Delia had made a habit of taking cues from her older brother. As early as she could remember, she made efforts to copy him. She was lucky – there was just enough distance in their ages that this didn't annoy him. So for the earliest parts of her life, especially in New York, she had more of a protector and teddy bear, than a teasing, older brother.
With the move to Everwood, that connection lessened. Ephram grew surly and angst-ridden, and she was eager to separate herself from the turmoil raging between him and their father. So Delia, for the first time in her life, struck out into the world without Ephram. And what she found was a whole town just ready for the exploring. And along the way, she picked up a few more teddy bears.
One of them was Bright Abbott.
The summer before Bright was to go back to college was an exciting one for Delia. She was about to turn 12, and 12 was only one year from 13 and after that…the possibilities were endless! She could recall every word of her conversation with Bright that last day at the pool. He'd given her a big hug, lifting her off her feet. And it was after the hug he gave Brittany, so technically, Delia had been the last one to actually touch him. More than that, he'd told her, specifically, that he'd see her at Thanksgiving. Delia's diary belied her tom-boy persona, and was filled with pages devoted to the deconstruction of his parting words: "We'll have to share a wish bone at Thanksgiving, Munchkin." Munchkin! She was sure that it would be his pet name for her when they were married.
But before Bright left for school, Linda Abbott died. And the guilt and misery of her former loathing of Linda made Delia incapable of going to the funeral. She'd told her father she was sick, and too lost in his own grief to push, let her stay home. He'd turned to Ephram for a solution and Ephram suggested Madison come over, a surprising proposal given how their relationship had ended. But Delia was grateful, and former babysitter and babysittee watched movies. All the while, Delia wallowed in her belief that her hatred had contributed to the death of Bright's aunt.
By the time her father and brother convinced her that no one held her responsible, even a little bit, Bright was already in Africa. But as with most childhood loves, her crush faded, others replaced him, and she grew to remember Bright fondly, if not with a little embarrassment.
Now, so many years later as she followed him and Ephram through the twists and turns of the hospital, she considered what it might be like to leave New York a second time. To come back to a town where she'd felt cozy and safe. To once again leave her solitary devotion to her brother behind and allow other people into her life.
As soon as the thought entered her mind, she blanched and pushed it away. Wasn't this trip the perfect example of why not to let people into your life? Years after Ephram and Amy first met, here he was, walking through a hospital to find…what? Amy sick? Amy dying? Wasn't this the way it always ended? Letting people in inevitably meant losing them. This was a lesson she had learned well.
'No,' she thought as she prepared herself to be strong for her brother, the only person she allowed beyond the veneer of friendship and familial affection since her father's death. 'I'm not opening myself up to that pain again. Not like Ephram has.' And yet, she thought of Edna and Nina – women she hadn't seen since a brief stop in Everwood two years ago for her old high school's graduation. Letters and phone calls kept them in touch, and with every contact, Delia felt the pull of their love on her. It was what kept her in New York, far from the possibility of being hurt.
Amy's call to Ephram had done more than bring them back to Colorado. It brought Delia within striking distance of the two women who'd filled the gap her mother had left behind. Caught between desperately wanting to see them, and fearing reattachment, she decided she was lucky this time. This time, all decisions were Ephram's.
***
"Ephram, please. She needs you."
He inhaled in order to steel himself against his grandmother's plea. On the phone, there was only her calm voice and the chime of their clock in the background marking a quarter-of-an-hour. On his end, music and drunken laughter filtered into his garden apartment four blocks away from the heart of New Orleans. His roommate, an ex-Navy cadet from Arkansas, was always telling him he needed to get out of the jazz cafes and into the 'Calles'…that's where the action was happening. Usually Ephram shook his head with a bemused grin. However, tonight he would have desperately liked to be out in the streets, avoiding this call, if nothing else.
"Nonnie, she's going to graduate in three months," he reasoned, sure that this was another ploy to get him to move back. "She's going to go to college and all the crap—"
"Ephram!"
"Sorry, sorry! All the 'crud' she's going through in high school will vanish. I know this! It happens with everybody." He took a drink and winced on the gin, hoping his grandmother wouldn't hear the ice cubes clinking in the glass.
"I'm not convinced, Ephram. It's not as though leaving high school was the cure-all for you. You ran all the way to Europe to shake off the 'crud' of high school." She dripped with authentic New York sarcasm.
This was a sore subject. "I didn't 'run' anywhere, Nonnie. Vienna was the opportunity of a…"
But she didn't let him finish, "You didn't even finish your degree at San Francisco and then you ran down to that town of debauchery…" She paused as though she didn't have the strength to continue. "You have a responsibility, whether you like it or not."
And this enraged him, "I'm NOT shirking my responsibility for Delia. Me living in New Orleans has nothing to do with me running. This is about me, living my life, finding my own way!"
There was a brief silence on the phone as each of them considered their next attack. It was his grandmother who saw the chink in his armor first. "That's fine, Ephram. If this is, indeed, about finding your way, then I'm not one to stop you. I know your music is central to your life, and even if you've abandoned higher education, at least you haven't forgotten what your mother and father had hoped for you. As to Delia, I leave it to you to make the decision."
They hung up after exchanging stiff 'I love you's and Ephram finished his drink and three others in the dark of his bedroom, not hearing the din of the city for all the screeching in his head. He fell asleep sometime after his roommate came home with a girl from Utah who'd never been to New Orleans and was happy to call out her delight through the paper-thin walls. The next day Ephram booked a flight for New York that would leave at the end of the week.
***
Bright made the final turn down a wing reserved for patients preparing for experimental treatment. Among the nurses, he'd discovered, it was casually referred to as the "sci-fi" wing. He'd made several trips down this hall in the past month and each time he wondered what the people in the other rooms were praying for. A miracle cure; a new innovation; an earth-shattering discovery; a reversal of diagnosis?
He knew what he'd prayed for. And for all the good he'd done in Africa, in South America…hell, even in Everwood…he would have thought his prayer would be answered. He knew God didn't work that way, his mother told him that a thousand times. But it didn't stop him from feeling his cries were ignored. Especially now as he led Ephram to the last door. The nameplate read "Abbott" and there were paper roses struck to the door in cheerful, non-death colors. Red for blood. Blood for life. He knocked twice, quickly rapping his knuckles on the wood, and heard a faint, "Come in."
Ephram and Delia lingered for a moment as Bright stepped into the room, then stuck his head back out, impatient, "Come in, you guys."
They turned the corner into the sunlit hospital room at the same time, and neither had the composure to conceal their shock.
"It's so good to see you again, Ephram, Delia. I'm so glad you came."
Ephram stared at the woman lying in the hospital bed, pale and hooked up to several monitoring machines. Some beeped, others drew lines across a black screen. She looked frail, thin, weak. But when she smiled at him, he could see her old joy in the tired lines near her eyes.
"Hello, Mrs. Abbott. It's good to see you again, too," he said.
