Deacon (earlier same day)
It is still dark when they walk into the clinic at Vanderbilt hospital, not even a trace of the sun yet. He almost turns the truck around half a dozen times on the way there, but Scarlett is giving him the evil eye, reading his thoughts from her post in the passenger seat as if to say don't you dare.
He can't imagine the kind of beat-down she gave the nurse on the phone that they got him in so quickly. Of all the things a person could say about his niece, they sure couldn't say she didn't have guts.
"This is the biggest, most advanced hepatology clinic in the state of Tennessee," Scarlett says, trying to sound optimistic.
"Hepa-what?"
"Hepatology," she repeats. "the branch of medicine that deals specifically with the management of diseases of the liver."
"I don't even wanna know how you knew that."
I'd probably be better off jumping off this damn bridge and getting it over with, he thinks as they cross the river.
By noon, Scarlett's eternal optimism is already driving him crazy.
"You know, you didn't have to come," he says again as they sit in a different waiting room for yet another appointment. It's making his head swim, the blood draws and every kind of poke and scan he can imagine. He hates hospitals. They smell like misery, and death, and remind him of all the times when he was a boy that his mom had driven him to the emergency room, always had to get the story ready in the car on the way there. Don't tell em it was your daddy, okay? Just say you fell off your bike, Caroline would say nervously as he sat there in the passenger seat, broken or bleeding. And he never told, knowing she'd be the one to suffer if he did.
"Yeah, I did," Scarlett said, not even looking up from her magazine. "Someone's gotta keep you in line."
"I think I can handle that on my own."
"Mmmm hmmmm."
He's got a hell of a headache.
"So after we're done here today and we know more…you're gonna tell her, right?"
Rayna. She meant Rayna.
The look on his face says it all.
The look on Scarlett's face says exactly what she thinks of his decision-making skills at the moment, and the fact that he's been acting like a petulant little kid all day who doesn't want a shot at the doctor's office.
After another six hours of seeing 3 different doctors and getting poked and scanned so many times he is ready to take the damn syringe and stab the nurse herself and see how much she likes it, Deacon finally sees the specialist in charge of his team. Apparently he has a "team" now. Because that's what they give you to try and keep you alive. It takes a whole team.
He tries real hard to understand what this lady behind a desk in a white coat is trying to tell him about his life, but all those damn medical terms are lost on him. The only thing he gets that she's telling him is his liver is definitely junk.
"Just give it to me in English," he says, leaning forward on his elbows. "What do I gotta do to…beat this thing?"
"Well, the medication we have you on right now, while it's going to keep you feeling better, it's only going to work for awhile. We can try chemo or radiation, but this isn't going to just go away with drugs and treatments," Dr. Abbott says, not mincing words. "It'll prolong it, but the fact is that you definitely need a transplant. There is no way to reverse liver cirrhosis, even if you didn't have the issue of cancerous cells. And we need to do it soon, before the cancer spreads to other organs. You're lucky in that aspect that we caught it early."
Yeah, he thinks. This is what you call lucky.
He wonders what she tells people when they don't catch it early. You're screwed and it's your own fault?
Probably not.
"That other stuff you said, like…radiation or whatever…" Scarlett asks cautiously. "What are the side effects?"
The doctor rattles off a long list, and Scarlett's stomach drops because she knows what Deacon will say before he even opens his mouth.
"Well, we ain't doin that."
"That option is completely up to you," the doctor says. "Like I said, it wouldn't cure it, but it would keep it from spreading."
"Maybe you should just think about it for a little bit before you say no," Scarlett says quickly. "You don't know how long you're going to have to wait for a transplant, it might be-."
Deacon silences her with a Look. "I said. I'm not doing it. If all I got is six months, I sure as hell ain't gonna spend it sicker than a dog taking a bunch of toxic crap that ain't even gonna help."
Scarlett closes her eyes and sighs. Damn, the man is stubborn as a mule. She turns back to the lady doctor, who is trying to look sympathetic, but the look on her face says this is nothing new. She probably deals with patients like this every day. "A transplant? How does that work?"
"We put your uncle on the national registry, and he receives a grade. If his condition worsens and the grade falls, he moves higher up on the list," Dr. Abbott explains.
Nice how they talk about me like I'm not even here, Deacon thinks sardonically.
"Or there's always a chance someone close to you could be a good match for being a living donor."
Scarlett perks up at the sound of that. "Really? I didn't know that was possible. How does that work?"
"Well the liver is a regenerative organ. A person who is a good donor match could give your uncle a part of their liver, and within a few months, both of your livers would regrow themselves back to normal size." Dr. Abbott goes into a long list of the first round of tests required for living donors, but Deacon interrupts her before she's halfway done.
"We're not doing that either," he says firmly. "I sure as hell am not letting anyone I care about put themselves at risk for me."
"Deacon," Scarlett says with a sigh. "You could at least listen to what she has to say."
"I don't need to hear anymore," he says, rising to his feet. "Just put me on that….national list or whatever, and I'll hope like hell that works. I'll be outside when you're done." He stalks out of the office.
The doctor looks at Scarlett with raised eyebrows.
"I don't care what he says," Scarlett says, looking her right in the eye. "I want to be tested first."
#############################
Rayna
"Alright girls, are you ready for this?" She asks as they wait in the back hallway for the band to finish warming up. They don't even look a bit nervous. Born performers, these girls of hers.
Maddie and Daphne are beyond excited, in their pretty dresses and with their hair all done up. The three of them had spent the rest of the afternoon at the salon together: fancy hair, manis and pedis, the entire works.
We need to do more of that, Rayna thinks, looking at them now. They're growing up too fast. As proud as she is of Highway 65, these two beauties are the greatest thing she's ever done in her life.
"You called Dad, right?" Maddie says, holding onto her guitar. Her eyes keep scanning the people gathering at the tables. "I don't see him."
"Well, I sent him a message," Rayna says, forcing a smile. "I'm sure he'll be here if he can."
She herself cannot keep her eyes from traveling through the crowd.
Deacon, where are you?
It bothers her to no end that she hasn't heard from him since they came back. But then again, this is real. They are back to real life, not playing house snowbound in the woods.
Tandy hugs the girls. "You look beautiful! I'm going to go sit by your dad over there and take video. Knock em dead, okay?"
Tandy takes her place in the front row next to Teddy. Next to her, an empty chair waits.
Rayna keeps watching the door, even as the manager introduces them and they take the small stage. He'll show up, she thinks. He has to. Even if he's angry at me for some reason, it's too important to the girls.
The crowd thinks they are getting their regular Thursday night "in the round", so they are surprised and delighted when the Queen of Country herself walks out with her beautiful daughters.
"Well some of you know my girls and I have had a very…eventful few weeks." Rayna says when the applause has died down. "But we're home now, and this seems like the best place to get back into the swing of things. The Bluebird will always feel like home to us."
She looks over at Maddie, who steps up shyly to the microphone and speaks. "We wrote this first song with our mom, and now we want to share it with you. It's called "I'll Be"."
When darkness falls upon your heart and soul
I'll be the light that shines for you
When you forget how beautiful you are
I'll be there to remind you
When you can't find your way
I'll find my way to you
When troubles come around
I will come to you
I'll be your shelter when you need someone to lean on
Be your shelter when you need someone to see you through
I'll be there to carry you
I'll be there
There is not a dry eye in the house by the time they are done with the song, and it earns the girls a much deserved standing ovation.
"Thank you so much," Rayna says, feeling more than a little emotional herself. This is home. This is where she started, right here in this stage with Deacon. It's so right to be here, and yet so wrong that he isn't on that stage next to them. "I am so proud of my girls, and I'm sure you'll be seeing them on this stage again in the future."
"We better!" Someone in the crowd calls out.
They sing two more songs, a more upbeat old one of Rayna's called "My Good Side", and then she lets Maddie and Daphne have the stage to themselves to sing "Believing", the song Maddie and Deacon wrote together.
She stands off to the side and watches the girls own the stage like they've been doing this their whole lives. The last verse of that song hits her particularly hard.
My fears are safe here
Held in your hands
When I'm broken, you put me back together again.
All that I once was
All I could be
When I've forgotten
Baby, you remind me.
Rayna tears her eyes away from the girls for a second, but the chair next to Tandy is still empty. It makes her chest ache, and her eyes burn, and she has to excuse herself for a minute to get some air.
Standing outside behind the building, she leans against the brick wall, staring up at the full moon and the clear winter night sky, and trying to regain her composure. The cold air makes the tears on her face sting like tiny needles.
So this is what this feels like, she thinks.
##############################
It takes Scarlett almost two hours before she finds Deacon on roof of the hospital, in the dimly lit courtyard. He's sitting in a metal patio chair with his arms crossed and his boots up on the bistro table, staring up at the night sky and the full moon, not the least bit bothered by the fact that it's January and about 30 degrees out.
"There you are," she say, clearly ticked off. "I've been over every inch of this godforsaken place looking for you. You're outside. Did you ever hear of turning on your damn phone?"
It's right there in front of him on the table. Turned off.
He doesn't move.
Exasperated, Scarlett reaches over and turns it on. She shoves it in front of his face as the buzzer signaling unread messages started going crazy. Hospital policy meant they'd both had their phones off all day in the building. "Rayna and the girls were playing at the Bluebird tonight. If you wouldn't have run off, maybe we could have made the end, but it's too late now."
He blinks, as if just coming out of a haze. "What?"
"You heard me. She texted me two hours ago and asked me where you were, so I'm sure she probably did you as well. I guess it was a big deal. There's a video getting crazy hits on youtube."
Deacon scrolls through his messages on his phone, and sure enough there's one from Rayna, timed hours earlier. The girls and I are playing a few songs at the Bluebird tonight. We'd really like you to be there. He swears under his breath, feeling like the biggest jerk on earth. It was a huge deal, the girls getting to sing at the Bluebird for the first time. He should have been there.
When she doesn't get a response, Scarlett walks to the courtyard door that leads back into the building. "I'll be in the truck. You got 15 minutes or I'm leavin you here. Believe it or not, I've had enough of this place for today too."
She would, he thinks wryly.
With a sigh, he stares up at the moon for one second longer, and gets to his feet. "Scarlett, wait. I'm….sorry. I know I've been a pain in the ass all day, and I'm just…."
"Scared?"
"Yeah," he says, his voice low. "Scared."
Scarlett knows how hard it is for him to admit that. For years she's watched Deacon be the rock everyone else leans on. Having to lean on someone else for a change is far out of his comfort zone.
"You know," Scarlett says quietly. "It's only a death sentence if you let it be. And you don't have to go through it alone. Okay?"
"Okay."
"Now let's get the hell out of here."
##########################
Deacon sits in the passenger seat as Scarlett drives, the Youtube video from the show tonight playing on his phone. The sweet bright voices of three of his favorite girls in the world are the only thing that can lighten up the somber cloud hanging over his head, even if only for a few minutes.
Rayna and the girls are amazing in every song, and it hurts his heart that he missed it. "They're so good, Scar. They'll be on stage like Ray some day. No doubt."
He wonders if he will be around to see it.
"That they are," Scarlett says, keeping her eyes trained forward. "Maybe you should call her. Rayna, I mean. Just so she knows you didn't miss it on purpose."
The video ends and he runs his finger over her face in the contacts list.
"It's pretty late, already. I'll just wait til tomorrow."
He knows he isn't going to be able to stand in front of Rayna again without telling her. Today made it all real. It isn't a "could have or might have" thing anymore. It's a diagnosis, and a plan, and a "team", and a fight he has to face, whether he wants to or not.
'You're gonna tell her then?"
"Yeah," he says, clearing his throat and staring out the window. "I'm gonna tell her. Tomorrow."
#################################
It's not until the next afternoon when she's up to her elbows in craziness at the office that Rayna finally sees Deacon's number appear on her phone.
For a second, her temper flares. Maybe I shouldn't even answer, she thinks.
She stares at the buzzing phone so long that eventually it stops ringing.
A minute later her text message alert is going off.
Rayna. I know you have your phone glued to your hand. Pick up please.
It is ringing again. Irritated, she jabs at the answer button.
"Hello, Deacon," she says evenly. "I'm surprised you still remember how to use a phone."
"Hey," he said, his voice low, not at all surprised by her pissy tone. He deserves it. "Can you meet me?"
She looks at the two people impatiently waiting for her to end the call, and the day's planner in front of her that said she had a band coming in in an hour for an audition, and Daphne had dance class at 3:30.
"Sure, how about 6:30?" she says, balancing the phone on her shoulder as she signs for the FedEx guy.
"Ray," he says. "I know you're really busy, but it kinda has to be now."
It took him all day to make this phone call. There's no going back now.
She pauses at the tone in his voice, caught offguard. Something is wrong. She has known this for weeks, the way he's been acting. Something that has nothing to do with Luke or the Rolling Stone article, or her broken engagement. She knows Deacon, and she knows when something is wrong.
For a second she wonders if this is it. He's finally going to tell her that he's moved on, that's there's someone else and it's too late. That's why he didn't show up, that's why he's keeping her at a distance. Maybe he has really moved on.
The buzz of office activity blurs around her, and she only hears Deacon's voice.
"Where do you want to meet?"
#################################
From where Rayna parks her truck, she can his silhouette leaning against the bridge right where she knows he'll be, exactly halfway across.
Somehow she knows this is their now or never moment. Whatever he wants to tell her, either it's going to bring them back together once and for all….or it's going to break them for good.
Her feet carry her, and she hardly realizes she's moving until suddenly she's standing in front of him, hands in the pockets of her white wool coat, shivering against the cold winter air that blows off the river.
Rayna can't help but think how many times they've done this dance before. Standing in front of each other, trying to push away what has always been lingering there, and unable to do it. But there is nothing in the way now, no spouses, no engagement rings, nothing. This is their chance to get it right, she thinks, if they can figure out how.
"Hey," he says quietly. "Thanks for coming."
She forgets to be mad at him for a second, forgets everything she wants to say, because when he looks at her, the way Deacon has always looked at her, with his heart in his eyes, the rest of the world just fades away.
Deacon reaches down and runs his fingers over the initials on the faded padlock attached to a spindle of the bridge. "Still here," he says quietly.
"Yep," she says softly. "For eternity. Like us, right?"
"Yeah. Like us."
Because they've always been an "us", and they both know it.
Rayna knew before she came that the lock was still there. She knows it's there because she's passed by it hundreds of times. She's drive over this bridge in her car. She's walked by it years ago with her babies in strollers and stopped briefly to run her fingers across the letters scratched into the metal. She's walked by in on a summer day with her then-husband, and not dared to even stray her eyes to its place for a second, because Teddy most definitely did not know it existed. There's a couple other locks here now, but theirs is the oldest.
It's tarnished and weathered from the bright gold color it used to be, but their initials are still there, R + D= E Every time she walks by she thinks it won't be there, that some city worker will have cut it away and tossed it out with the trash, but every time it is still there.
"You remember when we put this here?" Deacon asks.
"Of course," Rayna says with a knowing little smile. "You gave me that lock for my 18th birthday. I thought you were crazy when I opened up that box, until you brought me here. We locked it on the bridge and threw the key in together."
"I wanted to think up something real special," he says, his voice gravelly. "Because I knew, Ray. Even back then, I knew it was you."
She'd known too, since she was sixteen years old. I swear I'm gonna love that man for the rest of my life, she'd told her sister. Tandy had laughed at her. There'll be lots of boys, Rayna. Don't fall in love with the first one that comes along. But it was too late, because she already had. She'd been in love with Deacon Claybourne from the second she laid eyes on him.
"Sometimes I think you should have done it," Deacon says before he can stop himself from the thought that has been on his mind for days now. "You should have married Luke. He could have given you everything you want. You'd never have to doubt him."
Guilt plagues her. "Don't say that," she says, feeling sick. "Because you know it isn't true."
He leans against the railing on his elbows, staring down at the swirling dark water. "Can you tell the girls I'm sorry I missed the Bluebird last night? I feel awful. I should have been there."
"So why weren't you?" She asks quietly. "Was that…some kind of way to get back at me or something? For not showing up at your NPR performance?"
"No, Ray, that wasn't it at all." Deacon takes both of her hands in his, tangling their fingers together, holding on tight. Holding on for dear life.
The look on his face is so distressed, so awful, that Rayna feels like her heart is standing on the ledge of the highest downtown building, ready to fall. "Deacon," she says more sharply than she intends. "You're starting to scare me a little. What the hell is going on?"
"I've been trying to find a way to tell you for awhile…."
"Is there someone else?" She says, her heart getting a little closer to that ledge. "Is that it?" She's heard rumors he had something going on with a backup singer during the tour, and as much as that hurts, she has no right to say a damn thing about it. She'd been engaged to someone else.
He gives her a smile that's so sad, so broken. "Don't even think that. You know there could never be anyone else for me. Not like this."
"Then just say it, Deacon. Whatever it is."
He closes his eyes and says the last three words she ever expects to hear. "I have cancer."
"What?" She whispers, stunned beyond belief, absolutely floored, falling. Her grip on his hands is so tight now, her knuckles are turning white, but it's the only thing holding her up.
"I'm sick, Ray."
"But how….you….you're fine. I mean you're standing in front of me, and you're fine."
But he isn't fine. Even now, she can see everything she's been trying to deny. He looks tired. Worn out. Thinner. She'd noticed that at the cabin already, and figured it was just the stress of being on tour with Luke.
He echoes her thoughts. "I'm not fine."
"I… don't even know what to ask first," she murmurs, trying to shake the fog that had settled in her head. "Can we…I think I need to sit down."
They walk to the end of the bridge, and still she clings to that hand tightly, suddenly afraid to let go, that he'll slip away when she's not looking.
Rayna sinks onto the bench, and tries to think like the I-can-face-anything woman she's supposed to be as he sits down next to her. She can't even look at him, because she knows the moment she does she'll lose it completely. So they just sit there, both staring straight ahead as they speak.
"What is it?" She asks.
"I got sick in Memphis," Deacon says quietly. "And they ran a bunch of tests. Spent the day at the hospital yesterday getting more done. It's my liver, Ray. Go figure."
"That's why you didn't make it to the Bluebird. Because you were at the hospital."
"Yep. Poked enough holes in me to make swiss cheese."
She closes her eyes at the stab of pain that hit her heart, and tries not to give into to the fear that was quickly taking over. "Well how bad it is? I mean there must be like treatments or something."
"There's some stuff," he says. "But it'll only delay it. I need a transplant."
"How…. long do you have to find one?"
"Not much," he admits "Maybe six months. This is it, Ray. They always said my drinkin was gonna kill me, and they were right."
"You said Memphis," she tries to digest that info. "So for a month already. You knew at Christmas and you didn't tell me. When we were…at the cabin?"
His face is pained. "You were so happy. And the girls….it was Christmas. I couldn't ruin that. I'm just glad we got to spend it together."
"Dammit, Deacon," she whispers. He'd been suffering through knowing by himself.
"You should have told me right away." She finally drags her eyes to his, and then the tears start falling. It is impossible to hold them back.
"This," he says with tears in his own eyes. "Sitting here telling you this is the hardest thing I've ever done, Ray."
And now they'll have to tell Maddie, Rayna realizes, her heart breaking into a few thousand pieces more as she thinks of all those years he'd missed. He hadn't had nearly enough time to be her dad. It seemed so cruel and unfair to think about, she almost couldn't bear it.
"We're gonna fight this, Deacon." she says, trying to sound a hell of a lot more determined than she is feeling. "You can beat it."
He looks so defeated. "I want to believe that. But they don't put you up too high on the list if you did it to yourself by being a drunk."
She reaches over and lays a hand across his cheek. "You will," she whispers. "You can't leave me. I need you too much. I've always needed you, Deacon. Sometimes I just…forgot for a little while. Can you forgive me for that?"
He swallows hard around the lump in his throat, taking her hands in his again, tangling their fingers together. "You know,' he says. "If it gets so bad you wanna…walk away, I'll get it. If you wanna walk off this bridge right now and not look back… because I don't want you to feel like you have to take care of me, Rayna. I won't let you do that again."
"Don't you say that," she says, almost getting angry. "Don't you dare even think that. I love you, Deacon. I'll take care of you if I want to, you don't get to decide."
The pain in his eyes breaks her, and suddenly they are in each other's arms completely letting go, their kisses mixing with salty tears and pain and so many regrets, holding onto each other for dear life.
"Don't leave me," she whispers, laying her head against his shoulder. "Promise me you won't leave me."
His arms around her tighten and he buries his face in her hair. "I promise," he says, his voice quiet next to her ear.
But it's one promise he doesn't know if he can keep.
#####The song I borrowed for the Bluebird is "I'll Be" by Reba McIntyre. Thanks for reading!