2. Grace

Chapter 2

Grace

I stayed with Mallory and Helen all afternoon in the waiting room, eating Thai takeout and playing countless games of UNO as I bit my fingernail to the quick — although Mallory's somehow still looked perfect.

When the hospital surgical liaison confirmed the severity of Bruce's heart attack, I asked Helen if she would prefer to call Alexander with the medical update or if I should. Her tear-brimmed eyes met mine and filled with gratitude.

In a terse follow-up call, Alex grilled me with a series of precise follow-up questions, as Connor had prepared me to expect, testing all my professional training in calm communication with family members, and hung up before I could ask about his plans.

That evening, Bruce's family was called up to the cardiac ICU, and when I hesitated at the nurses' station, Mallory gripped my hand and pulled me along. When I retracted my hand and gestured for her to lead the way, Mallory slid her arm through her mother's as they walked into Bruce's room. I washed my hands, giving them time without me loitering. They were his family, I was just his daughter's friend.

Bruce's skin was sallow, gray hair clumpy due to his awful surgical shower cap. He smiled groggily as his wife and daughter leaned down for a hug. Mallory, who normally could joke about anything, forced a tight smile.

"Mr. Clarke, I'm Carla, your overnight nurse," she greeted as she washed her hands. She recognized me as a fellow staff member, her lips lifting before she pulled a flashlight out of her scrubs pocket to check his pupils. "You gave these women quite a scare. Can you tell me who they are? "

I braced myself. Carla was doing her job, trying to check her patient's cognitive skills and memory while taking his vitals.

She couldn't know how loaded her question was.

"The gorgeous one is my wife Helen. Her cute clone is my daughter Mallory. And over there," his head flopped in my direction. No better time to get an honest opinion than after anesthesia, it's practically truth serum. "That's my Grace."

Carla raised a brow before she teased, "She works with me, I thought she was my Grace."

"Nope, you can't have her, I've already got her." He flipped his left wrist up in a silent request, and I gave his hand a gentle squeeze.

Carla's eyes softened as she watched the tender moment and rested two fingers on his other wrist to take his pulse. "How did you get yourself a Grace, anyway?"

"I don't know how other people get their Graces, but I got mine for Christmas."

After discovering my Christmas plans last year — or more accurately, lack of plans — Mallory had insisted I join her family's holiday ski trip to their Adirondack cabin. She skied the most difficult black diamond runs effortlessly, gaining a crowd of admirers to flirt with on the lifts, while I stayed with Bruce on the easier blue square trails.

I was a nervous wreck. I'd grown up in Plattsburgh, 20 miles north of the ski resort, and I hadn't been that close to home in seven years. I scanned the mountain, expecting to see members of the church where I'd been raised … or worse, my father or one of my brothers. They'd never skied growing up, but a lot could change in seven years.

A person's whole life could change.

"Loosen your grip on your poles, Grace," Bruce coached. "Alex once dislocated his thumb from gripping too tight, and whined about how redundant it was to ice your hand and put it back in a glove, and I said —"

"I'm sorry, could you — I haven't talked to my father in years, and you being so … " I felt bad interrupting, but I couldn't handle stories about his kids' perfect childhoods. Not here, not today.

Bruce gestured to a heated bench, handing me a granola bar from his coat's inside pocket. "My dad had a drinking problem. When he died sixteen years ago, Helen and I hadn't talked to him in eleven years. Every summer, Dad loved taking Alex to the racetrack to bet on horses. One year, he had enough whiskey that he hit the mailbox turning into the driveway. Alexander was unbuckled in the back seat and his forehead got scratched. He was only seven, too excited about showing me their winnings to care, but it was a wake-up call. I had to make a choice: I had to choose my future over my past."

His arm draped along the bench as we watched the ski lift in silence. A father dismounted, leading a little boy to the launching point and ruffling his ski cap before they pressed off. The granola bar turned to ash on my tongue.

"I wasn't born a girl." The words escaped, coming out wrong. "I mean, I always have been, I know that now. But I was assigned male at birth, raised as the youngest of four boys. I knew I was different, but we were raised Evangelical, no room for deviating from the Scripture. When I told my father … it didn't go well."

I held my breath. Thankfully, he didn't keep me waiting very long.

"Well that's a shame," Bruce said, and I flinched, "that he didn't listen."

My mind spun. "It doesn't bother you?"

"What would bother me?"

"That I'm transgender?"

"Why would that bother me? I believe you are who you say you are," he shrugged. "You say you're Grace, so … you're Grace."

"Can I add a Grace to my Christmas list?" Carla asked, meeting my eyes again before wrapping a blood pressure cuff around his arm.

"There aren't any Graces in Santa's workshop. You have to go find your own Grace." He sang softly, " Have yourself a Merry Little Gracie … "

"Completely consensual, of course," Mallory said. "No Grace-trafficking."

Bruce narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Is she trying to kidnap our Gracie?"

Our Gracie. I bit my lip to restrain my sob. Mallory placed her palm over our interlocked hands. "Don't worry, Dad. Grace isn't going anywhere. Nobody can take her from us."

Carla wrote his pulse and blood pressure on the whiteboard. "Vitals look good, but he needs sleep. Visiting hours are over, they restart tomorrow at 10."

I looked imploringly at Carla as she guided Helen and Mallory out of the room. She held up an open palm, giving me five minutes .

Mallory batted her eyelashes and mouthed, ‘ Can I add a Grace to my Christmas list? ‘

Typical. Even in the cardiac ICU, she was still trying to set me up.

I rolled my eyes then sent a quick text to Alexander:

Visited your dad, charming as ever. It would bolster his spirits to see your face.

By the time I clicked send, Bruce had fallen asleep. Pulling the chair closer, I took his outstretched hand and rested my forehead against the back of his palm.

If this were my father in the hospital and I approached his bedside, would he hold out his hand to welcome back his outcast child? Or did the parable of the Prodigal Son not apply to daughters?

"Please," I whispered my first prayer in years. "Please don't let me lose him too."

As he slept, I thought Bruce's hand squeezed mine. I dozed off remembering a quiet Sunday afternoon with my grandma: the first time I shared my truth, before I understood the repercussions, dreaming of a time when praying felt as natural as breathing.

"Nanna," I said, inspecting her jewelry to avoid eye contact and running my sweaty palms over my thighs. "Does God make mistakes?"

Her eyes snapped up from her romance novel, Lord of Scoundrels. Daddy says she shouldn't read those ‘filthy bodice rippers,' but her stash under the bed was our little secret. "Why do you ask?"

"Daddy read this Scripture on Sunday about being knit together as babies."

"Psalm 139." She identified it easily, reciting with the confidence of a woman whose son was an Evangelical minister: " For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. "

"Yeah, that one." My voice shook as my fingertips traced a pearl brooch of a butterfly. "Is it true?"

"As far as I know," she said, popping her recliner lever to sit up. "Why?"

"Well, at school this week, we had to write about what we want to be when we grow up, and I wrote about wanting to be a mom." My eyes jolted up at Nanna's sharp inhale to her reflection in the mirror. Her alarmed eyes softened as they took in my panic. "That's all I've ever wanted to be. And the kids, they told me I'd be a dad, but I —"

My face scrunched up to fight back tears. Daddy said I couldn't cry anymore since I'm seven. Mama didn't give him the girls he wanted, so he wanted no more tears under his roof. If he saw my puffy face, I knew which Scripture he'd choose: ‘ When I was a child, I behaved like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.' Last time he'd recited it, I pointed out that Jesus also said, ‘ Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.' He reprimanded me for talking back.

"Come here," Nanna prompted sternly.

I trudged over with heavy feet and shared my theory: "Maybe since Elijah and I were in Mama's belly together, God didn't notice I'm not supposed to be a boy. He wasn't trying to forget me, but … like when Mary and Joseph got home from vacation and realized they forgot Jesus because they both thought the other one had him?"

"You know what I think?" Nanna scruffed my short hair. Her eyes flickered around, landing on her dresser. "I think grown-ups are like butterflies, each uniquely beautiful. But butterflies aren't born that way, are they?"

I shook my head, remembering the tank in my second grade class. "No, they start as caterpillars before they metamorf—um, go into cocoons."

"Right, metamorphosis. Some butterflies don't change much, they start and finish blue."Her gentle hand cupped my cheek. "But some caterpillars are different when they grow up."

"Like the monarch," I murmured, thinking of the yellow and black striped caterpillars. After the green shells — crystal somethings — they emerge bright orange and black .

"Like the monarch. Do you know what happens when they're in their chrysalises?" Nanna leaned closer like she was telling a secret. "They turn into goo. Their entire body, all of their cells …" She made a farting sound and I laughed out loud. "Scientists have studied it, but can't explain exactly what happens in that chrysalis. Even their best microscopes can't look inside. Do you know the only one who knows?"

"God?"

"He decides who each caterpillar will grow up to be. We can't predict it, we have to rely on His grace for the faith that each will turn out the way they're meant to,. Do you understand?"

"I think so."

"Remember what the Lord said to your namesake, the prophet Jeremiah," Nanna pressed her forehead to mine. " Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; For I know the plans I have for you, plans to give you hope and a future. "