“It sounded like maybe a hurt animal. Oh, Daddy, there it is again! Did you hear it that time?”
“Hurry it up, Blake. I don’t know what it is, but I heard something, too. I want to get back to the car in case it is an animal. You have to be careful out—”
“Daddy, wait! That’s not an animal. Look over there, Daddy! That’s a lady laying over there by the creek!”
“Oh, come on, Blake! Why would anybody be … Oh my God, you’re right! It is a woman! Go to the car, son. Grab my cell phone. Be careful to not drop it. Go on, hurry!”
Wendy allowed her head to drop back to the ground. Her voice, unused for several days, grew so hoarse from her sobs that she could barely whisper now.
“Thank you, God, oh, thank you!”
Rescue crews brought equipment including floodlights so they could work into the night to bring Wendy out of the ravine. It took several attempts for the rescuers to get her phone number because she kept losing consciousness. When someone called Bryan and told him they’d found her, she heard him weeping through the phone line. When the phone was placed to her ear, all she could manage to rasp out was, “Love you.”
Her post-operative coma lasted two days. When she opened her eyes it was to find a room filled with flowers, a television playing but the sound muted, her mother dozing in a recliner across the room, and Bryan with his head leaning against the bedrail. He’d tried to keep his sobs silent but his fear of losing her, his anger at his own helplessness, and his joy of having her saved, increased the volume of his cries.
When he saw her eyes were open and the smile that reached them, he leaned over her, careful to avoid all the tubes, the needles, and the machines. With tears in his eyes, he whispered, “Oh, thank you, honey, for not leaving me. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”
Wendy smiled through her own tears and kissed his lips. “So you’re admitting that you missed me?”
With a gentle touch, he caressed her face and brushed her hair from her face. “Oh, yeah; that laundry’s really piling up in the corner of the bedroom!”
The Pain of Betrayal
“Aw c’mon, Sam, that’s a girlie movie. I don’t wanna watch that! Dad!”
Ted’s grin was already in place when he walked into the living room.
“Okay, what is it this time, my two young warriors?”
Samantha, predictably, rolled her eyes. Jacob the Informer, saw all, knew all.
“Dad, Sam rolled her eyes at you again!”
A pillow sailed across the room and landed with such precision it nearly knocked Jacob off his feet. Samantha chortled at her little brother’s expression of shocked disbelief.
“Dad, did you see what she just did? She threw a pillow and …”
He was knocked off-balance by a pillow thrown from the other side of the room. Ted was laughing so hard he didn’t see the corduroy missile that was launched into his shoulder. When he saw that it was his wife, Kathy, who had hit him, he ran toward her. Her mock screams were the stuff for which extreme stuffed-cushion battles were created.
Ted started stockpiling every shaped pillow he could find. He braced himself in a corner, held up a fist and declared, “Pillow Fight Friday Night has begun!”
In the following melee, a couple of lamps were shoved off their tables, the coffee table was wiped clean of the magazines that had been bothering no one, the dog and cat hid beneath furniture far enough to avoid being hit, but close enough to watch the males of the species rule victorious. Actually, the war ended when one of the pillows popped its seams and the stuffing flew around the room, coating everything in enough feathers to make it look like a chicken ranch.
All the participants were breathing heavily but their broad grins slipped a notch when Kathy’s mom voice said decisively, “Okay, I’ll concede the battle, but not the war. As the winners, boys, you can clean up the mess.”
“But Mom!”
“Oh, chill out, Jake! Samantha and I are going to put away the dishes and then we’ll get the popcorn, fire up the ol’ DVD player and argue over what movie to watch.” Over the kids’ heads she looked at her husband who interpreted it correctly.
“Jacob, go ahead and start cleaning. I’ll be back in a minute. I need to talk to your sister and mom for a minute.”
“Dad, that’s so unfair! Oh, okay. I’ll start but I can’t do it all by myself.”
“No problem, buddy. I’ll be back in a few minutes to help.”
It was Sam’s turn to groan. “Is this about that history test? I swear to you, I studied hard but …”
Kathy put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “What test? No, it’s not about that but maybe we should talk about your grades next.”
She glanced at her dad’s face, then back to her mother. “It’s about Charlie, isn’t it?”
They sat at the kitchen table with each parent scooting close, as if to protect her, as well as prove how important this conversation would be.
Kathy looked at Ted and he spoke first.
“Sam, we don’t think Charlie is good for you. He’s everything that you’re not and we believe he’ll eventually be a bad influence or worse, he’ll do something to harm you in some way. Oh, we don’t necessarily mean physically, though your mom and I disagree on the potential for that, but perhaps emotionally.”
Kathy took her daughter’s hand. “Honey, you don’t even act like yourself anymore. Since you started dating Charlie you’ve stopped smiling, you’re withdrawn from your friends, and then there are those grades you, yourself, just mentioned. Anytime a relationship changes you, alters your life in unhealthy ways, it’s probably a good idea to break free.”
Looking back and forth between them, Samantha began to cry. “Did he do something I don’t know about?”
Ted sighed. “Okay, I’ll start. The first time I met him, he didn’t exactly make a good impression. You invited him over for dinner and we were willing to be open-minded. I came home from work and he’s sitting there in my recliner.”
“You got mad at him for sitting in your chair, Daddy?” Ted didn’t like the tightness around her lips.
“No, let me finish, Sam. I walked in and he just sat there, staring at me. I said, ‘Are you Charlie?’ He said, ‘Yeah. And you are …?’ I said, ‘My name’s Ted, and that’s my chair. Do you always just sit there when someone comes in like this?’ He said, ‘Yeah. What about it?’ I told him ‘Not in this house. Here you stand up and speak to someone when they come in.’ That was very rude, Sam.”
“And because his manners don’t measure up to yours, you don’t like him?”
It was Kathy’s turn to sigh deeply. “No, Sam, of course that’s not all that bothers us. When you were over at your Aunt Katrina’s last week you were on Facebook. You didn’t log out before you left so, Aunt Kat being Aunt Kat …”
Samantha frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. “She stuck her nose in my business!”
“Watch the attitude, Sam. She looked at Charlie’s page, yes. What she saw upset her so she called me. She’s not only my sister, Sam, she’s your aunt and she loves you.”
“Okay, Mom. What did she find?”
“She found lots and lots of pictures that would upset anyone. Some were cartoons he’d drawn, depicting violence so horrific I’m surprised someone hasn’t reported him yet. There were several of him with a bottle of booze in his hand, obviously drunk, and a couple pictures of him brandishing a machete.”
The young girl dropped her head, staring at her hands clasped in her lap. “Yeah, those have always bothered me, too. I asked him to take them down.”
Ted rubbed his hand over his face. “Sweetheart, taking photos off Facebook doesn’t change his character. Anyone that does those things isn’t right for you.”
She nodded, then looked at her father. “You’re right, Dad. I’ve been thinking that maybe we’re not meant to be together, that we’re too different, but he keeps telling me how much he loves me.”
The resolv
e on Kathy’s face surprised her daughter. “Well, maybe this will help you decide. After you left Kat’s house, Charlie and a friend of his kept posting things on his wall. Charlie said ‘Hey dude, you should come over later. Sam’s going to be here. We’ll get wasted and crazy.’ His friend said, ‘Oh, we gonna sex it up tonight!’ That was on his wall, Samantha, for everyone to see! It’s why you’re not out with him tonight; it’s why I said you had to stay home.”
She dropped her head into her hands, her long blond hair covering her face as she sobbed. It was hard to understand her but what Ted and Kathy heard was music to their ears.
“I’m going to call him and break up with him right now! I am so embarrassed I could just die! I’m sorry Mom, Dad. Nothing’s happened like that and I’m now happier than ever that it hasn’t, and it never will. Don’t you worry about Charlie, you won’t be seeing him ever again!”
With that she jumped up from the table, pulled her cell phone from her pocket, and walked out as she dialed her soon-to-be ex-boyfriend. Ted and Kathy hugged each other.
“That actually went better than I imagined it would, Ted. I figured she’d put up a bigger fight.”
“I think it was the comments he made where everyone could read them, especially her family, that did it. Sam’s a good kid. She wouldn’t want her family to read that junk.”
Both of them were a bit surprised when Sam came back into the room and her tears were gone. “Okay, who’s fixing the popcorn? Did we ever decide which movie we were going to watch? Please don’t make me watch something dorky like ‘The Green Hornet’. I know Jake is thirteen and likes stupid movies like that but can we watch something like, oh, I don’t know, that movie I rented today called ‘Red Riding Hood?’”
Kathy started the microwave and Ted leaned close to Sam, glaring into her eyes, “Grandma, what big teeth you have!”
Sam touched her nose to her father’s. “All the better to eat you with, my dear!”
Jacob groaned from the doorway. “Oh man, we’re going to watch that?”
Ted said, “It would seem so, old man.”
Samantha began to smile, to laugh, to act like her old self. She acted as if a heavy weight had been lifted from her shoulders. The atmosphere in the entire family had circled back to normal.
* * *
That night Ted and Kathy slept the sleep of the contented, secure in their love of family, already looking forward to church the next morning. They never heard unfamiliar footsteps in their home, or knew of the hatred that walked into their lives, until it was too late to stop it.
It was loud, harsh, painful gunfire in their bedroom that woke Ted. He reacted in instinct.
He threw his arm up to shield himself, yet he took several rounds up the arm, the shoulder and finally, a blast to the face. That is the shot that threw him out of bed. While lying there, he could hear himself gurgling but he couldn’t feel the blood coming out of his ears, his nose, his jaw. He couldn’t feel his body. He didn’t yet know it, but he was shot eleven times.
Ted kept slipping in and out of consciousness. Whenever he awoke, he kept thinking about his children upstairs, sleeping, unaware. Before he passed out again, someone walked over to where he lay face down and kicked him in the foot; yet Ted forced himself to be silent. The only sound he heard was heavy breathing and the reloading of the gun. Unable to move, he lay there anticipating the person shooting him in the back of the head.
I know that this time it’s all over. All I ask, God, is make it quick.
For a few minutes, the gunman just sat on the side of the bed, breathing heavily, then stood and walked away. Because they left a small light burning in the kitchen that illuminated the hall through the open bedroom door, Ted had seen the shooter’s face but he was too injured to think, to reason, who it was. Ted’s addled mind thought it was a home invasion robbery.
He heard footsteps climbing heavily up the stairs, and then he heard his youngest son, Jacob, yell out, “No! Don’t! Why you doing this, Charlie? Please don’t hurt us, Charlie!”
That’s when the gunfire resumed. At that point, due to pain and loss of blood, Ted’s head dropped to the floor and he lost consciousness again. That’s why he never smelled the gasoline, or knew that Charlie and his accomplice had set fire to the house.
When Ted awoke again, he saw the room filled with smoke. He turned his head to see through his open bedroom door that the fire was in the hallway close to the stairs leading to the kids’ bedrooms. He began to panic but the adrenalin gave him the strength to stand. He took a step toward the bedroom door and that’s when he realized he couldn’t reach his children that way.
He fell back down then crawled to the other side of the bedroom. There he found Kathy, his wife, his partner, his love, his mate of eighteen years. There was no need to even check for a pulse. Charlie had sliced Kathy’s throat with that same machete she had seen in the photograph. She was so butchered, her body was so horrific, Ted knew there had been no way for her to survive her murderer. The amount of blood splattered proved she’d fought as long, as hard, as she could before her life drained from her body.
Terry’s next thought was again of the children. The adjoining bathroom had a door that gave access to the laundry room that, in turn, opened into the kitchen. When he saw flames licking the walls and heard the ceiling beginning to cave in, and windows exploding in the living room, he realized he couldn’t go that way, either.
He stepped back into his own bathroom that was now filled with smoke. Even though he’d lived in that house for years, had been in that bathroom every day of those years, the smoke disoriented him to the point that he got lost. He kept thinking there was a window in the room, but he didn’t know where it was.
He was hot, panicked, bleeding profusely, and fighting to stay alert. He moved until he found a wall, then just shuffled his feet, moving sideways, until he found the one window in the room. When he reached it, he couldn’t open the window. He began to beat on it, hoping it would break and he could open it that way, but it was solid, unbreakable.
God, help!
At last, with what seemed to be his last ounce of energy, Ted shoved one more time and the widow shot upward. He knocked the screen from the window and stuck out his head. After choking on blood and smoke, that first gasp of fresh air felt sweet and pure. But he felt and heard that the house was literally caving in on him so he crawled onto the roof. There was a four or five foot drop. It was such a mind-jarring jolt to his badly injured body, that it took his breath away. He shook it off.
I’ve got to get to my kids.
He made his way around the side of the house only to find flames were shooting out all the windows.
Oh, God, the house is coming down!
He looked over at his neighbors’ house, four hundred yards away and it might as well have been miles. He knew he had to reach that house where its residents were blissfully ignorant of the terror happening next door.
There were no stars, even the moon was hiding, as Ted began his trek. He crawled a few steps, managed to stand, stumbled a few more steps before falling back down to begin crawling again. He crawled on his belly, crawled on his hands and knees, getting cut by thorns and tree roots, but continued to push himself to keep going, no matter what. Please God help me make it to the only people who can help.
He made it about halfway and stopped to lean against a tree. He looked back at his home, now completely engulfed by fire and realized it was over, there was no hope of rescuing his family. No one could save them now.
No more. Please, no more. Come on, God, take me now. I don’t want to live without them. He drew in as deep a breath as possible and screamed, “Enough!”
Then he became angry, and many emotions began to well up inside him. If I die now, no one will ever know who did this.
Ted pulled himself back to a standing position, about to turn toward the house next door when he saw movement in his own backyard. His eyes widened as he saw three people, and he struggled to figure
out who they were.
As God as my witness, if it’s Charlie I’ll kill him. Lord, I’ll kill him with my own two hands for what he’s done to my family!
He took a step toward the figures silhouetted against the backdrop of sizzling fire, then fell. Using his one good arm, Ted dragged himself back to the scene of horror, noticing one of the figures runs away. As he moved closer, he realized one of them was his son. The other one was the monster who had destroyed them. Charlie was conscious but he was merely lying on his back, eyes staring at the sky, as if to count the stars shining there. Jacob stood there, huffing for breath, his shoulders drooped, and in one hand was the rifle his grandfather had given him last Christmas, the gift that had caused such arguments between Kathy and her father-in-law. The discord came to an abrupt end when Jake had told them that he appreciated the gift but there was no way he’d ever fire the weapon. He didn’t want to hunt, target practice didn’t interest him, and he could never fathom a reason to shoot at another human being. Until tonight.
“Jake, you okay, son? Where’s Sam? Did she get out?”
Jake saw all; knew all.
It wasn’t fair that so much heartbreak should be reflected in the eyes of one so young.
“Of course she got out, Dad. She got out before her boyfriend started killing us.”
“Wha …? What do you mean, Jake? Did she hear a noise and run? I don’t understand.”
Both of them turned toward the sound of frantic running in their direction. Samantha stopped a few feet away, taking in the scene of her home collapsing in a fiery desecration, her bloodied father and brother, and Charlie lying, unmoving, on the ground. Ted tried to lift his arm to her.
“Oh, baby! You’re safe! How did you …?”
Rushing past them, Samantha fell to her knees beside the prone body of a murderer.
“Charlie? Oh honey, wake up! Come on, baby, don’t leave me! I love you, Charlie. Do you hear me?” With the anguished scream of one who has truly lost all she cared for, came the words, “Charlie, I love you!”
Jacob held his father’s gaze, then dropped his head as tears ran down his bloodied, dirty cheeks. His legs covered with cuts he had endured jumping through a window, finally gave way and he sank to the ground.
Safe in the Heart of a Miracle: More True Stories of Medical Miracles Page 13
