Yes.
Jessica leaned forward and laid her hand on his cheek. “Honey? What is it?”
“I believe my work at the church is finished now.”
She continued to hover over him and wait as if she expected a punch line.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Our church needs someone besides me to be the administrative pastor. I might take the youth or we might eventually take another much smaller church but I don’t belong in this particular position. I think that’s what this whole thing might have been about.”
“You think God dumped you in the river to get your attention?” she teased.
“I don’t think it’s that simple but my forced baptism stopped me long enough to think hard and long about my faith, God’s will, and our marriage. It was also probably the only thing that could have changed Mitchell’s mind about God.”
“Let’s hope this is the last time you have to nearly die to lead someone to Him.”
“I fervently hope that but something occurred to me while I lay there in the darkness all those hours. That whole accident became a metaphor depicting my out-of-control life.”
Jessica sat down in the chair beside his bed. “Interesting, because for me it became a depiction of our marriage and my fear of losing you to the church. But when I realized I might lose you for good it was the very same church that supported me through it.”
“I love our church,” Archer said. “But I allowed my work there to take the place of God as the focus of my life. Just as my tires lost contact with the surface of the road and spun out of control because of the depth of the water, my life—our lives—were out of control. Up until this accident the frantic pace of life had become so overwhelming that some mornings I hit the floor at a run and didn’t slow down until my head hit the pillow late at night. I had my meals on the run, said my prayers on the run, and only brought out my Bible when I needed to share a comforting Scripture with a church member or a patient at the hospital. I’ve been going about it all the wrong way.”
“And so you think it took this to get your priorities back into line?” Jessica asked.
“Seems like it to me. Do you think I could get a full-time job as a hospital chaplain?”
“I think you could do anything God calls you to do.” Her smile widened. “He’s called you to do one more thing.”
Archer shifted in the bed, mystified that she didn’t seem to be getting what he was trying to tell her. “Jess, I’m resigning as church pastor.”
She laughed. “Hallelujah! Perfect timing, Daddy.”
He chuckled at her. She’d finally gotten... “Daddy?”
She kissed him on the cheek, her soft breath warm on his skin. “One of the worst days of my life turned out to be one of our best. Sunday morning I fainted. Tony and Caryn took me to the ER. Grant ran tests and I’m pregnant.”
She wasn’t kidding. She was serious.
“Oh, Jessica! Yes!” He shouted it so loudly he was afraid a nurse might open the door and come rushing in.
“I’m about seven weeks along now,” Jessica said. “So I want you to start healing so you’ll be in perfect shape to help me with diapers when the time comes.”
“Diapers! Yes! Anything you want. Hey, you know those bubble gum cigars they used to sell in the stores? They came in pink and blue. Is it too soon—”
“Archer! Cigars?”
“We’re having a baby!”
Jessica chuckled. “Now we can spread the news to our families and to the church. I wanted you to be the first person I told.” Her gaze sobered. “How do you think the church will handle both our announcements at once?”
“They handled the tornado and they handled the flood. They can handle a new baby and a new pastor.”
“And you’ve thought it all through? You’re sure this is God’s will?”
He took her hands and kissed them. “Jess, I thought you’d be ecstatic about the prospect of actually seeing me every day.”
“Oh, I will. I think it’s wonderful. But I don’t want you to feel pressured into it because of my demands.”
“It’s almost as if God gave me a word picture—a very literal one.”
“And so you decided you aren’t a pastor? Archer, you’re wonderful with—”
“That’s just it, Jess. I’m a pastor, not a church administrator, and that’s what our growing church needs now, someone who can manage a large number of people without killing himself—and his marriage—in the process.”
She smiled down at him. “So you feel at peace with the decision?”
“Yes. Do you?”
Her smile widened. “I’m trying not to get too excited about this. I don’t want to get my hopes up and then—”
“Then you want me to do it?”
“More than anything, especially with a baby coming.”
“We’ll lose my salary,” he warned.
“We’ll keep mine. If God’s directing you to do this then He’ll take care of us. Besides, He might just be directing you to a smaller congregation.”
“You think?”
“You’re a healer. You have to be able to give that personal touch, that personal, individualized compassion.”
“Have I told you lately how much I love you?” he said softly.
“Sounds like a country-western song.”
“Come here and kiss me.”
Hallowed Halls
Hannah Alexander
Chapter 1
Fury surged through Dr. Joy Gilbert like a rifle shot as she shut her office door and yanked the stethoscope from around her neck, suppressing a rebel yell. She stormed to the wide windows and sucked in her breath, ready to throw open the panes and shock the world. But an inquisitive squirrel leapt from one branch to another on a tree behind the clinic.
With a comical tilt of his head the furry critter broke the force of her outrage. Joy released her breath and deflated. As a child, she’d helped Mom bottle feed an orphaned gray squirrel, and the little thick-tailed acrobat had often made her laugh.
Why scare the squirrels because she was angry with the ridiculous accusations of a hostile patient? The man was unbelievable.
Her intercom buzzed, jerking her back to complete maturity.
“Dr. Gilbert, honey, you okay in there?” It was Betty, her favorite nurse.
“Give me a sec—”
“The boss is on his way to the clinic, sweetie. I want to rush Mr. Bezier out the door before he can waylay Mr. Cline.”
Joy winced. Along with half the clinic staff and several patients in the waiting room, Betty had clearly heard Frank Bezier berating Joy for her refusal to write him a script for a half-year’s supply of Percocet. He wouldn’t listen when she explained that was illegal. Some people thought they were above the law.
He had, in fact, loudly accused her of using her physical attributes and other “abilities” to land her job with Weston Cline “since you’re obviously an incompetent physician.” The man was a bully.
“He’ll just call Weston later,” she told Betty. “He has clout.” And Weston’s personal cell phone number.
“Oh horse dumplings; the man’s a legalized drug junkie and everyone knows it, including the boss. And might I remind you that Mr. Cline hired you for your ability with patients? Not anything else, and everybody here knows that, no matter what Mr. Bossypants says.”
Joy closed her eyes in relief at her nurse’s soothing words. No one in the clinic knew about the pains she’d taken to keep Weston Cline’s hands off of her. All the struggles growing up without a daddy could teach a girl a few hard lessons, so she’d been prepared. Being accused of doing the very thing she’d always sworn never to do before marriage had felt like a stab in her gut with a butcher knife.
“You could fire him from your service,” Betty said. “Send a letter and he’s out the door in thirty days.”
“And then I’ll be out the door.” Joy suspected Weston chose to advertise the clinic’s willingness to take chronic pain patients
in the first place because it would ensure a fast growth rate. And it certainly had. “The boss wants Bezier happy.”
“If you go out the door, so will I, and so will half the staff. Mr. Cline knows better.”
“I’m not so sure. He wants me to write more scripts for narcs.”
“You don’t want the state medical board breathing down your neck for being overly generous with controlled substances,” Betty reminded her.
Joy turned her back to the desk. She refused to become a legal pusher. Where had her brain been the day she agreed to work for a man who wanted her to put an emphasis on pain management?
No, wait, she hadn’t been thinking with her brain last year. Weston Cline had the charisma of a world dictator, and for a short time she’d allowed herself to be dazed by his sweet words and the promise of a successful career—particularly after Zack broke their engagement.
If only Weston wasn’t so damaged. If only his character had been as solid as she’d believed it to be in the beginning. Over the months she’d realized that the man she’d thought he was had concealed his broken character by utilizing his dynamic personality. He had plenty of that. His male magnetism that had nearly been her undoing.
Mom taught Joy long ago that sweet words and a handsome face might draw a woman to a man, but she’d better be smart enough to hold him at arm’s length until she could see the character beneath. That took longer.
While watching Weston promote the clinic to the public, Joy had found that for him the game was all about making people believe in the magic of narcotics. Money was his narcotic. He’d failed the character test for Joy.
The hum of familiar voices drifted through her closed door. There was a cry of a child and the clatter of a computer keyboard, the laughter of a couple of the staff members in the break room.
“Dr. Gilbert?” Her door opened, the bottom of it brushing across carpet. She caught a whiff of Lindsey Baker’s spicy perfume. The girl needed to be educated about patient allergies and invasion of doctor privacy.
While Joy’s stomach growled because of a missed lunch three hours ago, she reminded herself that her hometown was just downriver, between Frankenstein and Hermann, Missouri. Not that far, really, though it seemed a world away.
“Dr. Gilbert, it’s Sarah Miller,” Lindsey said.
Joy turned immediately. Good. A real patient. She reached for the file Lindsey held out to her.
“She’s in Two,” Lindsey said in that timid, eager-to-please voice of a new-hire. This one was especially young, with rich auburn curls and friendly, dark brown eyes.
Weston encouraged an attractive appearance among the clinic’s staff members.
Once again drawn into the milieu of work, Joy glanced at the information on the clipboard. She was halfway down the hall, paging through the three-inch-thick stack of notes and test results when a pair of polished black wingtips stepped into her field of vision. She looked up into the cobalt gaze of her employer.
She should have been able to sense his arrival by the suddenly hushed voices of staff, and the adoring—or possibly fearful—glances from every woman in view, depending on their status with him. Employees feared or worshiped him. Patients who recognized his city-wide fame from the billboards practically genuflected at his feet. The man had been featured in a regional magazine recently for taking his family fortune and doubling it. Who besides Joy didn’t worship the wealthy?
She’d overheard a couple of women arguing in the waiting room one day over whether he looked more like Hugh Jackman or Gerard Butler. Had Joy really once shared their admiration?
“Weston, hi. What brings you here in the middle of the week?” She instinctively moved her hand to cover the name on the file she carried—Sarah Miller was a pro bono case. He would make no money from this one.
“Doesn’t a man have a right to check on his business investment from time to time?” The intentionally seductive depth of his voice and the gentle expression in his gaze assured her he was presently relaxed. “I heard you haven’t taken a lunch break. Why don’t we have Lindsey bring you a Reuben from the deli? You can join me in my office while you eat and catch me up on today’s progress.”
“That would be great if I had time, but we’re a little swamped right now.” That should thrill him. “Rain check?”
He glanced at the file in Joy’s hand. “After this one?”
“Three more.”
He reached down and nudged her hand from the name. He’d taken Joy to task more than once about “wasting time with non-payers.” She could almost feel the temperature drop in the room a couple of degrees.
At thirty-nine, Weston had flecks of white at the temples of his night black hair, a neatly trimmed beard and pinpoints of quicksilver in his blue eyes when he was upset.
That quicksilver gave a momentary flash. “Joy.”
“This one’s in pain.”
He tapped the file folder. “This one’s a hypochondriac.”
She glanced around and lowered her voice. “I beg your pardon, but I’m the physician on this case.” Since when did he get his degree? She swallowed. Had to remain calm. “I have some unique cases that—”
“As you’ve pointed out to me in the past, every case is unique.”
“This clinic is doing so well after less than a year. It’s not hurting the bottom line to help someone every now and then.” She held her breath.
His gaze softened, but remained on her. The troubled questions in his eyes had haunted her for months. As Bezier just finished trumpeting to the whole clinic, Weston had hinted from time to time that he hoped for more than an employee relationship from her when he brought her to Kansas City. At one point, when they met after clinic hours to discuss strategies, she’d almost weakened. Why save herself for marriage when the only man she’d ever loved had broken their engagement? When it seemed the whole world believed in the joys of matrimony without the contract—when her own mother had obviously weakened at one point long enough to become pregnant with her out of wedlock—why had she pushed back so hard every time a man tried to push her into bed?
Just in time she’d realized that no woman could give Weston what he truly needed, because the great Weston Cline, sole heir to the Cline family fortune, had a heart so wounded he could barely function emotionally. Losing a child could do that to a parent.
Weston’s ex-wife, Sylvia, claimed his heart was forged in ice and stone, but every so often Joy saw something different in his expression, heard it in his voice, sometimes in his words. There was no denying he’d been a lonely child, and she knew about the tragedy of his younger brother’s death when Weston was eleven.
That might explain why his relationship with his mother was always so strained, but Joy had stopped herself from following that rabbit trail before becoming too involved with his private life. That could give him the wrong impression. Sometimes she really did follow in her mother’s old habits and attempt to soothe the woes of the world. It wouldn’t be wise to encourage Weston to get the wrong impression.
“I have a patient, Weston.” She tried to step around him.
He didn’t move.
She pressed between him and the hallway wall, retaining as much dignity as possible. How she wished this man didn’t control her life so completely, as Mom had warned her he would.
Sometimes it seemed as if Molly Gilbert had ways of reaching across the distance to make her daughter pay for the choices she’d made that Mom—and by implication, God—had not condoned.
She entered the exam room, shutting Weston out so she could focus on one of her favorite patients. “How are you doing, Sarah?”
Pale of hair and eyes, Sarah Miller met Joy’s gaze with a tentative nod.
A wise professor had once taught that if physicians would listen longer to the patients, those very patients could provide missing puzzle pieces for their own diagnoses. Oh, for the luxury of time. Joy loved listening. But with Sarah, Joy had realized many weeks ago that it was necessary to know more than the i
nformation on the chart.
“Haven’t been sleeping?” Joy sat on the chair in front of the computer and studied the notes the nurse had made.
Sarah looked up and shook her head. Today her eyes were more gray than green, a sure sign she didn’t feel well, though her vitals were solid. Her translucent skin was paler than usual, her mouth more rigid. She put Joy in mind of a prisoner who hadn’t seen the sun in years.
“What’s wrong, Sarah? Betty said you wouldn’t talk to her about why you’re here.”
“That’s because last time I was here I think someone told the rest of the staff that I asked for a colonoscopy; they were all snickering at me from behind the Plexiglas when I walked out the door.” There was reproach in her soft voice.
Joy knew Betty wouldn’t do that, but after being fired from the services of two other physicians, Sarah was gun shy.
“Tell me what’s going on with you today,” Joy asked, leaning forward, keeping eye contact. “Is your stomach still causing you trouble?”
“Yes, but that’s not what I came for.” With a sigh, Sarah pointed to her nose. “Could this be melanoma?”
Joy nudged Sarah’s finger away and examined the worrisome spot. It was tiny, with even color and edges.
“Can you tell, Dr. Gilbert?” Sarah’s breath sounds were irregular, with underlying fear—irrational, erratic, intense—that had characterized her visits since she’d become a patient here seven months ago. “I know how fast those things can grow.”
Joy took Sarah’s hands, feeling the frailness of her bones. It would take a lot of work to allay the real fears that stalked this otherwise rational, intelligent twenty-four-year-old. “What you have is a freckle.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “But it’s right there on the end of my nose, where the sun hits it.”
“The way you slather yourself with sun block, and at your age, I don’t think you’ll have a problem with melanoma. I can biopsy the spot if you’re horribly worried about it, but we don’t want an unnecessary scar to mess up that flawless complexion.”
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