by Becky Melby
God was punishing. And she deserved it.
Jake counted the drops slipping through the tube and into Emily’s arm. Eight … nine … ten … The decor was all too familiar. Hooks that looked like they belonged in a widemouth bass connected leaf-patterned privacy curtains to their aluminum tracks. A metal triangle dangled on a heavy-duty chain from a curved bar over the head of the bed. Were chin-ups a condition for early release? One tug on a white cord of mini plastic beads changed the fluorescent ambience of the room.
He stood, paced. White sheet, white blankets, white window blinds, white vinyl tiles, white walls. Blue and purple tiles interrupted the white floor at random intervals. A wallpaper border sported tan leaf-swirls on a blotchy maroon and green background—the only concessions to nonwhite.
Had no one ever done a study on the healing power of color?
Or a visitor’s need to have one room different from the one down the hall where his sister had died?
A nurse walked in and pulled the beaded cord. Emily jerked then stilled. The fat-faced clock said it was ten after eight.
“Are you her husband?”
“No.” I’m the guy knocking down her walls. He almost smiled at the dual meanings playing in his tired brain. “But she gave consent for me to talk to the doctor.” While she was totally drugged up. “How is she doing?”
“Everything looks good.” The woman stared at a blipping monitor, arms folded across a generous-sized Scooby-Doo smock. She checked the IV needle. “The cloxacillin should neutralize any nasties she’s got in her lungs. She’s not as sick as she looks. We sedated her because she tried to rip out her IV.” She winked. Her smile poured sympathy on his exhaustion. “We’ll let it wear off and see if she’s a little more willing to cooperate. Anything you can say to convince her not to fight would be helpful.”
Lady, if I knew how to do that, she would have been in here yesterday. And I’d be saving myself a whole lot of frustration. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Go back to sleep. I’ll tiptoe when I come back.”
She walked out. In what seemed like seconds he woke himself with a snore. Saliva dampened his unshaven chin. He stood and peeked through the blinds. There was still an empty space where his mother’s car had been earlier. They’d released Adam after supper— an hour after Emily arrived. Jake’s tongue was raw from biting back all the ugly things he’d wanted to hurl at Ben. His mother had literally begged the slug to let the kids come home with her, but he’d refused. They’re my kids, and I’ll take care of them. If only either one of those statements were true.
All the words he’d used to comfort his mother as she sobbed in the hallway were lies. Her grandkids wouldn’t be fine. And she’d be in bed for days from the stress of knowing the truth.
He dozed again, waking in a semidark room. He stood and stretched and walked to the side of the bed that wasn’t occupied by tubes and monitors. The head of the bed was elevated. The hand without the IV needles lay at her side. He picked it up—a habit he’d have to break when she was conscious. A habit he shouldn’t have started in the first place.
What’s fuelin’ you? Topher’s amateur psychology always came in handy. Beyond the obvious, what was the fascination? The question flipped a switch. A hundred-watt bulb illuminated the answer. Because she’s everything Heidi wasn’t. Therein lay the intrigue. He’d tried saving Heidi from drowning in herself. He liked the feel of being her hero—until her desperation wrapped around his neck and pulled him under. He still found himself gasping at times, grateful all over again for free air.
His real-life rescue of Emily Foster, on the other hand, had left him feeling anything but a hero. All he had to show for his efforts was a tender spot on his ribs.
What fueled him? Challenge. Show him a poorly planned, outdated kitchen and his adrenaline rushed like the Echo Lake dam. Give him a kayak paddle and a run of rapids and he was stoked. Emily represented yet one more challenge. And there’d be nothing wrong with it if he were a free man.
Her eyelids fluttered. Dark brown lashes with hints of gold settled back against high cheekbones. Jake’s breathing quickened, tight ridges formed along the tops of his shoulders. Ben. Ben Madsen was the reason he couldn’t pursue Emily. Ben Madsen was the reason his mother was in constant pain. His neck tensed, triggering an instant headache.
Ben Madsen was the reason his sister was dead.
Like tombstone dominoes, everything started toppling the day Abby married her second big mistake.
What was it about the way they were raised that made him and his sister want to save the world one hard-luck case at a time? He’d had the sense to walk away from Heidi. Abby never seemed to catch on until it was too late. Within six months of marrying Ben, she’d lost twenty pounds. She died a week before their third anniversary. Two days after the twins’ twelfth birthday.
Ben’s toxins spilled into his in-laws’ lives. His mother’s quick laugh silenced and, as if needing her own pain to share in Abby’s suffering, she’d developed fibromyalgia.
When Abby died, no one questioned that Adam and Lexi would come to live with Abby’s mother. Especially not Ben. The poor man’s dreams of making it big in the computer repair business were buried with the breadwinning wife he’d put in the ground. Who could expect him to care for two children while holding down an actual job? He was prepared to surrender his rights and allow his mother-in-law to adopt the children.
And then the first Social Security check arrived.
Jake’s temples pounded. Pressure built with each domino that fell in his mind. Parenting had not birthed the best in Ben.
The pale hand moved, bringing Jake out of his angry reverie. Fingers bent around his. Jake returned the pressure. In a different world, he might lift the hand once again to his lips and hope the magical kiss would wake her with a smile.
He rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. Enough with the martyrdom. No one had coerced him onto this path. Someone needed to stand in the gap for Adam and Lexi. His mother wasn’t strong enough. He was determined to be the one.
He loosened his hold on Emily’s hand. His time for thinking of himself would come, but it would be too late for holding hands with Emily Foster.
A shadow dappled the light from the hallway. A polite knock followed. From where he stood he couldn’t see the door. “Come in.”
The curtain swayed. His mother stepped through. Reddened eyes found his face and then his hand. A wisp of a smile tipped one corner of her mouth. “How is she?”
With artful nonchalance, he released the slim, soft hand. “You’re supposed to be sleeping.”
She shrugged.
Jake filled in her blanks. The house was too quiet.
His mother internalized and he made bad jokes. Like broken but usable gears, they’d learned how to mesh differing coping mechanisms since Abby died. Concern for the twins provided the grease.
He motioned toward the chairs. “Her fever’s gone down. She’s sedated because she was trying to pull out her IV. She has a hospital phobia.”
Gazing at the monitor, his mother nodded. “Who doesn’t?” She took a seat and smiled up at him. “You look terrible.”
He smiled back. Like fragile green shoots, there were occasional signs of life in her. “You don’t look so hot yourself.”
Running her fingers through shoulder-length brown hair that had sprouted natural highlights in the past year, she shrugged and pulled a magazine from her purse. “Go get something to eat. I’m replacing you.”
“You don’t …” He left the thought unfinished. She needed to be needed. “Thank you.” He walked around the end of the bed and kissed her on the cheek. The changing of the guard was all too familiar. “Push the call light if she wakes up.”
“I will.” She leafed through the magazine as he walked around the curtain. “Right after I ask her a few little questions.”
The cafeteria had stopped serving an hour ago. He bought a club sandwich from a vending machine, fought with the plastic wrap a
nd finally won, then zapped it in the microwave until the Swiss cheese oozed onto the plate.
How many people have a favorite spot in a hospital cafeteria? He had two. One in the corner, facing the wall of windows, and the other near the cash register. It all depended on his mood and the kind of distraction he needed. There had been days when analyzing the lunch choices of the hospital staff had provided the perfect respite from watching the line of red blood cells flowing into his sister’s arm. Other days, he needed to be alone with God and the scrubby pines on the other side of the window. What he wanted now was air. Grabbing a pile of napkins, he tossed the plate and headed outside.
When the sandwich was gone, he broke into a run, convincing himself with every step that from now on Emily Foster was a job and a paycheck.
And nothing, absolutely nothing, more.
Laughter stopped him at the door to Emily’s room.
“… on my hands and knees to the bathroom. My dad had forgotten to mention he’d called a plumber to fix the sink.” Emily’s last two words dissolved with a laugh. “You can”—a fit of coughing interrupted—“imagine the look on the guy’s face, and mine, when I crawled in.”
His mother gasped for air as she cackled. “I can top that. So there I am at Pick n’ Save in an oversized shirt, standing in front of the milk cooler, and my mind goes totally blank. Fibromyalgia fog, they call it. I can’t remember who I am or what I’m doing there and the cold is making the pain worse, so I fold my arms over my middle to hold in the heat and do what I always do. Lamaze breathing.” She stopped to giggle. “All of a sudden, this woman throws her arms around me and tells me not to worry, she’s an OB nurse. Next thing I know, she’s yelling across the store for someone to call 911!”
Jake stood behind the curtain, his mouth gaping, his eyes stinging, afraid to move and break the spell. When a lull in the laughter finally came, he took several deep breaths and walked in.
“You two sharing your meds?”
His question triggered another fit of laughter, until Emily started coughing.
His mother patted Emily’s knee. “This was fun, but you need to rest.” She wiped her eyes and laid her hand flat against Jake’s chest. “I’m outta here. Your watch.” With a wink so exaggerated it looked painful, she walked out.
Jake stood helplessly as Emily held a tissue to her mouth and coughed. “Should I get someone?”
She shook her head. “No.” After a moment, it stopped. She brushed her hair away from her face. “They say … it’s good … for me to cough.” She blew her nose and lay back on her pillow. “I like your mom. She’s funny.”
“She hasn’t been for a long time. You seem to have brought out the best in her.”
“And vice versa. Haven’t laughed like that in centuries.” She nestled into her pillow. “I don’t think I properly thanked you for bringing me here.” Pale cheeks pinked then lifted with the muscles that bowed her lips.
Properly thanked? His ribs ached and the point of contact her foot had made with his thigh on the trip down her stairs was probably the same color as the bruise on hers. “Guess I’d have to say I don’t feel properly thanked.”
“I’m sorry.” She pushed the button to lower the head of her bed.
Did the medicine or his mother deserve the credit for this metamorphosis? “All’s forgiven.”
Emily yawned. “I was kind of mean.”
“You were.”
Her eyes closed. “I’ll make it up … to you.”
Dinner and a movie? He sneered at his own inside joke. “No need.” He glanced at the chair by the window and parted the curtain.
She’d be fine on her own.
September 5, 1852
Waving Mama’s lace fan just inches from her face, Hannah conformed her spine to the unforgiving pew and willed her thoughts to rest on God and not on the empty space in the third row.
Liam was helping his father. She was sure of it. He’d made it home safe in the middle of the night. She’d heard the trapdoor close and tiptoed in the dark to get the letter. “All went well,” it read. “I am on my way home to dream of you.”
Only three miles to ride from her house. He’d made it home safe. He was just helping with the harvest. There were other empty spaces in the pews. Even the reverend said men often worshiped best in the field. When God sent the gift of a sunny Sabbath after days of rain, picking corn or harvesting wheat was a gesture of gratitude.
She pictured Liam, arms as strong as the iron he forged, grasping the plow handles. Next spring, on their own plot of land. Unlike some men, he’d talk kindly to the draft horses. Their massive feet would plod the ground, pulling the plow and turning the soil at the gentle commands from Liam’s lips. Those lips … if they were wed she would bring him lemonade and kiss away the parchedness. He would return to the plow with a smile. When the sun rose overhead, he’d slip off his shirt. …
Hannah Glennis Shaw! Her fan fluttered like a nervous hummingbird. The prophet Jeremiah must have had her in mind when he penned, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” Her thoughts were wicked, and how much more so that she entertained them in church!
No more. She would heed the apostle Paul’s admonition and bring every thought into captivity. Like a horse with blinders, she would follow the straight and narrow furrow— She bit her tongue. Road, she meant road. Not for a moment would she stray to that field of fresh-turned dirt or the man with the sun-bronzed back. Lord, constrain my wayward mind! She stared at Reverend Drummond with desperate intensity, as if her very life depended on following the rise and fall of his bushy brows.
“… shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” A hairy finger pointed directly at her. Hannah covered the smile that would not obey. She did not need to be told to love her neighbor. What she needed was a sermon on how not to love.
The message continued. “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.”
Hannah pictured the men they’d hid for two days. Gaunt and tired, their feet raw and blistered. Her countenance sobered.
“… he passed by on the other side.”
How could people do that? How could they not open their homes to men and women who risked their lives to give their children freedom? She glared at the back of the bonnet in front of her. Dolly Baker’s mother nodded with every verse the reverend read. The woman was a whitewashed sepulcher, sniffling and clutching her Bible to her breast as the minister described the plight of the hapless man. Yet sit beside Lucille Baker an hour from now under the shade of the cypress tree, and you’d hear a very different sermon from those primly pursed lips.
Just last Sunday Lucille had ranted, “My father cares for his darkies better than some men care for their own children. They had no use for freedom till some Yankee started fillin’ their heads with crazy notions.”
Lucille Baker had moved north before Dolly was born, yet whenever abolitionist views arose, her Kentucky drawl had a sudden rebirth. “Now three of ’em’s run off,” she’d said. “Wherever they are, they know by now how good they had it. They aren’t like us, you know. They need someone ordering their time.”
Hannah had left the circle of women at that point. She wasn’t the first to excuse herself, and it wasn’t long before Mrs. Baker and her daughter sat alone in the shade of the cypress tree.
“But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.”
Hannah thought of her father on his knees, washing the feet of the man and his son, dressing their wounds with salve and clean bandages. Her eyes filled with tears. Lord Jesus, let me love like that. Grant me a heart that cares more for Your chil
dren who suffer than for my own selfish wishes. Bless Papa and Liam for their kind hearts and help me to put Your kingdom above my—
The door creaked softly as it opened. Hannah turned discreetly. Just enough to see a tall, sun-bronzed man take his seat in the third row. The heat beneath her collar grew and no amount of fanning or prayer would cool it.
CHAPTER 13
Jake stopped in front of the elevator and stared at the gift shop display case. Baskets of silk daisies in unnatural colors so bright they hurt his eyes, stuffed bunnies and bears, and slippers embellished with sparkles and pearls—all strategically located for those who wanted to arrive with full hands to complement their empty words.
He looked down at the paper bag in his hand.
