He rubbed the tears on his face. “I can’t get my shoes on.”
“Well, I’ll help you, sweetie. You don’t have to cry.” She took the shoes and stooped down in front of him. When she lifted his foot to slide it into the shoe, she saw how swollen it was. No wonder the shoe wouldn’t go on.
“Joseph, do your feet hurt?”
“No, ma’am,” he said. “They’re just swollen. I can’t get them on. But I want to go, Mama. I can’t go without shoes…”
“Wear your flip-flops,” she said, going to his closet. “That’ll be more comfortable, anyway.” She got out the flip-flops and turned back to her son. He was wiping new tears as they ran down his face. “Honey, it’s okay. This is nothing new; your feet have been a little swollen every day. The doctor knows about it.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you crying?”
He shrugged again, and hiccuped a sob. “I don’t know.”
But she knew. This constant sickness, all the medication, the doctor visits—they were taking their toll on her son. He needed this outing. He needed to get his mind off his problems and have a little fun.
When they arrived at the museum and Tory let them out at the door, Joseph argued weakly that he didn’t want to be pushed around in a wheelchair because it was too much like a stroller and he wasn’t a baby. But by the time they’d gotten through the ticket line, he’d given in without a fight.
When Tory came in from parking the car, she let go of Brittany and Spencer and they hurried to their favorite exhibits in the art section as fast as they could, as if they feared someone would reach them before they did and suck all the fun out of them. Rachel pushed Joseph’s wheelchair into the art room, and Brenda and Tory followed behind.
Tory was dressed in a matching shorts outfit that complemented her trim figure, and her hair and makeup were impeccably done. Brenda had only had time to run a brush through her hair and pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She felt frumpy in comparison.
“So how’s Joseph doing on his medication?” Tory asked softly.
Brenda struggled to maintain her smile for the sake of the kids. “Not well,” she admitted.
“I didn’t think so,” Tory said. “He doesn’t look like he feels well at all. So what are they going to do now?”
“I don’t know,” Brenda whispered. “The doctor seems to think that as long as his heart is functioning at fifty percent, that’s good enough. I just keep thinking that sooner or later this has got to get better. But I’m really worried.”
“You worried?” Tory asked. “I never thought that was possible.”
Brenda knew Tory meant that as a compliment, but she almost resented it. Sometimes, she was just weak, and she hated for people to be shocked by it. She went to a bench against the wall and sat down. Tory followed, still searching Brenda’s face.
“You know, it is human to worry,” Tory offered.
“But what’s the point?” Brenda asked. “God knows what’s going to happen tomorrow, ten years from now—He knows the very day that we’re going to die. What’s the point of worrying when He’s got it all under control?” She felt Tory’s eyes still upon her as she watched Joseph in his wheelchair, having fun for the first time since they’d rolled their yard with toilet paper.
“I know you’re right,” Tory said, “but worrying is one of my worst faults. I’m trying to give it up, though. That, and writing.”
Glad to be off the subject of her worry, Brenda shot Tory a grin. “You’re not giving up writing.”
“Yes, I am. Already have.” She raised her right hand as if making a vow. “I’ve written my last word.”
“Well, you can’t do that,” she said. “You’re called.”
Tory laughed sarcastically. “Yeah? Called to do what?”
“You have a gift. The stuff you’ve let me read, it was wonderful. I don’t know if you have a right to give it up.”
Tory’s smile died, and she frowned thoughtfully at Brenda for a moment. “I’m not sure,” Tory said finally, “but that might be one of the nicest things anybody’s ever said to me.”
Brenda laughed. “Oh, come on.”
“Really,” Tory said, still serious. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. As an obligation, I mean.”
“Well, you should. Just because it didn’t work out that one time doesn’t mean it’s not meant to be. For heaven’s sake, how is God ever going to teach you if things go perfectly well all the time?”
“Oh, I don’t know. He could send books. I could read the lessons He wants to teach me.” She winked, and Brenda laughed. Brittany flopped by with ponytails wagging and both shoes untied. Tory stopped her and tied them, then with a pat on her bottom, sent her on her way.
Brenda’s eyes followed the comical child. “So is Brittany getting excited about starting school?”
“Oh yeah,” Tory said. “We’ve been shopping for school clothes and supplies. I never dreamed I’d have a baby in school this soon. Seems like it’s flown by. But I have to tell you, I’m looking forward to it a little. Maybe I’ll have more time to think.”
“And write?” Brenda asked with a smirk.
“No, not write,” Tory said stubbornly. “I told you. I’m through with that.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see,” Brenda said. “So you’re going to send them to public school?”
Tory nodded. “I feel pretty good about our school district. And by the time they get into junior high and high school, I’m counting on Cathy having worked out all the sex ed problems.”
“Maybe,” Brenda said, forcing herself to keep her mouth shut about the virtues of homeschooling over public education. It was something she felt passionately about, but she didn’t want to sound condemning or heap guilt on Tory. They’d had this conversation before, and Brenda knew that Tory thought she was a little paranoid.
Though Brenda chose not to say anything, her silence spoke volumes, and Tory responded. “I know, I know. Homeschooling is the best way. But you have to have a certain temperament for that, and I just don’t have it.”
“Don’t kid yourself,” Brenda said. “It’s not that hard. I get to stay home and do something important for the four people I love most in the entire world. I don’t have to let anybody else’s crazy ideas and influences get pounded into their heads. I’m guarding their hearts and teaching them what’s important, and I get to learn all over again. What greater calling could there be?”
“I see your point, and I admire it,” Tory said. “I really do. But if everybody took their kids out of public schools…”
“I know the argument,” Brenda said. “Then the schools would really go to pot. And you’re right. I’m not suggesting that everybody take their kids out.”
Tory smiled. “Just the Christians?”
“No, not even them.”
“Because a few minutes ago you told me that I’m called to be a writer, something I can’t do as long as I have two kids at home all the time. Plus, there are millions of women who work because they have to, who don’t have the option to pull their kids out of school and teach them at home. Besides, I loved the school experience. I loved all the friends I had and all the functions and events…I don’t want Britty and Spencer to miss that.”
“I’m just saying that if they go, you need to stay on top of things. Watch carefully what they’re taught, what they’re learning. Get involved. And then when they get home, spend a lot of time teaching them the important stuff.”
“Like the Bible?”
“Yes, like the Bible.”
Tory gave her a contemplative look, then asked, “Does that bother David? That you spend so much time teaching the kids Scripture?”
“Not really. He feels like the lessons there are good moral lessons. Of course he doesn’t believe there’s anything more there.”
“Do the kids get confused? I mean, since they know their dad doesn’t believe, do they ever question it?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “It’s a problem, but I’m
praying for him.” She paused and considered whether to confide in Tory. “David was taught the Bible as a child—but in a real distorted way. The Christians who influenced him growing up probably meant well, but they sent him running the other way. That’s just a reminder to me that what my kids are taught, and who teaches them, is critical. You can be taught the right things by the wrong people, or the right things in the wrong way, and have it turn out worse than if you’d never heard it.”
Tory seemed to process that as she kept her eyes on Brenda. “Do you ever regret marrying a non-Christian?”
The question almost startled her. “I wasn’t a Christian, either, when we married,” she said. “David’s a wonderful husband and father. I just wish…” Her words trailed off, and she averted her eyes.
“That he had your faith,” Tory prompted.
“It would be really great to have that in common,” Brenda said, meeting Tory’s eyes again. “But it’s okay. I’m praying hard, and I know the Lord will answer. After all, it is to His glory.”
“If a man could love God just by being around you,” Tory said, “I’m sure he would.”
Tears misted in Brenda’s eyes, and she hugged her neighbor. “That’s sweet, Tory. Wish it was so.”
“No, I mean it,” Tory insisted. “You’re an exemplary wife, a wonderful mother, a model Christian. If you could twirl a baton I’d have to hate you.”
Brenda laughed. “Well, thank goodness I can’t.”
“Really,” Tory went on, leaning her head back against the wall. “I wish I were more like you. If I were one of the Israelites, I’d be grumbling about the manna and quail. I’d keep complaining that the pillar of fire just kept leading us in circles. I’d probably even be one of the people to melt down my jewelry and contribute to the golden calf.”
Brenda sighed. “I think there’s some of that in all of us.”
Spencer came running. “Mommy, they’re about to start the art class. Can I go? Please, can I go?”
“Yeah, but I have to come with you.” He grabbed her hand and pulled. She winked at Brenda and followed her skipping son to the art room.
Brenda went into the room where Joseph was and stood at his wheelchair. She wondered if the other kids ever resented the fact that she spent so much time with him. It was just maternal instinct to hover over the one who needed her the most. Daniel, Rachel, and Leah were so self-sufficient, and they seemed to understand that their brother was in trouble.
Joseph got out of his wheelchair and took a few steps into the photographic booth where he could make faces, freezeframe them, and print them out. It was his favorite thing in the museum, and it produced something he could take home and put on his bedroom wall. She glanced back at the other kids. Leah and Rachel were playing with the ink and stamps, and Daniel was creating some elaborate masterpiece they would hang on the refrigerator door. Smiling, she looked back in the booth at Joseph.
He had stopped making faces at himself and was leaning against the wall in the booth.
She ducked in. “Honey, you ready to come out?”
“Just a minute,” he said, breathless.
She could see that something was passing over him—dizziness, light-headedness, perhaps. She waited for it to pass, but it didn’t.
“Honey, come get back in the wheelchair and we’ll go get you something to drink.”
He continued to sit, limply leaning against the wall, so she reached in, took his arm, and tried to coax him out. His right hand came up to cover his chest.
And her own heart seemed to stop.
“Honey, does your chest hurt?” The tremulous words came out on a rush. He nodded slightly, got up, took a step toward the wheelchair. “Come on,” she said. “Just sit down. You’re going to be all right.”
But before he could reach the wheelchair he fell and hit the floor like a rock.
CHAPTER
Twenty-Two
As Brenda and David waited for the doctor to come, Brenda found the silence in the hospital consultation room to be smothering—but appropriate. There were no words that could adequately describe the fear she’d felt waiting for the ambulance to come get Joseph. She had wept hysterically as the paramedics barked out Joseph’s vital signs and conversed with hushed, panicky concern about the need to stabilize him en route to St. Francis. Although no one had said so, she was certain that his heart had failed. Like a sixty-year-old man, her baby had lain on the floor of the Adventure Museum in full cardiac arrest.
Brenda had ridden in the ambulance with him, and Tory had called David, then taken the other kids home. The emergency room personnel had treated Joseph like a Code Blue, which had frightened her to the point of dysfunction. David had arrived just in time to hold her together, and someone had shuffled them both into this room to wait for the verdict. In her wildest dreams, she had never anticipated sitting in a room waiting to be told if her son was dead or alive.
She’d been thankful when Harry had appeared from his office, after Tory alerted him that Joseph had collapsed. He had gone to check with the doctors and promised to give them news as soon as he knew something. But so far, no one had come to tell them anything.
David got up and walked around the room, staring vacantly at the cheap oil paintings on the wall. Brenda closed her eyes and tried to pray. She wished the words she had given to Tory at the museum could filter into her heart right now. What was it she’d said about there being no point in worrying because God was in control? He knew everything that was going to happen. Why couldn’t she rest in that peace now?
Panic rose in her heart, along with the overwhelming sense that there was something she needed to do to keep Joseph alive. She could make her heart beat for his, make her lungs expand in and out to give him oxygen—she could keep him alive, if they would just let her go to him…
The door opened, and they both jumped. Harry and Dr. Robinson came in, looking like weary soldiers after a crucial battle. It took every ounce of restraint she possessed to keep from attacking them with her questions. Solemnly, Dr. Robinson and Harry shook David’s hand, then Brenda’s. Desperately, she watched their eyes for a clue.
“I’ve asked Harry to come in with me to talk to you,” Dr. Robinson said, taking a seat across from them at the table.
“Is he dead?” Brenda choked out.
“No, no.” Harry sat down next to her and touched her shoulder. “We would have told you.”
She felt a rush of gratitude followed immediately by renewed grief, and a fresh onslaught of tears ambushed her. She wilted against David.
“The news…it isn’t good, is it?” David asked as he held her. Brenda pulled herself together and sat up, unwilling to miss a single word.
Harry and Dr. Robinson exchanged looks. Finally, Harry spoke. “The medicine isn’t working. Joseph’s heart is functioning at fifteen percent capacity, and what happened today was a very close call.”
“Fifteen percent?” David threw the words back as if they were dynamite. “Why didn’t we know this before?”
“He wasn’t this bad at his last checkup,” Dr. Robinson said. “His decline has been pretty rapid.”
“What’s going to happen?” David asked, getting out of his chair, red-faced, and facing off with the two men as if they were threatening him. “’Cause you can’t just keep on putting a Band-Aid on it, pouring drugs down him…”
“No, we can’t.” Again, the two doctors exchanged looks, as if silently deciding which one would go on.
“There’s really only one option at this point,” Dr. Robinson said quietly.
“Surgery, right?” David prodded.
It was not so much what they were saying as what they were not saying that alerted Brenda. She got slowly to her feet, her tears falling freely. “Harry, what is it that we can do to save Joseph?”
“He needs a heart transplant,” Harry said.
Brenda’s mouth fell open, and she sank back down.
“A heart transplant?” David’s words were hoarse, just ab
ove a whisper. “But he’s just a little boy.”
“It’s the only thing that’ll save him. He’s in very bad shape.”
“But isn’t there some other less risky kind of surgery?”
Dr. Robinson shook his head. “The damage is too great. He’s going to have to have a transplant, or he’ll die.”
Brenda and David stared at each other, horror stricken, as if they each silently urged the other to do something to stop this madness.
“Where…where do we have to go…for a transplant?” she asked.
“Until a year ago, the only place in the state was Knoxville. But since St. Francis is a teaching hospital, we started doing them here. Our transplant team is excellent. One of the best in the South. They do a wonderful job, and the survival rate is very high.”
“Survival rate?” Brenda muttered. It wasn’t a question really, just words she never thought would have anything to do with her children.
“So when—when do we do this?” David choked out.
“We have to wait for a heart to become available.”
“And how long will that be?”
“There’s no telling,” Dr. Robinson said. “The wait is usually a couple of months. It could be longer, it could be less. It just depends on when a match is available. The transplant team will meet with you tomorrow, and we have a family support team that will help you tremendously. We’ll have to start testing Joseph immediately to make sure he’s a good candidate for transplant, but I feel sure he will be.”
“But he doesn’t have two months if his heart is only functioning at fifteen percent,” David said. “And what about next week—it could be ten percent, or five. It could stop altogether.”
“We’re going to put him on a Left Ventricular Assist Device, otherwise known as a Heart Mate. It’s a portable heart that will keep him stable until the transplant. We’ll have to keep him here in the hospital,” Dr. Robinson said. “But that will keep him alive until the heart is found.”
“Keep him alive,” Brenda repeated mechanically.
“What is this…this Heart Mate?”
“It’s about the size of a hockey puck, and it weighs about two and a half pounds. We implant it just under the diaphragm, and then we use an air compressor outside the body to power it. It has a battery that lasts up to thirty minutes, so he’ll be able to detach from the machine and walk up and down the halls a little, to get some exercise. We’ll also have him doing some supervised exercise and physical therapy to build him up for the surgery.”
Seasons Under Heaven Page 14
