by Chris Fabry
“I can’t change that. But I’m not going to let asthma keep me from doing something I was made to do.”
“Baby girl, where’s this coming from?”
Hannah looked bewildered. “What do you mean?”
“The words you’re saying. This focus on running.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, Grandma. It’s just in here, I guess.”
She had pointed to her heart and Barbara put down the phone. Hannah was just as feisty as her mother. When she got it in her mind to do something, nothing could stand in her way. Hannah was like Janet and Janet had been like Barbara. Some things ran deep in the DNA.
Barbara chuckled as she finished vacuuming and changing the sheets in room 327 at the Franklin City Inn. People left tips at the restaurant but most didn’t see the need to tip the hotel cleaning staff. Every now and then she’d find cash left on a dresser or nightstand, but it was mostly abandoned loose change. She and the others who cleaned had a jar in the laundry room they filled with nickels, dimes, and quarters and when it filled, they all guessed how much was there. The closest guess got the whole amount. It was something fun they looked forward to every few weeks. Just a jar filled with what people didn’t want to carry.
She checked her clipboard and sighed. Room 332 was the only one left to clean. She’d passed the Do Not Disturb sign two hours earlier, and checkout time had come and gone. She radioed the front desk and was told the guest hadn’t checked out. She knocked on the door.
“Housekeeping,” she said in a loud voice.
No answer. She didn’t want to intrude, but she had a job to do. She checked her watch again. The race was about to start. She wanted to clean the room, drive to the race, and surprise Hannah at the finish line. That dream was dying as she stared at Do Not Disturb. If she couldn’t get to the race, she could be home and have lunch ready. When Hannah arrived, they could spend some time talking about her day. Hannah loved mac and cheese and burgers. Barbara would have it on the table, steaming, when she walked in the door. And though it weighed on Barbara, she wouldn’t bring up Hannah’s “problem.” Not today.
She used her key card and the door clicked. She opened it a few inches, again saying, “Housekeeping.”
No response.
Her heart beat a little faster. She had once discovered a woman passed out in the bathroom and called 911. The staff had called her a hero. The lady who was led away by paramedics yelled at her. Barbara knew the woman wasn’t in her right mind.
She expected the door to catch on the inside lock, but it didn’t. The room was as dark as midnight, the drapes drawn. She stepped inside and said, “Hello?”
No answer.
She flicked on the light switch to her left and gasped. The room wasn’t just a mess—it looked like an F5 tornado had touched down and had stayed two nights and called the front desk for a late checkout. She surveyed the damage. At least the walls were intact.
She turned on the light in the bathroom and calculated how long it would take her to clean it all. She went to the phone and called the front desk. The manager would want pictures.
Two hours later she jumped in the car and drove toward the river. She was relieved and at the same time frustrated when she saw Hannah’s things. How many times had she told that girl not to drop her stuff on the couch?
She called for her and Hannah answered from her room. Barbara found her on her bed with her nose in a big textbook, two notebooks nearby. She didn’t have her earbuds in, which was unusual. Maybe that was progress.
“Hey, baby girl, how’d your race go today?”
“I finished eleventh,” Hannah said as if apologizing.
She finished. That meant no asthma attack.
“Well, you’re improving,” Barbara said. “I really wish I could have been there, but I thought about you all day at work.”
Hannah stared at her. Out of the blue, she spoke the words that took Barbara’s breath away.
“Did you ever see my father run?”
Stay calm. Don’t overreact.
Barbara gripped the strap of her purse over her shoulder. “One time, at a city race.” She let go of the strap and took a breath. “He was in his thirties.”
There. She’d answered the question. She hadn’t yelled or even raised her voice. Hannah probably just wondered where her athletic ability came from. She was at that age where questions popped up when she was alone and thinking. When she wasn’t listening to music, perhaps. If only Barbara had gotten home earlier so Hannah wouldn’t have had time to think of her father.
“And how did he die?” Hannah said, interrupting Barbara’s thoughts.
She studied her granddaughter’s face, then turned aside. Here she was again. She thought she was through with all these questions. She thought Hannah had moved on. Firmly, with as much kindness as she could muster, she faced her granddaughter.
“Baby, I already told you this. Those drugs got ahold of him. You don’t even need to worry about that. The best thing you need to do is to get on with your life. He would want that.”
Barbara felt good about the answer. In the last fifteen years she had told herself that story so many times she almost believed it was true. The drugs had to have gotten T-bone. She hadn’t heard anything from him since that day when the world stopped spinning.
She quickly changed the conversation. “So have you eaten? Because I can whip us up something. I’m starving.”
Hannah didn’t seem ready to leave the history question she’d raised but she nodded slightly and said, “Okay.”
Barbara forced a smile and walked to the kitchen. She boiled the water and put the pan on the burner and removed the meat from the refrigerator. As she worked, she couldn’t harness her mind, couldn’t stop the images stuck there from fifteen years ago. She cut an onion for the burgers and it stung her eyes. She thought of the trashed hotel room. It was a lot like her life. But there had been no one to clean it up, to vacuum the floor and make the bed.
Barbara knew why Hannah asked questions about her mother. She brought her up so many times because she was curious. And in a strange way, it was healing for Barbara to talk about Janet. Just speaking her name and laughing about some of the silly things that had happened made her life real instead of it being a dream.
But why did Hannah bring up her father? What triggered her heart to go down that overgrown path?
When she had lunch on the table, she called Hannah and the girl’s face lit up at the sight of her favorite meal.
After they began, Barbara said, “So why did you bring up your father to me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Were you wondering about where you get your running ability?”
Hannah shrugged. “I guess so.”
“Well, I know it’s hard not getting the answers you want. But I’m glad you don’t have to go through the pain that comes with finding them. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Grandma.”
CHAPTER 26
John Harrison hadn’t prayed about anything as hard as he prayed for Hannah and Thomas. The two were constantly on his mind, as well as Hannah’s grandmother, Barbara. How she would react to the news that Thomas was in Franklin and wanted to see Hannah was anyone’s guess.
Amy called Mark Latimer and said they had a difficult situation at school and requested prayer. She didn’t go into detail.
“You don’t need to tell me specifics,” Pastor Mark said. “God knows what’s going on. I’ll put out the request right now.”
John told Ethan and Will that he’d appreciate them praying for Hannah too. Will prayed at the dinner table that night before the meal and asked God to “help Hannah with her asthma and everything else happening to her.”
Ethan looked at John after Will’s prayer. “When will you be able to tell us?”
“Soon, I hope.”
John called Thomas Saturday evening and told him about the conversation with Hannah. Thomas wanted to know every detail of her reaction.
“She sounds like she’s confused,” Thomas said. “I wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t want to see me after the way I treated her. The way I abandoned her.”
“I think we have to give her the time she needs. I don’t remember processing anything remotely like this when I was fifteen.”
“You and me both,” Thomas said. “But at the same time . . .”
John heard the beep of the monitor in the background as Thomas searched for words.
“My fear is that by the time she wants to see me, I might not be here.”
“Well, Amy and I are praying. There are folks from our church and Bible study lifting you up.”
Thomas fell silent, and that made John want to be bold with his words. “Thomas, I want to pray for you right now. Would that be okay?”
“Yeah,” Thomas said weakly.
John thanked God for the friendship they had developed. He prayed for healing for Thomas—for his body and for his heart. He asked God to show up in a mighty way and give Thomas hope, no matter what Hannah decided.
“Yes, Lord,” Thomas whispered into the phone.
When John finished, Thomas thanked him. “I do feel encouraged. I think the best place to put all of this is in God’s hands and leave it there. Life is one surrender after another, isn’t it, John?”
“It sure is. But knowing that doesn’t make it easy to wait.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
John closed his eyes and he could see the man’s face, his head against the hospital pillow. He’d carry that image of Thomas for a long time. He was a man seemingly helpless but who had decided to trust God for everything.
“You know, once I hit bottom and God grabbed my heart, I started praying for Hannah,” Thomas said. “But every time I did, I felt so ashamed. Guilty. It almost stopped me from praying at all. I know that voice I was hearing wasn’t God’s because He’s not the accuser. And when I realized that, I changed my prayer. I stopped asking Him to bring her into my life, and I started praying that God would draw her to Himself. I prayed He would do for her what He did for me. I prayed the same thing for Barbara. So my greatest hope has been that Hannah would come to know the love of God I’ve experienced.”
“I’ve been praying the same thing, Thomas. It feels like more is going on here than we can understand.”
“I hope you’re right about that,” Thomas said. “But you can be sure this is not going to make God’s enemies happy.”
“All the more reason to pray,” John said.
The next practice, John found Hannah warming up on the field. Amy had to take Will to a dentist appointment, so the two were alone. He wanted to ask about her father but gave her space. This had to be Hannah’s decision.
After running intervals, Hannah asked if she could hit the course and run a full race.
“Are you sure you’re up for it?”
Hannah nodded. “I think it’ll help.”
Help with what? John thought.
He started the timer and watched her run up the hill and into the trees. With basketball, he was engaged with every aspect of practice. He was privy to everything that happened on the court. With cross-country, Hannah spent a lot of time out of sight. Today, he decided the best thing he could do was pray.
He sat on the bleachers, elbows on knees, head down. Anyone passing would think he was studying his clipboard, but he was deep in prayer for Hannah and her need for a relationship with God. And it struck him there was a parallel between Hannah’s heavenly Father and her earthly one. Both of them wanted a relationship with her.
“Father, the most important thing for Hannah is that she would know You. So I pray You’d work in her heart, soften it, prepare her, so that she would reach out to You, receive Your forgiveness, and come to know You. Make me sensitive. Help me not to push too hard or hold back when I shouldn’t. Use Amy in her life—You’ve already done that. Or bring someone else along who can help her understand Your love for her and who You created her to be. You’ve done that for me, Lord. And You’ve been so patient.”
He heard footsteps and looked up to see Hannah flying down the hill.
“Thank You for her, Lord,” he whispered.
He rose and waited at the finish line, ready with the stopwatch. Hannah looked like she was gaining momentum with each stride.
“Come on, finish strong,” John said. “Good, good, good!”
She crossed the finish line and he clicked the watch and stared at the numbers. “20:45. Hannah, you’re getting faster.”
Her face glistened with sweat. She was spent but she wasn’t laboring.
“How’s your breathing?”
“Good,” she said.
“I’ll get you some water,” John said, retreating to the bleachers. He grabbed a water bottle and heard her voice.
“I want to go.”
John stopped and turned. Had he heard her correctly? He stared at her, waiting for an explanation and hoping it meant what he thought it meant.
“I want to go see him,” she said.
John handed her the water bottle, thrilled but also cautious. “What about your grandmother?”
“She said he’s dead.”
John nodded. “You want to go tonight?”
“My grandmother will be home pretty soon.”
“Of course. Tomorrow? We can skip practice for one day, I think.”
Hannah paused a moment. “Do you think . . . ?”
“What is it, Hannah?”
“It’s probably too much to ask.”
“Go ahead.”
“Do you think Mrs. Harrison would come with us?”
John smiled. “That’ll make her happy that you suggested it. I think she’d love to be there.”
It felt like he had just witnessed a breakthrough. It felt like winning a play-off game. And as he walked to his office, he paused at the door, closed his eyes, and thanked God for what had happened.
Then he called Amy.
Then he called Thomas.
Then he called his pastor and asked him to tell people to pray more than ever. Something good was happening and he wanted it to continue.
CHAPTER 27
Hannah had butterflies all day. Before leaving for work, her grandmother asked if she had a test or any papers due or if there was “anything special” happening today.
Hannah wanted to say she was thinking of making a new friend, her father. She just shrugged.
In her wildest dreams, she never considered meeting her father. She had read a story in English class about an adopted boy who stared out the window wondering if any of the men walking by might be his dad. The story had stuck with her, but it always seemed like a fairy tale.
She chose her outfit carefully, going through her closet, picking a skirt and blouse, then putting them back. She had three dresses, but none of them seemed right. She settled on a shirt and nice sweatpants and looked in the mirror. It wasn’t until she was walking to school and saw a woman with dark sunglasses and a cane that she remembered her father was blind. He wouldn’t see what she wore. He never would. And that was okay. He didn’t have to see her. In fact, that took some of the pressure off. She just wanted to look at him, to hear his voice, to see if what Coach Harrison said was true.
Mrs. Harrison complimented Hannah on her outfit in first period and winked. After class she said, “You ready for today?”
“I think so. I’m kind of nervous.”
The woman smiled. “I’d be worried if you weren’t nervous.”
That put Hannah at ease for about fifteen minutes. She couldn’t eat at lunch. She couldn’t concentrate in her classes. All she could think about was what her father might look like and what he might say. And how her grandmother would react if she found out. That was part of the stomach churn—her grandmother had lied to her all these years. Or perhaps she really believed her father had died. Could she have gotten incorrect information? No, her grandmother knew details about everything.
Hannah found the Harrisons after sc
hool and they drove to Franklin General. Hannah didn’t like hospitals. She associated them with the pain she felt the last time she’d been there and the look on her grandmother’s face when she opened the bills. There were so many. They came in the mail and her grandmother asked to work out a payment plan. And then came something called collections, which Hannah only vaguely understood. It was a mess and Hannah vowed she’d never be admitted to the hospital again.
They rode the elevator to the fourth floor. Hannah walked behind the two, clutching her inhaler. For a hospital, it was eerily quiet. She heard every footstep they took. The Harrisons looked at each other on the drive over and in the hallway, not saying anything. Did couples get that way after being married a few years?
When they neared her father’s room, she felt like she would be sick, but with the Harrisons there, she couldn’t turn around. She had to go through with this.
Part of her fear was that her father’s condition might alarm her. If he was close to death, he might look weird. Like a skeleton. Then she remembered he wouldn’t see her reaction to him. She wasn’t glad he was blind, but once again it took away a little of her fear.
“It’s right here,” Coach Harrison said, slowing as they reached room 402. The door was slightly open and Hannah glanced in and saw the bed, then studied the floor tiles.
“I’ll tell you what, let me step in there for just a second, okay?” Coach said. Hannah had never heard him talk so softly.
When he went inside, Mrs. Harrison turned and put a hand on her arm. “Hannah, are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” She felt the tightness in her lungs.
She took a puff from her inhaler, then slipped it into the pocket of her sweats.
“Listen, if you want more time, we don’t have to do this now.”
Relief. She could get on the elevator and leave. No, she couldn’t, not when she was this close. “I want to. I’m okay.”
Coach Harrison walked into the hall. “Okay, guys, you ready?”
When Hannah stepped into the room, it was like walking into another reality. She heard the beep, beep of a machine by the bed. There was that weird, antiseptic smell, alcohol and cleaning solution. And there was her father. He lay propped up in bed, staring straight ahead, like he was studying the wall on the opposite side of the room.
