Strength IN
Numbers
Strength IN
Numbers
CHARLOTTE CARTER
Stories from Hope Haven is a registered trademark of Guideposts.
Copyright © 2010 by Guideposts. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Guideposts, ATTN: Rights & Permissions Department, 16 E. 34th St., New York, NY 10016.
The characters, events and medical situations in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or occurrences is coincidental.
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Cover design and illustration by Lookout Design, Inc.
Interior design by Lorie Pagnozzi
Typeset by Aptara
Printed and bound in the United States of America
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This book is dedicated to my writer friends who face the challenges of multiple sclerosis every day of their lives—Bonnie, Liz and Deb—and to my readers who share the same courageous battle.
Special thanks to Lori Wilde for her insights into the world of nursing, to my amazing fellow authors of the Stories from Hope Haven series, and to all the ladies of the loop for their humor and unfailing support.
The Best Medicine by Anne Marie Rodgers
Chasing the Wind by Patricia H. Rushford
Hope for Tomorrow by Patti Berg
Strength in Numbers by Charlotte Carter
A Simple Act of Kindness by Pam Hanson & Barbara Andrews
The Heart of the Matter by Leslie Gould
Well Wishes by Anne Marie Rodgers
Measure of Faith by Patricia H. Rushford
Cherished Memories by Patti Berg
Christmas Miracles by Charlotte Carter
The Healing Touch by Pam Hanson & Barbara Andrews
Lean on Me by Leslie Gould
Special Blessings by Anne Marie Rodgers
With Open Arms by Patricia H. Rushford
In This Together by Patti Berg
New Beginnings by Charlotte Carter
Chapter One
JAMES BELL WALKED ACROSS THE PARKING LOT TO the entrance of Hope Haven Hospital, the chill morning air clouding his breath.
The Lord had blessed this mid-December morning, the sun just beginning to rise into a clear sky, a cold front moving in from Canada. If the weather stayed cold, the fire department would flood the basketball courts at the Deerford town park. Neighborhood kids would search their homes for ice skates they hadn’t seen since last spring.
James grinned as memories of his youth played like an old video through his imagination. Pom-pom-pullaway on the makeshift rink. Pickup games of hockey. Friday date nights with music playing from an old boom box.
Deerford, a small community in north-central Illinois, was a great place to grow up and raise a family.
He picked up his pace, his unzipped parka flapping open with each step. As a registered nurse, he was eager to do his bit to help bring healing to others, body and spirit.
The automatic door swished open. As he entered the three-story building, the warm interior air struck James.
He took the stairs to the third floor to the staff lounge and locker room. A few steps inside the door, the bulletin board was draped with silver garland for the holidays. Various notices were posted, most of them old and faded. Information about filing a workers’ compensation claim. A request for volunteers to serve as counselors at a children’s winter camp.
He spotted an envelope in his employee mailbox. Shrugging out of his jacket, he opened the envelope and read a memo addressed to all employees:
Due to a continuing financial shortfall, salaries of all Hope Haven Hospital employees will be reduced by 10 percent, effective January 1. This change will be reflected in the first paycheck following January 15.
The administration regrets the necessity…
James’s knees went weak. His mouth dropped open and his heart sank to his stomach.
He’d known for some time that the hospital was struggling financially, but he’d thought the problem had been solved. He hadn’t imagined Albert Varner, the hospital CEO, would take such a drastic step.
A 10 percent cut in salary meant James would earn several thousand dollars less per year to support his two teenage sons and his wife. Fern suffered from multiple sclerosis. Their insurance didn’t cover all the necessary medications to control her MS, and the excess came out of their pockets.
In time, that expense would only grow larger.
Same thing with his boys, Gideon and Nelson. Each year their expenses for clothes, cell phones, school activities and just plain being teenagers increased. Sometimes exponentially.
A 10 percent cut would be disastrous.
What could he do?
His mind in a fog and a sick feeling in his stomach, he went into the staff locker room and changed into green hospital scrubs. He left and slowly descended the stairs to the second floor where the General Medicine and Surgery units were located. Still a half hour until his shift officially started, he was in no rush to get to work.
The quiet of early morning on the nursing floor would soon be replaced by the hurried footsteps of doctors and technicians coming and going, meds being administered and patients leaning on their call buttons.
A pair of poinsettias sat on the counter of the nurses’ station, supplied by the families of grateful patients.
Anabelle Scott and Candace Crenshaw, his nursing colleagues, were behind the counter, their expressions as grim as he felt.
“You look like you heard the bad news too,” James said. His throat felt tight, as though he’d have as much trouble swallowing a simple aspirin as he did accepting such a huge pay cut.
Anabelle, the nurse supervisor for Cardiac Care, gave him a sympathetic smile. “Not exactly good news just before Christmas, is it? Particularly for those of you with young families.” An experienced nurse and wise woman, Anabelle’s short, salt-and-pepper hair was neatly combed, her expression calm. As was usually the case, she wore a white lab coat over her street clothes.
Candace, who worked in the Birthing Unit, shook her head. “I’ve already bought most of the presents for Brooke and Howie. I always start my shopping early so I can spread out the expense.” Her forehead furrowed and she bit her lip. “Now I’m wondering if I should take some of the presents back to the store.”
As a young widow and the single mother of an eleven-year-old girl and a five-year-old boy, Candace was understandably worried about the impact of a salary cut on her family’s finances.
So was James.
“Varner sure picked a bad time of year to do this.” James stepped into the supply room.
“I can’t think of a good time of year,” Candace countered.
From force of habit, James checked the automated computer system to see how many patients he had—one prostate, a pneumonia on oxygen, a hand surgery. He skimmed the rest. He really needed to pull himself together. His patients deserved his best efforts and all of his concentration.
He shifted his attention back to his friends. “You know what they say, adversity makes us stronger.” Somehow he’d cope with reduced income in a way that wouldn’t hurt his family. Just how he’d do that eluded him for the moment.
Candace eyed him skeptically. “Who says that?” She removed her stethoscope from the pocket of her pale yellow scrubs and looped it around her neck.
“I don’t know, but it sounds good.”
Anabelle laughed. “For months the hospital has been teetering on the brink of disaster, and somehow Albert Varner has pulled us out. Maybe he’ll find a way to pull us back from the edge again.”
James wasn’t all that optimistic. The news had really shaken him. Maybe that was because Fern was going through a rough patch with her MS and he was worried about her.
The stairwell door burst open. Elena Rodriguez, a nurse from the Intensive Care Unit, hurried across the floor to the nurses’ station, planting herself right in front of James.
Lifting an eyebrow, he looked into her brown eyes, so dark they were almost black. They sparkled with an intensity that would not be easily subdued.
“Okay, Mr. Hotshot Spelling Bee Guy,” she said. “I’ve got a new word for you.”
Her energy forced a smile from him. All of his friends knew he was addicted to watching the annual spelling bee championships on TV. Once upon a time, he’d almost made it through the state championships to a regional event. “Okay, Ms. Moderator. What’s today’s word?”
“Exacerbate.”
“Ah, a good one. Can you use it in a sentence?”
“You betcha. The ten percent pay cut we’re all going to be hit with is going to exacerbate our families’ financial problems.”
“Amen to that,” Anabelle said.
“She’s right on,” Candace agreed.
Thinking, James rocked back on his heels, looked up at the acoustic tile ceiling and carefully spelled the word.
Elena snapped her fingers in a gesture of dismay. “Shoot, I thought I’d catch you on that one.”
“Not even close. That’s a first-round word for sixth graders.” He grinned at her. “How ’bout this? Albert Varner seems determined to pauperize all the hospital employees.”
“If you think I’m gonna spell pauper-whatever, think again. I had enough trouble with exacerbate. What I want to know is what we’re supposed to do. Cesar and I won’t starve, but the cut is sure going to put a crimp in my savings for our trip to Spain. Just yesterday I got a brochure about festivals in the Andalucia region. They have something going on every month, and I was trying to figure out the best time of year to go.” She pulled her lips back to a discouraged angle. “Now I have to worry about if I’ll be able to go at all.”
James rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. He knew Elena had been planning and saving to go on the trip for years, dreaming of the day when she could visit the ancestral land of her paternal great-grandfather.
Anabelle spoke up. “I’m afraid the cut in pay will cause some employees to look for work elsewhere. That could impact all of us.”
Candace said to Elena, “James claims adversity is good for us.”
“That’s not exactly what I said but close.” He exhaled, bent his head and studied the toes of his white work shoes. “Maybe we ought to do what we always do when things get tough. We ought to leave it in God’s hands and have faith everything will work out for the best.”
Anabelle touched his arm. “Prayer helps too.”
He shouldn’t have needed that reminder. But he did and was glad Anabelle had shared a bit of her strength with him.
“Will you all join me?” he asked.
Elena nodded and Candace smiled, then bowed her head.
“Dear Lord, we come to You in search of Your comfort and Your strength,” James began. “We need Your help as we face this new adversity. Guide us on Your path to find positive ways to deal with the proposed salary cut and to maintain our faith that all things are possible in You. Bless our work here at Hope Haven and our patients. Amen.”
His co-workers echoed soft amens, and some of the despair James had felt earlier lifted from his shoulders.
As though a starting bell had been rung, the activity on the second floor picked up. Graveyard-shift nurses updated the day-shift nurses on patients, reviewing medications and adding insights about the patients’ health and morale as needed.
The hospital loudspeaker paged doctors. Meal service carts rumbled through the hallway bringing breakfast to waiting patients.
It was a long-established routine, and James mentally settled into the changeover as he met patients held over from the previous day. This was what he did. He was good at his job. He’d learned as a medic in the first Gulf War that this was what he wanted to do with his life.
About nine o’clock, he received word that a transfer patient from a hospital in Springfield was being moved into his unit later in the morning—an amputee who had lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. The kid was only seventeen.
James’s heart broke for the young man. Losing a limb was a tough adversity to handle for someone so young. During the war he’d seen soldiers far older than seventeen come apart emotionally when they realized they had lost a part of themselves.
Recovery from that kind of trauma required more than a few stitches and a handy bedpan.
As the morning progressed, James prepared the discharge paperwork for the prostate and hand surgery patients and made sure a room was ready for the new amputee patient. According to the computer system, the young man’s name was Theodore Townsend.
He’s hardly more than a boy, thought James.
A soft ping announced the arrival of the service elevator on the floor.
The boy lay on a gurney, his gaze riveted on the elevator ceiling as though it were a Rembrandt on loan from the Louvre. The boy’s mother held his hand while Dad stood stoically looking straight ahead. Both parents were simply dressed, the dad a muscular guy who looked like he might be a plumber or in the construction business.
“All ashore that’s goin’ ashore,” the orderly everyone called Becker announced, pushing the gurney out of the elevator. An IV dripped medication into the boy’s arm and the transfer paperwork rested on top of the kid’s stomach.
“Room 207,” James told Becker.
“Got it, boss.” The stocky orderly, not much older than the patient, expertly rolled the gurney down the hallway and made the turn into room 207.
James picked up the paperwork to make sure everything was in order.
“Hi, Theodore,” he said, flipping quickly through the printed pages. “You like to be called Theodore or Ted?”
“Ted,” the boy replied in a monosyllabic grunt.
“Okay, Ted, how’re you doing?”
“Great. I’m having a blast.” The youngster’s sarcasm fell flat against the pain etched in the boy’s face and the fear visible in his hazel eyes. An all-American kid with a blond buzz cut, he had a couple of stitches on his forehead and road burns on his cheek and right arm. He’d apparently taken quite a tumble off his motorcycle.
If James had his way, his two sons would never ride anything that didn’t cocoon them safely inside a couple of thousand pounds of steel.
He rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder for a moment, speaking in a low voice meant to both soothe and reassure. “I’m James, your nurse. We’ll get you settled in a minute, then you can get some rest.”
Ted’s eyes cut toward James, but the boy didn’t speak. His mother still had a death grip on her son’s hand, her complexion almost as white as her knuckles. Worry lines etched her face.
“Mr. and Mrs. Townsend, if you’d like to step outside, it’ll take me just a few minutes to make your son comfortable. Then you can come back in and visit for a few minutes.”
Having a child injured or seriously ill was probably harder on the parents than it was on the kid. Sometimes they didn’t understand that James needed room to do his job, and their son probably didn’t want them to witness his pain. Mothers, in particular, often didn’t want to leave their child’s bedside for even a few minutes.
Fern had been the same way when their son Gideon had been hospitalized with a respiratory virus at the age of two. As James thought about it, he realized he had felt the same.
“Come on, Cynthia.” Mr. Townsend hooked his hand through his wife’s arm. “I saw a waiting room down the hall. We can wait there.”
&n
bsp; Bending down, Cynthia kissed her son’s cheek. “We’ll be right back, Teddy, I promise.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m not going anywhere.”
As the mother turned to leave, James saw tears welling in her eyes. Tough business, being a mom.
When the parents left, James and Becker positioned themselves to shift the young man onto the bed. Physically fit with good muscular development, the youngster probably weighed in the area of 170 pounds.
“We’re going to lift you up and place you on the bed, Ted,” James said. “Let us do all the work. Think of it as a free ride.”
“Yeah, right,” he mumbled.
James slid his hands under the boy’s shoulders, Becker had the patient’s hips and legs. “This may hurt, son, but we’ll make it quick.”
Ted visibly gritted his teeth.
Checking with Becker, James gave him a one, two, three count. Together they hefted the boy. Ted sucked in a quick breath and then he was safely on the bed.
Becker adjusted the IV pole and pulled the gurney away. “He’s all yours, James. I promised you’d take real good care of him.”
“Will do,” James said.
Becker left, and James went to work adjusting the boy’s position in the bed and checking the dressing on his wound. James noted that the kid had lost his right leg just above the knee, leaving him with nothing but a stump.
“How’s your pain level?” The doctor’s orders included pain medication as needed.
“I can handle it.” Ted squared his jaw tough-guy style.
“How’d you mess up your leg?” James asked.
“I hit a patch of gravel. The bike slid and took me with it.” Ted turned his head away. “It would’ve been better if it had killed me instead of turning me into a stupid cripple.”
James’s breath caught in his lungs and he felt a stab of concern. Depression and grief for a physical loss wasn’t unusual, and this boy was experiencing both. Ted’s comment that he’d be better off dead was more than a little troubling.
Strength in Numbers Page 1
