by Cronk, LN
Probably Mike knew that Laci’s pregnancy had developed only from paternal cells too . . .
“You wanna go in where it’s warm?” I finally asked him. He looked grateful and nodded. I picked up two pieces of firewood on the way in.
We walked to the living room and Mike sat down on the couch while I opened up the wood stove. I used one of the logs to poke at the remnants that were inside before throwing them both in. I stood next to the stove for a minute and rubbed my hands over the heat. Finally I sat down on the other end of the couch.
“If you want to talk,” Mike said quietly, “I’m here.”
I nodded, but stayed silent for a long time. I actually wouldn’t have minded talking, but it was going to be really difficult to explain to another person how I was feeling.
I liked to think that I was way beyond questioning why God would allow these things to happen. I’d seen first-hand how everything works to the good of those who love God. Something miraculous and eternal had resulted from Greg’s death and I may not have understood yet why Gabby had died, but that didn’t stop me from having faith that God would work that for good too.
“I know I fall short, Mike,” I finally said. “I know that I’m not without sin . . . that I’m not perfect . . .”
I glanced up at him, trying to decide whether or not to go on. His face looked so understanding that I decided I would.
“But I think I’m a pretty good guy . . . you know?”
“I do too,” Mike nodded.
“I mean, I’m not talking about the fact that I’ve been living in Mexico and that Laci and I have given every moment we have to helping those kids . . . or about how I would move into the landfill if God told me to do that for some reason . . .”
I paused for a moment.
“I’m talking about how I try to put Him first in everything and how I know that my relationship with Him is the most important thing and I just think . . . I think I do a pretty good job with that, you know, considering everything . . .”
Mike nodded again.
“And I don’t have some misguided notion that I’m going to be spared any problems just because of my relationship with God . . . I know that’s not how it works, but . . .”
I knew in my head that God would never leave me or forsake me, but I didn’t know it in my heart. I knew He was still there, but I didn’t feel that He was still there.
I’d prayed and prayed about it and asked Him to please show me that He still loved me.
Nothing but silence.
And every day I was growing more and more discouraged.
I really didn’t know how to say all of this to Mike, so I didn’t say anything. That’s why I was very surprised when he quietly finished my sentence for me.
“But you want God to let you know that He loves you . . .”
A chill actually ran through my bones. It was as if Mike had read my mind and I stared at him dumbly for a moment. I could suddenly feel my pulse pounding in my throat.
“How’d you know that?” I managed to ask, swallowing hard.
“Is that right?”
“How’d you know that?” I asked again.
Mike was silent for a minute, but finally he answered.
“I’ve heard God speak to me clearly – like you did – only one time, too. One time. You know when that was?”
I shook my head and stared blankly at him. I had no clue.
“Yesterday . . .”
I didn’t say anything.
“He told me to come here,” Mike explained, “you know . . . to talk to you.”
I kept staring at him.
“Don’t you get it?” Mike finally asked.
I shook my head slowly.
“He told me to come here and talk to you,” Mike said again. “He wanted me to tell you that He loves you.”
~ ~ ~
A FEW HOURS later Jessica and Laci got home. They were both surprised to find Mike there and I could tell that Laci was really glad to see him. We went out to the car and helped carry packages down to the basement. Laci made it a point to talk to Mike and Jessica, but not to me. I didn’t really blame her.
When we were done putting the packages away, Jessica offered to make everybody some lunch and Mike went with her upstairs. Laci tried to follow, but I caught her arm.
“We need to talk,” I said.
She shook her arm free.
“Not now,” she said in a low voice. “We have company.”
“Please, Laci,” I said. “Please . . .”
She softened, but just a little.
“Hurry up.”
“Come here,” I said, taking her hand and leading her to the couch. I sat and tugged her down next to me. “Sit down.”
“What?” she said, reluctantly sitting beside me. If I hadn’t still been holding her hand I think she would have crossed her arms at me.
“I’m so sorry, Laci,” I began. “I love you more than anything in this world. I’m so sorry.”
Her eyes filled with tears and I knew she was going to forgive me so I kissed her.
“I shouldn’t have made you leave Mexico and I never should have talked to you the way I did,” I continued. “You have to know that I didn’t mean what I said about the house . . .”
She looked at me and blinked. Tears fell onto her cheeks.
“I don’t really feel that way,” I promised her. “Please don’t think I meant what I said. We’re not going to sell the house. As soon as your treatments are through we’ll go right back down there to our house . . . our house. I don’t know why I even said what I did. I didn’t mean it at all.”
“You were scared,” she said quietly.
“I was scared,” I admitted, “but mostly I was mad . . . but it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have said what I did at all – no matter how I felt. Can you forgive me?”
“You were mad?”
“Can you forgive me?” I asked her again.
“I forgive you,” she said, laying one hand on my cheek and kissing me. “What do you mean you were mad?”
“I was mad at myself.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
I paused for a moment before going on.
“You know how God talks to you sometimes?” I asked her. She nodded.
“Well,” I said, “He doesn’t do that to me. He usually just leads me, or guides me. It’s . . . it’s different. You know?”
“He does that to me, too,” she said, nodding.
“But He has talked to you, right?”
“Just about really important stuff,” she said, smiling, and I knew she was referring to the times when God had told her that we were supposed to be with each other.
“Well,” I said, hesitating. “He’s only talked to me like that one time . . . just once.”
“When?”
I paused.
“Remember after Gabby died?” I finally said. “When you were packing to go back to Mexico and I came down here with that ad for Adoption Alternatives?”
She nodded at me, looking confused.
“God told me to call them . . .”
I let that hang in the air for a minute.
“He told you to call them?” she finally repeated.
I nodded.
“And you didn’t,” she said slowly, “because I got so upset . . .”
“I should have called them no matter what you said or did,” I replied. “He told me to do something and I didn’t do it.”
“You don’t think this is your fault, do you?” she asked, putting her hand on her belly.
It sure didn’t take her long to make that leap.
“I think there are definite consequences for our actions,” I said.
“I do too,” she agreed, “but even if we’d called the adoption agency that very day . . . even if they’d found us a baby . . . I still would have wanted my own baby too. I still would have tried to have one and all this still would have happened . . .”
“Maybe,”
I said. “All I know is that I’ve felt very cut off from God ever since then and if He ever does trust me enough to speak to me again, I’m definitely going to do what He tells me to do – no matter what.”
“What do you mean . . . you’ve ‘felt cut off from God’?”
“I mean He hasn’t let me know that He’s been there at all. He hasn’t let me know that He loves me, or that He cares about me . . . nothing. He’s just been silent.”
“I cannot believe you haven’t told me any of this!” she said. “All this time you’ve felt like God doesn’t love you and you’re just now telling me?”
“Well, I knew He loved me in my mind . . . I just . . . oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I can’t explain it . . . that’s probably why I didn’t tell you. Plus, I think I kept hoping it would get better.”
“Did it?” she asked quietly.
I nodded and smiled.
“Mike?” she guessed.
I nodded again.
“I’m glad,” she said. “But David! You have got to talk to me! How am I supposed to know how to pray for you when I don’t even know what’s going on?”
She sounded mad.
“I’m sorry?” I tried.
“I can’t believe you never told me any of this,” she said, shaking her head.
“Look,” I said. “I can’t help it if I’m not all open with my feelings like you are. You knew what you were getting into when you married me.”
“Like I had a choice!” she said, rolling her eyes and then she smiled at me. “I don’t know why God couldn’t have decided to hook me up with a good looking doctor or something.”
“Oh,” I moaned. “Please don’t tell me that you use to have a thing for Mike, too!?”
“Naw,” she said, smiling. “But I bet I could’ve had him if I’d wanted him!”
“You could have had anybody you wanted,” I agreed.
~ ~ ~
I WOKE MIKE up in the middle of the night. He was sleeping on Jessica and Christopher’s couch in the living room because he’d offered to go with us to our first doctor’s appointment tomorrow.
“Mike . . .”
He sat up slowly.
“What’s going on?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.
“I’m really sorry to bother you,” I said, “but Laci’s not feeling too good . . .”
That perked him right up.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Is she still supposed to be bleeding a lot?”
“Define a lot.”
“I don’t know. She says it’s a lot.”
“Can I go take a look at her?” he asked. He was already grabbing a small bag out of his suitcase.
I followed him down the stairs.
“Hey, Laci,” he said when he saw her. She was slumped against her pillow, staring straight ahead. She didn’t acknowledge that he had spoken to her.
“How’re you feeling?”
He touched her forehead and then he put his fingers to her neck, feeling her pulse.
“Hey . . . Laci?” he said, as he pulled a blood pressure cuff out and wrapped it around her arm. “Can you tell me anything? Can you tell me how you’re feeling?”
Laci didn’t answer him, she just closed her eyes. Mike started pumping up the blood pressure cuff and as soon as he’d taken the reading he pulled out his phone.
“What’s the address here again?” he asked me.
I had to think for a minute.
“Um . . . 137 Buckhorn . . .” I said.
He nodded and punched some numbers into his phone.
“I need an ambulance at 137 Buckhorn . . .”
An ambulance?
“Female,” he said. “Twenty-three years old. BP of 80 over 40. Pulse is thready . . . 120.”
Mike listened to his phone and then he continued.
“She’s two weeks out from a D & C for choriocarcinoma. Heavy vaginal bleeding . . . probable hemorrhagic shock.”
He paused for a few moments, listening. “Yes . . . but very shallow.”
Her breathing . . . it was shallow.
“Okay,” he said into his phone and then he closed it.
“What’s going on, Mike?” I said.
“She’s in shock from losing so much blood . . .”
“Is she going to be all right?”
“Sure she is,” he said. Her eyes fluttered opened and she stared straight ahead again, not focused on anything.
“Hi, Laci,” he said. “You’re going to be fine, okay?”
He picked her up and I followed him again as he carried her upstairs and laid her on the couch in the living room. He wiped his hand across her forehead and I noticed how damp her hair was. Her arms and legs were trembling too.
Suddenly Laci’s eyes rolled back into her head – just like in the movie The Exorcist. Now I’d never actually seen that movie, but whenever someone wants to describe how somebody’s eyes roll back into their head they always say: “It was just like in The Exorcist!”
If that’s really what it looked like in the movie, I knew I didn’t want to see it. Then – just in case things weren’t scary enough – Laci started throwing up.
“What’s going on?” I turned to find Jessica standing behind me in her bathrobe. She took one look at Laci and turned white.
“She’s fine,” Mike insisted. “She’s going to be fine.”
Mike was doing a pretty good job staying calm, but I saw a look of great relief wash across his face when he heard a siren. By the time the ambulance had come to a complete stop at the curb he’d already carried Laci out the front door with me and Jessica at his heels.
The paramedics opened the back of the ambulance and pulled out a metal stretcher. Mike laid Laci down on it and started telling them her medical history. They slid her into the ambulance and Mike climbed up with her . . . then he stopped and looked back at me.
“Here,” he said, jumping back down. “You go.”
“No,” I said. “Go ahead. You’ll do more good than me. I’ll be right behind you.”
Mike didn’t argue with me. He hopped back up into the ambulance and I saw him sit down next to Laci and take her hand before the doors closed and it raced off.
God hadn’t just shown me that He loved me that day . . . He’d also put a certainty in my heart that Laci was going to be okay. I don’t know how I knew this, but I did. I was also sure that Mike had been sent not just to help me, but to help Laci, too.
Mike and Laci had both done such a good job of doing whatever God had asked them to do. It only seemed fitting that they should ride to the hospital together.
~ ~ ~
ABOUT TEN O’CLOCK the next morning, Laci finally started to wake up. Her mom and dad were on one side of her bed and I was on the other. Her mother was stroking Laci’s hair and telling her how lucky she was that Mike had been there last night and how glad they were that she was going to be okay.
They’d been at the hospital all night, so when Mike knocked lightly on the door and came in they thanked him again for everything he’d done and then excused themselves to go to the cafeteria for some breakfast.
“Hey, Laci,” he said, smiling at her. “You’re looking good. How’re you feeling?”
“Tired . . .” she said. “Where am I?”
“She just woke up,” I explained.
“Oh,” Mike said. “You’re at the hospital.”
“What happened?” she asked.
Mike looked at me questioningly.
“You can tell her,” I said. I didn’t want to.
“Laci,” he said, “you were hemorrhaging quite a bit last night . . .”
“I didn’t feel good,” she said, trying to remember.
“The bleeding,” Mike went on, “was . . . severe.”
He looked to make sure she was paying attention.
“They had to do an emergency hysterectomy to save your life – you would have died otherwise.”
I was watching her to see if she u
nderstood what he was saying . . . no more uterus . . . no more pregnancies . . . no more babies.
“Listen,” he said. “They were able to leave your ovaries . . .”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
“That’s really good, Laci,” he continued.
“Why?” she asked. I could tell she was still trying to process everything he was saying.
“Several reasons,” he said. “You won’t have to go through menopause right now and you still have eggs . . . if you ever want to look into having a surrogate carry your biological children, you’ll probably be able to do that . . .”
“Ohhhhhh,” she moaned, her hand sliding down toward her belly. “It hurts.”
“Here,” he said, reaching for a little button on a cord that was attached to a machine on the other side of her bed. “Morphine. Greatest thing ever invented. All you gotta do is push this button.”
He showed her how to depress the button and within a few seconds I could see relief spread across her face. In less than two minutes she’d drifted off to sleep again and he draped the cord over her bed rail so she’d be able to reach it.
When she woke back up Mike was gone. He had a long drive ahead of him and I’d insisted that he go ahead and leave.
“Where’s Mike?” she asked.
“I made him go on.”
“Oh,” she said, closing her eyes again. “I wanted to say thank you . . .”
“He knows,” I said. “Laci?”
“Hmmm?” She opened her eyes.
“Do you . . . did you understand what Mike was telling you?”
She nodded.
“I’m really sorry, Laci,” I said, stroking her hair.
“It should be easy to have kids,” she said.
“You mean that surrogate thing?” I asked, surprised.
“No,” she said, smiling slightly and shaking her head. “I work at an orphanage.”
“Oh,” I said, smiling back. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she said, and then she gasped, “Ow.”
She reached for the cord that Mike had draped over her rail and pushed the button.
