The Sacred Acre

by Mark Tabb

  “All right, let’s go. You drive,” she said to one of them. The other EMT climbed into the back. Jan called the dispatcher on her cell phone and said, “We’re en route.”

  The fire station was less than a half mile from the high school. Jan got her kit ready so she could get to work the moment they arrived.

  Chris walked in the weight room door. Two men cradled Ed as he lay on the floor. The weight room equipment partially obstructed his view, but Chris could see enough. One of the men looked up at Chris, obviously in shock. “It’s real bad, Chris. Really bad. I don’t know what to do.”

  The policeman in Chris fought to keep him in control. Chris the former Falcon football player, Chris the man who admired Ed Thomas more than anyone on earth, Chris who counted Ed as his best friend, wanted to run over and grab hold of Ed and not let him go. He pushed his emotions down, but he felt he was about to lose the battle. “Just stay with him. Help should be here soon,” he said.

  A siren started off in the distance. Oh, my gosh, Jan is on her

  way. Chris knew she was in the ambulance because she was always the first to respond when the ambulance was called out, especially during the day. As this thought ran through Chris’s mind, he stepped closer to Ed. Blood from the head injury seemed to obstruct Ed’s breathing. “All right, we need to turn Coach onto his side. Keep him off his back and on his side, OK?”

  Chris took one last look at Ed. Ed’s breathing was labored, but he was still alive. “Hey, Coach, everything’s going to be all right. I want you to know that. Hang in there. The ambulance is going to be here real quick and you’ll be all right.” Ed didn’t respond, but Chris thought he heard him. Oh my, he’s lost so much blood, he thought to himself but didn’t dare say it out loud.

  “I’ve got to secure the scene,” Chris said and jumped up. “Stay with him, guys. Keep talking to him. I’ll be right back.” As soon as Chris came to a spot where Ed could not hear him, he called his dispatcher on his cell phone. “Dispatch, I need you to get the air ambulance started this way. We need it here RIGHT NOW!” He paused for just a moment as his knees buckled. “Keep it together, Chris,” he told himself, “keep it together.”

  The students had told Chris that the shooter took off out the back door of the weight room, so Chris dashed off in that direction, gun drawn. Pushing through the door, he did a quick, frantic search of the parking lot. If the shooter was still here, Chris was fully prepared to use deadly force. He looked for the car the students described. It was nowhere to be found. A handful of cars littered the parking lot, but all of them were empty. Every student, as well as all the parents and anyone else on school grounds, had scattered over to the elementary school.

  “Chris, is the scene safe?” someone called out to him. He looked up and saw the ambulance stopped at the parking lot entrance.

  “Yes,” he called back. “Pull in and park directly in front of the doors of the bus barn. I’ll meet you there.”

  As the ambulance turned in front of Chris, he saw Jan sitting in the passenger seat. The moment it stopped, the three EMTs jumped out, Jan in the lead.

  Chris jumped in front of her. “Jan, stay right here with me,” Chris said.

  As one of the EMTs took off running into the bus barn, Jan tried to follow her. “No, Jan. Stop!” Chris yelled out.

  “I need to get in there,” Jan said. She tried to get around him. Chris grabbed her by the shoulders. “Jan, stop.” “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Jan, look at me. Listen.” Chris swallowed hard. Tears welled up in his eyes. “The person in there is — it’s Ed, Jan. He’s been shot several times in the head.”

  Those words did not make sense to Jan. This was supposed to be a workplace accident involving a construction worker and a nail gun. “How is he?” she said.

  “It’s bad, Jan. It’s very, very bad.”

  This is impossible. This is impossible. This is impossible. “None of this makes any sense, Chris. It can’t be Ed. This was a construction accident, right?” Her mind could not comprehend what she had just heard. It sounded impossible.

  “No, Jan. Someone shot Ed with a gun.”

  Jan began to tremble from head to toe. “I need to get to him. He needs me.”

  “I don’t want you to go in there. Not yet, at least. Your crew has to do their work, and you know they can’t do that with family right there.”

  “OK,” she said in a near whisper. She fought to keep from hyperventilating. Shock swept over her. Oh, God, what has happened?

  The pain in Jan’s face was nearly more than Chris could bear. Ed knows she’s here, he thought. He had to have heard the siren. He must know she is here. How can I keep her outside when he knows she’s here. He pushed those thoughts away as hard as he could. His years on the ambulance service taught him that grieving family members get in the way of the medics. And Ed needed medical attention right now more than he needed his wife. Please, God, let him be all right.

  More ambulance crew members arrived and went inside to help. Jan stood with Chris outside. Time seemed to stand still for her. Every second outside was sheer torture, wondering how he was, praying she would walk inside and find him lying there with a smile on his face, then telling her he was embarrassed by so many people making a fuss over him.

  “How are you holding up?” Chris asked.

  Jan nodded and tried to say, “I’m OK.” The words stuck in her throat. By all rights she should have been in hysterics. Inside she was, but somehow she kept it together on the outside. Finally, she leaned over to Chris and said, “I need to go in, now. I know what you told me. I know it’s bad. But I need to go in there now.”

  “OK,” Chris said without trying to talk her out of it. “When you go in there, you need to tell him that everything is going to be all right. He needs to hear your voice. He needs to know you’re here.”

  Jan nodded and headed toward the door.

  The EMTs were loading Ed onto a backboard when Jan walked in. The local pastor who rushed in when the kids ran out was still at Ed’s side, praying over him. Jan walked over and knelt down beside Ed. For a split second she was able to take in the scene as a paramedic rather than the victim’s wife. She did a quick survey of his wounds. Right away she knew that he probably would not survive, although she did not allow her mind to process that thought. He didn’t appear to be conscious, which did not surprise her, given the extent of the injuries she could see right in front of her.

  “Ed, I’m here,” she said. The moment those words came out of her mouth, the EMT in her melted away. She took hold of his hand. Tears streamed down her face. “I’m here. Everything is going to be all right. They’re going to take good care of you.” Please, God, let him be all right. She held tightly to his hand and did not want to let it go. Ever. But her EMT training kicked back in, and she knew she needed to get out of everyone’s way as they fought to stabilize him and prepare him to be transported to the hospital. “I need to step away so the guys here can help you. I love you, Ed. I love you.”

  She stepped back and looked around at her friends with whom she had worked together on many, many serious accidents. The looks in their eyes confirmed what she already knew. No, no, no, no. Oh, God, no, she cried inside as outwardly she kept her composure. “Thanks, guys, for everything.” Her voice cracked ever so slightly as she dismissed herself.

  Jan walked out of that room and into another room inside the bus barn where she could be alone. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed Aaron’s number.

  “Hey, Mom, what’s up?” Aaron said as he answered the phone. He and the high school principal at Union High in La Porte City were on their way to an administrative conference in Des Moines. They were nearly there.

  “Aaron, there’s been an incident at the high school. Your father has been shot, and it doesn’t look very good.” Jan could barely force herself to say the words.

  “What? What do you mean he’s been shot, Mom? Dad doesn’t have a gun. He doesn’t hunt. How could he
be shot?”

  “No, Aaron, this wasn’t an accident.” She paused to try to gain her composure. Part of her wished she had asked Chris to make this phone call, but she felt she needed to be the one to break the news to Aaron. She pushed the words out with all her strength. Even then, they barely came. “Someone shot your father several times. It’s bad, Aaron; it’s really bad.”

  “Where are you, Mom? Is anyone with you?” Panic welled up in Aaron’s voice.

  “I’m still at the school with the ambulance crew. They are getting ready to transport your dad, I think to Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo. Chris is here with me. He called for the helicopter, so they may take your dad to University Hospital in Iowa City. I’ll let you know.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you? This is really happening?”

  Jan’s voice broke as her grief and pain poured out. “I am afraid so. Would you call Ellie and see if she can get hold of Todd? I don’t have the contact information for the hotel where he and Candice are staying in Jamaica.” Todd and Candice were in Jamaica for a friend’s wedding.

  “Sure, Mom. Anything.” Aaron hung up the phone, and turned to his principal. The look on his face said everything. He blinked hard and rubbed his head. His mother’s words rang in his ears. Aaron felt like he had just stepped into someone else’s nightmare. “We need to turn around. Someone shot my dad.”

  “What? Who?”

  “They don’t know,” Aaron said, but one name leaped into his mind.

  At church in Parkersburg that Sunday, someone had started talking about the high-speed chase that had come through Parkersburg, a chase that began in Cedar Falls, twenty miles away. That was when Aaron found out that Mark Becker had been the driver. He also learned why the police were chasing him. Apparently, Becker had attacked a house, trying to get to the people inside. He bashed in the windows with a baseball bat and then grabbed a tire iron and tried to break down a door. All the while, he screamed profanities at the top of his lungs and threatened the people inside. When he could not break through the doors with the tire iron, he jumped into his car and tried to drive it through the garage door. About that time, he heard police sirens and took off. The police chased him all the way from Cedar Falls through Parkersburg and out toward his grandparents’ house. The chase ended when Becker hit a deer seven miles outside of Parkersburg. Chris Luhring was the arresting officer.

  Aaron had never understood his father’s commitment to Mark, especially since he had done so many things that went against everything his father stood for. Ed told Aaron the same thing he had told Todd about Mark. Aaron could still hear his father say how Mark needed the team more than the team needed him and that he would not give up on him. And now this. Aaron did not yet know who shot his dad, but the more he thought about it, the more he knew only one person was capable of it.

  The principal turned his truck around and headed toward Parkersburg. A Gulf War veteran who had led his unit into Baghdad, he knew what it was like to lose someone very close to him. He patted Aaron on the leg and drove without saying a word. He gave Aaron space to grieve. They were at least two hours away. Aaron called Ellie and broke the news to her. She tried to call Todd and Candice in Jamaica, and then broke down in tears, unable to move or speak.

  Chris paced in front of the bus barn. The air ambulance helicopter was still at least fifteen minutes away. We have no time! We’ve got to get him to the hospital NOW! But Chris wasn’t sure he could leave the scene. He thought the shooter was gone, but he didn’t know for sure. At any moment, more shots could fly from God knew where. Panic tried to set in. He looked over at Jan. The color had drained completely from her face. She can’t ride in the ambulance, and she sure isn’t in any condition to drive herself. Where is that HELICOPTER?!

  His cell phone chimed, telling him he had a text. It read, “12-1 and 12-2 have the shooter in custody.” 12-1 was the Butler County sheriff; 12-2 his deputy.

  That settled it. “All right, let’s get rolling,” Chris yelled to the ambulance crew. He called the dispatcher on his cell phone. “Have the air ambulance contact me when they get close. I need them to meet us on the way.” Then he turned to Jan. “Ride with me, OK?”

  Jan nodded. She then followed behind as the EMTs rolled the gurney to the ambulance. A friend put his arm on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear. She didn’t hear him. Right before they loaded Ed into the ambulance, she took his hand and said, “They’re taking you to the hospital now. It’s going to be all right. I’ll be right behind you. I love you.” As she released his hand, she feared these would be the last words she would ever say to him. The crew lifted up the gurney. Jan stood off to one side, softly crying. She tried to pray for her husband, but she did not know what to say.

  The ambulance doors slammed shut, pulling Jan out of her daze. The ambulance took off, siren blaring. Jan climbed into the passenger seat of Chris’s squad car, the same Explorer that had nearly been destroyed during the tornado a year earlier. Before he got in the car, Chris grabbed Dave Meyer, the high school principal. “Lock the bus barn up tight, and don’t let anyone go in or out. It’s a crime scene.” He then took off behind the ambulance, lights flashing, siren blaring.

  They weren’t even out of the parking lot when Jan looked at Chris and said, “Those are mortal wounds, Chris. I want to pray for him, but I don’t know if I can pray that he survives this. The shots in the head …” Her voice trailed off. “If he survives he will not be the same, and Ed would never want that.”

  “Jan, we’re both medics. We’ve both seen some very bad stuff where it looks like there is no hope, and the people make a full recovery. Remember that woman who was dead, but you and I brought her back with CPR? Don’t give up.” Chris was telling himself this as much as Jan. As an EMT himself, he knew Ed’s chances were slim at best.

  The ambulance sped south down Highway 14. The air ambulance got through to Chris’s radio. Whatever was wrong with the radio system, it had to be in Parkersburg, not on Chris’s end. He set up a rendezvous point on Highway 20, a four-lane divided, limited access highway near the town of Dike. Dike is halfway between Parkersburg and Cedar Falls/Waterloo. Chris and the ambulance carrying Ed reached the point first, which allowed Chris to stop traffic and set up the landing zone for the helicopter. Once the helicopter landed, Chris told Jan, “You probably have time to check on him before they take off.”

  “OK,” Jan said. There wasn’t room for her to climb into the helicopter and sit down next to Ed. Instead, she opened the door and looked in. Her husband’s eyes told her what she was afraid she already knew: He would not recover from these wounds and probably would not survive the trip to the hospital. She took a deep breath and whispered, “I love you.”

  While Jan spoke to Ed, Chris answered a phone call. It was Butler County Sheriff Jason Johnson. “We’ve got him in custody, the shooter. You know who it is, don’t you?”

  “I have no clue,” Chris replied.

  “Mark Becker. It is Mark Becker.”

  “Can’t be. They locked him up in the psych ward. The hospital was supposed to notify us when he was ready to be released so we could put him back in jail.”

  “Yeah, I know, but they didn’t. It’s Becker all right. I’m staring at him right now.”

  The doors of the helicopter closed. The medic on board took over Ed’s care. Chris and Jan climbed back into the squad car and took off toward Covenant Medical Center. “They have the shooter in custody, and you might as well know who it is because you are going to find out pretty quickly,” Chris said.

  Jan took a deep breath.

  “Who?”

  “Mark Becker.”

  “That’s impossible. Joan told me yesterday that he was in the hospital and that they were going to keep him for a while.”

  Chris shook his head. He felt like vomiting. “I’m sorry, Jan, but that’s who it is. They’re questioning him right now.”

  Jan could not respond. She and Chris rode in silence the rest of the wa
y to the hospital. When they arrived, Chris pulled around to the emergency entrance in the back.

  The helicopter landing pad was nearby. It was empty. They had beaten the helicopter to the hospital. Jan prepared herself for the worst that she knew was coming.

  CHAPTER 17

  A NIGHTMARE UNFOLDS

  Being a Christian does not mean we will always win and be exempt from adversity, disappointments in life, and problems. Being a Christian is hard.

  ED THOMAS

  TODD WAS JUST ABOUT TO SIT DOWN TO EAT AN OMELET WHEN he noticed Candice running into the hotel restaurant, her hand over her mouth. She had woken nauseated, so Todd assumed Candice had her hand over her mouth to keep from throwing up. Getting sick away from home is always rough, and waking up sick in Jamaica is even worse. Candice stopped at the restaurant doorway and looked around. As soon as she spotted Todd, she sprinted over to him.

  “Ellie’s on the phone. You need to talk to her,” Candice said.

  Todd could see his wife was very upset. “OK,” Todd said. “Why? What’s going on?” He was more than a little surprised anyone had called. With no cell service for his phone on the island, he hadn’t heard from anyone back home since they arrived two days earlier.

  “Someone shot Dad.”

  Todd assumed Ellie meant someone had shot Candice’s dad. “What? Why would someone shoot your dad?”

  “No, you don’t understand. Someone shot your dad. Someone shot Ed.” She burst out crying.

  That statement made even less sense to Todd. “He doesn’t hunt. How could he get shot?” He pushed his plate away, and he and Candice took off running toward their room. The television was on CNN when he walked into the room.

  Todd grabbed the phone. “What’s going on, Ellie?” he asked his sister-in-law. He glanced over at the television. “That’s Jon Thompson,” he said to himself as he saw the A-P superintendent on the television screen.

  “Someone shot your dad. It looks really bad. Everyone’s been trying to get ahold of you to let you know.”