Father, don’t let this be anything bad. Rachel Marie forced a bounce into her step, climbed up to the second story, and knocked briskly. “Anybody here?”
It took a moment before her former roommate came to the door.
“Hey, you.”
“Yes, come in.”
The Asian girl was barefoot and in a bathrobe. She gave Rachel Marie a tentative hug and motioned her into the small living room. “Thank you for coming.”
“Sure.” She slipped off her shoes, remembering.
“Traffic is okay?”
“Yeah. Nothing. I got lucky.”
Jisoo pulled the robe tighter, and sat down across her. “I, uh . . .”
With the upstairs picture window facing east, it was gloomy in the living room, and Rachel Marie felt her heart skip a beat as she noticed a wad of Kleenex in her friend’s hand. “Oh, sweetie . . . .” She moved closer. “You’ve been crying, huh?”
Jisoo’s emotions threatened to spill over, and she sucked in a faltering breath. “I am so . . .”
“Well, what happened? Bad news from Seoul?”
“No. It’s . . . me.”
“Sweetie . . .” Rachel Marie felt her own eyes well up despite the mystery of the crisis. “You can tell me.”
Silently the Korean girl rose and came to sit by her. Reaching out with awful precision, she picked up both of Rachel Marie’s hands and clutched them to her heart, which was beating a wild tattoo in her chest. “I just came back from doctor’s office,” she whispered.
Oh, no . . .
Rachel Marie felt a sick, hurting dryness fill her mouth. “Oh, dear God. What is it?”
All at once the reservoir burst. Her slim shoulders shaking, Jisoo collapsed against her friend. “Cancer. Real bad cancer.”
CHAPTER TWO
Rachel Marie’s mind reeled. I didn’t hear that right. Cancer? My friend? My bouncy, teasing, 26-year-old, healthy friend?
“Are they sure? What did they say?”
Jisoo raised up slightly. “Yes. Ovarian cancer. I think they say, like, Stage 3B.”
“Which is . . . what? Halfway bad? What?”
“No, more than half,” her friend said in a bleak voice. “It spread already outside pelvis, but not so much.”
Rachel Marie tried to force back the gagging wave that threatened to spill to the surface. “Oh, sweetie,” she murmured, clutching Jisoo. “I’m so sorry. But you know what? You’re strong and you’re young and you’re awesome, and you’re going to get through this. I swear to God.”
“I don’t know. It seem very bad.”
“How’d they figure out you . . . that this had come along?” It was hard to keep her expressions low-key and not apocalyptic.
The older girl tried to pull her emotions together enough to explain. “Well, I went in some time ago because I am not doing so good.”
“Like what?”
“Oh . . . so many things. Excess bleeding each month is one. I come home and feel, you know, bloated and bad in my stomach. And I think, so, it is just a small bug or something I eat. But it is getting to be more and more, so I finally go in and they ran the tests.”
“And called you today?” Rachel Marie’s voice was hopefully soothing.
She nodded. “I must go back Wednesday and they will have more details. What I should do, what my selections are. Everything.”
Rachel Marie clutched at Jisoo’s suddenly frail form, looking over her jet-black hair and out the window where a tender bit of moonlight was already melting into the nearby trees. “Let’s get some light in here.” She went over to a lamp in the corner and turned it to the medium setting. “There.”
She came back and nestled close to her old college chum. “I know you’re scared. I would be too. And you know I’m scared for you, Jisoo. But we have God to count on.”
“I know.” Her lip trembled. “But what if it is God’s will that I . . . not become well?”
Please, Jesus. We need you now. So bad! “You know,” Rachel Marie said at last, “God wants for all of us to live. Live forever. In his kingdom.”
“I know.” It was a bare whisper.
“And I guess, in this wretched world, there are going to be a few of God’s saints who are the ones who are brave and keep praising even if they’re the ones that he lets . . . go before the others. And if for some reason, that should be you, then . . . God is good. He has his reasons for choosing who are his most special people.”
“Yes. You are correct.”
Rachel Marie felt a tear of love spring into her eyes at her friend’s still graciously precise Asian way of responding, even in this blackest of moments. She sensed a gentle returning of hope as they prayed together. “You really are my most awesome, special friend,” she soothed.
“Thank you.” The two girls embraced for several long minutes.
• • • • •
The remaining school days fell heavily into place one after another. Jisoo’s fragile hopes weighed on Rachel Marie as she made her way from home to school and church. It was comforting to know her cherished friend was in the hands of a loving God who cared far more than she did, who treasured Jisoo’s days on earth, her life-brightening influence. But a stealthy adversary had now boldly announced itself and was relentlessly attacking someone she dearly loved.
“Miss Stone, you are okay?” Her reverie was broken as she glanced up. A slight Hispanic boy, his innocent eyes wide with concern, stood next to her desktop computer, holding his English paper.
Rachel Marie smiled. “Sure, Rico. I’m good. Why do you ask me that?”
“You look so sad,” he observed as he handed her the assignment. “All this week you seem to be thinking something sad.”
A lump came into her throat. Lord Jesus, thank you for these amazing kids. “You know, I have been a little sad,” she admitted. “I have a friend who is sick and so I worry about her.”
“Is she a teacher like you?”
“Huh uh. She’s a lawyer.”
“Oh.” The boy hesitated. “Miss Stone. My mom and me, we can pray for your friend.”
She felt a flood of gratitude. Despite the reality that this was a sterile and secular state-funded institution, it was wonderful when a tender blessing like Rico’s prayers slipped through the cracks in the wall of separation. “Sweetheart, that would be mucho wonderful. Thank you.”
“Do you pray, Miss Stone?”
She felt her heart lifting. “Honey, I pray a bazillion times a day.”
“You do?”
Rachel Marie found herself actually giggling. “Mr. R, I pray for you every single day, that you’ll learn to spell the word separate correctly and put an ‘a’ in the middle instead of an ‘e.’ And that you’ll stop putting such silly LCD’s on your math papers.”
“Really?”
“I’m teasing you. Now go. Recess in two minutes, mister.”
• • • • •
The next weekend she met Jisoo for an early breakfast before church. A nearly empty bistro overlooking a colorful flower bed provided a respite as the two girls shared an omelet and sipped cappuccinos.
“The doctors say you’re doing okay in your treatments?” Rachel Marie tried to make it more of a statement than a question.
Jisoo nodded, her dark eyes still with the warmth that her roommate had always loved. “I think, just, staying even. Not good, but not bad also.”
“Hey.” Rachel pushed a bit of cranberry muffin toward her. “Every day that passes and you’re gaining strength is a good day. You know?”
“Yes. You are right.”
“You look fabulous, too.” Rachel Marie slipped off her sweater and set it on the unused third chair. “Cute hat, by the way. You know every kid in my classroom is praying for Miss Kim.”
A wan smile. “You please tell them that Miss Kim is thankful.”
“Sure.” She waved off her friend’s fumbling in her purse. “I got it.”
Following Jisoo’s directions, Rachel Marie drove
to a quiet suburb in Temple City, where Upper Room Fellowship’s worship service was just beginning. Jisoo accepted encouraging hugs from friends in the mostly Korean congregation and pointed her friend to an empty pew. “Here is okay?”
About forty earnest worshipers gazed at the screen filled with a picture of Jesus holding a small Asian child. “Maybe some of you guys came here this morning with a burden in your soul,” the praise leader began. “And the rest of us don’t know anything about it. We go to work, and we make money, and we buy our toys and go out for karaoke parties, and then we come here and sing . . . and all the time, you have this stone in your heart.”
Dear God, how did she know? Rachel Marie leaned over in the quiet darkness of the sanctuary and took Jisoo’s hand.
“But Jesus knows.” The singer, her eyes warm, seemed to look right at the pair. “Our mighty Jesus knows. And if you came here today with a burden, Jesus is in this place and ready to lift that burden.”
The keyboardist began a simple melody that found its way into Rachel Marie’s heart as she felt Jisoo’s cool, desperate hand in her own. The warmth of the bass guitar and the gospel words bathed the two as they worshiped together. Burdens are lifted at Calvary. Jesus is very near.
A young man sitting nearby noticed Rachel Marie’s tear-streaked face and gave both of them a smile of support. Troubled soul, the Savior can see every heartache and fear. Burdens are lifted at Calvary, Calvary, Calvary.
She blinked an hour later as she led Jisoo out into the sun-bathed courtyard. “That was nice. I should tag along with you more often.”
“Do you and Adrian attend together often at New Hope?” Jisoo managed a small wave toward the pastor’s wife.
“Oh, about half. He has a lot of meetings and stuff. With his work. Like today – he had a seminar presentation clear down in Irvine. But if he’s free, yeah, he usually comes.”
“He is very, how do you say . . . hot-looking man.” Despite her pale demeanor, Jisoo’s eyes twinkled as she managed a bit of teasing.
“Yeah. He is that.” Rachel pointed toward the fellowship hall. “Well, I can smell the inviting allure of kimchi. Clear out here.” She laughed. “Are we staying? Or what? I’m not hungry, but . . . wow.”
Her friend shook her head reluctantly. “I am sorry. Please . . . can we go? To home?”
A renewed knot of anxiety crept into Rachel Marie’s heart. “How are you feeling, kid?”
“Maybe not so good.”
• • • • •
It was a raucous but bittersweet celebration as parents and relatives jostled for parking spots and pushed their way into the middle school gymnasium. Rachel Marie herded her children toward the left-side entrance, beaming with pride at their matching outfits. Dark trousers and white shirts for the guys, black dresses for the girls. The fragrance of hair mousse was stiff in the air, and many of the girls wore nylons and were glittering with newly purchased cheap jewelry.
“You guys look amazing,” she beamed at Marina and Olga, identical twins with sharp, Slavic features who had emigrated from Russia three months earlier.
“Thank you,” they murmured in unison, edging involuntarily toward each other as if to ward off the boisterous American hubbub. The two sixth-grade classes moved together into the back of the auditorium and filed, grinning, down the aisle to the roped-off seats toward the front.
Rachel Marie spotted Pastor Mike waving at her. “You made it!” she whispered, sidling up to him.
He was a middle-aged man, energetic and friendly, with an engaging smile and a hurried but well-balanced look about him. He and his team of associates had taken New Hope Church a decade earlier and built it up to a thriving body of a thousand believers. How does he find time to come to this for little old me?
“Well, I didn’t think I could get here,” he confessed, tucking his Blackberry away and keeping his voice low as the principal began her opening remarks. “But I know this is your first year, and I just wanted you to know, man, we’re all real proud of you.” He glanced around. “You’re the only teacher here to attend New Hope, right?”
She nodded.
“Well, then, get to work witnessing,” he teased. “We got room for your whole staff, Miss Stone.”
“I know.”
He watched the proceedings for just a few minutes, smiling in amusement at the silly elementary humor in the kids’ tribute to parents. “Well, forgive me if I slip out. I do have a home Bible fellowship at eight I can still get to. Do you mind?”
“No, of course not.” She accepted a hug of congratulations. “Thanks a lot, Pastor Mike. I really appreciate it.”
“Well, young lady, I can see that the Lord has a great spot for you here,” he responded. “Glad to hear you got picked up for next year, especially in this economy.” A pause. “‘Course, anyplace he sent you, I know you’d do an incredible job.” He waved to a row of parents and then eased toward the back.
Rachel Marie sank into a chair and scanned the faces of her brood, now standing on the platform in their dress clothes, some embarrassed, some cocky and cutting up to mask their pre-adolescent anxieties. Thank you, Jesus, for these kids.
The middle school band was beginning to play when an odd, discordant feeling began to settle over her. Anyplace he sent you. Anyplace. ANY place.
She looked around at the chairs, the posters on the walls, the row of trumpeters awkwardly trying to hit their notes. She remembered her classroom with its American flag, the crowded rows of desks, tiny chad of notebook papers buried in the carpeting, the books she’d paid for with her own money and stocked in her classroom’s tiny library. The Christmas presents kids had brought and carefully put on her desk with a blushing smile.
It was a sacred disquiet. Lord, am I going to be someplace else next year instead of here? Why, Jesus? And where?
• • • • •
As the story unfolds, you’ll also meet Nigel Blaine, a gorgeous expatriate in Bangkok who makes a lucrative living as a freelance TV journalist. Then there’s Khemkaeng Chaisurivirat, Bangkok Christian School’s vice principal, a delightful friend who still happens to be a nominal Buddhist. Which direction will Rachel Marie’s life take? But I’ve said too much already . . .
Bucky Stone: The Complete Adventure (Volumes 1-10) Page 105
