Chasing the Wind

by Patricia H. Rushford

  MONDAY MORNING’S DEEP PURPLE CLOUDS were skittering away by the time 6:00 AM rolled around, leaving behind a sky tinged with pink and orange as the first hint of sunlight peeked over the top of Hope Haven Hospital.

  What a glorious October morning.

  In spite of the chill, Elena Rodriguez leaned against her forest green Jeep Liberty, and as she did at the beginning of most every workday, inhaled the clean fresh air.

  “Father, be with me as I care for my patients today,” she whispered. A wisp of wind fluttered across her face and for one moment wrapped her in its oddly warm embrace before scurrying back to the maples, where it began to shake amber and crimson leaves from their branches.

  Smiling, Elena offered a quick but heartfelt amen and hitched up the tote bag carrying the lunch and snacks her husband Cesar had packed for her, along with a notebook full of ideas, contracts, proposals and cost estimates for the Bread of Life Harvest Festival, a charity event she was coordinating for her church and two others. Instead of heading for the staff entrance, she meandered through the hospital grounds toward the front of the hospital. It was far too beautiful a morning to shut out the outside world just yet.

  The floribunda roses lining the walkway no longer bloomed with yellow, pink and scarlet blossoms. After sixteen years at Hope Haven, though, where she’d started working at the age of thirty, their sweet scent was fixed in her mind. The green grass was rapidly turning the color of wheat, storing all its energy for winter and the snow that would come all too soon—but hopefully after the Harvest Festival.

  A month from now, the day after Thanksgiving, members of the hospital staff would hang twinkling lights in the trees and get ready for the live Nativity. Elena was more than ready. The holiday season was her favorite time of year.

  The dried leaves crunching under Elena’s baby blue clogs reminded her that she needed to head to Cavendish House one day soon to gather the biggest and best leaves for harvest decorations.

  Cesar would laugh, of course. “I’ve been raking leaves around the house for weeks now. Couldn’t you have picked some of ours?”

  As she neared the front of the hospital, she was mentally compiling a few things to add to her to-do list besides gathering leaves—recruit two people willing to decorate kids’ faces for free, design a maze to be built out of hay, finagle free hay from Jim Ireland—when she heard raised, angry voices coming from near the hospital’s main entrance.

  She heard Albert Varner’s familiar baritone voice drifting toward her, and she stopped dead in her tracks to listen.

  She’d recognize his voice anywhere. The chief executive officer of Hope Haven had a friendly smile and encouraging words for everyone on the staff. He also sang in the choir at Elena’s church. But she’d never heard or seen him annoyed, let alone furious, until this moment; nor had she ever seen him storm across the hospital grounds, looking as if he could punch a fist through the glass doors if they hadn’t slid open a moment before he disappeared inside the hospital.

  Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a glorious morning after all.

  A moment later, Hope Haven’s wealthiest, surliest board member, Frederick Innisk—whom Elena had nicknamed Scrooge—stepped into view, his face red with rage, as he fiddled with the knot in his tie and smoothed his hands through his thick silver hair. He looked around the grounds, as if searching for busybodies who might have overheard his argument with Mr. Varner. When his gaze settled on Elena, she wanted to run.

  He was probably gunning for her right this moment, considering the frown she saw on his face when he stopped in front of her. She didn’t need to get on his bad side today, not when she already had one big strike against her—the fact that her idea for the Wall of Hope fund-raiser was going forward despite his protestations.

  A gust of wind whipped Elena’s long, dark brown hair into her face, and the much-dreaded Frederick Innisk probably couldn’t see the smile she offered him. Unfortunately, she could easily see his downright churlish glare.

  “Be nice,” she told herself.

  “Good morning, Mr. Innisk. It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

  “Too windy for my liking.” He looked at his watch and frowned. “Shouldn’t you be at work by now? As far as I know, we don’t pay you to lollygag or to stand outside listening to private conversations.”

  Elena hadn’t been late a day in her life, and if Innisk and Varner hadn’t been yelling, she wouldn’t have stopped. She wasn’t one to argue, but the mere fact that he was one of the hospital’s board members didn’t give him the right to be an uncivilized boor.

  “Actually, Mr. Innisk, my shift doesn’t start for another hour. Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, skirting around him, “I have a meeting to get to.”

  Elena pulled her scarf up close to her face to fight off the wind and Scrooge’s scowl. She rushed off, feeling the heat of Mr. Innisk’s glare on her back until she disappeared through the hospital’s sliding doors.

  “Dear Lord,” she whispered, “please let that be the last encounter I have with Frederick Innisk for a good long time. Amen.”

  She hung a right into the administrative area, just in time to see Mr. Varner shove through his office door and slam it behind him.

  What on earth was going on?

  It seemed odd that the chief executive officer and one of the board members would be at the hospital at the crack of dawn, arguing and slamming doors. Unless…

  Elena frowned. The hospital had suffered through financial woes a few months ago. Was it in dire straits again?

  Elena had far too much on her plate to worry about what was going on behind the hospital’s closed doors, but she had to think about her job, her future.

  All the upheaval would gnaw at her nerves until she learned the truth.

  Hopefully she could get to the bottom of it during her meeting with Quintessa Smith about the Harvest Festival. Quintessa was serving as the festival’s financial coordinator, and—most importantly at this moment—worked as the executive assistant to the chief financial officer, Zane McGarry. She was privy to just about everything that went on behind the hospital’s closed doors. Quintessa was the height of decorum and confidentiality, but if Elena worked the argument between Innisk and Varner into their conversation about donations and sponsors, Quintessa might let something slip.

  Quintessa was on the phone, seated behind an antique mahogany desk, the top neat as a pin, with one corner, plus the credenza behind her, devoted to photographs of her twin brother, Dillan—a technician in Hope Haven’s lab—her mom and dad, plus a host of nieces and nephews.

  “I’ll be another few minutes,” Quintessa whispered to Elena, her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece.

  “No hurry,” Elena whispered back, wondering if she’d hear more slamming doors or more raised voices coming from Mr. Varner’s nearby office while she waited.

  Elena dropped her coat, scarf and tote on one of the guest chairs, taking a load off…and listened, but it was only Quintessa’s voice she heard.

  “Let me put it this way, Mr. Welsh,” Quintessa said, speaking succinctly into the phone. “If you look closely at the proposal, it’s up to you to come up with a viable way to…”

  The conversation was all Greek to Elena. Her mind wandered to her ever-growing to-do list: taking her granddaughter Isabel out for a girls’ lunch, and to the zoo or the art center, as well as what she planned to fix for dinner that night.

  Elena stiffened when she heard an angry voice reverberate through the wall, nearly drowning out Quintessa’s conversation. There was definitely a battle going on next door.

  Elena leaned against the wall, hoping she could pick out a few phrases from the conversation, but it was all rather garbled and all she could do was guess.

  Had the directors finally decided to vote Mr. Innisk off the board?

  Was Varner being fired?

  Could there be a huge malpractice suit on the horizon?

  If only she could hear more.

  “It
can’t be helped. You know that better than anyone,” board president Bernard Telford’s familiar voice filtered through the wall.

  What can’t be helped? Elena frantically wondered.

  Another door slammed.

  And then, unfortunately, Quintessa hung up the phone. “Sorry to keep you waiting so long.”

  If only she’d been a little longer, Elena might have heard more from next door. Even though she knew Quintessa wouldn’t divulge any secrets, she couldn’t help but ask, “What on earth is going on? What’s with all the door slamming?”

  Quintessa’s pretty brown eyes darted to a packet of papers on her desk that she suddenly seemed too interested in. “I haven’t heard one slamming door.” Quintessa was being much too coy.

  And then another door slammed.

  Elena’s eyes widened. “Don’t tell me you didn’t hear that?”

  Quintessa laughed lightly as if it were no big deal. “If you spent eight hours a day here, five days a week, you’d hear that a lot. It comes with the territory.”

  Elena wanted to dig deeper, to see if Quintessa would divulge anything, but all this crazy intrigue was pulling her away from her number one priority right now. She was the queen of multi-taskers, but she already had enough on her plate without getting completely caught up in the Hope Haven hornet’s nest.

  Not right this moment, anyway.

  Elena pulled a file folder from her bag. “Here’s the list of local businesses and those in the surrounding area that I came up with to contact about possible donations.” Elena handed a copy of the list to Quintessa, plus a CD containing an electronic copy of the form.

  Quintessa scanned the list quickly. “I know two women who are great at sales and love talking on the phone. I think we can crank out these calls before the end of the week.”

  “That would be wonderful,” Elena said, tucking a wayward strand of her still wind-blown hair behind her ear. “I have a meeting with the pastors from Holy Trinity, Good Shepherd and Riverview Chapel in a couple of days. They might feel a little more reassured that the festival is going to go off without a hitch once I tell them you’re handling the donations.”

  As Albert Varner’s shouting reverberated through the wall, Elena tensed, her breath catching in her throat.

  “I’m out of here. Find someone else to do your dirty work.” Another door slammed in Varner’s office.

  Quintessa turned her head away from Elena, picked up a stack of papers, as if she had something important to get to, but Elena had seen the tears beading up in her eyes. No doubt about it, Quintessa knew exactly what was going on and hated every minute of it.

  Elena put a hand on her friend’s arm. “I can’t possibly ignore that, Quin. You might say it’s nothing, but something bad’s going on. If it has to do with the hospital’s finances, if there’s more talk about us closing down, of me losing a job I love, I need to know what’s happening.” Elena dropped her file folder on Quintessa’s desk and headed for the door.

  “Don’t go out there, Elena,” Quintessa called after her. “There might be heads rolling.”

  “Then they might be in need of a good nurse.”

  Unfortunately, all Elena saw when she threw open Quintessa’s office door and stepped into the hallway was Albert Varner’s back as he disappeared into the hospital’s main reception area, and when she turned to see if anyone was going after him, she saw the tear-stained face of Mr. Varner’s executive assistant, Penny Risser. She was known as the Dragon, the CEO’s faithful, fearless and all too brusque guardian. Tears were something one never saw on Penny’s face, confirming that something dreadful had happened.

  “Is there anything I can do?” Elena asked.

  Penny’s slender shoulders drew back. Her long neck stiffened, and Elena was sure that if Penny could breathe fire, she’d do so right this very minute.

  “What you can do,” Penny stated, “is pretend you didn’t hear a thing, that you didn’t see a thing. And I strongly suggest that you keep this incident to yourself.”

  With that, the rather tall, gangly woman with a tight curl in her short hair, stepped back into her office and slammed the door behind her.

  Mind her own business? That was impossible.

  Hope Haven was Elena’s home away from home, and she was like a mother hen when it came to protecting all she loved.

  She was going to peck away at this situation until she got to the bottom of it.

  A Note from the Editors

  Guideposts, a nonprofit organization, touches millions of lives every day through products and services that inspire, encourage, and uplift. Our magazines, books, prayer network, and outreach programs help people connect their faith-filled values to their daily lives.

  Your purchase of Stories from Hope Haven does make a difference! To comfort hospitalized children, Guideposts Outreach has created Comfort Kits for free distribution. A hospital can be a very scary place for sick children. With all the hustle and bustle going on around them, the strange surroundings, and the pain they’re experiencing, is it any wonder kids need a little relief?

  Inside each easy-to-carry Comfort Kit is a prayer card, a journal, a pack of crayons, an “I’m Special” wristband to wear alongside the hospital-issued one, and a plush golden star pillow to cuddle. It’s a welcome gift and has a powerful effect in helping to soothe a child’s fears.

  To learn more about our many nonprofit outreach programs, please visit GuidepostsFoundation.org.