Chapter 7
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Hope stopped by Will’s room in the ICU to visit before starting her shift. His condition remained unchanged. Again, she hated the darkness in the room, and longed to open the blinds.
Clocking in for her shift at the CCU, she fell in line behind JoAnn again, shadowing her preceptor in the daily tasks of the unit. The morning zoomed by quickly, and Hope was relieved when break time arrived. Her stomach rumbled with hunger as she realized that in the rush to get Sam dressed, fed and off to school, she had forgotten to eat breakfast.
Hope took a walk to the cafeteria, where she bought a plate of scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee. The dining hall was packed from wall to wall without a single open table or booth in sight. She held her tray close and walked slowly, panning from side to side in hopes of pouncing on an open spot.
“Pardon me, Miss?” came a voice from behind her.
She turned around to find an elderly man sitting alone, pushing his fork around a plate of biscuits and gravy.
“Yes?” She stepped closer to him.
“It looks like maybe you’re trying to find a place to sit. If you don’t mind sharing a table with an old man, you’re welcome to join me.”
Hope smiled. “I’d be delighted,” she said, grateful for the unexpected invitation. She slid into the booth and thanked him.
“So I’m going to venture a guess and say that you work here, right?” he said, eyeing her hospital badge and scrubs.
Hope laughed. “Good guess. I work on the critical care unit.”
“Do you like it?”
“Yeah. It’s only my third day, but I’m learning a lot, really fast. It just takes time, you know?”
“I can only imagine. It takes a special kind of person – a real smart cookie – to be a nurse. I admire those of you who do the job.”
“Thanks,” Hope said, sipping at her coffee.
“I’ve put in lots of hours around here lately,” he continued. “And I’m really thankful for the nurses. They take wonderful care of my wife. She’s on the oncology unit right now, having a few complications, but I think they’re getting her all fixed up. Hopefully she’ll be able to come back home soon.”
“I sure hope so.”
“My name’s Saul, by the way. What’s your name, young lady?”
“Hope,” she said.
He smiled broadly. “Hope,” he repeated. “I had a pet turtle named Hope once.”
She laughed out loud. “I’m sure there has to be a story behind that.”
“Indeed there is, if you want to hear it.”
“I’m all ears.” She glanced at her watch. “For fifteen minutes, anyway.”
Saul leaned in and lowered his voice a bit. “I wasn’t always a nice fella, Hope. I got wrapped up in some bad stuff when I was a lot younger. Served eighteen years in a medium security prison.”
She nodded politely, suddenly intrigued by the thought of a self-admitted hardened criminal who’d taken in a pet turtle, and named it Hope.
“Once I got out, I had to do some community service as part of my parole. They put me on highway cleanup. I bet you’ve seen those big white prison buses parked on the shoulder of the road, with inmates walking all around in orange vests, picking up garbage and throwing it into trash bags? Prison guards following behind them with rifles resting on their shoulders? Know what I’m talking about?”
“Yes,” she nodded.
“Well, the job they gave me for community service almost made me wish I was back in prison. All I ever had to do as an inmate was pick up litter and throw it in a bag. Once I was paroled out and on community service, they gave me a pickup truck and had me drive around town scooping up dead animals off the side of the highway. Then I had to haul them to the city dump for disposal.”
Hope covered her mouth, an involuntary gesture to avoid gagging at the thought. “I see,” she said to Saul through her cupped hand.
“Not the most pleasant job in the world,” he said. “But sometimes you find beauty in life’s dismal situations. Sometimes you find hope where you least expect it.”
“Even in dead animals on the side of the road? Now I’m really curious,” Hope confessed.
He smiled. “In the spring, when it was nice and warm, I would find turtles all over the road. If they were alive and well, I’d move them off of the road to safety. A lot of times, I’d find that the turtles had been hit by a car, and were still alive, but had broken shells and were unable to move. Whenever I’d find one like that, I would take it home, seal up the break with epoxy glue, and release it near a creek in the woods behind my house.”
“So you provided turtle first aid and saved their lives. How sweet.”
“Something like that,” he laughed. “If eighteen years in prison taught me anything, it was that there’s nothing more tragic than a wasted life.”
“So did you keep one of them as a pet and name it Hope?”
“Not exactly,” he shook his head. “Not every turtle that I found was still alive. The ones who weren’t… well, I took them home with me too.”
Hope raised an eyebrow. “You took dead turtles home?”
He nodded. “The warm weather in the spring brings mother turtles out in search of a place to lay their eggs. As I’m sure you know, a lot of them never make it when they try to cross the highway. Some of them get run over by cars and there’s just nothing that can be done for them. Sometimes, however, you can save the eggs.”
A smile slowly returned to Hope’s face.
“I would take the dead turtles home, cut through the shells, and collect whatever eggs I could find. I had to be careful to keep them in the same position I’d found them, as the eggs polarize. I’d move them as quickly as I could to the ground, and bury them in a few inches of warm, moist soil. It’s the same exact thing that the mother would have done for them, had she lived.”
“And it really works?”
“Usually, no. There’s a very short window of time after the mother dies. Once her body temperature drops, so does the chance of the eggs surviving.”
Hope stared at him, mesmerized. “How many did you save?”
He smiled again and reached for his wallet, pulling out a dog-eared picture. “Just one,” he said.
Hope stared at a very old photo of a newly hatched turtle, barely bigger than the thumb of the hand that was holding it.
“Hundreds and hundreds of eggs I buried over the years,” said Saul, “knowing how slim the chances were that it would make a difference. People laughed at me and told me I was crazy, and I was wasting my time. But when this turtle hatched, nothing that anybody else said to me mattered anymore.”
Hope struggled to put her thoughts into words, but was at a loss for what to say. All she could do was stare at the picture.
Saul pointed his finger, gnarled with arthritis, at the baby turtle in the photo. “One survivor out of hundreds and hundreds of eggs. That’s what made it all worth it for me. That’s what you call hope,” he said. “I’m seventy-four years old. I’ve been lots of places, and I’ve seen lots of stuff in my day, but that baby turtle in my hands was the most beautiful sight I’ve ever laid eyes on. Something about it told me that if I could give a turtle a second chance at life, then maybe the world might hold a second chance for me, too. And it did. After that, I managed to stay out of trouble, got myself a job, and met my wife a short while later. I’ve had a good, happy life since then. Who would have thought that a little turtle could have made such a difference for me?”
She passed the picture back to Saul. “It’s pretty amazing,” she grinned. “Thank you so much for sharing that story.”
“You’re most welcome.” He slid the photo back into his wallet with the greatest of care. “That picture was taken a long time ago, of course. When Hope was old enough to make it on her own, I released her into the woods. She was a little box turtle. They can live to be a hundred years old or more. I think about her sometimes and wonder if she’s still
around. I bet you she’ll outlive me. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?” He broke into hoarse laughter.
Hope smiled, then reached across the table and touched his arm. “I’m so glad I got to meet you today, Saul. I hope your wife has a speedy recovery. I’ll be keeping her in my prayers.”
“And I’ll be doing the same for you, young lady. Nurses need prayers too. When things get tough at work, you just think about me, the crazy old man who buried turtle eggs in his back yard, and remember what it taught me.”
“What’s that?”
He smiled. “Always do what you know in your heart is right. Don’t listen to people who try to tell you any different. Hope makes it all worth it.”
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