Love Comes Home (29 page)

This couldn’t be normal. Not this much blood, but she didn’t really know. She hadn’t asked Aunt Hattie what would happen if she did lose the baby. She hadn’t wanted to need the answer to that.

She struggled up from the commode. She had to have help. Why had she told Graham not to bother her mother? She grasped the edge of the sink as the pain gripped her again. What was it she and Graham had said? Everybody had a time to die. Whether appointed or not.

Her heart pounded in her ears and her stomach went queasy on top of the gripping pain. Kate stared at her pale face in the mirror and spoke out loud. “It is not your time.” The pain got stronger as though defying her words. She shut her eyes and leaned against the wall next to the sink. “Please, Lord,” she whispered. “Please, let it not be my time.”

Time. She had no idea how long she’d slept after Graham left. Jay could be on the way home and then it might be an hour before he came. How long could a person bleed without losing consciousness?

“Jay, please come home.” Her words were swallowed up in the silence. If only she knew what time it was. She breathed out another prayer. “Lord, let it be time for him to come home.”

She folded a towel to staunch the blood. Maybe if she could make it to the couch, lie back down, then she’d be all right until he came. She could do that. She could. She took one step and the room went black except for the sharp image of the doorknob in front of her. She reached for it. But her knees buckled and she sank to the floor and curled up in a ball. The linoleum was cool against her cheek. All she could do was hope Jay came in time. Or her mother. Or anyone.

She was drifting in a fuzzy world of pain when she heard the door. “Jay.” She pushed the word out with all the force she could muster, but it was little more than a hoarse whisper.

No answer came from the front room. Instead the movements sounded unsure, almost furtive. Definitely not Jay. He always burst in from work ready to use up the rest of the day. But it was someone.

“Help me.” This time her voice was stronger.

“Where are you?” The voice was familiar but somehow not right. Low with an uneasy edge.

“In here.” Kate tried to sit up, but she was too weak. “Please.”

Fern was the last person she expected to step into the bathroom, towering over Kate. The woman didn’t have on her usual overalls, but somehow she looked even odder in a flowery dress that hung off her shoulders without touching her body anywhere else. Her steel gray hair was yanked back from her face and held there with a red kerchief. As she stared down at Kate, fear mixed with panic crossed the woman’s face. Kate had never seen Fern look afraid. It was plain she wanted to turn and walk away. Kate didn’t blame her. She wanted to get up and walk away from it too, but she couldn’t.

“I lost the baby. He’s gone.” The words ripped through Kate’s heart. “Gone.”

“Hattie said you would. She prayed for you.”

“It didn’t help. I prayed too, but I still lost him.”

“She didn’t pray for the baby. Prayed for you.” Fern’s voice was harsh as she finally let go of the door and stepped closer to Kate. “Hattie sent me.”

Katie looked up at her and the room started spinning. “Why?”

“An angel told her you needed help.”

“You should have told Mama.”

“Didn’t think of that.” Fern’s face looked set as she crouched down beside Kate. “Never put much stock in angel messages, but for Hattie, I said I’d come. Hattie’s sinking.” Fern’s rough fingers pushed down on Kate’s wrist for her pulse. “You’re sinking too.”

“I prayed, Fern.” Kate grabbed Fern’s arm. The room was
going black, but maybe if she stared at Fern’s face she could keep from passing out. She didn’t want to faint. She needed to do something. “I prayed for Aunt Hattie. I prayed for my baby. But he’s still gone.”

Fern made a noise Kate wasn’t sure was disgust or sympathy. “Prayer don’t change what can’t be changed.”

“Then why pray?”

“To endure what has to be endured.”

“Can’t stand it.” Kate gasped as a new pain struck her. When the pain eased a bit, she asked, “Am I going to die, Fern? Like my baby?”

Fern pushed her arm under Kate’s shoulder and raised her head a little. “Don’t know. Hattie’s angel didn’t tell her that.”

“Angels.” Kate shut her eyes. “Lorena thought I was an angel. Do you remember that?” She was drifting away from the pain now. Away from everything.

“I remember.” She lifted Kate up. That brought the pain back.

“But I wasn’t.”

“You were her angel.”

Kate stared at Fern’s face as things came back into focus. Weathered skin splotched from too much sun and wind. Eyes forever sad. Lips not smiling. Lips that rarely smiled. “Are you my angel?”

Fern snorted as she lifted Kate up. “Been called lots of things, but never angel.”

“My angel,” Kate murmured, trying to get her legs under her. She could feel life pouring out of her. “Tell Jay I loved him.”

“Tell him yourself. I hear his car.”

“Jay,” Kate whispered, but then the darkness won.

The front door was wide open. It wasn’t that warm, Jay thought as he pulled in the driveway. But Kate could be letting smoke out after burning their supper. It wouldn’t be the first time. She’d put something on the stove and then start writing. He needed to buy her a timer.

That could be it, but worry that something was amiss had the hairs up on the back of his neck as he pulled into the driveway. He’d been home for months and out of the fighting longer than that, but his nerves stayed on edge.

The empty open door wasn’t right. Kate should be standing in it, ready to greet him with a sheepish grin about having tuna sandwiches for supper again. Then he had left her in bed that morning. Not normal either. He should have insisted on taking her to the doctor.

He ran across the yard and up the steps into the house. The smell hit him. A smell he knew but didn’t expect to confront in his own house. Blood. Death. He had to be having a flashback to the war. He stopped and took a deep breath.

Someone yelled from deeper in the house. Not Kate’s voice, but a voice he knew. Fern. He had to be wrong. Fern wouldn’t come inside their house even if a thunderstorm was raging.

“Jay Tanner.” The name was almost a bark, definitely an order. Something like Sarge would have said it, but not Sarge. Fern. Inside his house. Beyond the front room. Where was Kate? His heart hammered inside his chest as he moved toward the sound of Fern’s voice like he was approaching battle.

“Kate?”

“In here.” Fern again. Not Kate.

He stepped to the door and froze. The sight of the blood
threw him back to that fresh-faced kid stepping on the mine in front of him and Jay carrying his blood forward to the battle the kid would no longer have to fight. Then Artie had bled out on his shoes minutes after changing places with Jay on that street in Germany. Blood draining out of men in every battle. Dying men.

But this was Kate’s blood. “Is she . . . ?” He couldn’t say the word as his heart did a funny stutter. She looked so limp as Fern held her.

“She lost the baby.”

A wave of sadness swept through him. “Oh, Kate.” He knelt down to run his hand across her cheek.

“No time for that.” Fern frowned at him. “She’s sinking. Fast.”

Jay reached under Kate and picked her up. She groaned and stiffened in his arms. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Hospital. Only thing.” Fern pointed toward the door.

“All right. I’ll get her mother.”

“No time. Lay her in the backseat. Hattie said to put her feet up.” Fern grabbed an armful of towels. “Go.”

Jay looked around. “Hattie’s here?”

“No. Hattie’s dying.” Fern said without emotion. “Sent me.”

“Dying?” Jay felt shell-shocked, but thankful to feel Kate’s breath against his cheek.

“Too much dying.” Fern shoved him toward the door. “Go! The girl would be sad if you let Kate die.”

“She won’t die.” Jay held her tighter as he went out the front door. Then he looked back at Fern. “Will she?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Keep the maybe not in your head. Hattie was praying.”

“You said Hattie was dying.”

“Don’t mean she can’t pray on the way up. She was talking to angels.” Fern opened the car door. “Do what Hattie said.”

He placed Kate as gently as he could in the car, but even so, he bumped her against the back of the seat. She groaned and opened her eyes. “Jay?”

“I’m here, darling. We’re going to the hospital.”

Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I lost the baby.”

“I know.” He brushed away her tears as his own eyes flooded.

Fern grabbed his arm and jerked him back. “Go.” She pointed toward the driver’s seat as she pushed a pile of towels under Kate’s knees with surprising gentleness.

Jay slid under the steering wheel and looked back at Fern. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like tears on her weathered cheek. “Tell her mother.”

She nodded. “Drive fast. The girl and me, we want Kate breathing.”

Mashing the gas pedal to the floor, he drove like a mad man. He yanked the rearview mirror down where he could see Kate in the backseat, not caring what was on the road behind him. Only about who was in the car with him. He couldn’t lose Kate. He couldn’t.

At the hospital, the nurses and doctors rushed out to get Kate. He tried to stay with her, but they pushed him back, told him go fill out papers. What good did papers do?

“I’ve got to see her,” he told the woman at the desk after he answered her questions.

The woman looked kind, but she wouldn’t let him through the doors to Kate. “The doctors are treating her. They’ll come for you when you can see her. Right now you have to let them do their job.”

“You don’t understand. She needs me with her,” Jay pleaded.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Tanner.” She sounded sympathetic. “But you’ll have to wait until they send for you. Until then, you can be assured they are doing everything possible for her.”

When he just kept staring at her, she touched his hand. “Please have a seat. And if you’re a praying man, perhaps that will help you bear the wait.”

What could he do except what she said? He had his head in his hands, praying without words, when Kate’s parents and Birdie came in. Mr. Merritt’s breathing was ragged after their hurry.

“How is she?” Kate’s mother demanded.

“I don’t know. They took her back and say I have to wait here.” Panic formed a knot in his chest.

Birdie put her arms around him. “She’ll be all right, Tanner. She will.”

“Of course she will.” Mr. Merritt had caught his breath, but his voice still sounded wheezy. “Kate’s strong.”

Jay stared over Birdie’s head at Kate’s mother and father. “She lost the baby.”

“We know.” Mrs. Merritt’s eyes sorrowed with him.

“Did Aunt Hattie tell you?”

Suddenly Birdie was sobbing against his shoulder and Mrs. Merritt’s lips went white as she pressed them together and blinked back tears.

“Fern told us. Aunt Hattie—” Mr. Merritt had to swallow before he could go on. “Aunt Hattie passed on this afternoon. While Fern was with Kate.”

They held hands then and ignored everybody around them as Kate’s mother looked up at the ceiling and prayed like Aunt
Hattie would have if she’d been there. “Lord, we’re here. Missing our dear Aunt Hattie but we know you’re welcoming her home and that she’s running to meet her Bo. Down here, we beg for your mercy. Watch over our Kate. Give the doctors skill in treating her. Give us power in praying for her as we wait. If it be your will—” Mrs. Merritt’s voice weakened a little on those words. She cleared her throat and repeated them. “If it be your will, and we pray fervently that it will be, please heal her body and her spirit. Amen.”

Birdie echoed her amen. Then she said, “Aunt Hattie would have called her Katherine Reece.”

Mrs. Merritt smiled through her sadness. “She would.”

“Can we say Kate’s name?” Birdie said. “All of us together? The way I say mine?”

“If it would make you feel better.” Mr. Merritt looked at Jay. “Is that all right, son?”

Son. How long had it been since anyone had called him son? And now that son he’d begun to imagine, had begun to love in his heart, would never have the chance to call him father this side of heaven.

He moistened his lips but was unable to push words past the lump in his throat. Mr. Merritt grasped his shoulder and Mrs. Merritt took his hand while Birdie leaned against him. They waited for him to find his voice.

He shut his eyes. Kate was there in his mind. Kate was always there in his mind. He took a breath and opened his eyes to look at Birdie. “Ready?” he asked.

She nodded.

He started and they joined in, voices strong as they pushed Kate’s name out into the air. “Her name is Katherine Reece Merritt Tanner.”

The woman behind the desk looked up at them, as did the few people scattered around the waiting area. Jay didn’t care. He wanted Kate’s name in the air. He wanted it lifted up like a prayer.

Their prayers must have had wings or perhaps Aunt Hattie grabbed them on her way to heaven and laid them right at the feet of the Lord. The nurses came for Jay. The bleeding had been slowed. Kate was going to be all right, but she’d have to stay at the hospital. The doctor wanted to monitor her condition.