“I'm sorry. You'll have to take the meeting for me.” He shoved the note at his boss and stumbled past him, suddenly furious at this stroke of fate.
“Great timing, Gloria,” he muttered through clenched teeth, and immediately regretted the sentiment.
His bags were still on the cart, he realized, but then he didn't care where his bags were. Besides, he would be right back. By tomorrow morning, perhaps. No, tomorrow evening was the Paris trip. Maybe on the way to Paris then.
Okay, Buckwheat. Settle down. Nothing has happened here. Just a little glitch. A bug. She's only in the hospital.
Kent boarded a Yellow Cab and left the bustle at Miami's Hyatt Regency behind. Gloria would be okay. Had to be. She was in good hands. And what was one conference? A dread fell into Kent's gut, and he swallowed.
This had not been in the plans. Not at all.
THE WAITING room in Denver Memorial's ICU wing was decorated in a rust color, but in Helen's mind it was red and she wondered why they would choose the color of blood.
Helen gripped pastor Bill Madison's arm at the elbow and steered the much larger man toward the window. If anybody could understand, it would be the young, dark-haired Greek who had attracted her to the Community Church in the first place ten years earlier. He had been fresh out of seminary thenânot a day over twenty-five and bubbling with love for God. Somewhere in there the church bureaucracy had tempered his passion. But Pastor Madison had never been confused about his beliefs.
He had arrived in the night sometime, but she could not remember precisely when because things were fuzzy now. They were all exhausted, that much was clear, and her knees throbbed with a dull pain. She had to sit. Behind them, Spencer sat like a lump on one of the blood-rust waiting chairs.
Helen knew her strained voice betrayed her anxiety, but given the circumstances, she hardly cared. “No. I'm not telling you I
think
I've seen this. I'm telling you I
did
see this.” She squeezed hard, as if that might help him understand. “You hear me?”
Bill's dark eyes widened, but she didn't know if it came from her announcement or her squeezing. “What do you mean, you
saw
this?” he asked.
“I mean I
saw
this!” She stretched a shaking arm toward the swinging doors. “I saw my daughter in there, on that bed, that's what I saw.” The anger came back as she recalled her vision, and she shook with it.
He eyed her with a raised brow, skeptical to the bone, she saw. “Come on, Helen. We all have impressions now and then. This is not a time to stretch perceptions.”
“You are questioning my judgment then? You think I did not see what I say I saw?”
“I'm just saying that we shouldn't rush to conclusions at times like these. This is a time for caution, wouldn't you say? I know things are difficult, butâ”
“Caution? What does caution have to do with the fact that my daughter is in there spread on the table? I saw it, I'm telling you! I don't know why I saw it or what God could possibly mean by showing it to me, but I saw it, Pastor. Every last detail.”
He glanced about the room and steered her toward the window. “Okay, keep your voice down, Helen.” A thin trail of sweat leaked past his temple. “When did you see this?”
“Two days ago.”
“You saw all of this two days ago?”
“Isn't that what I just said?” she demanded.
“Yes.” He turned from her and sat on the windowsill. His hands were shaking. Helen stood by the window.
“Look, Helen. I know you see things differently than mostâ”
“Don't even start, Pastor. I don't want to hear it. Not now. It would be insensitive.”
“Well, I'm trying to be sensitive, Helen. And I'm thinking of the boy over there. No need to bury his mother just yet.”
Helen looked toward Spencer, who sat, chin on palms, legs swinging under the chair. Dark circles looped under his bloodshot eyes. Through the night he'd slept a fitful hour, at most.
“I'm not
burying
my daughter, Bill. I am confiding in you. I saw this, and it terrifies me that it is precisely what I saw.”
He did not respond to that.
She stared out the window and folded her hands. “The fact is I like it even less than you. It's gnawed at me like a cancer since that first moment. I can't seem to wrap my mind around this one, Bill.” A lump rose to her throat. “I can't understand why God is doing this thing. And you would think
I
should know, of all people.”
His hand reached out and rested on her shoulder. The gesture brought a sliver of comfort. “And how can you be certain it is God?”
“It doesn't matter. It is God by default. What he allows, he does.”
“Maybe, but only if he is truly God. Omnipotent. All powerful. And if so, it is for him to decide why he would do such a thing.”
“Yes, I
know
that, Bill! But it's my daughter in there hooked up to a machine!” She lowered her head, confused and angry at the emotions boiling up within her.
“I'm very sorry, Helen.” Bill's voice sounded strained.
They remained silent for a few long moments, face to face with the impossibilities of the matter. Helen wasn't sure what she expected from him. Certainly not a pithy statement of inspiration.
Now, now there, Helen. Everything will be just fine. You'll see. Just trust in the Lord.
Heavens! She really ought to know. She'd been here before, facing the threat of death like this.
“So then, you saw more?” Bill was speaking. “Did you see her die?”
She shook her head. “No, I did not see her die.”
She heard him swallow. “We should pray then,” he said.
Helen tried to still her emotions. “I did not see her death, but I did see more, Bill.”
He didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice came haltingly. “What . . . what did you see?”
She shook her head. “I can't say, really. I . . . I don't know.”
“If you saw it, how could you not know?”
She closed her eyes, suddenly wishing she had said nothing to the man. She could hardly expect him to understand. “It was . . . hazy. Even when we see we don't always see crystal clear. Humanity has managed to dim our spiritual eyesight. But you already know that, don't you, Bill?”
He did not respond immediately, possibly offended at her condescension. “Yes,” he finally offered in a weak voice.
“I'm sorry, Pastor. This is rather difficult for me. She is my daughter.”
“Then let's pray, Helen. We will pray to our Father.”
She nodded, and he began to pray. But her head was clogged with sorrow, and she barely heard his words.
KENT BROWSED through the trinkets in the airport gift shop, passing time, relaxing for the first time since he'd read that message eight hours earlier. He'd caught a connection to Chicago and now meandered through the concourse, waiting for the 3 A.M. redeye flight that would take him to Denver.
He bent over and wound up a toy monkey wielding small gold cymbals. The primate strutted noisily across the makeshift platform, banging its instrument and grinning obnoxiously.
Clang-ka-ching, clang-ka-ching
. Kent smiled despite the foolishness of it all. Spencer would get a kick out of the creature. For all of ten minutes possibly. Then it would end up on his closet floor, hidden under a thousand other ten-minute toys. Ten minutes for twenty dollars. It was skyway robbery.
On the other hand, it was Spencer's face grinning there for ten minutes, and the image of those lips curved in delight brought a small smile to his own.
And it was not like they didn't have the money. These were the kinds of things that were purchased by either totally irresponsible people, or people who did not bother with price. People like Tom Cruise or Kevin Costner. Or Bill Gates. He would have to get used to the idea.
You wanna live a part, you'd better start playing that part. Build it, and they will come
.
Kent tucked the monkey under his arm and sauntered over to the grown-up female trinkets neatly arranged against the wall beside racks of
I love Chicago
sweaters. Where Gloria had picked up her fascination with expensive crystal, he did not know. And now it would no longer matter, either. They were going to be rich.
He picked up a beveled cross, intricately carved with roses and bearing the words “In his death we have life.” It would be perfect. He imagined her lying in some hospital bed, propped up, her green eyes beaming at the sight of the gift in his hand.
I love you, Honey.
Kent made his way to the checkout counter and purchased the gifts.
He might as well make the best of the situation. He would call Borst the minute he got homeâmake sure Bonehead and his troop were not blowing things down there in Miami. Meanwhile he would stay by Gloria's side in her illness. It was his place.
And soon they would be on the plane to Paris anyway. Surely she would be able to travel. A sudden spike of panic ran up his spine. And what if the illness was more serious than just some severe case of food poisoning? They would have to cancel Paris.
But that had not happened, had it? He'd read once that 99 percent of people's fears never materialize. A man who internalized that truth could add ten years to his life.
Kent eased himself into a chair and glanced at the flight board. His plane left in two hours. Might as well catch some sleep. He sank deep and closed his eyes.
SPENCER SAT next to Helen, across from the pastor, trying to be brave. But his chest and throat and eyes were not cooperating. They kept aching and knotting and leaking. His mom had gone upstairs after seeing Dad off, saying something about lying down. Two hours and an exhaustive run through his computer games later, Spencer had called through the house only to hear her weak moan from the master bedroom. His mom was still in bed at ten o'clock. He'd knocked and entered without waiting for an answer. She lay on her side, curled into a ball like a roly-poly, groaning. Her face reminded him of a mummy on the Discovery Channelâall stretched and white.
Spencer had run for the phone and called Grandma. During the fifteen minutes it took her to reach their house he had knelt by his mother's bed, begging her to answer him. Then he had cried hard. But Mother was not answering in anything more than the occasional moan. She just lay there and held her stomach.
Grandma had arrived then, rambling on about food poisoning and ordering him around as if she knew exactly what had to be done in situations like this. But no matter how she tried to seem in control, Grandma had been a basket case.
They had literally dragged his mom to the car, and Grandma had driven her to the emergency room. Dark blue blotches spotted her skin, and he wondered how food poisoning could bring out spots the size of silver dollars. Then Spencer had overheard one of the nurses talking to an aide. She said the spots were from internal bleeding. The patient's organs were bleeding.
“I'm scared,” he said in a thin, wobbly voice.
Helen took his hand and lifted it to her lips. “Don't be, Spencer. Be sad, but don't be afraid,” she said, but she said it with mist in her eyes, and he knew that she was terrified too.
She pulled his head to her shoulder, and he cried there for a while. Dad was supposed to be here by now. He'd called from the airport at six o'clock and told the nurse he was catching a 9 P.M. flight with an impossible interminable layover in Chicago that wouldn't put him into Denver until 6 A.M.Well, now it was seven o'clock, and he had not arrived.
They had started putting in tubes and doing other things to Mom last night. That was when he first started thinking things were not just bad. They were terrible. When he asked Grandma why Mom was puffing up like that, she'd said that the doctors were flooding her body with antibiotics. They were trying to kill the bacteria.
“What bacteria?”
“Mommy has bacterial meningitis, Honey,” Grandma had said.
A boulder had lodged in his throat then. 'Cause that sounded bad. “What does that mean? Will she die?”
“Do not think of death, Spencer,” Grandma said gently. “Think of life. God will give Gloria more life than she's ever had. You will see that, I promise. Your mother will be fine. I know what happens here. It is painful now, but it will soon be better. Much better.”
“So she will be okay?”
His grandmother looked off to the double swinging doors behind which the doctors attended his mom, and she started to cry again.
“We will pray that she will be, Spencer,” Pastor Madison said.
Then the tears burst from Spencer's eyes, and he thought his throat might tear apart. He threw his arms around Grandma and buried his face in her shoulder. For an hour he could not stop. Just couldn't. Then he remembered that his mother was not dead, and that helped a little.
When he lifted his head he saw that Grandma was talking. Muttering with eyes closed and face strained. Her cheeks were wet and streaked. She was talking to God. Only she wasn't smiling like she usually did when she talked to him.
A door slammed, and Spencer started. He lifted his head. Dad was there, standing at the door, looking white and ragged, but here.
Spencer scrambled to his feet and ran for his father, feeling suddenly very heavy. He wanted to yell out to him, but his throat was clogged again, so he just collided with him and felt himself lifted into safe arms.
Then he began to cry again.
THE MOMENT Kent slammed through the waiting room door he knew something was wrong. Very wrong.
It was in their posture, his son's and Helen's, bent over with red eyes. Spencer ran for him, and he snatched the boy to his chest.
“Everything will be all right, Spence,” he muttered. But the boy's hot tears on his neck said differently, and he set him down with trembling hands.
Helen rose to her feet as he approached. “What's wrong?” he demanded.