A Hickory Ridge Christmas (15 page)

“Is he conscious? Is he asking for me?”

“He's been going in and out. Before the ambulance arrived, I had to use that portable defibrillator we had installed at the church last year.”

“Andrew, does that mean—”

“Now, Hannah, we don't know anything yet. You just need to get to West Oakland Regional Hospital as soon as possible. The ambulance just left to take him there.”

“I'll be there.” Either she was experiencing an overwhelming sense of calm or she was in shock, but she suspected the second. She backed to the kitchen table and slumped into one of the chairs. She couldn't just sit there. She needed to move, and yet she felt paralyzed. Details needed to be handled, but for the life of her she couldn't list them in her mind.

“Hannah, do you want me to have Tricia take Rebecca? Or do you need me to call Todd for you?”

“No, I'll phone him, but thanks.”

Only after she ended the call did she realize she'd answered only one of Andrew's questions, and it should have surprised her which one, but it didn't. Without bothering to wonder whether after last night she should ask, she dialed his number. She had to. She needed him.

He answered on the second ring.

“Todd.”

“Hannah, is that you?”

“Yeah, um, I have some bad news.”

“Tell me. What is it?”

“It's Dad. They think it's a heart attack.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, honey.”

“This can't be happening. He's only sixty.”

“He'll probably be fine,” Todd tried to assure her.

“I have to leave for the hospital. Do you think you could—”

“Are you at home?”

She glanced at the bags of groceries still sitting on the counter, the ice cream already beginning to melt. “Yes, but—” She didn't even know
but what.
Her whole world was cloudy, and the only thing that seemed clear was that she'd made the right decision to call him.

“Stay where you are. I'll be there in five minutes.”

H
e'd made it in four. Hannah smiled at the thought when little else had given her any cause for happiness since she'd arrived at West Oakland Regional four hours before. Todd had driven her to Commerce Township after showing up at her house so quickly that she'd only had time to toss water on her face and wrestle Rebecca back into her boots and coat.

He'd insisted that Hannah was in no shape to drive, and only now did she realize he was right. She couldn't have navigated the village streets and twenty-miles-per-hour zones on the way to the hospital without him.

In fact, she couldn't have handled any of the details without him—from registering her father in the emergency room to contacting relatives to planning for Rebecca's care.

She hadn't thought about any of those details again until now, not since she'd glimpsed her father in that
hospital bed with so many tubes and wires and monitors attached to him. Not when the hours that followed were filled with tears, prayers and uncertainty.

But in this moment of clarity, she allowed herself to recall all of the help Todd had given her, even after all the awful things they'd said to each other the night before. When the ground had seemed to be shifting beneath her, he'd been a solid rock, calmly suggesting that she give him her keys so he could take Rebecca home where the child could sleep in her own bed.

Todd's help and her silent admission that she couldn't handle the situation alone would have terrified her a few months ago—or even a few days ago. Self-reliance had once mattered more to her than self-respect. But she felt a strange sense of relief in accepting Todd's help. It felt good to leave the details in his capable hands.

She couldn't allow herself to read too much into Todd's kindness. Just because he'd reached out to her didn't mean he would be able to accept her on her terms—conditions that even she could no longer justify. Todd was a good man. He would probably have done as much for anyone in need, but still her heart squeezed with gratitude. He'd caught her when she was falling, despite the fact that she'd hurt him in ways she couldn't even imagine. If only she could be the kind of woman Todd deserved.

A creak from the door at the back of the chapel drew Hannah from the lonely place her thoughts had ventured. Mary Nelson stood in the spray of brightness seeping into the softly lit chapel through the open door.

“Hannah, sweetie. The nurse was looking for you. She said you could go back in and see Bob.”

“Is he conscious again?” Hannah asked as she straightened in her seat and brushed at the smeared mascara beneath her eyes.

“She didn't say. They only give reports to family members.”

Those words drew Hannah's gaze back to the woman standing just inside the door. Mary was watching an arrangement of lighted candles on the far wall. She looked so sad. Standing up from the short pew where she'd been sitting, Hannah crossed to her dear friend and placed her arm around her shoulder.

“That nurse obviously doesn't know us then.” If anyone was family to her father, Rebecca and her, it was Mary. No lack of blood ties could change that.

“I'll let you know as soon as they tell me anything, okay?” she said as she stepped back from her.

“Thanks. I'm sure the others will want to hear, too. Nearly twenty church members are in the waiting room.”

“Dad would be so embarrassed by the fuss.” She paused before adding, “And humbled by the concern.”

Mary's smile couldn't quite take the sadness from her eyes. “He's too used to being the one in the hospital waiting room, drinking bad coffee and leading the prayers.” She pointed to the door. “You should go on now. He shouldn't…be alone.”

Her voice broke then, anguish she'd been holding back all evening breaking through the cracks of her control in a near-silent sob. That hopeless sound tore
straight to Hannah's heart, and she gathered Mary into her arms.

“Why didn't you tell my father?”

“Tell…him…what,” Mary asked in a muffled voice into her shoulder.

“Oh, come on, Mary. That you love him.”

Mary pulled back and gripped Hannah's forearms. Behind her glasses, the older woman's eyes were red rimmed, their usually shiny brown color had lost some of its luster. “How did you know?”

Hannah chewed her lip. Perhaps this wasn't the best time to mention that anyone paying attention—clearly her father couldn't be counted in that number—would have noticed how Mary lit up the moment Reverend Bob walked into the room. Her interest hadn't been as obvious as Olivia's, but then Mary's affection was more sincere.

“Maybe people carrying around secrets have a special connection with others who have secrets,” Hannah told her.

“Maybe.”

Hannah watched as Mary tightened her tan cardigan sweater around her body and retied its belt at her waist. She could relate. Hannah hadn't been warm since the moment Andrew had called her with the news.

“My father is blind if he doesn't see how wonderful you are and how wonderful your lives would be together.”

“Thanks, sweetie.”

“He's going to be okay, you know,” Hannah said,
surprised to find herself reassuring the other woman when she wished she could be that certain.

Yet Mary nodded as if she had enough confidence for the both of them. “God and I have been talking about that all night.”

Arm in arm, the two women moved down the hall to the waiting room. Several church members came to their feet as they entered the room. Andrew was the first to reach them, but others—Rick and Charity McKinley, Charity's mother, Laura Sims and Deacon Littleton—gathered around them.

“You'll want to check at the nurses' station,” Andrew said. “They're looking for you. I think they're ready to give you an update.”

He indicated for Hannah to wait for a second while he helped Mary settle back into her seat, and then he went with her to the nurses' station. She wouldn't allow herself to think that the youth minister was there to support her in case she had devastating news.

“Miss Woods?” the nurse asked when they reached the desk. At Hannah's nod, she continued, “I'll page the doctor if you can wait here for a minute.”

“I'm sure he's going to be fine, Hannah,” Andrew told her while they waited.

She smiled at having received the same assurance she'd just given Mary, but something from earlier struck her, and she studied Andrew. “You said before you had to use the portable defibrillator on my father. Did his heart stop?”

“No, but his heart rate went crazy. The defibrilla
tor did what it was supposed to do, though. When I put those pads on his chest, the machine said he had an irregular heartbeat, and then it shocked his heart. After that, the EMTs arrived.” Andrew stared down the empty hallway, appearing lost in his thoughts.

“Thank you for saving my father's life.”

He turned back to her. “God just made sure I was in the right place at the right time.”

“Then thanks for listening to Him.”

The doctor arrived with an update. After a string of four-syllable medical terms, Hannah managed to gather that her father had been given a “clot buster” drug and was heavily sedated. Though he would soon be moved to the Cardiac Care Unit, Hannah was allowed a few minutes with him in the Emergency cubicle.

Leaving Andrew to update the others on his condition, Hannah passed beyond the locking metal doors leading into the E.R. Inside the curtained cubicle, she found her father much as he'd been when she'd seen him briefly hours earlier.

It was so strange to see her big, strong daddy reduced to merely human under the hospitals unforgiving fluorescent lights.

“Oh, Dad…”

Again, heat rose behind her eyes. She'd already watched one parent die, had sat back as a helpless spectator while her mother wasted away, her sweet spirit losing its battle before her body succumbed. Hannah couldn't imagine how she would survive if her father died, as well.

She shuffled to the chair across from the narrow
hospital bed that looked like a heavily padded ambulance stretcher. Pulling the chair close to the bed, she sat and reached over to lay her hand atop her father's.

“Come on, Dad, wake up.”

Hannah waited, expectant, but this was real life, not the movies. Reverend Bob's eyelids didn't even flutter. Then her gaze moved to the IV stand and the morphine drip, and she remembered. At least he wasn't in pain. The monitor next to the bed showed the zigzag evidence of his heartbeat, and his chest continued to rise and fall in a steady rhythm.

The tiny room blurred. She didn't bother brushing away the tears that trailed down her cheeks. Without closing her eyes in case her father chose that moment to emerge from unconsciousness, she whispered a prayer.

“God, please lay Your healing hands on my father. Please heal his heart and send him home to us.” She couldn't bring herself to pray for God's will in the situation when she feared that His will might have been something very different from her own. “His work here isn't finished yet, and we don't know what we'll do without him.”

She hadn't breathed the word
amen
yet when the words from Philippians 1: 6, one of the many Scriptures her father had encouraged her to memorize over the years, drifted through her thoughts. “‘He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus,'” she recited softly, hoping her father would hear the Scriptures he loved and open his eyes.

His chest continued to rise and fall in its steady rhythm. Hannah shrugged and shook her tired head. It had been worth a try. Coming up from her seat, she leaned over her father and kissed his lined forehead.

She stepped to the edge of the curtained area and glanced back at her father once more, but she felt none of the earlier anxiety at having to leave him for the short while until he could be moved to Cardiac Care. He was only resting, and the doctors were making sure he wasn't in too much pain.
He who began a good work in you.
The Scripture gave her comfort when everyone's platitudes, including her own, hadn't helped. It felt as if God was telling her that her father's work here really wasn't finished. Finally, she felt some cause to hope.

 

Hannah stumbled into her apartment Friday night, operating on only the fumes remaining after a three-day adrenaline rush. As she shrugged out of her coat, several snowflakes broke away from her scarf and fluttered to the floor. Strange since she hadn't noticed it was snowing. The roads were probably slick tonight, but she hadn't noticed that, either. God's hand must have been on her car for her to make it home at all.

Her back ached between the shoulder blades from too many hours spent keeping vigil next to her father's bed, but the rest of her body felt numb. She could barely distinguish the first day from the third in her memories as each worry, each prayer and each moment of foreboding melded with the ones before.

She would have been there even now if Mary hadn't promised to stay with her father through the late-night hours and insisted that she go home and get some sleep.

Hannah wondered if she would be able to sleep, anyway. After all the nightmares she'd witnessed while wide-awake, would she be able to take a chance at succumbing to her dreams? She'd witnessed too much of life's frailty and fleetingness not to wonder what would happen when she closed her eyes.

Hannah glanced around the empty rooms of the apartment. It felt so small, so unwelcoming, when a few days earlier she'd thought of it as home. In the corner, Rebecca's dolls, except for Miss Gabrielle, sat too neatly atop the toy box, awaiting the girl's return. The special doll had served as their daughter's companion all week while she'd spent her nights with her father and visited with other church members while Todd worked during the day.

She wondered if she should have asked Todd to bring Rebecca back tonight instead of waiting until morning, but then she worried if that would have been more for her benefit than her daughter's. And she suspected that even if Rebecca were in the next room sleeping, Hannah would still have been prowling around the dark apartment, trying not to crawl out of her skin.

Guessing that she might feel better if she ate, she shuffled to the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. Eggs, lunch meat, fresh vegetables and milk lined the shelves. Todd had put her groceries away
that first night and had been adding items to the refrigerator since then. Once again, he'd handled the details when she'd been too overwhelmed to do more than put one foot in front of the other.

Too bad her stomach was rolling so hard that she couldn't consider eating any of the food he'd supplied. She couldn't pull her thoughts away from her father, who was still battling his way back to health, though he'd already made it through the darkest hours.

For his part, Reverend Bob had dozed away most of the hours of his crisis under sedation, only occasionally having a few lucid moments to hear of the clot busters and the angioplasty that had cleared the blockage in his heart and the life changes that would be necessary to continue forward.

Perhaps more distressing than watching her father had been serving as witness to Mary's silent vigil. Each time Reverend Bob had awakened, Mary had been among those nearby, but she'd taken care to stay on the periphery.

What did it feel like to have that kind of regret? To love in secret, to pine alone? The ironic thought wedged a new ache inside her heart. Hannah knew that regret intimately. She'd lived that secret love, she'd pined, and when she'd had the opportunity to live that love out in the open, she'd been too scared to risk her whole heart. For that, she'd lost everything.

Hannah tried to push those useless thoughts aside as she changed into a pair of oversize sweats and climbed into bed. But her thoughts chased her in the darkness.
She'd made so many mistakes out of anger and fear. Though the anger had faded, she'd clung to the fear.