Far Country (64 page)

           
As soon as his charges were safely delivered, one officer hurried off in the
direction of the waiting room, where a solemn group of people sat or slept in
the chairs, obviously worn down with stress from the night just past. 

           
Deborah was sleeping, finally, on a couch, her head in her mother’s lap. Hester
absently stroked her daughter’s shoulder length, red-gold locks, occasionally
plucking out one of the tiny flowers that had adorned her hair for the wedding.
Deborah’s eyes were still puffy from all the tears, but for now, her face was
peaceful.

           
Reverend Graham sat hunched in a chair across from Deborah and Hester. His eyes
were partially closed as if sleeping, but his lips moved in perpetual
supplication. He had sat like that much of the evening when he wasn’t leading
the three families in group prayers.  

           
Next to him huddled Lee Ann and Richard Bolton, clinging together in their
misery. Richard had survived the blow, although his head was partially wrapped
in gauze. Purple bruising had spread across his cheek and nose, making his eyes
appear sunken. His good cheek rested on Lee Ann’s hair. The couple held hands
like lost children and their eyes were closed.  Although they had been
silent a long time now, no one was really sure if they slept.

           
 Gracie lay curled up beside her Mama Lora, who seemed to have aged ten
years since she had watched the attack at the wedding unfold before her on the
viewing screen at Park Headquarters. She had no answers to give her
granddaughter, whose face was as pale as Deborah’s, and also streaked with
tears. Uncle Pete had fallen right in front of her, his blood spattering her
sundress.  Fiona was missing and her daddy had not come home at all. 

           
Only one or two people even looked up when the officer strode into the waiting
room, his smile so wide on his chubby cheeks that his small eyes seemed to
disappear in the flesh.        

           
“They’re safe!” He exclaimed jubilantly. The doctors have ‘
em
right now, but I drove ‘
em
in from the Park, and I
didn’t see much wrong that a few days of rest wouldn’t fix up real quick!”

           
Lora Williams let out a choked cry. Her hand went to her heart, and she burst
into quiet tears. Reverend Graham slumped forward in his seat, relief washing
over him. “Oh thank you, God,” he whispered over and over.

           
Hester shook Deborah awake. “They’ve found Steve and Kelly!” She half whispered
through her own tears. “They’re okay! They’re both okay, baby.”

           
Deborah struggled to sit up, her eyes going wide with relief at her mother’s
words. She looked hopefully at the officer. “Where are they?” She begged,
quickly getting to her feet. “Can I go see them?”

           
The officer shrugged. “The doctors are checking them out in the emergency ward
right now…it may be a little bit before you can get in,” he called after her as
she hurried past him and down the long
hall
.

           
“Just let ‘
em
try to stop me!” she retorted over her
shoulder in a mutinous voice as she disappeared around a corner.

           
In Exam Room #1, Doctor
Eggert
eyed Kelly with
exasperation as she spread some lotion on Kelly’s hornet stings. She had
sponged off most of Kelly’s abrasions and cuts already, but there was very little
that she could do about them. Most were really superficial, despite all that
she had endured since David had held her at gunpoint.

           
 “I don’t get it,” she declared, staring over the top of her glasses as if
she only half believed Kelly’s story.  “You claim you’ve been kidnapped,
dragged through the woods, shot at, and even fell thirty feet onto a ledge, but
these bug bites and bruises are pretty much the worst thing I can find wrong
with you! You want to explain this to me?”

           
Kelly shrugged and smiled tiredly up at her doctor. “I guess I’ve been under
the care of a Great Physician all night?” She offered.

           
Doctor
Eggert
rolled her eyes. “Christians,” she
grumbled in disgust. “You’re a laugh a minute.”

           
She threw away her sponge and checked the x-ray of Kelly’s jaw one more time,
to make sure that David’s furious punch to her face hadn’t cracked the bone,
but other than being very sore and bruised, everything on the film checked out
normal.

           
She threw her hands up in the air, as if she was disappointed that Kelly had
come through the ordeal in such good shape. “Go, then! A hot bath and a good
meal will do you more good than anything I can do for you today.”

           
“Thanks anyway,” Kelly said in a small voice, slipping painfully off the table
and reaching for her clothes.

           
“No one really expected to find you alive, you know,” Doctor
Eggert
explained to her with a frown. “Channel 9’s been
playing the video of you being dragged into the trees over and over all night.
It was some scary stuff. There’s been search party’s out looking for you since
dawn.”

           
“Really?” Kelly said in surprise. “It all happened so fast, I didn’t think
anyone had even seen what happened to me.”

           
“Actually, it got overlooked for a long time yesterday, with what happened to
the groom right after.”

           
A wave of sadness washed over Kelly as her thoughts flashed instantly back to
the memory of David’s unwavering hand pointing the gun at Pete’s chest. 
She wanted to cry again. She would cry, too!  Just as soon as she could
find a quiet place to collapse in.  Slowly, since every muscle in her body
ached worse than if she had the flu, she made her way toward the door.

           
“Do you know – have they found David yet?” Kelly asked, her eyes shadowed with
sadness.

           
Dr
Eggert
gaped at her in surprise.  “I just
assumed that they told you already!

He’s…”

           
“
Kelly!”

           
Deborah’s scream resounded around the ward, and a moment later, Deborah tackled
Kelly and wrapped her in a painfully tight bear hug. “We just heard you were
alive! We’ve been so worried!”

           
Kelly held on to Deborah, her tears finally flowing freely down her cheeks.
“Oh, Deborah! I’m so sorry!”

           
“It’s going to be all right. God’s using this for good!” Deborah said firmly,
smiling through her own tears. “And you all are safe!   We’ve been
praying so hard!”

           
She stepped back and wiped her tears on her sleeve. “Where’s Steve?”

           
“Here,” Steve answered, stepping out of Exam Room #4, and giving Deborah a
heartfelt hug of sympathy.  He had a bandage on his arm where the bullet
had creased the skin, but as he had joked that morning, it really was only a
flesh wound.

           
Doctor
Eggert
had followed Deborah into the corridor.
She smiled at Steve’s bandage and nodded toward Kelly.  “I see that your
‘Great Physician’ missed a spot on him, at least,” she said smugly.

           
Steve lifted his arm and studied the white bandage.  “You mean this little
thing?” He scoffed. “I just let Doctor Rawls put it on there to hush him
up.  I guess it makes him feel like he’s earned his keep, or something.”

           
“I appreciated that, too, Mr. Williams,” Doctor Rawlins confirmed with a
satisfied grin as he stepped out to the examining room beside his patient.
“You’ve got to admit, it makes a better conversation piece than that band aid
we had on there at first!”

           
Doctor
Eggert’s
smile disappeared.

           
 “Can they go now?”  Deborah asked the two doctors eagerly. 
“Everyone’s waiting to see for themselves that they’re okay.”

           
Doctor
Eggert
sniffed and made a sour face. “Check
with him, why don’t you?” she said sarcastically, pointing in the general direction
of heaven.

           
Deborah took them by the hands and pulled them down the corridor. “Let’s go
then. There are some anxious people who want to see you, and one of them is a
very impatient six year old!” 

           
As she led them toward the waiting room, Deborah filled them in on the search
parties. “Jill and Chuck went back out to look for you at dawn,” she told them.
“I hope somebody’s told them you’ve been found!”

           
Steve laughed.  “Actually, they were at Headquarters when we were brought
in. They’d just found Fiona at the trailer, and they offered to take her to the
vet and get her fixed up – David wounded her, poor thing, but she probably
saved my life, showing up when she did.”  Steve sighed. “We didn’t really
get to talk to them though, our police escort seemed to think we needed to see
doctors immediately.”  

           
“You can be really proud of Gracie, Steve. She’s behaved like a trooper despite
all the chaos. But what happened…?”  Deborah started to ask more
questions, but then she stopped herself.  She sighed. “Never mind. Let’s
wait until we get back to the waiting room. You look exhausted, and everyone’s
going to want to hear the whole story. There’s no point in repeating the
details over and over.”

           
She squeezed their hands again. “I’m just so glad you two are alive! When they
found David’s body and the empty gun, we thought the worst! He’d collapsed on
the trail in shock. The wasp stings nearly killed him! If one of the first
responders for Pete hadn’t had an
epi
-pen in his kit,
he’d have died on the spot,” she told them solemnly.

           
“He’s alive?” Kelly whispered, her eyes widening in apprehension.

           
“Alive, and in pretty bad shape right now.  But don’t worry, he’s locked
up,” Deborah reassured them. “They caught a lot of the incident on tape, so he
won’t be getting out any time soon.”

           
“The – incident?” Kelly met Steve’s eyes over Deborah’s head. For a bride whose
husband had just been murdered in front of her, she was acting so calm! Too
calm, really. Something didn’t seem to add up.

           
“Deborah?” Kelly asked hesitantly. “How are
you
doing?” Her voice was
filled with gentle concern.

           
Deborah paused, the shadow of yesterday’s events flickering starkly over her features
as she stared at nothing in particular. Grief choked her voice when she spoke.
“Yesterday evening was horrible,” she whispered. “You can’t imagine - he just
fell at my feet!”

           
She raised her tear filled eyes to Kelly and Steve. “One minute we were
laughing and then – there was blood everywhere!  Why would anyone want to
do something like that?” She asked them helplessly. “I would never have
believed David could do – that!”

           
At last Deborah’s strong front dissolved into tears of wild grief, and Steve
and Kelly cried with her. They stood in the hallway, oblivious of the nurses
and patients who had to walk around them, and comforted each other as the grief
and sadness poured out.

           
Steve held Deborah in his arms as Kelly rubbed her back and cried, too, her
head resting against Steve’s wounded arm. He didn’t care. It was a relief to
finally give in to the tragedy and pain of losing Pete.

           
The storm of tears eventually slowed to a trickle. As they hiccupped and
sniffled together, Steve said in a choked voice.  “He was my best friend,
Deb. He never gave up on me, even when I was just plain nasty to him. I’m so
glad you two found each other. He deserved to have those few months of true
happiness with you before he died.”

           
Deborah went very still against his chest. She raised her eyes and looked in
horror from Steve’s face to Kelly’s. “They didn’t tell you?” She exclaimed,
taking in their blank looks in shock. “Pete didn’t die! Chuck and the
paramedics were able to stabilize him and get him to the hospital in time!”

           
She laughed at the slowly dawning comprehension on their faces. “He’s alive!”
She repeated to them joyfully. “It will take awhile, they said, but he’s going
to be okay!”

           
Steve’s knees turned to jelly, and he had to lean against the wall for support.
He closed his eyes for a moment in joyful acknowledgement for yet another
miracle. Once again tears fell freely from his eyes, but this time they were
tears of thanksgiving.

           
He felt Deborah reach out and take his hand. She pulled them both down a
different corridor. “You must have thought I was the worst wife ever!” She
giggled and hiccupped all at the same time.  “Come with me and you can see
for yourselves.” she told them.

           
“They operated to remove the bullet immediately,” she explained as they rode
the elevator to the third floor. “That was the scary part. It was touch and go
for a little while, and when he went into surgery, we didn’t have any idea if
he would survive it. I waited for hours, but when they wheeled him into
recovery around  two o’clock this morning, he was able to squeeze my hand,
and I knew he’d make it then!”