Mother's Promise (26 page)

By the time the excursion ended Rachel had begun to wonder if Justin had indeed gotten caught up in wanting so much to connect with a group of boys in his class that he had been drawn into questionable activities. His attitude toward Sally while they were on the boat had alarmed Rachel, and his stubborn refusal to apologize only deepened her worry. She decided that before her meeting with Mr. Mortimer on Monday it was imperative that she learn more about this Derek Piper and his relationship with her son.

“I have an idea,” she said when they were back home. “Tomorrow is Saturday. Why don't you invite your friend—Derek—is that his name? Why don't you invite him over here? The two of you could study together for that math test you mentioned, and we could have …”

The look on Justin's face stopped her in midsentence. “What is it? The boy must live in the neighborhood since he rides the same bus with you and Sally.”

“He's probably busy with other stuff.”

“How will you know if you don't ask?”

Justin turned away from her. She watched as his shoulders sagged. “Please, Mom.”

“I don't understand.”

Justin turned to face her, his eyes traveling instantly to her prayer covering and then back to the floor. Suddenly it all made sense. He was embarrassed—by her—by who they were.

“I take it your new friends do not know that you are Mennonite. And what if they did? Would that make so much of a difference?”

His head jerked up, and he looked at her with something she could only describe as pity. “Mom, please let it go. Be glad for me that I've made some friends. That was really hard to do, and I don't want to have to start over.”

“Are you saying that Derek and the others would not want to be friends with a Mennonite?”

“They wouldn't understand. They don't like different. Look at the way they treat Sally.”

“And how do they treat her? Do they roll their eyes as if her comments are stupid as you did on the boat? Do they ignore her as you did in the car tonight? Is this what you have learned from your new friends, Justin?”

“I'm sorry, Mom. Sorry for how I acted tonight with Sally. She's okay, but …” He drew himself up to his full height even with her own. “You're the one who put me in that school with all those outsiders. Now you want to ban the only friends I've been able to make?” His eyes challenged hers. Neither of them blinked.

Rachel was on unfamiliar ground. She wished James were here. She wished she could seek counsel from a man—perhaps Ben would know how best to talk to Justin. But it was just the two of them—and she was the parent.

“Do not speak to me in that tone, Justin,” she said quietly. “No one has said anything about banning your friends. I have simply asked to meet them. But I can see that you are ashamed of your heritage—your father's heritage.” She knew it was a low blow, but it was the truth. She bit her lower lip to stem her own tide of anger. She sucked in a deep breath and continued, “I had a call from Mr. Mortimer today.”

Instantly she knew that Justin understood why his teacher had called her. Instantly she realized that what Mr. Mortimer suspected was not only true but that Justin knew that what he was doing was wrong. It was all right there in his eyes that suddenly could not meet hers, in the way his whole body slouched into a defiant posture, and in the way his lips thinned into a hard unyielding line.

Never had there been a more inconvenient time for her pager to go off than that moment, yet it buzzed insistently on the table where she had laid it when they returned from the boat ride. She picked it up and read the message.

“I have to go,” she said. Justin turned toward his room, but she stopped him by placing her hand on his shoulder. “Justin?”

He did not look at her, but stood rooted to the spot as if waiting for something. “We will speak of this in the morning. Now it's too late for a bus so please call a taxi for me while I gather my things.” Hester had suggested that she invest in a used car, but Rachel was unwilling to spend any more of their meager savings until she could be certain that they were finally settled. She in her job, Justin in a proper Mennonite school, both of them in a small rental house in Pinecraft where the ways of the outside world could not tempt her only child.

Chapter 16

A
fter rushing Sally to the hospital, trying hard all the way not to alarm her, Ben realized he'd failed. As they waited for Sharon and Malcolm to show up, he saw that Sally was shivering and he knew it was from fear—not the temperature.

“I don't want to be sick again,” she whispered as he waited with her in one of the small ER examining rooms. A nurse had drawn blood and hand carried the samples to the lab with Ben's instructions to deliver the results directly to him. He felt sick that he seemed incapable of offering Sally any reassurance.

At her insistence, he had promised not to hold back anything. “I want to know what we're fighting,” she'd told him, showing far more maturity than most of the adults surrounding her, who were helplessly wringing their hands.

And through it all, Ben had stuck to his promise. First, after her diagnosis and the failure of the first round of chemotherapy, and then again and again as the search for a donor match failed repeatedly he'd told her the truth. Even over the long months that followed the transplant where Sally endured regular testing to be sure that the transplant was a success he had remained totally honest about what she could be facing. Through all those endless weeks and months it had been as if all of them—except Sally— were holding their collective breath. Only she seemed certain that the fight had been won. Only she dismissed the caution that her parents insisted upon with a disbelieving shake of her head.

She rubbed her eyes, as if trying to change the picture she feared she might see once she opened them again. “Oh great,” she muttered. “Skin lesions
and
dry eyes.”

Sally knew the signs for chronic Graft-Versus-Host Disease—or GVHD—as well as any of them. It was a risk of transplant, when the patient's body perceived the transplanted cells as foreign. In which case the body would do what the body always did when a foreign invader threatened—her body would begin to reject the healthy cells from the transplant.

When she had reached the one hundredth day after her transplant with no symptoms of the acute form of the disease, she had framed the results of her blood tests—all showing normal levels—and hung it on the wall of her room.

“Party time,” she had crowed. Even Sharon had laughed at that.

“Where is she?” Ben heard his sister's voice as she hurried down the corridor.

“In here,” Ben called out.

Sharon went immediately to Sally and cradled her against her shoulder.

“Where's Malcolm?” Ben asked.

“Making arrangements to transport her back to Tampa. Don't you think that's the best plan?”

It was, but Ben did not like it since it would mean that he would not be able to oversee Sally's treatment. Still, the transplant team was in Tampa, and they were the ones best qualified to address any complications. Ben worked up a smile for his sister and niece. “Road trip,” he said and was rewarded by Sally's half smile.

“Chopper trip more likely, knowing Dad.”

The nurse entered the room and handed Ben the lab results without comment. But he only had to look at her face to know he wasn't going to like what they told him.

“The count is high?” Sharon asked, still holding Sally and rocking her as if she were a toddler.

“It's high,” Sally confirmed.

“It's also early in the game,” Ben said. “Let's don't jump to conclusions.” The nurse was back with a wheelchair.

With a resigned sigh, Sally pulled free of her mother and trudged over to the chair. “To the roof, driver,” she instructed wearily as Ben took hold of the chair's handles.

“Your wish is my command, your ladyship,” he replied, but his voice cracked in spite of his determination to match Sally's bravery with courage of his own. He glanced at his sister as the elevator carried them to the rooftop landing pad. Tears slid down her cheeks. When they reached the roof, he gestured that she should take charge of Sally's wheelchair. That way Sally would not see her mother crying.

Malcolm was already there, and in the din of the helicopter's engine there were no words. Malcolm insisted on lifting Sally into the helicopter while Ben hugged Sharon. Then Malcolm helped her in to sit beside Sally and climbed in after her. With a nod from Malcolm the hospital aide shut the door and moved away from the perimeter of the huge rotating blades to stand with Ben. The helicopter lifted off and turned north. Even after the noise that had been deafening softened to only a distant buzz, Ben stood staring at the sky.

“Doc?”

The orderly was holding the elevator door for him. Seeing him, Ben realized that for now there was nothing more he could do.

The calls that Rachel got to return to the hospital in the middle of the night had run the gamut. There had been the gang fight that had ended with three boys and one girl badly injured, their mothers huddled in separate corners of the waiting room, eyeing one another angrily as they sobbed or spoke in whispers to their companions. Somehow Rachel had calmed them, revealing that she, like most of them, was a single parent struggling to do the best she could for her child.

Then there had been the night she had arrived to find a well-dressed couple sitting dry eyed in the family waiting room while their baby was being treated for hiccups that would not stop. They had been on vacation and, since their own pastor was far away, had requested a hospital chaplain. They wanted Rachel to pray with them for their baby.

In short, in the eight weeks since she'd started work at the hospital, Rachel had had to deal with situations she could never have imagined in her role as school nurse back in Ohio. On this night the person in need was a woman about her age who was suffering from terminal brain cancer. “Is her family here?” Rachel asked the nurse as she prepared to enter the room.

“She doesn't have family—or friends from what we've been able to see. When she first came in she was alert enough to ask us to call a couple of people, but they never showed up. Now … well, if she makes it through the next hour it would be a miracle. We'll keep trying to reach the next of kin, a cousin in Virginia.”

So Rachel entered the room with its machines marking each labored breath for the emaciated and bald woman lying on the bed. She pulled a chair close to the bed and took one of the woman's hands in hers. “Jennifer?” she said softly.

The woman's fingers twitched and then tightened around Rachel's. It was a little like the first time she had extended her finger to Justin when he was first born. After a moment he too had tightened his little hand around that finger and held on.

“I'm right here, Jennifer,” Rachel crooned. Realizing that the sound of her voice might be more soothing than the silence that would only exaggerate the sounds of the medical equipment, Rachel began to quote the twenty-third psalm. Pastor Paul had once told her that if all else failed, Psalm Twenty-three should be her fallback plan.