Rejoice (14 page)

She took four quick, jerky breaths and knotted up her features. “I can understand Hayley’s drowning because of something we did; because I shouldn’t have been on call and Peter shouldn’t have been glued to that stupid baseball game.” Her eyes narrowed, bright with pain. “But if it wasn’t my fault, if it wasn’t Peter’s fault, then I’d have to believe God allowed my daughter into the backyard by herself. And then instead of causing one of the adults to check on her, I’d have to believe that same God watched her fall into the pool and did nothing to stop her, nothing to save her.”

“That isn’t true.” Ashley removed her arm from Brooke’s shoulders and met her stare straight-on. “Hayley’s alive, isn’t she?”

A handful of emotions flashed across Brooke’s face. Surprise and anger, fear and desperation, and finally an understanding that came and grew stronger with every passing minute. The fight inside Brooke was gone now, and once more she peered through the bed rails at Hayley. For a long while neither of them said anything, but Ashley could sense the change in her sister. Something she’d said, something God had given her to say, had touched Brooke and even now it was working its way from her head into her heart.

After several minutes, Brooke stood. When she opened her mouth to speak, her words were barely more than a whisper. “She is alive, isn’t she?” She took Hayley’s hand in hers. The hint of a smile played at the corners of her lips. “I never thought of that before . . . that maybe what happened to Hayley wasn’t anyone’s fault. Maybe it just happened, and God in all his mercy saved her life.”

“Exactly.” Ashley stood next to Brooke and stared at her niece. “We’re all praying for her, Brooke. Even Peter must be praying.”

Brooke ignored the part about Peter. She was quiet for a moment, and then she said, “Mom told me Pastor Mark has churches around the country praying for Hayley, thousands of people.”

“Right. And you know what, Brooke?” Ashley remembered Hayley’s slow, strange laugh and the way she’d used her eyes earlier that evening. “I have a feeling God’s not finished with her yet.”

Chapter Fourteen

The best news of all came three days later on the first of December.

At Brooke’s prodding, the doctors decided to retest Hayley’s vision, and that morning three of them entered her hospital room together, their faces a mix of shock and exuberance.

Dr. Martinez took the lead. “Brooke, we have no explanation for the information we’re about to give you.”

Brooke rose from her chair and faced the men, all of them doctors she’d seen at the hospital over the past few years.

“Hayley can see.” A sound that blended awe and joy came from the doctor’s throat. “We checked her every way we knew how and there’s no question about it. Her vision has returned completely.”

An explosion of color and light flashed through Brooke’s mind, as if the news had given sight again to her, too. Hayley was sleeping, but Brooke took hold of her hand anyway, her eyes still on the three doctors. “People all around the nation are praying for this little girl, gentlemen. She’s getting better; that’s the only explanation.”

Dr. Martinez raised his clipboard a few inches and let it fall back to his side. “All we can tell you is this: It’s working.” He flashed a smile at her, one that said he shared her faith. “Tell everyone to keep praying, okay?”

The other two doctors shifted their weight from one foot to the other, their eyes intent on the floor tiles. Med school didn’t teach doctors how to handle three-year-old drowning victims who spent fifteen minutes underwater and then regained their sight. Brooke understood the uneasiness of the two men. Medical books taught nothing about God.

One of the two stepped forward, the lines on his forehead more pronounced than before. “We, uh . . . we have no explanation for what’s happened with your daughter.”

Brooke smiled, willing them to understand. “I know prayer isn’t conventional medicine, Doctors.” She looked down at her daughter. “But you said it yourself. There’s no other explanation.”

An hour later Brooke’s father knocked on the doorframe and leaned his head inside the hospital room. “Can I come in?”

“Sure.” Brooke hadn’t stopped smiling all day. “Did you hear the news?”

Her father came to the opposite side of Hayley’s bed and held on to the railing. He looked from Brooke to Hayley and back again. “She . . . she can see? They’re sure?”

A ripple of gentle laughter spilled from Brooke. “Wait a minute, Dad. You’re Mister Prayer Man, remember? ‘Never underestimate the power of prayer’; wasn’t that you? Every time I bombed a test or struggled in any way?” She grinned at him from the other side of Hayley’s bed. “What do you mean ‘are they sure?’ ” Her smile pushed up into her cheeks. “Dad . . . she can see!”

Since the accident, her father had been quiet and tense. Normally the strength of the family, in light of what had happened to Hayley, he seemed distant, almost irritated. Brooke hadn’t talked to him about it, because her father hadn’t stayed in the hospital room more than ten minutes at a time.

Now, though, relief filled her father’s features and his eyes welled up. “Brooke—” his gaze held hers—“I have a confession.”

He sounded serious, and Brooke took quiet steps around the bed and faced him, her back to Hayley. Was it something about Peter, something her father knew that she hadn’t found out yet? She steadied herself against the bed railings and searched his face. “What?”

Her father reached out and took her hand in his. “Remember that first night, when we got the news about Hayley?”

“Yes?” Brooke reminded herself to exhale. Whatever this was, it hurt him badly. She’d never seen him look so tormented.

He shifted his attention beyond her to Hayley, and he shook his head. “Her doctors gave me the numbers from her initial tests and—” he tossed his hands— “she didn’t have a chance, Brooke. I couldn’t tell you that then, but I knew the truth. Children don’t recover from that kind of brain damage.”

“Okay . . .” There had to be more to the story. Brooke waited, her eyes trained on her father’s face.

“So I prayed something awful that night, honey.” Her father’s chin trembled and he clenched his jaw until he had control. “I prayed that God would take her home. Because according to her tests, she would never get out of this hospital bed, never know any of us, never even wake up.”

Brooke had experienced more emotions in the past two months than in all of her life until this point. Standing before her, admitting his frailties, was the man she idolized, the one who had praised her abilities since she was a child, the one who had encouraged her to apply to med school. John Baxter, the strongest man she knew. All that and he was only human after all, human like everyone else.

“Dad . . . it’s okay . . . really.” His admission sent her into his arms, and for a moment their roles seemed reversed—he, the repentant child; she, the forgiving parent. She pulled back and studied him, the sorrow in his face. “We all thought about it, Dad. At one time or another, all of us. It was easy to think she’d be better off in heaven, running and playing the same as she’d done before the accident.”

“But now . . .” John nodded his head toward Hayley, and his voice dropped to an agonizing hush. “Now she can see!”

“Yes!” Brooke felt an otherworldly joy fill her heart, spreading out from her veins into her limbs and heart and soul. A joy that went deeper than the ocean and higher than all the mountains in the world combined. “Yes, she can see!”

Her father looked at Hayley again. “I doubted God, Brooke. For the first time in my life I doubted.”

“But, Dad . . . look at how much God loves you.” Brooke took gentle hold of his shoulders. Her father would never know how close she felt to him in this moment, knowing that her hero could make mistakes and be big enough to admit them. She looked over her shoulder at her younger daughter. “He loves you enough to laugh at the limits you put on him.” She met his eyes again. “The limits all of us put on him.”

“But not you, Brooke.” Her father kissed her forehead. “You believed from the beginning.”

“Because if I didn’t believe . . .” Brooke choked back the lump in her throat. “If I didn’t believe, I would’ve drowned right there beside her.”

Her father twisted up his face and gave a hard shake of his head. Brooke had never seen him look more broken. “I’m sorry.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and hugged her close again. “Forgive me, Brooke. I promise . . . I promise I’ll believe now.”

Brooke’s heart hurt within her, because she had known all along. Deep inside she’d been sure that her father wasn’t completely with them, and she hadn’t known why. Only that she didn’t seem to have his support, his confidence the way she’d had it all her life. But now . . . now Hayley wasn’t the only one who had her sight back.

Her father did, too.

She framed her father’s face with her hands. “God can do anything, remember, Dad?” Her voice was pinched, tight with emotion, but she smiled anyway. “You taught me that.”

“I remember.” Her father’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “And here’s something else.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small folded piece of paper. “Open it.” He handed it to Brooke and let his eyes drift to Hayley.

The paper was fragile, cut out of a newspaper or catalogue perhaps. She opened it and there inside was a picture of a small pink bicycle, complete with white streamers and a floral basket. Brooke knit her brow and looked at her father. “I . . . I’m not sure I understand.”

“It’s for Hayley.” He pointed to the picture. “I bought it an hour ago and parked it in the garage. It’ll be there waiting for her.”

“Dad . . . are you serious?” Brooke clutched the picture to her heart. His renewed faith in Hayley’s future was the greatest gift he could’ve given her.

“Yes.” He smiled for the first time that morning. “Because God
can
do anything, Brooke. Anything at all. And on the day when Hayley can ride that bike down the driveway, I want to say I was the first one who believed it could happen.”

When her father was gone, Brooke took her place in the familiar chair near Hayley’s bed and pulled her Bible from her overnight bag. She wanted to find something about this . . . this indescribable joy, the feeling brimming inside her unlike anything she’d ever felt.

It was strange, really. Because even with the strides Hayley was making, she still had a million miles to go. Even after Ashley’s talk the other night, she was still bothered by feelings of guilt about her role in Hayley’s accident, about Peter’s role.

In many ways their lives were still in massive disarray, total confusion. Maddie was living with her parents, and the two of them saw each other only an hour a day when Brooke visited the Baxter house. She was still living at the hospital, sleeping in the reclining chair next to Hayley’s bed. Things at work had moved on without her, and the other doctors had filled in with her patients since the accident. Peter never came by, never called, or even talked to her at the hospital.

Hayley was making strides, yes, but she still lay confined to a hospital bed, unable to move or speak or eat without the nose tube. Still, somehow, Brooke had never felt happier, never known with more certainty that God was moving and working in her, around her, never been more convinced that he had every aspect of their future figured out.

Somehow Hayley would get better; Brooke had no doubt.

Hayley would go home soon—the doctors had said that—and the four of them would find their way back to being the family they used to be. The joy within her seemed to promise as much.

But still, she hadn’t studied the Scriptures about this strange new kind of joy. Hayley was asleep and Brooke wasn’t expecting visitors. She opened the Bible and flipped to the concordance at the back, where she found a list of key words and their locations in the Bible.

She stared at the list of words and tried to think of the right one.
Joy
. . . or
joyful
. Or maybe
rejoice
. One of those had to be listed. She was turning to the
J
section when she heard someone enter the room. Her eyes lifted from the Bible to the door, and she felt her heart skip a beat.

“Hello.” Peter stopped before moving farther into the room. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“No.” Brooke didn’t know what to say. This was the most he’d spoken to her in weeks. Usually he’d spend ten—fifteen—minutes standing at Hayley’s bed, and then give her a terse nod on his way out. She closed the Bible and set it back in her bag. “Sit down if you want.”

“Okay.” He took a chair near Brooke, reached up and cupped the back of his neck, massaging his muscles for a moment. When he lowered his hand to his lap, his fingers shook. He seemed to notice the way they trembled, and he made tight fists of both hands. His eyes lifted to hers, and he looked twenty years older than the last time they’d sat face-to-face this way. “Brooke . . . we need to talk.”

In a rush, Brooke realized something. She and Peter hadn’t had a joyful discussion in months. Forget joyful. They hadn’t even been civilized to each other since long before Hayley’s accident. Now, with Peter almost always gone, with the two of them not speaking, she had in some ways written him off, forgotten about him.

But Peter’s tired, lackluster tone brought back all Brooke’s old feelings. How dare he question her medical abilities? And what kind of nerve did he have, leaving her alone to handle the tragedy with Hayley? He was an unfeeling coward, a man who had carelessly risked the safety of their children so he could watch a baseball game and . . .

The inner diatribe went on. And in a tangible way she felt bitter sarcasm pushing joy out of the way.

“We need to talk?” She leaned back in her chair and lifted her eyebrows in his direction. “You think?” She hardened her eyes. “Our daughter’s been in the hospital for two months, and you haven’t said five sentences to me. Yes—” a mean-sounding exhale came from deep in her throat—“I’d say we need to talk.”

Peter hung his head. He seemed unable to find the strength to lift it again, but he did so anyway, meeting her look head-on. “I didn’t come here to fight. This whole thing’s been just as hard on me.”

“I can tell.”

“Brooke . . .” A flicker of anger danced in Peter’s eyes and then burned out. “Brooke, I’m moving out this weekend.”

She stared at him, not believing what he’d just said. “You’re what?”

For all of her anger at him, all the reasons she was frustrated, even disgusted with him, she had never for a moment expected a statement like that one. She felt light-headed and sick to her stomach all at once, and she gripped the arms of her chair. Her voice was there, but barely. “What did you say?”

He breathed out through his nose and shook his head. “It’s over, Brooke. You and I both know that.”

She needed a glass of water, needed a way to stop the scene taking place between them. “So we go from arguing and tragedy straight to divorce, is that it?”

Peter dropped his jaw and let his mouth hang open for a minute. “I . . . I guess. I don’t see any other way.” He looked at Hayley’s sleeping form. “I talked to her doctor. They think she’ll be coming home a week from today.” He lifted his shoulders, defeated. “You and the girls deserve the house; I’ll be in an apartment by then. I thought you should know.”