Wake the Dawn (23 page)

“Do we have any choice?” Lars asked, his tone dry as pine needles.

Aptos paused. “Lars, you know me. You know I try to let God lead, sometimes more so than others. But I’ve been praying on this. The way that young woman there brought me back to not only living but wanting to really live again, I do believe that was her being willing to be used of our God. He has blessed me beyond measure and many others in this town. Now it is our turn.”

Ben blinked and blew out a breath. He glanced at Esther, who appeared to be even more shocked than he was. Lars muttered something, obviously struggling to come up with a comment, but finally just threw up his hands. “What can I say?”

“You can say praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.” Mr. Aptos stood up again. “I have another idea, too, so that more of our people can take part in this. I talked to Hazel, and she said it can be done. We sell bonds of various amounts that will be redeemed at staggered times. That way we will have the cash up front and people here will get a return on their investments.” He studied each of those in the room, nodding all the while. “Another God idea. I never would have come up with that one on my own.” He puffed out a breath. “Any questions?”

“Not right now, but I’m sure you’ll have answers when I do. Did I hear you right that you said we’ll let God do the deciding as the ninety days draw to a close?”

“You did. I believe He will come up with whatever extensions, if we need them.”

Lars nodded. “I remember when one of the churches held a bond sale like this for their building fund. They found it very successful. But I don’t remember them having such a tight time line.” He wiped his glistening forehead with a white handkerchief. “Why do I feel like I’ve just been run over by a Great Northern train?”

Aptos sat down, a chuckle drifting into the corners of the room. “How do you think I feel? This wasn’t exactly what I had planned for these next months, either. I thought to go visit some friends in Florida, and now I’m trapped here to see this through, and winter at the door. By the way, we have two more commitments of a million each. Any idea how much this clinic is going to cost?”

Esther nearly choked on her snort, which morphed into a coughing laugh. “No, none. I move we name it the Aptos Memorial Clinic.”

“No. It will be the Paul Harden Memorial Clinic. He made a world of difference in this town through the years, an impact on everyone, one way or another.”

And I miss him more than I ever dreamed possible. Lord this is all in your hands.
“I’d say we best get the committees appointed and get this ball rolling.” Ben pushed back his chair and stood. He checked his cell and saw Amber’s name on the screen. What could she be wanting? He thought he knew. And it wasn’t going to happen.

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
o call or not to call was more a dilemma than a simple question.

Esther took her cell out of her shirt pocket—again—and sucked in a deep breath. Ben was a friend; girls could call friends. Still, her mother’s dictates rang in her head.
Nice girls do not call boys
. Even back then her mother had been hopelessly out of date. But Esther had believed her whether she planned on that or not.
You are a grown woman now, Ben is a friend, and it is okay to call him.
She flipped to contacts and tapped Ben James’s cell number. After all, he was still at work. As the phone rang she nearly hung up. His comment about the new super being death on calls or anything during work time that was not work-related made her feel guilty. Not a difficult thing to do.

“Hi, Esther, what’s up?”

She had to swallow to find her voice.

“Esther, are you all right?”

“Yes. Pardon me.” She coughed and cleared her throat. “Sorry, swallowed wrong. I’m calling to invite you to come with me to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving.” She knew she was speaking too fast but better that than dropping the phone or something stupid. “I’ve put them off for the last couple of years and…you could bring Dawn. My mother loves babies.”

“Yes.”

“And we don’t have to stay through all the football games if you don’t want to.”

“Esther, hold it.”

“And…oh sorry.”
You crazy woman. What’s come over you?
“I’m holding.”

His chuckle sounded even better than she remembered. Not that she’d been thinking about him unduly or any such thing. “Sorry.” Her mind made a screeching halt. “What did you say?”

“I said yes.”

How to make a fool of yourself in three easy steps. Not that she even needed three. “You will?”

“Yes, if you are sure that they are expecting you plus two others.”

Esther heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank you. My mother and father love to have a big crowd on Thanksgiving. My baby sister Jill is going home with her college roommate and my other sister, Andrea, has to go to her in-laws this year so Mom was disappointed. There will be my brother Kenneth and family, Gramma, and us.” She was babbling. Taking a deep breath she shook her head. “Sometimes my aunt and uncle come, too. They remember you from your football days.”

“What time do we need to be there?”

“Anytime, maybe noon. It’s a little more than four hours’ drive.”

“From something you said, I thought you grew up nearer to Thief River Falls.”

“Nope. Sorry to bust into your day like this. You won’t get in trouble?”

“I doubt it. Bo and I are scouting the backwoods.”

“Find anything else since the scarf?” He’d told her about that before the meeting with Lars and Mr. Aptos.

“No so far. Helped a farmer out of a ditch. Said he swerved for a raccoon and nearly ended up in the lake. The shoulders are still soft from all that rain.”

Barbara tapped on the door. “Phone for you.”

“Gotta go. More later.” She paused only long enough for his good-bye and snapped her phone shut before picking up the office line. “Dr. Hanson.” The day was truly under way, but at least she had accomplished the most difficult thing first.

Thanksgiving was less than two weeks away. She needed to call her mother and find out what she was supposed to bring. “No, thank you. We aren’t in need of any of those right now. No. Really. I’m sorry. No.” How had that vendor slipped past Barbara’s method of screening calls?

She left the building at three for her regularly scheduled appointment with her counselor. Halfway there, her phone chimed and she was told that Dr. Phillips had a last-minute emergency and she would need to reschedule. Puffing out a sigh, she turned around at the next driveway and headed back to Pineville. Since she had no scheduled appointments, perhaps she could get to the bottom of the catch-up pile.

“What are you doing here?” she asked Barbara after letting herself in through the side door.

“Same as you, catching up. I put some more paperwork on your desk, things that I needed to figure out first.”

“Thanks heaps and bunches.”

“Anytime.”

Back in her office, she called and rescheduled her appointment, then attacked the stack that had grown larger in her absence. She was sure that two sheets of paper touching each other bred more during the night. In the daytime, the stack had Barbara’s help. When the outbox was nearly full and the inbox empty, Esther leaned back in her chair. The files on patients treated during the storm were woefully inadequate. Those treated by others, like Ben and Rob, needed their input. Barbara had put sticky notes on the pages with the name of the one who’d given the immediate treatment.

Esther sorted the remaining stack into separate stacks so that the correct person could go over the file before Barbara consigned them to the file cabinets along the walls. Whatever could not be remembered or filled in—well, that was the way it was. Her concern was those who weren’t documented. She pushed the button for the front desk.

“What do you need?”

“I thought you went home hours ago. Flipping through these I remembered those two little kids who came to us, the ones whose mother had died. What happened with them?”

“Yvette took them over to the church to the shelter and their father picked them up two days later. The women at the church made sure they were taken care of.”

“And their mother’s body?”

“Dennis and Yvette took it to the morgue as soon as they could. We didn’t want that poor man to have to deal with her decomposing body when he walked in the door.”

“Thank you. What other things fell through the cracks that I am not aware of?”

“Well, old Mrs. Unfeld, the one with dementia, as soon as her daughter could get her, she took her home with her. Again, the ladies at the church made sure she was cared for.”

“The unsung heroes?”

“There are many of them in this town. Nothing gets people pulling together better than a natural disaster. But you know, people here have always taken care of each other.”

“I guess. I’ve started piles here for Ben, Dennis, and Rob. How about giving them a call tomorrow and ask them to come when they can and see if they can fill in any of the blanks?”

“All right. Now go home.”

“Yes, Mother. Night.” Esther hung up and dug out her purse from the drawer. The stack was gone. The relief that washed over her threatened to carry her out with the tide if she didn’t just give up and get some rest.

The next brisk November days flew by with talk of the clinic overshadowing everything except the football team, first with its league victory, then on to district. Despite the time they’d lost due to the storm and recovery, the team was charging forward. When you thought about it, the whole town was. Esther came in one day to find blue and white balloons that said
ON TO STATE
tethered to the underside of the reception counter and bobbing in the draft.

“And who do we thank for the new decorations? Don’t they have to win district first?”

“That’s this weekend. They’re playing Fillmore, I think.” Barbara snickered. “You know the old fifties movies where something horrible happens to the quarterback the day before the Big Game? Always the Big Game. Well, this one’s the Big Game, capital letters.”

“Wouldn’t the state championship be the Big Game?”

“Normally, yes. Pineville has to get past the Fillmore Eagles to go to the finals. But beating Fillmore is almost more important than the championship. Certainly more important than life and death.”

“Wow. Okay.”

“Are you going?”

Esther kept from making a face. She’d been off to college when her brother played and didn’t mind missing the games. Like she’d told Ben when he tried to teach her, she’d not cared much for the sport. “I doubt it.”

The next day Beth called and invited her over for a girls-only party while the guys were gone to the division game. “I’ve invited Yvette, too, since her hubby went with Ben and Ansel.”

“What can I bring?”

“Yourself. I’m making an apple crisp and I have chips and dip. Nothing fancy.”

“I could bring a cheese ball and crackers.”

“All right. But don’t expect a whole lot.”

When Esther arrived at Ben’s house, Beth handed her Dawn and went to pick up Nathan, who had decided he was now hungry. “He’s adopted a trait of Dawn’s, wanting to be fed immediately. I thought they’d be down before company arrived.” With Nathan on one arm, she sent her nightgown-clad little daughter for a blanket and settled in the rocking chair. “Thank you, sweetie.” She flipped the blanket over her shoulder, settled her son to a noisy nursing, and heaved a sigh. “Not quite the way I had planned it.”

The doorbell rang. “Could you get that please?”

Esther nodded and, Dawn in one arm, invited Yvette in. “Welcome to feed-the-babies hour.”

“I can see what it would take to raise twins,” Esther said a bit later when the three children were sound asleep in their respective beds. “How do you stay so cheerful and on top of things?”

“I guess because I love doing this. I have always loved babies, and watching these two grow and change is pure delight.” Beth reached for a the knife to add cheese to her cracker. “This is so good.”

“Thank you.” Beth smiled. “A recipe I tried so that I could make it for Thanksgiving. My mother asked me to bring three kinds of hors d’oeuvres. I agree that it is yummy.”

They talked recipes and life in Pineville, the funding drive for the clinic, and the arguments going on wherever folks congregated.

Yvette’s beeper went off; she groaned and flicked it open. “I’m needed on a run. I told them I’d be on call.” She grabbed her coat. “See you. Thanks, Beth.”

“I’d better be ready just in case. Thanks for having us and for letting me hold Dawn for a while. This has been a delightful evening. And to think, we never even brought up football.” She drove to the clinic and listened to the police band. They were bringing the patient to the clinic parking lot to meet air evac.

At the same moment, she heard the chopper coming in. What a shame that patients needed to be airlifted out because their clinic was so insufficient. She watched the smooth exchange and the chopper lifting off again. Who was it and what had they needed? So many of the elderly in Pineville needed closer care. Why was there so much arguing going on about the proposed clinic?

Thanksgiving Day came quickly. From long experience with the big friendly gang wars that her mom called “family getting together,” Esther packed the perishables in the cooler and the nons in a basket, so when Ben drove up, she was ready. She met him at the door, handed him the cooler handle, and carried the basket. He had left the SUV running, with Bo watching over the infant seat strapped into the seat right behind the driver. He wagged his tail and sat back down. Ben settled the food things in the rear.

“You’re not concerned Bo might have a snack?”

“He’d never touch that without permission. He’s been trained to not take food from anyone but me.” He opened the passenger door for her.

“What if something happened to you? Would he never eat again?” She climbed in and glanced over her shoulder. Dawn lay sound asleep, a pink fleece hood cupping her round little face.

Ben slid behind the steering wheel. “Good question. If someone else put kibble in his dish, he’d eat that. But no hand-feeding.”

“I assume there’s a reason.”

“So the bad guys can’t distract him with a steak while they do their badness. Or worse, feed him poison or something.” He smiled at Esther. “You ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

“Is this really so hard for you?”

Esther could feel him glancing at her. Trying to figure her out. How could he figure her out when she couldn’t figure herself out? But if she forced herself to look inside, she knew what the problem was. Plain old guilt. Guilt and resentment. Two of those things God said to let go of. Resentment that her mother always had to find something to criticize in her eldest daughter. Was she that way with the others? If so, they didn’t let it bother them. Kenneth was the golden boy in their mother’s eyes. He could do no wrong. So was it not only guilt and resentment but envy, too?

Why not look at ’em all? No wonder her mother constantly found something to harp on. Esther figured she brought it on herself.

With a sigh, Esther answered. “Probably only as hard as I make it. The others seem to get along just fine. I’ve always felt like the odd man out. Or woman in this case.”

“And of course you are not an overachiever at all.”

She stared at him wide-eyed. “Ya think? Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I think it is that eldest-child syndrome. Our parents expect a lot of us and so we expect even more. Something worth growing out of, wouldn’t you think?”

“You excelled in football, earned straight A’s, and could have gone to any number of universities. Why didn’t you?”

“I had always wanted to be a marine, thought I would stay in and retire with a bunch of stars on my shoulders or something. But during my first hitch, my folks needed me at home, and I had lost my desire to fight. There had to be other ways to handle problems, nationally and internationally. So I finished my tour and came home. Took me one more year to graduate with a BS and I went to work for the border patrol, grateful to be stationed right here in my hometown.”