Silent Pledge

by Hannah Alexander

  “Those crazy machines will tell me more about the extent of your problems than a stethoscope will. We have the equipment right here at the hospital to run the tests, and I can arrange to have them done tomorrow, while you’re still here.”

  “But won’t they cost a bundle?”

  “Medicare.” Mercy laid a hand on Odira’s arm. “We’ll take care of the rest. Okay?”

  Odira huffed a couple of times, the crinkles around her eyes deepening as she studied Mercy’s expression. “Guess I should for Crystal’s sake.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “Okay, Dr. Mercy, I trust you. Now I’ve gotta get back to my gal!” She turned and lumbered down the hallway toward the hospital room where an aide sat with Crystal.

  Ivy pushed the sleeves of her sweater up above her elbows and stepped over to the refrigerator. “I think we’ll go to the late service this morning. Meanwhile I’ll make your favorite slaw.”

  Clarence picked up his fork and poked at the concoction. “I know I shouldn’t ask, but what is this stuff?”

  “Can’t you trust me for once?” She took out a head of red cabbage and red, yellow and green peppers.

  “What if I want to cook it myself someday?”

  She placed a small dish of crumbled feta cheese and a bag of slivered almonds on the table next to her chopping block. “Okay, I use egg whites, chopped low-fat ham, green peppers and onions. And low-fat cheese.”

  Clarence put down his fork and groaned. “Not the cheese, too!”

  “Do you know the fat content of regular cheese? You don’t need that. Here, I’ll give you some nuts on top. They have the right kind of fat, and these don’t have salt.”

  Clarence jerked his plate out from under the bag she had begun to lower over his eggs. “Nuts with eggs! Are you crazy?”

  Ivy continued to hold the bag aloft. “Put that plate back down here. You wanted something besides oatmeal for breakfast, and I’m giving it to you. This is healthy. I eat it myself, with a good salsa sprinkled on top. Great for the cholesterol.”

  Clarence sighed and set his plate back down, then winced when Ivy poured a sprinkling of the nuts over his eggs, but he decided, philosophically, that at least the nuts would kill the taste of the cheese on top. But before he could pick up his fork, Ivy plopped something else down on the plate.

  “There you go, my own homemade salsa. Dip the eggs in that. You’ll think you’ve tasted heaven.”

  Clarence studied Ivy’s expression for a moment to see if she wasn’t playing some mean practical joke to get even with him for staying out all night. She looked innocent enough. He took a deep, sustaining breath and raised a forkful of food to his mouth. He closed his eyes as he shoveled the mess into his mouth and chewed.

  “Not bad, is it?” Ivy prompted.

  Clarence finished chewing, swallowed and felt some of the tension ease from his shoulders. Okay, that didn’t taste so bad. In fact, it was almost—

  “See?” Ivy demanded as she pulled a bunch of grapes from the refrigerator and began to chop her assembled ingredients. “Didn’t I say you’d like it? You never believe me, do you?”

  He caught the grin of triumph in her expressive dark eyes, so like Mercy’s. He couldn’t help grinning back. To answer her question, he filled his fork with more eggs. “It isn’t exactly chocolate chip cookies,” he said, “but I could stand this every so often.” He put the next bite in his mouth.

  “Now, that’s what I call high praise, coming from you,” Ivy said dryly. “And speaking of which, did you happen to notice a squirrel in here last night before you left?”

  Clarence kept eating. “Hmm-mmm.”

  “I didn’t think so.” She reached over and opened the small freezer door on her side-by-side refrigerator. “But since the squirrels in our trees don’t understand proper household etiquette and you do, I didn’t think you could have been the one to scatter crumbs all over the packages of frozen vegetables.”

  He swallowed. “Sorry.”

  She watched him curiously for another few bites, but he didn’t mind. Ivy could get on his nerves, especially when she nagged him to drink more water, eat less dinner, exercise. But even though he was worn-out from the long, sleepless night, he felt a warmth he’d never felt before. He couldn’t seem to keep a smile from his face.

  Ivy kept shooting quick, inquisitive glances at him as she chopped her vegetables. “Clarence, just what did you do last night? Are you up to something?”

  He took a bite of the multigrain toast and didn’t even complain that there was no butter or jam or anything to go on top of it. “Not up to nothing. Don’t be so suspicious.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full. You’re telling me you rode up to Springfield with Buck and Kendra, waited around all night while they got Kendra settled, then rode back with Buck? That’s all you did?”

  “Yup.”

  “Then why do you seem so…perky?”

  Clarence choked on his toast. “Perky!”

  “There’s something different about you this morning.”

  Clarence kept chewing and thought about that for a minute. He did feel different. He couldn’t say what he felt, exactly, except that he had a feeling of purpose this morning.

  That was it. He looked down at himself. He was still fat. He still got out of breath when he walked more than a couple of blocks. He and his sister still lived as Ivy’s dependants. But then, he liked to think that Ivy was getting a kick out of bossing him around and whipping him into shape and watching the weight drop off.

  But that wasn’t why he felt this way. Something had happened last night. He now had some kind of a connection he didn’t have before…a connection with God? And did that mean he wouldn’t have to struggle with depression again?

  He wasn’t sure. The docs said depression was a physical illness, and even Ivy and Lukas and Mercy got sick sometimes. Their lives weren’t perfect…but still, they had purpose in their lives. Maybe he did, too.

  But he wasn’t ready to talk about what had happened. Right now he wanted to hug the knowledge to himself like a secret treasure. He wanted to cherish the newness in his life a little longer before taking the chance of telling someone and being laughed at. He knew God wasn’t laughing. He knew God had used him last night. But he wasn’t ready to tell a bunch of people about this new experience yet. This would be his own silent communication with God.

  “Hiding out?” The cold, rough male voice came from behind Mercy in the hallway, filling her with a shudder an instant before she realized where she’d heard it before.

  She swung around and found herself staring up into the glinting, muddy-yellow eyes of Abner Bell. He was wild-eyed and stringy-haired, and his beefy hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as if he were preparing to wrap them around the next available neck. Abner Bell had always been an unpleasant man. He could cover his temper well when he wanted to, but he usually didn’t want to. Some people who didn’t know better thought he was attractive. The appearance didn’t last long, though, and lots of people in Knolls were afraid of him. One glance at his present expression gave Mercy a chill.

  “Where’s my wife?” His growl sounded as if it came from the inside of a cement mixer, and his gaze pinned Mercy with accusation.

  Mercy resisted the urge to take a step backward from his looming bulk. There was no need to be afraid. Hospital staff bustled up and down the hallway, and trays and dishes still clattered in the rooms.

  And then she focused on his question. “Your wife? Abner, what are you talking about? Delphi’s—”

  “Gone!”

  He leaned forward, hovering over her. The rank odor of his breath combined with the hovering threat of his tall frame. Instead of frightening her further, he irritated her. From past experience she knew this man was a moral coward whose main joy in life was manipulating and frightening others. He would not bully her.

  His voice rose. “You’ve been telling her to leave for months, and last night she did. Where’re you h
iding her? You ain’t got any right to sneak a man’s wife away from him.”

  “Excuse me,” she snapped. “I did not ‘sneak’ anybody anywhere. What did you do, Abner, get high and start beating on her again?” Her voice rose a few decibels louder than she’d intended it to and caught the attention of several of the staff.

  “Whatever she told you was a lie.” He leaned closer.

  Instinctively Mercy raised a hand and shoved him backward. “Get out of my face! I haven’t seen your wife, so she hasn’t had a chance to tell me anything. Now get out of this hospital.” She pivoted away and left him standing there. She had more important things to do this morning than listen to some abuser’s temper tantrums. Apparently Delphi had finally taken her advice.

  But as Mercy walked away she felt the brooding stare of Delphi’s husband boring into her back. She said a silent prayer for Delphi. Was she really gone this time? Was she safe?

  Chapter Nine

  At five-fifteen Monday afternoon Lukas sniffed the ham salad sandwich he’d purchased from the vending machine in the Herald Hospital cafeteria. He took a small bite to make sure it didn’t taste funny, chewed and swallowed. He took a drink of orange juice, checked the cellophane wrapper on the sandwich to make sure the date was okay and opened his mouth to take another bite when a public address blared from a speaker directly over his head.

  “…Ottar Ower to the emer…oom, please,” came a fuzzy female voice. “Octar Bower to the emergency room.” He winced at the noise and static, then realized that was his name they were mangling.

  He rewrapped his food, took another quick swig of his orange juice and carried everything with him out the door. So much for dinner. The evening rush was probably beginning, with parents getting home from work and finding their kids sick. The family docs were gone for the evening, and waiting until the next morning would cost a day of work as well as the doctor bill. At minimum wage, no one could miss a shift without skipping a payment of some kind.

  The Monday E.R. nurse, Janice Carter, met him at the front desk. “We had a lady with a traumatic near-amputation, Dr. Bower.” Janice was a slender lady in her fifties with short, frosted brown hair and eyes the color of maple syrup. Her temperament wasn’t quite that sweet, but she got the job done with a minimum of complaint. Compared to most of the other staff members in this E.R., she was an excellent employee.

  “Johnson’s Poultry again.” Janice shoved her assessment sheet toward him. “I haven’t completed the vitals yet. Didn’t think you’d want me to delay. It’s the little finger of her left hand.”

  Lukas glanced at the paper. “Which room?”

  “Trauma. They didn’t call in. They just brought her.” Janice lowered her voice. “The safety director’s with her, so you won’t get much information. They always try to make an accident look like it’s the employee’s fault, but they have an accident out there at least twice a month, and that’s just on my shifts.”

  Lukas followed Janice to the trauma room to find a frightened forty-five-year-old woman lying on the exam bed. She still wore her clothing from work, splattered with pieces of chicken fat where the apron hadn’t covered her. She smelled like a butcher shop. A white cloth net covered her hair, and she wore black rubber boots that were still wet from splashing through constantly dripping water and chicken juice. The woman’s left hand had been wrapped in several thicknesses of gauze, and blood seeped through the material.

  “Hello, Mrs. Morrison, I’m Dr. Bower. Do you mind if I take a look at this?” He indicated the gauze and carefully began the unwrapping procedure. Her hand trembled in his grip. Except for smears of black eye makeup, her face was as pale as a winter sky. “What happened today?” he asked, keeping his voice reassuring and gentle.

  Her chin quivered. Her gaze darted toward Mr. Gray, who sat watching silently from the chair by the far wall. She did not make eye contact with him.

  When Lukas uncovered the injured finger he found, to his dismay, that near-amputation was the correct assessment. The tip of the finger was already becoming pale, with a capillary refill of four seconds. A quick test with the point of a needle revealed markedly diminished sensation compared to the corresponding finger. He would have to move quickly. He checked the chart, then turned to Janice, who hovered at the other side of Mrs. Morrison’s exam bed. “Have Shirley call an ambulance for us. We need to transfer her to Columbia for this.”

  Gray straightened then. “Hold on a minute, Dr. Bower.” He sounded almost bored. “I have to get clearance from the home office before we can do that.”

  “If you would do so immediately, Mr. Gray, I would appreciate it,” Lukas said. “Meanwhile, we want that ambulance to be on its way. I think the finger is salvageable.”

  Janice hesitated, giving Lukas a worried frown. “Uh, Dr. Bower, Mr. Amos wants us to call him before we transfer any work comp patients out of here.”

  Lukas couldn’t quite hide his frustration. “That shouldn’t even be an issue here. This is a near-amputation, and this hospital isn’t equipped to reconnect a finger.”

  Janice shrugged. “Sorry, that’s our order.”

  “Fine, get him on the phone for me, but I want Mrs. Morrison ready to go as soon as we can get an ambulance here.” He turned back to the patient. “Mrs. Morrison, have you ever exhibited any allergic reaction to pain medication or penicillin?”

  She shook her head.

  “Have you had a tetanus shot within the past five years?”

  Again she shook her head, but then she cleared her throat and spoke loudly enough for the safety director to hear as he walked out the curtained entrance to find a telephone. “Never done anything like this before. Never needed a tetanus shot. I’m always careful around knives.”

  “Okay, then I’m afraid we’ll have to give you a shot now,” Lukas said. “While we’re at it I’m going to have the nurse start an IV in your arm so we can give you fluids, pain meds and an antibiotic to prevent infection. We’ll also need to have an X-ray.”

  As soon as they heard Mr. Gray on the telephone out at the secretary’s desk in the central area, Mrs. Morrison reached out with her good hand and gestured to Lukas to come closer.

  He bent forward.

  “I’ll probably get fired for this, but the line was going way too fast.” Her voice trembled with fear and anger. “They always do that! It’s why so many people get hurt. I’m a leg cutter, and they don’t keep my knife sharp enough, and every time I think I’m going to keep up, they speed up the line. They’ve got those birds flying through there as if they still had feathers on their wings!”

  “Can’t you tell them—”

  The woman snorted. “Griping gets people fired at Johnson’s Poultry. We need our jobs, so we keep our mouths shut.” She lay back as Janice prepped her arm for an IV. “Don’t tell anybody, Doctor. If you do, they’ll fire me. Guaranteed.” She winced as Janice pierced the skin with an IV needle.

  “You haven’t told Mr. Gray?” Lukas asked.

  The patient shook her head. “He’s not going to risk his job. The last safety director who reported the company got fired.”

  “Dr. Bower,” Shirley called from the front desk, “I have Mr. Amos on the line.” She transferred the call to the phone at Lukas’s workstation, and he rushed to grab it while she walked quickly away, as if escaping a line of fire.

  “Yes, Mr. Amos, this is Dr. Bower. I’m calling as per protocol to inform you of a transfer of a patient who was injured at Johnson’s Poultry. She needs—”

  “This is not acceptable,” came a clipped, nasal voice, which sounded as if it was coming through a speakerphone. “Contact the Johnson’s Poultry company physician to attend to the patient.”

  “I’ve already had him paged, but this patient needs to be transferred as quickly—”

  “Dr. Jeffries must examine her before she leaves this facility.”

  “But an ambulance is on the way over now,” Lukas snapped back. “She needs a hand surgeon or she could lose a—”
>
  “Not until the Johnson’s Poultry physician sees her.” The speakerphone disengaged with a click.

  At eight o’clock Monday night Mercy finally found a chance to dial information for Lukas’s new listing. His cell phone, as usual, wasn’t getting reception in Herald. Surely, even if he had to work today, he would be home by now.

  The telephone rang four times, and Mercy braced herself for the mechanical voice of Lukas’s answering machine. She hated that thing, but it seemed as if she had a closer relationship with it than she did with Lukas lately.

  She was able to at least detect the Lukas-style inflections of voice in spite of the tinny sound of the recording, and she let his words flow over her. Then it beeped.

  “Hi, Lukas.” She couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice, hard as she tried. “Sorry I missed you again.” She glanced at her watch. “I’ll be on my cell. Tedi’s due home from a field trip anytime, and then we’ve got to go get some groceries before we starve to death.” She hesitated, wondering when she would have another chance to talk to him. She didn’t even know what his schedule was anymore. “I guess I’ll be in touch.”

  A loud screech snapped at her through the telephone, and she heard Lukas’s garbled voice through the line. “Don’t hang up!” Another screech, then sudden silence.

  “Mercy? Are you still there?” A quickening of welcome rang through his voice.

  She felt a smile warm her face, and she relaxed and sat down on the sofa next to the phone. “When are you going to get one of those new digital things that actually record you instead of your evil twin?”

  He chuckled. “When this one breaks.”

  “Sounds like it’s time, then. I tried to get your new number yesterday, but you didn’t have one at home yet.” Did he know how good his voice sounded to her?

  “I was sleeping anyway. Were you trying to call me yesterday for any particular reason?”

  No, she just wanted to hear him. “Yeah, the rates are cheaper on Sundays. Plus I had a killer of a Saturday night, and I wanted to blame somebody for it. You’re the top candidate, since you’re not here to defend yourself.”