Silent Pledge

by Hannah Alexander

  At eight-fifteen Lukas gave up on a home-cooked meal from Tex and walked into the kitchen at the urging of his growling stomach. He had some apples in the fridge, and some bread and lunch meat in the tiny freezer section, along with the Healthy Choice frozen dinners. He was reaching for an apple when a loud knock sounded at the front door.

  Okay, so she was late. Tex never did anything predictably. The knock sounded again, this time more insistent, and he rushed through the apartment. She was probably carrying a bag of sandwiches from the hospital vending machine in spite of her promise to cook. He had difficulty imagining Tex in a domestic setting.

  He unlocked the door and pulled it open, and his breath caught. A tall stranger stood there with a large shopping bag in her arms. She wore a short black dress that hugged a generously proportioned shape and dipped at the neckline, and a soft cloth coat covered her arms and shoulders. Her blond hair curved around her face and over her forehead in gentle waves, and green eyes looked out at him from the depths of an artistic makeup job.

  Then she spoke. “Well, are you going to stand there staring all night, or are you going to let me get to the kitchen with this stuff?” She shook her head, rolled her eyes and barged past him. “It’s cold out here.”

  Lukas stepped out of her way. “Sorry.” Why was she all dressed up? Did she think this was a date? It wasn’t. Tex was just a neighbor sharing dinner, trying to make him feel at home in a town that had apparently never seen a welcome mat.

  “Tonight I’m Theresa,” she announced as she marched across the hardwood floor of the living room in her high heels.

  Tex wearing heels? And hose? Was this the same woman who’d tracked mud into his apartment a couple of days ago?

  “It’s what Dr. Moss calls me,” she said.

  Lukas followed. “Dr. Moss?”

  “He’ll be here any minute.” She stepped into the kitchen and dumped the bag onto the counter.

  “What do you mean he’ll be here?” Lukas sputtered.

  “Yeah, sorry I didn’t warn you. He’s going to have dinner with us tonight. I couldn’t resist. He called and asked me out tonight after I’d already promised to cook for you. Did you know he has a family practice at Osage Beach?” She reached out and nudged Lukas’s arm for emphasis. “And did you know he’s the one who delivered Marla Moore’s baby last week? You know, the one they haven’t found yet?”

  “He delivered Jerod?”

  She slipped off her coat and handed it to Lukas. “Sure did. You do have a closet somewhere, don’t you? Or you can throw this on your bed. Just remember this piece of wool set me back eighty dollars. How do you like the dress? Got it on sale, but don’t tell anybody.” She held her arms out and turned around. “What do you think?”

  “You look great, Tex. Do you mean to tell me you’re interested in this Dr. Moss?”

  “Theresa! Don’t forget tonight my name’s Theresa.” She turned back toward the counter and pulled out a head of lettuce and some tomatoes. “And the gossipers don’t know what they’re talking about. A man stands up for his ethics—which is more than I can say about a lot of people around here—and the whole staff can’t wait to bad-mouth him behind his back. Doesn’t that beat all? The guy has some backbone and won’t let Mr. Amos manipulate him, and some female patient gets him alone for five minutes and accuses him of making a sexual advance.”

  “How exactly did Mr. Amos try to manipulate him?”

  “The nurses have standing orders from Mr. Amos to delay treatment of any patient with Medicaid or without insurance who presents without a life-threatening injury or illness.”

  “How do they delay treatment?”

  She shrugged and tore the head of lettuce into pieces. “They leave the patient out in the waiting room until they get tired of waiting and go somewhere else. Don’t look at me like that, Dr. Bower. I ignore Amos. I always have. Anyway, three weeks ago Hershel had an empty E.R. but saw someone waiting. When he asked the nurse to bring them back, she refused. So he took care of that patient without the aid of a nurse and wrote her up for insubordination.”

  “Were you there? Did you see it happen?”

  “Nope. Didn’t need to. A week later some floozy came into the E.R. and that same nurse refused to stay in the exam room with them. The floozy cried abuse, and he didn’t have a witness.” Tex shrugged. “Mr. Amos had an instant excuse to suspend Hershel, and Hershel’s being investigated by the licensing board, so he’s got legal fees on his hands. If you ask me, that floozy’s on somebody’s payroll.”

  In a cloud of instant depression, Lukas went to put the coat in the closet. Once again, he couldn’t escape the fact that greedy, unethical people seemed to lurk in every corner of the world. He knew they weren’t just in the medical community, but since that was the realm of most of his experience, he tended toward paranoia on the subject. He’d been shocked when he was in med school by the abundance of information with which medical students were inundated and were supposed to input into their brains. He was even more amazed by the temptations to cut corners, both at the university and in med school. He supposed he should be grateful that such a high percentage of his classmates resisted those temptations. Their patients should be grateful, too. Were they still resisting, or was the pressure of managed care and dwindling finances corrupting more and more people?

  As he returned to the kitchen he realized the shallowness of the question. Typical for him, he was labeling people again. In this world of situation ethics, it was sometimes difficult to draw a straight line. For instance, hadn’t he just recently sidestepped the rules by quietly checking the injury on that man in the waiting room without making him pay? And in doing so, no matter the sentiment, wasn’t he as guilty of breaking the rules as Mr. Amos? In fact, Mr. Amos would most likely have approved. The man had no insurance. Cash patients were notorious for not paying their E.R. bills—another instance of a few unethical individuals giving the whole group a bad rep.

  At the counter, Tex was pulling a package of noodles and some hamburger meat out of the grocery bag.

  “Anything I can do to help?” Lukas asked.

  “You could slice the loaf of French bread and stick it in the oven.” She opened both packages and plunged her hands into the hamburger. “I just washed before I came over, so don’t worry, my hands are clean. You’ve got a pot and a skillet, haven’t you? If not I’ll get mine.”

  Lukas glanced down at the cupboards beneath the counter. The apartment had come furnished.

  She raised her arm to scratch her nose with her arm and left a streak of flesh-colored makeup on the black material. “Well? Pot and skillet?”

  He shrugged and bent down to look. Yep, they were there, a little banged-up and abused. The nonstick coating had been rubbed away in several places, but they looked usable. He pulled them out and held them up.

  She frowned at him. “You don’t cook at all, do you?”

  “I barbecued hamburgers last fall and set off all the smoke alarms in my house.” That was the night Mercy had opened a cabinet door and screamed at the sight of a stuffed rattlesnake.

  “Fine,” Tex said. “You entertain the guests while I chop the veggies and do the cooking. I hope you have a paring knife, or even a butcher knife. Anything besides a steak knife.”

  “Guests?” Lukas prompted. “There’s going to be more than one?”

  “Dr. Bower, please don’t mess this up for me.” She crumbled the meat into the skillet. “Where’s that knife? You do have a knife, don’t you?”

  Lukas felt as if he’d been sideswiped by a freight train—an increasingly irritating freight train. He jerked open three drawers before he found a knife. He pulled it out and slapped it onto the counter. “Who else is coming tonight?”

  She started to wash her hands at the sink. “Soap? Come on, Dr. Bower, you’ve got to have soap somewhere. And do you have paper towels? I don’t want to get this grease all over my dress.”

  “Tex, you’re avoiding the question. What are you pla
nning, a full-blown party?”

  She left the water running, hands dripping. Her front teeth dug into her lower lip with nervous energy as she gazed at him in sudden, subdued silence.

  “How many are coming?” he asked.

  “Only two.” Her voice sounded suddenly meek.

  He took pity on her and pulled out the drawer with the roll of paper towels. He unwrapped the package and tore off several sheets for her. “Do you think you could call me Lukas tonight? Who besides Dr. Moss is coming?”

  “His sister.”

  Lukas suppressed a gasp. “His sister?” Oh, no. She was setting him up. “So this is, like, a double date or something?”

  She wiped her hands and turned pleading eyes on him from her lofty height. “It’s just for dinner. You’ll have a lot to talk about. Nancy’s thirty-four, just a couple of years older than me, and she’s really sad right now. She’s recently divorced, and she’s still struggling with the loss. You have such a compassionate nature, I thought the two of you might hit it off.”

  “But, Tex, I’m not interested in entertaining a strange woman.”

  “Theresa.” The door knocker sounded through the small apartment, and Tex froze, eyes still pleading. “Would you get that? You don’t have to kiss her or anything, Dr. Bower—”

  “It’s Lukas—”

  “Just let her talk. She needs to talk. Be nice to her….”

  The knocker sounded again, and Lukas went to answer the door. Okay, he could do this. He would think of tonight as a counseling session.

  Someone jostled Mercy from the left, and a woman’s voice floated over her in apology. Opening her eyes took all her effort, but she finally managed. She looked up to see people gathering their books and coats and purses. She heard the rustle of feet and the increased murmur of voices and the clatter of folding chairs being replaced in their compact stacks along the far wall. She’d missed the lesson and the prayer afterward. She’d fallen asleep.

  She cast guilty glances at the ladies who had been sitting beside her. Had she snored? They weren’t glaring at her. They weren’t even looking at her. They were laughing and talking with others around them. Why was she able to fall asleep here in a crowded room, but she couldn’t sleep at home without her trusty pill?

  She stifled a yawn and reached for her own coat. She needed sleep. Tedi would just have to understand the early bedtime tonight.

  Someone stepped up beside her and touched her on the shoulder, and she turned to see Lauren smiling down at her, blond hair cascading around her face and shoulders, green eyes friendly and alert. Disgustingly alert.

  “Hi, Dr. Mercy. Can you believe the crowd? You’d think the ice storm would keep everyone away. I wondered if you’d be up for it tonight, after yawning at work all afternoon. You really should give yourself a break and get more sleep tonight.” She wore faded jeans and knee boots and a gray SMU sweatshirt. She could pass for twenty.

  “Thanks for the advice,” Mercy said dryly. “I’ll try.” It wasn’t as if she wanted to roam the house half the night. It wasn’t as if she enjoyed staring at the ceiling of her bedroom until the early-morning hours.

  Without waiting for an invitation, Lauren pulled a chair over and sat down next to Mercy. “What do you think of Dr. Jordan—oops, excuse me, Joseph. He likes to be called Joseph. He really knows his material, doesn’t he? I could listen to him all night. I even learned something from tonight’s lesson, even though…well…since I’ve never been divorced…. But Joseph explains how relationships go so much deeper than just the rules and regulations, all the way to the relationship between Christ and His church. I feel like I’m learning about the heart of God and discovering some of the reasoning behind the legalism, you know?” She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, and her long shining hair fell forward like a curtain. “I mean, Joseph’s right. Who better than the natural parents to raise the children? I just don’t know if I could do it. Forgiving would be hard enough, after what you and Tedi went through, but you seem to have already done that,” Lauren said as she shoved some strands of her hair back and tucked them behind her ear.

  Mercy found herself wondering why this extremely attractive woman had never been married. Men were obviously drawn to her blond innocence, and the patients loved her. And then Lauren’s words registered. Mercy sat up straighter in her chair. “Lauren, what are you talking about?” The words came out more sharply than she’d intended.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t implying anything, Dr. Mercy. I was just saying it would be hard if you made the decision to reconcile.”

  Mercy thought back to the few verses she’d actually heard tonight, and she recalled, dimly, the contents of the study. “Reconcile? You’re surely not saying I should remarry Theo!” She heard the freeze-over of her own voice as she spoke. Obviously, so did Lauren.

  “Not me, no, I wouldn’t tell you that,” Lauren said quickly. “I’m just saying reconciliation would be hard to do…if you did. Since you and Theo are both Christians now…and Tedi…” Her cheeks turned a healthy pink, and she buried her face in her hands. “Oh, there I go again. Me and my big mouth. I’m not saying you and Theodore should get married again, and I’m not sure that’s what the pastor was saying, either. It’s none of my business.”

  “You’re right, it’s nobody’s business.” Mercy was suddenly wide awake, and her indignation increased with her level of consciousness. “How could anyone expect Tedi and me to return to a situation like that?”

  Lauren looked even more miserable. “But it wouldn’t be the same.”

  Mercy waved Lauren’s words away. “Even if I were masochistic enough to do that to myself, I’d never do it to Tedi. Never!” She was shocked by the sudden revulsion she felt.

  Lauren sat back and lowered her hands to her lap. “But that’s just the point,” she said softly. “If you got back together, your marriage wouldn’t be the same. Remember, when you come to Christ, all things are new, and you and Theo have both come to Christ. Your relationship is new.”

  “Then why would God expect me to return to the old marriage?”

  Lauren started to speak again, and then her attention turned to someone behind Mercy. “Oh, boy,” she murmured. “Dr. Mercy, did you know Theo was here? He’s coming this way.”

  Mercy caught her breath and felt a shock of discovery all the way through her body before she even turned around. The anger and revulsion that had risen within her swirled into a confusion of frustration and disappointment. She was tired, irritable and totally unprepared for the maelstrom of emotions that overwhelmed her. For the past three months she thought she had been doing what the Bible said she must do—trying to forgive Theodore. She thought they had been building a solid friendship from which Tedi could gain a foundation on which to grow. But somehow the anger had found its way back. In all that time she had never considered the possibility that she and her daughter might be expected to plunge back into their past and take the chance of reliving those days again—this time with a man she no longer loved. Would God do something like that to her?

  Lauren touched her arm. “Do you want me to stay here or get lost?”

  Mercy turned and saw Theo no more than six feet away, his blond good looks and cool blue eyes so familiar as he smiled and waved and made his way toward her past a group of laughing people. For a brief moment an image of a drunken, angry, malevolent Theodore superimposed itself in Mercy’s mind. That image was the one she had known longer. It was as if they were two different people. Would the more familiar one ever return?

  “Dr. Mercy?” Lauren whispered.

  Mercy looked at her and found the strength to shake her head. “I…I’m sorry, Lauren. You go on. I’ll be fine.” She took a deep breath and braced herself as Theo drew near.

  “Okay, see you Friday,” Lauren said as she grabbed her gear, said a quick hello to Theo and left.

  Mercy forced herself to meet the gaze of her ex-husband. “Hi, Theodore. I didn’t know you were coming tonight.” />
  “Yes, Dr. Jordan mentioned the class during our session Monday. We were talking about the divorce and the subject of forgiveness, and he thought I might be interested in this study.” He sat down into the chair Lauren had vacated. He was watchful, hesitant. Had he heard Mercy’s outburst?

  “Joseph is young, and he’s new here,” she said quickly. She felt her anger transfer itself to the pastor, who stood talking to a couple near the back door. “He doesn’t know how far we’ve come to get where we are now. If he thinks we can just tumble back into the past—” she began, then stopped herself. Going off on a tangent wouldn’t help any. “I’m sorry, Theo. I’m really tired, and I’m going home.” She stood up, reached for her coat and pulled it on.

  Theo stood with her. He picked up her chair and folded it, then tucked it under his arm. “I’ll walk you to your car. There are a lot of slick spots out in the parking lot.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I brought my ice grippers.” She needed to get away, to think, to reassess what was going on, and she certainly couldn’t do that in Theo’s presence.

  He picked up another chair and folded it. “I need to talk to you.”

  She grew still. “About what?”

  “Tedi. You got that call today at Odira’s house before we decided on anything.”

  “Oh.” Relief. “Fine.” She turned toward the door, and Theo fell into step beside her.

  “How many hours are you putting in at the office?” he asked.

  “Too many right now, but I don’t see what I can do about it.”

  “I do.” He placed the chairs with the others and rushed forward to hold the door open for Mercy. “Learn to say no.”

  She pressed her lips together, cringing at the phrase she remembered him using when they were married and she had an extraheavy work load. “It doesn’t work like that. I can’t just leave my patients hanging because I didn’t happen to get enough sleep last night.” Her commitment to her patients wasn’t any of his business, and it would never be again. Never.