Silent Pledge

by Hannah Alexander

  The sound of those words overwhelmed her with joy in spite of the worry.

  She heard an alarm in the background over the telephone, and she heard Lukas groan.

  “Time for me to get up,” he said. “But I’ll be back in Knolls Friday night. Meanwhile, I’ll try to call Theodore later this morning. Would you please let me know the results of his biopsy?”

  “Yes. Lukas, I’m so glad you’re coming home.”

  “So am I.”

  Mr. Bennett was back in the E.R. Wednesday morning, less than twenty-four hours from the time he had signed out against Lukas’s advice. Today he wouldn’t be signing out. His ECG showed acute myocardial infarction—he was having a heart attack. His wife, his mother and two of his brothers had tried to crowd into the cardiac-trauma room before the E.R. nurse directed all but Mrs. Bennett to the waiting room. The echo of helicopter rotors reverberated through the E.R. as the big bird landed outside.

  Mr. Bennett moaned. His face was pale and perspiring, and there had been no improvement this time with nitroglycerin. Lukas had him on morphine and a Heparin drip, and still the pain was bad.

  “I shouldn’t’ve played with the kids,” he muttered to his wife, who stood holding his hands, obviously frantic with worry.

  “Hush,” she said. “Just hang on. Dr. Bower has you all set up at Jefferson City. We’ll get you there in time.”

  The chopper grew silent, and the flight team came trooping through the front door with their equipment. There was nothing more Lukas could do for this patient except pray.

  As Theodore stared into the lively brown eyes of his daughter, the aroma of barbecue and the chatter of the cooks and servers in the homey café seemed to disappear. He wanted to capture her expression of enjoyment as she licked the barbecue sauce from her fingers and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin. How much more time would he have with her?

  Funny, as much as he’d worried and as hard as he’d prayed since Robert Simeon gave him the news about the cancer, nothing had upset him more than Lukas Bower’s telephone call this morning about ten-thirty. Lukas had been kind and encouraging, and he had promised to pray. Then he had invited Theodore to stay with him if he didn’t feel well enough to be at home alone after the biopsy. What he didn’t say—what he’d obviously been careful not to say—was that he expected Theodore to get worse. Lukas and Mercy expected this liver cancer to be bad; Theo could tell it in their voices, and he could see the concern in Mercy’s eyes.

  “Dad, if you don’t eat your sandwich you won’t get dessert.” Tedi’s teasing admonition dragged him back to the present.

  He winked at her. “I’ll take it home and eat it later.” Her appetite had been hearty. Not only had she eaten a mixed-grill sandwich, but she had devoured her red-cabbage-and-pepper salad and downed a glass and a half of pink lemonade. Mercy, he noticed, had eaten three bites of salad and finished a glass of water. Their gazes had met occasionally throughout the meal, and he still read the concern in her eyes. It told him so much more than he wanted to know.

  Mercy took another drink of her water, set it down, and pushed her food away, catching his gaze once more. It was time.

  He glanced with distaste at his untouched food, then pushed backward a few inches from the table. “Tedi, your mother and I need to talk to you about something.”

  She stopped eating, and the liveliness of her expression grew serious. “Okay.” She picked up her lemonade glass and took a swallow, then set it down quietly. “What is it, Dad?”

  “I’m going to Cox South in Springfield for a test this afternoon.”

  Her expression didn’t change. “Are you sick?”

  “I guess so. The doctors tell me I am. I’ve got hepatitis B, and it’s affecting my liver. They’re going to do a biopsy.”

  Tedi’s eyes widened a fraction. “They think you’ve got cancer?”

  “Yes.” He looked at Mercy, and she reached out and laid a hand on his arm. Comforted by the gesture, he continued. “After the biopsy, they’ll probably want to keep me in the hospital a couple of days and do more tests to see if the cancer has spread.”

  This time she didn’t answer right away, and he wanted to weep at the change in her eyes, the sudden tension that froze her facial muscles, at the careful breaths she had suddenly begun to take.

  “Can we come and see you there?” Her voice was softer.

  “I’d love to see you, but it’s the middle of the week.”

  “I can get away tomorrow.” Mercy’s mellow voice washed over him in a wave of concern. “We’ll come as soon as school’s out.”

  For the first time in months…no, in years…he felt as if he actually had family who cared for him. He was becoming adept at battling sudden tears. He swallowed hard and prayed that he could make this as easy as possible for Tedi.

  “Are you scared, Dad?” Tedi asked.

  He had to be honest. “Yes, but I don’t want you to worry.”

  “I’m not going to worry. I’m just going to pray. You are praying, aren’t you, Dad?”

  “Yes.” He smiled. If only he had her faith. “I’ve done a lot of praying.”

  “We will be, too,” Mercy said. She gave his arm a final squeeze and released it. “And we’ll bring you home from the hospital when it’s time.”

  He stared at her in silence for a moment. “You don’t have to do that, Mercy. Joseph Jordan is going to drive me there, and he offered to come and get me—”

  “Would you rather have your pastor take you home from the hospital, or your daughter?”

  He stared into Mercy’s dark eyes, so much like Tedi’s, filled with compassion, and he wanted to hug her. “My daughter, of course.”

  She smiled. “Then stop arguing.” The door opened, and six people walked into Little Mary’s Barbecue. Mercy glanced at her watch. “We’d better get out of here before the noon crowd descends.”

  As Theodore paid the bill and walked out with Mercy and Tedi, he felt a mixture of joy and regret. After all this time, his relationship with his family—with his daughter—seemed to be going so well. What would happen now?

  Lukas stood staring out the front E.R. window at the cold shoreline of the Lake of the Ozarks. He had received the news just a few moments ago that Mr. Bennett had been taken immediately into cath lab when he arrived in Jefferson City. He’d had quadruple bypass and was doing well in the intensive care unit. The nurse who passed on the information was not amused when Lukas asked about the rest of the family. Apparently the reunion was now being held in the ICU waiting room.

  Lukas couldn’t prevent the second-guessing that always accompanied a case like this. Should he have tried harder to convince Mr. Bennett to stay yesterday? Could he have done more when the man returned with a full-blown MI this morning?

  Outside, an icy wind rippled the water into tiny waves that splashed against the rocks and brown grass along the shore. He felt it spit at him through the cracks of the poorly fitted windows. He felt it in his heart. Some days were like that, when none of the news was good, when no one seemed willing to listen to medical advice. At least Mr. Bennett was still alive.

  Lukas turned back toward his desk and saw Carmen watching him surreptitiously. She looked away and pounded a few keys at her computer while he sat down and picked up a chart. Then she stopped and glanced at him again. Finally he turned his swivel chair in her direction. “What is it?”

  She slumped and looked away, her gray dark-lashed eyes brooding. She shook her head and sighed, then looked back at him. She glanced around the room and out into the hallway, then rolled her office chair closer to his desk and leaned forward. “Dr. Bower, I didn’t know they were doing all that stuff to you.” She spoke softly, and it was apparent she didn’t want anyone to overhear her.

  For a moment his thoughts were so far away, he didn’t realize what she was talking about.

  “I mean, I knew about the surgical jelly—but I didn’t do it! I didn’t know they were cutting your slacks and ruining your clothes, and I did
n’t know about all the other stuff until I heard them laughing about it in the break room.”

  “They?” Was there a practical joke committee at this hospital? “Carmen, was it more than one person?”

  “No, but everybody knew about it.”

  “Who was it?”

  She glanced away, pressing her lips together uncertainly.

  “Was it Quinn?” Lukas asked.

  She blinked in surprise. “Quinn? No. He hangs around here all the time, and everybody wishes he’d leave. Nobody ever listens to him anymore.”

  “So who chopped the legs off my slacks, and why are you covering for them?”

  “Because until you came storming in here spouting fire about it, I didn’t realize he’d done all that damage.”

  “It was a he?” Aha, a clue! There weren’t that many male nurses or techs in this hospital.

  Carmen put her hand over her mouth and rolled her eyes. “Okay, fine, it was Brandon Glass. You know, the night tech in lab who does double duty in X-ray.”

  Oh, yes, Lukas knew the guy. He was the one Tex called Godzilla. He was the one who always griped when he got too busy. Somehow this surprised Lukas. Brandon didn’t strike him as the kind of person to be a practical joker—he had no sense of humor.

  “Don’t take it personally, Dr. Bower. He did the same thing to Dr. Moss.”

  “And I heard from Tex that Dr. Moss handled the situation much more graciously than I did.”

  Carmen rolled her eyes. “Dr. Moss had a bad habit of handling everything, if you know what I mean.”

  Lukas tried not to react, but he could feel the heat of embarrassment flush his neck.

  Carmen shook her head. “Poor Tex. Everybody in the hospital but her knows Dr. Moss is a lech.”

  A lech. Yes, that was a good word for what Lukas had witnessed the other night.

  “You know, a groper. He was always ‘accidentally’ putting his hands where they shouldn’t be, and if someone complained, he apologized and acted all innocent and everything or, even worse, tried to make them feel sorry for him because his wife died last year and he had ‘special needs.’ What a loser. I wasn’t around him much, because he left a couple of days after I started working here, but I know the type. He was probably just too scared to try anything with Tex. She was the only one who was surprised when that patient complained.” Carmen made a wry face. “Tex is a great paramedic, but she doesn’t know squat about men.” She paused, then added, “Except with Quinn. She got his number real quick. She never liked him.”

  “He’s not a groper, too, is he?”

  “Worse than that.” Carmen glanced around at the still-empty emergency department, then rolled her chair closer to Lukas’s desk and lowered her voice further. “You know that night you had to run the code on Marla Moore? Well, Quinn was making a telephone call—right in the middle of all that! What a jerk! Like human life didn’t mean diddly to him. And then after Marla dies he comes out acting all upset and—”

  “He was on the phone!” Lukas came halfway out of his chair. “We had a patient dying, and Quinn walked out and left us to make a telephone call?”

  Carmen crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s right. That shows you what kind of a paramedic he is. I guess I should’ve said something to you about it then.”

  “Who was he talking to? What did he say?” Lukas sat back down in his chair, but he’d lost all interest in keeping his voice down.

  “Well, I was pretty preoccupied at the time, but I remember hearing him call the person’s name…something like Raymond or…no, that’s not it. Maybe it was Raynell. No, wait a minute…it was Ramey! That’s it, Ramey. Then he caught me staring at him, and he lowered his voice and I couldn’t hear anything else he said, and I had more important things to do, but I know I heard him say something like, ‘Ramey, it’s Quinn. I need you to do something for me.’ I’m not sure that’s exactly what he said, but something like that. And that was when he saw me. I’m sorry, Dr. Bower. I should have told somebody. Like I said, I was so busy I didn’t notice him much.”

  “Ramey,” Lukas said. “Where have I heard that name before?”

  Carmen shrugged as she rolled her chair back to her desk. “The only one I know of around here is Mrs. Ramey, who babysits my sister’s kids, and she’s in her sixties. Why would Quinn risk somebody’s life to call a babysitter?”

  Lukas no longer had any interest in confronting the practical joker. He wanted to confront Quinn. But first, there were others he needed to talk to.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Late Wednesday afternoon Theodore opened his eyes in the recovery room and saw a blurred vision of a man in scrubs. He blinked and raised his head, and recognized his gastroenterologist, Dr. Huffman, standing at his bedside.

  “Mr. Zimmerman, the biopsy was positive, as I’m sure you’ve already suspected.” The doctor’s words were sympathetic.

  Theodore pushed against the mattress and tried to sit up, but he still felt woozy.

  “No, lie still for a while longer. Relax. You’ll be with us a day or two. You don’t need to rush.”

  The man’s voice was kind, soothing. He obviously intended to be reassuring, but Theo felt no comfort. He’d already read the studies on advanced hepatocellular carcinoma.

  The doctor explained their plans for a metastatic workup the next morning. Theodore nodded, but he didn’t listen. He already knew the routine. In the morning he would have more tests to see if the cancer had spread. Between now and then he would have to combat his panic and fear. He would call his pastor. He would call his boss. He wanted to keep his thoughts at bay for as long as possible.

  “Do you ever pray with your patients?” he asked suddenly, interrupting Dr. Huffman’s descriptive monologue about the next day’s schedule.

  The doctor hesitated for a moment, obviously caught off guard by the interruption. Then he relaxed and smiled. “Yes, I do. Would you like me to pray for you, Mr.—”

  “Theodore. Please call me Theodore. And yes, I would like you to pray with me, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course.” Huffman was a young man, possibly in his middle thirties—young enough that his wide blue eyes betrayed a sympathetic heart, and a knowledge of what was to come. He reached out and touched Theo’s shoulder.

  Finally, as the doctor’s voice drifted through the room in peaceful prayer, Theodore felt the comfort. It was far more complete than human hands or heart could convey. There was no doubt about Who was in control.

  Wednesday night at seven o’clock Lukas picked up his jacket from the hastily made bed in the call room, pulled the remainder of his dinner from the tiny fridge beside the desk, and turned to leave. He didn’t get far. He found Tex standing just outside the open threshold, hands jammed into the pockets of her pea-green jacket, head hanging in obvious dejection.

  “Hi, Dr. Bower.” She slumped into the room, blond curlicues of hair falling across her face. Her nose was red, and her face was pale and pinched. Her green eyes were bright and moist.

  Lukas stared at her in surprise. “Tex? I thought this was your day off?”

  “Oh, I’m off, all right.” Sarcasm sharpened her husky voice. She wore an old, worn black sweat suit beneath her jacket, definitely not her work scrubs.

  “What’s wrong?” Lukas asked.

  She walked over and sank down onto the only chair in the room, then leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees, chin in her hands. “You got a minute?”

  “Sure.” He tossed his jacket and leftovers onto the bed and sank down beside them.

  “I got fired.” She tried, and failed, to make the words sound casual. Her voice wobbled.

  For a moment Lukas didn’t understand the news he was hearing, and he couldn’t reply. Fired? He must have misunderstood.

  She looked up at him and frowned. “Don’t tell me the news already reached you.”

  “Of course not. Did you say fired? Why? You’re the best nurse they have.”

  The statement seem
ed to mollify her, and some of the misery lifted from her expression. “I’m not a nurse, I’m a paramedic.”

  “You’re a doctor,” he said. “You graduated from med school, didn’t you?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Fat lot of good it’ll do me without a permanent license. Mr. Amos telephoned me this afternoon. The wimp didn’t even have the guts to meet with me face-to-face. I’m surprised he didn’t get somebody else to do the job for him.”

  “What did he say?”

  For a moment he thought she wasn’t going to answer. She straightened and leaned back in the chair and reached up to tug her fingers through her hair. “Somebody saw me with Hershel and complained.”

  “They saw you? Where?”

  “Remember when I went and met him for dinner the other evening? Well, we just happened to run into somebody from Herald, wouldn’t you know. She’s been in here a couple of times for migraines, and you know what a cesspool of gossip this place is. Everybody makes it their business to keep up on all the latest. So when she saw me, she let out a big gasp and stomped out of the restaurant. I guess…well…Hershel might’ve had his arm around me at the time.”

  And when didn’t Hershel have his arm around her? “And Mr. Amos heard about it.”

  “Of course,” Tex said bitterly. “I told Amos it was my business who I saw when I wasn’t at work. That went over like a lead balloon.”

  Lukas thought again about the conviction that had been growing within him about Hershel Moss. Granted, it was wrong to listen to hospital gossip—particularly since Lukas had learned from painful personal experience that the rumors were often started with malicious intent—but something about what Carmen said earlier rang true.

  “And he said…” Tex took a breath and blew out sharply, disturbing a few curls that had fallen into her face. “He said my bedside manner stunk.” Fresh tears misted her eyes but didn’t spill over.

  “I don’t believe that,” Lukas said. “How would the man know anything about your bedside manner? He never leaves his office. And besides, he wouldn’t use the word stunk.”