Hope for Tomorrow
Page 21
She wanted so desperately to feel the peace in her heart, the wholeness that had come to her after she’d begun to believe, to have faith. It was returning slowly, but something else was holding her back.
Please, Lord, restore my faith. Help me to believe in You again.
“Ma’am?”
The voice was so soft that Elena thought for a moment that she might have imagined it, that the wind had whispered through the naked branches of the trees, sounding so much like a young girl.
“Could you help me? Please?”
Elena followed the voice to the nearby cluster of trees and found a teenage girl shivering on the ground. Her jeans were dirty and ragged. She wore tennis shoes without socks. Her face was smudged, her hair slick with oil, looking as though she hadn’t had a bath in weeks. And she had to be at least nine months pregnant.
“We need to get you inside right away,” Elena said urgently as she positioned her arms under the girl’s to help her up.
“My water broke a couple of hours ago and I’ve been having contractions. A lot of them. I couldn’t walk any further.”
“Do you need assistance, Mrs. Rodriguez?”
Elena looked up to see who was offering to help.
It was Scrooge.
“Yes. Please.”
Mr. Innisk seemed to know exactly where extra wheelchairs were kept, and he ran inside to get one, returning moments later wheeling it toward Elena and the young girl. She was shivering. Her body temperature had to be plummeting.
Mr. Innisk took off his coat and draped it over the girl, who looked at him with expressionless eyes.
“Let’s get her up to the Birthing Unit,” Mr. Innisk said, moving quickly with the wheelchair, heading inside, then toward a bank of elevators. As if it had known they were coming and that they were in a hurry, the doors opened and Mr. Innisk pushed the wheelchair inside.
The girl winced in pain. “I’m scared. Help me. Please.”
Mr. Innisk frowned, and Elena was afraid he’d say something abrupt. Ask her what she was doing out in the freezing cold. Tell her that if she didn’t have insurance, they’d send her to some other hospital. But he didn’t.
“This is a good hospital,” he said. “We’ve got wonderful nurses to take care of you.”
“I can’t have this baby. I just can’t. It doesn’t matter if the nurses are good or not, I have no way to take care of it.”
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“Tracy. Tracy Givens.”
“Well, Tracy,” Mr. Innisk said, “let’s worry about all of that later.”
The elevator opened again and Mr. Innisk pushed her straight to the Birthing Unit, calling out orders and getting attention.
Fast.
Candace was there, reacting like the expert she was, and in no time at all they had Tracy in a room by herself, isolated from the rest of the women.
“I don’t have any money,” Tracy said, beginning to cry. “I don’t know where the baby’s father is. I haven’t seen my parents since my eighteenth birthday. If they knew I was here—”
“Would you like me to call your parents?” Elena asked. “I’m sure they’d—”
“No. Please don’t.”
“It’s okay, Tracy,” Mr. Innisk said. “You don’t have to see your parents or talk with them if you don’t want to.”
In between contractions, Tracy attempted to sniff back her tears. “If it hadn’t been so cold, I was going to deliver the baby myself and just leave her here at the hospital. You take care of babies when they’re abandoned like that, don’t you?”
“You’re not abandoning your baby,” Elena said. “You’re here in a warm hospital. We’re going to get you all cleaned up, and we’re going to make sure you have a healthy baby.”
“But I can’t keep her. I’d be a lousy mom, just like my mom.” She swiped her hand across her face to wipe away tears. “Can I give the baby up for adoption?”
“Is that what you want, Tracy?” Elena asked gently.
She nodded. “I can’t let my baby live on the street. Not like me.”
Dr. Carpenter came into the room, her hair a mass of black curls flying every which way. “Hi, Tracy. I’m Dr. Carpenter. I’m going to check you out and—”
“If I’m no longer needed, I’ll be on my way.” Frederick Innisk said, interrupting the doctor. “No need to return the coat.”
“Please don’t go,” Tracy said, looking up at Mr. Innisk. “Couldn’t you just wait a little longer?”
The hard lines on his face calmed as he resigned himself with a nod. “I’ll be right outside the door.”
“Thank you,” Elena said, following Mr. Innisk out to the hallway and taking hold of his hand, as if they were the best of friends, instead of sworn enemies. “I’m glad you were there for her.”
“You would have done okay without me.”
“She seems to trust you. She didn’t warm up to me the way she did you.”
“I have that affect on some people—not you, of course.” Then he actually winked. The Frederick Innisk, previously known as Scrooge, had winked at her.
Elena reached up and wrapped her fingers around the cross Cesar had given her, the cross his mother had believed in, and for the first time in days, she prayed, really and truly prayed.
Heavenly Father, I believe we’re in need of a miracle today. Amen.
“Hi, Elena.”
She spun around when she heard Ginger’s voice. She hadn’t seen Ginger since she had been released from the hospital early on Sunday and insisted Elena go to church with her; and for some reason, she looked more beautiful than she ever had before.
Steve had his arm tucked through Ginger’s, but he released her long enough to give Elena a hug.
“Mr. Innisk, I’d like you to meet Ginger and Steve Murphy. Steve works for the Deerford Fire Department.” Elena looked at Steve and Ginger. “Frederick Innisk is one of the board members here at Hope Haven.”
After the introductions were made and everyone shook hands, Ginger turned to Elena.
“We’ve been making the rounds, stopping by to see everyone who’s been so kind to us in the past few days, and we were on the way to see you next. We want you to be the first to know our good news.” Ginger’s smile brightened her face. “We’ve decided to adopt. It’s probably going to take forever, but—”
“I have a good friend,” Innisk said, powering right into the conversation, “who does a lot of pro bono adoption work. Perhaps I could introduce you to him.”
Steve frowned. “Why would you do that for us?”
“Because the good Lord moves in mysterious ways,” Elena stated, taking hold of her cross again and squeezing it tightly. Could Mr. Innisk be thinking the same thing she was, that there might be a baby available for adoption sooner than they could ever imagine?
Mr. Innisk paced back and forth for a moment or two, then stopped again in front of Steve and Ginger. “As it happens, there is a young woman in the hospital right this moment who’s about to give birth. She has said she’d like to put the baby up for adoption.”
Both Ginger and Steve stared at Mr. Innisk, too overwhelmed to say anything.
“Do you think you might be interested?”
A scream came from the birthing room, and Elena squeezed her cross even tighter.
Ginger looked at her husband and then smiled at Mr. Innisk. “Please, do whatever it is you have to do, and we’ll just wait here and put the decision in the Lord’s hands.”
Another scream came from Tracy’s room.
Without another word, Frederick Innisk punched a number on his cell phone.
And Ginger, Steve and Elena held hands and prayed.
“Heavenly Father, we thank You for the gift You have given us today. A beautiful baby girl.”
Pastor Tom stood with the proud adoptive-parents-to-be. Ginger and Steve cried, finding it hard to believe that they were finally blessed with a child, a miraculously healthy baby swaddled in pastel pink.
“In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”
About the Author
USA Today best-selling author Patti Berg began penning stories while in elementary school, when she wrote the script for a puppet show that she and her friends put on at a local hospital. Thirty years later, one of her dreams came true when the first of her many warm and lighthearted novels appeared in bookstores.
Scared of dogs until the age of fifty, Patti now goes out of her way to pet every dog she gets close to and would happily bring home all of the puppies in the pound if her less impulsive husband would only let her. He’s had less success keeping her from saying yes when family, friends and others ask her to volunteer. A past president, secretary and newsletter editor of the Sacramento Valley Rose chapter of Romance Writers of America as well as past president, Web site and conference coordinator for RWA’s Published Authors’ Special Interest Chapter, Patti is currently volunteering with the Ada County Idaho Sheriff’s Department.
She lives in southwestern Idaho with her husband of thirty-three years and a huggable Bernese mountain dog named Barkley.
Read on for a sneak peek of the next exciting and heartfelt book in Stories from Hope Haven.
Available through Guideposts’ direct mail program by calling Customer Service at (800) 932–2145.
Strength IN Numbers
by
Charlotte Carter
JAMES BELL WALKED ACROSS THE PARKING LOT TO the entrance of Hope Haven Hospital, the chill morning air clouding his breath. The Lord had blessed this early December morning, as the sun was just beginning to rise into the beautiful clear sky. The cold front moving in from Canada nipped at his cheeks, so he picked up the pace with each step he took. As a registered nurse, he was eager to do his bit to help others heal their bodies as well as their spirits.
The automatic door swished open and the warm air struck him.
James took the stairs to the staff lounge and locker room on the third floor. Inside the lounge, the bulletin board was draped with silver garland for the holidays. Various notices were posted, most of them old and faded.
He spotted an envelope in his employee mailbox. Shrugging out of his jacket, he opened the envelope and read a memo addressed to all employees.
Due to a continuing financial shortfall, salaries of all Hope Haven Hospital employees will be reduced by ten percent (10%), effective January 1.
The administration regrets the necessity…
James’s knees went weak. His mouth dropped open, and his heart sank to his stomach, turning into a painful knot.
He’d known for some time that the hospital was struggling financially, but he’d thought the problem had been solved. He hadn’t imagined the hospital CEO Albert Varner would take such a drastic step.
A 10 percent cut in salary meant James would earn several thousand dollars less per year to support his two teenage sons and wife. Fern suffered from multiple sclerosis. Their insurance didn’t cover all the necessary medications for her MS, and the excess came out of their pockets.
In time, that expense was likely to grow.
Same thing with his boys, Gideon and Nelson. Each year their expenses for clothes, cell phones and school activities increased. Sometimes exponentially.
A 10 percent cut would be disastrous.
What would he do?
His mind in a fog and a sick feeling in his stomach, he went into the locker room and changed into green hospital scrubs. He left and slowly descended the stairs to the second floor to the General Medicine and Surgery Units. Still a half hour until his shift officially started, he was in no rush to get to work.
The quiet of early morning on the nursing floor would soon be replaced by the hurried footsteps of doctors and technicians coming and going, meds being administered and patients leaning on their call buttons.
A pair of poinsettia plants sat on the counter of the nurses’ station, supplied by the families of grateful patients.
Anabelle Scott and Candace Crenshaw, his nursing colleagues, were behind the counter, their expressions as grim as he felt.
“You look like you heard the bad news too,” James said.
Anabelle, the nurse supervisor for Cardiac Care, gave him a sympathetic smile. “Not exactly good news right before Christmas, is it? Particularly for those of you with young families.”
Candace, who worked in the Birthing Unit, shook her head. “I’ve already bought most of the presents for Brooke and Howie.” Her forehead furrowed and she bit her lip. “Now I’m wondering if I should take some of them back.”
As a young widow and single mother, Candace was understandably worried about the impact of a salary cut on her family’s finances.
From force of habit, James checked the automated computer system to see how many patients he had—a pneumonia on oxygen and a hand surgery. He skimmed the rest. He really needed to pull himself together. His patients deserved his best efforts and all of his concentration.
“For months the hospital has been teetering on the brink of disaster,” Anabelle said, “and somehow Albert Varner has pulled us out. Maybe he’ll find another way again.”
James wasn’t all that optimistic. The news had really shaken him. Maybe that was because Fern was going through a rough patch with her MS and he was worried about her.
The stairwell door burst open and Elena Rodriguez, a nurse from the Intensive Care Unit, hurried across the floor to the nurses’ station, planting herself in front of the small group.
“What I want to know,” Elena started as she waved the letter, “is what we’re supposed to do.”
“That’s what we were just trying to figure out as well,” James said.
“And with Christmas right around the corner,” Candace added with a sigh.
“It’s just I’m so close to having enough for the trip to Spain.”
James rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. He knew Elena had said she’d been planning and saving for the trip for years, dreaming of the day when she could visit the ancestral land of her great-grandfather.
“Just yesterday I got a brochure about festivals in the Andalusia region, and I was trying to figure out the best time of year to go.” She pulled her lips back to a discouraged angle. “Now I don’t know if I’ll be able to go at all.”
Anabelle spoke up. “I’m afraid the pay cut will cause employees to look for work elsewhere. That could impact all of us.”
James exhaled, bent his head and studied the toes of his white work shoes. “Maybe we ought to do what we always do when things get tough—leave it in God’s hands and have faith everything will work out for the best.”
His co-workers murmured their agreement, though he still saw concern in their eyes.
As though a starting bell had been rung, the activity on the second floor picked up. Graveyard-shift nurses updated the day-shift nurses on patients, reviewed medications and added insights about the patients’ health and morale as needed.
The hospital loudspeaker paged doctors. Meal service carts rumbled through the hallway bringing breakfast to waiting patients.
James settled into the sudden change in pace as he checked in with patients from the previous day. This was what he did. He was good at his job. He’d learned as a medic in the first Gulf War that this was what he wanted to do with his life.
About nine o’clock, he received word a transfer patient from Springfield was being moved into his unit later in the morning. An amputee who had lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. The kid was only seventeen.
James’s heart broke for the youngster. Losing a limb was a tough adversity to handle for someone so young.
As the morning progressed, James made sure a room was ready for the new amputee patient. According to the computer system, the boy’s name was Theodore Townsend.
A soft ping announced the arrival of the elevator on the floor.
/>
The boy lay on a gurney being pushed by the hospital orderly, Becker. The boy’s mother held his hand while Dad stood stoically looking straight ahead. Both parents were simply dressed, the dad a muscular guy who looked like he might be a plumber or in the construction business.
“Room 207,” James told Becker.
The stocky orderly expertly rolled the gurney down the hallway and made the turn into the room.
James picked up the paperwork to make sure everything was in order.
“Hi, Theodore,” he said as he entered, flipping quickly through the printed pages.
“Ted,” the boy replied in a monosyllabic grunt.
“Okay, Ted, how’re you doing?”
“Great. I’m having a blast.” The young man’s sarcasm fell flat against the pain etched in his face and the fear visible in his hazel eyes.
James rested his hand on the young man’s shoulder for a moment, speaking in a low voice meant to both soothe and reassure. “I’m James, your nurse. We’ll get you settled in a minute, then you can get some rest.”
Ted’s eyes cut toward James, but Ted didn’t speak. His mother still had a death grip on her son’s hand, her complexion almost as white as her knuckles. Worry lined her face.
“Mr. and Mrs. Townsend, if you’d like to step outside, it’ll take me just a few minutes to make your son comfortable. Then you can come back in and visit.”
Having an injured child was probably harder on the parents than it was on the kid. Mothers, in particular, often didn’t want to leave their child’s bedside for even a few minutes.
“Come on, Cynthia.” Mr. Townsend hooked his hand through his wife’s arm. “I saw a waiting room down the hall. We can wait there.”
Bending down, Cynthia kissed her son’s cheek. “We’ll be right back, Teddy, I promise.”
“It’s okay, Mom. I’m not going anywhere.”
As the mother turned to leave, James saw tears welling in her eyes. Tough business, being a mom.
When the parents left, James and Becker positioned themselves to shift the boy onto the regular bed. Physically fit with good muscular development, the young man probably weighed about 170 pounds.