What the Heart Knows

by Margaret Daley

  Jared laid his hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “Thanks. If you see him, he needs medical help. Call the number on the flyer.”

  Kathleen rushed toward the back office. If only Mark were sitting in there waiting for her. God, please, please help my son. I have to find him. Get him some help before it’s too late.

  The door to the office was ajar. She knocked on it and waited, her whole body quivering. Her son was close. Only twenty minutes away at the most.

  “Yes?”

  Kathleen stepped into the office as a man who must be Vance glanced up from the paper he was writing on. “Have you seen this person?” Again she showed her son’s photo, the motion becoming second nature to her.

  “No, but I have it posted over there.” He waved his hand toward a bulletin board with some other people’s pictures tacked up on it.

  “He used the phone in here to call long distance twenty minutes ago.” Kathleen felt the clock ticking, each minute of delay taking her son further away from her.

  “Oh, that one. A lady just called about him. When I was coming back here to do some paperwork, someone darted out of my office and out the emergency exit at the end of the hallway. There wasn’t anything in here to take so I wasn’t—”

  “Thank you,” Kathleen cut in and spun about.

  She ran toward the back door, desperate not to waste anymore time. A beep sounded when she opened it and stepped out into the warm summer air. She scanned the area littered with several cans over-flowing with trash. The stench overpowered her. She covered her nose and mouth with her hand and moved toward the field behind the shelter. Light from a street lamp illuminated only a few feet into the weed-infested lot. The rest was pitch black, and she felt as though she had hit a dark barrier.

  Jared came up behind her. “Let’s check the area, and if we don’t find him, get some help from the police. He can’t be too far.”

  Kathleen thought of all the places he could hide in the dark and her desperation turned to panic. Taut with tension, she peered over her shoulder at Jared. “He’s out there. I can feel it.”

  Jared took her hand. “Then we’ll find him—together.”

  Lord, please give me my son back. The words whispered through her mind and peace allayed her fears, as though God had laid his hands upon her shoulders. “Together.”

  Kathleen walked toward the empty lot behind the shelter and beyond, beginning to make out shapes and outlines as her eyes adjusted to the dark. Some homeless people were settling down for the night. Was Mark among them?

  With Jared by her side, she moved toward the cluster of people. An old man stared at them approaching, but he didn’t leave. He sat on a log, drinking from a tin cup. She remembered the purse snatcher earlier and quaked.

  “Do you want the police to do this?” Jared whispered into her ear.

  “No police. Mark’s here. That’ll scare him off for sure.” She strode past the man on the log, the hairs on her nape tingling.

  Several people were curled on the ground, sleeping. One was inside a large cardboard box. Then Kathleen caught sight of a figure about her son’s height and shape sitting against a utility pole. In the dark she couldn’t tell if it was Mark or if the person was sleeping or watching her. With breath held she started toward the pole.

  The person’s chin rested on his chest, his shoulders hunched as Mark’s often were. Ten feet away. Five. The pounding of her heart drowned out all other sounds, its roar echoing through her mind like a freight train barreling down the tracks out of control.

  Chapter Eight

  “Mark?”

  The person, who on closer inspection was a male, didn’t move. She could tell from what little moonlight there was that he wore dark pants—possibly jeans—and a dark shirt—like her son. Was he asleep? Was he—she refused to think beyond that.

  “Mark,” she said in a strong voice that carried through the litter-cluttered lot.

  The figure sitting against the pole stirred, slowly lifting his head and regarding her emotionlessly. Even though he was still cast in the shadows of night, Kathleen knew it was Mark. She rushed forward the few remaining feet and knelt beside him.

  “Mark, it’s Mom.” She grasped his arm. “Are you all right?”

  Mark didn’t jerk away; he didn’t do anything. He just sat there motionless, as though frozen in time.

  “Mark?” All her fear and panic laced that one word. Why wouldn’t he say something? She took hold of his other arm, commanding his full attention, her face thrust close to his. “Are you hurt?” She searched the dark shadows cast over his features for any sign her son was even hearing her.

  An eerie silence prevailed. Kathleen glanced back at Jared. “What’s wrong? He’s not responding.”

  Jared squatted on the other side of Mark. “Let’s get him to the car.”

  At the sound of Jared’s voice, Mark whipped his head around and stared at him. “No hospital.”

  “Honey, we just want to take you back to Crystal Springs. You don’t belong here.”

  Mark jerked his head back toward her. “No hospital. They will find me there.”

  The frantic desperation in her son’s voice eroded her composure she had so painstakingly erected. “I’ll keep you safe, but you need to come with us.” With a shudder Kathleen scanned the area, the darkness looming menacingly before her. “This place isn’t safe for you.”

  “Not safe?”

  “No, Mark. My car is over there. You will be safe in it,” Jared said, slowly placing his hand on the boy’s arm, his voice pitched low, soothing.

  “I have to be safe. I can’t let them get me.”

  “They won’t, honey. I won’t let them.” Kathleen rose, coaxing her son to stand with Jared’s assistance.

  “Mom?”

  “Yes, honey.”

  “Mom?” he asked again, as though he wasn’t sure she was his mother.

  The thought that her son couldn’t recognize her sent a stab of pain through her heart that nearly doubled her over. With a hidden well of strength, she supported his lanky frame as they started for Jared’s car. “Mark, you are safe now.” She repeated that sentence the whole way to the blue sedan, parked under a street lamp.

  The light illuminated her son’s unkempt appearance. From the odors emanating from Mark, Kathleen didn’t think he had washed since he’d left home three days before. Even his hands were crusted with grime, dirt under his fingernails. His messy hair looked as if he had raked his hand repeatedly through it or torn at it.

  Jared opened the back door and with his help Mark climbed into the car. Kathleen followed, sitting next to her son, afraid to take her eyes off him in case he disappeared again. She slid her arm about him and he laid his head on her shoulder, seemingly calmed by her continual reassurances.

  After Jared started the engine and pulled out onto the street, he said, “I’ll swing by the hotel and get our things. Will you be okay in the car by yourself?”

  “I think so,” she answered, not really sure if she would be. She didn’t know what to expect from her son anymore. But that didn’t matter right now. She handed Jared her room key.

  “I’ll be quick.” Jared parked in front of the hotel and hurried into the lobby.

  Kathleen noticed he took his keys with him and locked the doors before leaving. Rubbing her hand up and down Mark’s arm, she murmured over and over in a pacifying voice, “You’re safe, Mark. No one will hurt you.”

  Life continued around her, people passing the car to go into the hotel or on down the street, the bellman opening a taxi door for a woman. Ordinary, everyday activities while she held her son and tried not to breathe too deeply of his rank scent of day-old sweat and something else she didn’t want to identify. She didn’t want to think what he had been doing for the past few days. She wished she could blank her mind, but emotions churned inside her. She rapidly moved from relief at finding Mark to fear of what the future would bring. Something was terribly wrong with her son, and she and Jared had al
ready agreed that Mark would go to a psychiatric hospital in Crystal Springs.

  She thought of her prayer earlier to the Lord. Thank You, heavenly Father, for bringing Mark back to me. Now what do I do?

  Kathleen stared out the window at the beautiful July day, the sun bright, the sky a clear, light blue. Looking at the landscape she felt a sense of serenity. Until she remembered. Behind her lay her son in a hospital bed, sedated after nearly tearing the place apart when he realized he was at a hospital.

  She closed her eyes and could still see the picture of Mark, yelling and flailing his arms as he tried to escape. Three orderlies had been needed to subdue him. She was still amazed she and Jared had been able to get him into the building before he had come fully awake and aware of his surroundings. If not, she shuddered to think what he would have done or where he would have fled in the parking lot.

  A hand settled on her shoulder and kneaded her tight corded muscles. Jared. She knew his touch, had become so used to it these past few days while waiting to see what was wrong with Mark. She wanted to lean back against his strength but instead forced herself to turn toward Jared. She had to stop depending so much on him.

  “Where’s Dr. Martins? Is he through?”

  “Yes. I told him I would like to talk to you first.”

  “Oh, that doesn’t sound good at all. Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be something simple, but—” She couldn’t finish her sentence. Her throat closed as though a fist was jammed in it.

  “Let’s sit down.” Jared gestured toward the two-seated couch.

  “Now, you really have me worried.” She attempted a light tone that failed miserably.

  After sitting next to her, Jared captured her hands within his. She couldn’t quell the trembling that was fast spreading throughout her body. She glimpsed her son lying for the time being peacefully in the bed and wished she could take his pain away, wished she could trade places with him.

  Licking her dry lips, she asked, “What’s wrong?”

  Jared took a deep breath as though arming himself before telling her. Her pulse quickened, her chest expanding with an incredible pressure.

  “Kathleen, Dr. Martins has confirmed what I suspected. He feels Mark is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.”

  For a moment Kathleen was sure she hadn’t heard right. Her mind went blank. The room tilted. She closed her eyes and still her world spun like a kaleidoscope gone crazy.

  “Kathleen?”

  Jared’s worried voice pierced through her fog, pulling her back. The tightness about her chest constricted, making each breath she dragged in painful.

  “Kathleen, I’m sorry. The changes you’ve seen in him over the past six or eight months plus all the tests we ran to rule out other health concerns lead us to believe he has schizophrenia.”

  The last word echoed through her mind, demanding she pull herself together. She opened her eyes and saw the concern etched in Jared’s features, the compassion that darkened his blue gaze. A fragile dam held her emotions in check.

  “I wish I could tell you something better, but he had a psychotic episode at Laura’s when he kicked in the TV. His hallucinations then and later support that diagnosis. As you know these past few days we ran many tests to rule out other causes for that kind of behavior and they came up negative.”

  “He isn’t on drugs?”

  “No, and there is no brain tumor or metabolic disturbances.”

  “Schizophrenia,” she said slowly, as though Jared had pronounced a death sentence for her son. Emotions held at bay suddenly flooded her, stealing her breath, her thoughts.

  She yanked her hands from his grasp and hugged her arms to her, a chilling cold permeating itself deep into her bones. It just wasn’t possible. Not her son. This can’t be happening. She began to shake, her teeth chattering as though a north wind swirled through the room.

  Jared slipped his arm about her shoulders and drew her against him. “Kathleen, in the past years there have been new medicines developed that are so much better than the old ones. A person with schizophrenia can live a relatively normal life, especially since I think we caught Mark’s early. The earlier the better. We can get him the help he needs. Through the right medicine and psychotherapy he will be all right.”

  Kathleen heard Jared’s words as though he were talking to her through a long tunnel. One part of her brain registered what he was saying, the other part observed the scene as a bystander would, detached, unemotional. She couldn’t think of anything to say. The process of even thinking seemed too much at the moment.

  Jared’s other arm enclosed her in a tight cocoon of comfort. Laying her head on his chest, she listened to his steady heartbeat, his familiar scent a balm that sought to soothe her shredded nerves.

  But nothing really helped for long. Slowly the reality of the situation gripped her and tears rose from the depths of her sorrow to flow. “Why is this happening? I don’t understand.”

  “We will get through this, Kathleen. I promise.”

  The vehemence in his voice reached through the haze that clouded her mind. She straightened and looked at him through the blur of tears. In that moment she realized she cared for this man a great deal, too much to handle on top of everything else. She closed her eyes, needing to block the sight of his endearing features. Tears leaked out.

  The soft brush of his fingers under her eyes brought more tears to her. His kindness, his tenderness unraveled her composure further.

  “You are not alone,” Jared murmured and drew her against the cushion of his shoulder. “I am here. Your family, but most importantly God is with you.”

  She remembered her ardent prayers to the Lord. Yes, she had found her son, but why was he suffering so much? What kind of God caused this to happen to His children? “I don’t understand, Jared, how God can to do this to Mark. He was—is a good kid.”

  “Sometimes we have to put our faith in God even when we don’t understand the reasons behind what happened.”

  “A test of our faith?” Through the sheen of tears Kathleen watched her son sleeping on the bed. Her heart broke at the sight. When Mark was sedated, he was peaceful. But when he was awake, the demons returned to plague him.

  “Possibly. Jesus is our salvation. That is a promise from the Lord. Other things are negotiable.”

  She recalled the peace she’d felt after her prayer in Tulsa. Could she turn her life totally over to the Lord? Could she turn Mark’s life over to Him? She wasn’t sure that was possible anymore.

  “Somehow I feel I’ve let my son down, that I could have stopped all this from happening. Am I being punished? Is that why my son is suffering? Because of me?”

  “The Lord doesn’t work that way and you can’t control everything and everyone around you.”

  Kathleen pulled back, twisting so she could face Jared. “You really feel that way?”

  He nodded, grasping her hands and holding them between them. “You are a good mother who has stood by her son through some rough times. There are simply some things that are out of our control. We can’t be responsible for the actions of others, only ourselves.”

  “Then why do you blame yourself for your wife’s death?”

  Jared blinked, surprise registering on his face. He opened his mouth to say something but snapped it closed. He glanced away. A myriad of emotions flickered across his features with finally a wounded look settling in his eyes.

  “She had the drinking problem. She chose to drive while under the influence.”

  His eyelids slid closed. Drawing in a deep breath, he released it slowly, a ragged sound. “I’m the one who pushed her over the edge that day she drove.”

  Kathleen felt his tension in his tight grip, the lines of anguish carved into his expression, the quick rise and fall of his chest. “How?”

  When he looked at her again, his eyes were a stormy blue, his mouth pinched into a frown. “Because I took the keys to her car away. Because I treated her as a child, telling her she couldn’t drive until
she stopped drinking. I had reached the end of my patience and didn’t know what else to do. She had come home with the smell of alcohol on her breath and wanted to take the kids out for dinner. I told her no and stormed from the room. I couldn’t stay in the same room with her. My anger at her was so strong that day. I should have been able to control that, my reaction to her problem.” He shivered as though he were reliving every awful minute of that day.

  “You did what you had to do.” She sandwiched his hands between hers.

  “I took the children out back while I worked in the garden. I needed to do something constructive before I exploded. I didn’t think about the spare set of keys we had in my desk drawer. When I heard the car starting, I ran to the driveway, but I was too late to stop her. She screeched out of there, knocking over a neighbor’s trash can across the street. Alice was doing the very thing I didn’t want her to do and it was all my fault. The last words we exchanged were angry, spiteful ones.” He clamped his mouth shut, the hard set of his jaw attesting to the anguish he was re-experiencing.

  “You aren’t responsible for Alice driving the car. She chose to do that. Just as she chose to drink in the first place. You can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

  “I should have been able to do something—anything. I’m a doctor. My wife was ill.”

  “You did. You supported her for years while she drank. You encouraged her to get help. You stood by her when a lot of people wouldn’t have.”

  “There were times I just wanted out and wished I was someplace else.” He cradled his head in his hands. “But I never wanted her to die.”

  His raspy voice penetrated her own pain. Like her, he was hurting inside. She touched his arm and felt the tensing of his muscles beneath her fingertips. “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Because of my actions, my children don’t have a mother.”

  “That’s not true. She was the one making the choices, not you. You need to take to heart your own advice.”

  He plowed his hands through his hair and shot to his feet. “I need to go. I’ll be back later to check on Mark.”