Running Lean

by Diana L. Sharples

  She didn’t respond to his touch or voice, even when he rolled her onto her back and fumbled with her helmet latch. “Stacey, come on. Don’t do this, please. Wake up.”

  He dropped the helmet. Stacey’s head lolled to an awkward angle. Her eyes remained shut while her mouth hung open.

  “Oh, God.”

  Calvin thrust his arms under her shoulders and knees then struggled to his feet. He fast-walked toward the ER doors. A shocking thought flashed through his mind—Stacey weighed about the same as one of his little brothers.

  The automatic doors whooshed open.

  “Help! Somebody help!”

  A nurse jumped up from her station, spilling papers onto the floor.

  “ER admitting area, stat,” someone yelled.

  A woman’s face appeared in front of Calvin. “What happened?”

  “Sh-she passed out. And she’s bleeding bad. Her leg.”

  Metallic sounds approached as someone hurried over with a gurney. A man helped Calvin place Stacey on top of the white sheets; her face almost matched the color of the linens. A dark-uniformed EMT pressed his fingers hard into Stacey’s throat.

  “No pulse. Code blue. Cardiac arrest. Get her inside.”

  Calvin felt his pulse quicken. “What? What did you say?”

  Someone grabbed his arm as others pushed the gurney away. Calvin tried to shove the hand off his bicep and follow. The grip turned hard.

  “They’ll take care of her. But right now I need to talk to you.”

  Calvin jerked his arm away, but another nurse joined the first, creating a small barrier.

  “Calm down. The best way to help your friend right now is to give us information so we know how to help her.”

  Calvin pointed at the double doors closing behind Stacey’s gurney. “What’s that mean, code blue, cardiac arrest?”

  “It means she’s in serious trouble.”

  “But she-she was fine. She gashed her leg open. She was walking just—” The room began closing in, trying to choke him.

  “All right. Take some deep breaths. Come into the office and sit down.”

  Gasping, Calvin tried to make sense of what he’d heard. Cardiac arrest. Her heart stopped beating? It had to be a mistake.

  A nurse led him toward an office cubicle, her hand looped around his elbow. “You brought her here on a motorcycle?”

  “Huh?”

  She gave him a small smile. “You’re wearing a helmet. Sit down. Tell me what happened. Did you have an accident?”

  Calvin felt the arm of a chair nudge the back of his leg. He plunked into the seat then fumbled with his helmet strap.

  “Did you have a motorcycle accident?” the nurse asked again, sitting down on the other side of a desk.

  “No. Sh-she was fine, like, two minutes ago. But her leg was bleeding.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Stacey Varnell.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Uh, sixteen.”

  This was crazy. Impossible. How could she walk or ride the bike if—?

  “Has she been drinking or taking any drugs? The more truthful you are, the better the doctors can help her.”

  Calvin settled back into the chair and shook his head. “No. I-I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so? It’s very important that you tell me. If she’s overdosing on something, we need to know.”

  He couldn’t catch his breath. Where had she been? Could she have been doing drugs or something with Zoe? “I don’t know what she did today. But she doesn’t take drugs or drink.”

  “What’s your relationship with her?”

  “B-boyfriend.” Ex. Doesn’t matter.

  “But you don’t know what she did today?”

  Calvin wanted to pull his hair out. “I don’t know! She called me to come get her.” He looked at the partition and flopped his hand down on top of the desk. “She’s anorexic. And she hurt her leg somehow. That’s all I know.”

  The woman clasped her hands on the desk, more frustrated than compassionate. “Anorexia can result in heart failure.”

  Calvin slapped the arms of the chair and bolted from his seat. He ran toward the ER doors, ignoring the people who yelled at him to stop. He hit the door with his shoulder; it rattled but wouldn’t open. On the wall was a keypad. The system was designed to keep him out.

  “Young man, you have to calm down! None of this is going to help her.”

  At least three women had their hands on him. Other people in the waiting room stared. A large man even rose from a chair and took a step toward him.

  “All right! All right. I’m calm. I just need to know what’s happening in there.”

  “Sweetie?” Another woman wearing scrubs demanded his attention. “I know this isn’t easy. But if you go back and sit down, I’ll try to find out what’s going on.”

  Defeated, Calvin followed the original nurse back to the little office. He plopped down in the chair and answered all of her questions, saying “I don’t know” to many of them. Around the time they were both getting frustrated again, he gave the woman Stacey’s home phone number and waited while she took it to someone else. Finally, she directed him to the waiting area and promised that a nurse or doctor would talk to him soon.

  Another nurse found him in the waiting room and sat beside him. Calvin sucked in his lips and bounced his knee, waiting for her news.

  She let out a slight laugh. “Honey, you really need to relax. I know you’re worried, but you’re starting to worry me.” Her face then turned serious. “Now, listen. She was in cardiac arrest, but she’s got good doctors working with her. I’m sure she’ll be okay.”

  “Cardiac—But she’s—” He remembered something, and tugged his hair as he spoke it. “Sh-she had surgery on her heart, when she was a baby. But she’s supposed to be fine now.”

  The nurse’s eyebrows shot up briefly. “I’ll go relay that to the doctor. Just you sit tight here, and someone will come talk to you when they’ve got more news.”

  She patted his knee, and Calvin nodded. Nothing else he could do.

  For ten agonizing minutes he stared at a talking head on television, but ringing in his ears kept him from comprehending what was said. A commercial showed some guy riding a motorcycle, and Calvin remembered his own bike lying in the driveway where a car could run over it. He dragged himself to the admitting desk and spoke, not caring if the person behind the desk was paying attention. “I’m going outside for a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  Someone had picked his bike up and moved it to the curb. Calvin straddled the seat and brought his foot down on the kick-start lever. It wouldn’t budge. He tried again. The lever seemed frozen in place. He’d bust it if he put all his weight on it.

  “What the—?”

  Calvin popped open the gas cap and shook the bike while peering into the dark hole. Liquid sloshed inside.

  Stupid. Being out of fuel wouldn’t cause the kick-start lever to freeze anyway.

  But the frozen lever could mean the engine had seized.

  Calvin slowly replaced the gas cap, his own body and movements seeming far away. The Yamaha was dead. He’d pushed it too hard while it was running lean and he shouldn’t have been riding it at all.

  He looked around the parking lot, breathed in night air that smelled like diesel fuel and honeysuckle combined. Sickening. He wasn’t sleeping in his bed having a cold medicine-induced dream. He was in Dawson. Awake, emotionally and physically wrecked, with a dead bike. And Stacey …

  A siren wailed, getting louder. In a moment the ambulance passed him and went under the overhang. Calvin watched, numb, as EMTs rushed around to move someone inside.

  No one noticed him sitting there on his lifeless motorcycle with tears running down his face. Not that they would care even if they looked. There were more important things than a stupid old bike. People inside were fighting for their lives. People like Stacey.

  Her parents arrived and rushed past Calvin without lo
oking at him. Sure, the parents were sent immediately into the ER to see what was going on, but he had to wait. He was just the lowly boyfriend.

  He should call his own parents. What time was it? Not that it mattered; they’d be furious no matter what. Exhaustion weighed on Calvin as he got up. He found a pay phone in a hallway around the corner.

  “Where are you?” Dad growled as soon as he heard Calvin’s voice. “We trusted you to stay—”

  Calvin leaned into the little phone cubby and spoke softly. “I’m sorry. I’m at a hospital in Dawson.”

  “What?”

  “I’m fine. It’s Stacey. She’s really sick. They said …” He sniffed. “They said she had a heart attack.”

  “Calv—”

  Words tumbled out, and with them more tears. “They won’t let me see her. I don’t know what’s going on. I brought her here because she cut her leg real bad. But she fell on the sidewalk, and-and—”

  “Slow down, son.”

  “Dad? Dad. Can you come here? I, um, I don’t have any way to get home.”

  A crackling noise came over the line. “Calvin? What’s going on?” his mother asked. She’d picked up the extension.

  He ran through the whole story and was choked up again when he finished. He leaned his forehead against the wall, snuffling, the phone receiver pressed hard to his ear.

  “Calvin?” Mom said. “Your father is on his way out the door. He’ll be there soon. It’s okay.”

  “No, it isn’t. She could be dying. If her heart stopped—”

  “Listen to me, baby. A terrible thing has happened, but you need to believe that God is in control. God is with her.”

  He closed his burning eyes while she went on.

  “When we got home from church, I felt like the Lord was calling me to pray and pray and pray. And that’s what you ought to be doing right now. While you’re waiting for your father, be praying for Stacey.”

  “Okay,” he muttered.

  “Do it, Calvin.”

  “I will.”

  “Stacey’s right where she needs to be, with all those doctors, because God got the two of you there. Don’t you doubt that for a second.”

  Calvin blinked and his breath stalled. “Yes, ma’am,” he heard himself say.

  “You hang in there. I’m looking out the window now, and your daddy’s backed the truck out to the street. He’s on his way. He’ll be there soon.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s going to be all right, baby.”

  “Yeah.” He sniffed. “Okay.” Calvin hung up the pay phone.

  God is in control …

  Had God really arranged it so that he was able to find Stacey in time? The Harley rider on the Interstate who stayed with him—had that guy been responding to what Mom called a divine nudge?

  Calvin rocked his head back and forth slowly. He didn’t know. He’d never witnessed a miracle, never felt that kind of nudge. Yet if someone asked him if he believed in miracles, he’d say yes, absolutely.

  What would have happened if Stacey had passed out before he found her? Or while they were still on the bike? And the Yamaha had made it to the hospital. Just that far.

  Calvin squeezed his eyes shut, pinched the bridge of his clogged nose. God … I want to believe! Help me to believe. I—I can’t do anything else. I’m done. I don’t know what else to do. Calvin pressed his fingers against his eyes to block the renewed flood of tears. I have to trust you, because I don’t have anything left. Nothing but this prayer.

  Calvin scrubbed his face with his hands and shuffled back to his seat in the waiting area. Several other people sat staring into space, waiting like him, not talking to each other. Dull minds focused on one thing: a hospital staff person walking into the room and calling their name. Calvin slouched way down and stretched his legs out. He closed his eyes, and despite all the worry and the grief, his body grew heavy and relaxed.

  “Hey, buddy.” Someone patted his knee. Calvin jolted to alertness and his gaze darted around the room.

  Dad sat next to him. “What’s happening?”

  Calvin pulled himself up in the chair and rubbed his eyes. “Still waiting,” he muttered.

  “I got here quick as I could. There are two hospitals in Dawson. I went to the other one first.”

  Calvin frowned. How long had he been sleeping?

  A nurse came through the ER doors, carrying a clipboard. “Hildebrandt family? Varnell family?”

  With a shock, Calvin realized he’d heard Stacey’s last name called before, eking into his feeble thoughts and dreams. Stupid. He’d expected them to call Greenlee. He untangled his legs from themselves and got to his feet. Dad rose with him. They walked to the nurse, who directed the other family through the ER doors first, with a promise to be right with them. She touched Calvin’s arm to keep him from following. “Wait. Varnell? They’ve moved the patient to a room in the critical care unit. You can go upstairs to the CCU waiting room, and they’ll give you more information there.”

  Calvin looked up at his father and let out a shuddering breath. “She’s alive.”

  Chapter 38

  Tubes and needles everywhere. And Daddy standing over her. Dim light cast deep shadows in the lines of his face, especially around his frown. Stacey thought she saw a tear roll down his cheek, but she couldn’t be sure. So hard to keep her eyes open.

  Stuff hurt. Like a truck had slammed into her chest. Yet the pain seemed far away, as if her consciousness was somehow separated from her body. A dream danced through her memory. Was it real? She couldn’t remember. The parking lot, Calvin, getting off the back of his bike. Then the pain. Had a car hit them?

  She didn’t want to remember, but she needed to know. “C—”

  “Try not to talk, baby.” Mom’s voice. “Just rest. Daddy and I are here.”

  “C … Ca … win.” Something in her mouth wouldn’t let her make the right sounds.

  “He’s in the waiting room,” Mom said.

  Stacey couldn’t see her mother, couldn’t move her head toward the direction of the voice.

  “He’s been here all night, him and his daddy.”

  “Wan … see … h-mm.”

  “He was in here a little while ago, before you woke up.”

  A warm touch on her shoulder, stroking her arm. Mom laughed a little. “I don’t think that boy is going anywhere else for a while. He’s so worried about you. But you’re going to be okay, baby. You’re going to be just fine.”

  But what happened?

  She ran the images through her mind again. The wind in her face, taking her breath away as she rode with Calvin. And then he stopped the bike and she tried to walk toward the bright windows. The pain came and dragged her down, tried to keep her from reaching the light. She had to get there … to the light brighter than any she had seen. Love was in the light, warming her and breathing life into her. A presence embraced her, flowed through her, lifted her.

  A voice came with the softness of a whisper but the power of a shout. Not yet. This is not the end for you, nor the life I want you to live.

  Machinery beeped. Tubes lay across her face and one went down her throat. She was in a bed again, and Mom spoke words she couldn’t understand.

  What? Take care of me? I want to go back.

  It couldn’t have been a dream.

  She recalled something else too. People rushing about barking orders, someone bouncing on her chest. Big paddles against her skin. A jolt that lifted her from the table.

  Oh, God! Oh, God! “Di … I die?”

  Daddy sniffed and looked away.

  Mom renewed her stroking. “They had to resuscitate you, baby. But you’re okay now. And we’re going to fix it so it never happens again.”

  So the part with the paddles was real. Vivid pictures played out behind her eyelids. She looked down on a skinny thing lying naked on the table. Bones everywhere. That couldn’t be her. Could it? How was it possible for her to see herself?

  How was it possible she h
adn’t been able to truly see herself before?

  “S-sorry.”

  “We love you, baby. We love you so much,” Mom cooed.

  “Okay.”

  Mom chuckled again. “Okay that we love you? Okay. I guess that’s okay.”

  It’d have to be. She didn’t have the strength for anything more.

  The murmured conversation outside her room was just loud enough for her to know her parents were talking to a doctor about what would happen next. One word stood out and planted itself in her mind. Charlotte.

  Mom came back in and patted her arm. “Hey, sweetie. You’re awake.”

  “Charlotte?”

  Her mother’s smile vanished. “Oh. Don’t you worry about that right now. We’ll talk about it when you’re better. Right now, a certain curly-headed young man is here to see you.”

  Stacey moved her head up and down a little. Yes, please. Now.

  More arm pats. “I’ll send him in.”

  She turned her head as much as she could, focused her eyes toward the door, and waited. Her father leaned against the doorframe. He glanced out of the room then lowered his head as Calvin slowly came in.

  Calvin’s hair lay flat against his head, and his nose was red and his eyes bloodshot. Shadows Stacey had never seen before spotted the lower portions of his face. He moved to her bedside and slid his fingertips lightly across her palm, as if he were afraid to touch her.

  “Hey.” His voice was hoarse. “How are you feeling?”

  “Heavy.”

  He blinked. “Heavy?”

  “That’s the sedatives.” A nurse crossed to the other side of Stacey’s bed. “We need to keep her quiet.”

  The woman did something with the tubes and machine, then bent over Stacey and adjusted stuff around her head. As the nurse moved about doing her job, Calvin’s shoulders hunched and he tugged at his dirty hair. Daylight seeping between the slats of window blinds painted stripes across his face and wrinkled clothes.

  Her bedraggled hero.

  The nurse finally left. Calvin sank into a chair at Stacey’s bedside. His touch stayed light against her hand. “The doctor says you’ll be okay.” The corners of his mouth twitched into something like a smile. Not convincing. He looked so tired. “You need to stay here and rest for a few days, get your strength back.”