The Riches of Mercy

by C. E. Case

  "Natalie," Meredith said, sounding far away but feeling close.

  "Wha--" Natalie tried to speak. Her eyes were wide. She blinked, feeling foolish for having dreamed about deer and her mother and yet being scared.

  "You had a bad dream."

  "No kidding. What are you doing here?" Natalie asked.

  "I couldn't sleep, so I decided to check on the boys. And then I decided to check on you," Meredith said.

  "Oh. Good timing."

  "Are you all right?"

  "I think so."

  "Didn't pull any stitches?" Meredith dropped a hand to Natalie's leg, pressing through the blankets.

  Natalie tensed. "No pain."

  "Good."

  Natalie exhaled slowly.

  "Your heart is pounding. You're sweating." Meredith put her hand on Natalie's forehead.

  Natalie closed her eyes. "You put the heat on."

  "No, I didn't."

  Natalie frowned.

  "It's the humidity."

  "Oh, crap."

  "Yes." Meredith soothed her, stroking her cheek.

  "All year round?"

  "Except for winter," Meredith said.

  Natalie made a face.

  Meredith laughed. "Sorry. What was the dream about?" She dropped her hands to her lap.

  Natalie wanted to reach for them. She hooked one hand around Meredith's forearm, trying to put on a brave face to answer.

  "My mother. And--the accident, I think. Or, my idea of the accident. Or my idea of my mother."

  "Is she--"

  "When I was sixteen. Cancer."

  Meredith covered Natalie's hand on her arm and squeezed her fingers. "I'm sorry."

  "It's all right. I mean, we weren't close. That makes it sound worse, doesn't it? I just mean, I turned out okay."

  "Yes, you did."

  Natalie made a wry face. "I lived with a friend until I graduated high school, and then as a poor, smart orphan, made a life for myself through student loans and on-campus housing."

  "Huh."

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  "Tell me?" Natalie wanted the conversation to continue, to go in unexpected, sharp directions, to shatter the image of the deer's eyeball, staring at her, impossibly vivid. Weren't dreams supposed to fade? She felt like she was still trapped in this one, only Meredith appeared and was warm and tactile.

  Meredith blushed. "I just--it's wrong of me, I guess, but I thought lawyers were just born rich. And--born lawyers."

  Natalie chuckled. "I was just like everyone else."

  "And your father? Oh, geez. Stop me. I don't mean to ask such personal questions. I--"

  "It's okay."

  Meredith swallowed.

  "Mother always says he died in the war--I'm not sure what war. Just combat. I mean, the Iron Curtain. Everything. We fled. I know that. But I think--I've always thought he just abandoned her."

  "Oh, Natalie." Meredith leaned forward, hugging her shoulders. "I'm so sorry."

  "What about your parents?"

  "We'll talk about that later. You need to relax."

  Even with Meredith closer so her hair tickled Natalie's ear, Natalie could still only see the deer. She blinked and cursed to herself, but it wouldn't go away.

  "I don't want to go back to sleep," Natalie said.

  "You don't have to. We'll--"

  "Stay?" Natalie asked.

  "Sure, I can stay." Meredith let Natalie go, and then walked around the bed and crawled onto the free side. Sitting against the headboard, companionably next to Natalie, she put one hand on her arm.

  Natalie closed her eyes.

  # #

  Chapter Sixteen

  Meredith blew a kiss to the picture of her boys and closed her locker. She'd changed into clean scrubs, brushed out her hair and put it back up, and had twenty-five minutes left for lunch.

  Natalie packed cold pizza and an apple. She could eat it in the locker room and not have to worry about the break room at all. Before everything she would have eaten whatever the patients were eating, but now the cook stared at her as if she was taking the food of orphans right out of their mouths.

  She'd retreated to the vending machines, but even there she got stares and whispers. Natalie had no idea. Natalie liked packing her lunch.

  Working was okay in the eyes of her peers. Penance. But eating was a luxury reserved for non-criminals. Better she do the world a favor and waste away.

  She settled onto the bench and pulled out the foil-wrapped pizza.

  Angelo came in, half-way to pulling off his shirt before he noticed Meredith.

  She waved.

  "Oh, hey. I'm hitting the shower. You're not eating the crackers that come in packs?"

  "Not today. Natalie packed my lunch."

  "You have your patient doing your chores?" He whistled.

  "It's not like that."

  He yanked off his shirt and straddled the bench. "What's it like, Merry?"

  "It's--nice. She's nice. It's nice having someone around who's--"

  "Nice? Who doesn't know?"

  She unwrapped the slice of pizza.

  Angelo leaned forward. "How nice, Merry?"

  She glanced away.

  "Look, I never met Mr. Jameison. Everyone around here knew him--I never met the man."

  She didn't move when he put his hand on hers.

  "But I met the Russian--" he started.

  "She's not Russian."

  "Whatever. I've seen you with her. It's--" He grinned. "Nice. You should be hanging out with her, not with us clowns."

  "Gotta pay the bills."

  "Lawyer bills, right. You know I'm praying for you, right, girl?"

  She swallowed.

  "I should shower." He started to get up.

  She put her hand over his, clasping his wrist. "Angelo, talk to me. No one ever talks to me."

  "Merry."

  "I'd rather be offended than ignored. Please. My few remaining friends walk around like they're on eggshells and everyone else--"

  "Pretends you don't exist. I've seen it. Even some of the patients. I want to punch them in the face. You're healing them and it's like they want to scrape you off their shoe."

  "Angelo."

  "Sorry." He squeezed her hand. "Merry, I've been wanting to tell you. We have your name on our prayer roster. You and the boys."

  "Thank you."

  "You could come by sometime. If you're not doing anything on Sundays. We don't even do the Inquisition thing anymore."

  She laughed. "I'm not ready." The idea of walking into a church put fear in her heart. Even the conversation made her skin prickle.

  "Sure. When you're ready. God's with you, Merry," he said.

  "You too." She didn’t meet his gaze.

  "Been talking to God much, Mer?"

  Meredith shook her head. "Are you witnessing to me, Angelo?"

  "I'm on a roll. Aren't I? I'm never eating in the break room again."

  "You should still shower."

  He stuck out his tongue. "Come on. Remember when the beach house caught fire and they brought those kids to us?"

  She remembered. The man and the woman who couldn't be stabilized in Wilmington. He had died of smoke inhalation. She lost an arm to the burns. They'd been able to save her shoulder. Her grief at the death of her friend had been untreatable. Even the smell came back to her--backyard smoke, charred skin, salt and sweat and fear.

  "I remember," she said.

  "I didn't know you then, but I was running back and forth for you and the doctors, and--You had peace itself in your hands. Every time you touched those kids, something happened. It was like a miracle. I'll back you anytime, Meredith."

  "I'm not anything special. I never felt I was."

  "But you're a nurse. You have a calling."

  "I just it happened. By default."

  "And you're afraid to ask God?"

  "No. I'm--it’s fine."

  "What are you--" He stopped.

  "I just don'
t know what He expects of me, sending Natalie into my care. I'm trying to help her--heal her--but it doesn't feel exactly right. Not enough. I can't figure out what He wants. Maybe he's just testing me, or--"

  She said those words, and would say no more, she decided. That was already too much voice to give to what made her heart ache, but voicing it brought her relief, and if not to Angelo, then to no one. She seized what opportunity she could, and let it be enough.

  "I don't speak for Him, Merry. I don't mean to. And I sure know you shouldn't be like, psychoanalyzing Him. But He's not screwing with you, Merry."

  She took a bite of pizza, purposely filling her mouth. Silencing her tongue.

  "He loves you."

  She swallowed, and felt a hollowness in her chest. She knew God loved her. She could feel warmth when she reached out, whenever she was alone, or in a crowd--it was as real to her as the boys. But--

  "And there ain't nothing you can hide from Him."

  "I know."

  "He knows every part of you, Merry. He knows the thoughts you're afraid to think. So what's the point in being afraid to think what He already knows? And He sure as heck knows what He's doing."

  She glanced up as he stood and put his shirt in his locker, and then flung a towel over his shoulder. He flexed.

  "Like what you see?" he asked.

  She looked away.

  "I know I already said all the things you're not supposed to say to another person. Not in a 'work environment.'" He made quotes with his fingers. "So I'm going to say one more thing. Because God commands me to help. I'm not very good at helping. Just talking too much."

  She crumpled aluminum foil in her fist.

  "You may think there are worse things than killing a man. Or not honoring your father and mother. Or gossiping. You may think those worse things are inside you--deep inside you where you put them, so no one can see them. You may think it's worse than all the abortions and rapes and assaults and poisonings and sheer stupidity we see every day. The one line you cannot cross."

  "I do think that," she said.

  He touched her arm. "It's not true, Merry. Those things inside you, you're pushing down--God wants you to raise them up. He wants to shine a light on them. He wants you to sing."

  "You're in the wrong line of work, Angelo."

  He grinned. "I was an altar boy."

  She chuckled.

  "Don't believe me? Ask Him." He pointed at the ceiling.

  She inhaled deeply, and then made a face.

  "I get it, I get it. I'm going." He went around the corner and turned on the shower. "Ask Him!" he shouted.

  Meredith put her chin on her hand and contemplated her apple.

  #

  Maybe it was the lack of sleep after her nightmares, but the children seemed more manic, less tolerable. Natalie eased herself onto the back steps and forced them to play outside. They begged to watch television. Overruling their desires was difficult. Morally, she knew what she was doing was right. But it would be so easy to make them happy. She wanted them to be happy. She loved them.

  She wanted them to shut up, more than anything. More than good parenting. And now they were crying and sitting in the grass.

  She hung her head. She hadn't thought to bring a magazine or her laptop out with her, and the journey inside would be arduous. She couldn't leave the boys out there, not with the street a few feet away. They were fast. So she watched them, and the afternoon sunlight, and the trees. The boys wrestled. She threatened to turn the hose on them. They all laughed together, the television argument forgotten. Forgiven.

  A hand dropped on her shoulder. Natalie glanced up. Meredith smiled. Before the boys even saw her, Natalie reached up to her shoulder and clasped Meredith's hand and said, "Wait."

  Meredith wrinkled her nose.

  Slowly, because her muscles stiffened on the uncomfortable concrete seat she'd made, and because her bad leg was still mostly bad and her hips felt too fragile for this--though Jake assured her they were not--she held onto the stoop and held onto Meredith and stood.

  She stood up all the way, with Meredith watching her, holding onto her with nurse strength and not saying a word.

  Merritt and Beau ran up. They were proud.

  "Look what she can do!" Beau said.

  Natalie stood and faced Meredith and loosened her grip on Meredith's hand, to balance herself. She could stand on her own. "Hey, Merry. Jake says the chair's just for show now."

  "Hay is for horses," Meredith said, and hugged her.

  Natalie sank into the embrace, wrapping her arms around Meredith and hugging her closer. She felt Meredith's hand against her back. Meredith's cheek went against Natalie's ear. Natalie inhaled deeply. She felt ten times more alive than she had all afternoon. Her last hug, her last friendship, had been so long ago she couldn't remember it. Someone was happy enough to hold her.

  "Merry."

  Meredith pulled back. Her eyes widened as she searched Natalie's face. "Sorry."

  "No, don't be sorry."

  "I see."

  Merritt and Beau grabbed a leg each, and Natalie wobbled. She put her hand on Merritt's head.

  "We helped. Do we get ice cream?"

  "Yes," Meredith said.

  "Yes?"

  "Ice cream for dinner," Meredith said.

  Natalie blinked at sharp, sudden tears. She swayed.

  Meredith reached for her elbow. "Are you all right?"

  "Yes. I think so. I just--"

  "Inside, woman," Meredith said.

  Natalie shook her head. "I just--Is this what having a family is like? Really?"

  Meredith sent the boys inside to set the table and wrapped one arm around Natalie's waist to help her.

  Natalie met her eyes--the sad, worried eyes—trying to send strength.

  "I wish," Meredith said. "Oh, I wish."

  # #

  Chapter Seventeen

  Natalie stretched and glanced around the van's interior. She sat in her wheelchair but could move around more easily. Both in bonding with the chair, and in getting stronger, she felt rather unstoppable.

  Jake was right, darn him..

  Harold grunted. Natalie turned away from the parade of trees and strip malls. He'd grunted three times. She met his eyes in the rearview mirror.

  Her lawyer senses tingled for the first time since the accident. They must have healed, too. She sensed something brewing.

  "You think next week's going to go well?" he asked.

  "Next week?"

  He shrugged.

  "I guess, if all goes well, I could go home."

  "Charlotte."

  She nodded. "You?"

  "Honeymooned on the Outer Banks. Wife wanted to go to the mountains. We go there now. Get a cabin. Sometimes on a lake. Not the same."

  "I haven't seen many mountains."

  "But you've seen the ocean. Wilmington?"

  "No, not yet."

  He looked annoyed.

  "Maybe someday," she said.

  "You should go before you go back to Charlotte."

  She shrugged. "You going to drive me?"

  "You don't need me anymore. You could drive yourself."

  "My car is in little pieces."

  "You could get a new one. You're a rich lawyer."

  She frowned and glanced away, back to the window.

  She tried not to think of her car.

  #

  Being in the hospital without being sick was surreal. Natalie's skin itched. She was afraid of getting something. Flesh-eating disease. Pneumonia. She'd felt immortal in the van. She didn't belong here.

  Teresa and Colleen were happy to see her, but to be treated like a patient and an invalid offended her. Before she had been too weak to protest. Now she could be belligerent, and she had to fight her impulses. She'd be going under the knife. She'd better be nice to everyone.

  She fasted throughout the night and in the morning. They were going to continue rebuilding her leg, they told her, and it was going to hurt like h
ell. Morphine and rods and pins and necrosis and bone growth and muscle atrophy--every word made her want to throw up.

  Only she couldn't throw up, because they wouldn't let her have any food or water.

  She sat in her hospital room and flipped through Highlights for Children. Teresa promised her ice cream after the surgery. She wanted to cry. She turned on the television. She turned off the television. She couldn't concentrate. Every sound touched her ears. Scrapes on the floor and the buzzing of machinery tortured her nerves.

  When she recognized Wheeler's voice, somewhere out in the hallway, it was a blessing. She listened. She tried to go outside herself and into the hallway, where he would be, comforting and serene.

  Meredith's cousin.

  Except he was angry.

  "Go back to Rocky Mount," he said.

  Natalie leaned forward. She considered getting out of bed.

  "Don't you think it's bad for the hospital to have a murderer working here?" A woman's voice.

  "Alleged," Wheeler said.

  "She confessed. Come on, you know. All of North Carolina knows."

  "What's going on in her personal life has no bearing on her position here. She's an excellent nurse."

  "Her personal life? Justice affects the whole society, Dr. Wheeler. Do your patients know? How would they feel?"

  Natalie certainly didn't know. She slipped off the bed, grabbed a walker, and hobbled, one-footed, toward the door. She reached it just in time to see Wheeler storming past. He didn't glance in her direction.

  She peered into the hallway.

  A young woman stood, polished and citified, overwhelming Natalie with a sense of nostalgia. The woman wasn't even wearing sneakers. She carried a briefcase. Her long dark hair was pulled back into a bun, and she was short and slender and pale. She noticed Natalie noticing her.

  "Are you a patient of Meredith Jameison?" the woman asked.

  "Who are you?" Natalie asked.

  "Oh, sorry, most folks around here already know me. I'm Erica Mendes, reporter for the Rocky Mount Telegram. Merry's hearing is tomorrow, so we're doing a follow-up piece."

  "Hearing?"

  Erica frowned as if Natalie were wasting her time. "Do you know Nurse Jameison?"

  Meredith hadn't told her what the appointment tomorrow was for, and Natalie has assumed, selfishly, it would result in some sort of surprise for her. Like cake.