“God’s will is no obstacle. He is the only path.”
“Then I shall insist He carve that path back to life and health.”
She made to turn, and he helped her shift to her side, hating the way her thinness now shaved cruel angles into the curves he’d once so admired. She fell asleep for a second, drifting in and out of slumber the way she did lately. John took the moment’s respite to lean against the wall, his head falling back to stare at the ceiling.
You cannot have her, he declared to Heaven, as if Leanne were ever his to possess in any case. The foolishness of his thoughts did nothing to stem the strength of his feeling. I’ll not let You take her from me. Followed, almost instantly, with the more truthful, more disturbing, I fear what I’ll be if You do.
He looked down to find her staring at him. “So much fear,” she whispered. It made John wonder if his silent shouts at God had really found their way into spoken words. “There’s no need.”
The tear he saw wind its way down her ashen cheek was his undoing. “Do not leave me, Leanne.”
“You’ll not be alone. Not now.”
John did not want to hear about God’s comfort in loss. He’d heard Leanne give the speech too many times not to know the words nearly by heart, but such belief wasn’t his. Not yet, perhaps not ever. “I’ve not the faith to believe without you beside me.”
She smiled, and he saw the first glimpse of the Leanne he knew under the waxen figure before him. “Silly John. Still thinking faith is something you’ve earned.”
“I sought it. You pointed me toward it.” He was delighted to see her talking, engaging, coming back to him from the brink of wherever she was.
“Yes, but God gives us…” her breath seemed to falter “…our faith.” Another fit of coughing seemed to steal all the progress she’d made toward life, vaulting her back to the limp slip of a thing that seemed to melt into the sheets. John reached out for the bowl and wiped her drained face. Every touch seemed precious, fleeting, and he refused to let his mind caution him that this might be their last time together. She seemed to have left this world already, as if she were more spirit and less solid than even an hour ago. John was somehow sure that if he failed to keep touching her, talking to her, anchoring her to this place, she would slip away to hide from the pain under God’s wings. Colton came by to say that he was needed elsewhere, but John refused. Seeing Leanne’s precarious state, Colton pressed it no further. John would have gone to fists if it had come to it: no duty was more important than the vigil before him.
He was only vaguely aware of the daylight slipping away around him. At some point he must have slept, for he woke to the feeble whisper of her voice in the lightless room. “John? John?”
“Beside you, my love.” There, in the dark, the endearment slipped out of him unchecked. The shadows and disease seemed like beasts waiting to devour this woman who had stolen in to become the center of his heart. John realized he wanted her to know of his feelings, and he was too tired and too anxious to resist the urge. Calling her his love was the truth, after all, for he did love her. “And I do love you, Leanne.” He looked for a response, but she seemed to be slipping away from his very fingertips, as if his next touch of her would pass his hand through her ghostly image to touch an empty bed. “I tried not to, you know. It seemed irrational, painful even, to love you, but in the end I had no defenses to resist. I love you.” He pressed a kiss to her fevered cheek.
She tried to say something, but it left her lips as not much more than a struggling sigh. Had she understood what he’d just said? She seemed to be in so much pain, it almost seemed cruel to wish her awake and aware. Could not God grant her a peaceful end if she must leave him? Must it be in anguish, without the most important words he would ever speak to her? “I love you,” he whispered close to her ear, even while hating the heat of her fever radiating against his face. “Come back to me so I can tell you properly. Stay with us, Leanne, please.”
Her only reply was a thin, wheezing cough. A better man wouldn’t be so greedy for her response, but he could not help himself. John selfishly yearned to see the look in her eyes when she heard he loved her. He craved a life with her too much to surrender her, even to her eternal peace. He didn’t deserve her, knew the rage he felt at God right now made him no partner to a faithful woman like Leanne, but still he wanted her. For a few moments to look into her clear eyes and declare his love, John was sure he would have pulled the lethal fire consuming her onto himself. Despite a chest full of medals and the admiration of so many, John was sure of one truth: Leanne would bring far more good to the world than he ever could.
He would hold her. If she couldn’t recognize his words, surely even in her state she would know the comfort of his arms. As he went to pick her up, it shocked him how light she was, how easily he slipped her delicate body from the bed to rest on his lap as he sat on the floor. Were he whole and healthy, he would carry her outside to the cool air, to the place where they’d sat in each other’s arms and he’d felt the first of his heart slip away. But he wasn’t whole and healthy, he could not walk with her in his arms. He could only offer what broken comfort was possible here and now. He handled her as though she were glass, some mythical vial with only the last drops of elixir left. He fought his urge to enfold her fiercely, to fend off all foes and somehow press his life into her fragile form.
In the distance he heard the ceaseless pounding of the casket crews as if they were banging down the door beside him, demanding entrance into the tiny sanctuary he shared with her. I cannot let You have her, he raged silently to the God she’d brought into his life. I’ve not the faith to let her go. He felt her heartbeat, light and skittish against his shirt. Her hands were cold, yet her face and chest glistened with fever. Even in the shadows, he could see the influenza’s telltale blue-black imprint, stark and angry against her pale cheeks. Marred and thin as she was, Leanne was still the most beautiful woman God ever created. Don’t You love her enough to spare her? He silently shouted the accusation to God through the helpless darkness that seemed to swallow them whole.
The answer came back to him with startling clarity: Don’t you?
Unbidden, John’s mind threw itself back in time to a stable when he was twelve. He was standing over his beloved mare, Huntress, the animal as bathed in sweat and suffering as Leanne was now. He was pleading the exact same case to his father, who had silently walked to the house and returned with a pistol. John had cried openly to his father that night—something a Gallows was never allowed to do—begging for the animal’s life. He had never forgotten the sound of that pistol as it split the night, how even the sight of Huntress’s final peaceful breaths had not soothed the wound of loss he carried in his chest for weeks. The memory overlaid itself on John’s current pain, cinching around John’s heart until he wanted to weep again, here, now. He had howled the same refusal to let Huntress go then as he had done to God tonight. It had been selfish and wrong then, it was selfish and wrong now.
John knew, then, that the memory was no accident. His father’s words that night were his Holy Father’s words to him tonight. It was not love to plead for more suffering. Leanne was more fit for Heaven than he could ever hope to be. “I don’t know how to let You have her,” he whispered to the darkness, praying as much for himself as for her. He looked into her face, limp against his arm with eyes sweetly closed. “How do I get to ‘Thy will be done’ as You would have me? I’m miles from being that man.”
As the hours passed, the miles became a smaller and smaller distance to travel. Ida came in once, stopped to look at the sight of Leanne gathered against John’s chest there on the floor, and silently let them be as she tended the other patients. As her fever soaked his shirt, as her winces of pain singed his ears and her spasms of coughing shook his own heart, John relinquished inch by inch. Broken, exhausted, perhaps already infected and in his own last days, John laid down what was left of his life. It seemed impossible that he and Leanne would wake tomorrow. Should h
e wake to find her gone, John felt sure he would stumble through life only as the hollow shell of a man who had loved and lost.
With what felt like his final thoughts, John surrendered to God this woman they both loved. “Take her even as I beg You not to,” he whispered, a tear of his own falling onto Leanne’s cheek as he held her near. He told her “I love you” over and over, hoping each of her shallow breaths was not her last. If he never heard the words from her, the hundreds of times she heard it from him would have to do.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Gray.
Vague gray and a strange coolness.
Leanne felt foreign inside her own skin, as if she were outside her body looking in from a curious distance. She felt pain, and yet the sensation wasn’t nearly as sharp as before. It was a hollow ache, a dry and dusty feeling as though she’d blow away in the slightest breeze.
Papa was holding her. She was cradled in his arms, a little girl again. She could sense the steady rise and fall of his chest, feel the warm linen of his shirt against her cheek. Only her feet weren’t curled onto the brown velvet of his sitting chair, they were on something cool and smooth. She thought about moving, about lifting her head to look around her because the sounds were all wrong, but her body seemed disconnected from her thoughts. She didn’t seem to have any strength, not even to open her eyes. Am I dreaming? And then the more confusing thought: Am I dead? She felt like only a soul, surely, all thought and feeling but without substance. And then again, far too heavy to move.
The scent was wrong. This was not Papa, but still familiar, still comforting. The shoulder was not Papa’s, but yet strong and trustworthy. It came to her like a single candle lit in a dark room, a tiny circle of light changing the darkness.
John.
She had been sick. Blurry impressions of light and pain and struggle floated past her awareness. She had been very sick. Yes, that explained why she felt too weak and thirsty, why her skin felt as if it would crack open if she moved too quickly.
John.
This was John’s shoulder against her cheek, his chin resting above her head. His arm encircling her. She wasn’t sure how she knew, only that it couldn’t be anyone but him.
The hospital. She remembered that much now. The image of her blood spattered on the dormitory sink came back to her. Influenza. With enormous effort she forced her cracked lips open and asked her body to breathe. Both her chest and throat felt ripped and raw, yet she could feel the air slipping in and out. She was breathing.
She was alive. Some part of her recognized the impossibility of that fact, recalled enough of her circumstance to know it shouldn’t be. Lord, she reached out in prayer, movement still beyond her ability, have You spared me? Do I live? Leanne let out a small gasp, the marvel of her survival sending a surge of joy through her fragile limbs.
The sound made John shift slightly in his sleep, a soft and weary groan tickling her ears. She was alive. Leanne forced her eyes open, willed them to stay so until the swimming images before her gained clarity. Her first sight was the stubbled curve of John’s chin, tilted back against the wall. Even in his rumpled state, he was without a doubt the most handsome man in all the world. They were on the floor of some small room with a handful of other beds. She remembered being here, gazing out the window and wishing for death to take away the pain. The memory returned the large ward’s horrors to her mind, the rows upon rows of ill and dying, how she understood now why they begged for death. The image of Charles Holling’s lifeless eyes just before she’d pulled the sheet up over his face washed over her vision, making her frightened and dizzy until she returned her gaze to John’s sleeping face.
He must have taken her in his arms and held her there on the floor—for hours or minutes she couldn’t say. He had been beside her, had cared for her. Fleeting images of his face and voice came back to her, blurred by fever and pain so that she could not remember the words, only the tone and how much comfort it had brought to her. She had a vague memory of him singing—which made no sense at all—but a very clear memory of him pleading for her to stay, to fight, to live.
And she had. She had survived, and she would survive. A tiny, powerful core of truth pulsed somewhere under her ribs like a heartbeat, telling her that her life was no longer in danger. Leanne wet her lips again, pulled another burning breath into her lungs, and pushed one word out into the morning air, “John.”
He started, jolting to a bleary consciousness with another groan. It seemed to take him as long as it had taken her to remember where he was, to pull his head from its propped angle against the wall and look down. When he did, it was as if the sun rose in the blue sky of his wide eyes. He blinked with disbelief, his face melted into an expression of such joy and relief that Leanne felt tears sting her eyes. He pulled a hand across his eyes, as if to wipe away a dream, then looked at her again. He worked to form a word, producing only a tender sound; the eloquent John Gallows rendered speechless. Instead he bent his forehead to hers, and she felt the warmth of his tears steal between the rough stubble of his unshaven cheek. “You’re here. Thank You, Lord. Thank You. Thank You.” He rocked her gently, his chest heaving in a way that made her wish she had the strength to throw her arms around him. “You’re here. You’ve lived. You’re here.”
Leanne closed her eyes for a moment, letting the pure joy push away the aching weakness.
He pulled back and touched every part of her face, cherishing her existence with eager fingers. “I’m not dreaming? You are really here?”
“Yes.” She remembered, looking at his eyes, saying goodbye to him in her heart as she felt the darkness pulling her down. “I’m here.”
“I was sure I’d lost you.” His voice broke as he pulled her carefully closer. She felt her heart pound in her chest, wonderfully alive despite her still-frail state.
“I love you,” he whispered close to her ear, and she felt it flood her soul like warm sunshine. “I told you over and over last night when I feared…” She was glad he didn’t finish the thought. “I yelled at God that He couldn’t have you because I loved you too much to lose you now that I’ve just found you. And then you worsened, and I couldn’t ask Him to keep you in such suffering, so I…” He pulled back again and stared into her eyes. “I love you and you’ve survived. What else matters now?”
He was actually rambling, running words together like an excited schoolboy, and she let his joy flow over into her. John’s exuberance radiated life and hope, and she gulped it in with every trembling breath. “Love?” Of course he loved her, for she loved him. She loved him. The fire in his eyes kindled the clearest truth—that she had always loved him.
“Yes.” His smile was brilliant beyond anything she’d remembered. “Love. I would have suffered through loving you and losing you, but it seems God is kinder than that.” He kissed her forehead, and it spread throughout her body as though it filled her with light and sparkles. “I’ll thank Him every day forever, I think.”
“You stayed with me. How I love you for that. How I love you.” It took so much effort to lift her arm, and the thin gray hand that stroked his unshaven cheek seemed to belong to an old woman. He placed his hand atop hers, the way he had done on the hilltop back before all the darkness, and Leanne reveled in the warmth and strength of his touch. She yearned to give him grand words, to shout her feelings from the rooftops, but her body was still far weaker than her spirit. She was filled with too many emotions to hold back the tears.
“Are you all right? Do you hurt? You’re still so frail.”
How could she feel so weak and so alive at the same time? The room seemed to spin around her, and she was grateful for the anchor of John’s embrace. “I’m terribly thirsty,” she admitted. John tried to grasp something behind her—a glass, perhaps, on the small metal table she knew the hospital kept beside some of the cots—but couldn’t reach it. He couldn’t hope to get up with her in his arms. It would be difficult for a man with two healthy legs, much less his troublesome injury.
“My damsel. My lovely, living damsel.” He chuckled, attempting the rise they both knew was impossible. They were indeed stuck together on the floor, and while she could not manage a laugh, one bubbled forth from him. “Miss Landway!” he called, splitting the quiet dawn and waking the other patients in the room. “Madison!”
Ida burst into the room, the alarm on her face melting as she sagged against the doorway in relief and joy.
“Look what I have to contend with. Look at my splendid problem, Miss Landway!”
Ida’s hands flew to her chest, then to her mouth, a tearful little whimper escaping her smiling expression. “She lives!” She rushed over to place an assessing hand on Leanne’s cheek. “Her fever’s broken. Mercy on us all, we’ve a survivor. You’ve survived, Leanne. You’re the first one here.”
“I have,” Leanne said, letting her head return to the support of John’s shoulder. Truly, he had the most wonderful shoulders.
“She has indeed.” She felt John’s jovial laugh tumble through his chest in little shakes that made her smile. “And I’d waltz her around the room…if I could get off the floor. Which I can’t.”
Grinning, Ida broke her own rule of quiet by shouting “Dr. Madison, come quickly!”
He must have been close by, for within seconds the doctor dashed in the door to show the same shock of pleasure Ida had. “Land sakes, she’s still with us.”
“No fever,” Ida pronounced, stepping away as she gestured Dr. Madison over. “She’s come through it, Doctor.”
Madison squatted down to check her pulse, clasping a hand to John’s shoulder with a smile. Something had changed between those two, Leanne could see it in the way their eyes met. The enmity between them had dissolved, replaced by what seemed to be a deep friendship. What all had God wrought while she slept?
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