Tomorrow's Dream

by Janette Oke; Davis Bunn

  4

  ONCE AGAIN KYLE OPENED HER EYES to find Kenneth bending over her. Surprised, she glanced toward the window to measure the hour. “Is it already time?”

  He settled his hand upon her shoulder. “Time for what?”

  “Visiting hours. I can’t believe I slept the entire day.”

  “It’s ten.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Yes.”

  Kyle shook her head. Now she was totally confused. “But visiting hours aren’t until two.”

  Kenneth nodded. For the first time she looked closely into his face. His smile looked a bit forced. A shadow seemed to darken his eyes. Kyle pushed sudden fear away. Perhaps he was as impatient to get acquainted with their son as she was. The waiting was so difficult.

  “Did they let you see him?” she asked.

  “Yes . . . yes, I saw him after he was born. But I haven’t seen him . . . today yet.”

  “It makes me a little upset. After all, he is our baby. I don’t know why they feel they need to . . .” Kyle tried to rise into a sitting position. It was not at all comfortable, so she lay back down. “Isn’t he beautiful? I saw him this morning. The nurse brought him in. If only they’d let me—”

  “Kyle,” Kenneth’s tone stopped her. “The doctor asked me to come in this morning. He says . . . he needs to talk to us together.”

  Kyle’s eyes widened. “What about?”

  “I don’t know. He wouldn’t say. Except . . .” The shadows in Kenneth’s eyes deepened and darkened, causing her joy to drain away. “The doctor just said that little Charles . . . well, has him concerned.”

  Fear gripped her throat and allowed nothing but an echo of his word. “Concerned?”

  He took her hand, and his lips smiled, but his gaze did not ease. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about. Some little thing that needs attention.”

  She grasped at the words as she did his hand, because she had to. She forced herself to take a deep breath. “Of course. He’s big. And healthy. I saw for myself. Whatever it is, it can’t be too serious.”

  The words buoyed her up, as though by saying them she could make them so. Kyle went on, “Just think, in a few days we’ll be going home. Our baby and us. I can’t wait.”

  Her thoughts quickly turned to the waiting nursery. It was the one part of their modest home that she had furnished with little thought as to the cost. Kenneth had smiled in good-natured indulgence as she had insisted upon every possible convenience or extravagance for their new baby. Now the room was waiting. Blue and beckoning, for Kyle had secretly agreed with Abigail from the beginning that the child was going to be a boy.

  Kenneth nodded in agreement to her words, but his answering smile never reached his eyes.

  Footfalls in the hallway brought their attention to the door. But when Dr. Pearce appeared, he did not enter the room alone. Three figures followed closely on one another’s heels.

  The nurse led the way, carrying an official metal clipboard before her like a shield. Their family doctor followed behind, his gold-rimmed spectacles riding low on a long, pinched nose, his hair the usual disarray of sparse gray curls.

  The man who walked at his side was in direct contrast to their comforting family doctor. He was young and intensely focused. In his stark white hospital coat and sharply creased trousers, he looked both important and foreboding. His presence in her room made Kyle feel even more uncomfortable.

  “I asked Dr. Saunders to join us,” Dr. Pearce said in his kindly, tired voice. “He is a pediatric surgeon.”

  Surgeon? Why? Kyle wanted to ask what he was doing here but could not form the words.

  In spite of hospital protocol, Dr. Pearce seated himself on the edge of Kyle’s bed. He nodded to Kenneth and said, “Son, why don’t you grab yourself a chair.”

  Kenneth glanced to where the chair stood on the far wall and settled his arm on Kyle’s shoulder. “Thanks, but I’m fine where I am.”

  The doctor nodded his understanding. He took a deep breath, as if seeking to draw strength from outside himself. “Kyle,” he began slowly, “we’re having a little problem with your baby.”

  Kyle felt her whole body freeze. The entire world seemed to seize up tight. Oh, dear God was her inner whisper, just a short heart-wrenching prayer for what she did not understand.

  “I was called back in by the staff a short time after his delivery. He wasn’t getting his color the way they liked. I returned and had a look.” He hesitated again.

  The moments crawled like hours as Kyle waited, lying there helpless, holding her breath.

  “I am not sure yet exactly why, but his heart does not seem to be functioning as it should.”

  Kyle groped blindly for Kenneth’s hand and clutched at it with all her might.

  “I called in Dr. Saunders. He’s, well . . .” Again the hesitation, the searching breath. “The tests are all preliminary at this stage, you understand. But he, too, believes the boy might have some kind of heart condition.”

  The young doctor stepped forward. Kyle tore her eyes away from Dr. Pearce’s face to look at him. He did not seem quite as distant and official as he had at first. Kyle read compassion in his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was soft, yet there was a strength and certainty to his tone that made his words pierce her very soul.

  “We often have great success with corrective surgery,” he began.

  Kyle heard the consoling tone but could not understand. Her grip on Kenneth’s hand tightened until her arm trembled with the strain. Surgery? Surgery for her baby boy? That was unthinkable. What were they talking about? She had seen him. He was fine. Why . . . ?

  They were talking on. Kenneth was the only one who seemed able to listen. Kyle looked up and saw him nod, a strained and fearful expression on his face.

  “Of course we will need more tests to determine the extent of damage,” she heard the young doctor say through her haze of disbelief.

  Was this some bad dream? Was she still under the influence of the anesthetic? Oh, if she could only force herself to wake up and make it all go away!

  She heard Kenneth ask, “When?”

  “I’d like to get a number of the tests done as quickly as possible.” Dr. Saunders addressed his matter-of-fact words directly to Kenneth now, as though aware that only he was able to comprehend what was being said. “Time is of the utmost importance in such cases. We’ll need you to sign the releases before we can proceed. That’s why we called you in this morning.”

  “Releases for the surgery?” Kyle noted that Kenneth’s voice was so hoarse and strained it did not even sound like her husband.

  “No. No, we won’t be able to do surgery at this point. The baby is not strong enough yet . . . he’s really not strong enough.” The strain now seemed to touch the young doctor as his words began to push out, rushing toward what was hardest to say. “Right now we are devoting all our efforts to keeping him with us. By the time he has strengthened and grown a bit we should know the full extent of the damage. Once that’s been assessed, then we can look at the feasibility of surgery.” He paused, looking relieved now that the worst was out in the open. “The releases are necessary for our tests.”

  But Kenneth was not going to let him off that easily. “I don’t understand. If there need to be tests, then why not just go ahead and do them?”

  Old Dr. Pearce looked at Kenneth, then Kyle, pain in his eyes. He rubbed a tired hand through his remaining hair. “It is possible,” he said, clearly hating the words he needed to speak, “that we might lose such a fragile baby in the process of assessment.”

  Kyle clenched her eyes shut with the same vehemence that she squeezed on Kenneth’s hand. No. No. It isn’t possible. Not little Charles. I won’t have it. You can’t do the tests. You can’t.

  But Kenneth was speaking again. “And if the tests aren’t done?”

  When there was only silence in response, Kyle forced herself to open her eyes. The old doctor sat there beside her, slowly shaking his head. “Son,
we wouldn’t even think of doing them unless they were absolutely essential. If we don’t go ahead, your child has no chance of survival at all. We’d have nowhere near enough knowledge as to how to proceed with treatment.”

  Kenneth opened his mouth, closed it, then tried again, forcing out words so heavy they dropped like stones from heaven. “And if you do the tests? What are our chances then?”

  Dr. Saunders started to speak, but Dr. Pearce raised his gaze in time to halt the younger man with one quick look. The silence in the room hung like a shroud until Dr. Pearce finally said, “We’ll know more after the tests.”

  Kenneth nodded, his face bleached white, his jaw stiff.

  The nurse pushed her metal pad toward him, pointing at the places where he needed to sign. Without a word Kenneth accepted the pen and wrote on the indicated line.

  No, Kyle wished to scream. Don’t sign it. But instead of speaking, she turned her face into the stack of pillows and began to sob, her shoulders heaving with the intensity of her pain.

  “Kyle.” She heard the doctor’s fatherly tone. “Nurse Jacobs has a little needle for you. It will help you get some sleep.”

  Kyle was only slightly aware of the hands upon her arm and Kenneth’s voice speaking to her from some grim distance somewhere.

  “It’s going to be all right, darling. God will see us through this. Hang on. Just hang on.”

  Hang on, Kyle repeated to herself. Of course. God would see them through.

  5

  THE TELEPHONE’S RING jarred the silence of their empty little house. Kyle rushed toward the hall phone, not so much because she wanted to speak with someone but because the sound did not belong. She lifted the receiver and said hello.

  “Kyle, darling, it’s Martha. How are you, dear?”

  Kyle couldn’t form an answer in her mind. She raised her head and flinched as she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror.

  “It’s been over a week since I’ve heard from you,” Martha rushed on into the silence. “I had to call. Has there been any word?”

  “No.” She had to turn away from the hollowness in her eyes. But comfort was not to be found elsewhere. There should be a baby here. Every nook and cranny of her empty house shouted Charles Kenneth’s absence. “No, nothing,” she repeated.

  “But it’s been over a month now.” Martha’s voice rose. “How long do they need to finish these tests of theirs?”

  “They can’t tell us. They say they don’t know yet.” There should be a baby for her to lift from the crib upstairs, a baby to hold and love and fit into her heart’s barren space. A baby to fill the house with its light and cries and love. “They won’t—can’t tell us anything. And it’s been six weeks, Martha. Six weeks tomorrow.”

  “Oh, my darling, Kyle, you sound so sad. Wait, Harry’s telling me something.” There was a murmuring in the background, then Martha said, “Harry suggests that we take you out for a drive. We could go have lunch in Annapolis and a walk along the Maryland shore. There won’t be a soul out this time of year.”

  “Thank you, Martha. But I can’t.” Her slow revolution around the hall brought her back to her reflection in the mirror. There were new creases to her forehead, new shadows. Her gaze looked as dull and lifeless as her voice sounded to her own ears. “Abigail has arranged for baby Charles to be seen by one of the world’s leading heart specialists—a doctor from the Mayo Clinic. He’s here for a conference, and she pulled some strings.”

  “That’s wonderful, dear.” Martha’s enthusiasm was full of hope and encouragement. “At last maybe you’ll hear some good news. When is your meeting?”

  “Kenneth is supposed to pick me up in a half hour.” But saying her husband’s name renewed the pain and the guilt she had been feeling all morning. It was so strong she had to let a little of it out. “We had a . . . well, a fight this morning.”

  “Oh no, I’m so sorry.”

  “It was my fault. Kenneth has been so strong, and I started arguing with him over nothing at all.” There was a little catch to her voice, but she fought it off. It was easy to do. She had cried so much there was no need to shed any more tears. If tears could ease her worry or bring Charles home, it would have happened weeks ago. “I just don’t see how he can get up and go to the office like . . . like nothing is wrong.”

  “But he has to go, dear. He has a job. The world doesn’t stop because—”

  “But it should stop.” She heard the unreasonableness in her voice and did not care. She was not arguing with Martha. She was giving voice to the storm of feelings that robbed her nights of sleep and her days of meaning. She was calling out for the baby who was not there in her arms. “How dare people keep walking by outside my house. Or laugh. Or say hello to each other like nothing was the matter. How dare they.”

  Martha was silent a long moment before suggesting, “Maybe we should pray together.”

  “That’s all I do.” Kyle’s gaze shifted from the mirror to the Bible resting on her little desk. She had tried to read it since her return from the hospital, but the words were as lifeless as her heart. She had given up even the attempt. She turned away. “I pray so hard I feel like I’ve wrung my heart dry.”

  “Well, we will keep praying right along with you, my darling. Both of us. Night and day. Just remember that.”

  “Thank you, Martha. I have to go now.”

  When Kyle hung up the phone and walked into the living room, the clock over the mantel seemed to mock her. The ticking slowed and slowed until time was frozen into the same endless void that was in her heart and her home. Kyle wrung her hands and willed the time to move forward until Kenneth would come and pick her up and they could go see her baby again.

  Turning away from the clock and walking back into the hallway, Kyle picked up her coat and seated herself in the high-backed chair by the door. She stared through the narrow front window, wishing Kenneth’s car would appear and she could open the door and walk away from the emptiness that was in her home. She glanced at her watch, held it to her ear, then sighed and let her hand drop back to her lap.

  Kyle wished Martha had not called again. It was too hard to talk with her. It brought up too many things she would rather keep locked away inside. Where was Martha’s God all those years when Martha’s own baby daughter was missing from her arms? Where was Kyle’s God now?

  The tap on Kenneth’s door had become a familiar sound over the past six weeks. “Am I disturbing you?” Abigail opened it a crack. “Are you ready?”

  “Come on in.” He pushed back in his chair. “I have one more letter to approve, and we can be on our way.”

  But instead of returning to the letter in front of him, he watched her enter, close the door, walk over, and sit down. Of all the traumas and stresses of the previous six weeks, nothing could have prepared him for the current situation with Abigail. The two of them were becoming friends. Not simply allies against the fear and the strain. Genuine friends. Abigail had the ability to say more with a lift of an eyebrow than most people could with an hour of words. And she knew the value of saying nothing at all, a quality he would never have expected to find in her. But it was there. And it had proven to be a powerful comfort.

  Abigail asked, “How is my girl doing?”

  “There are good days and bad days,” Kenneth replied. “Today was a bad day.”

  “What happened?”

  He shook his head and sighed the words, “This is killing her, Abigail. I can’t blame her for what she said.”

  “Of course you can’t.” The normally proud features held a depth of feeling he would never have expected. “But it must still hurt terribly.”

  “I made the mistake of talking about business at the breakfast table this morning. I have a dozen things that have been put on hold since Charles was born, and I’ve got to move on them. I want her to know—”

  “Don’t tell her.” Abigail was firm, decisive. “Just do it.”

  “It’s her company.”

  “Not right now
it’s not,” Abigail said. “Her world holds no space for anything but worry and grief.”

  He nodded. Her determined stance helped mightily and granted Kenneth the ability to accept what he had not wanted to see. “Abigail, I owe you an apology.”

  “Kenneth, there is absolutely no need—”

  “Yes there is, and please let me say this.” He stopped and took a breath, trying to ease the pressure building inside. “Ever since we first met, I have seen you as an adversary.”

  “And with good reason.”

  “Please, this is hard enough as it is,” he said, raising a hand. “All my life I have read about showing the love of God to others. Forgiving the wrongful acts as God forgets and forgives our own sins. And here, with my own mother-in-law, I have held on to my own barriers.” He had to stop there and breathe again. “I want to ask your forgiveness, Abigail.”

  “There is nothing to forgive.”

  “Yes, I do need your forgiveness. More than that, I don’t know what I would have done without you these past weeks. I don’t think I could have survived. I really don’t.”

  “Stop, please, you’re going to make me cry.” Her mouth trembled between a sob and a smile.

  “I’d like you to give me another chance. See if I can be the friend you deserve. And the son-in-law.”

  Abigail reached inside her purse, pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed at the corners of her eyes. “There. See what you’ve made me do. Is my makeup a mess?”

  “You look fine. As always.”

  She extracted a compact, examined herself, and closed it with a snap. “I will tell you something I have never told another soul. When my husband and I were first married, he was struggling to set up this company. It was touch and go for a while. He would come home exhausted. More than that. He was terrified of failing.”

  “He told me of that time,” Kenneth said quietly.