Jennifer

by Dee Henderson

  The hug was smoothly done, comforting, and for one brief moment she closed her eyes just to snapshot the emotions and tuck them away to savor later. She smiled. “We’ll get you and my family together, but it’s not something I plan to rush into.”

  “As long as it’s only me on your list.” He hugged her a last moment, then stepped away. “Coffee, then I’ll head home. Where’s that burned-out light bulb you wanted me to look at?”

  “Back hallway by the garage. Replacements are in the utility room.”

  “One tall man to the rescue.”

  She laughed. “I think one short girl with a chair could do it just fine too. I just haven’t had time.”

  “Lack of height, lack of time—what’s the difference? It got you to laugh.” Whistling, he headed off toward the utility room.

  She poured water into the coffee maker. “I do appreciate the laughter,” she whispered, glad he was there. Work tomorrow would be heavy, and this time with him had given her the space she’d needed to breathe. It was a small thing, but she was now letting the emotions and burdens of her responsibilities, sometimes life-and-death ones, flow over and rest on his shoulders when the days were markedly hard. She hadn’t told him about Kelly—some things were too close to tears to talk about—but he’d probably guessed.

  Tom left for home a half hour later, and Jennifer wisely began preparing for bed rather than work another hour on paperwork as she often did before turning in.

  She sat on the bed and picked up the photo on the bedside table. It was a more informal picture of the O’Malleys than the one Tom had seen on the refrigerator. She had been the last one chosen, the last selected to be an O’Malley, and she’d spent the final years at Trevor House more than blessed by the group’s decision to invite her to be one of them. They had survived by thriving together, and it mattered so very much what her family thought of Tom.

  They would like him because she cared about him. She didn’t question that. But beyond that she wanted them to personally think he was a great guy, and she knew that kind of respect would have to be earned with time. She wanted the family to get to know Tom in the ways she had. To appreciate his humor. To appreciate his heart. To trust him. So she hesitated to mention him. Not because it mattered so little, but because it mattered so much.

  She’d have to figure out a way to tell them about Tom over the Fourth of July gathering. Low-key, casual, but clear enough they would understand he might one day be more than just a good friend.

  That thought was enough to make her hesitate even more. She hadn’t been looking for a guy to appear in her life, and now that he had, she was still not entirely sure where she wanted the relationship to go.

  He had so many parts of his life beyond work that she was just beginning to find out about, church being one of the larger ones. She still hadn’t met his family either, and she knew they were as important to him as the O’Malleys were to her.

  She put the photo back on the table. She’d figure it out.

  She set her alarm for five a.m. so she could see Kelly in ICU before her workday began, then turned off the lights.

  “What are you watching?”

  Jennifer stirred on the couch and looked over to see Tom walking into the playroom of the hospital pediatrics wing. He’d changed from scrubs to street clothes, but the white coat and the notepad he carried said he’d still been finishing his evening rounds. She glanced back at the television and the DVD playing. “A Herbie movie—not sure which one. The kids were watching it earlier.”

  “I heard the news.” He sat down in a chair near her.

  She appreciated the understatement and simply nodded her acknowledgment. Kelly Brousher had died, succumbing to heart failure at 7:18 p.m. Twelve years old.

  Jennifer felt numb.

  Tom didn’t say anything else, simply sat and watched the movie with her. It was odd, the fact she could watch the movie, appreciate the laughter in its soundtrack, and yet not find the ability to even smile at the funny scenes.

  There were charts to update, tomorrow’s schedule to review, and she should get some sleep . . . but she didn’t move. The pediatrics playroom wasn’t the most comfortable place to relax, but it was quiet and uninterrupted at this time of night, and she didn’t have to face driving herself home or pretend she was a professional and composed doctor as she passed staff in the halls. She’d finished the intake paperwork for the second of her new cancer patients, seen Wendy settled in, and come down here to collapse for a while.

  She was glad for Tom’s silence.

  The movie was at the scene of the car race along dirt roads, and she watched it just to keep her eyes focused and not filling with tears. “Do you believe in heaven?” She knew he also had days like this one. Surgeons lost patients. It was a simple fact of the world in which they had chosen to work. But she hadn’t known she was going to ask the question until it popped out of her mouth. The topic had been pushing at her all evening, demanding to be answered somehow.

  “I do.”

  She looked over, surprised at the confidence she heard in his words.

  “An actual heaven, not just a nice concept?”

  “Yes.”

  She hugged the pillow she held in front of her a bit tighter. She wasn’t sure what she believed. She just couldn’t reconcile the idea the girl who had passed away today was simply gone. Life should be more than that. “Kelly had Creggle’s Syndrome, showing on both genes’ markers. She never should have lived past six, but she made it to twelve. It wasn’t like I didn’t know this day was coming. But it’s the fact it was pneumonia—something we know how to treat—that we knew to watch for—that makes this so hard to accept. We just couldn’t turn it in time.”

  “I’m so sorry, Jennifer.”

  “So am I.”

  She let the couch absorb more of her weight, winced, and shifted to find a more comfortable position for her back. She preferred not to think about the last hours—she’d do enough of that in her dreams tonight. She tipped her right foot and studied the knotted laces. She needed new tennis shoes, she thought idly. These were showing their wear. Her walks with Tom were occasionally making her back hurt hours later—probably the worn-out shoes.

  “Have you had dinner yet?”

  She shook her head.

  “It’s almost ten. Come on, I’ll buy you a sandwich, and we’ll take a moseying kind of walk with no destination. That works for days like this.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll pass this time.” She wanted to sit here until the movie finished, then gather together her things and go home to cry in private. She’d been too numb to cry yet, and too smart to let herself go home until more time had flowed by. Kelly had been more than a patient over the last six years. She’d been a friend. Jennifer knew that when she started crying, it wasn’t going to be pretty or soon over.

  Tom stood and held out his hand. “Grieving alone is an absolute waste of good emotions. Come on. You’re going to eat and walk.”

  She let him pull her to her feet. “Sometimes I regret being a doctor.”

  He settled his arm across her shoulders. “Only on nights your heart gets broken.”

  Deep in her heart she knew he was right, but she shook her head.

  “Tomorrow will be a new day,” he reassured her. “The hurt gets less.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of, that I’ll forget her,” she whispered.

  “You never forget the patients that touch your heart. And there are a number of photos on your refrigerator of the two of you together. Those moments will eventually be what you remember more than today.”

  “I don’t think I’m cut out for this, Tom.” The hole in her heart tonight simply ached. Every child she opened her heart to risked becoming a loss like this.

  “No one is.” He turned her toward the hall. She reached up to grasp his hand, glad he’d come to find her.

  “I thought we might go to a ball game this week,” she offered, “if you’re interested. There were tickets floatin
g around the office today for a game Wednesday night.”

  “I’m interested. I like the fact you just offered to schedule something on both our calendars.”

  “I just hate to plan something and get disappointed when it doesn’t work out. You know one of us is likely to get paged away.”

  “Probably. We’ll just reschedule for another game if it does.”

  Tom seemed to understand her need to find some way out of the grief she was experiencing, and he turned the conversation to games he’d seen with his father through the years. It was the sound of his voice that was comforting, and Jennifer tucked away that knowledge to think about later as she walked along beside him and listened.

  The ball game Wednesday evening was a successful outing, both as a date and because their team won. The same for the show Tom bought tickets for a week later, and Jennifer decided to stop wondering where the friendship might be headed and simply enjoy it.

  That he was trying to lighten the complex relationship she had with her work, help her sort out the emotions of Kelly’s passing, while fully supporting the love she showered on her kids began to settle in as something unique she’d never before experienced. Tom wasn’t attempting to get her to split work away from the rest of her life and build in distance. He was working instead to make it possible for her to cope with what happened, to care deeply but still have a life that could exist alongside the job.

  She was aware their friendship was moving beyond friends to something more, but it was flowing forward in such a measured way she wasn’t feeling either pressured or rushed, just cared for, and cared about.

  For the first time she was beginning to wonder what might be possible if the relationship lasted through the summer or beyond. The very idea of being fully settled in life had seemed like an unattainable dream only months before, and now it seemed almost possible.

  “What do you think about this one?” She held up a T-shirt she’d found. She was still searching for what she would take with her to Chicago for the O’Malley July gathering, and they were wandering Dallas’s open-air market to explore more options. “Purple and green clashed when I was growing up, but it doesn’t seem like any colors clash anymore.”

  Tom tipped his head as he considered it. “You would look about twelve. But cute.”

  She thought about that and tucked the shirt under her arm. “That’s a good fact. I’m feeling old lately. Gregory asked if I was going to be as old as his grandmother someday.”

  “What did you say?”

  “That I would be, but only after he was married and had kids of his own. He told me he thinks it will be a long time, as he doesn’t like girls, and he first wants to ride horses like that leaning cowboy in the mural.”

  “The mere idea of Gregory on a horse from which he could fall is enough to make me shudder.”

  “I know. Maybe ten years from now I’ll stop worrying about him breaking any more bones.”

  Tom came over and perched a straw hat, its brim circled with colorful ribbons, on her head. “This works. You need more sun protection when we go wandering about. And you can wear it at your Fourth celebration.”

  She considered the display of hats where he’d selected it. “Going to buy yourself one too?”

  “You can pick it out for me. I’ll trust you.”

  She put the hat on top of her stack of purchases and handed them over to him. “Go check out for me, and I’ll find you the perfect one.”

  He obligingly took the items and her cash. “How are we doing on time?”

  She glanced at her watch. “Another hour.”

  They were going to dinner with two of the partners in his practice, and after that to a movie. She’d agreed to go to church tomorrow with him, and if both their pagers cooperated, they would be working on hanging pictures in his house tomorrow afternoon. The weekend was filling up the way she hoped many more would in the future—little things that created memories.

  She found the perfect cowboy hat for Tom. She took it over to him and tugged him down a bit so that she could put it on his head. “Very nice.”

  “I was afraid you’d get me one with ribbons.”

  “I’m kinder than that most of the time.” She accepted the stuffed bag he handed her and waited while he bought the hat. “You know what? You’re starting to enjoy shopping.”

  He smiled. “Or maybe I’m just enjoying watching you.”

  6

  Thanks for talking about this and not pushing. I like going to church with you. I just don’t understand much of this yet.” Jennifer shifted the books she carried as she and Tom walked along a park path where they had retreated from the Sunday-evening crowds. It was important to him, church, and she was trying her best to understand why.

  She’d read the book of Luke as a favor to him, and read other parts of the Bible in smaller sections, but it was hard to make sense of all the information that flowed at her—about God, about Israel’s history, about Jesus, about the church.

  “What else can I answer for you?”

  “How do you know, Tom? That the Bible, that Christianity, is true?”

  “I wish I had a brilliant answer for you. I guess, as with most things, you start with common sense.” Tom walked a bit, then bent to pick up a small branch on the path. He snapped the wood in two pieces and held them up.

  “The Bible tells about how people would take a piece of wood, use part of it to start a fire, and use the other part to carve out an image of a god, then worship that image and pray to it for rain and good fortune. As if the works of their own hands could come alive and answer them. It’s illogical and foolish. So common sense will knock down most religions.” He tossed aside the sticks.

  “Other religions sound good on the surface, but turn out to be impersonal systems based on grading what you do to determine your worth. Christianity is the only religion that promises not a system but a personal God you have a relationship with. At its core, Christianity is a relationship with a God who is listening, responding, and interacting with those who love Him. That’s how you prove it, Jen. You test Christianity’s claims by testing out the relationship on which it’s built.”

  “Can you have a relationship with God if you don’t believe in Him?” she asked. “That doesn’t seem possible. Isn’t Christianity something you have to take on faith first? Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus died for people’s sins. Jesus rose from the dead. Those are hard facts to absorb and believe.”

  Tom weighed her question, then nodded. “Consider it this way. If you step off a tall building, it’s immaterial whether you think gravity is true or not; it’s still going to splat you on the ground a few seconds later. Right?”

  “Thanks for that image.”

  He smiled. “It got the point across. In some ways it doesn’t matter what you believe. Christianity is more like that gravity analogy than not. God is God right now, and He will still be God tomorrow, regardless of whether you choose to believe in Him today or not. That’s a good thing. It means you can ask questions and search out answers and see for yourself what is true. God will still go on being God while you ponder the questions. He doesn’t mind.”

  He nodded toward the books she carried. “So read the Bible. Test it. Does God do what He says He will do? Is God behaving as He said He would? And if what you read and see does seem to be consistent, then maybe you might start by praying something like, ‘God, if you are really there, I want to get to know you so I can believe in you too.’ If Christianity is real, you’re going to find there’s a very personal God waiting to respond to you and help with the questions you have.”

  She didn’t understand how interacting with God was supposed to work, but she found it hard to put that question into words without sounding foolish.

  “You can quit biting that lip, Jen,” he said, smiling and slowing their walk to a stop. “God loves you. He’s not going to hide the evidence and the answers to the questions you wonder about. He’s going to help your search lead to answers. God says that th
ose who seek Him will find Him. I’m not afraid to say check it out and see. You’ll find Christianity is true.”

  “What about the things that simply can’t be proved? Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus died for our sins. Jesus rose from the dead. It’s hard to prove something like the resurrection.”

  “What happened two thousand years ago can be studied, Jen. You can’t see gravity, but you can see lots of evidence that gravity exists. You can find a lot of evidence that the resurrection actually happened. Both the record for the crucifixion and resurrection stand up to intense scrutiny.”

  He tapped the copy of C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity he’d pulled off his shelf for her. They started walking again. “This one is good for some more information to mull over. Nearly everyone will acknowledge there was a man named Jesus who lived two thousand years ago in the land of Palestine. The Roman historians of the time, the archaeological record—it’s not hard to find the evidence of Jesus that comes from numerous sources other than the Bible. The debate is about who that man was. A good teacher? A religious prophet? Or what He claimed to be—the Son of God.”

  Jennifer nodded. “I’ll concede to you that if you’re right, then I’d be foolish not to at least weigh the evidence. But, Tom, don’t you really want me to believe more because you believe than anything else?”

  “I admit it’s hard, sharing so much of my life with you but knowing this part that is so important to me is kind of a black hole for you. I find myself not talking about subjects I would normally mention because I know we don’t share the same perspective yet.” He stopped and reached over a hand to rest on hers. “I’m sorry I’m not more eloquent at explaining things for you.”

  “It’s more clarity than I’ve had before,” she offered. “I’ve gone a lifetime without being asked to consider Christianity. If you hadn’t come along, I probably wouldn’t be doing so now. But I care about what matters to you. I want to understand it. I just can’t promise I’ll believe like you do.”

  “I know that, Jen. I’m only asking that you consider it.” Tom smiled. “God’s not asking you to deserve or earn the fact He loves you. He’s not asking you to do something to be worthy of being loved. He just loves you. Jesus paid the full price of your sins so you can be with Him for eternity. That really is how simple Christianity is. A personal God who loves you, wants a relationship with you, and who has been willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make that possible. He’ll do most of the heavy lifting to help you figure this out. You simply have to be willing to give Him a chance.”