Stand by Me

by Neta Jackson

  Kat hoped she hadn’t gone home. Principal of an elementary school! She never would have guessed. But Kat’s thoughts were already racing. Maybe she could get a job there next fall if they needed teacher aides. Or maybe even—

  Just then the man at the keyboard played a few opening chords and spoke into his mike. “Good morning, church! Let’s stand and sing this song from Psalm 27, letting the words of the psalmist sink deep into our hearts. ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?’ ” He beckoned to someone. “Terri, sorry to put you on the spot, honey, but can you come up here and sign these words for us?”

  Chairs scraped and a rustle filled the room as everyone stood—and by now Kat knew they wouldn’t sit back down again for another thirty minutes. Minimum. She watched curiously as a thirtysomething woman with short brown hair came to the front. (He’d called her “honey.” Was she his wife?) She’d never seen anyone do sign language to music before, and the woman’s motions were almost . . . lyrical in their beauty. Several people in the congregation did the motions along with her, creating a dance of hands. Kat wanted to do them too, but she felt self-conscious. She still wasn’t exactly used to doing anything more than clapping to praise music—and she’d never even done that in her so-called home church growing up.

  Kat was so busy watching the sign language for Lord and light and strength and afraid that she hadn’t noticed Avis Douglass appear. But as the last phrase of the song died away, there she was at the mike with that big Bible she carried around. “The Word of the Lord from Psalm 56,” she said in that strong voice of hers. “ ‘Be merciful to me, O God, for people hotly pursue me. All day long they press their attack! My slanderers pursue me all day long. Many are attacking me in their pride . . .’ ”

  Was she the worship leader today? Kinda odd to come in late. She’d gone from “missing” to reading the scripture with a kind of . . . fierceness.

  “But—” Mrs. Douglass’s tone shifted slightly as she read. Calmer, not as fierce, but still passionate. “ ‘—when I am afraid, I will trust in You. In God I trust; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?’ ” The worship leader shut her Bible and held it against her chest. She was silent for a long moment, her chin tilted up, her eyes closed. The room hushed. Then she spoke. “Say these words with me, church: ‘When I am afraid, I will trust in You.’ ”

  “When I am afraid, I will trust in You,” a chorus of voices repeated.

  “In God I trust, I will not be afraid!”

  “In God I trust, I will not be afraid.”

  Twice more Mrs. Douglass had them repeat the words. “When I am afraid, I will trust in God! . . . In God I trust, I will not be afraid!”

  The back of Kat’s neck prickled as the voices around her rose, speaking the words forcefully. She’d read through the Psalms a couple times in the last few years but had never noticed the power of those two juxtaposed phrases, not like this. A few people around her seemed to be crying. She heard, “Thank ya, Jesus!” from one side of the room and “Yes, yes, I trust You, Lord!” from another, as if the psalm spoke to some real and present fears.

  Strange, Kat couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually felt afraid—well, maybe on 9/11 when those planes crashed into the Twin Towers. But even that terrifying event had seemed so far away from her life in Arizona. She’d only been sixteen at the time, a junior in high school, didn’t know anyone in New York. Mostly she’d just felt bad for the people who suffered so much trauma or lost family and friends in the disaster. But it hadn’t touched her personally.

  Had she ever really needed to trust God like that? In the face of real fears?

  Giving a nod to the praise team, Avis Douglass stepped off the low platform and joined her husband. Kat saw him give her a quick squeeze with his arm as the praise team led into another song of worship. Sweet.

  When the praise team finally sat down and the children had been excused to their Sunday school classes, there was another empty pause. Kat squirmed. Most Sunday church services moved along click, click, click. What was supposed to happen now?

  After a few long moments, Pastor Clark stood up and stepped onto the platform. He gripped the slender wooden podium as Mrs. Douglass came back and stood beside him. She laid a hand on his arm and prayed that God would speak through this man of God and that the people would have ears to hear.

  As she sat down again, Pastor Clark cleared his throat. “Thank you, Sister Avis. Good morning, church.” Good mornings came back in reply. “If you know me at all, brothers and sisters, you’ve probably already figured out that Hubert Clark is not exactly a spontaneous, seat-of-the-pants kind of person. I like order. I like schedules. I like advance notice.”

  Friendly chuckles greeted his wry confession.

  “So when First Lady Rose called this morning to say Pastor Joe had been up half the night with the flu and I’d need to fill the pulpit for him . . . well, the old, familiar stage fright set in. The cold-sweat, knees-knocking kind of stage fright. Maybe Sister Avis knows what I’m talking about, because our brother Justin, who was scheduled to lead worship today, also called in sick. So I did the same thing to our sister here. Put her on the spot and asked her to lead worship at the last minute.”

  Murmurs of empathy. Well, that explained that, Kat thought.

  “But what better time to talk about fear . . . or faith? It’s easy to praise God, to be thankful, to have confidence in God when everything’s going smoothly, when we’re healthy, when the job’s secure, when the money’s good. But what about when we haven’t yet seen the answer to our prayers? When our job gets terminated? When our kids are rebellious? Or when we’re sick or someone we love is in the hospital?”

  “That’s right, Pastor! That’s right.” A wiry black woman jumped to her feet, the one whose husband they’d prayed for last Sunday because he’d been injured on the job. “Mmmm. Lord, have mercy.” The woman sat again, fanning her face with a piece of paper. Florida. That was her name, Kat thought.

  “But, saints, how many times did Jesus say, ‘Fear not! Don’t be afraid. It is I.’ ” Pastor Clark stopped, fumbled for a handkerchief, and coughed a couple times. A man on the front row jumped up and gave him a glass of water. But after a few swallows the pastor went on. “Brothers and sisters, praise itself is an act of faith. Why? When we’re able to praise God before we see the answers to our prayers, we’re saying, Lord, I trust You to work this out, according to Your purpose. I’m going to thank You now for what You’re going to do.”

  More amens peppered the room.

  “And secondly, praising God strengthens us! The Bible says, ‘The joy of the Lord is our strength!’ Say that with me, church. The joy of the Lord—”

  “—is our strength!” the congregation echoed.

  But even as Kat dutifully said the words along with everyone else, she realized something was wrong. Pastor Clark didn’t finish the phrase. Instead he gripped the small wooden podium with both hands, wobbled . . . and suddenly, clutching the left side of his chest, he crumpled to the floor.

  A nanosecond of disbelief. Then pandemonium broke out. Some lady screamed. Several people rushed to the low platform. A panicked babble of voices. “Somebody call 911!” “Is there a doctor in the house?!” “Pastor Clark! Pastor Clark! Are you okay?”

  Kat lurched out of her seat and pushed herself through the crowd of people in the middle aisle. Was there a doctor in the house? She didn’t know. But her father was a cardiologist, and he’d made sure every member of his family knew CPR, knew what to do if someone was having a stroke or heart attack, knew how to treat for shock.

  Only vaguely aware that Mrs. Douglass was urging people to pray, Kat elbowed her way through the small knot of people huddled around the fallen pastor and dropped to her knees. The pastor’s mouth gaped open, and she heard a gurgle . . . a gasp. Pressing two fingers to the man’s scrawny neck, she felt for a pulse. There . . . no, no, lost it.


  “Give me room!” she snapped. “He needs CPR.” For a brief second she considered doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation but remembered that compression-only was recommended when there was no pulse. The keyboard man was still slapping the pastor’s cheeks and calling his name. Pushing the man aside, she straddled the pastor’s long, thin body, placed both hands over his heart, and began to pump. One, two, three, four . . . Half a second for each one. One hundred chest compressions per minute. . . . ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred.

  Again. One, two, three, four . . .

  How many minutes had she been doing this? Damp tendrils of hair fell over her face. Her hands and arms ached. Sweat trickled down her back.

  . . . fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five . . .

  Somewhere in the back of her brain she heard a siren.

  . . . sixty-two, sixty-three, sixty-four . . .

  Then shouts. “Let ’em through!” “Thank God they’re here!”

  Kat kept thrusting the man’s chest until hands took her by both shoulders and a voice said, “All right, young lady. You can stop. Paramedics are here.”

  “No! Keep going!” one of the paramedics barked. She pushed again and again, huffing, sweat trickling into her eyes, vaguely aware of the pastor’s shirt being ripped open as patches to a defibrillator and several strip leads were attached to his chest. A paramedic started an IV. Another placed a ventilation bag mask over the pastor’s slack mouth.

  Finally one of the paramedics took over for her, and Kat let herself be pulled up off her knees. Stumbling off the platform, she sank into a chair. Immediately Brygitta was beside her with a bottle of water. “Good heavens, Kat,” she hissed in her ear. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  Kat just shook her head, gulping the water. She was exhausted. The five men in the dark blue pants and jackets were strapping the limp body of the elderly pastor onto a wheeled gurney. Liquid dripped into his arm from a bottle held high by one of the paramedics. SouledOut men pushed chairs out of the way. A path opened up to the door. Kat’s eyes followed the gurney as it was wheeled outside to the white fire department ambulance with its red and blue lettering and lights parked at the curb.

  The rain had stopped.

  People stood at the windows and watched as the gurney was loaded. Some were crying. The ambulance doors slammed shut. The siren wailed and pulled out of the parking lot.

  Kat saw the Douglasses and a few others push through the doors and run for their cars. A moment later the black Lexus followed the ambulance. Two other cars did too.

  Small groups of people were still praying. Some stood and held hands. Others pulled chairs into a circle. Parents collected their children and ushered them out of the building.

  Kat still sat in the chair, elbows on her knees, head in her hands. She felt numb. Her mind was blank. How long she sat there, she didn’t know. Finally she felt a hand on her shoulder. “Kat? Maybe we should go.” Nick’s voice. Gentle. Kind. “We can walk back to the apartment. Rain has stopped. Walking will be good.”

  He took her hand and helped her up out of the chair. She let him lead her through the jumble of chairs, around groups of people still praying, still crying. Livie and Brygitta were waiting with her jacket and Bible. They pushed out the double doors. But as they walked across the parking lot to Clark Street, Kat looked back at the glass windows with SouledOut Community Church painted in big red letters across them.

  What had she done? It was the first time she’d ever used CPR in a real situation. Was Pastor Clark going to make it? Did she do it right? What if—

  And for the first time in a long time, Kat was afraid.

  Chapter 21

  As the automatic door of the ER at St. Francis Hospital slid open, Avis had to practically run to keep up with Peter as he strode up to the desk. “The man they just brought in—Hubert Clark. He collapsed in the middle of church. One of our pastors at SouledOut Community Church. Is he . . . how is he?”

  The woman behind the glass window barely looked up from her computer. “And you are . . . ?”

  “Peter Douglass. One of the church elders. How is—”

  “Sir, you’ll need to wait. Just take a seat in the waiting room. I’m sure someone will come out to talk to you directly. Does he have family that should be notified?”

  Peter looked at Avis. She shook her head. Pastor Clark didn’t have any immediate family. No wife or children. Sisters or brothers? She didn’t know.

  Peter left their names at the desk and slumped in a chair in the waiting room. But he stood up as the Meeks, Baxters, and David Brown came in. Good, all the elders are here, Avis thought. “We called Pastor Cobbs from the car,” she said. “I think he’s on the way.”

  Jodi glanced at Avis. “I thought he was sick,” she whispered. Avis grimaced.

  “Have they told you anything?” David Brown asked.

  Peter shook his head.

  David was in his forties, maybe five-ten, light brown hair thinning on top, his face pockmarked from a severe case of teenage acne. He and Mary had three children, two boys in middle school and a girl in fifth grade, if Avis remembered correctly, though the girl didn’t attend Bethune Elementary.

  The men huddled together, talking quietly. Debra Meeks took a seat, shaking her head. Jodi Baxter slipped an arm around Avis. “Are you all right?”

  Avis gave an absentminded nod. She was watching the huddle of men. Denny and David were white. Peter and Debra were black. She’d never thought anything about the racial makeup of the elders. Denny Baxter was just . . . Denny. A great guy. A great friend. She didn’t know the Browns that well, even though they’d been at Uptown with Pastor Clark before the merge, same as she had. Did David have the same reservations about their racially diverse church as his wife, Mary? She’d have to ask Peter if he’d picked up anything on the elder board.

  The automatic door slid open, and Pastor Joe Cobbs and his wife, Rose, came into the ER and headed their way. Beads of sweat dotted the forehead of the short, stocky copastor. Rose shook her head as they joined the group. “Joe shouldn’t be here. But he wouldn’t listen to me.” She looked from face to face. “How is Pastor Clark?”

  Peter shook his head. “No word yet.”

  They talked in quiet voices or just sat. Avis walked back and forth, praying silently. The words of Psalm 56 kept running through her prayer thoughts: “When I am afraid, I will trust in God . . . I trust in God, why should I be afraid?”

  They’d been at the hospital thirty minutes when a man in a white coat came through the double doors that led to the “inner sanctum” and paused at the reception desk. The woman behind the window nodded in their direction. Almost as one they stood and faced the man.

  “You’re friends of Mr. Clark?” the doctor asked. His face was a neutral mask Avis couldn’t read.

  Pastor Cobbs spoke. “I’m Pastor Joe Cobbs. Pastor Clark is my copastor at SouledOut Community Church. He collapsed during the morning service. These are church leaders and friends.”

  The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry. Mr. Clark didn’t make it. Both the paramedics and the doctors here kept working on him, but . . . the paramedics estimated his heart fully stopped even before they arrived at the church.”

  Debra Meeks gasped. “Lord, have mercy!”

  Peter groaned and reached for Avis. They stood a long moment holding on to one another. Avis, her face pressed against Peter’s chest, felt numb. All she could think was, What now, Lord, what now?

  Denny Baxter, who’d known Pastor Clark longer than any of them, and Joe and Rose Cobbs stayed at the hospital to make arrangements for Hubert’s body to be taken to a funeral home. The rest of them reluctantly went home with the assignment to pass the word along to the rest of the church.

  Peter and Avis were silent on the drive back to Rogers Park. Once they’d climbed the stairs to their third-floor apartment, Peter sank into his recliner, shaking his head. “I can’t believe he’s gone. Just like that.”

  Avis sat on the
arm of the recliner, facing him, stroking his close-cropped hair. “You’ve been worried about him for a while. We knew he wasn’t well.”

  “Yeah. I know. But . . . still wasn’t prepared for him to go so suddenly.”

  They sat together quietly for several long minutes. Suddenly Peter looked at her quizzically. “What happened to you this morning—before worship, I mean? I get that Pastor Clark asked you to fill in as worship leader at the last minute. He said as much. But where were you when service was supposed to start?”

  The sour taste in her mouth returned. She was so tempted to blurt out the whole conversation she’d overheard in the ladies’ restroom. By an elder’s wife, at that! But she felt a check in her spirit. This wasn’t the time. Pastor Clark had just died of a heart attack. Her offended sensibilities felt . . . almost petty in comparison.

  “I’ll explain later,” she murmured, bending forward to kiss her husband on the forehead. “Right now I think we need to make some calls. What letters of the alphabet did we say we’d take?”

  They were halfway through the Ks, using both the kitchen phone and Peter’s cell, when Avis heard a knock at the front door. “Someone’s at the door, Terri. We don’t know any details about funeral arrangements yet, but we’ll call when we do.” The knocks came again. “I’m sorry. I need to go. Bye.”

  Avis sighed. It had to be one of their new “neighbors” at the door. She opened it.

  Nick Taylor stood on the landing, hands shoved in the front pockets of his jeans. “We, uh, heard you were home. Just footsteps,” he hastily added. “No problem. But . . . we wanted to know if you have any word about Pastor Clark. Especially Kat.

  She’s pretty upset.”

  Avis’s heart melted a little. The four students were too new to be in the church phone directory. But she should have realized they’d want to know. Especially the girl, after jumping in and giving the pastor CPR.

  This wasn’t news for standing on the landing. “Come in, Nick.” She opened the door wider and led the young man into the living room. She sat down on the couch and motioned for him to join her. “I’m sorry, Nick. We should have told you and your friends right away. Pastor Clark . . .” She shook her head. “He didn’t make it. He’s home with Jesus now.”