Intended for Harm

by C. S. Lakin

  Despite all the horrible disappointments Jake’s family had faced, they all seemed to be navigating their way through life shoals—all except sweet Ben, his pain and the unfairness of it another reason why Jake refused to soften his heart toward God. Every once in a while Jake felt such a need to talk to his creator, to pour out his heart and feel again the comfort he had once felt for such a fleeting time. It had been the only time in Jake’s entire life that he’d felt true comfort, and he knew it hadn’t been a figment of his imagination. Sometimes Jake felt so lonely and alone in the world that he didn’t think he could bear it a second longer. And then Dinah would say something funny and smile at him, or Ben would cheer when he moved his chess piece into checkmate. Those little moments of joy kept him going. But if Ben died . . .

  Jake’s throat clamped shut, the way it seemed to do all the time now, thinking about how hopeless this all was, watching his son—really his only son left to him—die a little bit more each day. It was so wrong, so unfair! Jake would gladly give him life over and over to let Ben have a chance at living—living a real life, not this sham of a life, being sick all the time and not knowing the joys of health. Not knowing what it felt to wake up in the morning and actually feel good, full of energy and ready to scale a mountain, like Reuben liked to do. Or jump on a bike and ride fast down a hill, like Levi used to do, Jake picturing him on that brand new bike he’d bought him for his tenth birthday and Levi’s eyes wild with excitement.

  How he longed to give Ben a few of those moments, even some of his own: refreshing long days spent hiking in the Rockies, air so fresh and thin you felt invigorated in every cell of your body; the songs of osprey and hawks on the wind; the soft splash of whitewater in a nearby river as water tumbled over rocks, cold, refreshing mountain water that slid down your throat like heavenly nectar, nothing ever tasting so sweet. Jake wished he could bottle up those tastes and sounds and sights and let Ben drink long and deep of them.

  He thought of the one short trip he had taken with Ben and Joseph, all those years back. How old had his boys been then? He ruffled through the years like flipping scrapbook pages, trying to put the loose snapshots in some order, recalling the trip taken only a year or so after Rachel had died, when he felt like walking out on his job. Joseph must have been about ten then, and Ben only three—too young to really remember the majesty of the mountains. On a whim he’d hired a fishing guide to take them down the Poudre River in a boat, a lazy river on a warm lazy day, Joseph intent on snagging a trout but the day so sleepy all the fish were dozing in the shadows, not interested in a hand-tied fly—no matter how authentic it appeared. Jake then remembered Ben’s happy little face, his tipping his chin up and closing his eyes as he lay back against his father’s chest, soaking up the sun. Yet, all Jake recalled of his own feelings were the emptiness from sorely missing Rachel, wishing she could have been there too, having never seen such mountains or camped under the stars. He’d been so occupied with missing his wife he hadn’t allowed himself the pleasure of his sons’ precious company.

  Jake swore—as he sat on the couch, the TV playing some program too low to hear—that if Ben made it through his ordeal, if by some miracle a kidney could be found and Ben got well enough, Jake would take him back to Colorado, and this time he would pay attention, notice all the little things, the little bits and pieces that made up life—the way the breeze jingled the aspen leaves; the smell of the campfire as the sparks drifted up to the starry heavens; the taste of water tumbling down from the snowpack, icy and tingling in his mouth. He would point these things out to Ben, teach him to pay attention so he didn’t miss any of it, since he’d already missed so much. Jake knew now how important this was, since he’d pretty much missed everything that had happened in his life, let so much slip by without noticing, so that when those things and people he loved were lost, he regretted not having stored up all those moments, unable to treasure them later.

  He thought of that corny saying: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” That saying described Jake Abrams perfectly. He didn’t want Ben to make the same mistake. And Jake hoped with all his heart Ben would have the chance not to.

  June 12

  Joe took off his glasses and splashed water on his face, wiped with a towel and took a good look in the small mirror. He really didn’t like the moustache and goatee, but Rhonda had dared him to grow one, said it would make him look distinguished, that maybe his colleagues would stop teasing him for looking so young. But he was young, considering the responsibilities he held, being the top surgeon at the nation’s finest kidney transplant center. He’d been content staying at UC Davis Medical, but after Mosey had died, Rhonda yearned for a change, wanting to leave California for someplace wholly different. Well, Missouri fit that definition. They’d been here now two years and Joe still couldn’t get used to the humidity, the air so wet and muggy, his shirts always damp and sticking to chairs and the seat of his car.

  But they’d settled some good roots in St. Louis, found a church they loved that was a lot like the one back home—not too big and full of young families welcoming their two small sons, Ray and Manny, a great place of fellowship. Shortly after they’d moved here, Rhonda’s mother, Nadine, moved out too, and one of Rhonda’s brothers, who had three kids a little older than his boys. And although Joe’s workload was hefty, he loved what he was doing, loved it passionately, finding great satisfaction in helping save lives, seeing sick patients become well so quickly, their joy in life rekindled after so much suffering. Nothing brought him as much joy—with the exception of his family—and for all these blessings he thanked God from morning till night.

  Joe fingered his chin once more and chuckled at the unfamiliar feeling of hair there, then sat down at his desk and sipped his coffee. Already the air conditioning was blowing—even at seven a.m., the day promising to be a hot one, even for June. But Rhonda liked the heat, even the humidity, and no doubt it was on her list to take the boys to the community pool and the water slides at Aquatic Park. He recalled how the kids back in LA would find a way to open the fire hydrants and dance in the streets as the water gushed out. So different from these pristine parks with their water features, the little geysers that shot up from the holes in the concrete so the kids could cool off. One thing Joe especially liked about this city were the parks—over a hundred of them, with beautiful trees and lots of activities for a family—bike paths, fishing lakes, hiking trails. He could see staying here for a long time, a good place to raise his kids.

  He scanned down his list of appointments for the day. Fridays were non-operating days, set aside for appointments, consulting, catching up on his paperwork. He stopped as a name jarred him, jumping out from the page and hooking his attention.

  Ben Abrams.

  No, it couldn’t be . . .

  He thumbed through the folders underneath his roster as his pulse throbbed in his ears, pulled out the one marked Abrams, Ben. A common enough name, right? He drew in a breath, dropped his eyes to the page. The initial phone appointment was logged on Wednesday with Dinah Abrams in California. Dinah.

  Joe doubled over, clutched his stomach. His hand shook as he read the receptionist’s brief notes, enough information to confirm this was his little brother, Ben, needing a kidney transplant, and the appointment schedule today showing Reuben Abrams seeing him at one p.m.

  Joe’s head hurt, and he felt emotions tumble over one another: anger and fear, worry and panic. How could he face Reuben, after all this time? What could he say? He’d hoped Ben had gotten better over the years, just assumed he had, but now Joe realized he’d only wished that so he didn’t have to think of the alternative—that Ben, his sweet little brother, could really be dying. He had just pushed the possibility away, ignored it, living in denial.

  Frustrated, painful memories surfaced in an instant: Joe unable to do anything to help Ben, watching his brother so miserable and wishing he could just touch him and make him better, then remembering how God had
told him his job was to save Ben . . .

  He dropped to his knees in prayer, on the thick Berber carpeting in his office, the air conditioning blowing cool across his sweaty neck. The overwhelming sovereignty of God, his omniscience and mercy and foresight, shook Joe to his core, rattling his bones until they ached as he knelt there and shook in awe and fear. I can’t do this, Father. I just can’t.

  He remembered the day he first saw Ben in his mother’s belly, when he was only six and God showed him this tiny peanut-shaped life throbbing with light. Joe knew even then, had told his mother, that God had a plan to save his brother, even then. The wonder of God’s ways astonished Joe, humbled him. Joe had forgotten that—God telling him he was meant to save Ben. He’d brushed it off somehow, made light of it, forgetting God’s pronouncements never changed over time. Just like Mosey had told him—God doesn’t ever change his mind; he just has his own timetable, and often things happen at moments we least expect, God suddenly orchestrating events so his will would be done.

  Just as he was doing now.

  Joe knew what was in his way, making him resist the perfect and holy will of God—his simmering anger and yearning for revenge. He’d buried it neatly for years but just the thought of seeing Reuben—or any of his brothers—resurrected those emotions with a fury. God demanded he forgive them—wholly and unreservedly. And Joe had thought he’d done so—until now, God showing him plain as day how far from forgiveness he really was. And now God was requiring he walk through the fire of his anger and come through the other side unscathed.

  He could turn this appointment over to one of the other doctors and that would be the end of it. Reuben would come and go, maybe Joe could make sure everything was done to help Ben, help from the shadows, tell himself this was the way God had planned to use him all along. But Joe knew he was fooling himself. God was aiming at something greater, Joe realized. Healing. And not just Ben’s healing. Healing for him, for his entire family, a thing outrageous to consider yet undeniably of God.

  Joe couldn’t help the tears that poured out, and he let them flow, thinking about his father whom he missed so much, who he never allowed himself to think about all these years, just shut him out of his heart. He thought about Dinah, let those feelings escape their cage as well, and memories assailed him, struck him down with their great need to run roughshod over him, run rampant in freedom. His longing to see his father, to see Ben and Dinah, filled him to overflowing, coming out in that explosion of tears that did nothing to quell his pain, only bring it front and center, magnify it so he had to stare at it, couldn’t hide from it any longer. It amazed him to think he had walked out his days and nights for years unaware of these ponderous emotions slumbering inside him like a fiery dragon. It had only taken a name to wake that dragon up, have it blow fire out its nostrils before Joe had a chance to tame it—or take cover. He was singed from head to foot, singed with grief, with remorse, with prideful indignation. He had a right to feel vengeful, didn’t he? His brothers had tried to kill him! Yet Joe knew the Scriptures were clear. “ ‘Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord.” It was not Joe’s place to repay evil for evil, not his right. Still, he would not forgive all that easily either.

  He would need to know if they felt any remorse over what they had done. He would test Reuben’s heart, give him an opportunity to show humility. He felt God’s spirit stir inside him, pressing him forward, growing his need to face his hurt and anger and lay them to rest. The thought of confronting Reuben frightened him, but Joe had to remember the greater need—Ben’s life. And if God had brought them all to this place, directed events so that Ben would be his patient, then that meant God had intended good to come out of the harm his brothers had meted out. Still, that did not excuse their evil deed or the wickedness of their hearts, did it?

  But it did give credence to Joe’s staunch belief that God meant for Joe to save Ben’s life. And with God’s help, that is what Joe intended to do, and wanted to do, with all his heart.

  “Dr. Smith, your one o’clock is here.”

  Joe spoke into the intercom. “Thank you, send him in.”

  He stood and grasped the edge of his desk, hiding behind his desk as if that would shield him for what was to come. He had spent most of the morning rehearsing what he would say to Reuben, imagining the shock on his brother’s face upon seeing him, the awkward moments filling the space between them. But when Reuben entered through the door, and Joe began to walk toward him, then saw two other men—men—follow closely behind Reuben, it was all Joe could do to shake their hands, nod, introduce himself, stuffing down the shock of recognition of not just Reuben but Simon and Levi, there in his office, his three older brothers, looking exactly the way Joe remembered them yet the years having matured their faces, added weight and muscle to their stature. All the practiced lines flew from Joe’s head, leaving him dumbfounded, as he tried not to let his jaw go slack, give any telltale sign that he knew them. For it only took a short few seconds to realize, seconds confirmed by minutes passing, that his brothers did not know who he was. Not at all.

  Mosey had said something to him, Joe recalled in a flash of insight, how odd that Joe’s fall off the freeway only broke the bones in his face, but the rest of his body, bathed in light, didn’t even suffer a scratch. Joe thought it strange too—why would God protect him only partially? Or protect him at all? But the understanding rushed at him, as he sat down behind his desk, presenting a professional face—a wholly unfamiliar, new face that God had decreed, that changed his appearance just enough for this one purpose, this one moment God had foreseen and no doubt planned years ago. Joe clamped his mouth while thinking how God probably even put the idea in Rhonda’s mind last week to tease Joe about growing a goatee and moustache, God knowing Joe would never come up with that idea on his own, or would dismiss it, but how could he say no to his charming wife, daring him like that?

  Joe’s astonishment grew to massive proportions as he sat and half listened to Reuben talk about their brother Ben. He shook his attention, riveted on what Reuben was saying, nodded as he listened, took notes to keep from staring too long in the faces of his brothers. Like wandering in a dream, so surreal and unbelievable, Joe glanced at Simon’s face, all his brothers now nearly forty, Joe calculated in his head, lines on their faces where there had been none before, Reuben with a receding hairline, Levi wearing glasses—the years hardest on him, from what Joe could tell. No doubt the burden of their secrets had cost them, Joe swiping away the rising feelings of anger, ignoring them for now.

  “Tell me,” Joe managed to say without his voice quavering, “about the rest of your family. Ben is your younger brother. Is . . . are your parents still living? Do you have other siblings and have you all been checked for a possible match as a donor for Ben?”

  Joe worked at breathing in, breathing out, trying not to let his nervousness show as he both longed and dreaded to hear their answer. Simon spoke up.

  “Our father is alive but . . . we had a different mother than Ben, and his mother died many years ago. We have a sister, Dinah, who takes care of Ben. She’s a nurse. And yes, we would all be willing to give a kidney for Ben but none of us has his blood type. Ben’s an O, like his mother.”

  Sweat broke out on Joe’s brow as he fumbled for Ben’s chart. He’d failed to notice that clearly stated fact when he first skimmed the notes in the chart, lost in his memories and anxiety over his pending appointment. What was God doing? A strong surge of presentiment washed over him, leading him to other surprising thoughts. For he, too, had type O blood. Yet that didn’t mean he would be the right donor for Ben. Still . . . this was too uncanny and unexpected.

  “Uh . . . so there are no other members of the family—none on Ben’s mother’s side?” he asked. Breathe in, breathe out . . .

  Simon stole a quick glance at Levi, then Reuben. “There . . . was another brother, Ben’s brother, from the same mother. But . . . he died . . .”

  Joe nodded, consciously calmed his face as he looked
in his brothers’ eyes and saw something he never expected to see. Remorse. Sorrow. Joe felt his chest tighten.

  “How . . . is your father’s health? Is he well?”

  Joe could see the question puzzled them. Levi answered this time, Joe noting his brother’s hands tightly clenched in his lap. “He has unstable angina. Just had a mild heart attack a few weeks ago. Otherwise he would have come too. We thought if we all came it might . . .”

  Reuben finished what Levi apparently couldn’t say, making it clear to Joe that Levi felt a tremendous affection for Ben. He could see it in all their faces—their worry, their concern. Reuben said, “Ben’s really bad off. He’s on the list for a kidney, but he’s now getting dialysis four times a week, and he . . . he’s just not doing well. We understand there are a lot of people out there needing kidneys, but . . . Ben’s so young. He’s got his whole life ahead of him. It just isn’t fair . . .”