by Ann Nichols
“Oh no, Luke. I loved you for it then as I do now, but it’s not a job that a human can handle. You’re everything to me, as a man—I never want another—but you aren’t God. And that isn’t even a job you should covet—”
He stopped her by pressing his fingers lightly against her lips. “Not now, Melissa. You told me that you would wait until I asked. I’m not ready to ask that question, and I honestly don’t know if I ever will be. I still can’t help but feel that it was your sudden love for God that took you away from me.”
She respected his honesty even though she wanted to argue with his conclusions.
“But there is one thing I do promise you,” he continued as he drew her close to him again. “You are right. I do run away from situations that I find disagreeable. In some respects, it’s amazing that I made it through medical school. But I promise you that I will never run away from you again.”
Melissa squeezed her eyes shut. “Thank you, Luke,” she whispered and nuzzled her nose against his neck, inhaling the masculine scent of the man she loved.
Seventeen
Melissa spent the next morning at the castle of Chlemoutsi, and when she saw that she was running out of time to explore the fort, she obtained special permission from the guard to stay past the closing hour of 3:00.
She was thrilled to walk among the walls of the crusader fortress. Although Melissa knew that the Fourth Crusade, which brought the Franks to Greece, was one of the greatest civil disasters in Christian history, where one denomination, the Latin Church of the West, attacked and plundered Constantinople, the capital of the Greek church of the East, she couldn’t help but admire the Frankish Castle of Chlemoutsi.
Built between the years of 1220 and 1223 high above the Ionian Sea, it was a bulwark of strength and the site of many a great tournament. Melissa could almost hear the elegant cheers of the medieval ladies as they sat above the galleries and cheered on their favorite knights, who jousted and fenced on the grounds below.
The meltemia winds blew strongly and Melissa marveled at how they carried the heat away from the fortress on the hill. When it occurred to her that the same winds had blown during the time of the Franks, she felt a special connection with this historic site. The warm wind seemed to sing of the tale of the crusaders as it blew in and around the parapets and crenels, through the lancet windows and up the crumbling stairways.
As she stood among the massive walls of the man-made citadel, Melissa understood why King David in his psalms so often compared God to a strong fortress. There was something protective and reassuring about the gigantic walls of rough-cut, well-fitted limestone—something natural that was different from modern structures. The walls of Chlemoutsi were secure and firm even after more than 750 years of attacks from men and the forces of nature.
With the waning sun bathing the walls of the castle in golden hues of orange and red, she climbed the steps to the roof of the keep’s galleries from where she had a panoramic view of her surroundings. Pulling her binoculars out of her backpack, she trained them toward the promontory to the south and the much older walls of the Byzantine Beauvoir. Below the edge of the rocky knoll sat Villa Beauvoir.
Melissa involuntarily sighed. She knew that she and Luke still had tall walls to scale in their personal relationship, but she was filled with peace when she acknowledged that they had made a good start at climbing them the previous night. Lowering the binoculars, she pulled Luke’s cross out from beneath her T-shirt. It captured the rays of the setting sun and flashed in the palm of her hand. She squeezed it once before slipping it back inside her shirt, then gave one last sweeping look over the stupendous, unobstructed view before carefully picking her way back down to the entrance of the keep.
She walked through the deeply shadowed corridors and past the wide galleries. Night was beginning to fall on Chlemoutsi Castle, and although she carried a flashlight in her backpack, she didn’t welcome the idea of getting caught all alone in the castle after dark. Stones and hidden foundations from fallen medieval dwellings littered the courtyard. By day, it was a mass of picturesque debris, but definitely not something she would want to traverse by the shadows of night.
Stepping out of the vaulted gallery, she approached the arched gateway of the keep. But the view framed by the stone arch caused her to pause. The sun was a gigantic orange ball, low in the fiery sky, and it highlighted the green of the fields below with a depth of color that an artist could only dream about. The walls of the old fort were nearly fuchsia in the light. Even the swallows flying to their nests above the arch seemed to trail fire from the sun in their wake.
Melissa couldn’t resist watching the “show” from this vantage point. Dropping her bag against the wall next to a wild rose bush, she sat on the old stone walkway. With her arms stretched out behind her and her legs in front, she was wishing that Luke was with her to watch the sunset when the sudden intrusion of several high-speed military airplanes startled her. She quickly laughed at her jumpiness and waved at the second plane as it blasted past her. The lead jet was already over the fortress of Beauvoir and the villa fifteen kilometers to the south.
While she was waving at the second plane, she saw a black blur out of the corner of her eye circling her outstretched leg. In the split second that it took for her to recognize the blur as a bee, it attacked her and she felt the sharp pain of its stinger jabbing her ankle.
Jumping to her feet with a horrified shriek, she swatted and clawed at her ankle, clumsily dislodging the stinger in the process. Tears filled her eyes. “Oh, God! Help me!” she cried out and looked frantically around for help, even though she knew she was alone in the fortress. Looking down at her ankle, she watched in horror as it began to swell. She started breathing quickly and felt her body break out in a cold sweat. She knew that she was going into shock over being stung, but she also knew that she couldn’t allow that to happen—not in a deserted castle with night quickly approaching.
Yanking her canteen out of her bag, she bathed her ankle with water. It was getting larger by the second and she knew that she had to get help. Grabbing her bag, she stumbled to her feet and rubbed her eyes. Even they felt heavy to her, as if they were beginning to swell too. She told herself that her imagination was working overtime now that she had finally been stung by a dreaded bee.
She stumbled down the ramp to the courtyard of the castle. It had seemed plenty big before, but it now looked like a continent. She didn’t know how she would manage the uneven terrain.
The cross swinging freely from her neck caught her eye and called to mind the words of Psalm 18. “ ‘The Lord is my rock, my fortress.’ ” She took a step and looked around her. She knew that the fortress built by the hands of men couldn’t help her—it was made of the inanimate stones of the earth—but the security she found in the Fortress of God could. She took another step. “ ‘. . .And my deliverer.’ ” She took two more steps. “ ‘My God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.’ ” She took three more steps and with each word she spoke, the panic that was threatening to overwhelm her was kept at bay.
“ ‘He is my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.’ ” Melissa knew as she forced one foot in front of the other that her Shield, her Stronghold was walking with her.
When she had finished reciting Psalm 18, she went on to some verses from Psalm 71. “ ‘In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge.’ ” She looked around at the castle’s walls. People had taken refuge among these walls in ages past. She shook her head. They were like a prison to her now, a true testimony to the unreliable nature of the walls of men. “ ‘Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness; turn your ear to me and save me.’ ” She paused and squeezed her eyes shut. They didn’t feel right. She willed her feet to walk on. “ ‘Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go; give the command to save me, for you are. . .’ ” Melissa stopped walking and inhaled deeply. But not as much air as she wanted was brought into her lungs, and fear started to inch its insidious way up her spine again. “ ‘You
are my rock,’ ” she whispered, and forced her swollen foot to support her as she took another step, “ ‘. . .and my fortress.’ ”
She reached the midway point and shrugged her bag off her back, unable to support its weight any longer. She found her flashlight in the side pocket and grasping it, she turned it on, just in case someone might come and see the wavering light in the deepening of the night.
She stumbled forward, willing herself to breathe slowly and carefully and not to let the walls around her, which had become looming shadows in the near darkness, scare her. Instead, she used them as a reminder of the One, the true Fortress, that protected her and loved her, her Fortress of Love. He was her Fortress inside this fortress and she would not let panic rule her. Only God.
The curtain loomed above her now, the friendly gray, sun-bleached wall of day was now a black monstrous form of incredible height. It had been about fifteen minutes since the sting, but it felt more like fifteen hours. Her face and eyes were definitely swelling, and Melissa knew that she must be having an allergic reaction to the bee sting. Her ankle was three times its normal size now, but it was the swelling in her face that concerned her. . .and her labored breathing.
The walk through the wall lay directly ahead and she squeezed her fingers tightly around the flashlight. The dark tunnel, which had been a haven of cool relief from the hot sun during the day, now scared her. Panic again gained a foothold in her mind. “Dear Lord. . .” she whimpered, her strength almost gone, “please send someone to help me.”
When she saw the light, she thought she was hallucinating.
“Melissa!” Luke’s voice drifted out of the deep wall to reach her ears and she screamed, a scream of relief, a scream of terror that propelled Luke to her side within seconds.
“Luke! Luke!” She threw herself into his arms and cried.
“Meli! What happened?” He was kissing her but stopped when he felt the swelling of her skin. Training his flashlight onto her face, he sucked in his breath.
“I was. . .stung. . .by. . .a bee,” her voice rose on a hysterical note, all the years of her fear sounding in it. “Luke,” she tightened her arms around him and wailed out, “a bee. . .”
It wasn’t her fear that concerned him now. It was her labored breathing. “Where were you stung?” he asked firmly; his clinical skills took over and she became his patient.
Melissa took a wheezing breath and pointed to her leg. “My ankle.”
Fear sliced through Luke like a cut from a scalpel. He quickly diagnosed an anaphylactic reaction to the bee sting. She needed help. And fast. He picked her up as if she weighed no more than Emilia and ran through the tunnel and out the castle wall.
He knew that the castle closed at 3:00, so when Melissa hadn’t been at the villa when he arrived home at six, he’d simply assumed that she had decided to spend some time in the vicinity of the castle researching the area. It had mildly annoyed him, because after the previous night, he had been looking forward to talking to her about her castle-treading day.
When she hadn’t returned by seven, he’d become angry that the castle was apparently more important than spending time with him. But when Gabriel arrived an hour later, Luke’s anger had turned to cold fear and they had immediately set out to find her.
For some reason, Luke hadn’t expected her to be hurt. Even after they found her car parked outside the castle, he’d thought that she was just enjoying the sunset. It rocked him to his very core to find her in danger.
“Gabriel!” He shouted out to his friend who was looking for Melissa around the outside of the walls. “I found her! She’s been stung by a bee. She’s allergic.”
Luke didn’t have to say another word. Gabriel ran to the car, grabbed his Ana-kit, and sprinted toward the frantic sound of Luke’s voice. Ever since he had discovered his own sensitivity to bee stings the previous summer, Gabriel had carried an antidote with him everywhere he went.
Luke covered the last twenty meters to his friend’s side with Melissa in his arms. Gabriel coaxed Melissa to swallow antihistamine tablets while Luke injected her with adrenaline. “Let’s get her to the hospital. STAT!”
Luke held her in the backseat while Gabriel drove and prayed.
Luke prayed too. God. . .if you can hear me. . .please let my Meli be okay. I promise that I will ask her about the cross. He knew in his mind that he was making an immature plea bargain with God, but it was all he could think to do.
Please, God, let her be okay.
Eighteen
As they drove, Luke didn’t allow her to speak. He stroked her face and kept her calm. Her eyes, now only shiny slits showing through swollen flesh, never left his.
Her fingers moved weakly against the gold cross, drawing Luke’s eyes down to it. He looked at the symbolic pendant lying in her hand. Slowly, thoughts and ideas that he had held for a lifetime shifted and moved, reorganizing themselves within his mind.
She had wanted to go to Acrocorinth that day. In a bid to protect her, he had asked her to go to the much closer Chlemoutsi.
He shook his head.
At Chlemoutsi, she had been stung by a bee. A tiny melissa, perhaps, but she was allergic. He wasn’t able to protect her. Luke finally recognized the futility of trying to protect his loved ones from circumstances that were beyond his control. And for the first time ever, he considered that maybe, just maybe, God wasn’t as far off as he had always thought Him to be. . .
Hadn’t God protected his Meli today, by sending help in the nick of time? And not just any help, but a doctor and a battle-tested embassy official who carried a bee sting antidote. The right help at the right time. Luke mulled the words over in his mind.
Without giving it another thought, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do, he reached down and wrapped his fingers around Melissa’s—and the cross.
From within the hazy depths of her consciousness, Melissa noticed what Luke had done, and a tiny burst of joy pulsed within her heart. Unable to formulate any words, she lifted her thumb and rubbed it across the top of his hand. Feelings of peace, contentment, and satisfaction washed though her and she silently prayed that God would make her well so she could tell Luke everything. She closed her eyes and focused all her energy on breathing.
They arrived at the hospital just as Melissa started to turn blue. Her throat was constricted, but the emergency room doctors were able to insert a small tracheal tube, enough to relieve her lack of oxygen, and saved her from the trauma of a tracheotomy, which Gabriel had suffered the previous summer when he had been stung by a sersegia.
Luke sat by her side throughout the night, and as he watched the respirator breathe for her, his thoughts took him on a life journey to all those places and times when he had felt helpless: when he had been a child and his parents had given material blessings but neglected a hug or a smile; when Melissa’s home had been broken into and he hadn’t been able to do anything to prevent it; when Melissa had told him that she wanted to postpone their marriage; when Anastasia had lay broken and mourning the loss of both her husband and unborn child in a hospital bed not unlike the one he now sat beside.
When Luke returned to the present, he was amazed to realize that he no longer felt helpless. Although he knew that an allergic reaction to a sting could be life-threatening, he sensed for the first time that Melissa’s care wasn’t only up to him or the other doctors. Someone much stronger than any human physician was working to heal his Meli. He could almost feel the difference, taste the difference. It seemed to be in the air around her.
As he continued to review his life, he admitted that his idea of God had been shaped wrongly. He had always considered that God was like his father, a distant chairman of the board, sitting in a big boardroom in the sky, with no time for Luke or any of his concerns. He was beginning to realize that if he were to compare God to a father-type figure, Nono would be a much better representative.
He glanced down at the cross that now lay on top of Melissa’s hospital gown
in violation of the hospital’s rule against patients wearing jewelry, which he had used his professional clout to circumvent. He remembered the look on Melissa’s face when he had angrily thrust the chain over her head and insisted that she keep the necklace. What a fool he had been for blaming Melissa for postponing the wedding— and how unfair it had been for him to blame her for Anastasia’s accident.
He had always known that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Melissa. But this time, he would try to follow the path she had taken. It had changed her, yes, but for the better. He had to admit that the only changes he had made were for the worse.
He reached out and rubbed the smooth metal of the cross with his fingers. When she was able to tell him, he would listen to what she had to say about the cross. And this time his decision was what he really wanted, not a desperate plea bargain with God.
Early the next morning, Luke disconnected Melissa from the respirator and she was able to breathe on her own with an oxygen mask. By 10:00, she no longer needed the mask, and Luke leaned down and kissed her. “I love you, Meli. Don’t ever leave me.” His voice was low and husky with emotion.
Melissa reached out and ran her fingertips over the stubble of his beard. “I’m sorry, Luke. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Her throat, sore from the tracheal tube, produced a rough whisper that came out little more than a croak.
“I know,” he said and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Her face was still swollen, her eyes mere slits of amber light between the puffy flesh, and his heart nearly stopped beating when he considered that her throat had been as swollen as her face.
She smiled, an ironic twist to her already alien features. “Can you believe it? All these years of being frightened of bees and I’m allergic to them.”
Reaching for her hand and with a voice that nearly broke from remorse, he apologized, “Meli. . .I’m so sorry. . .I’ve. . .” he swallowed. “I’ve said some horrible things to you. About bees, I mean.”