An Open Heart

by Harry Kraus

  “But you’re not so sure.”

  Heather shifted in her seat. “You’ve seen pictures of Anita Franks. She was gorgeous. And you know my husband. I think Anita could have seduced him.”

  “So what’s with the ketamine?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t think my husband was capable of rape. Falling for a beautiful blonde, maybe, but not rape.”

  “So you want his blood to prove …”

  “I want to prove he’s innocent.”

  “But you’re scared.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” Heather felt tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. I used to think I married a reliable Christian man. Now I’m not sure who I married.”

  Lisa reached over and squeezed Heather’s arm. “Let me do some snooping. I’ll see if I can get more information out of the ME’s office about that sample. In the meantime, see if you can find out Jace’s blood type.”

  “The medical examiner won’t give out information on Anita to anyone except next of kin.”

  “I have a friend or two who owe me favors. Let me see what I can do.”

  When Jace walked home, he was escorted by two security officers. Near his house, two baboons ran from the corner of the small carport back toward a trash pit where they joined another pair looking for food. Overhead, the leaves of the eucalyptus trees clapped with the breeze, a constant in Kijabe.

  Just as he was unlocking the door, he heard the crunch of gravel and the familiar clicking drone of a diesel engine. He looked to see the Toyota Land Cruiser used by the minister of health.

  Samuel, the driver, did not smile, but exited quickly to open the passenger door.

  John Okombo stepped out into the afternoon sun, looking even more massive than when Jace had met him face-to-face in his office.

  Jace’s gut tightened. He whispered to the hospital security, “Stay close.” Then louder, he said, “Minister Okombo, I didn’t expect to see you.”

  The MP held out his hand and engulfed Jace’s. “I wanted to check on your safety.”

  “You didn’t need to come all this way for me.”

  Minister Okombo smiled. “I wanted to see you. You didn’t call after you failed to keep my invitation.”

  Jace opened his front door. “Will you come in? I should explain.”

  The tall man nodded. “Perhaps you should.”

  They entered the small kitchen. Minister Okombo’s driver stayed outside with the hospital security guards.

  Jace motioned toward a small couch and selected a chair for himself. “It became pretty obvious that someone was coming after me. What I didn’t know is who I could trust.”

  “So you suspected my driver?”

  Jace shifted uncomfortably.

  “And you suspected me?”

  Jace swallowed.

  The large man laughed. Loudly, he slapped his knee. “Of course you didn’t know who you could trust!”

  Jace nodded and forced a smile.

  Okombo leaned forward. “When the police informed me of the plot on your life, I assured them that my office would cooperate with an investigation.” He paused. “And I have asked the police to provide additional security measures for your protection.”

  “Unfortunately, the security measures are disrupting the flow of visitors, and hospital security is already stretched thin.”

  “My concern is for your safety. And I will send extra help from the Kenya police to speed security screening.”

  Jace shook his head. “If you want this heart program to succeed, you will have to make this all go away.”

  “Of course I want the program to succeed.”

  “I’m not a very popular man around here just now. It seems like my efforts are just making problems. Honestly, I’m not sure the system can support it.”

  “You saved my daughter.”

  Jace nodded. “Yes.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I’d prefer a low profile. I won’t hold you responsible. Please don’t make my life harder by tightening security.”

  The man shrugged. “As you wish.” He lifted his cell phone. “But I will insist on personal guards here. We want to watch your house at night.”

  Jace sighed. “Fine.”

  Minister Okombo folded his hands. “Don’t forget who your friends are, Dr. Rawlings.” The man stood, towering for a moment above Jace. “I’ll have my men in place before night. They will report directly to me.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I am the minister of health. I am only looking out for one of my own.”

  Jace didn’t like it. He wasn’t sure Okombo could be trusted, but he couldn’t exactly voice his concerns. Instead, he just mumbled “Thank you” and followed him to the door.

  As Okombo reached the Land Cruiser, Jace stepped up beside him and spoke quietly. “Would you like to visit Beatrice?”

  The man looked away, his face sober. After a moment’s reflection, he turned back and nodded. “Okay.”

  Jace smiled. “Let’s go. I’ll take you there.” He motioned for the hospital security. “We’re going down to the hospital for a few minutes.”

  As they approached the pull-down bar at the entrance to the parking lot, a hospital security guard held up his hand. “Hi, Dr. Rawlings.” Then, he looked at Minister Okombo. “Sir, I’ll need to see some identification. We’re restricting access to patients and patients’ family members only.”

  Minister Okombo didn’t smile. He moved closer to the man and spoke in a quiet voice. “I am John Okombo, the minister of health. It was my department that requested this additional security.” He made a move to step around the bar.

  “I’ll still need to see an ID.”

  Jace shook his head. Maybe this was good. Okombo might be frustrated enough to stop all the bother.

  The MP huffed and pulled out his wallet. “Here,” he said, shoving a card under the man’s nose.

  The security official waved them through. Okombo flipped open his phone. In a moment, he spoke loudly. “Captain, I want you to tell your men to notify Kijabe Hospital of a relaxation of our previous request. Remove the visitation restriction. But leave two men to guard Dr. Rawlings’s house. I want them in place by dark.”

  He closed his phone.

  “Thank you, sir,” Jace said. He lifted his hand and ushered Minister Okombo through a crowd near the entrance. “This way.”

  As they walked up the long hallway toward the HDU, Jace closed his eyes for a moment. There was no other smell like the hospital—too many bodies in one place, clinical aseptics, and floor wax seemed to permeate every inch. The surgeon looked at his guest. The MP didn’t seem to mind. Probably every hospital in Kenya that he’d visited smelled this way.

  Jace pushed open the door to the HDU. “This is our high dependency unit,” he said. “We have the latest vital-sign monitors, continuous oxygen saturation monitoring, and a very favorable nurse-to-patient ratio.”

  He waved his hand from left to right. “We have six beds here.” He sighed. “If our program takes off, we could easily use three times that amount.”

  The MP smiled. Jace introduced him to the three nurses in the unit. Okombo made a joke. “Why are all the nurses Kikuyu? We need some good Luo nurses here.”

  He then walked to the bedside of Beatrice Wanjiku. “Now this one has a Kikuyu name, but she looks like a Luo!” He looked at Beatrice. “Hello, Beatrice. Congratulations on your surgery. Dr. Rawlings has told me that it was a ringing success.” He paused. “Forgive me for not introducing myself. I am John Okombo, Kenya’s minister of health.”

  Beatrice remained sober. “I know who you are.”

  “You’ve read the papers.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Nzuri.” Fine.

  “
Then you will be going home soon?”

  Beatrice looked at Dr. Rawlings. “Let me stay. I don’t want to go back to Kibera.”

  Jace forced a smile. “We’ll see. I want you to stay here for a bit longer.”

  They chatted for a few minutes as Minister Okombo shuffled around her bed, unable to be still. They talked of schoolwork and of Beatrice’s hopes to make good grades. When it was apparent that they had little more to say and the MP was about to leave, Beatrice asked, “Why did you come here?”

  He smiled. “I wanted to see you.”

  “Then it is true.”

  “What is that, Beatrice?”

  “You are my father.”

  Okombo jerked upright and looked around to see if the nurses were listening.

  They were.

  “What would make you say such a thing?” he gasped.

  Beatrice shrugged. “An angel told me.”

  35

  The following night, Jace looked out the front window to see that his police guards had settled in for the night, one leaning against a tree, the other resting against a small shed on the other side of the carport.

  He looked up at the full moon and allowed it to take him back to that camping trip just before his graduation from RVA. He remembered sitting with his friends around a campfire, stirring a long stick in the coals, occasionally taking it out to allow the smoke to curl toward the moon. He and his friends talked of their future, college plans, America … and God.

  They talked of a desire not to be absorbed into the emptiness of the American dream, of their ability to make a difference, of a calling to be light and salt for the One who loved them.

  Jace looked at the moon and remembered the emptiness he felt then, and how it mirrored his feelings now.

  They speak with such confidence of God’s love, he’d thought back then, and His calling on their lives. Why don’t I feel the same?

  Will I always feel like I am looking in from the outside?

  Will I ever believe?

  Will I ever feel the call of the chosen?

  Jace, too, looked forward to going to America, but for different reasons. He wanted to escape the bubble, the exclusion of other faiths, the restriction of so many rules.

  He’d been excellent at compliance. He knew how to look good. But inside, Jace felt unchanged and unredeemed.

  When Janice talked with passion about being loved, Jace felt curiously neutral.

  When Janice whispered “grace,” as if it was the most precious concept in the universe, Jace was unmoved.

  Grace. Yawn. Yes, I’ve sung the song. But if it is wonderful and amazing, why doesn’t it move my heart? I must be Esau.

  Jace listened as his classmates sang songs of unending love. But for Jace, their words were soon melted in the vastness of the African sky. The moon beckoned. He stood and slipped away from the fire, preferring the solitude of the wilderness.

  He walked a hundred meters into the bush, stopping to lean against a tree. In the background, he could hear the mix of his friends’ worship and the cicadas. As he looked at the sky, the expanse seemed to echo from within his own emptiness.

  If You are real, why can’t I feel You like Janice does?

  If You love me, why can’t I believe?

  His heart was stone.

  He wanted to be loved.

  He wanted to believe.

  Is she right? Do You love me?

  Show me, God.

  He searched the sky, waiting for the writing of God.

  Nothing.

  He was alone.

  With his heart aching, he formulated the essence of his heart-cry. “Choose me, God,” he whispered. “Choose me.”

  In western Kenya, Simeon Okayo led a cow into the forest. His path lit only by the moonlight, his progress was slow but steady. Serenaded by a chorus of crickets, he prodded the animal forward.

  By midnight, the altar was built, a fire started, and flames licked the cloudless sky as smoke from the green wood curled upward.

  Simeon killed the animal by stabbing its neck, slicing through the right jugular vein and carotid artery. He collected the blood in a large wooden bowl.

  Then, he lifted the bowl to the sky and set it in the fire. Before the blood could boil, he painted his hands and face.

  Jace awoke and pushed back the thin blanket. I’m burning up. He touched his forehead and rubbed his fingers against his thumb, lubricated by the generous sweat. Malaria?

  But there was something else.

  Evil.

  Fear.

  I am going to die.

  He puzzled over the thought. Where did that come from?

  He pushed the thought away, struggled to his feet, and stumbled toward the bathroom, where he pulled the mirror forward to open the medicine cabinet. He dropped four ibuprofen tablets and a Malarone antimalarial pill into his hand, threw them to the back of his throat and drank water from the faucet, lifting it to his mouth with his hand. He splashed water onto his face, wanting to wash away the sweat. He closed the door to the medicine cabinet as he lifted his face to look at his reflection in the dim light of the moon coming through the window.

  His face was dripping wet. With blood!

  He gasped and looked at his hands. Blood!

  He fumbled for a towel with shaking hands. He took deep gasping breaths, exhaling into the cloth to suppress his urge to scream. With the towel over his face, he found and snapped on the light. It took a moment for the overhead fluorescent bulb to ignite, flicker, and then stay on.

  Slowly he lowered the towel to study his reflection.

  The blood was gone.

  He looked at his hands, the towel, and the wall where he’d left a trail of wetness searching for the light switch. Just water.

  But the fever consumed his face. He knelt by the tub and lowered his head beneath the faucet there.

  He stood and towel-dried his hair and went back to bed.

  There, he was aware only of heat.

  In minutes, his body and bed were drenched.

  Again.

  Simeon Okayo placed the cow’s heart into the boiling blood. Then, eyes focused on the unseen, he chanted and lifted an object toward the moon.

  Slowly, he lowered an instrument into the fire, allowing the tubing to coil snakelike into the coals.

  Dr. Jace Rawlings’s stethoscope. Smoking. Melting.

  Okayo began to scream.

  Jace tossed, finding sleep impossible as his body pulsed with fever.

  He stared at the ceiling with a weird but distinct sense that he was not alone.

  His heart began to race, galloping within his chest. He looked down, alarmed, sure that he would be able to see the pulsation.

  His chest tightened.

  He fought for breath.

  The night sounds of crickets disappeared into the thunder of his heart in his ears.

  His throat began to close.

  Instinctively, he reached for the ceiling, one name on his lips.

  “Janice!” He tried to scream, but his voice choked without air.

  The room began to swim. Searing pain ripped his chest. He was sure of death.

  And then, with his fingers drawing across the skin of his chest as if he could peel away the pain, he managed to whisper.

  Not his sister’s name this time.

  But a name he knew from his childhood. The one he thought had betrayed him. Left him on the bench unchosen. Unwanted.

  “Jesus!”

  Barely a whisper.

  But as he fought for air, a whisper was all he could manage.

  Simeon lifted his head. Something was wrong. The moon was gone, obscured by the sudden appearance of clouds.

  The fire provided the only light, revealing the trees as dancing spirits against the clouds. />
  And then, lightning. Violent. Stretching from east to west across the sky. The finger of God.

  Rain began to fall, big drops sizzling against the glowing coals. A few at first, and then his fire began to wither.

  Jace gasped as the weight lifted from his chest.

  “Jesus!”

  This time, the word came louder as his lungs relaxed to receive desperate breath.

  The heavens opened. Rain fell as a sheet. Within moments, Okayo’s offering was doused.

  Coals smoldered. Okayo brushed wetness from his face and looked at the ruined altar.

  Lightning revealed the unburnt carcass and reflected off something metallic. Okayo lifted the small object from the soggy ash.

  He weighed the disk in his hand, the remnants of Jace Rawlings’s stethoscope.

  Okayo cursed, threw the object into the forest blackness and began to pick his way through the trees toward home.

  Okayo shook his head. Someone is praying.

  Jace dressed and slipped out his front door. He quietly stepped past a sleeping Kenyan policeman leaning against a tree in his front yard. Jace waited until he was a few yards past the man to pick up his pace and switch on his flashlight to illuminate the path.

  His heart was full.

  Could it be that God had intervened on his behalf?

  He bypassed the hospital. Only an emergency could beckon him there at that hour. Instead, he walked the rocky road toward the cemetery.

  There, he knelt at the small memorial stone for Janice Rawlings to pray. His words echoed an old plea from deep within the recesses of his soul. “Please, God, choose me.”

  36

  Lisa Sprague smelled a story. It had all the elements. A famous person, now dead. Mysterious autopsy findings. An accident. Or something more sinister?

  A local surgeon, a family man, suspected of betrayal. A rich doctor turned hero? Or a surgeon running from the truth?

  Lisa started at the scene of the accident, downtown Richmond at the intersection of Lombardy and Broad, where a drunk driver in a Ford pickup had T-boned Jace’s Lexus. Lisa had reconstructed the scene from the police report.