Arms of Mercy

by Ruth Reid

  He placed his hands on both sides of her jaw and pressed his fingers over the bone.

  She jerked back and automatically reached for her face when he touched the joint area.

  He waited for her to relax, then placed his hands on the area again, only this time he didn’t press down. “Can you open your mouth for me?”

  She followed his instructions until her joint locked. A burning sensation traveled along her nerves, webbing her face in electrifying pulses and bringing tears to her eyes. She didn’t need a tissue; the bandages absorbed the wetness. Finally she was able to close her mouth, but that didn’t stop the surrounding muscles from trembling. How would she be able to chew food without the use of her jaw?

  “You did good, Julie.” Dr. Gleeson gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. “It’s normal for your muscles to be sore.”

  “Do you plan to make dietary changes now that the bandages are off, Doctor?” Amy asked.

  “We’ll need to reintroduce food gradually. She’s been receiving her caloric and nutritional needs intravenously since arrival, and we don’t want to bombard her digestive system. Let’s start her on protein drinks and applesauce and see how she tolerates it. How does that sound to you, Julie?”

  She appreciated his attempt to include her in the conversation and decided a lighthearted response was better than worrying if she would get any better. She pressed through pain to smile. “Do I like protein shakes?”

  Amy chuckled. “No time like the present to find out. Would you like to try the chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry flavor first?”

  Up until this moment, she’d had no appetite. Now she didn’t know which to choose. She licked her dry lips. “Surprise me.”

  “Just a few more steps. You’re doing great, Julie,” Darla, the physical therapist, encouraged.

  “Forty-eight more steps.” This was her second trip down the hall today, and while she was getting better at listening to her surroundings and counting the number of steps to the nurses’ desk, she wasn’t thrilled about roaming the halls. She could only imagine how bad she looked to those who saw her coming down the hall wearing a hospital gown and tapping the floor ahead of her with a long walking stick.

  Maybe it was better she couldn’t see the strange looks on people’s faces. She hated to think that bystanders pitied her. “I’m sure for a normal person the nurses’ station isn’t that far. I’m taking baby steps.” Shuffling.

  “It’ll get easier. You’ll be recounting in another week when your stride changes.”

  “From the bed to the bathroom is eight steps. Last night I made it in six and didn’t have to turn on the light.”

  “Do you normally turn on a light?”

  Julie smiled. “It was a joke.”

  Darla chuckled. “You got me on that one.”

  She shuffled a few more paces and stopped to listen for voices. She could pick out Amy easily. The other two were a guess. “Is that Amy, Claudia, and Alex?” She sniffed. “Dr. Gleeson is either here or recently left.”

  Darla gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “You’re doing really well using your other senses. Listening for audio clues and recognizing scents can be a great help.”

  “Amy’s voice is soft, and I can detect Dr. Gleeson’s musk cologne. And I hear the volunteer before she reaches my room. She’s always lugging around a book and magazine cart with rickety wheels.”

  “Yes, Ms. Arleen’s a sweet lady.”

  Julie agreed. “She reads to me some days. Wuthering Heights. The story doesn’t sound familiar, but I suppose that’s one benefit of memory loss—all things are new again.”

  “Think of it as a new adventure every day.”

  “I’m sure that once these bandages come off and I can see, I won’t be afraid.” Her thoughts flitted to all the different people she’d met so far. She’d learned a great deal about all of them and yet had learned only one thing about herself—her name was Julie—nothing more.

  “Julie.” Amy’s voice rose above the others at the desk. “The ophthalmologist’s office just called. Dr. Mosley is on the way to the hospital. Maybe he and Dr. Gleeson will remove your bandages.”

  She didn’t want to get overly excited. Her doctors had postponed the removal three days in a row due to swelling, but heading back to her room, anticipation brimmed to the surface. She lost count of her steps.

  Chapter 27

  Elijah had never experienced cabin fever in all his years of living in northern Michigan as he had the last four days of living in a stranger’s cabin. He was grateful God had placed it on the redheaded man’s heart to offer his place to stay during the storm. Elijah had found canned food in the cellar as the note had mentioned and enough wood chopped and stacked inside that he didn’t have to fight whiteout conditions to search for anything. The Bible he’d found on the kitchen table kept him company.

  In the past he’d been busy with chores or had other things on his mind when he did his daily reading. Sometimes it seemed as if reading was another chore added to his day. But these past days had been different. As he spent time reading the Scriptures, the words spoke to him. He found comfort like none other in those moments when he quieted his own thoughts and drew closer to God.

  Elijah awoke before dawn to feed the woodstove. The floor was cold against his socked feet as he padded out to the living room, a sure sign the fire had died out completely during the night. He opened the side compartment of the cast-iron stove. The embers were red and glowing. He added a few smaller pieces on the bottom, then a larger log to last a few hours.

  Elijah went to the window and pushed the curtains aside, but it was too dark to tell if it had stopped snowing. Not that it mattered. He had no place to go. He considered going back to bed but opted instead to make a pot of coffee and read.

  Once the percolator was prepared and on the stove, he sat at the table and opened the Bible to where he’d left off yesterday. But before he began, he folded his hands and bowed his head.

  “Father, I come to You today thankful that You are with me. I am not alone. You’ve blessed me with this place of refuge, with Your Holy Word to breathe life into these dry bones. I hunger for You, Father. Let Your Word resonate within me and penetrate my heart so I might draw closer to You.” He stopped praying and sat for a moment in silence. A new warmth—a warmth only God could provide—spread head to toe over him.

  Julie sucked in a breath as the final gauze covering her face was clipped. She kept her eyes closed, awaiting either Dr. Gleeson’s or Dr. Mosley’s instructions.

  “Okay, Julie. Go ahead and open your eyes,” Dr. Gleeson said.

  At first her lashes felt as though they’d been glued down. The sudden brightness was blinding. She closed them, then reopened her eyes again, this time slowly. “I see spots. Moving spots.”

  “Are the spots black or white?” Dr. Mosley asked.

  “White.” Feeling dizzy, her stomach roiled. She closed her eyes to make it all go away and held her hand over her stomach. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  Amy was quick to place an empty basin on her lap. “Use this if you have to vomit, sweetie.”

  “Thank you.” She hoped she wouldn’t need it. Keeping her eyes closed helped.

  Dr. Mosley waited patiently, giving her a few moments for the nausea to pass. “When you’re ready, Julie, I’d like you to open only your left eye.”

  She’d been told the ophthalmologist had worked on her eyes during surgery and she vaguely remembered him asking her questions about pain after surgery, but she wasn’t as familiar with him as she was Dr. Gleeson, who came by her room daily to check her progress. Not wanting to keep either doctor waiting long, she placed her hand over her right eye, then opened the left.

  A white foggy haze filled her vision. It cleared after a few seconds, but things were distorted, wavy. “Hot pavement,” she muttered as a memory flashed of a long country road. “It looks like heat rising from pavement on a hot summer day,” she said with growing excitement.

&n
bsp; “Look to your right and tell me what you see.”

  “A chair.”

  “That’s great, Julie!” Dr. Gleeson said.

  “I can only make out its shape. I wouldn’t have known what it was if I hadn’t used it to feel my way to the bathroom a few hours ago.”

  Dr. Mosley used an instrument to shine a bright light into her eyes. “You can close your eyes and give them a few seconds to rest.” After a moment he instructed her to open her other eye, the one Dr. Gleeson had said was bandaged to keep the injured one from movement.

  But that eye too was weak to respond. Lord, I’m afraid. Please heal my eyes.

  As her eye regained focus, she automatically opened the other one. Her vision wasn’t perfectly clear, but she could see better, which was all that mattered. “Thank You, Jesus. You gave me back my sight.”

  Dr. Mosley continued the exam. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  She had to turn her body to glimpse him standing next to her, and even then she couldn’t bring his fingers into focus once the wavy lines returned. “Three,” she guessed.

  “Let’s try it again without turning your head.”

  A dark mass filled her peripheral vision. “I can’t even see you, let alone your hand. It’s like I have horse blinders on. I can only see what’s straight ahead.”

  “That’s not uncommon after the type of surgery you had.”

  She turned her head to face him. “Will it get any better?”

  “Probably not.”

  Her eyes were dry and itchy. Rubbing them aggravated them more, and blinking only helped to moisten them some.

  Dr. Mosley’s face pinched with concern. “Do your eyes feel dry?”

  “Yes, and itchy.”

  “Nurse, bring me a bottle of artificial tears, please.”

  Amy crossed the room, her blonde ponytail swinging with her quick steps.

  “Try not to rub them,” the ophthalmologist said. “You could have debris in your eyes, and rubbing them could scratch your cornea.”

  “Okay.” She dropped her hands to her sides. “I certainly don’t want to cause more damage.” Tears spilled over her lashes and rolled down her cheeks, a warmth she hadn’t felt in weeks. By the time Amy returned with the bottle of drops, Julie no longer needed artificial tears to wet her eyes; the dryness had disappeared.

  Dr. Mosley placed two drops in each eye anyway, then instructed Amy to instill more drops every four hours as needed. “Julie, I’ll see you again tomorrow.” A blurry image of him walked out of the room.

  As the drops absorbed, Dr. Gleeson stepped into her line of vision. The deep wrinkles in his forehead came into focus. He was older than what she had expected. Kind blue eyes studied her from behind wire-rimmed glasses. His thick hair and bushy eyebrows were completely gray, and his hands were speckled with brown age spots.

  “The good news is that your brain is receiving messages from your eyes. You were able to recognize the chair against the wall.”

  “I guessed. I could only make out its form.”

  “The signal your brain received and registered was a good impression. Neurologically, you’re recovering nicely.” He took her hand and gave it a pat. “I don’t see anything hindering you from being released soon.”

  The thought of leaving knotted her stomach, but she returned his smile. Surely he wouldn’t release her without a place to go.

  “I have another patient I need to see,” he said, excusing himself from the room.

  She was finally able to put a face with the voice or the footsteps of her caregivers. Amy’s small frame matched her light footsteps. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her eyes were as blue as the cornflower-blue hospital scrubs she wore.

  Amy plucked a few tissues from the box and handed them to Julie. “I, ah . . . I received some news, and I—well, I’ve been debating how to tell you.”

  “Your face is about as whitewashed as a sun-bleached fence. Just say what you’re gonna say. Is it mei eyesight? You need to tell me mei brain won’t heal?”

  “It’s not your eyes or your brain. Remember how I told you I had contacted the bus companies about a passenger named Julie?”

  “Jah. My name isn’t Julie, is it?”

  “That’s still unclear. But I was able to find out that neither bus had a passenger listed under that name. I tried different variations too. Julian, Julienne, even Joann. I also tracked down the ambulance crew who brought you into the hospital and spoke with the paramedics. They didn’t find you with the rest of the passengers. Someone told them a woman was lying by the side of the road several yards away from the accident scene. Had the man not stopped them, you probably wouldn’t have survived with your head injury.”

  “I’m nett sure what it all means.”

  “There’s a chance you were never on the bus. We assumed you were a passenger because you came in with all the rest, but what if you were hitchhiking? When the buses collided maybe a piece of flying debris hit you.”

  “If I was hitchhiking, I could be from anywhere—running away from something or someone.” Of course that held true as a bus rider too. Why did this news feel more uncertain?

  “You’ve been through so much, but you’re strong. An overcomer. You’ve learned your way around the hospital in total darkness, and now you can see.”

  “Can I get out of bed now?”

  “That’s the spirit.” Amy’s cheerful smile matched her encouraging tone. “I’ll walk with you. Where do you want to go?”

  Julie wasn’t so eager to leave the room. She merely wanted to find a mirror to look at herself. Hopefully it would trigger her memory.

  Standing in front of the kitchen window, Elijah gazed outside at the clear blue sky. He’d been waiting for a break in the weather, eager to refill the woodbox. The supply inside the house had dwindled, and he would need more before nightfall.

  Elijah slipped on his boots at the door and grabbed his coat. Outside, the sunny blue sky was a bit deceiving. The brisk air nipped at his nose and cheeks the moment he stepped onto the snow-covered porch. He fisted his ungloved hands and blew air on them, but they still stiffened. Using the side of his boot, he swept some of the snow off the porch steps. He’d look for a shovel in the shed and clean off the steps later.

  Snow compressed under his feet as he made his way toward the barn. As he neared the large structure, a horse’s neigh caught his attention. He searched the area and finally discovered the young gelding on the opposite side of the barn, caught in the barbed-wire fence.

  Elijah approached the horse with caution. Young horses were easily spooked, and one caught was even more unpredictable. “Easy, boy.”

  The horse’s ears perked, then twitched. Aware of Elijah, the gelding stomped his hoof and snorted. Elijah went to reach for the halter, but the skittish horse sidestepped, tangling himself in the wire even more.

  “Easy, boy.” Elijah let the horse sniff his hand, then stroked its neck, its winter coat thick. “Where did you come from?” More importantly, how long had he been tangled? Fresh cuts marked his chest and places along his legs. He left the horse long enough to search for wire cutters in the barn.

  The wooden barn had seen better days. Slates were missing and snow had blown inside. He located several shelves along the back wall loaded with equipment such as currycombs, hoof picks, bridles, harnesses, and other horse-exercising equipment. Discovering a cutter inside a rusty toolbox, he headed outside to free the horse.

  “Easy, boy.” Elijah took the horse’s halter with a firm hand, but the gelding jerked its head and, in doing so, stretched Elijah’s shoulder muscles until they burned. He buried a painful cry in a groan. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he worked to get the beast stalled.

  The horse stomped and snorted while Elijah rubbed his shoulder joint. Elijah searched the shelves for something to put on the horse’s cuts. Finding an unmarked jar, he removed the lid and smelled the contents. The strong iodine-based ointment would help heal the wounds. Hopefull
y it hadn’t sat so long that it had lost its potency.

  “Hello, boy.” He eased open the stall door. Elijah slipped inside. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He talked softly as he inched toward the horse.

  He’d trained plenty of high-spirited horses, some with meaner temperaments, but he’d had full function of his arm and shoulder. Candice had warned him about his shoulder freezing up if he didn’t move it. Wonder if she would approve of how he was moving it now?

  Elijah reached out and stroked the horse’s neck, which seemed to calm him some. He applied a generous amount of medicated salve to the horse’s chest, then moved down each leg. The Standardbred’s muscles had good form. His owner—whoever that was—had taken care of him well.

  “You need something to eat, don’t you, boy?” The breed was typically used for pulling buggies. But Elijah hadn’t seen any Amish farms on his ride to the cabin. He couldn’t remember any road signs denoting horse and buggies in the area either.

  He slipped out of the stall, making sure to secure the gate latch. A quick search in the hayloft yielded nothing. The grain bins were empty too. Elijah had to find the horse something to eat. He hiked back to the house, went down to the cellar, and scavenged a grain sack full of carrots and another sack filled with apples. He collected the bags, then grabbed a bucket and filled it with water.

  The horse refused to come near the stall door even when Elijah waved the carrot. When he finally did, he stood out of reach and stretched his neck. He nibbled on the end but then moved to the back of the stall.

  Elijah waited him out. He had nothing else to do, and spending time with the horse took his mind off Catherine. Feeding the horse one carrot at a time, Elijah soon had the horse trusting him. The animal no longer snorted or stomped his hooves, and by late afternoon he was eating pieces of apple straight from Elijah’s hand.

  Inspecting the barn further, Elijah discovered an old horse blanket hanging on a nail. It was moth-eaten, but it would help keep the horse warm through the night. Tomorrow he would see about finding the owner, although he had no idea where to start.