by Kimberly Rae
“This is a powerful pain-killer. It should help.” The doctor put several x-ray films up on a backlit screen. “Her x-rays show a trace of pneumonia.”
“Pneumonia?” Laverne gasped. “You poor child. No wonder you had such a cough.”
Kayla’s eyes closed as the medication took effect. For the first time since she’d woken up, she was able to relax somewhat. It still hurt to breathe, but the pain was mild compared to earlier. “Thank you,” she whispered to the doctor.
Ryan approached the ER examination table and took her hand.
“Pneumonia,” she whispered to him. “Your youth group will all be exposed.”
“I don’t think you need worry about that,” the doctor said, pulling down her x-rays. “It’s just a touch of pneumonia. As long as you didn’t cough directly on any of them, they should be okay. You should be as well after a few days of strong antibiotics.”
“But what about the pain?”
Ryan had not spoken the entire time, but his grasp tightened.
“That is a mystery,” the doctor said, already flipping her chart closed and preparing to leave the room. “Different people respond to sickness in different ways.” He turned to her aunt. “Take her home, give her the antibiotics, and let’s see how she does after a few days. Hopefully the antibiotics will take care of the pain as well as the pneumonia.”
The doctor turned back to Kayla. “Get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids; I’m sure you know the drill. I’ll have the receptionist schedule you an appointment to come see me at my regular office in a week to see how you’re doing, okay?”
He did not wait for her answer before leaving the room, hanging her chart on the opposite side of the door and giving instructions to a nearby nurse.
“That was it?” Aunt Lavender appeared as shocked as Kayla felt. “All your pain? Pneumonia! And they’re sending you home?”
A nurse entered. “We’re so overbooked right now, I’m afraid we couldn’t admit her even if the doctor had wanted to. And to be truthful, as much as we try to keep everything sanitized, hospitals are full of sick people with germs harmful to someone with a compromised immune system because of antibiotics. She’ll be better off healing up at home where she can be comfortable and get plenty of rest.” The nurse leaned toward Kayla with a conspiratorial wink. “You know it’s impossible to get a good night’s sleep in the hospital with us nurses always coming in to check on you.”
She handed Laverne several papers, among them the prescription. “Get this filled on the way home if possible so she can start taking the antibiotics right away.” She turned back to Kayla on her way out the door. “Don’t forget, lots of rest.”
The door shut, and the three were left alone.
“Well.” Aunt Lavender broke the silence. “I guess that’s that.”
Kayla looked up to see Ryan’s eyes, still so intense, on hers. “Are you okay?” he asked gruffly.
She tried to smile. “Supposedly I will be in a few days.” She looked over at her aunt. “You should stay away, you know.”
“Gracious sakes, child, do you think I’m afraid of a few little germs? We’re going home right this minute, and I’m making you blueberry muffins.”
Just the thought made Kayla’s stomach churn, but she attempted a smile. “Let’s go then. If that medicine is going to help, the sooner we get it the better.”
Chapter Sixteen
For two days while Kayla slept, took antibiotics, and slept some more, Ryan forced himself to keep busy. He assembled the walkway in the unkempt, unprofessional way Laverne Bloom had requested, glad she’d wanted a shoddy job because he would not have been able to focus to do it right had his life depended on it.
The first day he’d eaten his lunch while unconsciously pacing outside the screened door near Kayla’s room. He’d spent his break the second day on his knees, asking God to help Kayla heal, and help him survive this awful waiting. He’d wanted to be in there, next to her.
But he was just a friend. Just some guy working construction. Just some guy in love with her, who had yet to get around to saying so.
The third day, when he stopped for lunch, he saw a small, feminine hand pushing the screen door outward. Tossing his half-eaten sandwich back in the bag, and the bag onto the walkway, he rushed to open the door.
She stood there, pale, looking as weak as a newborn kitten. When his eyes drifted downward to see her in pajamas, wrapped in the pink crocheted blanket, his heart squeezed tight.
“Hi,” he said softly.
“Hi.” She glanced outside. “Is anyone around?”
“No one but me,” he whispered. “It’s Aunt Lavender’s naptime, and no one else is in sight, so your blanket-robe secret is safe with me.”
Her smile only tightened the notch gripping his heart. He held his hand out to help her wobble toward the swing.
She sat. “It didn’t swoosh.” She looked down. “What did you do?”
He motioned with some pride toward the device he had thought of, designed, built, and installed. “It keeps the swing from moving, so it won’t make you feel sick. But when your Aunt Lavender is using it, she can pull this lever, which lowers the bar, and then it will swing again.”
“Ryan,” she breathed out, her eyes bright. “That is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me.” She rested back against the swing and allowed her head to fall over onto his shoulder. “Thank you.”
Something deep within Ryan quieted and felt at peace. He rested his own head atop hers.
“Hey! Watcha doin’?”
So much for peace. Ryan lifted his head as Kayla did to see Jose yelling from the edge of the yard. “Can I come over there with you?”
“Do you have Mr. Frog?” Ryan yelled back.
Jose held up the reptile. “Not mister, I told you! Just Frog.”
Frog croaked.
“Sure, come on over.”
Jose started toward them down the walkway Ryan had just completed. Per Laverne Bloom’s instructions, the stones were uneven and the pathway unsettled. Jose wobbled and pitched forward. His hands flew open and Frog escaped. Jose ran to catch him, but tripped on a stone that had sunk on one side and tipped upward on the other. Sprawling across the stones, Jose began to cry while Frog leapt toward freedom.
“Jose! Are you alright?”
Ryan was helping him up within seconds. Kayla rose from her swing, much slower but no less concerned. “Is he okay?”
“My knee hurts.” Jose wiped his nose, continuing to cry. “And Frog is gone!”
“Don’t worry. We’ll look for him together.”
Kayla had reached the edge of the path. “Ryan, is this the walkway Aunt Lavender had you build? It’s… it’s so, um—”
“It’s wobbly and the rocks stick out. That one tripped me!”
“I’m really sorry, Jose,” Ryan said, brushing the dirt off Jose’s legs. “I didn’t mean for anybody to walk on it until it got fixed.”
“Fixed?” Kayla was clinging to her blanket with one hand and running the other across her eyes. “I know I’m on a lot of medication, but that doesn’t make any sense.”
Laverne Bloom sped down the front porch steps, a fringed shawl trailing behind her. “Oh, you poor thing. I had no intention of anyone walking on the walkway until it was done right. Oh dear, this isn’t working out at all like it was intended.”
Kayla, looking too weak to remain standing, sank onto one of the upturned stones. “Aunt Lav, I am so confused. Could you please explain, and slowly so I get it? I’m feeling really out of it.”
Ryan stood. “How about we go look for Frog, Jose, huh?”
Jose grasped his outstretched hand. “Okay, I think he went back toward the creek. He likes it there.”
“We’ll go find him while Miss Bloom explains why she had me make this strange, uneven walkway.” There was a slight warning to Ryan’s tone as he turned away.
****
Kayla watched Laverne Bloom’s hands clench her shawl tight
ly around her in distress. “Oh, honey, now is not the time. I had these plans, and then you got so sick, and I was just going to have Ryan redo it without telling you the lesson, but then that poor little guy tripped and fell, and—”
“The lesson? What lesson?”
“It’s not important now, honey. You just need to get well.”
“Aunt Lavender,” Kayla said with a seriousness to her voice that was chilling. She stood. “I have about two minutes before I need to take another dose of antibiotics, and then I’m going to sleep. In those two minutes, I want you to tell me exactly why you went to all this money and trouble to make a lousy, unstable path.”
“Oh dear.” Laverne’s face was pained. “I suppose it can’t be helped.” She walked several steps back toward the house and sat on the lowest porch step.
Kayla followed, joining her.
“Ever since your mother died, and even before, I could tell from your letters that you desperately wanted your father’s attention. It’s as if even your relationship with God went through your father. As if, if you could gain his approval, you could gain God’s. You were building your faith on a person, not on truth. I saw you adding to that false faith with all kinds of effort… then when you went overseas, I worried that even that was trying to build your own faith your own way. But all those things didn’t give you peace. You had created a path that was unstable and even painful.”
Tears were appearing in Laverne’s eyes as she adjusted her shawl. “God wants to have a relationship with you that is only you two, not one that’s through your father. God wants to scrape away all the wrong things you’ve thought through your mother’s death and your father’s neglect, and make you a new creation, one at peace with your past and present and future. One that is stable, based on the truth of the Word of God, not on an image of God you’ve created in your own mind, based on hurts you’ve experienced from people.”
Kayla stood.
Laverne’s tense hands gripped the shawl. “Oh, I’m not saying this right. I didn’t want to offend you, my dear. I thought by making a visual with this pathway, it would explain it better, but it seems I was wrong. I’m so sorry.”
Kayla’s face was blank, her eyes on the uneven stones. “I just have one question,” she asked with dull slowness. “Did you pay Ryan to do this?”
Laverne’s head tilted to the side. “Of course, dear. He was working, so he ought to have been paid for it.”
Shoulders slumped, Kayla turned away. Slow, careful steps took her back toward the house, across the unstable path.
When she was two feet from the door, Ryan and Jose returned, Jose with a frog in hand. Though the frog appeared smaller and of a slightly different hue than the original, Jose’s mouth was spread in a triumphant smile. “We found him!”
“I’m happy for you,” Kayla choked out. She did not look at Ryan.
“I didn’t want to do the job, Kayla,” Ryan put in. “She insisted.”
“So you both could teach me a lesson, Mr. Pastor?” She sniffed, wiping her face with her pajama sleeve.
“A lesson? The lousy walkway was to teach you a lesson?” Ryan took her arm. “About what?”
“You can go now, Mr. Pastor. I got the point.”
“What point?”
“I was just another one of your projects, wasn’t I? Were you getting paid by the church, too, like a special overtime to get the wayward sheep back into the fold?”
“Kayla, I didn’t have any intention—”
“I’m really not interested in your intentions anymore.” Kayla leaned forward until her head rested on the wall next to the door. Her hand reached weakly for the screen handle. “The medicine they gave me isn’t helping anymore. My side is starting to hurt when I breathe again. I’ve been throwing up, and I’m so weak I can’t even take a shower.”
She tilted her head to look at him without lifting its weight from the wall. “I was a failure at keeping my mom alive. I failed to keep my dad’s love. I failed at being a missionary. Now I can’t even get better when the doctor says I should. And to top it all off, you and Aunt Lav went through this elaborate, expensive roundabout way of telling me I’m failing with God.” She sighed deeply. “As if I didn’t know.”
Clutching the blanket around her, she opened the screen door.
“Kayla…”
“Enough.” Her voice took on a moment of strength. “Tell Aunt Lavender she’ll have to write the rest of this story from her own imagination, because the real-life version she was hoping for just ended. Our book is closed.”
Chapter Seventeen
Ryan’s muscles screamed at him after hours of lifting stones from the colossal failure of a walkway, but he welcomed the pain. It helped keep his mind off the woman just inside that screened door.
When Jose appeared, Frog in hand, with a hundred and one questions about why Ryan was taking apart something he had just built, Ryan closed his eyes and prayed for patience.
When a van pulled into the drive and a small herd of teenagers piled out, Ryan prayed some more.
Jose held up Frog by way of introduction, and the teens were momentarily distracted. But not for long.
“Pastor R., why are you taking apart the walkway?”
“Whoa, you didn’t actually build it like this on purpose, did you?”
“We came to see Miss Kayla. Is she all better yet?”
It was Jainey’s question, whispered as she knelt beside his frenzied efforts, that got through. “She’s not better, is she? I can see it on your face.”
He lifted stinging eyes. “She’s worse. And she hates me.”
Jainey almost laughed, but at his expression she put a soft hand on his arm. “I doubt that.”
“I don’t.” With a grunt, he heaved another massive stone from the walkway.
Laverne Bloom came outside. Her usual graciousness was missing. “Hello, children. How good of you to come. Oh, Mr. Cummings, I just don’t know what to do. She hasn’t left her room since this morning.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Bloom.” Jainey rose, pulling Ryan with her. “We’ll check on her.”
“Maybe you should go by yourself.” Ryan extricated his arm from Jainey’s grip. “She doesn’t want to see me.”
“Maybe this should be about what she needs right now, not what she wants.”
He ran a hand across weary eyes. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
Ryan could feel the group of teens’ eyes on them as he and Jainey walked down the once-again dirt pathway toward the side entrance.
They slowly pulled open the screen door, which announced their presence with a long, sickening creak. Pushing open the wooden door, which had also been closed, both immediately heard the sound.
“She’s throwing up.” Jainey took a step forward. “And not normal throwing up either. That’s bad, Ryan.”
Ryan had moved forward until he was just outside the bathroom door. He put a hand on the doorknob, then stopped himself. What was he thinking? “She doesn’t want to see me,” he repeated.
He jumped back when Jainey punched him hard on the shoulder. “This isn’t the time to worry about what she thinks about you!” Jainey’s blue eyes filled with tears, the first Ryan had ever seen in her eyes. “She told me what I needed to hear when I didn’t want to hear it. Everybody else knew about me, about my — but they stayed away from talking about it because I pushed them away.” She pointed at the bathroom door. “She didn’t. She cared more about me than about what I thought about her.”
Ryan had been backing away. Jainey pushed him toward the door. “Now you have to do that for her. You love her! Do what she needs you to do.”
Ryan squeezed his eyes tight. Was he willing to give up any chance of her forgiving him to give her the help she needed? A flushing sound and the soft whimpers of her crying were his undoing. Of course he would do anything, whatever it took, to do what she needed. Even if she hated him for it.
“Kayla?” He knocked on the door. “Kayla, honey, we need to
take you back to the hospital. Please let me in.”
He heard a sound, some kind of shuffling, but the door did not open.
“Go in,” Jainey urged.
“What if she’s… indecent?”
“Oh for goodness sake.” Jainey pushed past him and opened the door. She gasped and stepped back.
Ryan stepped in. She was on the floor, still in her pajamas, curled up in a ball and crying weakly.
She looked up, and he, like Jainey, gasped and stepped back. The circles under her eyes were dark blue, almost black. Her skin was so pale it was nearly translucent, except for those few dark patches on her arms and hands. She was thin, her hair spindly.
Dear God, Ryan felt his heart praying. She looked… like she was dying.
“Ryan,” she breathed out. In three seconds, he had her in his arms. He lifted her gently, cringing at how light she felt, how his arms could sense each rib along her back where he held her.
“I’ll do anything,” she was whispering, nearly delirious. “Anything. Just make it stop.”
He talked all the way to the van. He had no idea what he said, just that he kept his tone reassuring and gentle, though it took everything in him from breaking into a run and screaming orders at someone, anyone, to help him get Kayla to the hospital.
There was no need for orders, though. The moment he was seen carrying Kayla from the house, everyone in the yard went into action. Cindy started up the van. Laverne Bloom ran inside to get Kayla’s papers and medication, along with several blueberry muffins in case she got hungry later.
The teens loaded into the van. When Jose climbed in with his frog, Ryan did finally speak. “Jose, you need to stay here.”
“I want to come with Miss Kayla to the hospital!”
“We don’t have time to ask your mom for permission, little buddy.” Ryan laid Kayla gently on the bench, sheltering her from falling by sitting next to her and holding both the top and bottom edges of the bench in case the van had to suddenly brake.
“My mom won’t care. Her boyfriend is over. She doesn’t care where I go as long as I’m out of the house till he’s gone.”