Be My Neat-Heart

by Baer, Judy

  There was an emotional hitch in his voice that frightened me. Whatever conclusions Jared had come to, I had a hunch I wasn’t going to like them.

  “I can’t see my way clear for anything right now, not until we have a picture of what will happen with Molly. I can’t think, I don’t sleep…” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Don’t hang around waiting for me to figure this out, Sammi. I want so much more for you.”

  I stared at him in shock and horror. Just like that? Out of the goodness and generosity of his heart he’s setting me free? This is the most altruistic reason I’ve ever heard in a breakup with a man—and also the most ridiculous.

  But he means it! He honestly thinks that the most loving act is to send me on my way.

  “No, Jared. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t…”

  But the expression on his face told me that, as far as he was concerned, I had no other choice.

  This can’t be what You had planned, Lord, is it?

  I felt tears begin to stream down my face.

  Okay, God, I’m speechless. Give me the words You want me to say.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “You nincompoop!”

  They weren’t exactly the words I’d expected from on high, but they got the job done.

  Jared blinked and stared at me.

  “You sweet, misguided, mistaken man! Freeing me from you would be like opening the door for a bird in a gilded cage,” I blustered. “What if the bird likes it just where she’s at? What if the cage that you find so confining is the cage she considers ‘home’? What if it’s where she thrives and sings and feels pampered and loved? Why on earth would a bird like that want to leave? And what kind of a bully does it take to force that bird out into a harsh place she doesn’t want to be?”

  I was building up a head of steam which finally erupted in a noisy bellow.

  “So Jared Hamilton, quit rattling my cage!”

  Spent, I sat down. I asked for a word from God, and He certainly gave me one.

  I looked into Jared’s startled countenance and realized that anything else I might have said, pleaded, begged, lectured or counter-offered would have been rejected. But this! I don’t know which of us was more surprised, him or me.

  He looked at me like I’d just hit him in the face with a plank. Then a small, bewildered smile tipped the corners of his lips and, finally, he started to laugh.

  It was infectious and cleansing. As his laughter diluted the tension in his body, I couldn’t help joining in. Imelda came over and began to lick my hand, concerned, no doubt, that her mistress was cracking up. Zelda, who enjoys scenes, moved closer just to watch.

  We laughed until we cried and then we just cried. For Molly, for her future, for our future. It was a catharsis that purged our fear, frustration, pain and confusion and when we were both exhausted, left us both quiet and calm.

  Without a word, Jared gathered me into his arms.

  We made our way to the couch without speaking and sat together silently. I could hear the clock ticking on my kitchen wall and Imelda’s tongue laving the tops of Jared’s shoes. There was even an occasional click of Zelda’s tiny jewel-encrusted collar. And Jared’s breathing. It was fast at first but as our heartbeats slowed and came into synch, it became unhurried and deep. As his chest rose and sank, I felt strain leak from his body with each steadying breath. When he finally spoke I heard something in it that had been totally absent since the accident—amusement and relief.

  “Okay, my little bird. Apparently you didn’t like my suggestion. What do you think we should do?”

  “This is something we go through together. I believe I’m the gift God’s giving you for this time in your life, not some helpless Tweety Bird or Chicken Little yelling, ‘The sky is falling.’” I fluffed up my emotional feathers as much as any human can do. “I am a five-hundred-pound canary and I’m here to stay. So snap out of this sacrificial, altruistic martyrdom and give me a hug!”

  “When you chirp, I will listen,” Jared said obediently, and he gathered me into his arms—the only cage I ever wanted.

  It felt so good to just be—together, at peace, in agreement—that neither of us moved for a very long time. Finally, because my foot was falling asleep, I squirmed a little.

  “Jared?”

  “Hmmm?” The expression on his face was more relaxed than I’d seen since our time at the Oasis.

  “Your mother told me about seeing you and your grandfather looking into Molly’s crib when you were a child.”

  His face grew somber. “What did she say?”

  “That it sounded as though your grandfather were appointing you to take his place and charging you with the duty of protecting your sister.” I hesitated before adding, “Sort of like a voice from above telling a little mortal what’s expected of him.”

  “It was a hard time for me,” Jared acknowledged. “I was losing my grandfather, whom I loved very much—and gaining a baby sister. I had it all mixed up, somehow, that God was taking my grandfather away and replacing him with Molly. All I knew was that I had to take good care of Molly or I might lose her, too.” He gave a dry, almost bitter laugh. “That shows you how convoluted a child’s thinking can be.”

  “Your mother believes that you took to heart what your grandfather said about your being the one to care for Molly. She knows he didn’t mean to ‘hand over the torch’ or to make you Molly’s keeper but that he was trying to tell you how precious she was—for the entire family.”

  “She says that to me regularly.” His voice lowered to a near whisper. “Maybe it’s true, but I remember that moment with such clarity. It was almost as if it were God giving me those instructions…” He paused. “As if God were giving me those instructions instead of my grandfather…”

  “And when Molly got hurt, who did you disappoint? God?”

  I could practically see the gears turning in his head

  “Unconsciously I have been on a ‘mission from God’ ever since. That’s pretty out there, isn’t it?”

  “How many times have you bailed Molly out of trouble?”

  “Countless. She never hurts anyone else. Only herself.”

  “So you’ve been saving her from herself all these years?”

  “I suppose so.” He laughed humorlessly. “Fat lot of good that’s done.”

  “Jared, what Molly needs is to learn how to save herself from the troubles she gets into.”

  “And how is that supposed to happen?”

  “If she is ADD, there is help. Skills she can learn, medication she can take, professionals she can talk to. Just knowing why she functions the way she does might be enough to give her the hope and determination she needs to deal with it.”

  “And if she’s not ADD?”

  “Everybody needs hope, Jared. There’s a plan for Molly that doesn’t have you holding her hand and watching her back.”

  He looked so doubtful I had to quash a bubble of laughter.

  “Jeremiah 29. ‘For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future and a hope.’”

  He moved sharply, sending me slightly off balance. “Why are we talking about this? She’s lying in a hospital bed unconscious! What makes you think…”

  “That she’ll recover?”

  He winced.

  “Because I have hope. And if it doesn’t happen, then what do you propose to do about it anyway, except know she’s in God’s care?”

  He buried his head in his hands, and when he spoke his voice was muffled and broken. “I just feel so helpless….”

  “You mean until now you’ve thought you actually had someone to rely on except God? Like yourself?”

  He lifted his head and stared at me. “Is that what I’ve been doing? Handling things for God?”

  “I don’t know. Have you?”

  “You sure know how to hit a guy where it hurts, Sammi. Humility has never been my strong suit.”

  “God, once He gets a hold o
n you, starts working on the weak spots, shoring them up to make you stronger in Him.”

  “Rely on Him, not myself,” Jared murmured to himself. “Realize that without Him I’m helpless. That’s not an easy request. Especially for a guy like me.”

  “Competent, smart, successful, proficient, the expert…”

  “I was thinking more about thickheaded, vain and doubting.”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You haven’t got a monopoly on it, you know. If all those people had to step off the stage, it would be pretty empty.”

  “You do have a way of bringing things into focus,” Jared muttered. “So I’d better get my own act together and trust that God knows what He’s doing in Molly’s life. And let God take care of both of us….” There was palpable relief in his voice.

  He reached to gather me closer and I had to look around to see who was purring. Frankly, I couldn’t tell if it was Zelda or me. We were both that happy.

  Zelda, perched on the back of the couch, moved close enough to Jared to knead her paws into his shoulder and rub the top of her head on his cheek. Imelda had inched closer herself and was still blissfully licking the top of Jared’s loafer. It doesn’t get much better than this.

  “Have you had anything to eat today?” I finally asked. The man needs his stamina if he’s going to keep up with me.

  “Not much. I had a bag of chips and some cheese and crackers from the vending machine at the hospital for breakfast.”

  “I know nothing I cook will compare to that, but I’ll whip up an omelet. What do you like in it? Mushrooms? Ham? Green pepper?”

  I had the frying pan in my hand when Jared’s cell phone rang.

  He pulled it out of his pocket and flipped it open. “Jared here. What can I do for you…?” He grew white. “Calm down, Ethan, I don’t understand you. What? Come to the hospital? What’s happened? Ethan, I can’t understand you. I’ll be right there.”

  Jared looked up at me with stark terror in his eyes. “Ethan said I was to come to the hospital right away. There were noises in the background, and he was difficult to understand. Something’s happened to Molly. I’ve got to go.”

  I dropped the pan and Imelda darted for cover. “I’m coming with you.”

  These tense, fear-filled rides were becoming far too commonplace for us.

  “Couldn’t you make out anything Ethan said?”

  “His voice was trembling,” Jared said grimly, “and there was a lot of clatter and noise in the background. There were people talking fast and in high voices.”

  Crash cart. Emergency resuscitation. Code blue. I didn’t speak it, but I knew what we were both thinking. Those were potentially noisy things.

  “Maybe he stepped into the hall or the cafeteria….”

  Jared gave me a well-deserved dirty look. “The cafeteria is on the lower level. He’s not going to call me from the cafeteria.”

  “Maybe it’s not too serious,” I offered. “Ethan just got rattled.”

  “Ethan doesn’t get rattled,” Jared said bluntly. “Other than that scene in his office when I met you, I’ve never seen him out of control of anything.”

  That day seemed so long ago and deeply mired in the distant past that it was difficult even to conjure it up. I hadn’t loved Jared then. I hadn’t even liked him. How times do change.

  “Slow down,” I said almost automatically. “Whatever is going on, Ethan is there. And your parents. They’ll have to handle it.”

  “It’s hard, letting go,” Jared murmured. “Especially if it might be forever. Lord,” he murmured, not talking to me but to the other One with us in the car. “I’ve hung on to everything—Molly, my duty to her, my idea that she can’t get along without me. And now You are showing me that I haven’t been in control of anything, even for a minute. I release everything I’ve been trying to control. It is in Your hands now. If You see fit to spare Molly, I praise You. And if You don’t…”

  A long, painful silence ensued. Finally I heard him murmur softly, “If You don’t see fit to spare her, then I praise You, too.”

  Tears coursed down my cheeks as we made the rest of our silent ride to the hospital.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I’ve seen albino rabbits with more color than Jared had in his face by the time we were in the elevator and on our way to Molly’s room.

  Lord, whatever is, is. Put Your healing hand upon this situation and please gift us with the “peace that passes understanding.” We could use a good helping of that. May Your name be praised. Amen.

  The door to Molly’s room was closed. Confused, we looked at a passing nurse, who gave a quick brush of her hand as if to say, “Go in. What are you waiting for?”

  Jared’s hands were clenched and unmoving at his sides so I reached out and gave the door a small shove. It opened onto a scene of chaos. We remained frozen in our places as Ben, wearing a pair of fake glasses, the kind with eyeballs popping out on the end of small springs, waved us in.

  “What on earth?” I stepped between him and Jared so that Jared did not attempt to smack him for looking so ridiculous when his sister was on her deathbed.

  “Sssshhh,” Ben hissed. “The doctor is trying to explain it to your parents.”

  “Explain? You mean how she…” Jared choked on the unspoken word.

  “Yeah. We all wanted to know.”

  “Vultures,” Jared spat.

  “I don’t think so,” Ben said as he stared at Jared in bewilderment. “The only bird in this room looks to me like a loon.”

  “Let me by.” Jared pushed Ben aside and strode toward his mother who was standing at the foot of Molly’s bed. The divider curtain hid his sister from view.

  “Mom, I’m so…”

  He stopped, and his shoulder jerked as if he’d been punched. “Wha—” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Molly?”

  “She opened her eyes about thirty minutes ago,” Ben explained to me in a low voice. “She’s coming back to us. Molly is coming back.”

  Illogically, I went to the least important issue at hand. “Us?”

  Ben grimaced. “Yes, us. To me, too. Is that what you’re asking?”

  I gaped at him, still in shock.

  His eyeballs, all four of them, rolled. “I was showing her some magic tricks. I was about to pull a hamster out of a hat when she opened her eyes!”

  It’s a wonder that she didn’t take a look at Ben and faint again. His hair bristled out of his head in a hundred directions, his cheeks were flushed and those eyes…so many of them and so loosely attached to his head… And did he have a hamster in here somewhere?

  He beamed at me and I saw for the first time something I probably should have noticed much earlier—amazingly, astoundingly, all this time Ben has been coming to “help out,” he’s been falling in love!

  “Ben, what’s going on with you and—” I felt ridiculous saying it “—Molly?”

  He bit his lip and I saw that my exploratory arrow had hit its target. “She’s been like a doll laying there, Sammi, a beautiful, soft-haired, fragile cherub. Every time someone speaks about her, it’s in terms of her generosity, her love, her goodness.” He smiled a little. “And her messiness. I like that in a woman.”

  “So you began to think about how it would be to have that kind of woman in your life, that kind of woman to love.” Strangely, I understood.

  “And I’d never even ‘met’ her, but I found myself praying for her to recover, to wake up, to be healed.” He blushed to the roots of his hair. “And to her future.”

  “And yours?”

  “If God wills it.”

  “God works in mysterious ways.” We were all proof of that.

  “No kidding.”

  Ben took me by the arm and thrust me into the crowd around Molly. Jared, Molly’s parents, Ethan, three doctors and a bevy of nurses ringed the bed. Jared reached out his hand and drew me in.

  She lay there blinking owlishly and appearing bemused. The bruise on her head was almost healed and
she looked utterly Molly-like. Then she saw me, and a smile spread slowly across her face. With great effort, she lifted her hand as if to reach out for me and her mouth struggled around a single word. “Sam.”

  That was it for me. I burst into tears and blurted, “Molly, welcome home! We’ve missed you.”

  Her answering smile seemed to say she understood perfectly.

  Things became hazy for me after that. The doctors shooed us out of the room so they could evaluate Molly and we stood in the hallway crying and laughing. Then the nurses steered us into the family room to keep us from disturbing the entire hospital with our celebration. Ultimately we all retired to the cafeteria to swill back iced tea and laugh, cry and make a general spectacle of ourselves. It was glorious.

  “So what happened,” I demanded. “What really happened?”

  “Molly’s father and I have been here all day. I read to her from the newspaper as I always do and treated her like she was ‘in there’ somewhere.” A tear spilled down Geneva’s cheek. “If there was any chance at all that she could hear us, she had to know how much she is loved.”

  “Then Ben came along with a paper bag full of magic tricks and his usual candy bar,” Robert said.

  “Candy bar?” Jared and I chimed together.

  “He’s got this shtick,” Mr. Hamilton continued, “Every time he comes, he lays a salted peanut roll, Molly’s favorite, on the foot of the bed.”

  “How’d you know what her favorite candy was?” Jared wanted to know.

  “He asked.” Leave it to Ben to cut to the chase. “Anyway, Geneva and I always laugh because he’d say, ‘Molly, if you wake up while I’m here, you get this candy bar. If you don’t, I’m going to eat it right in front of you. So if you know what’s good for you…’ and he’d make a big deal of the candy and then, of course, have to eat it before he left.

  “The last few days we’ve been noticing responses in her. Although the doctors said it could just be reflex actions, we thought we saw her smile.”