“Yes.” Elizabeth crumpled the tissue in her fist and gritted her teeth for a moment. “But it’s against my beliefs to be like this.”
“Against your beliefs?” Ashley raised her eyebrows, her face a mask of sorrow and amusement. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning depression, sadness.” She waved her hand in the space above her head, as if she was searching for the right words. “I’ve always believed Scripture when it says ‘rejoice always.’ No matter what the circumstances.”
“Yes.” Ashley reached out and wiped at another tear on her mother’s cheek. “But it also says that Jesus wept.” She cocked her head, her eyes sympathetic. “Oh, Mom, don’t you see? The joy we have in Christ is always there. But sometimes it’s a season of sorrow, and that’s okay, too. Otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have cried.”
Elizabeth took another tissue and blew her nose. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”
“Well, it’s true.” Ashley picked up her pile of vegetable pieces and tossed them into the bowl with the green peppers. “And if the sadness doesn’t go away, talk to your doctor. Sometimes we need medicine to help us feel like ourselves again.” She raised her eyebrows. “And that shouldn’t be against your beliefs either.”
“Listen to you.” Elizabeth made a sound that was more laugh than cry. “Miss I-Don’t-Want-to-See-a-Doctor giving me medical advice.”
“Someone has to.”
The mood lightened and by the time they set the table, the others began arriving. Kari and Ryan took turns holding Jessie, their moods lighter than they’d been in weeks. Ryan’s football team had a winning record and hopes for the postseason were high.
“Ryan’s brilliant.” Kari hoisted Jessie onto her hip and gave her a sippy cup of juice. “The Giants don’t know what they’re missing.”
“My guys are talented, that’s all.”
Kari waved her finger at him and smiled at Elizabeth. John and Ashley were listening, too, all of them working in the kitchen. “Don’t listen to a word. He’s brilliant, I tell you. Perfectly brilliant.”
Elizabeth laughed, and the feel of it was wonderful. Like having her first drink of water after a year in the desert. “We’ve seen the games, Ryan. Kari’s right.”
“Not that Elizabeth would know.” John leaned close and gave her a quick kiss. “Last Friday she asked me why some players ran backward after the ball was snapped.”
“Hmmm.” Ryan chuckled. “Can’t really trust that opinion now, can I?”
“Cole and I are coming to the game tomorrow night.” Ashley grinned. “After we do our trick-or-treating. Cole wants to wear his firefighter uniform.”
“That’s good, because we play the crosstown rivals.” He raised one eyebrow as he carried a stack of napkins to the table. “Things could get pretty heated.”
“Cole will be ready.” Ashley raised her voice so Cole could hear her in the next room. “You already put out one fire today, right, Cole?”
“Right, Mommy!” Cole jumped up and down and assumed his firefighting position, pretend hose raised high in the air.
Elizabeth looked from Cole back to Ashley. “He did what?” She pulled the chicken from the oven and carried it to the hot pads on the counter.
“We were at Sunset Hills.” Ashley made a face. “Pretend fires break out all the time over there.”
They all laughed and moved to the table.
A few minutes later, Brooke and Maddie arrived with news that Hayley was doing better, responding to the latest seizure medicine. Conversation shifted from football and firefighting to Thanksgiving and Luke’s approaching wedding in New York City.
“That reminds me . . .” Elizabeth set her fork down and waited until she had everyone’s attention. “I picked up a block of Lion King tickets for Sunday before the wedding.” She looked at the faces around her and realized how long it had been since they’d had a normal night like this one. “Will everyone be there by then?”
“I’m not coming until Tuesday.” Brooke’s smile was tinged with sorrow. “If Hayley’s well enough to go, that is. If not, I’ll stay behind with her.”
“Okay.” Reality tugged at Elizabeth like a giant deadly tentacle, but she pulled away, refusing to let it drag her down. She looked at the others. “How ’bout the rest of you?”
Cole clapped his hands. “I love Lion King, Gramma. Take me . . . take me!”
“Me, too . . .” Maddie stood up at her seat. “Simba’s my friend, Gramma.”
More laughter. Ashley offered to take Maddie with her to New York on Saturday before the wedding, so the child could sit with Cole at the play. When the discussion was over, everyone but Brooke had agreed to come.
Elizabeth reminded them of the itinerary for the rest of the week of the wedding. Sightseeing and The Lion King on Sunday, Niagara Falls on Monday, shopping on Tuesday, and the wedding rehearsal Tuesday night. The wedding on Wednesday, Christmas Eve, and then Christmas Day at Reagan’s mother’s apartment, complete with stockings and toys for the children. After that they would be on their own until most of them flew home again the following Saturday.
They were just about finished eating, the plans for Luke’s wedding and Christmas in Manhattan more clearly defined. Elizabeth began clearing plates, going on about how good it was to be together and how wonderful it felt to look forward to all that lay ahead.
She was about to thank everyone for coming when John nudged her. He leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
For a moment, she only stared at him. Then, with a quick gasp, she remembered. The good news! The reason she and John had invited them for dinner in the first place. She gave John the nod. “You do it.”
“Your mother and I have a little secret to share with you.” John stood up and took the cordless phone from the kitchen counter. He looked at Elizabeth. “Is this a good time?”
Curiosity filled the faces of the others around the table, and Ryan whispered something to Kari. She shook her head and looked back at John, waiting with the others for whatever John was about to do.
Elizabeth couldn’t contain her smile. She checked the clock on the wall near the stove and nodded. It would be six o’clock in Texas; Erin was expecting their call anytime after five. Moments like this were hallmarks in the Baxter family, times when good news was savored and shared in a single, celebratory moment. She nodded at John. “Go ahead and call.”
John punched in a series of numbers, then clicked a button on the phone so that the ringing on the other end filled the space above the dinner table.
“Hello?” Speakerphones always made the voices sound tinny, but even so, Elizabeth could see the others recognize Erin’s voice.
“Hi, Erin. It’s me, Dad. I’m at the table with everyone . . .”
A chorus of greetings came from Kari and Ryan, Brooke and Ashley. Even the children chimed in with high-pitched hellos.
“Hey, everyone . . . wish we were there.” As happy as Erin sounded, a faint tinge of homesickness hung in her voice. “Did Mom and Dad tell you our news?”
The others sat up a bit straighter around the table as John answered the question. “No, honey. Why don’t you tell them yourself?”
Erin made a light, laughing sound. “Okay.” She paused for a moment. “Sam and I are going to adopt. We’ve found a baby and started the process. The baby is due in six months.” She gave a short squeal. “Isn’t that awesome?”
The news was met with hoots of joy and the sound of Brooke and Ashley and Kari all talking at the same time.
“I’m so happy for you, Erin.” Kari put her arm around Ryan and leaned close to him. “I knew God wanted you to adopt.”
“Yeah, little sister.” Brooke clapped her hands. The sadness that had darkened her eyes since Hayley’s accident remained. But at least she was smiling. “You’ll love every minute of being a mom.”
“That’s for sure.” Ashley pulled Cole close and kissed his forehead. “Way to go, Erin! How’d you find the baby?�
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“That’s the miracle part.” Erin’s voice was trembling as she told the story. “Sam was meeting with the pastor once a week, just to be connected, and he mentioned we were thinking of adopting.
“The pastor got this strange look on his face and asked Sam how soon.” Erin paused long enough to catch her breath. “Sam told him very soon, actually. And then the pastor said that he’d just met with a woman the day before whose daughter was going to have her third child out of wedlock. Each of the kids was being raised by a separate family member, and the woman’s daughter had no interest in being a mother. This time the daughter wanted to give the baby up to a Christian family, through a private adoption, if possible.”
Elizabeth felt the hair on her arms rise, the same way it had the first time she heard the story.
“A few days later we met the birth mother and signed the initial paperwork. She’s absolutely sure about the adoption, and she showed us pictures of her other children.” Erin’s voice was pinched with emotion. “They’re beautiful. I wish you could see them.” She grabbed a few quick breaths. “Now all we have to do is wait.”
“God is so good, isn’t he?” John spoke the words toward the telephone, but he met the eyes of everyone in the room, even the children.
Again, Elizabeth felt a fullness in her heart, a knowing that someday soon the black cloud she’d been living under would lift. She had never understood why God hadn’t granted Erin and Sam children. Back before the move, she’d wondered if it was because their marriage wasn’t as stable as it should be. But now . . . now the answers seemed as clear as water. God wanted them to parent a child who otherwise might not have had a chance in the world.
Erin’s sisters made another round of congratulations, with promises to call her separately and talk about the impending adoption in more detail. Erin asked about Hayley, and Brooke sounded upbeat.
“She’s responding to the antiseizure medication, which is a big step. And the more time I spend massaging her muscles, the less stiff she is.”
“That’s good.” Sadness rang in Erin’s voice, even though Elizabeth knew she was trying to hide it. “We’re praying for her every day, for nothing less than a miracle.”
“Thanks, Erin. That means a lot.”
“Is Peter there? Tell him Sam’s going to call him later this week.”
The question was innocent enough, an assumption really. If Brooke was there, of course Peter was there. And Elizabeth realized she hadn’t been honest with Erin about the situation between Brooke and her husband.
“Uh . . .” Brooke looked around the table and a hush fell over the room.
“What’s the matter, Mommy?” Maddie stood up and wrapped her arms around Brooke’s neck. “Why’s everyone quiet?”
“It’s okay, baby . . .” Brooke took Maddie’s fingers and held them against her cheek, as if she was trying to quench the sadness that was suddenly building within her.
“Brooke, are you there?” Erin sounded confused. “What’s wrong?”
John clicked the button and took the call off the speakerphone. “Erin, honey, Peter’s not here. Things haven’t been the same with him for . . .” John walked out of the room, his voice hushed as he went.
Brooke ran her hand over Maddie’s back and looked from Ashley and Kari to Elizabeth. “I think we need to get going.”
“Brooke . . .” Elizabeth moved around the table toward her oldest daughter.
No words were necessary. Led by Elizabeth, the group formed a circle around Brooke and hugged her, as if the combined love from all of them together might somehow fill the hole in Brooke’s heart.
Ryan’s voice, strong and steady, lifted from the midst of them. “Father, we have no answers, nowhere to turn but to you. Our hearts ache at the thought of Peter trying to walk through this maze of pain by himself, without Brooke, maybe even without you.” He hesitated. “Whatever it takes, Lord, bring him back. Let him see that Hayley needs him; Brooke needs him. And please, Jesus, breathe new life into our little Hayley. You saved her, now please . . . we beg you, make her whole again.”
The moment ended, and in quiet, hushed tones Brooke, Ashley, and Kari gathered their children and headed off into the night. John was still on the phone with Erin in the next room, so Elizabeth was alone again, by herself and back at the shores of a sorrow that still swelled in her soul.
It was a moment when she wanted to trudge slowly to her bedroom, peel off her clothes, and slip into her nightgown, despite the fact that it wasn’t close to bedtime. A moment when she wanted nothing more than to grieve the tragedy of Hayley’s accident, the gravity of the situation between Brooke and Peter.
But instead she remembered what Ashley had said. They were supposed to be joyful. “Rejoice always”; that’s what the Bible said. But it also said that Jesus wept. And the thought of that was suddenly more comforting than anything Elizabeth had known since Hayley’s accident. Jesus wept. Even amidst perfect joy, he cried tears of pain. Certainly when he looked down from heaven at Hayley, he cried even now.
And that meant that none of them were really alone. Because Christ was with them in every moment, every season of life.
Even in this, their season of sorrow.
John had just hung up the phone from talking to Erin when he heard Ryan begin to pray in the next room. His first instinct was to hurry back into the dining room and join them. But then he heard the prayer move toward Hayley’s situation and how badly all of them wanted a miracle for her.
That’s when he knew he couldn’t be there.
Because though he wanted desperately to believe it was possible, he had been a doctor too long to believe in a miracle this time. Hayley was brain damaged, brain injured. He’d gone over the tests a number of times. When a child went without oxygen as long as Hayley had, the situation was no longer gray. Odds didn’t exist for healing in a drowning as serious as this one.
The results were the same 100 percent of the time. Children with Hayley’s type of brain damage didn’t get better. Not ever.
No happy ending awaited his darling granddaughter somewhere down the road. No, she would be fed by a tube, dressed in a diaper, drooling over herself for the rest of her days. Eight years, ten at best, and then death would come. Hayley’s body would atrophy, taking the brain’s lead in finally accepting an inability to continue.
Ten years of heartache before Hayley would be free of the prison her mind and body had become, free to run and play in the fields of heaven.
John hung his head and felt his body bend beneath the pressure. The prayer he’d uttered that first night came back to him, and he thought again of the ramifications. While everyone else had prayed for Hayley’s next breath, John had prayed for God to take her home.
He had known the score, known the type of life she would face, and so he’d asked God to give her freedom instead. But the guilt from that prayer ate at him still, nibbling at his soul and robbing him of even a moment’s peace since then.
The worst part was a fear he hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Pastor Mark. Maybe Hayley had lived as a way of punishing him for his lack of faith. He hadn’t thought God capable of making good out of her life, and so he’d asked the Lord for her death. Instead, Hayley lay hooked to tubes and monitors, unable to see or speak or connect with any of them.
“Is that what you’re doing, God?” His voice was a tormented whisper. “Are you punishing me by letting her lie there that way? by letting her live?”
Even now John wanted nothing more than to believe like the rest of them, believe that somehow a miracle was possible, and Hayley’s brain could heal itself, bring her back to a place where she was Hayley again. But it simply wasn’t possible. Hayley’s kind of brain damage went beyond traumatic injury, beyond anything the medical profession had ever seen healed.
“I want to believe, God . . .” John sat on the edge of the sofa in the den and gripped his knees. He knew the Scriptures, knew the times when Jesus promised that nothing was impossible wit
h God or that the Lord was able to do immeasurably more than all they could ever ask or imagine.
But healing Hayley’s brain?
A hundred answered prayers came rushing to John’s mind. Elizabeth’s recovery from cancer all those years ago . . . Luke’s return to the family . . . the renewed faith for Brooke and Ashley . . .
“Yes, God, you’re able . . . I know you’re able.” John clenched his jaw, willing himself to get past the hurdle of unbelief. “Increase my faith, Lord. Please.”
Sweat beaded on his forehead. He’d never prayed with such fervor in all his life. Because as much as he was convinced that Hayley had lived as a means of punishing him, he was also convinced that his unbelief could keep her from getting well. No, he had nothing if he didn’t have his faith, and that was the biggest problem of all. As hard as he was trying and as awful as he felt about it, John couldn’t muster the faith to believe God could heal his Hayley. Not this time.
Not when conventional medicine told him her recovery was completely and totally impossible.
Chapter Twelve
Winter had come to Bloomington, and the rain and sleet matched Peter’s mood. Especially when the pills wore off.
It was eight o’clock, the same time he’d been getting home to the familiar old house every day for the past month, ever since his family had left him. Since Hayley’s drowning and Maddie’s move to the Baxters’ house, and Brooke’s determination to stay at the hospital. Not that he blamed them—not when the whole situation was his fault.
His hands shook as he slipped the key in the door.
More! Find the pills . . .
His body screamed at him, and he did his best to obey. The keys fell to the wet cement, and he wiped the rain from his eyes. “Come on; get inside!” He hissed the words, and this time he was grateful to be alone.
He was always alone now; he would be alone for the rest of time. His family didn’t need him, didn’t want him. He’d done enough; he knew that much by looking at Hayley, at the strange, slow way her sightless eyes drifted about the room, at the painful seizures that attacked her body every moment she was awake.
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