Rejoice

by Karen Kingsbury

  “Because if I didn’t believe . . .” Brooke choked back the lump in her throat. “If I didn’t believe, I would’ve drowned right there beside her.”

  Her father twisted up his face and gave a hard shake of his head. Brooke had never seen him look more broken. “I’m sorry.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and hugged her close again. “Forgive me, Brooke. I promise . . . I promise I’ll believe now.”

  Brooke’s heart hurt within her, because she had known all along. Deep inside she’d been sure that her father wasn’t completely with them, and she hadn’t known why. Only that she didn’t seem to have his support, his confidence the way she’d had it all her life. But now . . . now Hayley wasn’t the only one who had her sight back.

  Her father did, too.

  She framed her father’s face with her hands. “God can do anything, remember, Dad?” Her voice was pinched, tight with emotion, but she smiled anyway. “You taught me that.”

  “I remember.” Her father’s eyes were bright with unshed tears. “And here’s something else.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small folded piece of paper. “Open it.” He handed it to Brooke and let his eyes drift to Hayley.

  The paper was fragile, cut out of a newspaper or catalogue perhaps. She opened it and there inside was a picture of a small pink bicycle, complete with white streamers and a floral basket. Brooke knit her brow and looked at her father. “I . . . I’m not sure I understand.”

  “It’s for Hayley.” He pointed to the picture. “I bought it an hour ago and parked it in the garage. It’ll be there waiting for her.”

  “Dad . . . are you serious?” Brooke clutched the picture to her heart. His renewed faith in Hayley’s future was the greatest gift he could’ve given her.

  “Yes.” He smiled for the first time that morning. “Because God can do anything, Brooke. Anything at all. And on the day when Hayley can ride that bike down the driveway, I want to say I was the first one who believed it could happen.”

  When her father was gone, Brooke took her place in the familiar chair near Hayley’s bed and pulled her Bible from her overnight bag. She wanted to find something about this . . . this indescribable joy, the feeling brimming inside her unlike anything she’d ever felt.

  It was strange, really. Because even with the strides Hayley was making, she still had a million miles to go. Even after Ashley’s talk the other night, she was still bothered by feelings of guilt about her role in Hayley’s accident, about Peter’s role.

  In many ways their lives were still in massive disarray, total confusion. Maddie was living with her parents, and the two of them saw each other only an hour a day when Brooke visited the Baxter house. She was still living at the hospital, sleeping in the reclining chair next to Hayley’s bed. Things at work had moved on without her, and the other doctors had filled in with her patients since the accident. Peter never came by, never called, or even talked to her at the hospital.

  Hayley was making strides, yes, but she still lay confined to a hospital bed, unable to move or speak or eat without the nose tube. Still, somehow, Brooke had never felt happier, never known with more certainty that God was moving and working in her, around her, never been more convinced that he had every aspect of their future figured out.

  Somehow Hayley would get better; Brooke had no doubt.

  Hayley would go home soon—the doctors had said that—and the four of them would find their way back to being the family they used to be. The joy within her seemed to promise as much.

  But still, she hadn’t studied the Scriptures about this strange new kind of joy. Hayley was asleep and Brooke wasn’t expecting visitors. She opened the Bible and flipped to the concordance at the back, where she found a list of key words and their locations in the Bible.

  She stared at the list of words and tried to think of the right one. Joy . . . or joyful. Or maybe rejoice. One of those had to be listed. She was turning to the J section when she heard someone enter the room. Her eyes lifted from the Bible to the door, and she felt her heart skip a beat.

  “Hello.” Peter stopped before moving farther into the room. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  “No.” Brooke didn’t know what to say. This was the most he’d spoken to her in weeks. Usually he’d spend ten—fifteen—minutes standing at Hayley’s bed, and then give her a terse nod on his way out. She closed the Bible and set it back in her bag. “Sit down if you want.”

  “Okay.” He took a chair near Brooke, reached up and cupped the back of his neck, massaging his muscles for a moment. When he lowered his hand to his lap, his fingers shook. He seemed to notice the way they trembled, and he made tight fists of both hands. His eyes lifted to hers, and he looked twenty years older than the last time they’d sat face-to-face this way. “Brooke . . . we need to talk.”

  In a rush, Brooke realized something. She and Peter hadn’t had a joyful discussion in months. Forget joyful. They hadn’t even been civilized to each other since long before Hayley’s accident. Now, with Peter almost always gone, with the two of them not speaking, she had in some ways written him off, forgotten about him.

  But Peter’s tired, lackluster tone brought back all Brooke’s old feelings. How dare he question her medical abilities? And what kind of nerve did he have, leaving her alone to handle the tragedy with Hayley? He was an unfeeling coward, a man who had carelessly risked the safety of their children so he could watch a baseball game and . . .

  The inner diatribe went on. And in a tangible way she felt bitter sarcasm pushing joy out of the way.

  “We need to talk?” She leaned back in her chair and lifted her eyebrows in his direction. “You think?” She hardened her eyes. “Our daughter’s been in the hospital for two months, and you haven’t said five sentences to me. Yes—” a mean-sounding exhale came from deep in her throat—“I’d say we need to talk.”

  Peter hung his head. He seemed unable to find the strength to lift it again, but he did so anyway, meeting her look head-on. “I didn’t come here to fight. This whole thing’s been just as hard on me.”

  “I can tell.”

  “Brooke . . .” A flicker of anger danced in Peter’s eyes and then burned out. “Brooke, I’m moving out this weekend.”

  She stared at him, not believing what he’d just said. “You’re what?”

  For all of her anger at him, all the reasons she was frustrated, even disgusted with him, she had never for a moment expected a statement like that one. She felt light-headed and sick to her stomach all at once, and she gripped the arms of her chair. Her voice was there, but barely. “What did you say?”

  He breathed out through his nose and shook his head. “It’s over, Brooke. You and I both know that.”

  She needed a glass of water, needed a way to stop the scene taking place between them. “So we go from arguing and tragedy straight to divorce, is that it?”

  Peter dropped his jaw and let his mouth hang open for a minute. “I . . . I guess. I don’t see any other way.” He looked at Hayley’s sleeping form. “I talked to her doctor. They think she’ll be coming home a week from today.” He lifted his shoulders, defeated. “You and the girls deserve the house; I’ll be in an apartment by then. I thought you should know.”

  She stared at him, speechless. Her emotions ran wild and she considered slapping him, screaming at him, throwing something at him. Fight, Peter, she wanted to yell. Fight for what we used to have; fight for the sake of our girls, for Hayley. But he’d surrendered their marriage before the battle had even begun.

  And despite her strong desire to pound her fists on his chest and rail at him for leaving her alone since Hayley’s accident, she also wanted to fall to her knees, crawl to him and wrap her arms around his waist. Let her head fall on his lap and weep for how much she’d missed him, how she still longed for the way they used to be.

  No words came, but a memory formed in her head, a picture of the two of them the year he graduated from med school. They’d snuck up to the school founta
in with a box of detergent and a bottle of dishwashing liquid. Together they sprinkled the soap around the watery perimeter. Then they tossed the empty box and bottle in a trash can, grabbed hands, and ran for the bushes. There they giggled and held each other, laughing about their “clean” getaway and how the professors would react the next day when soapsuds poured from the fountain down into the courtyard.

  But laughter had turned to passion that night, and most of the next hour they stayed in the bushes, kissing and whispering about the future.

  “Know when I first fell in love with you, Peter?”

  He’d kissed her lips, her jaw, the arch in her neck. “When you spotted me in chemistry?”

  She giggled and shook her head. “No, when you handed me that dead frog. Remember? We were in biology class and you passed me the frog I was supposed to dissect that day. You told me, ‘Don’t worry; he didn’t feel anything.’ ” She drew back and grinned at him. “After that I knew you were the most caring, compassionate man. A guy just like my father. And just like him, I knew you’d make the best doctor in our class. I couldn’t be more sure.”

  They’d kissed again, and by the time they snuck out of the bushes that night, soapsuds had formed a knee-high wall of bubbles around the fountain.

  They’d grabbed hands, and this time they ran as fast as they could back to the dorms. Peter bid her a breathless good night with a promise. “I’ll never love anyone like I love you, Brooke. No matter where life takes us, no matter what happens, we’re supposed to be together; I know it more than I know anything else.”

  Brooke blinked and the memory was gone. Peter had proposed to her the next year, and as she’d stood before her family and friends pledging to love Peter forever, she believed with all her heart that he was right. They belonged together.

  Never would she have guessed they would wind up like this.

  “You need to say something.” Peter spread his fingers across the legs of his work pants, and again his hands were shaking. This time he crossed his arms. He looked at her, but not with passion or remorse.

  And in that instant, what remained of Brooke’s feelings for him lifted and took flight. Who was she kidding? The two of them had been finished for a long time. In his absence she’d felt happier than before, more free. That had to mean something. “Okay.” Her eyes locked on his. “You’re right. We’ve both seen it coming.”

  Peter nodded. “Let’s make it easy on each other. The divorce-attorney thing.” He stood and slipped his hands into his pockets. “I’ll give you whatever you want, Brooke. But it’ll be better for Maddie and—” he looked at their younger daughter— “Hayley . . . if we handle it in a friendly way.”

  A friendly way? Breaking a commitment to love and honor for a lifetime? How could that be even somewhat friendly? She dismissed the thoughts and forced herself to look at him. “Will . . . will you file soon?”

  “I already have.” His shoulders slumped some and he shifted his feet, anxious to leave. “I’m sorry, Brooke. I . . . I didn’t see any other way.”

  “Well, then . . .” She stood also, but instead of going to him, she went to Hayley’s bedside and took their daughter’s fingers in hers. The shock was wearing off. In its place the sarcasm was back. “I guess it’s all neat and tidy.”

  Peter’s knees were trembling now, and Brooke wanted to ask if he was okay. But the answer didn’t really matter. They moved in separate worlds now, and whether either of them would ever be okay again didn’t seem to matter.

  Hayley began to stir and her sad, slow cry filled the room. Peter took a few steps toward her, gave her toes a single light squeeze, and then looked one last time at Brooke. “I guess we’ll be in touch.”

  “I guess.”

  His feet moved faster than before as he headed for the doorway. If he’d looked, he would’ve seen fresh tears in Brooke’s eyes, tears of futility and failure, tears for an uncertain future. He did stop just before leaving, but he didn’t turn around. Instead, in a voice free from undue emotion, he said only two words.

  “Good-bye, Brooke.”

  And with that, the man she’d married, the man she’d given her heart to, walked out of her life forever.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Peter slipped into the first rest room he could find. His hands were shaking hard, and he’d been frantic to get out of there. She’d looked at his fingers, his knees. No way she could’ve missed the way he was losing it, but at least she hadn’t asked any questions.

  He’d told her the truth. The divorce had been coming long before Hayley’s accident. It had nothing to do with his guilt, with the way he still wanted to rewrite the ending to that awful afternoon. And it certainly had nothing to do with his current love affair.

  The one he was having with the painkillers.

  He didn’t use the bottles anymore. Too risky. He kept them in a plastic sandwich bag. That way he could reach them easier, and no one would know what they were or whom they belonged to if somehow he lost track of them at work. Or worse, if someone besides his nurse, Betty, saw him taking one or two.

  Usually two, if he was honest with himself.

  The thing was, they continued to work, continued to take away the biting, driving pain in his head, the constant wondering about what he could have done differently. A few pills and there it was, like magic. Peace and normalcy. The ability to see patients and function like a human being.

  The ability to live as if his marriage weren’t falling apart and he weren’t moving into an apartment this weekend. As if Hayley weren’t fighting back from brain damage because he’d lost track of her at a friend’s party.

  Yes, the pain pills were a great equalizer, the doorway back to the living.

  He pulled the plastic bag from his pants pocket, fumbled with the opening, and whisked two pills straight to his mouth. Again he had no cup, so he turned the sink water on, bent over, and sucked in a quick swig. The pills would be working their wonder on his system in ten minutes.

  He’d researched the medication a few times in the past weeks, and what he found told him he wasn’t addicted. Not the way some people got addicted. Case studies told him of high-ranking businesspeople taking four and five pills every hour and still functioning.

  Some days Peter took two pills an hour to get the same relief he used to get from one. But four or five? Peter laughed at the idea. No way he’d ever need that kind of medication, not when two were doing the job quite nicely. By the time he got to the car, he was feeling like himself again. He even hummed something by Kenny Chesney while he drove by the postal station and purchased a dozen packing boxes.

  Not much in the house was exclusively his.

  At home that evening he started in his office and packed his old medical books and two years’ worth of Sports Illustrated magazines. He was halfway through the second bookcase when he had the first thought of Brooke since leaving the hospital. Years ago he’d written her letters and they were in a box somewhere in the office, weren’t they? Letters he’d written to her the year they married.

  Suddenly, strangely, as if his life depended on it, he stood up and glanced around the office. He had to find the letters, had to know how he’d felt about his wife back before everything changed. His eyes fell on the closet and he remembered. He’d put them in a box on the top shelf when they moved into this house.

  What had he said to Brooke that day? “Some rainy Sunday afternoon let’s take them down and read them together, okay?”

  She’d slipped her arm around his waist and smiled. “I’d like that, Peter.”

  They’d had many rainy Sunday afternoons in the past years, but the box had stayed on the office-closet shelf, untouched. Was there a reason they hadn’t made time for celebrating their love? Or had they gotten too caught up in their careers to care anymore?

  Peter froze for a moment and studied his hands. He wasn’t shaking—not yet. But the numb feeling around his heart and soul was wearing off. Otherwise he wouldn’t have thought of the letters in the
first place. He straightened his shoulders and ordered himself to be calm.

  Twenty minutes until the next pills. He wouldn’t take them sooner, wouldn’t fall victim to addiction the way others had.

  He wove his way around the half-filled boxes, opened the closet door, and peered at the top shelf. At the back on the right side was a simple gray box. He reached up, pulled it down, and stared at it, mesmerized as he crossed the room again and did a slow drop into his office chair.

  The lid came off easily, but Peter hesitated. Why had he stopped writing letters to her? When had the business of life taken precedence over its beauty? And how come it had taken Hayley’s accident and the undoing of his marriage to even remember about the letters?

  As he peered inside the box, a heaviness settled around his heart. He remembered writing letters, but this? The box held a hundred folded pieces of paper—some, delicate-colored stationery sheets; others, scrawled across legal paper. He saw one near the top of the stack, written on a pale blue sheet, and carefully separated it from the others.

  His fingers began to tingle—the first real sign that the medicine was wearing off. He told himself to read the letter first; the pills would be there. He opened the letter and found the beginning.

  Dear Brooke,

  It’s early in the morning, too early for daylight, and I have just come off the longest hospital night shift in my life. Hour after hour I reminded myself that when my training’s done, I don’t want to work another night as long as I live. But still, the night wasn’t all bad. Because no matter how many people walked through the emergency-room doors in the past hours, I didn’t go ten minutes without thinking of you.

  I don’t believe in God or a higher power, not with all my years of science and medicine. You know that. But here, as I write this, I could swear that something bigger than ourselves brought us together. How else could life have matched me up with someone like you? Maybe it’s that whole fate thing or karma or reincarnation. But I could search the world over, interview every woman I might meet along the way, and I’m convinced I would never find one like you.