Reach for Tomorrow

by Lurlene McDaniel

  Katie knew that what Meg said was true, but still she wanted to blame somebody. It had to be somebody’s fault. She grabbed up her purse and Lacey’s car keys. “I’m going back to the hospital. The least I can do is keep Josh company. He’s just miserable lying there all day long without being able to move.”

  Later that afternoon, she sat in Josh’s room as he drifted in and out of drug-induced sleep. It was after dark and visiting hours were over when she kissed his forehead and promised to return the next morning.

  “Thank you, Katie,” Josh whispered. “Thank you for being here for me.”

  A fine red stubble grew on his face and felt rough against her hand when she stroked his cheek. “You were there for me,” she reminded him. “I won’t desert you, Josh.”

  Out in the hall, she ran into Mr. Holloway. He invited her down to the coffee shop and bought her a cup of coffee, getting coffee and a slice of pie for himself. When he’d settled into a chair across from her in the brightly lit room, he said, “I talked to Dr. Benson this afternoon.”

  The coffee turned bitter in Katie’s mouth, and she set down the cup. “Are you going to give me bad news?”

  “Actually, there’s a little bit of encouraging news,” Mr. Holloway said. “Josh’s score is rising on the motor function index.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a testing method for measuring how well a patient’s motor skills are doing. A healthy person scores a hundred percent—there’s no impairment of his motor skills. When Josh was brought in, his was at zero, which meant he couldn’t even breathe on his own, but over the past two days his scores have risen.”

  “That’s wonderful.” She felt encouraged.

  “Yes, but he’s not out of the woods yet. According to Dr. Benson, the treatment they’re giving Josh includes some experimental drugs, which, although they’ve proved effective in the lab, have a so-so track record with people. You see, the problem with the spinal cord is that after a severe trauma the nerve cells begin to die. Scientists have discovered that if they can stop this process, if they can keep the nerve cells alive, the victim has a better chance of avoiding paralysis. Or at least limiting it to perhaps only the lower part of his body.”

  Katie’s eyes misted as the reality of Josh’s situation sank in. “I just can’t imagine Josh having to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.”

  “While it’s true that half of these injuries lead to paralysis, half of them don’t. That’s what you have to focus on. You’re his encouragement, Katie. You help him keep a positive attitude, and no matter what the outcome, he’s going to look to you to help him through this ordeal.”

  Katie dropped her gaze and stared into the cream-colored depths of her coffee cup. “We—We were closer once. I should have never cut myself off from him. Especially after all he did for me. If it weren’t for his brother’s heart, I wouldn’t even be alive.”

  “You have a right to explore the possibilities for your own life. You have a right to discover who you are and what you want, Katie.”

  She looked up into Mr. Holloway’s kind blue eyes. “I feel bad about the way I’ve treated him during the past year. I should have been nicer. Going away to college was so important to me this time last year. Right now it hardly seems important at all.”

  “You’re a bright girl. Josh wouldn’t want anybody who wasn’t absolutely sure of what she wanted. When Jenny was alive, she was so much more positive about wanting me than I was about wanting her.”

  “Do you still miss her?”

  “I’ll always miss her. But I’ve had to go on with my life. I couldn’t let all that she suffered count for nothing. Jenny House is her legacy. That’s why I’m rebuilding, why I’ve fought so hard to keep her grandmother’s dream alive. It’s all I can do for them.”

  Katie understood what he was telling her. “When I was recovering from my transplant, when I wanted to run again but hardly had the strength to stand up, Josh took me on as his personal project. He never let me quit.”

  “That was then, this is now,” Mr. Holloway said. “All that’s behind you. You can’t have a future if you can’t let go of your past. Being there for Josh now shouldn’t be out of gratitude for what he did for you. It should be out of what you feel for him in your heart.”

  Katie saw the subtle difference between the two things. Could she love Josh if he was trapped in a wheelchair? She didn’t know the answer because she didn’t know exactly what she felt for him. Pity? Yes. But pity couldn’t carry her through the rest of her life. She couldn’t be bound to someone because she felt sorry for him.

  Mr. Holloway pushed away from the table. “It’s late. We both should get back to camp.”

  “I have Lacey’s car,” Katie said. “I’ll be coming soon. First I have a stop to make.”

  * * *

  The full moon lit the construction site with a silvery glow. Katie parked and weaved her way through the well-trampled trail to the chapel. Much progress had been made since the first day of camp. She saw the shape of the building more clearly now. The building started low in the back, then rose higher in the front like the curving bow of a great boat. A partial roof was in place, but toward the front, where the altar and stained-glass window would be, the roof was still unfinished, and moonlight streamed through the opening. She stood in the moonlight, looking upward.

  Tree frogs and katydids filled the air with their music; otherwise there was silence. Katie was alone. Utterly alone.

  “Hello, God,” she whispered. “It’s me, Katie O’Roark.” It had been so long since she’d prayed that she felt it necessary to reintroduce herself to the Creator.

  “I—I need a favor.” She stopped, collecting her thoughts. “It’s not for me, you understand, but for Josh. You know he’s hurt. He’s hurt pretty bad. But I know you can fix him. With just a single word, you can make him well.”

  She remembered enough from her days in Sunday school to know that miracles happened. And that God was in charge of miracles. If he could raise Lazarus from the dead and his son from a grave, then he could heal Josh’s spinal cord.

  She took a deep breath. She could make God a lot of promises, but she knew that would be futile. In the first place, even if she swore she’d be “good” for the rest of her life, she knew she couldn’t keep such a vow. And God might not want her to swear such a thing. How could her being “good” possibly help Josh? No, she just needed to ask God outright to heal Josh.

  An owl called from atop a nearby tree.

  “Please make Josh all right,” Katie pleaded, looking up at the sky. “Please, let him walk again. Not for me, but for himself. And if he has to be in a wheelchair, then help me to help him accept it. Give me the courage to stand by him the way he stood by me when I needed him.”

  She stopped. By now tears had filled her eyes and her heart felt as if it might break. She truly believed that God had heard her prayer. What she did not know was whether or not he would grant her request. Against great odds, God had given her a new heart when she’d desperately needed one. And he had brought Josh into her life as well. She believed that with all her heart and soul. Now there was nothing more she could do except wait. And have faith. Faith in God to hurry Josh’s recovery. Faith in Josh’s ability to live bound to a wheelchair if he had to. Either way, Josh’s fate was in God’s hands, in God’s mercy.

  Katie lifted her arms in the moonlight in supplication to the heavens.

  EIGHTEEN

  “How’s the horse doing?” Meg leaned over the half door of the stable to ask Morgan her question. She had walked down to the barn to visit him while the campers were having their weekly popcorn and movie night in the rec center.

  Morgan, who was checking the horse’s leg, stood up and came to the door. “He’s still a little swollen around the knee, but the vet says he’ll be okay.”

  “Good. I know how much these horses mean to you.”

  Morgan let himself out of the stall. “Any good word about Josh yet?” It
had been three days since Josh’s accident.

  “Still waiting. Right after supper Katie headed straight back to the hospital. She says his doctor feels hopeful because Josh’s X rays show no broken vertebrae or crushed discs. That means he won’t have to undergo any surgery. He can still heal spontaneously.”

  Morgan picked up brushes from where he had been grooming the horses and motioned for Meg to follow him to the tack room. “Josh is tough, and … well, there are worse things than being paralyzed.”

  His comment surprised Meg, and she told him so. “I figured that as much as you like being outdoors and riding, you’d think being paralyzed would be one of the worst things in the world.”

  “I’ve seen wheelchair-bound athletes on TV. They move pretty good, and they look fit and tough to me. And just because you can’t walk doesn’t mean you can’t ride.”

  His attitude continued to surprise her. She hadn’t expected him to be so cavalier. “Well, I know I’d sure hate not being able to walk,” she said.

  His expression clouded and he got a faraway look in his eye. She couldn’t imagine what was going through his mind. Was there someone in his life who was paralyzed? “Do you know anybody who—”

  “Look, Meg, can we just drop it? I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  She stepped back, shocked by his reaction. Why had he become defensive? He could be so moody. “I guess it was a mistake for me to come down here,” she said quietly. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She’d taken only a few steps when he said, “Wait!” He caught up with her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m glad you came to see me.”

  “You are?”

  A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “I am.” He took hold of her hand. “Let’s walk.”

  They started down a trail in the woods. Daylight was fast fading, and lightning bugs were blinking among the leaves of the trees. “We never got to go on that moonlight ride, did we?” he asked.

  “We were sidetracked.”

  “And now camp’s closing in two weeks.”

  Meg felt let down. She could hardly imagine her days without the routine of camp life and seeing her new friends every day. And she couldn’t imagine not seeing Morgan. “Will you go back to Colorado?” she asked.

  “Sure. Winter’s coming, and we’ll have to bring the herds down from the high places and into the valley where there’s better grazing. It’s still a working ranch, and there’s a lot to be done. What about your?”

  “Back to Columbia. The books are calling to me. I haven’t spent any time this summer studying.”

  “Why would you want to?”

  She laughed. “Because I want to get into medical school. Only the brightest and best get in, you know.”

  “You’ll make it,” he said.

  “Oh, really? And have you got a crystal ball that tells the future?”

  He gave a short, derisive laugh. “If only.”

  She stopped and made him turn and face her. “What’s going on with you, Morgan? Something is. You’ve said things to me that make me believe there’s something you’re not telling me about yourself.”

  Looking down at Meg’s pretty upturned face made Morgan’s insides turn mushy. What he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss her. But that wouldn’t be fair. A girl like Meg deserved more than he could ever give her. She wanted to be a doctor. He didn’t even know if he had a future.

  “It’s nothing,” he said.

  “I can take it.” She persisted. “Do you have a fiancée tucked away somewhere you don’t want me to know about?” She was teasing, but also serious. She wanted to get to the bottom of his secrecy.

  “No fiancées,” he said. “But …” He teetered on the brink of telling her. “It’s personal.”

  “Do I have to play Twenty Questions? Let’s see …” She tapped her toe and thought up the most preposterous thing she could. “You’ve got some dread disease and you’re dying.”

  She meant it as a joke, but when he didn’t laugh, her heart began to thud with apprehension. “Morgan, I was just kidding.”

  “Actually, you’re not too far off the mark,” he said quietly.

  “Please tell me.”

  He stepped away and, turning, quietly told her about his genetic potential for contracting Huntington’s chorea. He hadn’t told anyone since Anne, and he never talked about it with his aunt, the only relative he had left. His fears had been bottled up for so long that his voice shook as he spoke, but once he was through it, once he’d told Meg about its horrors, he felt a tremendous sense of release.

  “And you’ve been living with this knowledge for almost eight years?” she asked, careful to keep her voice controlled and subdued. Inside she was reeling, but if there was one thing she had learned from her surgeon father, it was how to keep her voice calm and her expression serene. A patient must never see his doctor panic.

  “Yes,” Morgan answered.

  “But you won’t take the genetic test even though you can afford it? Even though it would settle the matter once and for all?”

  When she put it so matter-of-factly, his motives seemed petty. He confessed his darkest fear. “I—I’m afraid to.”

  He waited for her reaction, and when she neither scoffed nor scolded, he appreciated her even more.

  “I would be afraid too,” she said. “My mother has a friend who has a family history of breast cancer. The woman’s scared to death she’ll get it. There’s a genetic test that can tell a woman if she carries the gene that might lead to her getting it. But even if she has the gene, there’s no predicting absolutely that she’ll get breast cancer. So she still has to ‘wait and see.’ Some women can’t stand the suspense, so they have mastectomies anyway. My father won’t do those surgeries. He thinks it’s too drastic a measure.”

  Meg stared up at Morgan’s clouded expression. “I think you’re lucky to be able to take a simple test and know for sure whether or not you’ll get Huntington’s. Then all your waiting will be over.”

  “But what if it’s positive? What if I am going to get it?”

  “Then you can plan for it. Don’t you think that’s a whole lot better than wondering?”

  “I’m not sure. Anne wanted me to take the test too.”

  “What if you don’t get Huntington’s, Morgan? How old will you be before you’re absolutely, positively sure you won’t get it?”

  “It usually happens when you’re in your thirties. Or maybe even when you’re fifty.”

  “So then you’ll live years never doing something you want to do, never getting married, or having children, just in case you might get sick? That’s a long time to dangle your life, don’t you think? And it doesn’t seem fair to anybody who wants a future with you either.”

  “I try not to think about that,” he said. “Keeping to myself, staying uninvolved, seems the best way for me to handle it.”

  Meg ran her palm down his arm and grasped his hand. “I would never tell you what to do, Morgan. It’s your life, not mine. But I would think that living with not knowing is far more harmful than living with knowing. It eats you up inside. It does a kind of damage to your emotions and your spirit that dealing with the problem head-on avoids. Not facing the truth makes a person powerless. Knowledge is power, and the truth sets you free.

  “If you’re going to get Huntington’s, you may as well deal with it up front. Just like you do a wild horse. Would you not ride a horse because you might get thrown?”

  “Of course not. I’d ride any wild horse.”

  “Then why not think of this genetic test as a wild horse? A big, scary one, but still just a wild horse that you can manage if you put your mind to it.”

  Meg’s suggestion gave Morgan a new way of viewing his problem. He had avoided the truth for so long because he was afraid of it. And it was the only thing in his life he had ever been afraid of. “You’ll make a hell of a doctor, Ms. Charnell,” he said with a wry grin. “You’ve got a powerful way with wor
ds.”

  She shrugged. “It’s up to you, but if you do take the test, will you please tell me the results?”

  “If they’re bad, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t want anybody’s pity. Especially yours.”

  “And if they’re good?”

  He thought for a moment. “I could send you a yellow ribbon. If I take the test,” he added.

  She smiled up at him. “Fair enough,” she said. Then she asked, “Will you write me?”

  “I’ll be out on the range most of the fall. Besides, I’m not much of a letter writer.”

  “I am. I’ll write you whenever I feel like it. So there.”

  He laughed. “But there is something I will do.”

  “What’s that?”

  Morgan took her in his arms, tilted her chin up, and said with a kiss what he could not say with words.

  NINETEEN

  On the fourth day after Josh’s accident, when Katie went to the hospital, she found him sitting in a wheelchair. He wore a stiff white neck brace, a cervical collar that held his neck straight and rigid.

  “What do you think?” he asked when she stepped into the room.

  “Wow, you’re sitting up. That’s progress.” She was thrilled to see him out of bed, but the ominous sight of the chair made her stomach tighten.

  “I have some feeling in my right arm, but my legs are pretty useless.”

  “Is that normal?” She wanted so much for him to get up and come to her.

  “The doctor said so, but he’s not telling me what I want to hear—that I can walk out of the hospital soon.” Josh grimaced. “I sure hate this collar. I have to turn my whole body if I want to look to the right or left. But it helps keep my neck straight, and Dr. Benson doesn’t want it to get jarred.”

  “How long will you have to wear it?”

  “It depends. Six weeks to three months.”

  “What happens next?”

  “They haven’t said. I’m going down to rehab, though, and that seems like a good sign to me.”