Reach for Tomorrow

by Lurlene McDaniel

She came closer. “You work really hard in rehab, you hear?”

  “Katie, I know how serious my injury was.”

  “You do?” Her gaze flew to his face. Her instinct was to protect him.

  “I know they aren’t sure if I’ll walk again.”

  Tears misted her eyes, and she turned away.

  “Hey,” he said softly, “it’s not going to happen to me. I won’t let it.”

  “You were really hurt bad, Josh.”

  “I know. Dr. Benson’s been honest with me, and I’m glad. I know you’ve been scared for me, haven’t your?”

  She nodded, not trusting her voice.

  “You don’t have to keep it inside now,” Josh told her. “I know the worst. But I’m not afraid. The treatments they gave me helped a lot. Now I believe the rest is up to me. There are football players who’ve had injuries like mine—worse than mine— and they were told they’d never walk again, and now, a few years later, they’re up walking and going to the gym.

  “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but I can do this, Katie. Dr. Benson told me that the higher up the spinal cord the damage occurs, the greater the chance of complete paralysis. And that while I went over the horse and bent my neck pretty bad, it was the middle of my back that took the brunt of the fall.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  “It left me with upper-body movement. Watch.”

  She looked down at his hands and saw the barest twitch of his thumbs. For the first time that morning, she smiled. “Why, that’s wonderful!”

  “My legs are the most affected,” Josh continued. “They’re not sure if I’ll get full use of them back, but I’m here to tell you—I will.”

  She saw determination on his face and believed him.

  “When I get home, I have to go into physical therapy. I may not get back to classes till after Christmas.”

  “How will you manage on your own?”

  “Like I always have,” he said. “I’ll manage.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to go back to school. I could help.”

  “Is this Katie talking? Katie, who couldn’t wait to get back to Arizona and run track?”

  Her cheeks burned at his gentle chiding. Funny how her priorities had shifted over the past several days. Now, instead of school, all she could think about was how Josh was going to make it by himself. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

  “Katie, look at me.”

  She did, and his blue eyes burned brightly. He said, “I have never wanted to stand in the way of your dreams. I won’t let this accident sidetrack you in any way. Go back to school. Have a good time. I’ll be all right.”

  “I suppose Natalie could help you,” she ventured, feeling the the familiar prickling of jealousy in her heart.

  “She’s a good friend. But she’s only a friend. And yes, she’ll help me.”

  Katie wasn’t mollified. What if Josh’s friendship with Natalie turned into something more?

  The door opened, and a man dressed in white stepped into the room. “I’m John, your therapist,” he said. “Ready to go down to rehab?”

  “Ready and wanting to get started,” Josh said.

  “That’s the attitude,” John said with a smile.

  “I’ll wait for you,” Katie said.

  “It’s all right,” Josh answered. “I’ve got to learn

  to do this on my own. Go on back to camp and tell everyone I’m doing better.”

  Katie watched the therapist push Josh in his wheelchair out of the room. She felt bereft and lost.

  Only two days before the end of camp, Josh was released from the hospital. The entire camp threw a big party in the rec center. Banners proclaiming WELCOME BACK, JOSH! were strung across the room, and helium balloons hugged the ceiling. Eric had baked a giant sheet cake, and the staff had tacked to one wall an enormous piece of butcher paper, which every kid at camp had drawn pictures and written messages on.

  When Josh arrived in the late afternoon, still in a wheelchair, everyone clustered around him. “It’s good to be back,” he told them all.

  One of the boys asked what was on all their minds. “Will you be all right?”

  “They think so,” Josh answered.

  “Can you walk?” asked another.

  “I can stand with help, but it hurts.”

  “Your arm doesn’t move so well,” a girl noted.

  “I’m still working out the kinks,” he told her.

  “Can you stay with us, or do you have to go back to the hospital?” another boy asked.

  “I’m here to stay.”

  A cheer went up. Music began to play, and games started. Katie stuck close to Josh, but she wasn’t at all sure he wanted her with him. A subtle shift had occurred. She couldn’t say exactly what was different, but things between them were different. It was as if Josh had released her in some way. As if he’d let go of their relationship. He was kind to her, but she no longer felt tied to him emotionally. Neither did she experience the old gnawing guilt when she was around him, as if she owed him something, a debt she couldn’t pay. The feelings disturbed her, but she couldn’t say why.

  Later she stepped outside and breathed in the humid Carolina night air. Dampness mingled with the scent of jasmine, making her feel melancholy. Summer was nearly over. Soon she’d return to college and resume her other life. Yet this life had come to mean so much to her.

  “Hey, Katie.”

  She turned and saw Sarah. “Hey yourself.”

  “You want to be alone?”

  She did, but she would never tell that to Sarah. “Not at all. I was just taking a break.”

  Sarah leaned against the wall next to her. “I can’t believe it’s almost time to go home. When camp first started, I couldn’t wait for it to end. Now I don’t want it to.”

  “I know. It’s that way every year for me, Lacey, and Chelsea. After the campers leave, we pull an all-nighter where we eat and talk and cry because it’s all over and we have to go back home.”

  “Sounds like fun.” Sarah’s voice was wistful.

  Katie studied Sarah’s face, and an idea came to her. “If you were a counselor you could stay with us.”

  “I’m not a counselor.”

  “Would you like to be?”

  Sarah’s eyes widened. “What do you mean?”

  “Every year we make recommendations to Mr. Holloway as to who we think would make good counselors. I’d like to recommend you. You’d make a fabulous counselor next year.”

  “You mean it?”

  “I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t.”

  “Really?” Sarah’s face broke into a grin. In the moonlight she looked pretty but fragile. “I’d love to be a counselor here!” she cried.

  “Next year it’ll be a whole lot better because the main camp will be rebuilt. The dorms over there are posh, not like the cabins at all. You’ll have a great time, Sarah.”

  “What about you? Won’t you be back? I can’t imagine this place without you, Katie.”

  Katie glanced through the window and saw Josh talking to a group of kids. Sadness tugged at her heart. Everything was changing. She knew that as surely as she knew her own name. “Probably not, Sarah,” she said quietly. “I think it’s time I moved on. I think it’s time for me to leave Jenny House for others, for girls like you. It’s … time to say goodbye.”

  TWENTY

  Chaos ruled the campground as parents arrived to pick up their kids on the last day of Jenny House camp. Some kids were crying because they didn’t want to leave. Katie tried to comfort them while at the same time trying to make sure everybody had all their belongings.

  Once the campers were gone, the staff would have a meeting; then Katie and her friends would spend one final night together, with popcorn, fudge, cookies, sodas, and ice cream to console them. “I’ll gain back every ounce I’ve lost,” Meg wailed.

  “Yeah, but what a way to go,” Chelsea told her.

  Lacey insisted on boosting her i
nsulin dosage so that she could join them in the pigout.

  Because Sarah wanted to become a counselor, she called her parents and asked if they could come for her the next day. They agreed, saying they would spend the night at a motel in town and pick her up the following morning. Now she could spend the last night with Katie, Meg, Lacey, and Chelsea.

  Katie was saying goodbye to the last of her girls when Dullas found her. “Me and Kimbra are leaving.”

  “We’ll miss you,” Katie said.

  “Do you mean that?”

  Katie thought for a moment. “I do. You were actually pretty tame this year. You must be growing up, Dullas.”

  Dullas made a face. Katie noticed that she wasn’t wearing her pendant and asked about it. She’d never seen Dullas without it. “You haven’t lost it, have you? You know how special it is to all of us.”

  “I didn’t lose it. I—um—gave it to Sarah. I told her she could wear it all year and bring it back to me next year. She’s my best friend, you know.”

  “Did you tell her the history behind it?”

  “Course. She knows it’s special. She’ll take good care of it.”

  Katie was sure of that. Sarah was the perfect person to take Amanda’s diamond for safekeeping. “Well, I think that’s very unselfish of you, Dullas.”

  Dullas beamed with pleasure.

  Because Josh couldn’t drive his truck home, he was to fly out the next morning. Eric had volunteered to drive the truck up to Michigan for him and stay on for a few days’ visit.

  Katie was flying home herself, but she hadn’t been able to get on the same plane as Josh, so she would leave later in the afternoon. Her parents would be at the airport to meet Josh and make sure he got home safely.

  By suppertime the camp was quiet, all but deserted. The few remaining staff and counselors ate a lonely meal in the rec center. Meg excused herself, promising to return in time for their party.

  “Morgan’s leaving in the morning,” she said. “I want to tell him goodbye.”

  “Oh, all right,” Lacey said. “So Katie, Sarah, Chelsea, and I will start without you. Don’t blame us if your fudge portion is skimpy.”

  “Listen, I’ll be late too,” Chelsea said. “Eric’s asked me to go on a moonlight canoe ride with him and I’m going.” She looked effervescent.

  “Well, that’s just peachy.” Lacey crossed her arms and pouted. “Come on, Katie and Sarah, we’ll eat all the fudge.”

  “Actually,” Katie said, “I was going to ask if I could borrow your car for a little while. I want to take Josh someplace special before we leave.”

  * * *

  “This is where I came when you were in the hospital.”

  Katie had coaxed Josh’s wheelchair across the bumpy path to the Jenny House Chapel, and now they were alone in the moonlight, looking up at the splendid structure from the inside.

  “Impressive,” Josh said.

  She moved the chair back so that he could get a better view of the soaring front of the structure.

  “Why did you come?” he asked.

  “I wanted to ask God to make you well. This seemed the best place to do it.”

  He caught her hand. “Thank you, Katie. That was a nice thing to do.”

  “I didn’t do it to be nice. I did it because I care about you.”

  “I used to ask God to make you well too. That time when you got so sick and we thought you were rejecting your heart transplant … well, I really prayed hard then.”

  The moonlight glinted silver off the frame of the wheelchair. “I’ve tried so hard to take care of Aaron’s heart for you,” she added. She felt like crying.

  “Katie, please listen to me. It’s not Aaron’s heart. It’s your heart. And it has been since the moment your blood began to pour through it. I gave my brother’s heart away without ever knowing who would get it. The fact that it was you makes no difference. There are no strings attached to the gift. There never were. There never will be.”

  What they were talking about had happened years before. Katie didn’t know why she wanted to speak of it now. She thought they’d finished with it, but apparently not. “When you were in the hospital,” she said, “when I realized how hurt you were, I discovered something.”

  “Which was …?”

  She took a deep breath. “I discovered that I love you … really love you. And that I don’t want to go through the rest of my life without you.”

  Josh didn’t say anything for a long time. Katie’s heart hammered. Was she too late? Had his feelings for her changed so much that he no longer loved her?

  “I let you go last summer, Katie. I made up my mind that I wasn’t going to hold you back. Now I’ve had an accident and you feel sorry for me—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “If you never walk again, it won’t change how I feel about you.”

  “You picked a fine time to tell me,” he said with a short laugh. “When I can’t stand up or turn my head. Or kiss you the way I’d like to.”

  She crouched in front of him. “Then allow me,” she said. She slid her arms around him and bent forward until their lips touched in the moonlight.

  “Well, it’s about time,” Lacey declared the minute Katie strolled into the cabin. “I thought we were going to have to send out a search party.”

  “I’m here now. What’s left to eat?”

  “We were just about to head over to the rec center and raid the ice cream freezer,” Chelsea said, popping a chunk of chocolate chip cookie into her mouth. “And now I have to tell the story of my canoe ride all over again because you missed it the first time.”

  Katie eased onto a bed. The others sat on the floor in a circle. “I’m all ears.”

  “What’s with you, anyway?” Lacey studied Katie intently.

  “What?”

  Lacey’s eyes narrowed. “You look like you’re going to pop if you don’t tell us something.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “You look that way to me too,” Meg said.

  “Me too,” Sarah added.

  “All right, Katie O’Roark,” Lacey said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Tell us what’s going on. Spill it.”

  Katie faked a yawn. “Oh, all right, but you’ve got to promise me that you won’t yell and scream and jump up and down like wild women.”

  The girls exchanged glances and shrugs.

  “Okay, we promise,” Lacey said, acting as spokesperson.

  Katie leaned forward. “Next June, in Jenny Chapel, Josh and I are getting married. And I want all of you to be my bridesmaids.”

  The girls broke their promise.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Are you going to write about today in your sports column?” Katie asked as she studied her reflection in the full-length mirror. Her father stood behind her dressed in a black tuxedo, a white carnation in his lapel.

  “You bet I will. I’ve written about you in that column since the day you were born. Why stop now?”

  “And just what has my wedding day got to do with sports?” she teased.

  He thought a moment, then said, “I’m being a good sport. I’m letting that young man take you away from me.”

  “Oh, Daddy …,” she said with a smile.

  He glanced at his watch for the hundredth time. “I’d better go up and check on the groomsmen.”

  “Afraid Josh won’t show up?”

  “No … afraid he will.”

  Katie laughed and shoved him toward the stairs, then turned back to the mirror. Her stomach felt as if a thousand butterflies had set up camp inside, but in the mirror, in the magnificent white satin gown studded with seed pearls and sequins, she looked calmly elegant. Is this really me? she wondered, staring at her reflection. Was she really going to become Mrs. Joshua Martel in less than an hour?

  The previous September she had returned to Arizona, but at midterm she’d transferred to the University of Michigan, where the track coach had offered her a generous scholarship for the following year.r />
  Since January she had lived with her parents, attended classes, spent every minute she could with Josh, and planned her wedding. Josh had completed a rigorous rehab program, and now, almost a year after his accident, had made a remarkable recovery. He had only a slight limp. After their honeymoon in Aruba, they would live in his grandfather’s house. Katie and her mother had already fixed it up with new curtains, new kitchen and bathroom wallpaper and paint, and some new furniture.

  Katie, Josh, and her family had spent the previous week in North Carolina tending to last-minute details for the wedding. Katie’s bridesmaids had arrived two days before. Josh’s parents had come too. Katie had never met them before, and even though Josh had been anxious about having them around, they seemed to be on their best behavior. So far they had stayed sober, and the previous night had sponsored a wonderful rehearsal dinner for the wedding party.

  Josh had asked Richard Holloway to be his best man. Katie thought it fitting. And Mr. Holloway had pulled them aside at the rehearsal dinner and said, “Thank you. This is an honor for me. I find it very gratifying that the first event to be held in Jenny Chapel is a wedding. My Jenny would have loved knowing that.”

  Katie’s heart had gone out to him, for surely he must have wondered what his life would have been like if Jenny had lived and they had married.

  Katie turned to the sound of her bridesmaids giggling together in the corner. Lacey was fixing Chelsea’s hair while Meg and Tara, Katie’s college roommate from Arizona, stood offering advice. Katie thought they looked beautiful in their pale lilac gowns, and she only wished Sarah could have been with them.

  Sarah had died in the spring. Her bone marrow transplant had failed, and there had been nothing else the doctors could do for her. Katie would never forget the night Sarah’s mother called to tell her the news.

  “I can’t believe it,” Katie had sobbed into the receiver. “I wanted her in my wedding so much.”

  “She tried very hard to make it. But her body just broke down. We buried her in the bridesmaid dress,” Sarah’s mother said in her soft Southern drawl. “She looked lovely. Everyone said so.”

  “I’ll miss her,” Katie said, still crying. “We all will.”