Saving Sam

by Lynnette Beers

  Sam glanced at the hallway one more time then tapped out a panicked text to Annie:

  I think Johnny is at the hospital. The guy keeps walking past the room. Could you come to the hospital? Or send an officer?

  Sam followed the text with a call to Annie’s cell. The call went right to voicemail. “Annie, I think...I think Johnny is at the hospital. He’s found Robert. He’s here right now. Please, call me back or come directly to the hospital.”

  She then scrolled through her phone to find the number of the police station. Without hesitation, she tapped on the number and maneuvered her way through pushing a one and then a three to get to Annie’s department. A woman answered the phone, and before Sam could say who she was, she blurted out, “I need to speak with Lieutenant Annie Wright immediately.”

  “She already left the office,” the woman said. “She left a couple hours ago. Hon, can I ask who’s calling? What is this regarding? Anything one of the officers can help you with?”

  Sam’s heart beat faster, the blood pulsating in her head as she thought of what to say. “No, I need Annie. I need to speak with her. Please, could you relay a message to her?”

  “Sure, hon, I’ll be sure and get it to her as soon as possible.”

  Sam searched for the words to say to the woman and noticed the man in the hallway was now leaning against the wall opposite Robert’s room and staring at her with his arms crossed.

  “Just tell her Sam Cleveland called,” Sam said into the phone. “I’ve already left her a voicemail and a text, but please, just tell her I need to talk to her immediately.”

  “Samantha Cleveland? Harold’s daughter? I remember when you were heading off to California to go to college. How you doing, hon? Did you move back to Mississippi?”

  “No, I still live in San Diego. Could you just relay my message to Lieutenant Wright as soon as possible? It’s about...a case she’s investigating. I’m sure she’ll get the messages on her cell phone sooner than she would a message from the office.”

  “Sure, hon. You okay?”

  Now, in the hallway that man scowled at Sam. She forced herself to look at his face one more time. His eyes looked so dark and familiar to her. Twenty-four years ago, Sam saw nothing but evil in Johnny’s face.

  “Actually, could you send an officer to Forrest General Hospital?” Sam stammered out the exact details of her location then ended the call and tapped out another text to Annie:

  He’s right outside the room. I’ve asked to have an officer sent to the hospital. I’ll also contact the nurse to have her call security. The doctor is here with me now.

  Doctor Savage set a hand on Sam’s shoulder, causing her to jump. She hit send and then glanced again at the hallway, but Johnny was no longer there.

  “Didn’t mean to startle you,” Doctor Savage said. “I’d like to adjust his meds a wee bit, see if lowering the Keppra might make him more alert, but I’m not going to shelter you from the reality of his situation. I doubt adjusting any of his meds will get him to be more alert.”

  “Doctor Savage,” Sam said quietly and glimpsed at the empty hallway. “I’m not sure if you know about what caused Robert’s accident. I mean, about who caused the accident. You see, I think that man is—”

  “I did read in his chart that there’s a criminal investigation going on.” Doctor Savage walked toward the door and pumped a squirt of Purell into his palm and vigorously rubbed both hands together.

  “Is there any way you can...” Sam said quietly and stood to be by Robert’s side. “Well, could you contact security? I think the man who caused the accident is here at the hospital right now.”

  “He’s here? You’re sure of that? You’re certain it’s the man they’re looking for?”

  “I saw him in the hallway a few minutes ago.” Sam stared at the empty corridor and listened for any signs of his return.

  “I’ll ring security straightaway and have them send a guard to the floor.”

  “Please, they need to find him. His name’s Jonathan Patterson. He’s in his fifties and is wearing a blue checkered flannel shirt.”

  Doctor Savage reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He kept his eyes on the doorway. “Hello, this is George Savage, one of the doctors here. We have a possible situation. Send a couple guards up to room—”

  Before Doctor Savage finished his call to security, Sam heard a knock on the door. She looked up, and there he was—the man who’d been pacing in the hallway. Sam stepped toward the head of the bed wanting to somehow shroud Robert from any more harm.

  “Hi there,” the man said. “Didn’t want to intrude earlier, but now seems about the best time for me to pop in seeing that the doctor has finished his examination.”

  Sam cowered by the tall machines next to the bed. She reached down to cling to Robert’s hand and got ready to call Annie one more time.

  “Sir, it’s best you stay there by the door,” Doctor Savage said.

  “Ah, now isn’t a good time for me to visit Robert, I see,” the man said. “Sorry, but I just wanted to say hi to Sam and to Robert and maybe pray with them before I head back home.”

  “Pray? You’ve come to pray for my patient? You shouldn’t be here without the family’s consent. Just stay there by the door for now.”

  “Sam probably doesn’t recognize me,” the man said and took one more step forward. “Probably been over twenty years since you last caught a glimpse of this ugly mug, but I can tell by your expression that you don’t recognize me.” The man’s serious look softened when he grinned. Warmth washed over his face as he stared at Sam and continued to smile.

  Sam again stared at the man’s face and studied his eyes closely. She glanced at his grey hair, the wrinkles on his face. Within seconds, that fear dissolved when she realized that before her stood Pastor Dan—quite aged since she’d last seen him. The fear melted from her body, causing her legs to weaken. She gripped the side of the bed as she recovered from her error.

  “Pastor Dan? I thought you were...well, I didn’t recognize you. You look so...different.”

  “You can say it,” Pastor Dan said and laughed. “I look old. As I said, it’s been a long time since you’ve seen me. I’ve been through a lot.”

  “Everything okay?” Doctor Savage asked. “It’s all right for this man to be here?”

  “Yes, he’s one of the ministers from my old church. Sorry to have caused any confusion.”

  “I’m not usually this casual, but I drove three hours to come see Robert. I no longer live in Mississippi. I usually wear a shirt and tie when visiting parishioners in the hospital, but this visit is a bit different, seeing it’s you and Robert.”

  Doctor Savage left Sam and Pastor Dan alone in the room. Sam’s phone buzzed in her hands. She looked down to see that it was Annie calling. “It’s all okay,” Sam whispered into her phone.

  “I’m on my way there now,” Annie yelled into the phone. “I’ve notified the officers nearest the hospital, and they’re nearby. Might take me another thirty minutes, but I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

  “Annie, it’s all okay. It’s not Johnny. It’s Pastor Dan.”

  “Pastor Dan? Who’s that? Sam, what the hell is going on? Does this mean I should tell the officers to not go to the hospital?”

  “Yes, things are fine here. I made a mistake. It’s my old pastor who stopped by to say hi. I’ll call you later.”

  After Sam ended the call, she took another look at Pastor Dan. Up close, he seemed more like an old man.

  “How’s he doing?” Pastor Dan asked and set his hand on Sam’s shoulder.

  “Not good.” Sam’s voice quivered. “I keep hoping he’ll come out of this, that he’ll open his eyes and look at me. I mean, really look at me and not just stare at the ceiling.”

  “How are you doing, Sam? How you holding up?”

  “The best I can. Been a rough couple of months.”

  “I saw your mom in the cafeteria when I stopped to get a Coke. Ended up ta
lking with her for quite a while and prayed with her before coming up here. She seems to be doing well. Janey’s always been such a strong woman.”

  “I wish I had her strength.” Sam stared at Robert and set her palm on his hand. The skin had become so thin. Blotches of dark purple bruises lined his arms. Any time they attempted to insert a needle, his veins rebelled by collapsing.

  “What have the doctors told you?” Pastor Dan folded his arms and leaned against the bed.

  “The doctor you saw just now is probably the first one who hasn’t talked to me like I’m an idiot. Well, I didn’t understand half of what he said, but I understood that he was saying Robert’s neurological deficits would never improve. I just don’t understand why Mama would let Robert continue to live like this.”

  “Sam, you can’t lose faith. It sounds like God was watching over Robert that day. He’s alive. That’s God’s doing, Sam.”

  “Why would God let this happen?” She paced to the foot of the bed and waved an arm over Robert. “What kind of a God lets some evil man try to kill Robert? How was that watching over Robert that day?” Sam was filled with so much anger that her body shook; her hands were balled into tight fists. “An eye for an eye. Isn’t that what the bible says? I hope when they find the guy that they inflict as much pain on him as he did to Robert.”

  “Sam, don’t let hate fill your heart.”

  “That man left Robert maimed and brain damaged. Look at him. Does this look like living to you?”

  “You can’t keep that hate in your heart. I know how hard this must be for you to see Robert this way, but you can’t let anger take over. I know firsthand how hate can start to cause your spirit to die.”

  Sam felt like she was about to hear some long, drawn-out lecture—the same sort of sermon she used to tune out when she was a kid attending church. She stared at the breathing tube in Robert’s neck and watched as the accordion-like hose caused his chest to rise and fall. Robert seemed relaxed, despite the matrix of tubes and leads connected to his body.

  “You were probably too young to know why I left the church twenty years ago,” Pastor Dan continued. “I’m sure your parents never told you what happened. A couple years after I became the youth minister at the church, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd. I had full intentions of getting those guys to come to the Lord, but in retrospect, I know why I was hanging out at the bars. I used to only go drinking on Friday nights. I told myself that it was perfectly fine to drink a couple beers at the end of the week. Well, Friday nights turned into Saturday nights. It soon became my pattern to drink every day except the Lord’s day. Like I said, you were much too young to notice what a hangover looked like.”

  “I know what it looks like on me,” Sam said with a laugh then sat in the hard, plastic chair next to the bed.

  “I don’t know how I managed to counsel you kids back then when I was always so hung over, but being a youth minister was the one thing that had meaning in my life. Still, I continued to drink just about every night, and I’d even drive drunk. But, after about a year and a half of my binges, I got pulled over by your dad one evening.”

  “My dad? When he was on duty?”

  “Yeah, the street where he stopped me happened to be on his beat that day. He sat with me for what might’ve been four hours as I sobered up a bit. Pretty sure his shift had long since ended.”

  “He didn’t take you in? He didn’t arrest you?”

  “No, but he told me he wouldn’t let me drive that night, said I needed to find a way back to get my car the next morning. He took me to a diner and made me eat some food, said some sustenance might offset the alcohol in my system.”

  “He sure saved your ass,” Sam said and pursed her lips. She’d seen a couple DUI accidents when she worked as an EMT, and they always involved the oblivious drunk who had no clue of the injuries caused by the accident.

  “I wish he hadn’t saved my ass. For about a month, I made sure to do my drinking at home, but then a few weeks later, I started going to the bars just about every night. One night, I got behind the wheel and drove right into an oncoming car. Killed the woman driving the car and caused the teenager in the passenger seat to become a paraplegic.”

  Sam sat silently as she waited for Pastor Dan to say more. Nothing but the faint beeps from the machines and the hiss of the ventilator could be heard.

  “Once the church board found out, they let me go, said I wasn’t fit to be ministering to the youth of the church.”

  “I guess I did wonder why you left the church. My parents said you’d found a different church out of town. Did you move out of the state right away?”

  “No, I stayed in town for about seven months until the trial was over. By the grace of God, I was only charged with vehicular manslaughter. Turns out the woman wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and it was revealed during the trial that the kid had her feet on the dashboard during the accident, said something about how the impact of the crash wouldn’t have been as severe had she been seated in a normal position. I was sentenced to five years in prison but got out after three. During that time, I was filled with such hatred, even though I was the one at fault. Sam, I killed a woman and caused a teenage girl to become paralyzed.”

  “Three years in prison? I can see how something like that would really mess you up. I take it you’re sober now?”

  “Haven’t had a drink for a little over twelve years now. I started drinking again a few months after I got out of prison, but I quickly realized that the alcohol was fueling my hate. I realized I had to get that hate and anger out of my heart.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “Lots of prayer, several AA meetings, and some awareness that the anger would eventually kill me. I realized I hated myself for what I’d done, but I also hated my dad for how he treated me when I was a kid. I even hated your dad for not arresting me that night. I’m not saying life is easy for me now,” Pastor Dan said and took a deep breath. On his exhale he stepped close to Sam and set a hand on her shoulder and also placed his palm over Robert’s hand. “It’s not easy to let go of that hate. Without anger and hate, what’s left is despair. I faced that myself once I let the anger go.”

  “Pastor Dan, no offense, but I don’t have the sort of faith you and Mama have. Right now, the anger is motivating me to make sure Robert gets the best care possible. It’s also pushing me to make sure that guy gets put away. He shouldn’t ever be let out of prison for what he’s done to me or to—” Sam stopped herself and again stared at the trach. The gentle rise and fall of Robert’s artificial breathing momentarily calmed her. The steady rhythm of those breaths forced her own breath to slow. “The man who did this to Robert needs to pay for what he’s done.”

  “I’m sure the authorities will do the best they can to prosecute him, and the doctors will continue to care for Robert. As they say in AA, one day at a time. I continue to pray for Robert every day, to ask God for a miracle. I’ll also pray for the man who did this to him. I’m sure his heart aches with anger as well. I’ll pray that he finds it in his heart to surrender, to not inflict any more pain on anyone else.”

  “I doubt that man feels any remorse for what he’s done.”

  “It’s possible for people to come to a point of regret for even the worst types of evil actions. Sam, you must remember that redemption is a gift of God’s grace, attainable only through faith in Jesus.”

  “I guarantee Johnny Patterson doesn’t know the Lord, probably has no intentions of asking for forgiveness for what he did to Robert.”

  “I’ll continue to pray for Johnny that he finds it in his heart to admit he’s done wrong to you and your family. You have to have faith, Sam.”

  “Mama has said those exact words to me many times since Robert was in the accident. She says if Robert is supposed to pass, it’ll happen naturally. Well, what’s so natural about him being hooked up to a ventilator and being fed by a G-tube? I swear, sometimes Mama’s faith in the Lord is in direct conflict with her experie
nce as a nurse.”

  “Your mother has her faith in the doctors as well.”

  “The thing about Mama is that she says it’s not our job to intervene with God’s plan, but how is cutting into Robert’s trachea to insert a breathing tube not intervening with God’s plan? How is keeping him on so many drugs and feeding him through a tube not playing God? If he wasn’t on the meds or the trach or the feeding tube, he’d die.”

  “God is not the only healer. He gives doctors and nurses the skills needed to figure out how to get people well, even someone like Robert. Sam, would you like me to pray with you before I leave?”

  Sam went to the sink near the door. She stared at her reflection and ran the water until it got warm. She splashed water on her face as Pastor Dan approached her. “I don’t mind you praying for Robert, but I don’t really need you to pray with me,” Sam said and dried her face with a paper towel. “I hope you understand. Thanks for coming by and thank you for sharing your story with me.”

  Pastor Dan wrapped his arms around Sam and patted her back as he held her for a moment. The hug felt hollow, so different from Mama’s or Annie’s embraces. Sam stood in the doorway and watched Pastor Dan disappear down the corridor.

  Across the hallway, the door was now open. The daughter and little boy were no longer there; instead, a young man in a dark suit hovered over a narrow gurney as he fussed with what appeared to be a black tarp. Upon closer examination, Sam noticed it was a body bag. Her breath caught in her chest as she turned away for a moment but glanced back after she heard the muffled sound of a zipper. She watched as the gentleman then wrapped a wide strap around the deceased’s body, pulling it snug around the midsection. Sam became intrigued by how the undertaker fastened the straps around the body and how he secured the corpse on the gurney. Aware that she was gawking at such a private procedure, Sam backed away and returned to the sink. But, still intrigued, she opened the mirrored cabinet and angled it so she could view what the man did next.