A Heart of Stone

by Lyn Cote

  Though praying silently, she fought her panic by shouting at the elements. “There’ll be another outage. Enough is enough!” Hail pounded the SUV roof, blotting out her voice. Marble-sized ice balls beat against her hood and window.

  As the wind’s velocity grew alarmingly, she fought the steering wheel to stay on the rain-slick road. At last, town loomed ahead. The dangerous sky around her lifted from black to a strange, murky yellow-green. The hail stopped. The wind slowed. She sped up, heading straight for her alley entrance. She swung her car into place behind her shop and parked.

  Suddenly in the unnatural mid-morning stillness, the town siren blared. She shivered at its shrill sound. The wind swooped back. It hit her SUV from both sides. It felt like a losing boxer in his last round, punched right and left.

  When she opened her door, the wind tore it from her hands. It slammed flat against the side of her vehicle. She screamed. But she couldn’t hear her voice above the churning sound. The savage wind slashed her hair and clothing. She felt it sucking her out of the car. She grabbed the door handle and clung to it.

  For an unreal second the image of Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz fighting the Kansas wind and stomping on the door of the storm cellar to get in paralyzed Jane. In a terror beyond words, her spirit screamed for God’s help.

  Mighty strength surged through her. She ripped her hand away from the car and fought the few feet to the shop’s rear door. Surprisingly it opened with ease. But as the top hinge let go, she screeched in horror and threw herself inside.

  There Mel stood, frozen in the center of the shop. As in a surreal dream, Jane watched through the window behind Mel as the parking meter snapped off its base. Like a javelin, it pierced Jane’s plate-glass window. Shards of glass, dust and debris sailed everywhere. Jane felt herself screaming, screaming.

  Fighting the pull of the howling wind, she launched herself at Mel. She dragged the girl to the basement stairwell, then pushed Mel down the first step. She fought the door shut. At last she tugged the heavy, old bolt into place. The cheated wind shrieked its anger.

  Feeling around in the awful blackness, Jane found Mel at her feet, sitting hunched over on the step. Slipping down weakly, Jane wrapped her arms around the girl. With wordless prayers pouring from her trembling lips, Jane clung to Mel, who sobbed and rocked with terror. The roar above them filled their ears. The door vibrated. The screeching wind struggled to break the bolt.

  Suddenly Jane heard her own sobbing clearly, then Mel’s. She realized the door above her had ceased straining against the lock. Light glowed around the doorjamb. She swallowed deeply and shivered. “Mel, it’s over. It’s over. Thank God, it’s passed us by.”

  Mel’s grip on her didn’t loosen. Jane stood up shakily, urging Mel up with her. She drew back the latch and pushed against the door. It opened a few inches, then bumped against something and stuck. She heaved against it and, with much scraping, it opened. A twisted rack of sodden clothing lay propped against the door.

  For seconds, minutes, she stared, befuddled, at the crazy disarray around them. Then Mel leaned her face into Jane’s shoulder and mumbled something unintelligible. Jane looked down and saw blood. Mel’s head oozed crimson blood onto Jane’s white blouse. Her hands where she had touched Mel felt wet and sticky, too. With a gasp, she lifted Mel’s face in both her hands. She felt nauseated at the sight of blood spattered over Mel’s head and shoulders.

  She took a deep breath. “I’ve got to get you to the medical center. It must have been the glass.” Even though she said the words aloud, she felt no impetus to move. A sustained moan from Mel finally cracked the ice jam of Jane’s shock.

  She stumbled around as though drunk, but she managed to get the two of them outside. Her SUV waited in the back just as she had left it—except that the driver’s side door had been blown off. Farther down the alley a delivery van lay on its side.

  At the sight of this her mind shrieked, Angie! Cash! Terror sliced her heart. Where had Cash taken their baby? Had the two of them been in the path of the storm? Panic clutched her breast. She fought for breath. God, I can’t think. Help me. I can’t think!

  “Oh,” Mel whimpered.

  Pushing down her own terror, Jane half lifted, half pushed Mel into her car through the gap where her door had been. Jane climbed in after her. She fumbled around, then realized that she was instinctively searching for her purse on the seat, but it, too, had been carried away on the wind. Then she saw that her keys still dangled from the ignition. She sighed with relief and started the vehicle. Because the van blocked her usual exit, she backed down the length of the alley till she could swing around and head out onto Main Street.

  She stopped at the first intersection, not because the traffic signal was red, but because the traffic light itself lay across the road. Making a wide U-turn, she backtracked to take another route to the hospital. The short trip was torture. Downed branches and crackling power lines terrified her. She had to force herself to press on toward her goal.

  At every corner she wanted to turn her car toward Lucy’s cottage. Was Lucy safe? Her parents? Angie? Cash? But Mel was her first priority. And why had she left her phone in her purse?

  When the medical center came into view, Jane felt like bursting into tears of relief. She swung into the lot, parked near the emergency entrance and helped Mel out, then through the automatic emergency room doors. The normally tranquil and efficient small-town hospital buzzed with urgent voices and the sound of crying. The fearful sounds hit Jane, draining her of initiative.

  Fortunately a nurse saw them and stepped around the counter quickly. “Come with me.” She led them into a curtained area and helped Mel up onto an examining table. Soon she was carefully bathing Mel’s face and head. She occasionally contacted a sliver of glass and gently tweezed it out.

  Jane leaned against the inside wall. The desire to bolt taunted her. She had to find Angie and Cash. But she couldn’t leave till Mel had been treated and she took her home.

  Glancing up at Jane, the nurse murmured, “Please sit down. It will be a while before I can get to you—”

  “I’m not hurt—”

  “You are. Just not as much.” She pointed to a mirror above a small sink. Leaning over, Jane peered into it and gasped. Her own face was nicked and smeared with blood. Her complexion went white. Her knees lost their strength.

  The nurse dropped her basin and grabbed Jane’s arms. Without ceremony, she plunked Jane down on a straight chair and shoved Jane’s head between her knees. “I guess I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “The window broke—”

  “Just keep your head down till it clears.”

  Nodding slightly, Jane gazed dismally at the gray linoleum floor, feeling lightheaded for the first time in her life. She felt so helpless. Her family might be in need of her, and here she sat sick at the sight of her own blood. She tried to pray, but only worrying images flashed in her mind. Finally she sat up and watched the nurse finish treating Mel.

  Jane stood up. “Let’s get you home, Mel. Thanks. We’ll take care of the paperwork on our way out.”

  The nurse tried to dissuade her from leaving without treatment, but Jane helped Mel down from the high table. They stepped outside the curtain and into the arms of Rona.

  “Carmella Stephanie Maria Vitelli! Thank God! I couldn’t get you on the phone! I went to the shop. It was awful. I was so worried.” Mel wilted into her mother’s arms and began sobbing.

  Jane longed to throw herself into her own mother’s arms—and Cash’s. She visualized Angie and Cash as they had looked just hours before on her front steps. A terror beyond any she had known before ripped through her, making her gasp aloud. Where were they? Had they suffered harm? Her mind balked at the possibility that they had been hurt, but she could not stop the fear that they might already be lost to her. She felt a scream welling up inside of her. Not Angie! Not Cash!

  Her mind at that moment cut away all but the essential. Angie and Cash were the two most imp
ortant people in her life. Why had she refused Cash’s repeated proposals? Why had she let her foolish pride stand between them? So what if he didn’t love her! Oh, God, are they safe? Help me find them. Let me tell him how much I love him. Let me hold Angie and feel her soft, baby hair once more.

  “Jane! Jane, are you all right?” Rona asked loudly, taking Jane’s hands in hers.

  “She should stay for treatment,” the nurse insisted behind them.

  Ignoring the nurse, Jane squeezed Rona’s hands, then she moved toward the exit. Her fingers plucked keys from her slacks pocket. As she stepped on the rubber pad that activated the automatic exit doors, an ambulance with blaring siren and flashing lights halted in front of her, blocking her path. Two men in uniform quickly unloaded a wheeled stretcher. Jane barely noticed their activity till she saw her cousin climb out of the back of the ambulance, too.

  Tish threw herself at Jane, her arms closing around Jane’s shoulders. “Mother’s hurt!”

  “Tish!” Jane scanned her cousin, noting the girl’s disheveled clothing, scrapes and bruises.

  “We were driving back to town,” Tish explained between sobs. “The wind just pushed us off the road. We rolled down the embankment. Over and over...” She gave in to her sobs, and Jane, her arm around Tish’s shoulders, turned back to lead her inside. They followed the stretcher on which Estelle lay, white and silent, until it disappeared into another curtained area.

  A woman with a clipboard tried to ask Tish the few necessary questions to admit her mother, but Jane had to answer for Tish. Her cousin’s eyes never left the curtain, which separated her from her mother.

  Tish’s arrival caught Jane in a dilemma. Seeing Aunt Estelle made her anxiety over Cash and Angie multiply tenfold, but she could not leave Tish. As much as she loved her aunt, it took all her willpower to stay in the chair beside her cousin. She desperately needed to see Angie, her grandmother, her parents and Cash. A yearning ignited within her, a yearning to touch Cash, to see him whole and well. This longing almost swept her into tears. But Tish, sitting next to her, had begun to cry. Jane knew if she also gave in to tears, Tish might become hysterical. Drawing on God’s strength through silent prayer, Jane began talking softly, gently to Tish.

  Finally she calmed Tish enough so that she could leave her side and go as far as the desk phone. She tried to call each in turn: Cash, Uncle Henry, Lucy, her parents. She didn’t reach any of them—was a cell tower down? She left messages.

  Still unconscious, Aunt Estelle was wheeled from the curtained area. The doctor explained that one of her lungs may have been punctured and there was a possibility of other internal injuries. Aunt Estelle was being taken to X-ray immediately, then probably surgery.

  Tish clung to Jane. “I’m so afraid.”

  “I am, too, but the Lord is here. I know we don’t feel like it right now, but He is here whether it feels that way to us or not. We only have to ask.”

  “I don’t think He will help me...” Tish began crying harder.

  “Of course He will,” Jane whispered. “He loves us. No matter what.” She swallowed her own tears, held Tish close and smoothed her cousin’s long hair back from her tear-stained face over and over.

  Then Jane saw Roger Hallawell hustle in. He barked orders at the lone nurse still in sight. Jane caught only the word injured. The nurse followed him outside. Within minutes, the woman was back frantically paging staff. Roger returned carrying a girl about ten, who lay limp in his arms.

  A rush of staff with wheeled stretchers and chairs passed Jane and Tish. Before Jane could call his name aloud, Roger was back out the door, shouting information to the nurses.

  Jane and Tish watched as another four children and one woman were brought in. All five looked battered. Their clothing was ripped and embedded with mud, leaves and pebbles. Jane waited impatiently till Hallawell emerged from seeing the last of his charges receive treatment. “Roger!”

  He hurried to her. “What happened to you?” His shocked expression reminded her of her own disheveled appearance.

  “Just some nicks from flying glass,” she said with a shrug. She didn’t mention he was dirty and blood-smeared just like she was. His hands were encrusted with mud as though he had been digging earth with his fingers. “What happened to you? Who were those children?”

  “They were attending a woodcraft class at the park near my office. An oak took down the roof. Do you need a ride home or anything?”

  “I have my SUV, minus one door.” Then she directed his attention to Tish, who sat pitifully drawn and pale, huddled on the molded plastic chair. Jane lowered her voice. “I have to stay. My aunt is in surgery. We can’t locate my uncle and I can’t get my family on the phone.”

  “What do you want me to do? I’ve got to get going. We’re checking damaged areas with rangers and civil defense.” As he spoke he looked as though he was about to leave her.

  Jane gripped his sleeve, stopping him. “I need to have someone check on my parents and my grandmother.”

  “Okay. I’ll be out that way. If they need help, I’ll radio the police. If they’re okay, I’ll give them your news.” Even as he spoke, he pulled away from her.

  She nodded, biting her lower lip against tears. He waved to her and left at a jog. Jane slipped back down beside Tish and shivered.

  Tish looked up. “How much longer can they keep her up there? It’s been over an hour.”

  She put her arm around her cousin again. “The doctor will be down soon to tell us how she is.”

  Tish’s face trembled. “I’ve been awful to Mother this week. Yesterday when I was with one of my friends, I even mocked the way she talks. How could I?”

  Jane hugged Tish to her, feeling her cousin’s tears on her own cheek.

  “Just because she and Father talk so much. I love them. I really do—”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Then why do I say and do such terrible things all the time?”

  “This is the real world. Just because we love someone doesn’t mean we do and say everything we should.” Jane’s own words stabbed her. She’d been harsh to Cash because of his proposal. “Your parents love you, and they know you love them, too.”

  At last the doctor, still in green surgical garb, came down the long corridor to them. “Tish, your mother is in post-op. As soon as she is able, we will move her to ICU—”

  She stood up shakily. “That means she’s really bad, doesn’t it?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” the doctor hedged. “But we will have to watch her carefully for another day or two. Have you been able to reach your father yet?”

  Tish, looking down, shook her head.

  He patted her arm. “Keep trying, then.” He turned away. An ER doctor immediately called him into one of the curtained areas which were all now filled with new patients. Jane and Tish sat back down, side by side.

  “I’m so glad you were here, Jane,” Tish murmured, looking away. “I acted so awful that day you fired me—”

  “Don’t talk about it now.”

  “But I was awful. I lied—”

  “Tish, we all do and say things we regret. Grandmother always told me, ‘Just don’t repeat the same mistake.’”

  “I won’t. I prom—”

  Jane touched two fingers to Tish’s lips to silence her. “I have faith your mother is going to be fine. I’ll stay till your father comes.” She pulled Tish close again.

  Father, I’ll let you take care of Grandmother, Mom, Dad and even Cash and Angie. But only because I must. This is the hardest challenge of my life, staying here when I want to go to them. But I have faith that I am where you want me to be. Tish needs me.

  Jane shut her eyes, willing away the haunting pain of not knowing where those she loved best were and if they needed help. Heaven would have to take care of them. If only she had the chance to hold Angie in her arms again and tell Cash she loved him and that she would be honored to be his wife. She sighed and rubbed her hand across her forehead.

/>   Another few hours crawled by. The phone lines were still down, and the sheriff sent out word that everyone but rescue workers were to stay off the roads while the utility companies worked to clean up broken power and telephone lines. Jane’s eyes burned with fatigue and, for Tish’s sake, she had to suppress tears of frustration.

  She felt her faith was a rock she was clinging to in the midst of a storm. She hadn’t felt that way since Dena’s funeral. Soothing Tish took all her strength. She felt beaten, drained of energy.

  Finally evening darkened the sky outside the double doors of the ER. The number of people seeking medical attention slowed to a trickle. Another nurse tried to take Jane into a treatment area, but Jane waved her away. Jane’s face and hands stung where she had been nicked by glass, but others needed medical help more.

  As they waited together, she and Tish held hands. Giving in to fatigue, Jane bent her head into her free hand.

  “Tish. Jane.”

  Jane sat up straight. Uncle Henry stood in front of them. He was mud-spattered and rumpled like both of them. “The police finally tracked me down. I was helping our neighbors,” he said wearily as Tish flung herself into his arms. “I thought you and your mother were safely in Wausau—”

  “It’s all my fault. I started a fight with her,” Tish sobbed, “so we started home early.”

  “I’m here now, child.” He hugged Tish to him.

  Jane rose stiffly. “I’ll get going then. Have you heard from Mom or Lucy?”

  “No, but I think the twister missed them completely. It swung west of them.” He pulled Jane into his embrace, hugging both of them to him.

  She rested her head against his arm momentarily. Then she straightened up.

  “I should take you home, Jane.” He tightened his arm around her.

  “Estelle and Tish need you here. I’ll be all right.”

  Henry nodded and let her go. “Send word when you can. We’ll be here.”

  She nodded and patted Tish’s arm.

  Outside, twilight was spent. Jane shivered in the cool evening air. The sweltering temperatures of the morning had been swept away by the storm. She fumbled in her pocket for her keys. Her head throbbed, and she was aware of every cut on her face, neck, arms and hands. In the dim light of the parking lot, she felt totally abandoned.