by Linda Ellen
Vic looked past Charlie and saw cars waiting at both pump islands, and he let out a tired breath. Taking another big bite of his food, he muttered, “Better go. Thanks for lunch.” He swallowed quickly and added, “I’ll get you done as soon as I can.”
“No hurry,” Mr. Borders replied, giving a wave as he headed back across the little bridge to his restaurant.
Vic jogged out to the car waiting at the first island and helped out, checking oil and fluid levels, washing the windows, and counting out the S&H Green Stamps for the customers. Not only did he pride himself on his station giving the customer their money’s worth, he knew that any new customer could be an undercover quality supervisor for Phillips. You never wanted to take the chance on disappointing one of those guys – or gals, as he’d heard through the grapevine that they even had a few women on the job. Good marks could mean promotion, advertisement, and awards… Bad marks could mean sanctions or even fines, and would surely kill his chances for Manager of the Year. It added to his stress level, but that’s just the way things were.
Functioning together, the men caught up and before long the three of them were finally able to walk together into the office to put the cash and checks into the register.
Good, this is shapin’ up to be a good day. We should close out the day in the black. I need to replace the money in the bank account that Louise spent last week on all those Easter clothes and do-dads. Thinking of Louise brought to mind something their son Tommy had mentioned in passing the night before – something about earning his letter in football, “But, a lot Mom would care. All she thinks about and talks about and cares about is the baby.” It had hurt to hear Tommy say that, but shaking his head, Vic had to wonder if he was right in his assessment. It did seem that all Louise cared about was the baby…and getting a bigger house.
Thinking of that made him grit his teeth. We’re makin’ it right now, keeping the bills paid, food on the table, and buyin’ all kinds of extras – and now she wants a bigger house. We just paid off the second mortgage on the one we got! And I screened the back porch in like she wanted. I’d like to start puttin’ some money away for a rainy day… I sure didn’t think she’d do this when she told me she wanted another baby. Not that I’d trade in our little girl…she’s precious…but man, things have just got to loosen up…
Just then, the office phone started ringing, and the drive bell on the lot dinged – two sets of doubles. Two more cars. Vic’s chest hammered and the headache he had been ignoring all morning took a turn for the worse. Duke jogged out to tend to the customers as Floyd answered the phone.
Vic sent his right-hand man a wave with a half grin as he heard him say, “Hello WAKY, Matthew’s Service Station, can I hep’ ya?” before he turned and headed back into the bay to work on Charlie’s car, his half-eaten lunch forgotten. He gritted his teeth against the vibration he felt in his body – he knew he was tense. Too tense. But he couldn’t do a thing about it. People just kept piling more and more on his plate and there was no end in sight. He hadn’t slept well in months and he didn’t eat right. He seemed to get less and less rest as the days and months went on and now he was up to three packs of cigarettes a day; although he had switched to filtered, telling himself that it would make a big difference.
Nearing the rack where Charlie’s Ford was perched, his ears suddenly began to buzz, his heart sped up, and black spots swam before his eyes. He shook his head to try and clear his vision as he felt a spasm of pain radiate across his chest. It was so intense it took his breath away and he reached up with one hand, pressing on his breastbone to try and relieve the constriction. Oh man…what’s happening… he thought as he felt himself begin to blackout. The spots blocking his vision prevented him from seeing the air hose on the floor and he tripped. Louise…he whispered, his beautiful wife’s smiling face was his last thought before he lost consciousness.
He didn’t know his head was about to strike the edge of the lift. He didn’t hear his friend just emerging from the office yell a warning to watch out. As he fell forward, his forehead ricocheted off the hard, unmovable metal and he hit the concrete floor with a sickening thud. The cigarette pack somehow flew out of his pocket, bounced off the wall of the grease pit, and landed at the bottom.
*
Back at home, Louise was just getting ready to go out and run some errands when the telephone rang. Her brow furrowed and her heart sped up for a moment as she went to answer it. Who could this be?
It was Floyd on the other end.
“Miz Matthews,” he started respectfully. “Dis here’s Floyd. I’m sorry to have ta tell you, ma’am, but…they just took Vic to the hospital in an am’blance.”
Louise’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Wh…what?” The hairbrush in her hand clattered to the floor at her feet, unnoticed.
“We not sho’w what happened, but he musta tripped or something’ and he fell and hit his head on the rack. Knocked hisself clean out. He was still out when the am’blance pulled away,” he added softly, a hitch in his voice on the last word.
Her world seemed to drop out from under her feet.
‡
CHAPTER 22
Desperate Prayers
It had been hours. Louise had lost all sense of time.
Vic lay unconscious within the white sheets of a hospital bed. One strong, calloused hand lay across his chest; his tanned skin had been scrubbed clean. His face was pale – what she could see of it beneath the large bandage on his forehead. Louise sat in a chair at his side holding his other hand, her eyes never straying from watching the long black lashes now motionless against his cheek.
She gazed lovingly at his face. He looks peaceful. He looks almost de… NO! She jerked her mind away from the word. He’s alive. Unconscious yes, but alive. She laid a hand on his chest again, as she had done countless times since her vigil had begun, needing to feel the movement of his breaths to gain reassurance of that fact. Vic…do you know I’m here? Do you know how much I love you? Do you know how much I long for you to open those beautiful brown eyes and smile at me? How I long to hear your voice?
The doctor and several nurses had arrived and departed, words were spoken, predictions given, and encouragement offered… thus far there had been no change. The doctor had said the next twenty-four hours would be critical to Vic’s survival. She wasn’t sure how many of those had already passed, but she resisted glancing at the clock on the wall to track time. Somehow, she felt that if she weren’t watching it, it would move slower and work to their advantage. She knew she was being silly, grasping at straws, but she couldn’t help it.
I should pray for him…but I haven’t really prayed in a while… She felt numb. Thoughts wove their way in and out and Louise admitted to herself that she felt almost rusty at talking to God. Would He even listen? She wondered if perhaps this had happened as some form of punishment for not going to church regularly, not praying, not giving…for letting other things become more important. I don’t know…I just don’t know… Her heart squeezed as though it was constricted and tied up in a tight knot; so tight she felt smothered.
Vaguely hearing the soft squeak of the door to the room open, she couldn’t bring herself to turn to see who had entered. She figured it was another nurse coming to check Vic’s vitals.
“Louise?” a man’s voice softly prompted.
Louise slowly turned her head and recognized two dear people, Doc Latham and Irene Waller, standing just inside the doorway. Louise tried to smile in welcome, but her face felt frozen – she didn’t even realize tears were still wet on her cheeks.
Irene moved forward at once, coming to stand beside Louise’s chair. Doc automatically walked around to the other side of Vic’s bed.
“We came as soon as we heard,” Doc explained, his eyes trained on the man in the bed, a fond expression on his face. Louise could see the love he had for Vic, and she knew that the preacher had, from the day he and Vic met during the ’37 Flood, considered the younger man as a son. Watching him
now, that was abundantly clear. “How is he?”
Louise looked back at her husband’s face. “No change. He’s unconscious. They’re not sure if it’s just because of hitting his forehead, or something else, too.”
“I spoke to the doctor, he gave a cautious prognosis,” Doc agreed, laying his large, gentle hand on Vic’s shoulder.
“Louise, are you all right?” Irene asked softly as her arms gently came around Louise’s shoulders. The older lady pressed her smooth, powdered cheek against Louise’s. Raising one hand, the distraught wife covered one of Irene’s with a warm response. At the concern evident on the faces of these two precious friends, Louise felt her heart speed up and pound even harder, dread and fear surging to the surface.
She nodded in answer to the question. “Mama’s watching the kids…I’m just…waiting for him to wake up…but so far…he hasn’t.” Tears began again to silently slip down Louise’s cheeks.
Without further ado, Doc reached down and took Vic’s hand in his left, reaching his right across the bed to Louise as he murmured, “Let’s pray right now.”
Louise took hold of Doc’s offered hand, her other grasping Irene’s as if it were a lifeline and she was worn out from treading water in the ocean. For some reason, it made her tired brain recall the time when she had ventured out too far from the beach in Miami. Unable to get back past the high waves and strong current, she had been forced to wait until her hero, her Vic, had swum out to get her. Just one of the many times he had come to her rescue. Now, if she could only come to his!
She closed her eyes as Doc’s resounding voice began to plead words she herself had been unable to articulate.
“Father in Heaven,” Doc began, his deep strong voice seeming as if it were commanding the attention of Heaven. He prayed for Vic and for Louise, stating that he knew the Lord saw and understood the situation. With great passion and feeling, the earnest preacher asked the God of the universe to heal the dear man lying on the bed, and to allow him to wake up and be fine again, with no permanent damage.
Irene squeezed Louise’s hand as she tenderly added, “And Father, we lift up our sister to you. She’s a good wife to Vic and a wonderful mother to the children. Please give her strength and faith to believe. In Your Holy Name…”
“Amen,” all three softly intoned. Louise felt a tiny shiver course through her body.
“Thank you,” she whispered as she released their hands and reached for a tissue from the box on the bedside table, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose as the visitors stood quietly.
The three made small talk for a while as they waited for some form of change from the man on the bed, but he remained unmoving.
Finally, during a lull in their conversation, Louise glanced self-consciously toward them and before she could clam up, she asked, “Do you…do you think God punishes people for not doing what they should do, even when they know they should?”
Doc and Irene both smiled understandingly at their friend. For a moment, Louise wondered if either of them had ever experienced such doubts. Doc seemed to carefully consider his words before he answered, “I wouldn’t say that it is God punishing us, as much as it is that He perhaps pulls back His Hand of protection, at times, and allows the devil to…spank us…so to speak. But – it is always for the sake of bringing us back into the fold, never out of some sort of pleasure in our pain, and normally after a long period of waiting for us to do right on our own.”
Louise looked away from his penetrating eyes and cast her gaze back down at her hand still joined with her husband’s. Doc went on, “One thing I do know is that God’s Word is true – and in there He tells us that if we feel guilty for something, all we have to do is ask His forgiveness and He forgives. He doesn’t play cruel mind games with us. The devil does that, and then blames it on God, and we fall for it. In Psalms 103:12, He even says that He removes our sins as far from us as the east is from the west. Thus is the way of our good God,” he smiled gently. “However, the key is that we must ask.”
Louise nodded, pondering all they had said and prayed.
A few minutes later, the kind preacher and the dear lady said their goodbyes, promising to visit again soon. They left with parting words of encouragement for Louise to hold on to God’s Word and not lose faith.
Alone once more with her silent, motionless husband, Louise closed her eyes and began to talk to God, asking Him to forgive her for everything that came to mind. As far back as she could remember, all the way to when, as a child, she had walked over to another little girl on the playground at school and slapped her – merely because her sister Edna had told her to do so. Louise had known it was wrong, but she had done it anyway. Now, after all these years, she asked God to forgive her. Moving on in her memories, anything that she had done or said that was or could have been wrong, she asked God’s forgiveness.
When she was finally finished, she felt a bit better, but worry still maintained its grip upon her heart as she gazed at her beloved Vic’s handsome features. Now, she noted for the first time that his face was starting to show his age. From the years gone by, yes; but mostly from the mountain of stress and responsibility that he carried day after day. His hair was beginning to show a few strands of silver, and the crow’s feet next to his eyes belied hours of squinting in the sun and frowning in concentration. She realized that she hadn’t really looked closely at him in quite some time, and for that, she felt truly ashamed. He was her Vic! He was her true love, her knight on a white horse.
“Oh Vic,” she whispered as tears began to pool again. “Please don’t leave me.” Her heart squeezed even tighter as one tear spilled over and tracked slowly down her face. “I’m so sorry that I haven’t been the wife to you that I used to be… I love you so much…You’ll always be my only true love…my first love…”
In her mind’s eye, she pictured that first moment when she had opened the door of her family’s two-room apartment and saw him standing there. The cap in his hands had been damp from the rain, and his chocolate brown eyes had stared into hers as he asked, with a note of hopefulness, if she was Edna. Oh, how her heart had immediately flown from her chest, straight into his hands.
She saw images of their magical days of courting…eating hamburgers and drinking chocolate malts, laughing together over the silliest things, sitting on his lap in their friend Earl’s father’s old black hearse, enjoying rides at Fontaine Ferry, dancing on the Idlewild, kissing in front of her parents’ apartment. She remembered how proud he’d been when she had won that singing contest at the Knights of Columbus, his eyes twinkling, and his smile a mile wide. But then, she remembered his anger and shock when he’d found out about her lies and half-truths. She felt again the agony of their terrible misunderstanding, finding his letter a mere day too late, and the awful years when they were apart. During those long, lonely, miserable years, she had missed him dreadfully. She’d dreamed of him and longed for him until she thought she would lose her mind, believing that she was destined to live a wretched, unhappy life. Her only saving grace had been her sweet son, Tommy.
Shaking those thoughts away, she pictured how Vic had looked the first time she saw him after four years of being away from one another…how handsome he was, and so strong and mature. From then on, he was her best friend, sweetheart, and protector as they waited for her divorce to be finalized so that they could be married. She thought about how sweet Vic was when her daddy died and how he had taken care of all the details and been her rock to lean on. And then, their wedding, such a lovely day…and their wedding night, so wonderfully magical.
Images of those early years of their marriage swam through her mind; they were so much in love. A memory surfaced of him driving his taxi, following her down the street to whistle at her and make her laugh. She saw him out in front of the jail the morning after she and Alec had bailed him out – he had looked so sheepish and ashamed. She pictured him working hard at so many different jobs, waiting for his big break, all while being such a wonderful husband
to her and a loving father to Tommy. She remembered their first Christmas together, and every holiday thereafter. The days, weeks, months, and years had moved on as they had experienced life together.
Life. That thought made her think about the reality of their home life. Through all the years of living with his mother-in-law in the house, Vic had always made it a point to be patient and get along, even when Lilly was at her most obstinate.
The years had just seemed to flow swiftly by, like a fast-moving stream headed toward the Ohio. She wondered where so many years had gone – sixteen years of marriage, raising Tommy, working hard, navigating the ups and downs of life together, starting their own business, having sons of their own – and finally a little girl.
With that thought, her conscience pinched again and excruciatingly, she saw her own actions as if she were standing on the outside looking in. Lilly had told her more than once that she would be sorry for emotionally neglecting her boys and even Vic by concentrating her energies and attention on the baby. She had ignored her mother, stubbornly refusing to admit that she was, in fact, doing that very thing. Oh, why had she allowed herself to become so obsessed? Why did she allow the devil to make her unhappy and feel so unfulfilled? Comparing now to all those years ago when all she had wanted was to be reunited with her one true love, she didn’t even feel like the same person.
Vic had never given Louise cause to be jealous or think that he was unhappy, but always let her know how much he adored her and the kids. Did she show him how much she cherished him in return? Had she told him often enough? Did he know that she wouldn’t be able to go on if something happened to him? Had she taken him, and his love and fidelity, for granted? Oh Lord, he’s such a good man…
Her heart compressed so tightly, her chest hurt with the effort to breathe as the tears continued to flow. She held Vic’s hand firmly, their fingers entwined, with her tears dropping onto his skin. “Oh Lord…forgive me for times when I’ve hurt the boys…or Vic…I didn’t realize…I didn’t mean to…” she whispered, eyes squeezed shut. “Please forgive me…please don’t take my Vic away from me…I couldn’t bear it…”