Miracles

  He thought of another man who had been struck mute—Zacharias, in the Bible. He’d questioned God one too many times, and in answer had been struck dumb until his son, John the Baptist, was born. Andy had questioned God many times. Was he being punished for that now? Would there be an end to this trial, as there had been for Zacharias? If so, when?

  A team of nurses and orderlies rolled another man into the room with him, distracting him from his thoughts. The man was unconscious and lay helpless and silent. Another patient was brought in, this one awake but groaning in pain.

  Loneliness gave way to a sense of inadequacy. He longed to help these people whose needs weren’t being met, but he couldn’t think of a thing he could do for them . . . except pray.

  5

  BREE HEARD HER NAME CALLED THROUGH THE crowd of injured, and she tried to sit up.

  “Bree, thank God you’re all right!” Her mother’s voice reached her before she did, and Bree groped toward it in her darkness.

  “Mommy!”

  It was her children’s voices. She moaned with shivering relief, and in seconds they were at her gurney, their arms around her.

  She clung to them. “You’re all right!”

  Her mother touched her face with careful hands. “Honey, your eyes . . .”

  “I’m blind, Mom. I can’t see. And they’re so busy with the others . . .”

  Her seven-year-old, Amy, began to wail, and Bree pulled her close again. She wished she could see her face. “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “I’m scared. Look at your face, Mommy!”

  She heard her son sniffing, and she reached out for him too. “You’re not crying, are you, Brad? Mommy’s okay.”

  “Your eyes! They need to fix them.”

  “They will, honey. Real soon.”

  It sounded as though Bree’s mother was crying too. “What can I do for you, sweetie? I want to help you, but I don’t know—”

  “You can take the children home.” Bree kept her voice calm and steady. “Now that we each know the other is all right, you should take them home and let the doctors deal with me here. The kids don’t need to see me like this. It’s upsetting them.”

  Her mother pushed her hair back from her face. “But we don’t want to leave you.”

  “It’s a madhouse here, Mom. There are too many people. They’ll get to me soon. Just go home and pray.”

  When her mother finally kissed her good-bye and took the children away despite their cries to stay with her, Bree fell back onto her pillow, exhausted but grateful. The Lord had answered two of her prayers: she’d been rescued, and her children were fine. She prayed that someone would come and tend to her wounds soon so that she could go home to her children and hold them as they fell asleep tonight.

  Later that night, a doctor made it into her room. He stood beside her bed with his hand on her shoulder, and she wished she could see him. “We’re doing surgery on your eyes in the morning,” he said, “but there’s significant damage.”

  His weary voice didn’t sound hopeful. “Will I see again?” she managed to ask.

  There was a long pause. “We’ll do the best we can, Ms. Harris.”

  “What does that mean?”

  He sighed. “Nerves have been damaged, and the cornea was lacerated. I’ll try to get the glass and metal out and repair as much as I can, but I can’t promise that your sight will return.”

  After he left, Bree lay in the silent darkness that cloaked her. She was too numb to think, too numb even to pray. Finally the pain medication worked through her system, and Bree fell into a dreadful, shallow sleep.

  6

  THE NEXT MORNING, BREE FELT THE LIGHT OF DAY through the window, warming her face. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

  She saw light! She turned her face to the window, where she saw clouds floating through the sky, a tree just beyond the glass. And around her, she saw the other injured patients.

  “I can see.” She sprang off of her gurney and looked around for a nurse or doctor. “I can see!”

  Had they done surgery on her last night when she’d been asleep? Wouldn’t she have awakened for part of it? Wouldn’t she have bandages?

  She saw a bathroom, ran into it, and looked into the mirror. The cuts on her face and eyes were gone, and she looked as unharmed as she had yesterday before the quake. How could that be? No surgery could have healed her cuts that quickly, restored her vision, and erased her scars.

  She came back out of the bathroom, and a nurse rushed toward her. “You should have called me, honey. I would have helped you.”

  “I can see! Look at me.”

  The woman clapped her hands over her own face and stared at Bree. “How can that be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But they didn’t do surgery yet. They didn’t do anything!”

  Her heart hammered with realization. She had been healed, not by doctors or equipment or cleverly mixed drugs.

  God had healed her.

  “I’m going to get the doctor!” The nurse raced out the door.

  Bree went back to her gurney, looking around for someone else to tell.

  On the gurney next to her lay a high-school boy, blood caked on his disfigured face. Clearly frightened and traumatized, he looked up at her and met her eyes.

  Flash.

  The boy was no longer a teen, but a child, kneeling in a dark attic, screaming and banging at the door to get out. “Daddy, please let me out. I’ll be good. I promise I’ll be good.” He had a black eye, and his face was pale as if he hadn’t seen the sun in days.

  Flash.

  Bree blinked, then stared at the boy, who was once again a teen, once again stretched out in front of her on the gurney. What in the world had just happened? Here she stood, in a busy hospital room, staring at a boy who had just been through an earthquake, yet she’d seen a little boy in an attic . . . and she knew it was him.

  Had it been a vision of some kind?

  She was shaking, she realized, and she turned her eyes from the boy. “I need to go home.”

  Her heart pounded as she tried to get away from the boy whose past she had just glimpsed, and she walked through the gurneys toward the door.

  The nurse bustled back in. “Ma’am, the doctor will be here soon. You need to lie down until he comes.”

  Flash.

  It was nighttime. She saw the nurse tending to her sick husband. He was ill and could hardly move for himself. Vomit stained the sheets, and the woman moved around like a zombie, exhausted by her work schedule by day and her caring schedule by night.

  “It’s okay, honey,” she whispered as she stood over her husband. “I’ll clean it up.” She worked the sheet out from under him, cleaned his face and his neck, changed his shirt, then managed to change his sheets out from under him.

  Exhaustion and dejection painted her features as she lay down beside him and slid her arms around him. “You’re going to be okay, honey. I’m here.”

  But he wasn’t there, not really, and loneliness radiated from the woman’s broken heart.

  Flash.

  The nurse reached for her to move her back into bed.

  Bree started to run, dodging the gurneys, zigzagging through the people, until she finally got out into the sunlight and took off running, running, running, until she came to a convenience store where she went in and asked for a phone.

  Desperately glad to be out of that place, she called her mother to come and pick her up.

  7

  CARL WOKE ON THE SAME GURNEY HE’D BEEN brought in on, still strapped down . . . but the pain was gone. He wiggled his fingers and managed to get one hand free, then felt his legs. They seemed straight and whole.

  Wanting to see for himself, he managed to pull the brace off of his neck and slowly sat up and looked down at himself. His pants were still torn, but the blood was gone, and the legs that he’d seen last night—all mangled and bent like pieces of wire twisted in all directions— looked perfectly normal.

 
Slowly he peeled back the straps holding him to the bed and pulled his legs free. They moved without pain or trouble.

  “I can’t believe this,” he whispered. “How in the world?”

  He moved his legs so they hung off of the gurney, then slowly slid his feet down until they bore his weight. He stood on them, expecting searing pain to shoot through them, but there was no pain at all! His legs felt stronger than they’d ever felt before, and an urgent need to move filled him.

  “I can walk.” He marched across the floor, then jumped and spun around. “I’m healed!”

  He knew without a doubt that the Lord had shown him mercy. No doctor had done this. It was clearly an act of God.

  He wanted to tell someone, but that urgency to go rose up inside him, drawing him barefoot out of the room. His feet ran and skipped around the gurneys that blocked the hall.

  Those feet led him faster, faster than his mind could keep up. They led him between gurneys and around the corner, up the hall. And then they stopped beside the bed of a boy who lay sleeping.

  Carl looked down at the child and saw that his lips were blue. His skin looked as gray as death itself.

  The boy wasn’t breathing.

  Carl grabbed his shoulders and shook him. The boy remained limp.“Help!” He yelled at the top of his lungs as he scanned the hallway for a nurse. “This boy isn’t breathing. Somebody help!”

  A nurse came running, saw the boy’s condition, and called out a Code Blue. Doctors and nurses from all over the floor raced toward them to revive the child.

  Carl stood back, watching as adrenaline shot through him, twisting around his confusion. How had he known to walk right up to that boy? It was as if his feet had known the child’s condition.

  How could that be?

  He looked down at his bare feet. They looked the same, but something was different. That urge to walk had overcome him again.

  He gave into it, and suddenly his feet were making that mad dash again, though he had no idea where they were taking him.

  He left the hospital and went out into the bright morning. He started walking in a direction away from his own home, and then picked up his speed until he ran one block, and then another, turned a corner, and went down a hill.

  He saw a team of people digging at a collapsed building, still trying to rescue anyone who was buried.

  His feet led him to another collapsed building across the street, but no one was digging here. Instead, a crowd of people stood out on the street talking and chattering, as if grateful they had survived the quake.

  Carl turned, staring at the rubble. His skin crawled with a certainty so powerful it nearly knocked him down. Someone was in there, trapped in the collapsed building. He grabbed a man on the sidewalk. “Is everyone in this building accounted for?”

  The man nodded. “Yes. I work there. I’m pretty sure everyone got out.”

  Carl knew that wasn’t true, though he couldn’t have said how he knew. He took off running around to the back of the building where the wall had caved in. The man followed, staring as Carl stepped over the rubble. “How do you get to the basement?”

  “Well, there’s a stairwell—” he pointed—“but you shouldn’t go in there. The building’s probably unsound.”

  Despite the warning, Carl bolted toward the stairwell. He reached it and threw the door open. He started down the stairs . . . then stopped cold.

  It was as if the ground had just come up in a heap to swallow up the floor and walls of the basement. There was nothing but dirt and rubble on the side where the building’s wall had caved in.

  There were people down there. He knew it with absolute certainty.

  He ran back up. “Get some workers over here! There are people in there!”

  Several of the firemen from across the street came running over and down the stairwell to see the rubble.

  “Get some equipment over here!” one of the firemen shouted. “They could be alive.”

  “They are!” Carl’s voice trembled with urgency. “I can tell you right now that they’re still alive.”

  He didn’t know how in the world he knew such a thing, but he had no time to question it. He had to get to those people before it was too late. He grabbed a shovel and started digging with the firefighters, determined to rescue these people who had somehow drawn him to their aid.

  Within an hour, they made contact with the people who were buried, and one by one they managed to get them out, all alive. One man couldn’t feel his legs. Another had a severe head injury and was unconscious. Two came out almost unscathed. When the fourth man came out, Carl knew they were finished. There were no others.

  He turned and raced up the street, running like a track star for a couple of blocks, though his lungs panted and gasped for breath. A crowd of people stood in front of a store that sold televisions, and they watched the monitors as the news covered the earthquake damage.

  He stopped in that crowd, looking around. He had expected to find another building, more people buried, rescue workers with shovels, but instead there were just people standing and looking at the television monitors, tears on their faces.

  He saw a man in the crowd and quickly walked toward him. His feet seemed to know that the man needed help, but Carl stood there not knowing what to say or do. The man gave him an uneasy look.

  “May I help you?”

  “No . . . uh . . . I’m sorry.”

  Something strange was happening to him. He felt the man’s pain, as if there was something within him that needed rescuing, but Carl didn’t have a clue what it was.

  He suddenly felt very tired. His head had begun to ache, and he thought about his parents in North Dakota. They had probably been calling his house all night, frantic to know if he was alive.

  He needed to get home. He needed to make contact with the important people in his life. He needed to rest.

  A tidal wave of weariness and confusion crashed over him, crushing him with its weight until he could barely stand. Trembling, he started walking home.

  8

  ANDY DIDN’T REALIZE HE’D BEEN HEALED UNTIL his sister and her husband showed up at the hospital that morning. He still had a tube down his throat, but it didn’t burn like it had yesterday, and his breathing came easier.

  When the doctor made rounds, he pulled the tube out, and it was only then that Andy knew something had happened.

  “I couldn’t talk at all last night,” he said in a rapid-fire cadence. “I’m telling you, I couldn’t talk. My throat was burned, and my lungs felt parched, and I had blisters in my mouth and down my trachea. And now there’s not a trace of smoke inhalation, not a cough or a wheeze or phlegm in my throat or anything. Do you think I’ve been healed?”

  The doctor looked baffled and went to study his test results again.

  Andy looked up at his sister, Karen. “I thought I was a dead man yesterday, and I was in a lot of ways, but I’m telling you something strange happened to me last night. I shouldn’t be able to talk at all.” He glanced at the man on the bed next to him, who was watching and listening quietly. “Sir, I’m telling you that I was healed miraculously, just like in the Bible. It’s almost like Jesus came in and touched me and I was healed, only I don’t know why He’d heal me, of all people, because I’ve never been much of a soldier in His kingdom. It’s not like I’m worthy of a miraculous healing, but I’m telling you that’s what’s happened.”

  Karen started to laugh. “Andy, I don’t think I’ve heard you say that many words in a day, much less in a minute!”

  “I know!” Andy swung back around to her. “But all of a sudden I feel like I just have so much to say. I have to tell everybody about the miraculous healing power of a God who cares about us. Jesus is good! I don’t know how it happened, but I know what happened, and God healed me just as surely as I’m standing here with you.”

  The doctor came back in, still reading his chart and scratching his head. “I can’t explain it. When we looked at your vocal cords and your
lungs last night, you were in serious trouble.”

  “I’m well now!” Andy lifted his hands to the ceiling. “Examine me and you’ll see.”

  The doctor listened to Andy’s lungs and looked into his throat. Finally he pulled the stethoscope from his ears and gave Andy a long look. “You can go home, I guess. You look fine to me.”

  Andy sprang off of the bed, hugged his sister, and slapped his brother-in-law’s hand. “I’m outta here.”

  Karen just stared up at him. “You’re not acting like yourself, Andy. Are you sure you didn’t hit your head?”

  “I was only buried under a three-story building, Karen. I hit my head and everything else. But nothing on me is hurt.”

  “But you’re not acting like yourself.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” He started out into the hall, not even bothering to wait for the paperwork that would release him. When he came through the door, he bumped into a gurney parked there. A woman lay on it, groaning.

  He stopped and bent over her. “Ma’am, I’d like to pray for you if you don’t mind. See, I was healed, and the Lord who owns the universe and everything in it has the power to heal you too. So I’d like to pray and ask Him to send you the help you need, to comfort and help with your pain.”

  The woman started to cry. “Get away from me.”

  A nurse touched his shoulder. “Sir, can I help you?”

  “I just wanted to pray for her,” he said. “I didn’t mean to upset her, but she’s obviously in pain, and I thought prayer might be something that would help her because it sure helped me. I didn’t mean to offend her.”

  “She’d rather be left alone,” the nurse said calmly. “If you don’t mind.”

  Andy gave a plaintive nod. “Sorry.”

  He walked to the next gurney and bent over it. “Sir, do you know the Lord? Because I do, and amazingly and miraculously, He healed me this morning after I’d inhaled smoke while buried under a three-story building. And I feel that I have to use my voice now to glorify and praise Him, and what better way to do that than to tell everyone I see about the love of Christ—”