“But I thought visiting hours were only thirty minutes every four hours.”
“Right. They sit by the bedside for thirty minutes, then come back to the waiting room and worry for four hours until the next visit.”
“Seems cruel.”
“Maybe it is. But those short visiting times are usually in the best interest of the patients. They need quiet.”
He led her into the huge room lined with vinyl recliners and chairs. Families had nested in certain areas of the room, surrounded by books and little bags with their belongings, Walkmans, and canned drinks. It was easy to distinguish the family members from occasional visitors. They looked more worn, more stressed, more near the breaking point. In one corner, a woman crocheted an afghan furiously, and already it was big enough to cover her legs. Beth wondered when she’d started it. Across the room, someone else worked on a laptop, and next to her, a red-eyed teenaged girl did cross-stitch as if her life depended on getting every stitch exactly in line.
The five telephones on the wall rang constantly, and they were always answered by one of those nearby. Then they would call out, “Smith family” or “Jackson family,” and someone would rush to answer it.
“It’s like a little community up here,” Beth said.
“Yeah. My dad was in ICU for three weeks before he died. I didn’t leave the unit except for meals. I ate those downstairs, and only if I had to. A lot of times, churches brought sandwiches and stuff right here to the waiting room.”
“But what’s the point in staying? I mean, if you can’t visit them . . .”
“It’s the fear that something will go wrong. That the doctor will need you to help make a decision. Even the irrational fear that if you leave, if you’re not there hanging on, they’ll slip away.”
“I can’t imagine being sick and having someone waiting out here that diligently for me.”
“What about your mother?” he asked.
“She’s dead.” The words came so matter-of-factly that she feared Nick would think she was cold. The truth was, if Beth’s mother were alive, she wouldn’t have waited in the ICU waiting room for Beth anyway. The deep sadness of that fact washed over her. She was really no different than Tracy Westin, lying in there so sick with no one out here in this room, representing her and praying for her, refusing to leave because they had to stay and fight with her.
“I’m sorry.”
She didn’t say anything, but watched the dynamics of a family in the corner. “Poor Tracy.”
Nick looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“She’s all alone.”
“We’re here.”
“Yeah, but she doesn’t know us. We don’t love her.”
“Yes, we do. I love her because I’m a Christian. I’m ordered to love her.”
Beth smiled grimly at the irony. She hadn’t had much experience with love, but she knew that was wrong. “Love isn’t something you can be ordered to do, Nick. You have to feel something.”
“Love is first something you do, Beth,” Nick said. “The feelings are important, yes, but love is a verb, not a noun. We’re here to love her because no one else is.”
Well, there was something in that. She sat quietly for a moment, looking around the room at all the people so steeped in the act of loving. She wondered what it would be like to have people like that caring for her, waiting hours to see her, not willing to leave for fear that she might need them. She couldn’t even fathom it.
The crackle of the intercom quieted the room, and a voice said, “ICU visitation will begin now. The following families may go back: Anderson, Aldredge, Burton . . .” Eventually, they came to the name Westin, and Beth and Nick got up and followed the stream of visitors through the double doors into ICU. As he had promised, the doctor had bent the rules to allow Nick and Beth to visit Tracy.
There were no doorways in ICU, only three-sided rooms open to the nursing station so that the nurses could see and hear the patients at all times. Tracy lay on her bed, sitting up at a forty-five degree angle, with an IV in her hand and an oxygen mask on her face. Several cords ran out from under her sheet and hooked to monitors that kept close watch on her vital signs.
She looked so tiny, so emaciated. Beth hesitated at the foot of the bed, feeling like an intruder in this woman’s private hell.
Nick went to her bedside and leaned over her. He looked carefully at her face to see if she was sleeping, but her eyes were half opened. “Tracy? Can you hear me?”
“Don’t wake her up,” Beth said softly.
“I don’t think she’s asleep,” he said. “Tracy, I’m Nick. The one who found you and brought you here.”
She looked up then, and met his eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“No problem. They’re going to do everything they can for you here. Did they tell you you have double pneumonia? You’re in ICU so they can watch you real closely.”
She closed her eyes.
Nick looked at Beth, not sure what to do. “My friend here, Beth, knows your son. We thought—”
Her eyes fluttered back open, and she tried to rise up. “Jimmy?” she asked weakly.
“Yes,” Beth said, stepping forward. “He’s a great kid.”
Weakly, she dropped back down. “Haven’t seen him in three years. I have a little girl—”
“Lisa?” Nick asked.
Her eyes grew rounder. “You know Lisa?”
“Yes, Tracy. That’s why I was coming to see you today. I’m a social worker, and I’ve taken an interest in your kids.”
Tears began to roll down her face. “Are they all right?”
“They’re good,” he said. “Healthy, smart . . .”
Her face contorted in anguish, and she asked, “Do they hate me?”
Nick looked up at Beth, not sure how to answer that. Beth felt her own eyes filling, which rarely happened. She hated herself when she cried. “I don’t think they hate you,” she whispered.
“I left them, you know . . .” Her voice broke off, and she closed her eyes and covered her face with a scrawny hand that had the IV needle taped in place. “You should have just let me die.”
Something about the heartfelt regret touched Beth in a deep place, a place of wounds that had never fully healed. She turned away, blinking back her tears, ordering back her tears. When she turned back to the woman on the bed, her eyes were dry. “We don’t want you to die, Tracy.”
Nick shook his head. “That’s right. God might need you to get well so you can help your kids understand why you did it.”
“I don’t understand why,” she said.
Nick leaned closer. “Tracy, are you still addicted?”
“No. Been through treatment . . . three times. Always fell back. But this last time . . . clean for two months.”
“Do you work? Do you have a job?”
“No.”
“Are you on welfare?”
“No. I was living with my husband . . .”
He looked up at Beth, surprised. “Husband? You’re married?”
“Six months. Doomed.”
“Where is your husband now?”
“Who knows? Gone. He’s worse off than I was.”
“Do you mean he was sick, too?”
“He’s a junkie.” She wiped her tear-streaked face with the hand her IV was taped to. “When I got sick, he took off. Couldn’t stand to hear me hacking all the time.”
“Why didn’t you go to the doctor?”
“No money.”
“But you could have gone to the health department.”
“Too weak.”
“You didn’t have anyone to take you? No one?”
“No . . . no one.”
The nurse came into the room and told them their visiting time was up, and Nick touched Tracy’s hand. “Tracy, we have to go now, but we’ll be back. You get better, okay? We’re praying for you.”
She nodded mutely, her face contorted with sorrow and regret.
As they stepped out into
the night, Beth felt anguish gaining on her again, sneaking closer to her breaking point, pulling her under. Nick seemed to sense it. He put his arm across her shoulders and said, “Let’s not go to the car just yet.”
When she didn’t protest, he led her down the cobblestone walkway that led through the hospital’s courtyard and around the little pond. Moonlight flickered on the surface of the water, lending a sense of peace and beauty to the world that had so much ugly darkness.
“I think she’s remorseful,” he said. “I don’t always see that.”
Beth couldn’t answer.
“I just hope she lives. Maybe through some miracle we could reunite the kids with her.”
“Don’t you think you’re jumping the gun a little?” Beth asked quietly.
He shrugged. “Maybe. I guess I’m just a believer in miracles.”
Beth reached a bench, sank down, and pulled her feet up to hug her knees. “I believe in miracles, too, Nick. But I’ve learned that you can’t custom order them.”
Quiet settled between them as he sat down next to her, watching her face. She couldn’t look at him, for those tears were slipping up on her again, threatening her. She looked out over the water, trying to sort out the storm of emotions whirling through her mind. Anger, rage, sorrow, loneliness, rejection, frustration, fear . . .
“We sure have screwed things up, haven’t we?”
“Who?” she asked.
“Us. The human race. God gave us families, such a wonderful gift, and we break them into tiny pieces, reject them, throw them away . . .”
“That’s it,” she whispered, still staring across the water. “Thrown away. That’s how those kids feel. And no matter what happens to them, that feeling doesn’t quite go away.”
“And then there’s Tracy.”
“Yes. I wonder how Jimmy will feel when we tell him we found his mother.”
Nick tried to imagine. “Well, he’ll put on a tough-guy act. But deep down, kids love their mothers. Even kids who have been abused and rejected.”
“Sometimes there are other things that cover that love so deeply that you can never get back down to it. I don’t think we should let him see his mother like that. I don’t think we should even tell him we’ve found her until she’s better.”
“That’s true. Besides, she might die, and then he’d have to grieve for her all over again.”
“Again?” she asked, finally looking at him. “I doubt he grieved for her at all. Being taken from her may have been a relief to some extent. And he was probably so hurt, so angry that she left him like that . . . So worried for Lisa . . .”
“He’s still worried for Lisa. Like I said, this isn’t the kind of thing God ever meant for a kid to have to worry about. Families are supposed to protect each other. Love each other. When I have kids, nothing in heaven or earth could force me to leave them. And the best thing I’ll do for them is to love their mother.”
A soft, gentle, wistful smile curved her lips. “I believe you could do that.” She watched his face as he propped it on his hand and smiled at her. “Tell me about your family, Nick. Did you have a mother and father who loved you? Did you eat at the table at night, all together, talking about your day?”
He gave her a strange look that told her the question had been too revealing. “Yeah, I guess we did. I had four sisters and brothers, and my parents have been married forty-five years. It was a busy household. What about yours?”
Her smile faded and her eyes drifted back to the water. “My household was very busy, too,” she said. “But not like yours. You might say I’m one of the pieces my family broke into.”
He gazed at her for a moment, and she wondered if it was pity or disdain she saw on his face. Was he measuring her against himself, finding her flawed and scarred? Did he look at potential mates against a measuring stick of broken families and dysfunctional childhoods, as she sometimes did? She had broken a budding relationship recently when she’d discovered that the man had been raised fatherless. She had told herself that she desperately needed someone who had not suffered the battles she had as a child, someone who had more parts to him than she had to her.
Yet she knew it was a double standard, for if others measured her the same way, she would always be alone.
“I wondered where that tough edge came from,” he whispered. “Is that where? From a broken family?”
She smiled. She liked that he’d seen a tough edge in her. She had cultivated it for years. “Maybe.”
“I’m sorry if you had to go through pain as a child, Beth. But God works all things for good. And if you had to go through all you did to be who you are today, well, it turned out pretty good, didn’t it?”
She sighed. “You don’t really know who I am. Not really.”
“Then show me.”
It was a challenge, and she rarely backed down from challenges. Yet what he was asking was too intimate, too revealing, and she couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t know that she had once been one of those kids in the homes he monitored, one of the names in the files he kept stacked on his desk. He couldn’t know that she had been a trained thief, a practiced liar . . .
“You don’t have to show me,” he said, finally, when he could see that she struggled with the challenge. “I’ve seen it. In the way you’re fighting for these kids, risking your life, daring to make a change. Not many people would do that.”
“Given the proper motivation,” she said coolly, “people will do lots of things.”
“Yeah, you’re real tough,” he said with a hint of amusement as he touched her soft, short hair. “But you know what I saw the first time you came to me to get information about the home?”
She looked reluctantly at him. “What?”
“I saw a woman who sent my heart stumbling in triple-time. A beautiful woman with those big, clear blue eyes, and that smile that made me want to sit and stare at it for hours . . . And then I heard you talk, heard how you cared for those kids, how passionate you were about this story . . .”
She smiled uneasily and looked down at her hands. Suddenly they were clammy. Suddenly, she was shaking.
“You cared the way I cared. I had cared about those kids for some time, had worried about them, and I felt a bond with you. I thought that maybe God had crossed our paths for a reason.”
She looked at him curiously then. “You see God working in everything, don’t you? Nothing’s accidental. Nothing’s left to chance.”
“Absolutely nothing. Don’t you believe that?”
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I don’t think God’s working in my life yet. I haven’t done enough. Things are still too off balance.”
“What do you mean ‘off balance’?”
“You know. I’m sort of behind on this religion thing. I got a late start. I have a lot of work to do before I can expect anything from God. But I’m willing to do what it takes.”
“It doesn’t take work, Beth. It just takes surrender. Repentance. You just have to give all of yourself to Christ.”
“I’m not sure he wants even some of me,” she said with a self-deprecating smile.
“Trust me. He wants all of you. And you don’t have to wait until your good deeds outweigh your bad ones. Look at the thief on the cross.”
She looked up at him, stricken. Why had he chosen that example? Did he suspect her past? “What about him?” she asked.
“He told Jesus he believed in him. To remember him when he came into his kingdom. Did Jesus tell him to clean up his act and work hard?”
“No.”
“What did he say?”
Her Bible knowledge was shaky, but she did remember that. “He said, ‘Today you shall be with me in Paradise.’”
“That’s right. He took him just like he was, hanging on a cross for crimes he had committed, while Jesus hung there for no crime at all. But that man’s sins were transferred to Jesus, and when that thief got to heaven, he was clean. Not because of anything he had done, but because he believ
ed in his heart.”
Beth sighed. She had never compared herself to the thief on the cross, not until now. But she’d heard about this concept of grace before—they always sang and preached about it at church. Somehow, she doubted that Nick or any of them had it right. There had to be more. It had to be tied into behavior, or none of it made any sense. She couldn’t believe that, after everything she’d done, God could just accept her, forgive her, welcome her into heaven—at least not without her first having to do something to make up for all of those sins, and that something should be substantial. Because if that was true, if God just accepted and forgave us no matter what we’d done, then . . .
Well, then, someone like Bill Brandon—who professed to believe in Christ but used Scripture for his own evils, and who had ruined the lives of hundreds of children just as he had tried to ruin hers—could be readily accepted into heaven if he made a deathbed conversion.
And that could never be true.
“Tell me something, Beth,” Nick said. “Look ahead five years, ten years, whatever, and tell me, if you could be everything you think God wants you to be, what will you be doing? Who will you be?”
She shifted on the bench and propped her elbow on the back. “Maybe I’ll be married to a wonderful man I don’t deserve. And I’ll have babies . . .” That smile grew across her face. “Lots of babies. And my husband will love them, and never hurt them, and I’ll live my life the way a mother should, so that they’ll always trust me and count on me, so that no one will ever be able to take them away.”
His smile faded as she spoke, and she realized she had said too much. He was watching her with misty eyes now, hanging on every word.
But she couldn’t help going on in a strange, wistful voice. “And that family will be so great. The whole world can fall apart around us, but we’ll be so strong, so tightly knit, that nothing will ever break us.”
“‘What God has joined together let no man put asunder.’”
“Yes!” she said. “I know exactly what that means.”
“Do you believe that family you described is the plan God has for you? In other words, that he has good plans for you instead of calamity?”