An Open Heart (28 page)

“What?” she said. “Say something! Aren’t you excited?”

Her mother wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. “Of course, dear.” She hesitated before adding. “We hope you are going to finish college first.”

“Mom, we’ve checked on married student housing on campus. It would be cheaper for us to live together than rent two separate places.”

“He didn’t ask me,” her father said.

“Daddy!”

Her mother shook her head. “Your father is old-fashioned that way, you know.”

“I’m sure he’ll ask for permission.”

Her father pushed back from the table. “A little late, don’t you think?”

“He’s planning a trip down during our Thanksgiving break. He can ask you then.”

Her mom reached over and took her husband’s hand.

Uh-oh. Whenever they hold hands it’s a sign they’ll make some proclamation they’ve agreed upon.

“We’ve talked about Jace, honey,” her mother said. “He’s a nice boy.”

Heather felt her jaw slacken. “A nice boy?”

“I’m concerned about his ability to lead you,” her father said.

“He’s got his head on straight. He’s taking his MCATs, he’s going to medical school.”

“I’m not talking about that kind of leadership. I’m talking spiritually. You need a man strong in his faith to lead.”

“His family were missionaries, just like us!”

Her mom shifted in her seat. “Just what does
he
say about his faith? I, for one, haven’t heard him mention it. Not even once.”

“Jace is quiet about his beliefs. That’s not a sin.”

Her mother leaned forward. “That’s called hiding a light under a bushel.”

“If there is light at all,” her father added.

“I don’t believe this. You’re judging him.”

“And we’re supposed to sit back and not have opinions about who our daughter marries?”

“Jace is a good man,” Heather countered, feeling the tears that would soon flow. “I love him!”

Her father nodded. “Ah, love.” He continued gripping his wife’s hand. “Is that what is going to see you through hard times?”

Heather nodded.

“I’m afraid,” David said.

“Afraid?”

“The Bible teaches that the husband provides a spiritual covering for his wife. We need your husband to be that for you.”

“Jace is strong.”

“But is he spiritually strong? If he is not a believer, you won’t have the spiritual protection you need.”

Heather crossed her arms. “Spiritual protection?”

“We saw things,” he began, “during our time in Mozambique.”

Her mother nodded. “Spiritual attacks. Warfare.”

“You’re weirding me out,” she said.

“Remember, reality isn’t only the things you can detect with your five senses.”

Trevor Anne released her husband’s hand and reached for Heather. “We just want our baby to be safe. Take it slow, honey. If Jace is the one, a little extra time isn’t going to change that.”

“Maybe you just need to ask him a few questions. He’ll tell you about his faith if you let him.”

Her parents nodded.

Disaster averted,
she thought.

For now.

A short tap of a car horn snapped Heather back to the present. She’d been sitting at a traffic light, a green one, and the guy in the car behind her wasn’t happy. She sped off.
How long had I been sitting there?

But her memory of her parents’ judging of Jace made her wonder about her own attitudes.
Am I becoming my parents, too quick to judge?

She thought about Ryan Meadows.
That guy doesn’t hold a candle to my Jace.
Jace never seemed complicated. He’d always been an up-front, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of man. He would have been much more comfortable in a small-town diner than the Jefferson Hotel.

So why did I let little doubts take hold?

Have my parents’ doubts become my own?

Is this really about Jace—or about me?

Can I ever trust him again without knowing all the facts?

30

Jace walked toward the surgery waiting room. His intern, Paul, touched his arm. “Dr. Rawlings. It would be best if you changed your scrubs before talking with the family.”

He looked down. He was so taken by his own grief that he hadn’t thought about his appearance. His scrub pants were crimson, his shoes tracking blood with every step. “Thanks.”

He changed and returned to talk to the crowd. Paul stood by. Boniface Kabochi was dead at age ten. His mother stood, her face alive with alarm.

“I’m so sorry,” Jace began.

The Kikuyu crowd understood. “Eh.”

The mother began to shake her head. “No. Noooo!”

“We did everything we could,” Jace said.

Paul interpreted, speaking in Kikuyu for the mother to understand. She began to wail, swaying at the hips and stomping first one foot and then the other. She cried, pummeling her fists into Paul’s chest.

Jace stepped forward, intervening and grabbing the woman by her wrists as she continued to cry. Then, he moved her hands over his chest, directing her to strike him instead. She dropped her fists onto his chest, pounding out her sorrow, before another two women joined her at her right and left, hugging and crying in unison. Her fists slid from Jace’s chest, and she collapsed to the floor, wailing and pulling at her sweater. “Boniface, Bon-i-face,” she sobbed.

This was Kikuyu grief, extravagant and expressive.

Jace watched with his own heart breaking. Grief, he understood, took many shapes. The Maasai would hear bad news and not frown, not flash the emotion of pain across their faces. The Kikuyu, like some Hispanics Jace had observed back home, were loud, a fountain of tears.

Beyond her tears, though, he knew that she would not accuse him.

Jace stood, not knowing what to say and knowing his words would do little to comfort the woman.

A Kiswahili phrase came back to him. I’m sorry. So sorry. “Pole. Pole sana,” he repeated.

After a few minutes, Paul tugged his sleeve. “Let them grieve alone.”

Jace walked back to the theater desk. “Do I need to fill out any paperwork?”

“Just fill out an operative report and do the charge for the operation. I’ll do a death summary.”

“Charges?”

“Yes. I’m not sure they will release the body from the morgue until the family has paid.”

Jace looked at Paul. As broken as the American health system was, it was generations better than Kenya’s. “Tell the mother not to worry about the costs. I will cover the bill.”

“Okay.”

Jace quietly wrote a report and recorded a charge. With that, he left the theater and headed home. He thought about his offer to pay the boy’s bill.
Dave was right. I’m throwing money around, thinking it will solve problems … even if all it does is quiet my conscience.

The next afternoon, Jace ate a quiet American lunch classic: a PBJ on white bread. It came in a colorful wrapper emblazoned with the words “Supa Loaf.”

Then he walked down the hill, beyond the hospital, and past the cemetery to the doorstep of the hospital chaplain, John Otieno.

The chaplain’s wife answered the door. “Dr. Rawlings, what a nice surprise.” She held out her hand. “I’m Lydia, John’s wife. Come in.”

“Is your husband in?”

“Yes, he’s in the back. I’ve just put on water for chai. Can you join us?”

“Yes, yes,” Jace said. Beyond the kitchen counter, he could see the chaplain sitting in an easy chair with three large books open on the table in front of him. His Bible was in his lap, and he had a pencil behind one ear and a highlighter in his hand. His face brightened when he saw Jace.

“Daktari Rawlings, I’ve been waiting for you to come and visit me. Karibu.” Welcome.

Jace took the chaplain’s hand and grasped it around the thumb before falling into a normal handgrip. The Kenyans often alternated between the two grips several times depending on how vigorous and happy the greeting. Jace smiled. “Hi, Pastor. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Just my favorite thing in the world,” he said, his eyes beaming. “I was just dissecting the book of Romans.”

“Dissecting. Sounds like surgery,” Jace said.

“It is … of sorts. I peel away one layer only to reveal something deeper that feeds the layer on the surface, dissect that away, and yet another aspect of truth is revealed.” He gestured toward a worn green couch. “Have a seat. What’s on your mind? You look—” he hesitated—“troubled.”

Jace sat and took a deep breath.
Where to begin?
“I need some advice.”

“I’d be honored to listen.”

Jace leaned forward and narrated the confusing events of the past few days: Beatrice’s claim to have talked to some sort of angel during her open-heart surgery, the accuracy of her predictions of her mother’s illness, and her knowledge that one of Jace’s patients would die. Jace didn’t mention what she’d told him about seeing light in certain people—but not in Jace.

The chaplain sat, mesmerized, pausing only to sip the sweet chai.

Jace finished by telling him of Joseph Kosoi’s prediction and how that had also come true just the day before.

His story complete, Jace picked up his chai for the first time. “What do you make of this? Do you really believe my patients have communicated with angels?”

“What do you believe, Jace? Do you believe we can communicate with the dead?”

“You’ve been talking to my father.”

He nodded. “Before you came, we talked. He told me of your sense that your sister wanted you here.”

Jace rubbed the back of his neck. “Okay, so two months ago, I would have completely discounted this, but after my …” He paused and made a gesture of quotation marks as he continued: “vision or whatever it was, I’ve been forced to rethink a few things.”

“So why do you discount your patients’ experiences?”

“When I saw my sister’s face, I was close to death.”

“And your patients, they were close to death as well?”

“Not exactly, but suspended with their hearts not beating.”

“You haven’t told me why you are questioning your patients’ experiences.”

“When it was only Beatrice, I thought she must have just overheard my other patient’s name and repeated it to me. And it would be easy to predict her mother had HIV. But when my next patient gave me another name, and his prediction also came true, I came face-to-face with things I just don’t understand.”

“Things that you’d rather not believe. You’re a scientist, so naturally, you are looking for a rational explanation.”

“Exactly.”

“And yet you had an experience yourself.”

“Something I am still trying to understand.”

“You believed somehow that returning to Kijabe might help you resolve your feelings about your sister’s death?”

“Look, to be honest, I think I was scared. I almost died. It was only natural for me to dream of my dead sister. It was the only time in my life when I was so close to the death of someone I loved. So I tell myself it was a dream, perhaps an important one, something of some significance to help me refocus my life around what is important. So as I processed it, I felt like I wanted to do something of lasting value before I died.”

“And you thought starting this heart program to help poor Africans was it?”

Jace nodded. “Basically.”

“But now, you’re faced with even more bizarre spiritual events, stuff that you can’t explain away as only a dream anymore.”

He hesitated. “Exactly.”

“It will be difficult for me to make a judgment without further study.” Otieno opened the leather Bible that he had laid aside when Jace arrived. “I believe strongly after listening to the accounts that your patients have had encounters with spiritual beings of some sort.”

“Spiritual beings?”

“Angels.” He paused. “Or demons.”

“Okay, I’m at least open to that idea. I have no other explanation.”

“The Bible teaches us that we are in a spiritual war.”

“I thought that just meant good versus evil.”

“It is not only metaphorical, Jace. There are many verses that teach of ministering or accusing spirits.”

“Angels or demons.”

“Exactly,” the chaplain said, clasping his large hands together. “Perhaps this does not sit well with your Western scientific bent.”

Jace nodded.

“I know for a fact it’s true, Jace. I’ve seen evidence of the battle, both sides, during my years on this continent. I’m sure your father could tell you stories. Unfortunately, your country’s missionaries are reluctant to share their experiences with angels and demons. They are afraid that their supporting churches will think they’ve fallen off the deep end, and so they don’t tell the stories that might enlighten the church to the battle.” He sipped his chai and continued. “These stories often come out at missionary gatherings late at night, when friends begin to swap personal accounts around campfires and over chai.” He smiled.

“You said you’ve seen evidence?”

He nodded. “When I was just a boy out in Kisii town, there was a witch doctor who lived in a mud hut in the center of the village. He kept snakes in his house to use in casting spells. They lived in special baskets fastened on the walls. The man would come out in his yard and call the snakes by name and out they would come, a black mamba slithering down the side of the doorframe, and then a cobra.”