Rejoice (12 page)

The others sat up a bit straighter around the table as John answered the question. “No, honey. Why don’t you tell them yourself?”

Erin made a light, laughing sound. “Okay.” She paused for a moment. “Sam and I are going to adopt. We’ve found a baby and started the process. The baby is due in six months.” She gave a short squeal. “Isn’t that awesome?”

The news was met with hoots of joy and the sound of Brooke and Ashley and Kari all talking at the same time.

“I’m so happy for you, Erin.” Kari put her arm around Ryan and leaned close to him. “I knew God wanted you to adopt.”

“Yeah, little sister.” Brooke clapped her hands. The sadness that had darkened her eyes since Hayley’s accident remained. But at least she was smiling. “You’ll love every minute of being a mom.”

“That’s for sure.” Ashley pulled Cole close and kissed his forehead. “Way to go, Erin! How’d you find the baby?”

“That’s the miracle part.” Erin’s voice was trembling as she told the story. “Sam was meeting with the pastor once a week, just to be connected, and he mentioned we were thinking of adopting.

“The pastor got this strange look on his face and asked Sam how soon.” Erin paused long enough to catch her breath. “Sam told him very soon, actually. And then the pastor said that he’d just met with a woman the day before whose daughter was going to have her third child out of wedlock. Each of the kids was being raised by a separate family member, and the woman’s daughter had no interest in being a mother. This time the daughter wanted to give the baby up to a Christian family, through a private adoption, if possible.”

Elizabeth felt the hair on her arms rise, the same way it had the first time she heard the story.

“A few days later we met the birth mother and signed the initial paperwork. She’s absolutely sure about the adoption, and she showed us pictures of her other children.” Erin’s voice was pinched with emotion. “They’re beautiful. I wish you could see them.” She grabbed a few quick breaths. “Now all we have to do is wait.”

“God is so good, isn’t he?” John spoke the words toward the telephone, but he met the eyes of everyone in the room, even the children.

Again, Elizabeth felt a fullness in her heart, a knowing that someday soon the black cloud she’d been living under would lift. She had never understood why God hadn’t granted Erin and Sam children. Back before the move, she’d wondered if it was because their marriage wasn’t as stable as it should be. But now . . . now the answers seemed as clear as water. God wanted them to parent a child who otherwise might not have had a chance in the world.

Erin’s sisters made another round of congratulations, with promises to call her separately and talk about the impending adoption in more detail. Erin asked about Hayley, and Brooke sounded upbeat.

“She’s responding to the antiseizure medication, which is a big step. And the more time I spend massaging her muscles, the less stiff she is.”

“That’s good.” Sadness rang in Erin’s voice, even though Elizabeth knew she was trying to hide it. “We’re praying for her every day, for nothing less than a miracle.”

“Thanks, Erin. That means a lot.”

“Is Peter there? Tell him Sam’s going to call him later this week.”

The question was innocent enough, an assumption really. If Brooke was there, of course Peter was there. And Elizabeth realized she hadn’t been honest with Erin about the situation between Brooke and her husband.

“Uh . . .” Brooke looked around the table and a hush fell over the room.

“What’s the matter, Mommy?” Maddie stood up and wrapped her arms around Brooke’s neck. “Why’s everyone quiet?”

“It’s okay, baby . . .” Brooke took Maddie’s fingers and held them against her cheek, as if she was trying to quench the sadness that was suddenly building within her.

“Brooke, are you there?” Erin sounded confused. “What’s wrong?”

John clicked the button and took the call off the speakerphone. “Erin, honey, Peter’s not here. Things haven’t been the same with him for . . .” John walked out of the room, his voice hushed as he went.

Brooke ran her hand over Maddie’s back and looked from Ashley and Kari to Elizabeth. “I think we need to get going.”

“Brooke . . .” Elizabeth moved around the table toward her oldest daughter.

No words were necessary. Led by Elizabeth, the group formed a circle around Brooke and hugged her, as if the combined love from all of them together might somehow fill the hole in Brooke’s heart.

Ryan’s voice, strong and steady, lifted from the midst of them. “Father, we have no answers, nowhere to turn but to you. Our hearts ache at the thought of Peter trying to walk through this maze of pain by himself, without Brooke, maybe even without you.” He hesitated. “Whatever it takes, Lord, bring him back. Let him see that Hayley needs him; Brooke needs him. And please, Jesus, breathe new life into our little Hayley. You saved her, now please . . . we beg you, make her whole again.”

The moment ended, and in quiet, hushed tones Brooke, Ashley, and Kari gathered their children and headed off into the night. John was still on the phone with Erin in the next room, so Elizabeth was alone again, by herself and back at the shores of a sorrow that still swelled in her soul.

It was a moment when she wanted to trudge slowly to her bedroom, peel off her clothes, and slip into her nightgown, despite the fact that it wasn’t close to bedtime. A moment when she wanted nothing more than to grieve the tragedy of Hayley’s accident, the gravity of the situation between Brooke and Peter.

But instead she remembered what Ashley had said. They were supposed to be joyful. “Rejoice always”; that’s what the Bible said. But it also said that Jesus wept. And the thought of that was suddenly more comforting than anything Elizabeth had known since Hayley’s accident. Jesus wept. Even amidst perfect joy, he cried tears of pain. Certainly when he looked down from heaven at Hayley, he cried even now.

And that meant that none of them were really alone. Because Christ was with them in every moment, every season of life.

Even in this, their season of sorrow.

John had just hung up the phone from talking to Erin when he heard Ryan begin to pray in the next room. His first instinct was to hurry back into the dining room and join them. But then he heard the prayer move toward Hayley’s situation and how badly all of them wanted a miracle for her.

That’s when he knew he couldn’t be there.

Because though he wanted desperately to believe it was possible, he had been a doctor too long to believe in a miracle this time. Hayley was brain damaged, brain injured. He’d gone over the tests a number of times. When a child went without oxygen as long as Hayley had, the situation was no longer gray. Odds didn’t exist for healing in a drowning as serious as this one.

The results were the same 100 percent of the time. Children with Hayley’s type of brain damage didn’t get better. Not ever.

No happy ending awaited his darling granddaughter somewhere down the road. No, she would be fed by a tube, dressed in a diaper, drooling over herself for the rest of her days. Eight years, ten at best, and then death would come. Hayley’s body would atrophy, taking the brain’s lead in finally accepting an inability to continue.

Ten years of heartache before Hayley would be free of the prison her mind and body had become, free to run and play in the fields of heaven.

John hung his head and felt his body bend beneath the pressure. The prayer he’d uttered that first night came back to him, and he thought again of the ramifications. While everyone else had prayed for Hayley’s next breath, John had prayed for God to take her home.

He had known the score, known the type of life she would face, and so he’d asked God to give her freedom instead. But the guilt from that prayer ate at him still, nibbling at his soul and robbing him of even a moment’s peace since then.

The worst part was a fear he hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Pastor Mark. Maybe Hayley had lived as a way of punishing him for his lack of faith. He hadn’t thought God capable of making good out of her life, and so he’d asked the Lord for her death. Instead, Hayley lay hooked to tubes and monitors, unable to see or speak or connect with any of them.

“Is that what you’re doing, God?” His voice was a tormented whisper. “Are you punishing me by letting her lie there that way? by letting her live?”

Even now John wanted nothing more than to believe like the rest of them, believe that somehow a miracle was possible, and Hayley’s brain could heal itself, bring her back to a place where she was Hayley again. But it simply wasn’t possible. Hayley’s kind of brain damage went beyond traumatic injury, beyond anything the medical profession had ever seen healed.

“I want to believe, God . . .” John sat on the edge of the sofa in the den and gripped his knees. He knew the Scriptures, knew the times when Jesus promised that nothing was impossible with God or that the Lord was able to do immeasurably more than all they could ever ask or imagine.

But healing Hayley’s brain?

A hundred answered prayers came rushing to John’s mind. Elizabeth’s recovery from cancer all those years ago . . . Luke’s return to the family . . . the renewed faith for Brooke and Ashley . . .

“Yes, God, you’re able . . . I know you’re able.” John clenched his jaw, willing himself to get past the hurdle of unbelief. “Increase my faith, Lord. Please.”

Sweat beaded on his forehead. He’d never prayed with such fervor in all his life. Because as much as he was convinced that Hayley had lived as a means of punishing him, he was also convinced that his unbelief could keep her from getting well. No, he had nothing if he didn’t have his faith, and that was the biggest problem of all. As hard as he was trying and as awful as he felt about it, John couldn’t muster the faith to believe God could heal his Hayley. Not this time.

Not when conventional medicine told him her recovery was completely and totally impossible.

Chapter Twelve

Winter had come to Bloomington, and the rain and sleet matched Peter’s mood. Especially when the pills wore off.

It was eight o’clock, the same time he’d been getting home to the familiar old house every day for the past month, ever since his family had left him. Since Hayley’s drowning and Maddie’s move to the Baxters’ house, and Brooke’s determination to stay at the hospital. Not that he blamed them—not when the whole situation was his fault.

His hands shook as he slipped the key in the door.

More! Find the pills . . .

His body screamed at him, and he did his best to obey. The keys fell to the wet cement, and he wiped the rain from his eyes. “Come on; get inside!” He hissed the words, and this time he was grateful to be alone.

He was always alone now; he would be alone for the rest of time. His family didn’t need him, didn’t want him. He’d done enough; he knew that much by looking at Hayley, at the strange, slow way her sightless eyes drifted about the room, at the painful seizures that attacked her body every moment she was awake.

Yes, he’d done quite enough for his family; they were far better off without him.

What he hadn’t counted on was the pain. An aching emptiness that robbed him of his ability to think or feel or sleep. Even his ability to practice medicine. Of course, all that changed a few days after Hayley’s accident, when he first discovered the pills.

For years he’d known about them. A number of med-school students lived on them, popping them between class like so many jelly beans. Med students and—once he started practicing medicine—several doctors, too. Doctors who’d started on the meds to lessen the stress, the anxiety that came with the job. A few of them, doctors Peter knew personally, couldn’t stop, couldn’t get through the day without the magic of Vicodin or Percocet.

“Aren’t you worried?” he’d asked one of his colleagues once, half a dozen years ago. “You know the risks . . . you more than the patients.”

“Listen, Peter, I have one bit of advice for you.” The doctor had lowered his voice, a fine layer of sweat on his brow. “Don’t start, okay? Don’t ever start.”

Another time he’d asked a different doctor what the attraction was. “They’re addictive; they’ll kill you.”

The man’s response haunted Peter to this day. He’d squared his shoulders, leveled his gaze at Peter, and said, “Without them, life will kill me first.”

Five days after Hayley’s drowning, Peter knew exactly what the man meant. By then he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, couldn’t think. Couldn’t live a minute of life without replaying the scene in his mind and changing the ending:

He’s watching baseball with DeWayne when Hayley and Maddie rush into the living room and ask him to take off their life jackets.

“Girls.” He would grin at them, raising a single finger in their direction. “Now what did Mommy say?”

The girls would give up, aware of their mother’s rule, and Maddie would do the talking. “Keep the life jackets on.”

“That’s right.” And Peter would walk the girls into the bathroom, find a towel, and dry them off so the jackets wouldn’t drip water in Aletha’s kitchen. When he’d rubbed the water off, he’d kiss their foreheads—first Maddie’s, then Hayley’s—and tell them to go have cake. “But whatever you do, keep the life jackets on.”

Or a different scenario:

Maddie and Hayley come into the living room and ask to have the life jackets off, and Peter agrees. “But only while you’re eating cake. If you want to swim again, you need the jackets. Otherwise you can’t go in the backyard at all.”

Twenty minutes later, Hayley would scamper into the room carrying her life jacket. “Here, Daddy. I wanna swim again.”

Or still another possibility: fifteen minutes would pass. Not twenty or thirty, but fifteen. And he’d realize it had been too long since he’d seen the girls. “Just a minute,” he’d tell DeWayne. “I’m going to check on the girls.”

He’d trot up the stairs and find them playing with Barbies, Hayley pouting against the far wall. He would drop to his knees and hold his hands out to her. “What’s the matter, Hayley . . . why so sad?”

And she would come to him and wrap her arms around his neck, peering at him with those big blue eyes of hers. “I wanna swim, and Maddie won’t go with me.”

“Maddie wants to play with the girls, but I have an idea.”

“What?”

“How ’bout we get your life jacket on and I take you out in the pool. I’ll sit at the edge and watch you swim, okay?”

The story lines were endless. Playing over and over in his mind until he thought he might go crazy. Why hadn’t he listened to Brooke in the first place, kept their life jackets on just in case they went back outside? Couldn’t he have been more clear about the importance of staying inside as long as the jackets were off? Wasn’t there something else he could have said, something more specific that would’ve kept Hayley from going outside? And why had he sat there so long watching television when he had no idea where the girls were? What would it have hurt for him to check on them, offer to take Hayley swimming so she wouldn’t have to go alone?

He had no answers for himself, and that only added to the pain. A constant buzzing in his brain, a breathless, pounding ache that knew no end. Once that first week he’d tried drinking. He bought a fifth of vodka and drank half of it while watching
SportsCenter.

The drink numbed him for sure, but it also knocked him out. When he came to the next morning, vomit covered his bedsheets and the pain was worse than ever. It was the next day at work that he hit on the idea of pain pills. At two o’clock that afternoon he had visited Hayley again and checked her charts. Her brain-scan results were horribly poor, pointing to a vegetative life. It was the first time he’d been forced to realize the truth about the accident.

Hayley was gone forever.

He would never again see her playing with her doll on her bedroom floor, never hear her singing songs with Maddie, never see her run or skip or write her name. She was gone.

As he left the hospital that day, he had turned into the pharmacy and found his old friend behind the counter. The rest had been little more than a blur.

The medicine didn’t make him feel loopy or inebriated the way the vodka had. Rather it gobbled up the anxiety. Peter knew it was working because the next day—his first full workday under the influence of painkillers—he noticed something that hadn’t happened since Hayley’s drowning.

He’d gone fifteen minutes without thinking about it.

Fifteen minutes that felt like a lifetime, and a strange giddy feeling rose up in Peter. If he could take an occasional pill now and then and limit his visits to Hayley, he might get through an hour or two of life the way it used to be.

Even with all his medical training, Peter couldn’t believe the slippery slope he’d been on since that first day. How one pill a day had become two, and two had become four, and four had become more than he cared to count.

He blinked and the recent past collided with the present. Why wouldn’t the key fit into the front door, and how long had it been since he’d had a pill? Finally—after four attempts—Peter slipped the key into the hole and the door opened. He stumbled in and dropped his things on the chair. These days he carried a bottle in his pocket, but now it was empty. Something he hadn’t noticed until he was halfway home from work.

That was okay; he’d planned ahead. Weeks ago he’d made up another patient name, had the pharmacist fill another prescription, one he could keep at home in case of a moment like this. In case he was suddenly out of pills.

“Okay . . . where are you . . . ?”

The kitchen swayed and the floor buckled beneath his feet. Betty had warned him about this. She was his head nurse, his right hand at the office. A week after he started taking the pills she’d walked in on him as he was taking one. Her face had gone pale and she’d politely stepped out of the office.

But later she had come to him and told him how it was. “My son was addicted.” She kept her voice low, not willing to betray his secret. “You need more to make it work, Dr. West. More all the time. And before you know it, you’re hooked and it’s too late. My son said the floor would move beneath his feet if he didn’t get his fix.” She searched Peter’s face. “I know you’re going through a hard time, but please . . . don’t make it worse.”

Her words had come too late.

This past week he’d been taking one pill every hour on the hour. The whole time he convinced himself that he was okay as long as he wasn’t taking more than one. But four pills over four hours was a problem, no matter what he told himself.

He tried to hold steady, tried not to sway, but the kitchen floor wouldn’t stay still. The vitamin cupboard was at the far end of the room near the stove, and in that moment it felt like a world away. Peter held his hands out and took small shuffling steps until he was close enough to grab the edge of the counter and use it to keep his balance.

“Where are you?” He shouted the words, and the sound of his voice banged against his conscience, amplifying the steady, searing pain in his head. With a quick grab, he opened the cupboard door and swept his hand across the first shelf. A dozen bottles fell onto the counter, and his fingers fast-danced over them, searching the labels, looking for the pain meds.

The room began to spin and he felt himself shaking harder, faster. His heart raced and he wondered,
Is this it?
Would he die right here in the kitchen? He squeezed his eyes shut, and when he opened them the room was no longer spinning.

Reason interrupted the moment.

He was a doctor; he had taken classes on pain management, hadn’t he? He could think of something else, outlast the pain at least until he found the pills. His heart rate slowed, but then picked up speed again. He knocked another row of bottles off the second shelf and searched them with quick, frantic movements.

Vitamin A, calcium, vitamin C . . .

His legs were weaker than before, and without any sense of control, he dropped to the floor. Tears filled his eyes. “Help me!” He still wore his dress shirt and tie, still had on his white jacket, but his mind wouldn’t tell him what do next. “Help me . . . I need the pills . . .”

It wasn’t a prayer really. He hadn’t spoken to God since that awful day in Hayley’s hospital room. But he needed help from somewhere, whoever or whatever was willing to give it to him. Then, in that instant, he spotted something on the floor, tucked against the floorboard. An amber bottle with a white label, half full of pills. A bottle of—

Could it be? Was it?

He snatched at the bottle and tried to read the label, but his hands were moving too hard for him to get a good look. That and the fact that the floor was still moving. With every ounce of his remaining strength he used both hands and his knees to steady the bottle. Then—and only then—could he read the label and see that . . .

Yes! Yes, he’d found them.

It took another minute to remove the lid and struggle to his feet. He had two pills beneath his tongue minutes before he found the strength to pour a glass of water. At first—weeks ago—the taste had been bitter enough to make him gag. But water wasn’t always available when he needed a pill, so he’d learned to take them dry.

By the time he brought the water to his mouth, the pills were long since dissolved, their effects already playing out through his system. “Steady, Peter . . . stay steady.” He gripped the edge of the kitchen sink and waited.

Three minutes, five . . . seven . . . ten.

And gradually, moment by moment, everything was right with the world.

The kitchen floor no longer spun, the walls were stable, and he gave a shake of his head. A shudder passed over him as he considered what might have happened if he hadn’t found the pills. But no matter; at least he’d found them.

Sweat dripped down his face, so he took off his white coat, his tie, and white button-down shirt. Even his undershirt felt too hot, but he left it on. He didn’t like the way his ribs stuck out when the shirt was off.

He looked around and realized the mess he’d made near the vitamin cupboard.
Crazy,
he told himself.
Crazy to get that bad off.
He was picking up everything, putting the bottles back where they belonged when the clock caught his eye. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He wasn’t hungry; the pills took care of that, too. But he needed to eat. Otherwise he wouldn’t have the strength to get through another day.

A quick tuna-fish sandwich and an apple—that would take care of the food problem. He ate without tasting a bite, and then headed into the TV room and flipped on ESPN. It was football season—Peter’s favorite. He sat motionless, his mind numb from the meds, content to be consumed with midseason statistics and predictions about who would make the play-offs. Two hours passed and his hand began to twitch. First a little, then enough so that both arms were shaking.

This time he was ready.

He pulled the bottle of pills from his pocket and popped two more. Now that he’d done it once, two pills wasn’t a problem, not really. Not when he’d waited two hours between doses. What was the difference? One pill every hour or two pills every two hours. He wasn’t addicted, of course not. An addicted person would need more per hour, right?

Once the pills began working, his arms fell still against his body and he grew tired. Too tired to leave the chair or do anything but hit the remote and turn off the television. He could sleep in the recliner; he’d done it often that month.

It wasn’t until he was almost asleep that something occurred to him. He hadn’t thought about his family once that entire night, not since his last appointment at work. No images of the wife he’d pledged a lifetime to, or the father who had walked out of his life when he was just a boy, or the cheery little Maddie who had always played checkers with him.

And most of all, not a single thought about Hayley and how she should’ve been upstairs dreaming by now, tucked into her own bed next to her favorite doll. Her blonde hair should’ve been fanned out across the pillow, that precious smile of hers still on her lips.