Time for Grace (16 page)

“You didn’t want to ride with him, did you?” Sarah asked his sister.

“Yes, but you belong with him. I’m just his big sister. Take good care of my little brother. I’ll call Mom and the others. And Sarah.
This is a blessing.
Kip just got a second chance. I’m sure of it.”

Sarah couldn’t understand why Miriam thought Kip having what looked like a massive heart attack at age thirty-two was a blessing. But all the way to the hospital as she sat in front next to the driver she prayed things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Kip kept craning his neck so he could see her and she kept smiling and telling him he’d be fine. But, Miriam’s strange statement notwithstanding, Sarah didn’t see how.

S
arah hopped down out of the ambulance to meet Kip as they unloaded him. She looked up at the hospital. It wasn’t as large as the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania that sat next to CHOP but the ambulance driver told her it was a premier heart hospital of the region.

Kip reached for her hand as they pulled the gurney out of the ambulance. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I thought we’d get some time together. I wasted what little we had.”

“Kip, stop. They’re going to help you.”

Looking sad, he shook his head. “There’s something wrong. I feel really weak and my heart feels weird. I think I’m dying, Sarah.”

“Kip, don’t talk that way,” she said and prayed she was right. Still holding his hand, Sarah walked beside the gurney, listening with half an ear as the paramedics gave their report to a doctor who met them as they continued to roll him into the emergency ward.

Sarah looked back at Kip when his hand went limp in hers. “Kip!” she shouted, drawing the attention of the paramedics and the young woman doctor. She put a stethoscope to his chest and frowned. “Code Blue. Let’s move, guys. Get him into Bay Two. The crash cart’s already in there. Page Doctor Muller,” she told a nurse as they rushed past.

Sarah tried to follow but the nurse stepped in the way. “You don’t want to be in there. I know you think you do but you need to let them do their thing.” The nurse grabbed a phone that hung outside the cubicle and paged Doctor Muller as ordered.

Sarah stood in the hall staring at the door, praying that once again they’d get his heart started. But she also recognized that his heart could only sustain just so much damage. She loved Kip too much to want him to live as a cardiac cripple, grounded and unable to soar in the sky the way he loved.

It was the hardest prayer she had ever prayed but she put her hand on the closed door and whispered brokenly, “Your will, Lord. Not mine.”

She stood there, praying with her hand on the door for what felt like an hour but was probably more like ten minutes. Then finally the door swung open and Sarah stepped back as the doctor emerged.

“We’ve got him stabilized,” she said and put her hand out to shake Sarah’s hand. “I’m Doctor Michelle Kane. Try to relax. I’ve called in the biggest guy in the area in the field of cardiac intervention. If anyone can help your husband, it’s him.”

“Fiancé,” Sarah explained and felt a tear roll onto her cheek, as she added, “for all of ten minutes.” She dashed away the tears. “All the men in his family die young. He thought he had a few more years,” she said.

The doctor looked sharply at her. “Wait a minute. All?” She motioned with her hands, encouraging Sarah to add more. “Come on. Tell me everything you know.”

“You think it could be important?”

“If I’ve learned one thing working with Doctor Muller, it’s that the most insignificant information can solve a mystery and we have a whopper here with your Kip.”

Sarah was surprised the doctor found heart attacks a mystery even as young as Kip was. It was unusual but not unheard of. “I don’t understand. What’s mysterious about a heart attack?”

“I don’t know for sure but the complete absence of pain indicates this
isn’t
a heart attack. We’ve already drawn blood to check for enzymes but dollars to donuts it’ll come up negative. And I have a tech doing an ultrasound of the heart right now. I’m hoping it’ll show no damage.”

Hope surging through her, Sarah tried to remember everything either Kip or Miriam had told her about the history. “Okay, Kip tried to find out what might be wrong but the doctors he saw never found anything wrong in his tests. It really frustrated Kip because the same thing happened with his dad and uncle. Kip believes he’ll die before he turns forty the way they did. It happened with his grandfather and great-grandfather, too. Both his father and uncle saw doctors who said they were fine. His uncle saw one in the morning and was dead before the afternoon was over. Kip’s sister said their father was in bed and when they went to wake him in the morning he was dead. His uncle seemed to have laid down for a nap on the sofa. She said their autopsies were inconclusive—whatever that means.”

Doctor Kane nodded. “He’s being monitored right now and that may confirm what I’m starting to think is going on.” She took Sarah’s hand and squeezed it. “If you’re a praying woman, pray that I’m right.

“Why don’t you go clean up those tear stains. I have a call to make to Doctor Muller. Then we’ll go in and see Kip together. We’ll probably be taking him off for some tests and such after that.”

Sarah nodded, rushed into the ladies’ room, washed her face and tried to cover the ravages of her tears with cool water. After running a comb through her hair she tore back out.

Doctor Kane hung the phone on the cradle, closed a folder she hadn’t had before and turned toward her as she approached. “Ready?” she asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” Sarah said. “Has anyone told his sister anything?”

Doctor Kane nodded. “I sent word out to them that he’s stable. Let’s go.”

Sarah took a deep breath, plastered a big smile on her face and followed Doctor Kane into the small room. Kip was sitting up in bed wearing a hospital gown and over his head was a flat-screen monitor showing heart rate, blood pressure and a variety of other wavy lines running across the surface. “You look better,” she told him.

“Hey,” he said and she could tell he was trying for a light tone. “If things keep going this way, we may set a record for the shortest engagement in history. The Lord keeps trying to take me and these guys keep dragging me on back.”

Sarah felt her smile waver but she kept it in place as best she could. “That’s probably because I told them I’ve only just wangled a proposal out of you and I want my happily ever after. You’re not getting away this easily.”

Doctor Kane spoke up then. “We’re not giving up, Kip. Don’t you,” she ordered. “Just in case I’m right about what I think may be wrong with you, I’ve given you a medication that will hopefully stave off another episode.”

The door opened again and a tall balding man in a long white lab coat with glasses perched on the edge of his nose bustled into the room. “Is this the mystery man I’m hearing so much about?” he asked.

Kip put his hand out and the doctor shook it, introducing himself as Doctor Winton Muller. Doctor Kane introduced Sarah as Kip’s fiancé and he shook her hand and told her not to look so worried. Then he picked up an EKG printout and pointed something out to Doctor Kane who smiled and nodded. Then Muller looked up with a wide smile.

“Kip Webster, you have no idea what a lucky young man you are. This brilliant young woman is a student of mine. She just happened to be passing through the E.R. as the paramedics radioed that they were bringing you in. It looks to me as if she may have neatly solved the mystery I hear is in your family.”

“There’s no mystery except why we die. We still do.”

Muller pulled a rolling food tray over to the bed and laid the EKG printout on it. He pointed to an irregular line at the bottom.

Sarah stepped closer to the bed to see what it was the doctor was pointing out and Kip took her hand, holding tightly. She looked at him, then pushed a stray lock of his hair off his forehead before she glanced down at the paper the doctor had spread out.

“This is an indication of an extra electrical pathway running between the upper and lower chamber of your heart.” Doctor Muller said. “It’s called a Wolff-Parkinson-White pathway. In your case, I imagine you’ve inherited the tendency considering the family history your fiancé gave Doctor Kane. In most folks who have this it’s not dangerous or even all that bothersome. For a very few—you and I’m thinking your ancestors—it can be deadly.

“What it usually causes is a fast heart rate. In you, it’s causing a severely abnormal heart rhythm that then caused a cessation of blood flow from your heart to your body. Basically it’s causing your heart to short circuit.”

“Doctor Kane said she put me on a medication. Will that cure it or stop it?” Kip asked, sounding hopeful again at last.

“It could help but I have to tell you it’s a tough medication on the body and it might not be all that reliable a treatment in the long run.”

Kip’s shoulders slumped and he expelled a disappointed sounding breath. “Then there’s nothing surefire?” he asked.

The doctor grinned. “Son, it’s moments like this that I live for. We have a procedure that doesn’t just treat it. It’s almost always a complete cure. What I’ll do is thread a catheter through your blood vessels into your inner heart. There will be an electrode at the end of the catheter that I’ll heat and ablate—that’s destroy—a small spot of heart tissue. That will block the extra pathway. It’s relatively low risk and highly effective.”

“So, when would you do this?” Kip asked; his tone spoke primarily of confusion.

Both doctors looked at each other, then Muller checked his watch. “You have anything penciled in at midnight?”

“You would do it that soon?” Sarah asked.

Kip smiled a little sadly and squeezed her hand. “I think what the doctor means, sweetheart, is he’d better fix it now before my heart stops again.”

“Oh.” Sarah’s heart fell as she nodded. Did that mean they might be out of time together?

“We’ll take you up in a few minutes. You two visit while we go check to make sure the cath lab is all set for us. I’ll see you up there. Your fiancé can wait in the green room just down the hall from the lab. Any other family members can wait there with you. Try not to worry. Cardiac caths are extremely routine and this is just a minor change to that routine.”

Sarah felt a smile bloom on her face. He smiled benignly, then nodded to Doctor Kane and left, his long coat once more flapping behind him.

“Someone will be in to have you sign off on the procedure,” Doctor Kane said then.

“Thank you, Doctor. If you hadn’t passed through the E.R. when you did…” Kip said.

“But I did. Sometimes things just happen the way they’re supposed to,” Dr. Kane said and then she was gone too.

And they were alone.

Kip stared at the closed door. He looked dumbstruck. “That’s…that’s it?” he asked, disbelief in his tone.

“I know. I don’t think I’ve ever had such good news seem so impossible.”

“He seemed to know what he’s talking about,” Kip said, sounding a touch more hopeful.

Sarah smiled. “Dr. Kane told me Muller is the leading cardiologist in the region and he specializes in cardiac intervention. I take it to mean he steps in and prevents damage rather than dealing with what happens after damage occurs. Yes, I’d say he knows what he’s talking about.”

“I want to believe it. But this has been hanging over my head for so long…it’s a lot to absorb. You know?”

She nodded.

Kip sat there thinking, staring down at their clasped hands for a few minutes. Then he looked up, smiling broadly. “This isn’t going to kill me. Sarah, we have a real chance to have it all!”

Sarah smiled, then tears welled up in her eyes. “Honestly, I’ve turned into a garden sprinkler! And Miriam’s going to be unbearable after this,” she sniffled. “The last thing she said to me was that this was going to be a second chance for you. I couldn’t imagine a heart attack being a blessing but that’s what she said. And she was right. Because it wasn’t a heart attack at all. Oh, Kip if you hadn’t crashed, the paramedics wouldn’t have been there. If your landing gear hadn’t malfunctioned, you’d have landed and gone home. You’d have fallen asleep,” her voice caught.

“And never woken up—-just like my dad and Uncle Galen.” He pulled her into his arms and hugged her tight.

“Thank you, Lord. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

O
n a day that Kip had never hoped to enjoy, he waited at the end of the Tabernacle’s middle aisle for Sarah.

For his June bride.

And she’d be on her father’s arm. Sarah’s relationship with her parents had strengthened over the last months. Tentative though the connection had been at first, each time Adam and Theresa stepped up to the plate and didn’t disappoint her or Grace, Sarah’s trust in them grew.

Grace had come home in time for Easter, still undersized and on oxygen but bright, happy and raring to go. She already called him Da-da. Only one sound was more precious to his way of thinking and that was the sound of “I love you” on Sarah’s lips.

As sure as he was that this marriage was made in heaven, Kip had insisted on a six-month engagement. He refused to rush her to the altar as her first husband had done. Sarah had agreed that though they were sure of their love it had all happened rather quickly. As far as Kip was concerned it had been a courtship made in heaven as well. There seemed to be nothing they didn’t agree on now that they’d solved the cause of the one and only fight they’d ever had. The one in the coaching office at the school.

The keyboard player changed tunes then, and Miriam and Joy appeared at the end of the aisle to walk forward together. They both wore what Sarah had called basic black cocktail dresses. He knew they were an odd set of witnesses but regardless of convention, his partner was his best friend and his sister had all but adopted his future wife. They beamed their love and support to him, and his love for them made his eyes to mist over.

Sometimes he still couldn’t believe that the shadow of impending death had been lifted from his life. But he was confident it had been. His heart was fine. The extra pathway had been blocked. The surgery had been a complete success. He and Sarah had a long and happy future ahead. He just knew it.

Sarah and her father came into view then and as planned, she carried Grace in her arms. Her mother had made their coordinating dresses so he’d seen a piece of the pale blue silk and the soft white lace that flowed over it. But the sneak peek hadn’t prepared him for Sarah in the finished product.

She nearly stole his breath in the floor-length dress that showed off her small waist and her slender arms with its short cap sleeves. Matching blue satin ribbons and tiny satin roses were woven through her shiny chestnut tresses. Around her neck and at her ears she wore the pearls his grandfather had brought back from China after World War II. His mother had passed them on to Sarah—the wife of one fly-boy to another then another.

“Da-da!” Grace shouted, as she pulled off the headband that matched the ribbons and flowers in Sarah’s hair. He chuckled as his new daughter held out her arms to him, waving her headband like a flag, leaning forward out of Sarah’s arms. She squirmed so much Sarah was clearly having a problem holding on to her in the slippery lacy dress that was so much like her mother’s.

Kip rushed forward and met them halfway as Grace dove into his arms. He laughed as did Sarah, Adam and the rest of those attending. He couldn’t love his new daughter any more if she was his biological child but he couldn’t take his eyes off Sarah. There’d be time for Grace later.

“Who gives this woman?” Jim Dillon asked, starting a ceremony full of love, laughter and a few tears. With God’s blessing, the life he and Sarah had ahead of them would be a lot like their wedding.