Chapter Fourteen

Karissa watched as Malcolm sat propped up on the bed, his face darkening in anger as he listened to Dr. Fairfax. He wore nothing but a pair of white boxer shorts, though his chest and part of his stomach were almost completely covered in protective bandages. His dark chest hair was still visible near the top of the bandages and on the slice of naked belly, and the sight made him seem vulnerable.

Karissa steeled herself against that vulnerability. Nothing else in Malcolm’s appearance—not even the heavy white bandages—so much as hinted at weakness. Except the dark chest curls that suggested intimacy.

“I’m all right,” Malcolm insisted. “I just want to go home.” He swung his right foot off the bed, heavy with a calf-high temporary cast. The doctor had cut the mauled boot off his mangled foot to set it, and when the swelling went down, he’d need to put on a real cast. Karissa shuddered to think what Malcolm’s foot would look like if he’d been wearing his Nikes instead of his boots.

“I’d like to give you a blessing,” Jesse said from his place near the door.

Malcolm shook his head. “I feel fine. No use in bothering the Lord when I don’t need help.” After finishing all the stitches, the doctor had given Malcolm medication for the pain. He did act fine; maybe he really didn’t need help.

“Are you sure?” Brionney asked. “Because your home teacher is waiting out in the hall with the girls.”

“No, really. Thank you, but I feel fine. Like I said, I just want to go home.”

Dr. Fairfax shook his head slowly. “You took some serious hits, Malcolm. I want you to stay overnight at least for observation.”

Malcolm’s face flushed, but he heard the decisive note in the doctor’s voice. He gritted his teeth and hefted his leg back onto the bed. “All right, but tomorrow I leave.”

“We’ll wait for you outside,” Brionney whispered to Karissa.

Karissa didn’t reply except to nod. She’d expected to feel better once she learned Malcolm would be all right, but instead a growing numbness filled her heart, spreading to her entire body. Jesse and Brionney said good-bye to Malcolm.

“Tell the girls not to worry. I’ll see them tomorrow,” Malcolm said as they left.

Karissa clutched at the bed.

“Karissa? Are you okay?” Malcolm’s voice seemed to come from very far away.

Dr. Fairfax turned toward her. Karissa felt him touch her arm, but she was too busy fighting the sudden sharp pain in her abdomen. No! It can’t be, she wanted to scream. They took my blood pressure. They told me I was fine.

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong with you?” Malcolm called out. There was frustration in his voice, a desperation that demanded an answer, but Karissa closed her eyes and the world went black.

* * * * *

She saw the bear again, and though she knew it was a dream, she felt the terror flood her body. The animal was larger than she remembered, its muscles strong and sinewy as it ran toward her. Her mouth opened to scream, but nothing came out. Next to her Malcolm calmly smoked a cigarette, laughing openly at her fear. “I could save you, but I won’t,” he said. She backed away, falling over the rock. For long moments she thought she would never reach the ground, just fall forever. Then the ground came abruptly, knocking the air out of her and breaking something inside far more important.

She scrambled for the gun in her dream, as she had in real life, her hands shaky and dripping with sweat. The smell of terror filled her nostrils—and also the smell of blood dripping from Malcolm’s body. In reality she had prayed at this point, and she did so again in the dream. “Father, help me please if You would. I know I don’t deserve it, but Malcolm and Jesse didn’t commit the sin, I did. Help me save them.” Surely she would never be able to hit the bear, but rather Jesse or her blood-drenched husband. But she fired six times, and each bullet found its way into the bulky body of the bear. Only one hit the animal’s head.

The bear turned to her and said, “Why did you kill me?”

“I didn’t,” she replied. “You ran off.”

“You killed me,” it said. “You didn’t even give me a chance. I would have loved you. I would have made you whole.”

Karissa knew it wasn’t the bear talking then, but the baby.

She awoke and found Brionney by her side, stroking her right arm. “Oh good, you’re awake.”

“What happened?”

“You passed out. From shock, the doctor says.”

“I’m losing the baby, aren’t I?”

Brionney’s smile dimmed. “It’s too soon to tell. You are bleeding, but there’s still a chance that everything is fine.”

Karissa had known, but hearing it made the agony slice through the numbness in her heart. She turned her face away and sobbed. Brionney continued to stroke her arm.

Malcolm appeared in the doorway in a wheelchair, pushed by Jesse and the girls. They greeted her somberly. Brionney stood, balancing her heavy body awkwardly. “We’ll leave you two alone.”

Jesse pushed Malcolm closer to the bed and followed his family out the door. Karissa didn’t speak, but Malcolm reached out to touch her cheek and caught a tear on his fingertip.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“I haven’t lost the baby yet.”

“If you do, we’ll try again.”

Karissa clenched her teeth together and took a hissing breath. “You were out smoking when the bear came,” she said, staring at him. And silently she added, Because you just can’t give up that filthy habit, our child will die. She didn’t say it aloud, though doing so might ease the hurt in her soul.

There were tears in Malcolm’s eyes. “I didn’t know. Please believe me. I wish I could take it back.” His voice was soft and full of sorrow, and despite her anger and aching despair, Karissa felt her heart softening. She was glad someone had given Malcolm a gown, covering his bandages and the hairy chest. She didn’t want to feel anything for him—not pity, and certainly not love.

Sometimes sorry isn’t enough, she thought. How well she knew that lesson! She made her voice calm and without emotion—anything not to give in to the brutal agony in her heart. “Please, I need to be alone. I can’t talk to you now.”

His pain-filled face colored at her words. “What are you saying? That it’s over?”

She didn’t look at him. “I haven’t thought that far,” she said wearily. “I just want to be alone.” If she talked to him now, she might say something she would later regret. Like she now regretted that long-ago decision. Besides, who was she to cast the first stone?

“It was a mistake, Karissa.”

“Please.” She stared at the bed, wanting to help him, but knowing she couldn’t. She was too angry. Too hurt. Too guilty. “I need time.”

If he’d been able to walk, it would have made a great scene for a movie. He could have turned on his heel and thundered out the door, swinging his arms in wounded outrage at her words. As it was, he struggled to roll himself out the door, grimacing in pain. Karissa watched him leave, feeling numb. She had loved him this morning, or at least been committed to loving him, but now she didn’t know what to do.

If only she wasn’t losing the baby. If only he had been stronger.

Soon after Malcolm left, they brought a dinner tray and Karissa ate without relish. For the baby, she knew it was already too late.

She slept again, and when she awoke she could feel that she was not alone. A blonde man sat in the chair by her bed, scrunched over with his head in his hands, his elbows propped on his knees. In the darkness and without the moustache, she almost didn’t recognize him.

“Damon?” she asked.

He started, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I didn’t think you would awake till morning.”

“Were you going to wait?”

He smiled, and Karissa noticed the moustache had hidden a well-formed upper lip that made him more handsome than she remembered. Why had he ever hidden behind a piece of hair?

“I have nowhere else I need to be. Jesse called Anchorage and told me what happened, and I flew in to see how you were.” He laid his hand over hers. “I’m sorry, Kar. I know how much you wanted this baby.”

His sincere attitude brought a breath of relief to her soul. “Thank you, Damon. That makes me feel better somehow.”

“I wanted to be here for you.”

“You shaved your moustache.”

He grinned. “You like it?”

“I do actually. You look younger, and more handsome, I think.”

“I’m glad.” He paused for a second before asking, “How’s your husband?”

“He’ll be fine. But to tell the truth, I’m finding it hard to care right now.” She knew her words must sound callus, even mean, but she felt relieved to get her feelings into the open.

“You don’t love him?” Damon’s dark amber eyes bore into hers.

“He should have been with me when it happened. Not off smoking.”

Damon frowned and sat back in the soft chair. His warm hand drew away from hers, leaving it cold. “Now, as much as I’m not a fan of Malcolm’s, Jesse told me that Malcolm attacked a bear with his bare hands to save you. That shows courage. He could have run away.”

“It should never have happened,” she insisted. “And now,” she began to cry softly, “I’m going to lose my baby.”

He grabbed her hand again, leaning his face close to hers.

“I waited for so long,” she continued through her tears, “and now Malcolm’s ruined everything. I know he didn’t mean for it to happen, but there it is. I’m so angry and mad and sad and hurt. I can’t even face him.”

“I’m so very sorry,” Damon whispered. “I wish I could take it all away.” His voice was gruff, as though he was close to tears himself. “But things’ll get better, Kar. They will. And once things settle down, you won’t be so angry at Malcolm.”

“Maybe.” She sighed. “Thank you for coming. I really appreciate it. You’ve been a good friend.”

“A friend,” he repeated lightly, but his feathery eyebrows drew together as if in pain.

“What’s wrong?” Karissa asked.

A blank look covered his face. “I enjoy being your friend, Karissa. I’ll always be your friend.” He patted her hand in a brotherly fashion. “Why don’t you try to sleep now?”

Karissa closed her eyes obediently. This time she dreamed again of the bear. She cried out, and Damon was there to pat her hand and to comfort her.

When she awoke the next morning, he was still in the room, and so were Jesse and Brionney. “Has she had a blessing?” Damon was asking.

Jesse shook his head. “We offered one to Malcolm, but he said he was fine. I was a little nervous to ask Karissa. I thought she’d ask if she wanted one.”

Damon made an angry noise in the back of his throat. “Karissa isn’t Malcolm, not by a long shot.” He turned to the bed and found her watching him. “I’m giving you a blessing.”

“But you don’t have the priesthood.”

“Yes, I do.”

Karissa looked at Jesse, who nodded. “He was baptized several months ago. He just told us.”

Karissa turned her gaze on Damon. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I—I don’t know.” He cast an embarrassed glance at Jesse and Brionney.

Karissa didn’t need to hear more. “But this is happy news! I may not be active, but I know the Church is true.”

“Then you’ll consent to have a blessing?”

“Of course, though I don’t know if it will matter.” She felt the indifferent mask slip back over her face. Will the Lord help such a vile sinner?

Damon gave the blessing with a minimum of words. Karissa could tell by his voice and expression that he’d not felt any particular way about the baby. She had not expected him to do so; she knew everything depended on her.

“Brionney, will you stay with me?” Karissa asked. The room radiated cold, reflecting the emotion in her heart.

“Of course.”

Jesse left for church, where he’d dropped off the little girls for Primary before coming to the hospital. Damon went with him, seemingly unmindful that his dress pants and short-sleeved white shirt were wrinkled from his night in the chair.

“How long does it usually take?” Karissa said. “I keep waiting, but I haven’t felt any more pain. And the bleeding has stopped.”

“It depends.” In Brionney’s eyes was the memory of her own tragedy. Karissa knew that her friend understood too well her thoughts and feelings, her denials, her thin hopes. “What does the doctor say?”

“He’s going to give me another ultrasound today. To see if the heart is still beating. It was yesterday.”

“We can’t give up hope,” Brionney said.

“I don’t have any hope, not really. It’s as if all this time I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen.” Karissa met Brionney’s eyes and saw that they held a multitude of tears. Strange, she thought. My eyes are dry. The eyes of a sinner.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” Brionney said. “Isn’t it time you trusted someone?”

“You said one day I’d be ready to tell you and that you would still love me. I’m not ready. I can never be ready. But I need to tell someone.”

Brionney leaned against the bed. “I’m listening.”

Now that the moment was here, the words came easily. “I aborted a baby once.” Karissa’s eyes were still dry, but inside, her heart was drowning in the tears she could not shed. Brionney didn’t gasp and pull away as she’d expected but reached out for her hand. Karissa let her take the hand, but she couldn’t watch her friend’s expression. Why wasn’t there a window to stare out of? Instead she focused her gaze on a bouquet of white lilies someone had set by her bed.

“I was sixteen when I found out I was pregnant. I was so afraid my father would kill me, or disown me, or something. I didn’t know what to do. I had absolutely no one I felt I could turn to. Everybody knew our family was above reproach, and my getting pregnant would have damaged our family’s reputation forever. I knew my father would look at me with his terrible eyes and tell me I would go to hell and that he never wanted to see me again.” There was a slight tremble in her voice. “Can you even begin to understand how I felt?”

“I can’t, not really,” Brionney said. “But I know you, and I think you must have felt desperate to do what you did.”

Karissa nodded. “Desperate doesn’t begin to cover what I felt. But I am trying to excuse myself, really. Because I know that being desperate doesn’t change what I did.” Silent tears gathered in her eyes. “A million times I’ve looked back and told myself that there were other options. I could have run away. I could have confided in one of my teachers at church or school. I didn’t have to kill my daughter.”

“It was a girl?”

“They didn’t tell me it was, but I heard two nurses talking, and I looked at my chart when the doctor left the room. They had it written there.”

“What about the father?”

Karissa’s brow furrowed, and she felt a stab of half-remembered pain shoot through her heart. “I loved him. He was a senior at my high school. He played football, and he was really good. He wasn’t a member, and I never dared tell my family I dated him.” She shrugged. “I could never date the boys at church because my father would talk to their parents and to the boys. He would give us a lecture every time we went out, and haul us over the coals if we missed our ten o’clock curfew by even a minute. Ten o’clock on weekends! When everybody else was just beginning to have fun, we had to go home.”

“He probably worried about something happening to you.”

“To me?” The words came as a snort. She met Brionney’s gaze briefly. “No, he worried about what effect we might have on his salvation. I don’t think he really cared about me. Oh, I know that sounds like a child speaking, but even now I can’t think of one time when he said he loved me.”

“Well, surely he wanted your family to make it to heaven.”

“Yes, by any means possible.” Karissa laughed dryly, but tears still filled her eyes. “I used to compare him and Satan; they seemed to have the same motives—glory and force. But do you know something? I never once heard him bear his testimony. I don’t think he really believes. I think he stays in the gospel because it looks good, or perhaps because that was how he was raised.”

Brionney didn’t reply, but Karissa saw the pity on her face. She plucked at the thin blanket on the bed before rushing on. “His name—the boy’s—was Tyler, and I thought he loved me. I thought he would take me away from my life and from my father. But it was just a game for him, I think, and it was over before I found out about the baby. We were together three months.”

“Did he ever know?” Brionney’s voice was soft.

“About the baby? Yes. I went to him later. I was beginning to show, and I was so scared that my father would find out.” Karissa took a deep, shuddering breath. “Tyler seemed glad to see me until I told him. Then he stopped talking all of a sudden. He asked me to meet him the next day at the mall. I did. He gave me money and the address of an abortion clinic. He said not to bother him again, and that if I did, he would deny it, or get a bunch of his friends to say that I was with all of them. I knew that whatever I chose, I was lost. Either my father would kill me, or God would. So I accepted the least scary option at the time. God wasn’t real to me, but my father was. Only—”

“Only what?”

“I know I will have to pay for my sin, and I know that I chose badly, not just for my daughter, but for myself. My father could have killed me or raised a big fuss, but it would have passed. I understand that now. But what I chose instead was to deprive my baby of her chance for life, and myself of a chance for salvation.” Karissa looked at her friend, her eyes wet and pleading. “Can you believe I did that, Brionney? Can you believe I killed a living person?” Her voice broke, but she continued unevenly. “What was I thinking? Sometimes when I’m really busy, I almost forget, but then it all comes back. If Malcolm knew, he’d hate me. I don’t think he could ever forgive me. And why should he, when I don’t know if I can forgive him for not being there when I needed him yesterday?” She rubbed at her eyes with her hands. “Now my second child is gone, and I don’t know if my commitment to our marriage is strong enough to take this second death.”

Brionney gave her a little shake. “You can’t think that way. There’s still a chance your baby will live. Karissa, back then you were just a child, a scared, lonely child. It was a mistake. A terrible, dreadful mistake, but you can’t blame yourself any longer.”

“But I am to blame!” Then more quietly she added, “Please, let’s not talk about it anymore. I’ve told you, and now you understand what this baby means to me. I thought maybe God was going to take pity on me, but I see it’s impossible for me to ever be happy in the way that you and Jesse are.” She felt the tears envelop her, bitter and stinging, sliding down her face. “Why didn’t my father ever bear his testimony?” she asked.

Brionney didn’t know.

* * * * *

After hearing Karissa’s painful confession, Brionney’s heart was in turmoil. Karissa had aborted an innocent baby who had depended on her for life! There was a deeply ingrained part of Brionney that cried out at the injustice and claimed there was no redemption for such a heinous act. To her, pro-choice activists were people who wanted to spend their money and keep it at the same time. They claimed a woman’s choice superseded that of an unborn fetus. But hadn’t they made their choice when they agreed to a physical relationship? Brionney believed emphatically that they had. If you don’t want to be pregnant, she thought, you practice abstinence. That is the choice. Once a baby is conceived, then its rights must come first.

There was another argument, Brionney knew, that women should have the same freedom as men to have relationships without responsibilities. But women, no matter how disguised, were not men, and they had, like it or not, the divine power of bearing children. Why would they want to be equal to men? To lose or transfer this power? Besides her eternal relationship with Jesse, Brionney knew there was no greater or more precious bond than that between mother and child. She remembered the miracle, the extraordinary feeling of newness, the responsibility that came with creating new life. How could someone destroy that glorious, unequaled feeling within the lifeless walls of an abortion clinic?

Yet here was Karissa, silently torturing herself year after year. Not even hell could exact a greater punishment. Compassion instead of condemnation filled Brionney’s heart.

“I have to help her,” she said to herself.

“Is she okay?”

Brionney hadn’t realized she had said the words aloud until Delinda Goodrich spoke to her. “She’s fine, but we won’t know about the baby until later. The doctor’s going to do another ultrasound.”

Delinda simultaneously twisted two thick rings on the blunt index fingers of both hands. She used her thumbs, twirling the precious stones around and around. “Landsakes!” she exclaimed, darting a glance toward Karissa’s door. Her long earrings swung back and forth. “Who could imagine such a thing happening? I can hardly believe it.” She turned her soft eyes on Brionney. “Is there anything we can do? Meals? A blessing?”

Brionney shook her head. “I’m the one who cooks, and it’s ridiculous for you to drive forty minutes when I’m perfectly capable. And she’s had a blessing. We just need to wait now.” Then she thought of something. “Look, Delinda, there may be some way we can help Karissa. She has some questions about God and forgiveness. When you come visiting teaching during the next few months, maybe you could focus on that? You know, forgiveness. Just a little at a time.”

“Is there any particular thing you’d like me to discuss?” Delinda asked intently.

Brionney hesitated. No, she couldn’t breach Karissa’s confidence. “Follow the Spirit. I think Karissa is close to wanting to come back to church. Maybe we can help her.”

Delinda nodded and disappeared into Karissa’s room. As the door closed behind her, Brionney walked to the waiting room to see if Jesse and the girls had finished with church. One of the babies inside her stomach moved against her side, and she rubbed the spot, feeling an unidentified body part. The baby moved again.

This silent communication brought back Karissa’s dreadful secret with undeniable force. Was there any forgiveness for what Karissa had done in her youth? If it was in my power, I would forgive her, Brionney thought. But I could never forgive myself.

It was always harder to forgive yourself.