Everything happened so quickly that Miranda didn’t know how to make sense of it. Over the incredible noise of the fire there was a crash and a shriek and a form came hurtling from the third-story window. Several firefighters ran to where the body landed at the edge of the circular driveway. Mick, who had heard the call on his radio scanner and already shown up, held her and Portia back forcibly. “You are not going over there. There’s nothing we can do in any case.”
Before Miranda could see what was happening with the still figure on the ground, more commotion erupted at the front door of the house. Paramedics with a stretcher rushed to one of the waiting ambulances. “Grandfather,” Portia gasped. “Mick, can we go over there?”
“Sure. But don’t get in their way. It looks like they’ve started oxygen already.” Portia grabbed Miranda’s hand and they watched the paramedics from a few feet away.
“Is he conscious? Can we talk to him?” Miranda divided her attention between listening to the paramedic’s answer and seeing if Gregory would follow the others out of the house. Please, God, she prayed, keep him safe. He’s so precious to me.
“I’m afraid he’s not conscious,” the paramedic told Portia. “Would you have any idea what kind of medication he might have taken in the last several hours?”
“No, but his nurse…” Portia trailed off. “No, I don’t know. And even if you contact his doctor from the hospital, I’m not sure everything in his system will be his prescriptions in the right amount.”
“Please take care of him the best you can,” Miranda said as they loaded her grandfather into the ambulance.
“Of course,” the paramedic answered.
Miranda turned to look at the door and saw what she’d been hoping for. Greg and her father crossed the threshold. Greg looked more willing than her father. One of the firefighters guided Greg toward the other ambulance and a crew member helped him in. In a very short time they were examining Greg’s shoulder.
“It’s a deep graze,” Miranda heard one of them say. “Luckily nobody’s going to have to find a bullet. Start an IV and we’ll get him to the E.R.”
“Can I say goodbye?” Miranda asked.
At first the ambulance crew looked as if they were going to say no, but then the woman on the team, looking down at Gregory and Miranda, relented.
“Five minutes at the most. Then we toss you out of the unit and take him to the hospital,” she admonished.
Miranda climbed up into the ambulance and sat down next to Greg.
“I’m okay,” he said, trying to reassure her. Miranda wasn’t convinced by his statement. His pale face and slight shivering didn’t make him look okay to her and she told him so.
Greg tried to lift his head off the gurney but didn’t have much success. “Have you seen Peg? Did she…was she…”
“She didn’t make it,” Miranda told him, looking over to where the firefighters covered her gently with a sheet. “Did she tell you where Mama was before she jumped?” Miranda had to assume Peg had jumped. If not, it had to have been Ronald that sent her through the window.
“No. I’m sorry, Miranda. I feel we failed you in that respect.”
She brushed the hair from his forehead and kissed him gently there. “You haven’t failed me in any way, Gregory. Now let them take you to the hospital and fix your shoulder. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“All right.” Greg looked as if he wanted to say something more but didn’t have the energy. Miranda obeyed the paramedics and got out of the ambulance, which pulled out while she made her way back to her family.
Ronald stood surrounded by his daughters and his sister, who were all talking at once. He clasped Trudy’s locket in one hand and seemed to be focused on that alone.
“I can’t believe she got this far and we won’t be together. I’ll never get to tell her how much I love her, or ask her to forgive me for all that went wrong.”
Miranda had never seen her father cry before and it shocked her.
Nothing is impossible with God. The words rang in her head as clearly as if someone beside her had spoken them out loud. “We need to pray,” she said firmly.
Winnie nodded, and all of them gathered even tighter and held on to each other. Miranda had one hand on her father’s shoulder, and her other arm around Portia, and she could feel Juliet’s arm around Portia from the other side.
“Dear Lord, help us. Help us trust in You at this dark time, and let us know that You are here with us no matter what happens. We have been searching for our mother for so long, and at every step You’ve reassured us that she is alive and in Your care. Now we hold this hard evidence that she’s here, so close to us, Lord. Your word says that nothing is impossible for You. Please, Lord, help us do the seemingly impossible and find her before she dies in this fire.”
Juliet looked up to the third-story windows where smoke had started pouring out along one side of the house. She opened her mouth to add to the prayer but instead gave a strangled cry. “Someone’s up there. Look.”
They all focused to where she was pointing. “That’s the attic storage room behind Father’s quarters,” Winnie said.
“It opens through Peg’s bedroom. That has to be where they put Trudy.” Ronald shook off their hands. “I’m going up there.”
“No, don’t. Tell the firefighters. They have the right gear,” Bianca insisted. But it was too late. Ronald had already run to the house and fought his way through the doorway past the firefighters.
Bianca and Miranda went to the captain in charge and told him what was happening. He immediately got on a radio and issued orders to those in the house to apprehend Ronald and go to the third floor where they’d seen movement.
Miranda’s sisters all gathered together again, praying feverishly for safety for their parents. It felt so odd to her to mention both her mother and father in the same breath with prayers for deliverance. “How long has it been?” she asked, sure that at least half an hour had gone by since Ronald had plunged into the house.
“Ten minutes,” Portia said, her voice flat. Just then a knot of people came out of the house, with three firefighters surrounding Ronald.
The sight of him with a frail figure in his arms, blond hair streaming with water as he cradled the slight woman, finally made Miranda’s knees give way. She sank down on the grass in tears and Bianca hugged her. “Tell me she’s alive” was all she could choke out. Her sister nodded and hurried over to the spot where paramedics had taken Trudy from Ronald’s arms and were administering oxygen to both of them.
The sight of people giving her mother aid made Miranda get up and follow her sisters and Winnie. She was beginning to wonder how many rescue units they had in the county to be able to call upon; two had already picked up patients bound for the hospital, and now there was a third where Trudy was being gently laid on a gurney and treated. She looked paler than the soot-smudged tan blanket someone had wrapped around her in the house, and her eyes were closed. Still, she was alive and that gave Miranda hope.
“I found her,” rasped a voice behind her. Miranda turned to see her father, his dark hair singed even darker, pushing away the oxygen mask an EMT tried to put on him. “I need to talk to my daughters. Leave me alone.”
“We can talk later at the hospital. Right now they need to make sure you’re not badly injured. You should have let the firefighters go in there,” Bianca told him, tears in her eyes.
“No time,” Ronald choked out. The sound of his voice made Miranda’s throat ache. “Besides…I had to tell her…so many things.”
“And you did, Father.” Miranda leaned down to where he sat and gave her father a genuine, loving hug. “We’re so proud of you, and so thankful that you both came out of there alive.”
“I’m glad. I’ve been a terrible father…but at least I did this…” His body shook with choking coughs and finally Ronald allowed the medics to treat him. Within minutes Miranda and her sisters were huddled together again, watching an ambulance drive away carrying both of their parents.
“We can’t do anything here,” Winnie said shortly. “The firefighters will save as much as they can, and it will be hours before anyone else can possibly go in there, if we go back at all today. At least at the hospital we can watch and pray where we’re needed.” And like a general marshalling her troops, Winnie put things in order so that half an hour later they huddled in a waiting room at Stoneley Memorial Hospital. Miranda looked around her and decided she was about to learn the real meaning of the word vigil.
“Are you sure you should be up and around like this?” Winnie, hands on hips, asked Gregory what Miranda wanted to ask him. He still looked pale and a bit unsteady.
“I didn’t sign out against medical advice,” he said, which struck Miranda as a cryptic response.
“That sounds like whoever treated you told you to go home and rest for several days, but instead here you are back at the hospital on the same day that you got shot.” From the look on his face, she could tell that she’d hit the mark. “So why don’t you at least sit down with us here, Gregory. I don’t want to feel responsible for you passing out.”
“I’m the only one who would take responsibility for that. And I wasn’t shot. Even the doctors in the E.R. said it was more like a graze or a deep scratch that just happened to be caused by a bullet.”
“Just happened to be caused?” Winnie’s eyebrows were nearly in her hairline and Miranda knew she mirrored her aunt’s reaction.
“Okay, so maybe that is a little argumentative. Besides, I wouldn’t have felt right staying at home when I knew what was happening here. Even if you weren’t here, your family is a part of my church and you’ve just lost your home and you have two family members hospitalized.”
“Three,” Miranda said softly. “Father found Mama, and she’s alive. Greg’s eyes grew wider than she’d ever seen them before.
“I believe I will take you up on that offer to sit down. How about you tell me everything that happened after I left to come here?”
It took Miranda, Winnie and Portia more than half an hour to do just that. Somewhere in the middle of the conversation Winnie got up and made sure everyone who wanted it had a cup of tea in hand. Just about the time they came to the close of the story, Bianca arrived in the waiting room to add to the information.
“Okay, I finally got hold of Delia. She is catching the first flight possible and should be here tomorrow. Shaun is going to stay there for a few days and help her lone employee keep the shop going so that Delia won’t worry as much.” Miranda knew that Delia’s surf shop in Hawaii was what kept her sister going. To lose it now would be devastating. She thanked God again for the wonderful men He had sent into her sisters’ lives.
“Is there any more word from the fire department?” Miranda wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She couldn’t dwell on all that might have been lost in the fire: virtually every piece of clothing she owned, the chapbook order she’d almost finished, and much of her own poetry as well. But then, none of that mattered too much beside the fact that Trudy was alive and restored to them.
“The fire is out. It didn’t consume the whole house, but a lot of the damage was to the back of the house. Peg seems to have poured gasoline or something else just as flammable up the back stairs and set a series of small fires.” Bianca shuddered and Miranda went to her sister and hugged her.
“You need to sit down, too, and have Winnie get you a cup of tea. We need to stick together and be with each other through all of this.”
“Always the mother hen,” Bianca said, but with more generosity than usual. “You may be able to give that job up soon, you know.”
The realization that her sister could be right made joy and hope warm Miranda all over again. Little bursts of those feelings had caught her by surprise for hours, ever since her father came out of the house carrying Mama in his arms. “How much longer do you think it will be before they let us in there?”
Bianca seemed to know already where “there” was for Miranda. “I asked one of the critical-care nurses on my way back here. It could still be a couple hours. After twenty-three years you’d think a few hours would be nothing.” Her wry smile confirmed that those hours would be hard waiting.
By the time several doctors came to confer with Miranda and her sisters, it was after two in the morning and several family members had stretched out with blankets on the sofas and recliners in the family waiting room. Tate had come by, urging Winnie and some of the girls to go home with him and sleep in the guest rooms, but nobody was willing to leave. When he found out that Howard was on life support and had never regained consciousness, and that Ronald and Trudy were both being treated, he conceded that leaving might be a bad idea.
The doctor who briefed them was serious but not grim. “Your mother has a lot of problems. Fortunately the smoke-inhalation damage she suffered is minimal, and she has no burns. But from what I understand she’s been unwillingly sedated for quite some time with a combination of drugs no doctor would prescribe together.”
Rissa was the one to speak first. “Does this mean there might be brain damage?”
“We hope not. It’s too soon to tell. Right now she’s weak and slightly confused, but alert enough to talk to you. From what she tells me it’s a meeting everyone has been waiting a long time for.”
“That, Doctor, is the understatement of the year.” Bianca was the one to take charge and lead everyone into the critical-care cubicle where their mother lay on the bed. Her pale hair had been washed and brushed, and the smudges of ash and soot were gone from her thin face.
“I’ve dreamed of this moment for so many years. It’s what kept me alive in the worst of times,” Trudy said, unable to check her tears. She looked at the women flanking her bed on both sides and Miranda tried to imagine what she was seeing. How did the mind handle remembering young children who now stood there as adults?
Trudy looked down at the blanket covering her, where all her daughters had unconsciously put a hand on or near her body. Then she looked up straight into Miranda’s eyes. “Where’s Delia? Please tell me she’s alive and well. Genie and that other woman were always telling me they’d killed one of you, and I prayed they were lying to me.”
Miranda felt an overpowering presence of God’s spirit in the room. “They were wrong, Mama. We’re all fine. Delia lives in Hawaii now and it’s going to take most of a day for her to get here. But she’s well, and she’s married. Her husband Shaun is staying behind and watching her surf shop while she comes here.”
“Okay, if nobody else is going to ask, how do you know who’s who?” Juliet looked mystified.
Trudy reached out and took both of Juliet’s hands in hers. “I never forgot any of you, Juliet. Children always stay in a mother’s heart. Even though I haven’t seen you since you were only a few months old, you’re the easiest to identify. You were the only one who had my green eyes.” Trudy swallowed hard. “There’s something I need to confess to you about that.”
“I know, Mom. And so does everybody else.”
“I’m sorry for the pain that must have caused you. I can’t imagine that Ronald was kind about it.” She closed her eyes for long enough that Miranda wondered if she’d gone to sleep.
“We should let you rest. We’ll be outside when you feel like talking again.”
Trudy smiled. “That will be wonderful.” She closed her eyes again and her daughters left the room. Miranda could tell that her sisters were as reluctant to leave as she was.
“We need to see how Father and Grandfather are doing,” Miranda said. “Maybe Gregory can get more information than we could. I imagine he’s at the hospital often to visit people. He must have connections.”
When they got back to the family room, Miranda went to talk to Gregory only to find him sound asleep leaning back on one of the cushions of a bench. After everything he’d been through, she couldn’t wake him.
Bianca, who had assumed her attorney role and taken charge since they arrived at the hospital, was the one to find the right doctors. “I know that my grandfather has a living will. But it may be a while before we can produce a copy. Between the fire and our father being incapacitated as well…”
“That’s a more pressing subject,” the doctor told them. “I’m the pulmonary specialist for both your father and grandfather, and of the two I’d say you have more to worry about with your father. The smoke damage to his lungs is severe. The next twenty-four hours will decide whether he lives or not.”
The shock radiating through the room felt like a living thing. “We need to be informed every hour, then,” Bianca told him. The others voiced a muffled chorus of agreement.
“Even more often if necessary. We’ll do all we can, and he seems to be a fighter.”
“You have no idea,” Miranda said, thankful for the first time in her life for her father’s stubborn disposition.
By daybreak it was apparent that it was only his strong constitution and stubborn streak keeping Ronald alive. “I need Trudy,” he wrote on the pad he had insisted be brought to him. Having a way to write was the only reason he agreed to the breathing tube the doctors insisted he needed. Even then he wouldn’t agree to the pain medications they wanted him to have, or to be transferred to a larger hospital where they had even more advanced treatment. “Too much to do,” he wrote and underlined.
This was such a different man from the one Miranda was used to seeing. It pained her that she might only get to know him for a day or two. After reading his request for her mother, Miranda decided it was time to wake Greg and ask his help in dealing with this situation. He looked startled for a moment. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Over three hours. I couldn’t stand to wake you.”
He smiled at her. “You’re too kind. If you needed me, you shouldn’t have let me sleep this long.”
“I let you sleep until I really needed you, Gregory. I think we’re at a point where you need to get involved.” She told him about her father’s medical status, and his request to have Trudy brought to his bedside. “I want somebody else with me when I ask her what she wants to do.”
Greg took a deep breath, looking thoughtful. “Okay. I can do that. Are you prepared to accept your mother’s answer no matter which way it goes?”
“Definitely. But if she refuses to see him, I’m going to need help going back to Father to tell him that.”
Miranda had a hard time reading Greg’s expression. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” he told her.
After their journey of the last twenty-four hours together, she wasn’t about to argue with him. And even though Miranda had her reservations, her mother didn’t seem to have any. When Greg broke the news to her that Ronald might not live more than another day or two, she insisted on going to him. So after prayer and discussion with Gregory, and a bit of a fight with the nursing staff, Trudy was wheeled into Ronald’s ICU cubicle. Miranda sat in the waiting room outside the ICU with Greg, gripping his hand and praying for her parents.