Susan always found solace in the church—in the quiet beauty of the stained glass windows, in the subtle power of the great hymns, and in the glory of a kind and loving Father who bent His ear toward His brokenhearted children.
She closed her hymnal, selected sheet music to carry home for further study, then snapped her briefcase shut and left her office.
"Susan?" Reverend Silas Cartwright called as she walked past his office. "You still here?"
"Yes. I'm leaving in a little while."
"We don't pay you enough to be working so late."
"I thought I'd go into the sanctuary and ask the Big Boss for a raise."
"Put in a good word for me too."
As she knelt on the burgundy cushion beside the polished altar rail, a vision of Jeffy came to her. He'd looked so frail last night, sleeping with his eyelashes curved onto pale cheeks and his chest barely moving.
"Oh, God." It wasn’t much of a prayer, a dozen hopes wrapped up in two words, but she believed He understood.
How much longer could Jeffy endure? How much longer could she be strong?
She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against her joined hands. At least she had Paul. Was she selfish to pray that she could keep him?
"Susan?"
Paul's voice. At first she thought she'd prayed so hard, she'd conjured him up. But when she turned, he was there, coming toward her with that stride she knew so well, smiling at her in the special way she cherished.
“Paul.” She hurried toward him. “What brings you here?”
She was hoping for good news, hoping he’d come to say Jean had changed her mind, she’d signed the papers and everybody could move forward.
“I just came by to see your sweet smile.”
It wasn’t everything Susan wanted to hear, but for now, it was enough. She moved into his arms and held on.
o0o
Paul was at the fourth-floor nursing station when the alarm sounded.
"Code Blue. Code Blue. SICU."
Panic clutched his gut. Death was stalking the hospital. With the distress signal still ringing in his ears, Paul rushed down the hall toward the Surgical Intensive Care Unit. Nurses hovered over a small form in the front cubical, working frantically.
"Cardiac standstill," Cindy O'Connell said as they made way for him. "Blood pressure zero."
"Epinephrine IV," he said automatically, reaching toward the tiny chest to begin external heart massage. Time spiraled backward, and he was in the emergency room, looking down into the face of his own son. Sweat poured off his face.
He'd let Sonny die.
"Doctor . . ."
He willed his hands to move.
"Patient is Mark Baxter, aortic stenosis due to rheumatic heart disease." Another nurse, Glenda Bland, filled him in as they worked, intubating and connecting to a ventilator. "Aortic valve replacement surgery twenty-four hours ago. Attending surgeon, Dr. Curtis Blake."
They were losing him. The monitor still showed an agonal rhythm. Nausea threatened Paul, and memories so vivid, they might have been made yesterday. He shook his head to clear it. The child was not Sonny, and he was a doctor, by God, and a damned good one.
"Defibrillate," he said.
The tiny body jerked every time the powerful shocks coursed through him.
"Come on, dammit. Come on." Paul put the paddles on the small chest once more. Not only was the child's life at stake, but everything he'd fought for. "I won't let you die."
Glenda swabbed the sweat off Paul's face.
Suddenly the monitor took up a slow, irregular rhythm.
"Got em," Glenda said.
Paul wanted to throw his head back and howl his triumph, but it was too soon to celebrate. He put his stethoscope on the little chest. The murmur was suspicious. He listened again, needing to be sure. The child's life was in his hands. He could afford no mistakes.
Nor could he risk delays.
"Internal bleeding," he said. "Prepare him for emergency surgery."
As he left to scrub he thought of Susan, kneeling at the altar.
Within minutes he was masked and gowned and holding his gloved hand out for the scalpel. The nurse slapped it into his palm. His fingers closed around the cold surgical steel.
It had been months since he'd held the knife, months since he'd used his skills. Had he lost them? Could he make that first cut?
The steel glinted in the bright lights that illuminated the operating room. His tiny patient waited underneath the sheets, his pale chest exposed.
If you can spare any mercy, God, spare it now. Not for me, but for the child.
Paul put the scalpel to the sutures on the tender skin. After the first cut, he was lost to everything except the task at hand, the task of saving a life.
The tension in the room was almost palpable. But his hands held steady.
If the huge clock on the wall hadn't been ticking, he'd have thought time was standing still.
After he closed, he stepped back from the operating table feeling as if all the life had been drained out of him.
"Beautiful job, Doc," the head surgical nurse said.
"Thanks."
He needed Susan. Hurrying, he changed and drove to her house.
She was waiting for him in her darkened den, naked except for a pair of red high-heeled shoes, her body garlanded with roses.
"Can I interest you in a flower garden, Doctor?"
"Do you know how good you are for me?"
He put his arms around her, and she felt exactly right.