The nurse had told Andrea that she was fine, that the routine checkup following the crash had been necessary. No fractures or concussion, just some cuts and bruises and bumps. She was free to leave the hospital examination room, but Andrea asked to see the doctor. Surely Dr. Farell was busy, but not too busy to see her.
The nurse was wrong, however. Andrea wasn’t fine. She hadn’t been fine in a long time.
Her mind went back to the bridge and to everything that had happened. How quickly she’d been driving after the court hearing that night. How it just happened that her car ended up crossing over the bridge, a route she didn’t usually take back home to her condo. How she almost died in the crash, then how she managed to find herself wandering and dazed before someone ran to her rescue.
Someone who happened to be the least likely candidate for being her Superman.
This guy—this paramedic who supposedly was great at his job—a husband and a father of two boys—had put his entire career on the line, for what? For this little trinket she now held in her hand. A tiny wooden cross.
For some reason, it felt very, very heavy in her hand.
Andrea had brushed off Bobby’s faith in a way she had brushed off everything in her life. Her parents had given her everything she wanted and then more. Things in life had come so easily for her. Doors had always opened. She’d just kept walking and rushing and running as she got older, believing that at some point, she’d have enough success and respect and money and relationships to then maybe figure out the whole marriage and family and happily-ever-after thing.
I’m rushing to nowhere, hurting people along the way, ignoring so much of life while I go.
There was no way Andrea would have ever stopped to help someone trying to ruin her life. If she had been Bobby, she would have simply kept going the other way. Someone like Dr. Farell would have done the same thing. It’s hard enough to help those who help you, but for those people who don’t?
This cross is gonna cost you.
Andrea had spoken those words, but now they suddenly resounded in her heart.
She pulled out her iPhone from her purse and Googled the following words: the cross of Jesus
One of the first websites led her to a series of Bible verses. She clicked on a familiar passage and read it again.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
Andrea knew of John 3:16, of the way it had almost turned into a slogan, just like Nike’s “Just Do It” tagline. She’d heard it so many times, and yet . . . Tonight, it seemed to be jostling her out of a long sleep.
She reread the whole passage in different versions, which was easy to do online. A version called the Message put it into different words.
“Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.”
Acquitted. Death sentence.
It was from John 3:18, a verse she didn’t think she had ever read.
These were words in her universe, ones she understood.
A death sentence . . .
The curtain near the table she sat on whisked open. Dr. Farell appeared, a look of concern on his face.
“Are you okay?” he asked, coming to her side.
She could tell he’d been running around, surely dealing with people from the accident along with the other patients he was caring for. Though the term caring might be stretching it a bit far.
“Actually, no,” she said, surprising even herself. “I’m not.”
His eyes thinned, staring down at her. “What is it? Are you hurt?”
He began to put a hand up to her head to examine it, but she jerked it away.
“Tell me something. What kind of person would risk his life for someone who just finished ruining him?”
The doctor looked at her, then glanced off to the side while sighing.
“Andrea—look, it’s been a long night. For everybody. Why don’t I take you home?”
As usual, he hadn’t heard a word she said. He was too used to instructing and prescribing instead of actually listening.
“No,” she told him, knowing this wasn’t a word he heard many times. “I think I’ve been wrong, Thomas. And I think you have, too.”
Cold, calculating eyes didn’t offer any sympathy or empathy, but they almost seemed to harbor on pity.
“Honestly, Andrea. What is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know,” she said as she stood. “Maybe I’m the one with the God complex.”
She left Dr. Farell alone in the room. As she walked through the white hallways of the hospital, it felt like two roads stood in front of her as clear as day.
One leading to death. The other leading to an acquittal.
Maybe there was someone she could reach out to in order to help. Maybe even someone who had already helped her.
Maybe he’d be willing . . .
No.
She knew Bobby would be willing. His job was help sustain lives in emergency conditions.
This fit that description.
Maybe, hopefully, she’d figure out what a real acquittal looked like.