~ Seventeen ~

I’ll always come back,
come back baby to you.

—K. T. OSLIN

“I’ll Always Come Back”

The afternoon rain cascaded down Samantha’s kitchen windows in heavy jagged lines. She was busy washing a few dishes when the phone rang. It was Emma.

“Samantha, it’s Emma. Michael’s just called. Bo’s fallen off the roof of the house they were working on this afternoon and they’re rushing him to Wellman by ambulance.”

“Oh my gosh. Is he badly hurt?”

“They don’t know yet. Michael said he fell a long ways and that he wasn’t moving when the ambulance got there.”

“Oh my gosh …” Samantha gripped the edge of the countertop with a hand wet with sink water. “Where’s Christina?”

“I just called her. I’m on my way over to pick her up right now. I’m trying to get in touch with everyone I can while I drive.”

“Who do you need me to call?” Samantha asked, hearing the news like a fire alarm and springing into action.

“Could you call Bo’s parents? Christina is really shook up. I’ll be at her house in about three minutes, then we’re going directly to the hospital.”

“I’ll call them and be on my way,” she said.

Samantha hung up, leaving soapy water in the sink, and ran through the house.

“Noel!” she called. She heard noises outside in the garage. Samantha grabbed her purse from the table and moved quickly through the back door, nearly slipping on the slick back steps.

Samantha walked with quick, little steps toward the garage, hitting the soggy grass with her shoes as often as the slate stones of the footpath. The garage door was ajar and she could hear music from the radio as she approached.

“Noel!” she hollered. Noel peered around the open hood of the truck. He switched off the radio.

Samantha spoke in controlled, urgent tones. “Bo Wilson has fallen off the house he was working on and is being taken to Wellman. I need you to start praying and I need to get down there.”

She turned back through the door without waiting for Noel’s answer and headed toward her van. Noel darted out the side door after her.

“Mom, let me take you. The truck’s almost ready to roll. I just need to …”

“There isn’t time, Noel. I have to go right now. I’ll be fine,” she said, opening the driver’s-side door. She climbed into the vehicle and searched through her purse for her keys and cell phone.

“Come on, come on,” she said to the purse.

Samantha overturned her purse, dumping the contents onto the seat next to her. She sorted through the pile with her fingers until she found her key ring—the one she bought at Myrtle Beach the summer before—and started the engine. The van revved to life. She backed out of the driveway, switching the wipers on high as she drove.

Once in the street, she shifted the van into drive and pressed down on the accelerator. Samantha punched Jim’s office number on her cell’s speed dial and by the time she rolled through the first stop sign, Jim picked up.

“Honey, I need you to start praying,” Samantha cried.

“What’s happened?”

“Bo fell off the house he and Michael were working on,” she said. “He’s unconscious and they’re taking him to the hospital by ambulance right now. Honey, I’m scared. My heart is beating about a hundred miles an hour.”

“Slow down, Sam. Where are you?”

“I’m driving to the hospital. Christina is a wreck. Emma is going to get her and I …” Samantha voice collapsed, falling into a long, uncontrollable sob. “I’m so sorry, I just don’t know what to do. I can’t believe this is happening!”

“Samantha, I need you to pull over to the side of the road.”

“Jim, I can’t. I’ve got to get to the hospital.”

“Sam, I need you to pull off the road. Do it now.”

Samantha brought the van to a stop along the curb on Agnes Street in front of the elementary school. The buses would be here in half an hour to take the kids home.

“Are you parked?” Jim asked her.

“Yes.”

“Okay, now just take a few deep breaths and relax a minute. You know you have to keep your blood pressure from going up. Are you breathing?”

“Yes, but I can’t … can’t slow down my heart.”

“Samantha, listen to me. You’re just overexcited. You need to do the things Dr. Sharron told you to do, the things we practiced.”

“I can’t. Can’t make it slow down.”

Samantha started to cry.

“Honey, I need you to listen to me. Focus on the sound of my voice. You’re having one of your attacks and you need to slow down your breathing.” Jim lowered his voice, calm and steady, the way he always did when Samantha’s emotions rose like a thermometer set in boiling water. “I want you to take three very long breaths.”

Samantha took three breaths. The first one sounded choked and nervous. On the second breath, Samantha relaxed, and the air went in and out clearer. The third breath seemed almost normal.

“How are you feeling?”

“Better,” Samantha said. “But I have to call Bo’s parents. Will you meet me at the hospital, please?”

“I’m leaving right now and should be there in twenty minutes. Tell me what your heart rate is doing?”

“It’s slowing down, but something else just happened.”

“What?”

“I think my water just broke.”

o o o

Emma and Christina entered Wellman Medical through the emergency room doors. The two women were dripping wet. They saw Michael waiting for them at the registration desk, his T-shirt soaked with rainwater, soiled with dirt from helping the EMTs lift Bo onto the stretcher. Christina read the seriousness of the situation in Michael’s face.

“Where is he?” Christina demanded.

“They took him directly up to surgery. We’re to go up there and wait,” Michael told her.

Christina pushed through the ER doors without waiting for the others, searching for the nearest elevator, Michael and Emma following a step behind. She entered the elevator and pushed the button for the fourth floor three times in rapid succession, then drew in breath. She pressed the “Close” button and the doors finally closed.

“What happened?” she asked Michael in the elevator.

“We were finishing up the roof just as the rain was starting. We got up to go and then there was a gust of wind and he just lost his balance.”

Christina’s face contorted and she bite her bottom lip. “How far did he fall?”

“About thirty feet.”

Christina forced her eyes closed, praying for sanctuary inside her wounded soul from the horror of the news. Emma held Christina’s arm, steadying her.

The doors opened and the three hurried down the hallway looking for answers. A woman wearing green surgical scrubs walked toward the restricted doors.

“Miss, Miss,” Christina called out. The woman stopped and looked back.

“Yes?”

“Do you know what’s happening with Bo Wilson? He was just admitted to surgery.”

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait in there,” she said, pointing to the waiting area. She continued her scurried walk through the set of double doors to the OR.

Emma and Michael escorted Christina into the room to wait. There were twenty empty leather chairs. Judge Judy was sorting through the messes of some poor soul’s life on a muted TV mounted in the corner. They sat down in chairs next to one another, then Christina immediately stood and started to pace.

“Was he breathing? Was he breathing on his own when they brought him in?” Christina asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell me everything you know.”

“When the paramedics brought him in he was unconscious, but alive. They had a mask on his face and he was breathing. But when I got down from the roof, he wasn’t. He was just lying there. I thought for sure he was …” Michael stopped short of saying the word. “Mrs. Macintosh came running out and told me she’d already called 911 and the ambulance was on its way. I knew not to try and move him, so I called his name and felt for a pulse, but there wasn’t any. So I started to administer CPR. Paramedics were there in ten minutes or so. He started breathing on his own in the ambulance. They took him up to surgery as soon as we got here.”

“You rode in the ambulance?”

“Yes.”

“Did he regain consciousness?”

“No.”

Christina’s body wilted into her chair. She lowered her head. Emma reached out to touch Christina’s hand and held it. It was cold as ice. Christina moved her lips in silent prayer, her eyes closed.

Emma couldn’t help notice the way Christina seemed so comfortable praying. It seemed more of a two-way conversation than a plea to some unreachable being. Sometimes it looked like she was reminding Him of something. Sometimes it looked like pleading, or praise, other times she would sit still, hardly breathing.

Ten minutes later the OR nurse entered the waiting room.

“Are you with Bo Wilson?”

“Yes,” Emma said. The woman walked to where they were all sitting in the waiting area, her green scrubs swooshing as she approached.

“My name is Valerie Sala. Dr. Timbrook asked me to tell you that he and Dr. Jenkins are doing an initial diagnostic evaluation on Bo right now. They’re waiting on X-rays to determine broken bones and the possibility of internal bleeding. They’ll be in surgery for a while yet, but Dr. Timbrook will be out to talk to you as soon as he knows something.”

“What are they saying about his condition?” Christina asked. “Is he going to come out of this okay?

“His condition is listed as critical,” Valerie said, in a calming tone. “But Drs. Timbrook and Jenkins are excellent surgeons. They’re doing everything they can. Right now it’s too early for us to know much of anything, but as I can, I’ll come back out and let you know what’s happening.”

Christina drew in a long, shaky breath nodding in a herky-jerky way.

“Thank you.”

Christina’s voice weakened into a thin whisper of resignation, and Valerie turned to exit the waiting room. There might be no news on Bo’s condition for hours. Emma wondered how Christina would last another minute.

o o o

On the top floor of Wellman Medical Center, Samantha Connor started the first stages of childbirth. Jim had arrived at their private birthing suite on the fifth floor, sopping wet from the rain. Samantha was ecstatic to see her husband step through the doorway, wet or dry.

“Oh, thank goodness. I thought there was a chance you wouldn’t be able to get here in time.”

Jim hugged Samantha as she lay in the bed, excited and scared. “I’m here. How are you doing?”

“They just put in the epidural for pain, but I don’t think this is going to take that long.”

Jim smiled, putting his arm around Samantha’s neck in support. “You’re going to be a mama again.”

“Jim, there’s so much going on.”

“Shhh, just focus on this,” he told her. “There’s enough going on right here.”

Samantha leaned her head on Jim’s shoulder, staring at the second hand on the wall clock above the door. She worked her breathing—short puffs, in and out. “Jim, I love you.”

They squeezed each other’s hands. For twenty-two years they’d been each other’s best friends, they’d been everything to each other. Samantha couldn’t imagine her world without Jim in it.

“I love you, too,” he told her.

Despite the suddenness of the contractions and the fears floating up from the fourth floor, the mood inside the room seemed sacred, shaped into something rare and godly by the devotion of a committed partnership and the sanctity of welcoming a newly created life.

Jim’s cell phone chirped, the sound it made when one of the kids called him on the two-way pager. He answered the cell.

“Yeah.”

“Hey, Dad, I’m at the hospital. Where are you guys?”

“Noel, we’re up on the fifth floor.”

“Do we have a new brother yet?”

“Not yet. Here, your mom wants to talk to you.”

Jim handed the phone to Samantha.

“Noel, honey. Have you found Christina? She and Emma should be somewhere … oh!” Samantha felt a strong contraction. She gave Jim the phone and he stepped out into the hallway.

“Listen, Noel. If you find them, call me back on the cell, not the two-way radio, okay? I’ll have it on vibrate. Your mom’s got a lot on her hands and I don’t want her to feel overwhelmed by any news you may have.”

“Sure, no problem. I’ll call you if I find out anything.”

“Thanks.”

o o o

Noel shut off his phone, walking into the lobby at Wellman. He stepped into the first floor elevator and pushed the lighted circle with the black number four. Noel was comfortable in hospitals. He had interned one summer at Hope Community Church during high school. That internship included lots of hospital visitations at Wellman, and before long he knew the floors as well as the doctors.

He found Michael, Emma, and Christina in the fourth floor waiting room, saw them through the glass wall as he came down the hallway, his shoes squeaking on the polished floor. When he entered the doorway, he gave the hushed group a quick tip of his straw hat. He looked like a cowboy who’d just rode in from rescuing a lost calf.

“What’s the latest?”

Emma gave him the facts in a way that didn’t come off as either too positive or unduly hopeless.

“He’s in surgery. They’ve taken X-rays. They’re checking for broken bones and other things. We’re really just waiting for updates.”

Emma didn’t say what she felt everyone might be thinking—that Bo was in critical condition and they could get word any minute that he’d died.

Christina sat motionless in a chair next to Emma, on her face she wore a nearly catatonic expression. Noel walked up to her.

“Christina,” he said, believing that words could be like medicine. “I called the church about Bo and asked them to contact everybody on the prayer chain. I think some of the pastors are getting together in Brian’s office to pray right now.”

Christina’s eyes continued to stare, unblinking, into the dull brown carpet. Her head nodded in the smallest, almost undetectable, way.

“I also called a group of guys at Clemson from my fraternity. I told them what was going on and asked them to pull together some of the guys there to pray. I hope that’s all right.”

Her eyes made contact with Noel’s. He continued.

“And I remembered you telling me about Southwind Christian Fellowship in Raleigh, and how you’d spoken there once and you said they’d just really connected with you. I called them too. Do you know a Jeannie Harmon?”

“Yes,” Christina said in a dry whisper, tears welling up in puddles.

“She’s e-mailing or calling all the women you spoke to and she’s organizing them for prayer at this very minute.”

Two tears streamed down Christina’s face from her watery blue eyes. It was the first sign of life they’d seen in an hour.

Christina coughed, clearing her throat.

“Thank you. Excuse me,” she said, getting up from her chair to leave the room.

Emma looked at him. “Noel, I can’t believe you did all that. That’s amazing.”

“When my mom told me the news, I knew we needed prayer. I think God just put some of those people in my mind to call.”

In the small restroom down the hall, Christina wept and prayed.

“Father, thank You for the prayers. Thank You for Noel Connor. Thank You that You supply hope in the midst of the storm.”

When Christina reentered the waiting room her eyes were red from crying, but she looked alive again.

“Can I ask you all something?” she said. “Can we just pray for a minute?”

Michael sat up taller, nodding. Christina knew Noel hadn’t ceased praying for the last hour. She smiled when Emma agreed. Yes, of course they’d pray.

They joined hands in a circle, closed their eyes, and bowed their heads, huddling together in the quiet, nearly empty waiting room.

Christina prayed.

“Our heavenly Father … we come before You now in great humility. Our dear friend Bo has fallen. Father, whatever Your will is, that he should live or go on to be with You, I surrender myself, my feelings, to Your greater will trusting that You only have the best in mind for us.”

Emma opened her eyes and looked at Christina as she continued.

“Father, as Your child, I ask You with every ounce of energy I have for You to heal Bo. You know I love him. But, Father, not my will, but Your will be done.”

If the world could be seen from the perspective of heaven, and prayers were like candles lit by vibrant faith, the landscape of Juneberry, even greater South Carolina, would have appeared like a forest of Christmas trees strung with strands of white lights.

The four waited in silence, praying for the miraculous, while surrendering themselves to the will of God.