Silent Pledge

“Then don’t listen to her.”

“But then I asked Gramma. She said I might, but when I do, I’ll go straight to heaven and I’ll never get sick again.” She paused for a few seconds. “I’d like that.”

As a mother, Mercy couldn’t help imagining her own daughter saying those words. She’d never heard a child so young expressing a wish to die. What hurt the worst was the realization of Crystal’s suffering, both physical and emotional. From a year of treating Crystal, Mercy knew that the little girl, with her soft heart, worried more about her great-grandma Odira than she did about herself. Odira wasn’t in the best health, with her excess weight and high blood pressure. What would become of Crystal if anything happened to her great-grandmother?

“But, Crystal, we want to keep you here with us longer,” Mercy said softly. “I know it might be selfish of us, when heaven is so wonderful, but do you think you could be strong for Gramma and me?” Jesus, what do I say? How can this be happening? She tried not to think about the situation, but the questions grew too numerous too quickly. Her faith still felt so fragile.

“Gramma needs me,” Crystal said quietly. “I’ll stay awhile.”

They heard the sound of Odira’s footsteps and heavy breathing, and then she came lumbering through the open exam-room door. “I didn’t even think about using a Popsicle to get Crystal’s temperature down. Here’s a red one, her favorite. You’ve got a nice little freezer in there. Looks like you’ve got that back room all set up like an emergency room. I bet you use it a lot, what with the hospital—”

They heard the crash of a door flying open out in the waiting room, then the boom of a familiar voice—like a jet during takeoff. “Dr. Mercy! You in here?”

Clarence held the door open for Buck to carry Kendra through. “Dr. Mercy!” he called again. “Got those patients for you.” He tapped Buck’s shoulder and gestured toward the open doorway that led to the exam rooms at the back of the waiting room. When he’d telephoned Mercy she’d told him just to bring Kendra to the first exam room. Clarence knew where everything was. He should. He’d been here enough times.

After he’d finally lost enough weight to get around on his feet a little better, Dr. Mercy had made him come to her office once a week so she could weigh him and check him over. He hated going, hated the way the other patients in the waiting room stared at him and whispered. Still, when Mercy asked him to do something, he did it. If she asked nice.

Mercy came rushing down the hallway, her long dark hair drawn back in a loose ponytail, wearing baggy old jeans and a thick wool sweater. Her dark eyes looked tired. “Hi, Buck. Bring her back here. I have a bed ready for her. I’ll need you and Clarence to help keep an eye on her.” She reached forward and laid a gentle hand against Kendra’s cheek, and some of the tiredness cleared from her eyes. “Hang in there, Kendra. We’ll get you on some oxygen.” She pulled the stethoscope from around her neck, warmed it in her hand for a second, then placed it against Kendra’s chest.

Clarence watched Mercy as she guided Buck into the exam room and helped him lay his wife on the bed. He enjoyed watching her work. When she treated patients, she acted as if they were a part of her own family. Of course, that also meant she nagged them like family. At five feet eight, she was four inches shorter than Clarence, but there were times when she seemed bigger than life, especially when she stood over him as he balanced on that dinky little exam bed wearing nothing but his shorts and a sheet.

But the times she made the biggest impact on him were when she saw his depression and bullied it out of him. He didn’t get that way as often as he used to, but some days the heaviness of his thoughts messed him up big-time. Those were the days he didn’t want to diet, didn’t want to exercise, didn’t even want to get out of bed. That was when her tender toughness showed itself. She could look into his eyes and say, “Clarence, we’re going for a walk. Get your shoes on,” or “You haven’t come this far to give up. Just get through today,” and then she would tell Ivy to keep watch. And Ivy could be the queen of mean.

As soon as Buck eased Kendra down onto the exam bed, Kendra covered her face with her hands. Her body shook with sobs that grew louder and more forceful. “Why didn’t you just let me die?” She turned her head sideways on the pillow, and her light brown hair, as soft-looking as a sparrow’s breast, fell across her cheek. “Everybody’d be better off that way.”

Buck took a deep breath and hung his head, his square jaw working like a grinding machine. Buck was a big man, lots of muscles, with hair cut so short that his ears, which were already big, looked like doorknobs. He had a big heart, and nobody doubted that he loved his wife. Except her.

Clarence wished there was something he could do to help them both.

Mercy leaned over. “Kendra, tell me how you feel. Do you have a bad headache?”

Tears dripped across Kendra’s nose onto the pillow, and her lower lip trembled. “Yeah, real bad.”

Mercy gestured to Buck. “Would you please hook up the oxygen? I want her on a one hundred percent nonrebreather mask.” She reached toward a box beside the bed. “Kendra, I’m going to put this little clip on the end of your finger. It’s attached to something called a pulse oximeter, which will tell me how much oxygen you have in your system. And I’m sorry, honey, but I’m going to have to stick you for blood. It’s going to hurt, because I have to go deep enough for an artery. We’ve got to find out how aggressively we need to treat you. Buck, has she been confused?”

“Yes, at first.” Buck scrambled around until he found the tubing and mask he needed. “On the drive in I had the windows open, and she cleared up. Now she just keeps crying.” He stepped back over to his wife’s side.

Mercy leaned over Kendra again. “Are you dizzy? Do you feel sick to your stomach?”

Kendra’s face puckered. She covered it with her hands once more and didn’t reply.

Buck cleared his throat, tried to speak, cleared it again. “She was feeling sick earlier, Dr. Mercy. She had some shortness of breath.”

Mercy turned around and saw Clarence standing in the doorway. “Call an ambulance for me, would you?”

“No!” Kendra cried out. She reached toward Buck, eyes wide and frightened, and tried to sit up. “Don’t let them haul me away!”

“It isn’t for you,” Mercy took Kendra’s arm and eased her back down. “I have another patient tonight. I need to transport her over to the hospital, and I can’t leave you right now.”

Clarence picked up the telephone in the room, then hesitated and frowned at Mercy. “You want to call an ambulance to haul somebody less than a block? Doesn’t make sense to me.”

Mercy checked the pulse oximeter box. “Do you have a better idea? I have a sick child in there, and her great-grandmother isn’t in much better shape.”

“Let me take ’em.” Clarence spoke the words against his will, as if something outside himself were making the decision for him.

“I can drive, long as I can fit behind the wheel. I’m a mechanic, you know. My driver’s license is up to date.”

“Thank you, Clarence. Take my car.” Mercy leaned back over Kendra. “My keys are on the desk in my office, and use the south entrance at the hospital. Get a move on. They’re waiting for the patient.”

For a moment, disbelieving, he could only stare at her. Just like that? He hadn’t driven in two years, and she trusted him with her new car?

And then, in spite of the pain that still lingered in the room from Kendra’s tears and Buck’s stoic silence, he felt a glow of satisfaction that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. For once, he was on the giving end.

Chapter Three

T ex blotted and held, blotted and held as Lukas finished the last of the twelve interrupted sutures on Catcher’s arm. The big biker hadn’t even grunted through the ordeal. In fact, Lukas was sure that he himself had been the only one who grimaced every time the needle pierced flesh. Even with alcohol to mask the pain, it had to hurt. This man was tough.

Company had begun to arrive halfway through the procedure, as the first of Catcher’s biker friends came clomping into the E.R. carrying plastic packs of pimento cheese sandwiches and chips and soda they’d purchased from the vending machine in the waiting room. After an irritable glance in their direction, Tex had shown no reaction to their arrival. Even when one of the buddies came in and handed half a sandwich to Catcher, Lukas didn’t make a remark. They weren’t supposed to have food in the E.R. and if OSHA found out about the infraction, there would be complaints and fines and forms filled out in quadruplicate, but Lukas wasn’t in the mood to play hall monitor to a bunch of aging tattoos this early on a Sunday morning. Most of them just came in for a minute to check on their buddies, then wandered out to the waiting room, which was separated from the treatment area by a door and a sliding window where the secretary sat.

One husky woman wearing tight denim jeans and a heavy gray sweater shoved through the dividing door, food and soda tucked against her side by her left arm, holding a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in her right hand.

“Hey, Catcher!” she blared. “They treatin’ you okay back here? I’ll bash heads if they’re not.” She took a deep whiff of air. “Phew, smells like medicine and puke back here. Don’t you guys have any air freshener?”

Lukas clipped the nylon thread. “Okay, two more and we’re finished poking you, Catcher.”

Someone else in leather and tattoos stepped into the E.R. doorway from the waiting room beyond. “Hey, look, they got a TV! Hey, nurse, you guys got cable here?” A blare of music screamed through the rooms.

Lukas heard Tex’s sharp intake of breath and caught a glimpse of her angry scowl, and he shook his head at her. “We’re almost finished here.” Lord, please just hold this all together a little longer. Give me patience and compassion.

A loud clank and clatter pierced his concentration. His hands almost jerked the final suture too tightly. Neither he nor Tex could look up from their work just now, but as soon as he’d snipped the last of the threads, Tex put her things down and snapped off her gloves.

“If you’ll finish up here, I’ll check out the crash,” she said.

Lukas could almost see her flexing her muscles as she metamorphosed from Tex the paramedic to Tex the bouncer. Uh-oh. Not only was she about to make a scene, but she was also about to make him look like a coward. He did have a little pride left.

“Um, Tex, why don’t—”

Catcher groaned. “Oh, Doc, I think I’m gonna hurl.”

With a final glance over his shoulder to see Tex strutting off to bash heads, Lukas grabbed an emesis basin. “Breathe in through your nose if you can, Catcher, then out through your mouth. There you go.” He took the ice pack from Catcher’s limp hand and placed it against the man’s forehead.

More voices shouted from the other room. Tex’s was the loudest. “I said put that chair back down where it belongs and give me that coffeepot!”

Lukas had Lauren McCaffrey to thank for all this. Sweet-faced, innocent-eyed Lauren. When her cousin Tex heard through the family grapevine that there was an E.R. physician temporarily without a job, she’d called Lauren, looking for a replacement for a doctor on suspension.

“Scenic views, right there on the Lake of the Ozarks,” Lauren had said. “Small-town E.R. probably a lot like Knolls. It’ll be like a vacation. How much trouble could a five-bed E.R. be?”

And so Lukas had signed on for three months—until the earliest estimated time of completion for the Knolls E.R.