From Humbug To Holiday Bride

“You’ve been here three weeks, and I gather they haven’t let you see yourself. I don’t have the authority to countermand those orders, Miss Dolliver.”

She grimaced. “Who in the hell are you anyway? If Deborah sent you, you’re supposed to be cheering me up.” The words were spat with all the force it took her to get them out. Then she reached again for the bar above her, gripped it, then let it go.

“Deborah didn’t send me,” he said. “Her aunt asked me to stop by and see you.” He wondered whether he should explain who he was. He decided to go with full disclosure. “I’m pastor of the Kolstad Church.”

She muttered an expletive that he ignored. “I suppose you’re going to pray over me,” she jeered.

“I suppose I will.”

She reached for the bar again and gripped it until her knuckles were white, then released it, lowering her hand to her side. Her eyes were as hard as cold iron, but he saw something else barely detectable lurking there. It was fear.

She swallowed hard and winced. “So, why did Deborah’s aunt send you? If she did.” Her skepticism was as heavily evident as the dripping sarcasm. She closed her lids momentarily, then lifted them half-mast. “I remember Deb’s aunt,” she whispered affectionately.

“She’s my housekeeper, and she’s quite fond of you. Apparently, your friendship with her niece was significant to them both when you were in college.”

“Deb works here. She could visit anytime. But she’s a friend. She respects my privacy,” she whispered pointedly. “I don’t want visitors.”

He paused, letting the hospital noises from the hallway fill the space. “I know,” he said finally.

She glared at him. But he saw her struggling to be fierce, and he sensed something softer behind it all. She seemed hardly able to hold her eyes open.

“No visitors,” she rasped again. “Deborah knows that.”

“They care about you,” he said.

“Oh, damn,” she cursed softly, her eyes closing in a grimace.

He thought for a moment it was another spasm coming on and was about to bolt for the nurses’ desk. Then he realized she was distressed by something else. Once again he found himself the object of those eyes the color of fall grass.

“Why you?” she demanded.

He frowned, wondering why she was upset. What was she reading into his visit? While he wondered, she came to her own worst conclusion.

“What are they trying to tell me, sending a minister? Am I going to die? After all this, am I dying anyway?” He was struck by her bitterness.

“Of course not,” he said. “You’re getting better.” He wondered suddenly how the conversation had become so complex. “I think your doctor would have told you about your condition.”

“He says I’m…oh, what he really meant was I’m…crippled!” Hamish could barely hear the last word. He felt her horror and leaned forward to take her left hand in his. It was small and soft, cool and clammy.

“I don’t know your official prognosis,” he said as gently as he could, watching a large tear slowly squeeze out from under long, dark lashes and make its way toward her ear. “Please don’t read more into my visit than is intended.”

“Then why are you here?” she demanded.

He rubbed her small hand in his large one and looked at the many small cuts and scratches that were now healing. She didn’t pull her hand away, and he was strangely pleased by that, as if he needed the comfort of holding her hand as much as she might need his comfort in doing so.

“Ah, dear lady,” he said. “I’m not sure. Yet.”

He watched her lids fly open, sharp curiosity in her gaze. She was studying his face, her lips twitching with words she apparently wanted to say but was holding back.

“I know it sounds crazy,” he said. “But I’m not even sure why I’m here except that I was touched by Mrs. Billings’s concern for you.”

“Touched,” she scoffed. “Yeah, sure. Touched.”

She let him keep her hand, and the action took the sting out of her words, as if her mouth had spoken and the rest of her denied what it had said.

Hamish identified with the bitterness and sarcasm he heard. It had been many years, but he remembered when he had greeted every stranger with contempt and mistrust, ready to fight against any real or imagined threat to his survival. That was life on the streets, every man for himself, trusting no one. Ever. Remembering how it had been then, he inhaled deeply and smiled a sad smile.

What, he wondered, could have brought her to such bitterness when she had so much in her life—luxury, adventure, success? Her bone-chilling resentment was coming from some place deeper than he could see.

“Are you here to convince me my recovery is hopeless?” she demanded in a hoarse whisper.

“No, I haven’t heard your medical prognosis,” he said again.

“Yeah, sure,” she said, and pulled her hand away, reaching once again for the bar above her. He found it distracting the way she kept playing with the bar, gripping it, letting it go. But then, it was her only exercise as far as he could see. Nothing else moved. Only her left arm and hand. Her body twitched slightly. She paled and whispered, “Oh, God,” then quickly inhaled slow, deep breaths.

The nurse in the pink sweater slipped quietly into the room and lost no time in giving B.J. an injection in her left arm. “There,” she said, pulling down the wrinkled cotton sleeve that draped to B.J.’s elbow. “Hopefully that will keep those nasty spasms away. Just in the nick of time, too, I see.” She looked up at Hamish and smiled. “Are you a relative?”

Now that was a good question, he thought, and he struggled with an answer. “Friend” sounded false and patronizing, and “acquaintance” was too contrived. So he said simply, “I’m a pastor,” even though he was in a way pulling rank. He knew they hardly ever evicted pastors, even at the request of patients.

B.J. said nothing, but hardly seemed aware of him as she drew in an unsteady breath. Then she gripped his right hand and held it against her chest where he could feel the fast thumping of her heart and the stark tension in her body despite her recent dosage of medication. Her clasp was surprisingly strong, but clearly she was desperate and in acute emotional distress.

He waited a few minutes while the medication took effect. He studied the delicate bone structure of her stubborn chin and felt a twitch in his chest.

She opened her eyes. “He’s wrong,” she whispered finally. “I’m going to do it. I’m going to walk. And I’m going to run. I’ll show them they’re wrong.”

She was a fighter, and he was deeply grateful that she hadn’t wanted to give up and die as her friend Deborah feared, but was determined to make herself whole again. Maybe she could do it. Maybe she could make a liar out of her physician. He willed with all his heart and spirit that she was right.

He felt her frustration and her anger. And her defiance.

He also felt the softness of her breasts beneath the back of his hand as she clutched it hard against her. It was an unconscious gesture on her part, he knew, a matter of hanging on to whatever support was available, of gleaning strength and some tiny measure of comfort from the only source offered.

Still, it had been a long time since he’d felt the softness of a woman’s body, and for a fleeting moment Hamish was aware that he missed the intimacy, and he thought perhaps it was time to open himself to the possibility of finding another wife. In recent months, there had certainly been enough hints from his friends in the congregation that he should be thinking of remarriage.

He would only marry for love, though, in spite of his circumstances, and he dreaded the thought of all the rituals and uncertainties involved in meeting and dating. He still couldn’t imagine being married to anyone but Maralynn, although she had been dead for two years now, and their daughters seemed barely to remember her.

His attention was stirred by the woman on the bed when she released his hand, and reached up to grip the bar. He thought that she was going to try to pull herself up as muscles flexed in her arm, but she abruptly lowered her hand again.

“You can go now,” she announced in her husky whisper, looking up at the ceiling.

“I thought you’d say that,” Hamish replied, letting his elbows rest on his thighs so his hands hung between his knees.

“Your job is done here.”

“You think so?” he asked mildly.

She studied him with eyes narrowed in wariness. “Definitely.”

He couldn’t leave. Nor could he explain the curious compulsion to linger where he wasn’t welcome. “I think I’ll stay awhile.”