From Humbug To Holiday Bride

Mrs. B pursed her lips and folded her arms defiantly over her ample middle as if he had just threatened one of her own. “Will she be all right?”

“Possibly,” he replied, washing his hands in the sink. “She won’t be able to walk, though.”

“Not ever?” Mrs. Billings blanched and dropped her pot holder on the floor.

“Not ever,” he said as he retrieved the pot holder.

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Her eyes watered, and she patted them with her apron as she sank onto a kitchen chair. He watched her closely, surprised at the extent of her grief over someone she had never known well and hadn’t seen for several years. “She’s such a lovely young woman, and so very kind. I’ve admired her so very much. Such a tragedy, isn’t it? Such a terrible tragedy.”

“Yes, it is,” he murmured, putting a hand on her shoulder, astonished that he should be offering her comfort because of the Dolliver woman who was hard as nails and angry as a cornered bobcat.

She made a quick swipe over her wrinkled cheeks.

“It seems as if you and I are talking about two different people,” he mused.

“Well, I know she can be very tough and outspoken. After all, she had a very bad childhood,” she snapped, then softened again. “No mother. A father who wanted a son and never had time for her.” Mrs. Billings patted her eyes again. “I remember enjoying how spunky she was, and I wanted my own niece to be like that. You know, able to take care of herself and give back as good as she got. B. J. Dolliver is a heroine for a lot of young women, Pastor, in spite of growing up unwanted. I don’t know whatever she’ll do with herself now. What a terrible tragedy. What a terrible thing to happen.”

“Why are you crying, Mrs. Billings?” Emma questioned, her eyes filled with concern.

“The lady I visited today,” Hamish explained. “Mrs. Billings knows her and is sad.”

Emma turned to the housekeeper. “But Daddy said she’s going to get well,” she assured Mrs. Billings, patting her on the knee. “She’s going to have crutches to help her walk around.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Billings said, sniffing. “Crippled for life, that wonderful, vital young woman.”

Emma looked up at her father for an answer, but he had none to give. He hadn’t quite thought of the young woman in the hospital bed as a heroine. Certainly not a role model. In fact, he wasn’t aware that he had ever heard of her before Mrs. B had asked him to visit. He didn’t even know her first name. All he knew was that people called her by her initials, and she apparently had quite a following, which came as a surprise to him because she seemed so alone in her hospital room, refusing visitors and keeping the truth from her own father.

“She isn’t going to die, is she, Daddy?” Emma quizzed, wanting reassurance, obviously stricken with the sense of doom she heard in Mrs. Billings’s voice.

But Mrs. Billings answered for him. “She might not like living anymore,” she said, returning to the stove.

“Why?” Emma looked to her father, and he put his hand gently on the top of her head.

He dropped to his haunches to explain, although he was having a little trouble with it himself. “This woman, B. J. Dolliver, was very active and traveled around the world taking photographs, running after big stories to be printed in newspapers and magazines. An now, well, she won’t be able to do any of those things when she has to walk with crutches, and Mrs. Billings means that, for B. J. Dolliver, not being able to do all the things she loves to do is very sad. Maybe.”

“But there’s lots of things she can still do, isn’t there?” Emma questioned. “She can still see and hear, can’t she? And read books? And watch television and walk around with crutches? And she could swing on a swing if she wanted to, couldn’t she? And go down a slide and ride on a merry-go-round? If she wanted to?”

“Yes, she could, if she wanted to. But maybe she isn’t interested in those things.”

“But maybe if she tried them, she might like them, and then she would be happy, wouldn’t she?”

He ruffled her hair. “You’re very wise, Emma, and I’m proud of you. Maybe someday you’ll get to meet B. J. Dolliver and you can tell her how great it is to be alive.”

It was a casual statement to appease the curiosity of a child, and he couldn’t begin to think that what he said was in any way applicable to the reality of the situation. It was obvious B. J. Dolliver wasn’t even thinking of dying. She was going to tangle aggressively with fate and challenge providence. She had sounded determined to battle with her own body to force it to do what the medical profession said it would never again be able to do.

Obviously, she was not making it easy for the hospital staff, including her own physician. She had locked herself into a self-imposed capsule, holding everyone else away and struggling with desperate ineffectiveness to make liars of her doctors.

He wondered what B. J. Dolliver was going to do when she discovered that the medical profession knew better than she did, and that she would never walk again without crutches, and that she damned well would never run again or wield a tennis racket or chase down a combat soldier to get his picture. He wondered how she was going to take that, accept defeat and the hopelessness of her future as she envisioned it.

Alone. Facing it alone.

As he sat down to dinner, B. J. Dolliver filled his thoughts, and he discovered with just a minimum of soul-searching that he wanted to be there when she finally fell. He wanted to be there to catch her and hold her and tell her there were still things to live for.

Chapter Two (#ulink_d8d7812a-5daf-56e4-8983-2f100c175062)

The telephone awakened him late in the night.

Hamish answered the ring quickly, before he was entirely awake. There was a telephone next to his bed and getting late-night calls wasn’t uncommon in his line of work.

“Hi, Hamish,” she said, and he dropped back on his pillow and groaned. He hadn’t seen B. J. Dolliver for three days.

He glanced at his clock. “It’s nearly 3:00 a.m.,” he said, his voice still hoarse from sleep. “Where did you get my number?” He vaguely remembered giving her his card, but he believed she’d thrown it away.

“It’s in the yellow pages under righteous,” she quipped.

“What’s wrong, B.J.? Why are you calling me so late?”

“I’m moving out of this place,” she said. According to his fuzzy calculations, he had been visiting her every few days for nearly four weeks.

“Well, that’s great. They’re letting you go. You must be making good progress. How’s the arm?” Although she’d never appeared to accept his offer of friendship, she’d never followed through on her threat to have the hospital staff remove him.

“Arm’s getting better all the time.”

“Where are you going?”

“I get to pick the place.” He sensed a warning in the way her voice lilted up slightly on the last word, and he tried to shake off the fog of deep sleep that clouded his thoughts.

“So, have you made a decision?” he asked, wishing he could think clearly.

“I thought maybe you’d drop by and help me with that.”

“When?”

“In about an hour, preferably.”

“No more games, B.J. It’s nearly three in the morning. What’s the problem?”

“The problem is, there is no problem!” she cried. “It’s all cut-and-dried, all decided! The medical profession is turning me loose. They’ve given me all these wonderful places to choose from for the next phase of my life. Beautiful places. One of them even has a swimming pool.”

“I don’t understand,” he mumbled, pinching his eyes closed, wanting to know what was causing her distress.

“You wouldn’t. I don’t even know why I called you. See you around, Hamish.”

“Wait!” He was afraid she would hang up and he couldn’t allow that. He forced his mind to work, threw the covers back and turned to sit with his legs over the side of his old four-poster bed. “Give me time to dress. It’ll take me half an hour to drive—”

“No…that won’t be necessary,” she said, but her voice was suddenly soft and hoarse.

“What?”