Solemn Oath Read online

  “…read that Bailey Little’s letter in the paper the other day…”

  “…ever catch that guy who shot Cowboy?”

  The chattering voices continued to float over Tedi, and after they exclaimed over how pretty Tedi was, and how much she looked like Grandma and Mom, they ignored her. Thank goodness.

  “…hear they’re narrowing down the suspects for the fires, but I think they’re sniffing up the wrong tree…”

  “…think they’d have the arsonist already if they had money for a real investigation…”

  “…you have to think like an arsonist to catch an arsonist. That’s what my cousin told me at the dinner last week…”

  “…hospital’s taking up all the revenue…”

  “…RealCare could buy us out and shut us down or raise the fees so high we couldn’t afford medical care…”

  “…Dr. Mercy and her fella breakin’ up…”

  Tedi was not going on any more of these cancer walks.

  “You win,” Mercy muttered as she turned into her driveway at home. She didn’t designate the subject of her address. He knew who He was. “I get the message. I’m not good enough for Lukas. I’ll leave him alone. Is that all You want from me?”

  She heard the bitter challenge in her own voice, but she couldn’t help it.

  She got out of the car and went into the house. Tedi wouldn’t be home yet, thank goodness. She was having lunch with Mom. It would be hard to put on a smiling face today.

  The answering machine beeped that someone had called. Mercy looked over to find that she had one message. She hit the play button and then caught her breath when she heard Lukas’s voice.

  “Hello, Mercy. I hope this doesn’t wake you. I had a lot of trouble sleeping last night. I hope you slept like a log.”

  There was a pause, and Mercy realized he was trying to choose his words so that it wouldn’t be too traumatizing in case Tedi got the message instead of her. He sounded wonderful to her, and she drank in the flow of his voice like a kid who had been given the last chocolate candy bar she would ever eat.

  “You know how I have a bad habit of sticking both feet in my mouth?” he continued. “That’s what I did last night. I didn’t say anything right, and I’m sorry.” There was another pause. “I just called to tell you the same thing I’ve been trying to tell you all summer. You count with God. You count…with me. Very much. We just don’t know what the future is. I only know what I’m supposed to do right now, and it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life.” He stopped and cleared his throat.

  Mercy tried to resist a surge of hope at his use of the word future. Was Lukas suggesting that maybe, sometime in the future, he may rethink his position?

  No. Lukas wanted her to rethink hers.

  “I’m going on a long hike today,” the gentle voice continued. “I’ve got a lot of praying to do. I’ll be especially praying for you, Mercy.” He paused once more. “Goodbye.” It sounded as if he choked on the final word, and then he hung up.

  Mercy sat down on the chair beside the telephone. He was praying for her. She buried her face in her hands and cried.

  While Grandma cooked an early lunch at her house, Tedi excused herself and walked the four blocks to Abby’s house, blistered feet and all.

  When she reached the house, she rang the doorbell, then knocked and waited for a moment, then tested the door and pushed it open. The Cuendets were used to her coming in and out of their house without knocking when she stayed overnight with Abby. Maybe they wouldn’t get mad if she walked in alone just this once.

  “Hello?” she called out, standing in the threshold of the front door. The house was dark and quiet. She stepped down a few feet to the hallway, paused again, then headed toward Abby’s room. “Anybody home?” They always locked their doors when they went somewhere, so somebody had to be around. “Hello?”

  A shadow came out at her through Abby’s open doorway, and Tedi stepped back with a gasp, then recognized her friend’s short straight brown hair and glasses.

  “What’re you doing here?” Abby crossed her skinny arms over her chest, and her chin jutted out.

  “I came to see how you were doing. You didn’t sound too good last night when I called, and so—”

  “I thought you were going on that stupid walkathon with your grandma this morning.”

  “We just got back. You could’ve gone with us, you know. I invited you.”

  Abby stood in the doorway for another few seconds, glaring at Tedi, then she turned and walked back into her room. “Mom went to the store with April and Andy. I didn’t want to go with them, so she let me stay home, but I’m not supposed to have company while she’s gone.”

  Tedi could understand why Abby didn’t want to go. Abby’s mom knew everyone in town, too. It could take her two hours to run to the store and get a gallon of milk. But Mr. and Mrs. Cuendet usually didn’t let Abby stay home by herself.

  “Where’s your dad?” Tedi asked, stepping into the room.

  “None of your business.” Abby plopped onto her bed, refolded her arms and turned to glare at Tedi again.

  Tedi returned the glare. “Abby, what’s wrong with you? Are you mad at me about something? What did I do?”

  Abby held her gaze in the dim bedroom for another moment, then looked down. Her expression lost some of its fierceness, and then her eyes filled with tears.

  Tedi walked over to the bed and perched on the side. “What’s wrong?” she asked quietly.

  Abby shook her head. “Mom told me not to talk about it. Nobody’s supposed to say anything.”

  “About what?”

  Abby’s chin quivered, and her tears spilled over. Her glasses fogged up.

  “Is somebody sick?” Tedi asked.

  Abby shook her head.

  Tedi lowered her voice even further. “Are your parents fighting again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about this time?”

  “Same thing. Me. I heard them in their bedroom.”

  Tedi sighed.

  “Dad…moved out last night,” Abby said.

  Tedi caught her breath. “Oh no. Why? Where’d he move to?” That felt awful, she knew.

  Abby cried harder, ignoring the questions, and for a moment neither of them spoke. Tedi wanted to cry with her.

  “You can’t tell anybody,” Abby said at last.

  “I won’t.” Tedi wondered if there was another woman, like when Dad left Mom. She remembered the shouting and the door-slamming and the threats. And always Dad’s booze breath.

  “He never even told us kids what he was doing,” Abby said on a sob. “He just came out of the bedroom carrying two suitcases. I asked him if he was going on another trip for the company, and he said no. Then he told all of us goodbye except for Mom, and he left.”

  They sat there in silence. Tedi didn’t know what to say, and Abby couldn’t talk because she was crying too hard.

  Things seemed to change so fast sometimes. Last night, Tedi’s biggest worry was whether or not she could get up in time to be ready when Grandma picked her up this morning. And, of course, she’d been worried about Abby. She still was.

  “Um, Abby, you’re not going to do anything…you know…stupid, are you?”

  Abby wouldn’t look at her. “Like what?”

  Tedi frowned. She didn’t like the sound of her friend’s voice. “You know what. Cutting yourself didn’t help anything last time.”

  “It did when I had to get stitches from barbed-wire cuts.”

  “Not in the end. Your dad still left.”

  “If something happens to me, he’ll have to come back. Look at your dad. He turned himself in to the police and went through detox because of you. And now he’s off booze, and he’s a lot nicer. You said so yourself. And I bet he wants to get back together with your mom, too.”

  “That’s not the same thing at all. Mom doesn’t—” Tedi suddenly realized something. With Mom and Lukas broken up, and Dad acting so nice la
tely…“Oh no!”

  “What?”

  What if Dad really did want to get back together with Mom? Was that what Grandma’s friend was talking about this morning? Was that what reconciliation meant?

  Abby sniffed and wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand, and Tedi saw the faint line of the scar left from the last time Abby had cut herself.

  And she might do it again.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The first Monday in October looked liked frequent-flyer day in the E.R., and Lukas felt his frustration mounting as he swabbed throats for strep, wrote orders for cough suppressant, explained over and over again to mothers why he would not write a script for antibiotic for a mild earache. He wanted to ask everyone if they knew what a family practice doc looked like—and how much less one would cost than a trip to the emergency room. Perhaps he could print out the description of Emergency from the computer and post it on the wall in the waiting room.

  Of course, most of these people were covered by Medicaid, so why would they care? Most private practice docs in the Knolls area had their quota of Medicaid patients. Sometimes it seemed as if half the town was on Medicaid.

  Lukas knew there were struggling people who desperately needed Medicaid, but he had a hard time stifling his resentment toward the abusers. His attitude was getting worse by the minute, but he didn’t feel like praying about it. He was in the mood to be in a bad mood.

  One woman trooped five kids through the front door—all under the age of seven. She then stepped outside for a Coke and a smoke while the “poor, sick, weak” little children chased one another around the chairs of the waiting room, screaming at the tops of their voices. They sure didn’t act sick to Lukas.

  Later, the woman cussed every staff member in the place when told she could not have the whole neighborhood gang—only two of whom were her children—treated in the emergency department compliments of Missouri taxpayers.

  Then halfway through a telephone call with an admitting physician, he heard a familiar voice at the reception window. He looked up to see the round, lined face of Odira Bagby standing beside her great-granddaughter, Crystal, holding her hand. She wore a threadbare size twenty dress. Some of the tension left his neck and shoulders.

  It was easy to tell when Odira entered the department, because her familiar baritone voice seemed to reverberate from the rafters, and her heavy breathing was nearly as loud.

  “Tell the doc I’m sorry to come in again so soon!” she told Lauren as she lumbered in behind the nurse. The quiet undersize six-year-old followed behind her. “Crystal cain’t seem to get rid of this crud. Fever’s worse today, ’bout 103 when I last checked, and I done everything, even a spongin’.”

  As Lukas finished his telephone call, he listened to Odira’s voice continue to plunge past the fragile barriers of walls and curtains. The sixty-six-year-old woman had been taking care of Crystal for the past year, ever since the mother—Odira’s granddaughter—had disappeared. With Odira’s daughter dead, and no other living relatives, Odira got the child. She did the best she could in a one-bedroom apartment with nothing but income from her Social Security check.

  Minutes later, when Lukas stepped into the exam room, Odira broke into a wrinkled, gap-toothed grin, and her voice boomed out once more. “There’s our doc! Sorry to come in like this, Dr. Bower! We had an appointment with Dr. Mercy late this afternoon, but I was scared to wait that long. I’m always coddlin’ this gal, don’t you know!”

  Lukas returned her smile, feeling more needed than he had all morning. Crystal had cystic fibrosis.

  While Crystal watched him with silent water-blue eyes, he felt her throat and looked in her ears, checked for swollen lymph nodes and ordered something to break the fever. Crystal didn’t look too bad, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He ordered tests to check for pneumonia while he assured Odira that she’d done the right thing, then stepped out to check on another patient.

  Claudia, the double-coverage nurse today, caught him at the central desk. “We’ve got a good one in eight, Dr. Bower. She’s a school bus driver, and this morning one of the kids on her route bit her leg.”

  Lukas turned to Claudia. “Did I hear that right?”

  “Yep, you heard me. Just above the ankle. He was throwing a fit on the floor of the bus.”

  “Did it draw blood?” And it was still morning. What else would turn up?

  “Yes. I’ll clean it up, but it doesn’t look like it needs stitches. She had a tetanus shot last year.” Claudia leaned forward and lowered her voice. “She told me she didn’t want to come in after that bad write-up in the paper about us the other day, but her boss told her she had to.” She shoved a chart across the desk so hard it nearly toppled over the other side. “That Bailey Little sure has a lot to answer for. He’s out to destroy this hospital. I hope I don’t pass him on the street someday when I’m in a bad mood.”

  Lukas couldn’t prevent a grin at his iron-jawed nurse. “I hope you don’t, either, Claudia. We’re the only emergency room within an hour’s drive from here.”

  “You know,” she said, “that makes the fourth person in three days who’s mentioned that letter to me. Two people wanted to know if we were going to be closed down by the government, and one grouchy old man—who wasn’t even a patient, mind you—wanted to know if you’d ‘manhandled’ any more nurses lately. I’d like to know who started that rumor. I’d like to show him ‘manhandled.’”

  As Lukas went to check the bus driver with the bite, he felt his resentment mounting again. Not only had Bailey Little written a misleading letter to the Knolls Review, but he was also apparently spreading rumors that made Lukas look like a masher.

  The bus driver’s bite had bled well, which would help cleanse the wound, and it didn’t need stitches. It was best not to close bite wounds anyway. Lukas left Claudia to do further cleaning and went back out to the central desk, where Lauren sat talking quietly with Judy. They fell silent when he approached.

  He frowned at Lauren and sat down in his chair at the end of the nine-foot-long counter. “Please don’t tell me about all the patients who are complaining about our service or asking about the COBRA investigation or our sale to RealCare. I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “You won’t hear it from me.” Lauren wheeled her chair over to him and scooted to a stop. “All I’ve heard the patients talking about this morning is the fires. It’s making everyone nervous. You’ve got to admit, it tends to make you smell smoke everywhere you go.” She leaned closer. “I did hear one other thing just now.”

  Oh boy, here it came. He looked at her.

  “Did you and Dr. Mercy break up?”

  Lukas felt a fuse short out somewhere in his brain. That was the last thing he wanted to talk about. It was all he’d thought about this weekend. “Break what up?” he snapped.

  Her voice grew even softer, and she laid a hand on his arm. “Are you doing okay?”

  Lukas breathed an impatient sigh. How did that get out so quickly? A person couldn’t even sneeze in this town without everybody talking about it. “I’m fine, Lauren.” He moved his arm from her touch, rolled his chair backward and stood, feeling a rush of unaccustomed anger that mingled perfectly with his already bad mood. “Maybe you should reread the passages in the Bible about gossip. Maybe you should read it out loud to the whole town. Do you think you could get back to work?” He picked up a clipboard. “Are the test results back for the patient in four? What was Crystal’s temperature last time you checked?”

  A pink flush crept up from Lauren’s neck. “It’s only a hundred degrees now. Sorry, Dr. Bower, I’ll get busy.”

  He watched her get up and rush away, and for a full minute he refused to feel guilty for snapping at her. Hadn’t she learned there were times a person did not want to be accosted with the pain in his life? Hadn’t anyone in Knolls County ever heard of the word privacy?

  He slammed a drawer shut and saw from the corner of his vision that Judy turned to c
ast him a worried glance. He immediately felt embarrassed. His temper had been spilling out all morning, and he needed to get it under control. He knew Lauren had a good heart. She cared about people. Still, her intrusiveness could be irritating at times. He would apologize later, when he had thirty minutes or so to listen to her nonstop monologue.

  Finally he paused to mentally repeat to himself a verse he had memorized for just such circumstances. “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” He would try hard to push the rest out of his mind. But it was becoming a battle.

  He missed Mercy.

  “Good news, Odira,” he said moments later as he pushed past the privacy curtain. Crystal’s color already looked better, and her timid smile greeted him. “No pneumonia, and the temperature’s going down.” He listened once more to the little girl’s breathing. It was better.

  He bent and looked her in the eyes and, as always, was struck by the aura of silent resignation in her expression. He’d never heard her laugh or seen her play. He handed her three scratch-and-sniff stickers, and her eyes widened.

  She looked at him, then back at the stickers. “Thank you,” she said softly.

  “All right!” Odira shouted, struggling to get to her feet. “Knew you’d take care of her, Doc!” Once upright, she reached over and gave Crystal a bear hug. “Hear that, honey? My gal’s gonna be fine.” She turned back to Lukas. “You want me to keep that appointment with Dr. Mercy this afternoon?”

  “No, but she’ll want to recheck Crystal in a day or two. Be sure to reschedule her appointment,” he said as he lifted the child down from the exam bed.

  “I’ll do it!” Odira straightened the thrift-shop dress over her rolls of flesh, beaming at Lukas. “Don’t know what we’d do without you, Dr. Bower. When I read that letter in the paper the other day, I called ol’ Harvey’s office and told them if they did anything like that again, I’d cancel my subscription and tell all my friends at the senior center to do the same! Cain’t stand Bailey Little anyway. Never could. Why, if that man’s too stupid to recognize a quality doctor when he sees one, then he’s just too stupid!” She jerked her head in Crystal’s direction. “Why don’t people pay more attention to the important stuff in life, like this little girl here? Why don’t they stop tryin’ to make life miserable for good folks like you?” She took Crystal’s hand and waddled out of the room with her.