I hear the stretcher wheels in the hall and turn to watch it roll by. One EMT continues chest compressions while another propels the stretcher with one hand, squeezing the breathing bag with the other. I follow them out the door and into the cold dark of a January evening.
The stretcher wheels leave tracks in the snow between the porch and the ambulance.
A small crowd of neighbors has gathered across the street. The knitting circle ladies huddle together on the porch. Both groups are whispering, gawking. Thomas has become entertainment. A spectacle. They shouldn’t see him like this. He’s a holy man of God, not a resuscitation dummy.
Val’s arm steadies me as the ambulance team loads Thomas into the ambulance. Earlene prays aloud, hands clasped.
“Our Father, please be with our pastor in this moment. You are the Almighty Healer, you have the power to work miracles, and you know how he is needed here on this earth. We ask that you work a miracle now on his behalf, and yet we bow to your will . . .”
“You can ride with us if you’d like,” the woman EMT says. Something is wrong with my brain and my muscles. I can’t bring myself to say a single word, to do anything more than blink at her.
“I’ll bring her,” Val says. “That will be better.”
The EMT nods and closes the doors on her partner, who is still delivering compressions, then springs into the driver’s seat. Lights and sirens start as they drive away.
I’m shivering. Snow is drifting down, swirling in the light of the streetlamps. My feet in my slip-on pumps are wet, my toes burning with cold. The gathered crowd has turned their stares on me.
Val’s arm tightens around my waist, and she tugs me into motion. “Let’s get your coat and some boots, and then I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
Grateful that somebody has taken charge of me and is telling me what to do, I let Val lead me into the house. I sit on the sofa when she tells me to. Drink the glass of water she gives me.
The ladies of the knitting circle collect their belongings in funereal silence, tucking unfinished blankets into knitting bags, returning their chairs to the dining room, putting the unused cups and plates back in the cabinet
Val wraps an afghan around my shoulders, and only then do I realize how my body is trembling. “Is there anybody I can call?”
I blink up at her as if the words are in a foreign language. Who would I call? My parents are dead. Thomas’s parents are both in a nursing home, his father so far gone with dementia he won’t comprehend what’s being said to him, his mother not much more coherent.
As for friends, a pastor’s wife can’t have friends, not really. Inside the congregation, it looks like playing favorites when I’m supposed to love everybody equally and unconditionally. Friends outside the fold are off-limits. Val is the closest thing I have to a real friend.
“Liz?” Val kneels down on the floor, puts her hands on my shoulders. “Do you want me to call Abigail?”
My stomach lurches, rises. I press both hands over my mouth. Val’s kind face blurs and swims in front of me.
I will need to call my daughter and tell her . . . tell her . . .
I can’t do this. I can’t face this new version of the world, this new version of myself.
The house looks strange, as if I’ve never seen it before. The greens in the throw rug in the living room grate on my nerves. I hate green, at least in that color, would have chosen blues if I’d had a say. Everything is so freakishly neat, it looks like a stage set. There is not one thing in this room that I love, that belongs to me. My entire married life feels like a book I read, a movie I watched.
Outside of Thomas, I don’t have a life. Outside of Thomas, I don’t even exist.
I hear myself laughing wildly, the lunatic laughter of a crazy woman.
Kimber and Amy exchange glances and hustle out the door together. Felicity is already gone. Annie hesitates, touches my shoulder. I want to thank her, but the insane laughter doubles me over, and I can’t stop, can’t speak.
“What is wrong with her?” Earlene demands, hovering, an expression of outright horror on her face.
“Hysterics,” Val retorts. “Perfectly normal given what she’s just been through. I’m sorry, but do you need something?”
Before Earlene can come up with a response, my laughter shifts to weeping, great tearing sobs that feel like they’re going to turn me inside out. Over the horrible, humiliating sounds I’m making, I hear Earlene’s voice, clear and authoritative, praying for both my soul and my sanity.
“Do you have to do that?” Val challenges, interrupting.
“I’m seeking intervention—”
“Pretty sure He can still hear you if you pray silently.” Val turns back to me, her voice softening from commanding to coaxing. “Come on, Liz. Let’s get you to the hospital.”
She fetches my coat and drapes it over my shoulders. Kneels down and slips my shoes off my feet, sliding on my warm winter boots in their place. I feel oddly comforted by this small action and sit there like a child, letting her dress me.
Somehow Val even manages to shoo Earlene out of the house. She drives me to the hospital. Walks with me to the reception desk. Asks about Thomas.
“Someone will be right out to speak with you,” the receptionist says. Her expression gives nothing away, and I try to guess whether this is good news or bad news. If Thomas is alive, miraculously recovered, surely she’d just say, “Go on in. He’s been asking for you.”
Val and I settle into chairs, side by side. She holds my hand the whole time, her hand soft but capable, the skin a little dry and red on the back, nails trimmed short. In the chair across from me, an elderly man reads a magazine while the woman beside him rocks slightly, her face clenched in pain.
When the double doors open and a bearded man in green scrubs comes out, a giant hand seems to squeeze my chest, stealing my breath.
“Mrs. Lightsey? I’m Dr. Blaise.”
I get to my feet, even though I know without him telling me that I’m not Mrs. Lightsey anymore. In order to be a “Mrs.,” there needs to be a “Mr.,” and the doctor’s expression tells me plainly that the “Mr.” part of this equation has passed into the great beyond.
Chapter Three
How do you tell your only child that her father is dead?
That I should do this monstrous thing—break into her ordinary day with such shattering news—seems as possible as climbing Mount Everest or flying to the moon. How will I even begin?
My instinct is to shield her from danger, to kiss her hurts and make them better, and everything in me recoils from being the one to hurt her. If I must deliver this blow, I want to be able to hold her as I tell it. But as Val points out, very gently, if I wait, if I drive to Spokane, given the small town and church communication network that Abigail and I are both connected to, she is likely to hear it from somebody else.
So I call her, even though she’s in the middle of a shift in the emergency room at Sacred Heart.
“Hey, Mom,” she says. “We’re expecting an onslaught any minute. Can I call you back?”
“No, honey. We need to talk now.”
I take a breath and steel myself. She likes facts and abhors emotional scenes. I try to keep my voice even, as if I’m reporting on the weather.