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  Chapter Four

  THE DOUBLE DOORS OF Palmetto Memorial Hospital electronically burst open, clearing the way for the lead paramedic to rush through, communicating on a walkie-talkie. In seconds, two nurses appeared from around the corner, ready to assist the first responders.

  “Woman, five-nine . . . early thirties,” the paramedic announced in rat-tat-tat staccato. “Auto collision, driver’s side. Trauma to head, concussion, possible internal bleeding. Broken left leg . . .” Seconds later, a gurney rolled through, carrying the body of an immobilized woman. An oxygen mask covered the woman’s face and her neck was secured in traction. The entire left side of her body seemed to be covered in blood.

  “Get her to trauma room 2,” boomed the voice of one of the nurses.

  Not far behind the stretcher, Leonard and Jeannette Harper stumbled through the double doors. Leonard half held, half supported his wife as they moved as quickly as they could, the end result looking like a pairing in an awkward three-legged race. Jeannette’s eyes were wide and darting around inside their sockets, and she was incoherently mumbling to herself.

  “Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Harper?” The lady at the front desk called out, standing and raising her hand in a futile attempt to gain their attention. But the Harpers weren’t about to be slowed down by some woman behind a desk. Not when their only daughter was clinging to life mere feet away from them.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Harper!” the receptionist called out again, more loudly this time. At the sound of her voice, one of the nurses turned around to see the couple attempting to gain entry into the trauma room.

  “I’m sorry, but you two cannot come past these doors,” the nurse sternly cautioned, holding out his hand to block their path before they reached the doors leading to the operating room.

  “My daughter!” Jeannette screamed. “Get out of my way! My daughter is back there!”

  “I understand, ma’am,” the nurse replied gently, holding his ground. His facial expression radiated the perfect blend of sympathy and sorrow. “But I can’t let you past these doors. The doctors are doing everything they can for her right now.”

  Jeannette sagged against the nurse’s arms, her screams now turned into a mournful wailing. “You’ve got to let me . . . my daughter . . . Lynn . . .”

  Leonard placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders, gently leading her away from the doors. “It’s in the Lord’s hands now,” he whispered.

  “My baby . . . Lynn . . . oh, sweet Jesus . . .” Jeannette continued mumbling.

  “I know . . . I know,” Leonard repeated, encouraging himself as much as his wife. “But we’re going to make it through this.”

  They slowly made their way back to the desk, where the receptionist offered them a sympathetic smile. “If you’ll just fill out these insurance forms . . .”

  THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER Pastor Gentry, Arlene, and four ministers from the intercessory prayer team arrived to find Leonard and Jeannette sitting in the waiting area, holding each other.

  The pastor walked over to them, briefly placing his hand atop Leonard’s shoulder. He’d known Leonard for thirty years, dating back to when they were both students at Morris College. Alonzo had been the chaplain for the Baptist Student Union, and Leonard had been the first man he’d led to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. The two had remained close friends ever since, and Leonard had been one of the charter members when Alonzo had founded Faith Community Church. Alonzo had also introduced Leonard to his future wife, Jeannette, at a church barbecue, he had been in the hospital for the birth of their daughter, Lynn, and he was known to stop by a few times a year for Jeannette’s delicious German chocolate cake. Jeannette had long since returned the favor by introducing Alonzo to her longtime friend Shanice; the two had been married now ten years.

  “Leonard, this is . . . this is a shock to us all,” Alonzo began, sitting down in the chair next to Leonard. He allowed a few seconds to pass in contemplative silence. “But I want you to know that we are all here for you. Have the doctors said anything further about Lynn’s condition?”

  Leonard shook his head. “We don’t know anything yet. The . . . the impact on her left side . . .” He shook his head as his voice trailed off. He had seen Lynn lying on that stretcher—a sight no parent should ever have to see.

  Pastor Gentry closed his eyes and squeezed Leonard’s hand. “Father, we know that You are Jehovah-Rapha, the Lord that healeth us. We pray that You would now touch the hands of the doctors who are in the operating room as we speak. We know that nothing is too hard for You, and we release our faith for a complete healing for Lynn Harper. We ask that You would strengthen our hearts in the midst of this crisis. Above all, though, we pray Your will be done. In Jesus’s name, amen.”

  Chapter Five

  DURING HIS PAST FOUR YEARS as a staff writer for the State, the bulk of Travis Everett’s articles had gone largely ignored by readers. It was not that he was a bad writer; indeed, his colleagues regarded his literary acumen as above average. Instead, his lackluster reporting skills meant that he was assigned the garden-variety stories that languished in obscurity on the fourth page of the Metro section. In the editor’s all-important opinion (since story placement was ruled on with an iron fist), Travis simply was not a good enough reporter to handle the kind of hard-hitting political and community-interest stories commanding priority in Metro.

  Outwardly, Travis acted as if this stepchild-like treatment didn’t affect him. He claimed to be perfectly satisfied collecting a paycheck for pounding out two eight-hundred-word features a week, no matter where his stories were placed. In truth, though, he longed for the recognition that came from penning an important and interesting story that would dominate not only the front page of Metro, but also the front page of the entire newspaper.

  But where would he find such a story? By his own admission, he was a lazy reporter. He often researched data on the Internet instead of cold-calling sources and physically traveling to various parts of the state to collect eyewitness accounts. His boss, Ryman Wells, had noticed his tendency to cut corners almost immediately, handing Travis the thankless job of covering the likes of community bake-offs and town hall meetings.

  Glancing at his watch, Travis now saw he had three more hours until the deadline for submitting his next piece, a yawner of a story about the proliferation of summertime gnats. The article’s subject—gnats—aroused as much interest as tickets to watch a family of turtles sprint around the Darlington Raceway, but Travis could care less. For all intents and purposes, the article was already written; it just needed a little polishing.

  Nobody’s gonna read it, anyway . . . why even bother?

  He popped another salty pretzel into his mouth and washed it down with a swig of diet Pepsi from the can always perched next to his keyboard. He didn’t even know why he was addicted to this particular soda, since it didn’t taste better than the diet brands of the other soft drinks. Maybe it was the baby blue and red colors. It certainly had nothing to do with dieting—Travis’s five-foot-eight-inch body perpetually fluctuated between 250 and 280 pounds, depending on how many trips he made to Damon’s Clubhouse in a given week.

  Speaking of Damon’s . . .

  The pretzels weren’t doing anything to appease his growing hunger. He glanced at his watch again and greedily calculated that he had time for one of Damon’s tasty barbecue sandwiches. And maybe a slice of cheery cheesecake to satisfy his sweet tooth. And, of course, another diet Pepsi to wash it all down.

  As he stood and retrieved his Clemson Tigers baseball cap, his arm accidentally knocked the framed picture of his nephew Eddie onto the desk, causing the glass frame to shatter. He automatically cursed, but was nevertheless relieved to see that his half-full diet Pepsi can hadn’t tilted over and spilled onto his keyboard. That had happened once before, earning him two weeks of Ryman Wells’s unrelenting wrath. Hadn’t the old buzzard ever heard of the word “accident” before?

  He reached over to pick up his wastebasket, t
hen placed the metal receptacle at the edge of his desk. Carefully he swept the tiny shards of glass into the trash, idly wondering how much damage a piece of glass could inflict upon a keyboard’s internal wiring.

  “Hey, Trav, everything alright?”

  The question came from Benny Dodson, a fellow staff writer whose cubicle was adjacent to Travis’s. If Travis’s stigma was being Ryman Wells’s whipping boy, then Benny Dodson was the polar opposite. Benny kissed up to Ryman any chance he got, a tactic that the veteran editor loved. Partly due to such brownnosing (and to the fact that he was probably a better journalist than the other staff writers), Benny regularly saw his articles grace the Metro’s front page.

  “Yeah, Benny,” Travis responded, contemplating scattering a few shards of glass all over Benny’s chair. Now wouldn’t the chaos from that make for an interesting, exciting article? “Everything’s alright—go back to thinking of new ways to suck up to the boss.”

  Benny sighed loudly and Travis could visualize him rolling his eyes. “Give up, Travis. Will ya?”

  Travis started to respond with a nasty remark, but at that moment his eyes fell on the picture of his nephew Eddie, grinning in that “what, me worry?” way, a facial expression that was all the more remarkable considering Eddie’s medical condition. Eddie had been born with ectrodactylism, a rare birth defect that caused the tibia and fibula in both of his legs to be fused at the ankle, rendering him unable to walk. Eddie’s pediatrician had mentioned that only one out of every ninety thousand children in the United States was born with such a defect, causing Travis to sometimes wonder why fate had dealt Eddie such a cruel hand. And if that wasn’t misfortune enough, Eddie had also been born deaf. Both afflictions compounded Travis’s awkwardness around the kid, especially since Eddie was always reaching out with his arms, looking for hugs from his “Uncle Trav,” or pleading for someone to throw the Nerf baseball around with.

  The growling of his stomach interrupted Travis’s thoughts then, pleasantly reminding him that barbecue and cheesecake were awaiting the attention of his palate.

  Chapter Six

  HOPE SPRINGS CHURCH had been built at the turn of the twentieth century, during a time when houses of worship were constructed with one basic theme in mind—Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand.

  The church was a simple, wooden, one-story shotgun frame touched up with white paint about every ten years. T. R. Smallwood vividly remembered the first time he had walked through Hope Springs’s doors, and it was this memory that now caused a smile to spread across his weathered face.

  He had been eleven years old at the time, and his father had just relocated the Smallwood family to Sumter for a “missionary” assignment. All of the family moves—eight of them by the time TR reached high school—were missionary moves, as TR recalled. To his young eyes, his father had been a preacher without a pulpit, a wandering evangelist with four hungry mouths at home to feed.

  “We’re doing the Lord’s work,” his father would always answer to TR’s questions of why he couldn’t get a real job. “And the Lord will provide for our family.”

  Sure enough, God had always provided for the Smallwoods, a continuing act of providence that played a big role in TR’s heeding the same call as both his father and grandfather into full-time ministry.

  But on that day fifty years ago, TR had walked into a Wednesday night prayer service at Hope Springs and had been astounded at how the people were behaving. Women young and old were spinning around like colorful human tops, their hands lifted to the heavens and their long, billowy dresses fanning out all around them. The men were shouting and dancing, lifting their Bibles and waving them around like swords. And the pastor at the pulpit, a fiery young man known to all as Preacher Ray, was exhorting the congregation to do the same thing TR now employed as the trademark of his sermons.

  “Every man, woman, boy, and girl,” Preacher Ray had been exclaiming in his unforgettable raspy tenor voice, “if you’re a child of God, then let’s board that train to glory!”

  “Ah, that glory train,” TR now repeated, reminiscing as he stood on the front steps of Hope Springs Church. He looked upward, marveling at the countless number of stars dotting the summer South Carolina sky.

  “Lord, You have been so good to me,” he began, not caring about the tears coursing down his face. “You’ve blessed me with a wonderful, loving wife, with a church family that hears Your voice and follows me as I follow You, and most of all, You’ve blessed me with . . .” His voice began breaking. “You’ve . . . blessed me with a healthy heart. Lord, I’ve always believed in divine healing. And now, more than ever, I’m committed to preaching that message from now until the day You return to this earth. You are the Healer.” He lifted his hands and closed his eyes, letting the presence of God wash over him.

  “You . . . are the Healer,” he repeated.

  AN INTENSE THROBBING in the center of her forehead jarred Lynn awake more convincingly than any alarm clock ever could. Her first reaction was to cry out, but for some horrifying reason she . . . couldn’t.

  Why can’t I open my mouth?

  In addition to the headache, it felt as if a thousand cotton balls were glued to her tongue. She tried to open her eyes and found she couldn’t do that either. She sensed some sort of bandage covering them.

  Oh God, am I blind, too? Relax, Lynn. Just relax . . . try to remember what happened . . .

  Surely there was a reasonable explanation for everything. But why on earth couldn’t she . . . Then at last, she was able to remember. In an instant, like she was pressing rewind on a monitor and seeing a colorful blur of images flashing before her, the all-too-vivid remembrance of the accident came roaring back to her mind. The sight of that tan pickup truck seconds before it hit her . . . a gut-wrenching shriek . . . and then nothing. Everything after that went blank in her mind. Amazingly, she remembered no pain, no blood, nothing like the gory images of wrecks she always saw in the movies and on television. It was as if God spared her from all of that.

  But what about the other driver?

  There were so many questions in her mind at the present moment. Obviously, she must be in a hospital of some sort. But how long had she been here? And had someone called her parents? How badly was she injured? What . . . oh, Lord . . . what did she look like now?

  As she lay there unable to move, see, or speak, though, slowly the profound gravity of her present situation sank in a little more clearly. At once, she was upset with herself for even thinking about something as trivial as her looks. She could have very well . . . she could have very well . . . died.

  Do you realize how close to death you were?

  As it was now, she couldn’t even open her eyes and mouth. Or move her legs, she realized with a mounting sense of dread. And those two impairments were beginning to ring slight chords of fear within her heart. What if she could never walk again? Or see again? Or talk again?

  Lynn, don’t you even think that . . . Finally, after much effort, she found that she could manage to move her arms a little bit.

  Oh, thank God for that . . .

  A faint whirring noise could be heard to her right. Slowly crossing her left arm over her chest and then inching her hand and fingers along the edge of the hospital bed, she discovered, as she had presumed, that an intravenous fluid line ran from the machine into her right arm. Because her eyes and mouth were not any help at the moment, she had to rely more heavily on her other senses to get a feel of the room. The door was not far away; if she strained, she could just hear footsteps and other noises every other minute or so. The sounds were muffled, though, so the door more than likely was not fully open.

  Aside from the electrical whirring of the various machines on both sides of the bed, there were no other sounds. She was alone, utterly alone in the room and unable to open her eyes or mouth. That sobering reality would have given her a valid reason to be afraid, if not for the fact that surely a nurse was regularly checking on her.

  At least I
’m alive,she thought, before a wave of dizziness overtook her and she lapsed back into unconsciousness.

  “LYNN?” THE VOICE SOUNDED GARBLED and far away, like the person was speaking underwater via sonar. “Lynn, honey, can you hear me?”

  Lynn tried opening her eyes but they were still bandaged. Her tongue didn’t feel like cotton balls, peanut butter, and Superglue anymore, however, so she attempted to speak.

  “Daddy?” she weakly croaked, her voice sounding like a frog. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, honey, it’s me. Your mother and I are both here. Oh, Lynn, it’s so good to hear your voice.”

  But I sound like a frog . . .

  Leonard Harper didn’t seem to mind one bit what his only daughter’s voice sounded like. “We came just as soon as we could, honey. It’s so good to . . . so good to . . .” His voice cracked. “You’re . . . you’re gonna be okay, baby. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  “Lynn? Lynn, oh God, we’re so glad to hear you,” came her mother’s voice. From the sound of it, Lynn could tell her mother had been crying.

  “Mom, how . . . how long have I been in here?”

  “Two weeks, baby.”

  Two weeks!

  “You were in a coma for six days, and for a while it was touch and go. The doctors didn’t know if you were gonna make it. But everyone was praying, Lynn. We knew God was going to get you through this somehow.”

  Oh my God . . .

  “Lynn, I’m Dr. Sherman Winthrop,” she heard another voice say. “I’m very glad to see you awake and talking, although I’m afraid we are going to have to limit that.”

  “My eyes,” Lynn broke in. “Why . . . why are my eyes bandaged?”

  “Some glass splinters from the driver’s-side window pierced your eyelid and the surrounding uveal tissue. We’re waiting for the tests to come back on a diagnostic procedure we performed, and until then the bandages are a protective measure.”