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  “What about . . . what about my other injuries?”

  “Lynn, it’s best that you get your rest right now,” Leonard interjected. “You’ll be fine and out of here in no time at all.”

  “I feel so sore, Daddy . . . and what about the other driver . . . and—”

  “Lynn, shh . . .” Leonard soothingly interrupted her. He glanced quickly at Jeannette, who shook her head. Neither wanted to tell their daughter just yet that the other driver, whose blood alcohol level had been two times the state’s legal limit, had not survived the accident. “The most important thing is that you’re alright,” Leonard said instead. “Everything is going to be alright.”

  Daddy’s always right,Lynn thought to herself, taking a deep breath. He’s always . . . right . . .

  Chapter Seven

  LYNN’S NEXT FEW DAYS passed by in a medicated haze. It seemed to her that doctors and nurses were stopping by her room nearly every hour, monitoring the equipment around her bed, pricking her with needles, or taking her temperature. The bulk of her injuries stemmed from her rental car not being equipped with side-impact air bags, leaving her with a concussion, two broken ribs, and minor damage to her tibia and lower left leg. Although those were severe injuries, they were not life-threatening. She was expected to make a full recovery in a matter of months.

  The injury that concerned the doctors and her family the most, however, was the trauma inflicted on her eyes. Both her left and right corneas had suffered extensive abrasions and vitreous hemorrhaging from the shattering of the driver’s-side window at eye level, delicate wounds for which surgery would not guarantee a restoration of sight.

  “Y-you mean . . . you mean I’m going to go blind?” Lynn now whispered, her voice faltering as she contemplated what it would be like living in permanent darkness the rest of her life. She thought about her Natalie Cole-like eyes, her best facial feature, and how they might now appear lifeless and cloudy gray. She thought about being unable to read (her favorite pastime), or never again enjoying the brilliance of sunsets, sunrises, and rainbows. She thought about never again gazing through the stained-glass windows of Faith Community Church while in the throes of intimate worship.

  “Yes, there is a chance you could completely lose your sight,” Dr. Winthrop responded.

  Lynn couldn’t help but wonder if all of this was merely a test of her faith. Perhaps it was a boomerang effect from all the times she’d taught about faith during Christian education classes, encouraging believers to only believe the report of the Lord when facing trials such as a terminal illness, a job termination, or parenting a prodigal child.

  But blindness? How on earth could she live and function in a complete state of darkness?

  “It is also possible that you may lose only a percentage of sight, or perhaps your peripheral vision. At this point, we just don’t know how your eyes will respond to the treatments.”

  Lynn tried once more to visualize Dr. Winthrop’s face, just as she’d been doing with everyone she hadn’t already known who visited her room. The doctor’s voice had always been calm and soothing, almost grandfatherly. She sensed he was in his fifties, and had heard nurses talking about his “big tufts of white hair,” so she fancied him as the old colonel who’d founded the KFC restaurants.

  Come on, Lynn . . . get a hold of yourself . . .

  Is this what her life was to become? Imagining what strangers looked like? Straining for the scent of someone’s perfume or cologne?

  Oh God, I just can’t do this . . .

  “. . . going to do everything we possibly can to get you well,” Dr. Winthrop was saying as Lynn snapped out of her despairing trance.

  “I know, Doctor. Thank you.”

  “Your parents, Arlene, and a few members from your church are waiting in the lobby, as always. Do you feel up to a visit?”

  Lynn nodded. Visits from her family and friends were the highlights of her day, since there was no need for visualizing what they looked like.

  “TRAVIS! TRAVIS, GET IN MY OFFICE NOW.”

  The gruff, steely voice barking on the other end of the phone line couldn’t have sounded much angrier, Travis thought, as he replaced the receiver on its base. He’d e-mailed his second weekly story to Ryman Wells twenty minutes earlier, and apparently the old guy hadn’t liked it.

  What else is new?

  Travis guzzled the last of his diet Pepsi and tossed it in the wastebasket along with the two earlier cans he’d already polished off. Slowly, he got out of his chair, exited his cubicle, and plodded down the carpeted hallway leading to the editor’s corner office. Ryman was waiting for him, glaring at him from underneath brooding eyebrows. An ex-marine who’d returned to the newsroom after the first Gulf War, Ryman Wells was about as approachable as a pit bulldog. And about as friendly, too. Accordingly, he ran the Metro section as though he were dictator and it was his own personal kingdom.

  “Travis, what the devil is this?” he barked, holding up what looked like a copy of Travis’s latest submission.

  “Looks like my story,” Travis replied, his face blank.

  “What it is,” Ryman corrected, “is a piece of trash. Our readers do not care about the reproductive nature of gnats!”

  “It’s a follow-up, sir, on last week’s story about the proliferation of gnats in greater Richland County. In the summer, they’re—”

  “Your writing on that was trash, too! Last week’s story was only printed because we didn’t have enough community announcements to fill up the fourth page.”

  Travis didn’t even blink at Ryman’s tirade. He wasn’t hearing anything new from the grumpy old editor; Ryman always hated how Travis’s stories were written.

  “I’ve never given you an ultimatum,” Ryman continued, “but I’m past fed up with this. I’ve had it with your juvenile efforts at quality journalism. If your next story is not significantly better in both style and content, you’ll be given your marching orders.”

  “My marching orders . . . sir?”

  “Let me spell it out for you, Everett. I will fire you quicker than an AWOL soldier finds himself in trouble with Uncle Sam. I will not have juvenile stories cluttering up my Metro section. Do I make myself clear?”

  Travis resisted the urge to salute the ex-marine. He could never remember if it was supposed to be done with the left or right hand.

  “THIS IS AMAZING, TR. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.”

  T. R. Smallwood grinned broadly and lifted his gaze to the ceiling as his personal physician for the past twenty years, Hank Mitchell, studied his most recent heart scan.

  “God is good, ain’t He, Hank?”

  Hank coughed and pushed his reading glasses farther up on his nose. “Y-yes, God is good, but your arteries have had significant blockage for years. You’ve been doing a decent job with your diet and exercise, but this radical reversal on your heart is . . . is simply unprecedented.” He held out the readout from the heart scan. “I’m looking at the heart of a thirty-year-old here.”

  “Well, glory to God!” Smallwood shouted. “All praise to God for His miracle-working power!”

  Hank was a Christian and generally believed in the power of God to do the miraculous, but for Smallwood’s heart to change (and rejuvenate, even) virtually overnight defied all medical and scientific logic.

  “TR, now let me get this from you one more time,” Hank began, lightly scratching the back of his head. “You’re saying a man walked up to you, in the middle of your heart attack, touched his hand to your heart . . . and . . . and that was it? The pain, the shortness of breath—it all stopped?”

  Smallwood nodded. “But the man of God first asked me if I believed I was healed through the blood and by the name of Jesus. And Lord knows I do! I’ve been preaching that at Hope Springs for years! In the gospel of Mark 16:18, Jesus says that we will lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover!”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Hank replied, still scratching the back of his head. “But except for the m
iracles in the book of Acts, I’ve never seen this sort of thing.”

  “Oh, come now,” Smallwood said, still grinning. “Instances of divine healing have happened before—maybe I should refresh your memory a bit. Surely you’ve read about the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles? William Seymour led that great move of God back in 1906, which drew people all over the world to an old renovated livestock stable on Azusa Street. Folks were healed of all manner of sicknesses and were filled with the Holy Spirit by the thousands. Glory to God! And you’ve heard of Kathryn Kuhlman, right?”

  Hank took off his reading glasses. “Name sounds familiar.”

  “It should. She was a mighty healing evangelist who packed auditoriums and arenas all over America in the forties and fifties. People from all over the world testified of being healed through her services. And right around that same time, God raised up Oral Roberts, whom I know you’ve heard of because your daughter-in-law Gracie graduated from Oral Roberts U. His tent healing services in the fifties and sixties impacted who knows how many lives. I know one thing—it impacted mine. I attended one of ’em in 1954, and it changed my life forever.” Smallwood sighed contentedly and slapped his knee. “So many others—Smith Wigglesworth, John G. Lake, Charles and Frances Hunter. I tell you, Hank—the gift of healing is alive and well in the body of Christ!”

  “Well yes, that seems to be true . . .”

  “Ah, Hank, I still sense some doubt in you. But you’ve got the proof there in your hand! A personal encounter with the miracle-working healing power of God! Glory to His name! I’m beginning another series at our church on divine healing starting this Sunday. You should stop by. They don’t preach that at your church, do they?”

  Hank shook his head. “Well, n-not exactly.”

  Smallwood stood and placed a hand on Hank’s shoulder. “The Bible defines faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. But you’ve seen those images of my heart. And you’ve been my physician for the last twenty years. I’d reckon that’s more than enough evidence, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I-I really don’t know what to say, TR.”

  “Have faith, Hank. Have faith in God.”

  LATER THAT EVENING, TR stared at his reflection in his bathroom mirror, vacillating between longing and wonder at the aging process. His hair had once been full and jet-black, but it was now gray and thinning. It was amazing how the years had flown by. The bald spot at the crown of his head was seemingly growing larger with each passing month, but TR refused to get hair implants, or hair injections, or whatever those late-night infomercials kept advertising. He was content to grow old gracefully, now that he felt a greater assurance that he was going to grow old.

  Still looking at the mirror, he touched a finger to the spot on his bare chest. It was the same spot where that mysterious man had placed his hand and spoken the healing words of Jesus over his heart. Slowly, almost reverently, TR began circling that spot with the tip of his index finger, silently mouthing praise to the Lord. He’d long wrestled with the fear of succumbing to the heart disease that ran in his family line, mainly because his father and grandfather had both preached divine healing, just as he now did. And what did it say about a preacher who preached great faith in the pulpit, only to lie awake at night wrestling with the spirit of fear?

  Says you’re human, jus’ like everybody else . . .

  Yet God had heard him, and answered his prayer!

  “I don’t know who that man was that walked into Hope Springs, Lord, but I’m so glad he was listenin’ to Your precious Spirit and was obedient to come forward when he did,” TR said, the same prayer of thanksgiving he’d been saying every day since the healing.

  “TR, what are you doing standing there looking at yourself in the mirror?”

  TR jumped slightly, initially thinking the voice of God was responding to him. But unless God was now speaking in a gravelly “Weezy” Jefferson vocal inflection, then it was not the Almighty. Rather, it was his beloved wife of thirty-three years, Estella.

  “I’m marvelin’ at what a fine specimen of manhood the Lord wrought when He made ol’ TR,” he answered, chuckling.

  Estella appeared in the bathroom doorway and laughed along with him. He turned around to face her, and it was only then that he noticed Estella was wearing his favorite nighttime outfit, a silky black gown that accentuated the graceful curves of her body. Even at fifty-two years old, Estella Smallwood sported a figure that put an hourglass to shame. For a second, TR forgot all about what a fine specimen of manhood the Lord had wrought. The woman standing in front of him conjured up more pleasant, and urgent, thoughts.

  “Well now, that outfit’s been known to keep me young,” he remarked, walking over and taking her into his arms.

  “Amen to that,” Estella purred.

  Chapter Eight

  DR. SHERMAN WINTHROP studied the eye examination data that had been returned to him after he’d sent copies to a respected ophthalmologist at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. The diagnosis from that doctor was the same as his.

  Lynn Harper . . . would never see again.

  The surgery team at Palmetto Memorial had been successful in removing the glass debris from both of Lynn’s eyes, but the damage to her corneas had been too great. Her left eye certainly had no chance of restoration, and her right eye was not much better.

  The red light on his desk phone began blinking, a sign that he was being paged.

  “Winthrop here.”

  “Dr. Winthrop, Lynn Harper’s mother and father are here.”

  Nodding, Sherman set the papers down. His face took on a grim expression as he stood. “Tell them I’ll be right there.”

  LYNN HEARD THE FOOTSTEPS approaching her door fifteen seconds before anyone entered her room. Her hearing had been sharpened tremendously, as had her senses of touch, smell, and taste. She’d known, in an academic sense, that a human being’s other four senses were heightened during a prolonged state of blindness, but to experience the phenomenon over the past few weeks was almost too much for her to bear. She wanted—needed—her sight back.

  “Lynn, how are you feeling this morning?” she heard Dr. Winthrop ask.

  “A little better,” she replied, smelling first her mother’s perfume, then her father’s aftershave as they came in the room as well. “I can lift my left arm higher now,” she added, demonstrating with a thumbs-up gesture.

  “That’s terrific! You’ll be whipping it around like it was brand-new once you’re assigned to physical therapy.”

  “Baby, we’ve all been praying for you at church,” Jeannette spoke up, grasping her daughter’s hand. “Pastor Gentry called all of us to pray and fast for your healing and recovery.”

  Several church elders had visited her as well, following the scripture in James 5:14, where the elders of the church were called for, to pray over and anoint those who were sick in the name of the Lord. Lynn’s own faith had strengthened as a result, prompting her to lay her right hand over her eyes in the middle of the night, confessing healing scriptures from the Word of God.

  “Lynn, I’m afraid I have some bad news,” Dr. Winthrop continued. “Additional tests showed that the corneal damage to your left eye was so severe that there is no chance of sight restoration to that eye. Your right eye fared a little better. The optical nerve was not severely damaged; in a surgical procedure called temporary keratoprosthesis vitrectomy, we remove the injured cornea and place a clear, artificial cornea over your right eye. Retinal surgeons will then transplant a donor cornea.”

  “Wait a minute,” Lynn interrupted, unsure of what she’d just heard. “Are you saying there’s a chance . . . I could remain blind? Permanently?”

  In the brief silence that ensued, Lynn heard Dr. Winthrop rustling some papers and quiet sniffling from her mother. It was the respectful silence normally reserved for funeral parlors.

  “Yes, Lynn, there is a chance of permanent blindness,” the doctor finally answered. “However, the technolo
gy for treating ocular trauma has grown in leaps and bounds over the years. The finest eye trauma surgeons in the country are in Birmingham, Alabama, at UAB’s ophthalmology department. I have a colleague there who has successfully performed this procedure hundreds of times. Making arrangements is no problem at all. The Callahan Eye Foundation Hospital in Birmingham is just a five-hour drive away.”

  Though Dr. Winthrop’s words were reassuring, Lynn was still unable to move past the unthinkable. She . . . could . . . go blind for the rest of her life?

  No! God, this can’t be happening!

  “Lynn, honey, maybe we should think about this procedure,” she heard her father say.

  “. . . and you know God is still able,” her mother added.

  “I’ll leave you to discuss the options,” Dr. Winthrop said. “I’ve given your parents a packet with all the information.”

  A packet that I can’t read,Lynn thought despairingly. A packet that I might never be able to read . . .

  “Oh, Lynn, we’re going to get through this,” her father said, moving over to the bed and taking her hand in his. “We’re just going to have to trust in the Lord. He’s never let us down.”

  Lynn agreed with her father one hundred percent—after all, she’d always been the rock of faith in the Harper family. She’d always known she was called to the gospel ministry, even when it was unpopular for women to make such announcements in certain denominations. She’d led in campus ministry at the university, leading many students to Christ, and had fit in easily with the ministry team at Faith Community Church. If anyone knew that God would not disappoint, it was she.

  But I can’t see, God . . . I can’t see!

  It was one thing to believe for someone else’s healing, she knew. But she was now discovering the unique dilemma of believing in the miraculous when it was she standing in the need of prayer.

  While her mother cried quietly and her father read over the information the doctor had given them, Lynn began meditating on the Word of God.