Mother's Promise (43 page)

As Rachel and Hester checked each person for injuries, they tried to gather each person's medical information. With the help of Juan Carlos they came to understand that these people were not all from this village. Many of them had found their way here from the surrounding area after the initial earthquake had hit. Some of the children had no idea where their parents or siblings were. Others pointed toward the filled beds of the hospital tent when asked about their parents. It was all so very heartbreaking.

After several long hours, someone brought them prepackaged food rations and bottles of fresh water. “Water's going to be the main problem,” Hester mused as she held a plastic water bottle for a little girl who was too traumatized to hold the bottle herself.

“Why do you say that?”

“If they run out of clean water then they'll use what's available. Contaminated water means disease—likely cholera. Those trucks at the airport were loaded with cases of water. Why aren't they distributing it?” She directed this question to Mary.

“Because,” Mary said, as she joined them, “the local government is in a turf war with the powers that be in another, less damaged village down the road as to which of them gets the water and other supplies. It's an oft-told tale—supplies pour in from all over the place and then they sit.” She shook her head and then turned her attention to Rachel. “If you think you can handle things here I could use some help from Hester on the ward.” She indicated the larger hospital tent.

“Yes. I can manage,” Rachel assured her.

The setting sun brought little relief from the humidity. Rachel wiped sweat from her forehead and looked around to face a woman of indeterminate age dressed only in a thin shift, her hair matted and tangled, her face a mask of dirt marked with scrapes and cuts.

“Hola,”
Rachel said, using one of the few words she'd picked up from listening to Juan.

“My son is still there,” the woman said, pointing toward a pile of rubble several yards down the road where Rachel could see men in uniform working alongside some of the locals. Her English was perfect.

“The men are searching,” Rachel said. “They will find him.”

Vehemently the woman shook her head. “They are not looking where he is. They sent me away. They believe he is dead, but I know he is not.”

“How do you know?”

“God has already taken the boy's father. He would not take my son as well and leave me alone.”

In the gathering darkness, Rachel saw that the men were returning to the tents where the volunteers would stay while they were here.

“They are giving up,” the woman said angrily. “We must do something!”

Rachel had no idea why this woman had chosen her to champion her cause, but she understood that she could offer her no comfort unless she at least tried. She followed the woman toward the men.

They were filthy with caked dust, streaked with rivulets of sweat, and so weary that they stumbled over the rubble that passed for a road. They carried their tools over their bent shoulders or hanging from limp fingers. When Rachel told them the woman's story, they looked at her with sympathy but offered no hope.

“We'll start again at daybreak,” the soldier in charge told the mother.

“You are looking in the wrong place,” the woman argued.

The man—Hispanic in features but American by his accent—met her gaze. Rachel saw him struggle to hold his temper. “It may seem that way from where you're standing but trust me, we need to get to him in a way that doesn't risk having the whole hillside cave in on top of him.” He nodded to Rachel and then walked on toward the kerosene light coming from the hospital tent. Meanwhile the woman walked on down the road in the direction of the rubble.

Justin had come alongside Rachel, and he placed his hand on hers. “Mom?”

She looked at him and knew in an instant why the woman had come to her. Perhaps she had seen Rachel sending Justin off with the others to start work on the school. Perhaps not. But somehow she had known that Rachel was a mother and that only a mother would understand that she could not—would not—abandon her son until he was found.

It was tradition that Ben spent the Sunday before Christmas with his sister and her family. But this year, as a marker of how well Sally's recovery was going, they decided to drive north to spend Christmas Day with Sally's grandfather.

“You should come,” Sharon said as they sat by the pool early one morning watching Sally swim laps before the sun could become a factor.

The last time Ben had seen his father had been when his mom had died. On that occasion, his father had greeted him with, “Her last wish was to see you. You should have come sooner.” It did not matter to him that Ben had been halfway around the world attending a medical conference when the call came—not from his father, but from Sharon. It did not matter that his mom had slipped into a coma as soon as she was brought to the hospital after the stroke and never regained consciousness.

Ben glanced at Sharon, but her eyes were hidden behind large black sunglasses. “You're never going to stop trying to mend that particular fence, are you?” Ben said.

She lifted her sunglasses for a moment and pinned him with her startling blue eyes. “All I'm saying is that it would do you good to get away. I gave up on trying to get you and Dad to play nice a long time ago.” She let the sunglasses drop back into place and returned to watching Sally. “But I will say this,” she added, this time without looking at him. “I will say that you have allowed this feud with Dad to impact everything about your life—and not in a good way.”

Ben could have protested her logic, but Sharon was on a roll and it was evident that she did not expect him to debate with her. She needed to say her piece.

“Here's the thing, Ben. I get it that you and Dad have always been on different pages when it comes to religion, but you're as guilty as he ever was of wanting things your own way.”

“Dad is—”

“A man, Ben. Just like you. He figured out how to make this life work for him and Mom. He did what he thought was best for you and me and everyone in his congregation. But he can be wrong. There can be another way. Grow up already, and stop blaming him for your restlessness and failure to find your true calling.”

“I'm a doctor,” he reminded her. “It's what I set out to be and I got there.”

“I seem to recall that your original plan was to go to med school and then use your skills to minister—yes,
minister
—to those less fortunate, those who could not afford to pay or get insurance. What happened to that?”

“Why are you suddenly so mad at me?”

Sharon sighed and stared out toward the pool where Sally was swimming laps. “Because the one lesson I have learned in everything we've been through with Sally is that life is short and we don't get too many do-overs.”

Ben reached over and took his sister's hand. “Hey, Sally's going to make it.”

She turned to him and covered his hand with hers. “I know that. We're not talking about Sally here, Ben. We're talking about you.”

“I am fine.”

“Right. And I'm Lady Gaga.” She stood up and laid her sunglasses on the chaise then walked toward the pool's deep end. “Clock's ticking, big brother.” Then she pinched her fingers to her nose and bellowed, “Cannonball!” as she jumped into the water.

As the spray from the pool splashed over him, Ben's phone began vibrating on the small round table next to him. He checked caller identification and saw that it was the hospital calling. “Gotta go,” he shouted over the noise of Sharon and Sally laughing and splashing each other. “Hospital emergency. I'll be back later.”

When he got to the hospital and walked through the atrium, waving to the security guard and then taking the elevator to the children's wing, he realized he was hoping to see Rachel.

But Rachel wasn't there. If a counselor had been called, it would be Paul Cox waiting with the family—or the new guy they had shifted over from social services to fill in. Ben couldn't remember his name—only that he wasn't Rachel.

At her farewell party, Rachel had told him about the trip that she and Justin would be taking over the holidays. “Our church is sponsoring a youth mission to help victims of the earthquake in Central America.”

“You're leaving again?” He had blurted out the words, and he'd made no attempt to censor his assumption that she was running away.

The flash of anger that passed over her face was gone in an instant, and she'd smiled at him. “It's only for ten days, Ben. It was Justin's idea for us to go.”

But after the party—after she had boarded the bus for Pinecraft, refusing his offer of a ride home—it had struck him why the idea of Rachel at the site of an earthquake was so unsettling for him. It wasn't safe there. Some of the aftershocks had been pretty powerful, and there had been widespread flooding. The feeling that had washed over him as he'd watched the bus leave the hospital had been similar to the helpless not-again feeling he'd had when he'd first spotted Sally's GVHD symptoms.

“Dr. Booker?” Ben turned at the sound of the nurse's voice. Somehow he had left the elevator, made his way to the station, and this nurse had handed him the patient's chart.

“Sorry.” He focused all of his attention on the facts laid out before him—a girl of seven had been stung by a jellyfish and had had an allergic reaction to the venom. Ben gave the nurse a series of orders and then went in to examine the child and reassure the parents.

By the time he had gotten the child stabilized and out of danger, it was well past dinnertime. He was bone weary. He called Sharon and made his apologies, spoke with Sally and teased her about the gift he had for her, that she would have to wait until she returned from her trip to open it, and then he headed for home.

Home.
Who was he kidding? This sterile place with its rooms filled with furniture picked out by some designer had no more feeling of being a home than a hotel room. There was not a single personal item in the place—artsy glass vases where there should have been framed family photos. And an impressive set of leather-bound books chosen for their ability to accent the décor instead of the dog-eared oft-read novels that had once lined the bookshelves of his room when he was a boy.

Twinkling Christmas lights from a neighbor's balcony were reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows. They were the closest thing he had to having any decorations for the season. He flipped through the mail and found two Christmas cards from college friends. Each featured a photo of the family dressed for the season and smiling at the camera.

He didn't send cards. He didn't have a family. He was a doctor, and it dawned on him that this had become his entire identity. Suddenly the need for human contact was overwhelming. He called the only person he could think of that was unlikely to be busy with family or the festivities. He called Darcy.

“Ben?” She was definitely surprised to hear from him.

“Yeah. Look, I just finished up a tough case and I thought maybe if you're up for it, we could grab a late supper.”

There was a long pause, and he became aware of background noises—music, laughter. “But it sounds like you've got something going, so …”

“No, wait. I'm at the café—with Zeke and some people. We're helping Zeke paint the place. Come help us. There's plenty of food….”

“Another time. I'm pretty
beat.”
And the last thing I want right now is a party.
“Give Zeke my best.”

“Sure. Merry Christmas, Ben.”

“Yeah. Merry Christmas.”

He hung up and paced the rooms of his condo—the spacious, mostly unused rooms. Then he picked up his keys and left. Outside, he walked along the bay then up Main Street to Pineapple on his way to Burns Court. He was thinking maybe a movie would clear his mind, and the theater there always offered something of interest. But as he walked past one of the large old churches that dotted the streets of downtown Sarasota, he heard music—not the usual organ/choir music he might have expected but the sounds of the season's carols rendered by a jazz group.

He stood on the sidewalk for a moment listening then stepped inside. A woman smiled at him and handed him a program then pointed out a seat on the very end of the last pew in the church's chapel. The place was lit by candlelight, and a trio of jazz musicians were seated on a small platform at the front of the room. It took less than a minute for Ben to be drawn into the unique beauty of their rendition of “O Come All Ye Faithful.”

How long had it been since he'd sung the familiar words? And yet he found himself thinking them as he closed his eyes and listened. The carol took him back to the Christmases of his youth. The services at his father's church. The nativity story acted out by the children—he had played Joseph to Sharon's Mary for three years running. The packed house for his father's annual midnight service on Christmas Eve—the one sermon, Ben realized, he had always looked forward to hearing.