Stranger in the Night (17 page)

“The surgery went well, Mr. Rudi,” the physician was saying. “Your son is still in critical condition, but he’s stable. We have
him in recovery right now. When he can be moved, we’ll transfer him to the ICU. Then you’ll be able to see him.”

“What is this man telling me?” Stephen asked, grabbing Liz’s arm. “Is my son going to live? Will he recover? What is he telling me?”

“Virtue will be all right,” she assured him. “Your son will live.”

“Praise be to God! My family is—” Stephen swung around. “Where is Mary? Where has my wife gone?”

“Maybe she’s in the bathroom. I’ll check.” Liz took his hand. “Pastor Stephen, you must wait a little while before you can see Virtue. He’s resting now after the surgery.”

“But what of his health?” He turned to the doctor. “Will my son walk again? Can he eat and play and go to school just as before?”

“It’s going to take a few weeks. But yes, your son should make a complete recovery. Mr. Rudi, if you don’t mind—may I ask where you’re from?”

“My home was in Paganda.”

“I visited Paganda last year.” The doctor’s face broke into a smile. “Some fellow physicians and I went on a mission trip to a town near Lake Victoria. We worked in a clinic for three weeks.”

Joshua watched as Stephen’s face softened. The panic in his eyes vanished, and he took the doctor’s hand. “Then you know my people,” he said. “You understand my country. Come, sir, can you sit here with me and tell me what you saw in Paganda? I lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before I came to St. Louis, and I have not been to Paganda for many years. What news do you have of my homeland?”

The doctor looked at the others in the room for a moment. Then he smiled. “Sure, I’d love to talk to you for a few minutes. Going to Africa was the best experience of my medical career.”

Joshua looked at Liz and knew she would be eager to join
in the conversation. Her short trip to Congo had altered the course of her life. Now she had found a kindred spirit.

Pastor Rudi sat down and nestled Charity’s head in the crook of his neck. The doctor settled into one of the soft chairs, leaned forward and began to talk to the African. As he did, Liz took Joshua’s hand and drew him away.

“Mary left,” she murmured. They found a shadowed corner of the waiting room. Obviously exhausted, Liz leaned against the wall. “She told Stephen she was going to the bathroom, and maybe she’s still in there. But I have a bad feeling she fled the hospital. Why wouldn’t she stay with her husband, Joshua? Why didn’t she want to look after Charity? This is a terrible time for them, and she just vanished.”

“The woman is traumatized. You can see it in her eyes. She lives in some kind of a zone. As much as I hate to admit it, I understand where Mary is coming from. The things you feel when you witness violence firsthand…when you’re part of it…you don’t recover easily. Some of us learn to cope. I’m getting better every day. I can feel the changes in myself, and I have a lot of hope. But Mary Rudi? Liz, she may never get past the things that happened to her over there.”

“But she needs to at least
try
to get help. We have resources. I’ve offered to make her an appointment with one of the counselors who volunteers at Refugee Hope. If Mary doesn’t make some effort to heal, her life here in America isn’t going to be successful. I’m very concerned about the family. Especially her relationship with the children.”

“I’m concerned about that and a lot more.” He shoved his hands into his back pockets and studied his feet. “There’s something I need to do, Liz, and I don’t know how to go about it.”

“You have to talk to him in person,” she said.

He lifted his head in surprise. “Who?”

“Your dad. Go home to Texas. Tell your parents about the situation here. And then come back, Joshua. Please come back.”

Though it was a public place, the corner was dark and he took her into his arms. “I don’t know how this happened, Liz. Everything is out of my control right now. I dropped in on St. Louis to touch base with an old buddy and then head back home to my new life. Instead I’m training a ragtag little army to protect Haven. I’ve been involved in two street conflicts. I even got shot—my first bullet wound after a military career spent in two war zones—and it happened in a gang drive-by. The police say they need me. Haven needs me. And worst of all…I need you.”

“Those all sound like bad things,” she said, looking up at him. “Even me.”

“Not bad, just unexpected.” He laid his cheek against her head, enjoying the soft brush of her curls on his skin. “You, Liz. You’re the biggest surprise. And the best.”

Her arms tightened around his back. “Oh, Joshua, when I saw you this afternoon…” Her voice caught. “You were down on the ground, and there was blood, and I thought…”

“Maybe now you understand how I feel about your plan to spend the rest of your life in a refugee camp in Africa. When you care about someone—” he kissed her cheek “—when you feel about someone the way I feel about you, Liz Wallace, you can’t stand the thought that anyone might hurt them.”

“That sentiment ought to make me want to pack you off to your family’s office building in Amarillo.”

“But it doesn’t?” He stepped back and studied her eyes.

“I want you here, Joshua. In St. Louis. With Haven and the kids and the police. And with me.”

Captured by her words, he pulled her against him and kissed her hard, unable to hold back the tide. He had never wanted a woman this way. Never desired anyone to such great depth.

Her hands slid up his back, molding to the muscle and keeping him close. Her lips met his again…and then again. She kissed his cheek, his ear, his mouth.

“Joshua, I know what I ask is wrong,” she breathed. “Your parents love you so much. Their dreams for your life, their hopes and plans, those all supersede any request I could ever make. If I really cared about you in the right way, I would encourage you to go home and follow the path they’ve laid out. That would be the noble thing for me to do. You’d be happier. You’d certainly be safer. But I can’t. I’m too selfish.”

“What about me? You think I can stand here and encourage you to fly off to Africa?” He dipped his fingers into her curls and lifted them from her shoulder. “I see your heart, Liz. I read your face. You’d like to be sitting over there right now with Stephen Rudi and the doctor, talking about Paganda. Just the mention of Africa lights up your eyes. You told me God called you there.
God!
And I have the audacity to ask you not to go? But I am asking. I’m begging. As much as you want me to disobey my parents, I want you to disobey God. It’s wrong—dead wrong. But I’m selfish, too.”

At that, they came together again, holding each other, unable to speak.

So aware of the sweet curves of her body, so conscious of the stunning beauty in his arms, Joshua ached to do everything in his power to make this woman his own. But years of military training had taught him how to control his passions, to subject his own will to the greater good.

He drew back from her. Dropped his hands. Stepped aside.

“I need to go find Ransom,” he told her. “There’s more to his story. And Mo Ded. I’m going to hunt that guy down. I’ve only got three days before my flight, but I’ll do everything in my power to break his hold on the streets of this city. I will go back to Texas, Liz. I made a promise, and I never break a vow. You’re right in what
you said. I need to talk to my father. My parents have waited a long time for me. They want my presence, my skills, my education and training…they want—and deserve—a say in my future.”

“So, I’ll just be here,” she said with a shrug. “Studying Swahili and searching for messages in my scrapbook in the middle of the night.”

Fighting the urge to take her in his arms again, Joshua turned away. The path across the waiting room, past Stephen Rudi and his sleeping daughter, out into the hospital parking lot and all the way to his car, was the longest journey of his entire life.

“M
ary?” The name echoed through the ceramic-tiled hospital restroom. “Mary Rudi? Are you in here?”

Liz bent over and looked under the stalls. All empty. As she straightened, she caught her reflection in the mirror over the row of sinks. Pink-stained, her cheeks gave evidence of the flush of emotion coursing through her. Desire, joy, exuberant passion in Joshua’s arms. Terror and shock at the shooting outside Haven. Deep sorrow over the prospect of losing so much she had come to love.

Stepping to the mirror, Liz wiped a smudge of mascara from under her eye. Her curls were a little mussed where Joshua had crushed them as he held her so tightly. Her lips were swollen from his kisses.

Did she love Joshua? Was it possible to love a man so fervently in such a short time? Reason cautioned her. This couldn’t be much more than a physical attraction. A crazy magnetism born during the moments of excitement and danger they had experienced together.

Did she really know Joshua Duff? Did he know her?

She tugged a length of paper towel from the dispenser, wetted it and pressed it against her cheeks. Joshua claimed to want her, even need her. She could hardly imagine her life without him. But when the time came to make a decision about loyalties, neither was willing to commit.

Joshua would go home to Texas. And she would go to Africa—just as they had planned long ago.

She had to accept that he was concerned about Haven and his friends. That he cared deeply about her. But that he would never return to live in St. Louis.

Why would he? His family needed him and expected his loyalty. He had promised to do his duty by them, and his feelings for Liz wouldn’t keep him from that. Of course it wouldn’t, because she had not given Joshua a single shred of commitment. When he mentioned her plan to go to Africa, she said nothing. For all he knew, she really would spend the rest of her life on that continent.

Her call, Liz admitted as she studied her reflection in the mirror, had not died away the moment she laid eyes on Joshua Duff. Or felt his arms around her. Or heard his words of desire. Nothing, in fact, had silenced the constant whisper in her heart.

It was this call that took her back out of the restroom and into the visitors’ area to the row of chairs where Stephen Rudi sat. Charity lay on a sofa now, her eyes shut as she found escape through sleep. The doctor had gone away, no doubt to tend to yet another of the emergencies sent by the streets of St. Louis through those doors each night.

“I can’t find Mary,” Liz gently told the pastor as she took a seat near him. “She wasn’t in the restroom.”

He nodded. His dark eyes were tired, bloodshot, lifeless. “I can only pray for my wife now,” he said in a low voice. “She will not be helped except by God.”

“I’m sorry, Stephen.”

“You are sorry?” He looked across at her.

“For your suffering. I’m sorry that this terrible thing happened to your son. That your wife is struggling to adjust. That you came all the way to America only to find that life here can also be very difficult.”

The corners of his mouth drew downward as he nodded again. “I did not expect this. None of these bad things were revealed to us in that film we saw in our orientation class in the camp. We saw American people eating from a table covered with food—large chickens and potatoes and bread and yellow maize. We saw shops full of things to buy on shelves that stood from the floor to the ceiling. We saw yellow school buses and children sitting at desks in rooms with big windows. Each child had a book and a pencil and clean paper. We saw houses and gardens and nice cars and American flags waving everywhere. But this country is very different from that film.”

“There are places like you describe, Stephen. America is a land of plenty. But this nation also has problems. There are poor people here. Some lack education and good jobs, and they live in slums or other areas where there’s violence. I’m sorry that refugees arrive in America at the lowest level, not at the top where life is easier. Without knowing our language and culture, without work and transportation, people have a hard time rising above that low level. It’s hard even for many of those who were born into it right here in America.”

“Yes, this is what I understand now.” He rubbed his eyes. “I understand much more than I did. You know I am a pastor, and I have been educated about the Bible. I read it every day. I also pray very much. In Paganda and in the refugee camp in Kenya, I preached the word of the Lord—words of hope and salvation and new life. Now, I sit in this hospital, and I cannot pray.”

“Why not?”

He gave a low laugh. “If I pray, how will my words reach God? Where is He? What is He doing? At this moment, I wonder who is more powerful—God or His enemy?”

Bending over, he rested his elbows on his knees and rubbed his hands across his eyes. His voice was filled with anguish. “My beautiful wife and my sweet children were chopped to pieces in Paganda! They died a terrible death. My two remaining children and I struggled to survive in that refugee camp, eating rations from the relief agency and drinking water from a dirty river. Now, here in America, my only son has been shot with a gun, and my second wife is so frightened that she runs away from even me, from her own husband. I look at that child lying there—my little daughter—and I wonder what kind of a future I can give her. It is difficult…very difficult…for me to see God now.”

Liz laid her hand on the pastor’s shoulder. “I don’t have easy answers for your questions, Stephen. I wish I did.”

He sat in silence, staring blankly at the floor. “In the end, there is only faith. That is all I have. That is the only answer for my questions.”

“Faith?”

“‘The assurance of things hoped for.’”
He sat up, his dark eyes focusing on her. “If I have faith I can be certain that God loves me, that He is powerful, that He has a very good plan for me, Stephen Rudi…oh, those are hard things to accept at such a time. But do you know? Do you know what I have discovered whilst sitting here at this hospital tonight? I can do it. I can believe in God. I do believe in Him.”

Liz swallowed. “How, Pastor Stephen? How do you have such faith?”

“Because I choose to have it.” He said the words simply. Then he shook his head. “When I was a young boy, I did not have any understanding of God. I was not good in those days. I did many bad things. But then someone told me about Jesus and
His love. It was my employer at a job I hated. He said that Jesus had carried my sins on His own back all the way to death. And that is when I began to choose faith. If God would do this great and terrible thing for me—letting Himself be killed because of my sins—then I should take any risk for Him.”

“So now you’re continuing to have faith. And you call it a risk because you choose it, not because you have proof that God loves you?”

“Yes.” His dark eyes met hers. “I could stop believing. That would be the easy way. The educated way. Look at my life…all these evil things that happen to me and my family year by year…Do they prove that God is good? That He loves me?”

Leaning forward, he held up one finger. “Yes, they do! For now—here in this chair in the hospital—I have remembered that God did not promise me a happy life on this earth. He did not say He would show His love by giving me a nice table with a big chicken and yellow maize, or by putting me into a fine house with a garden. Or even by making my family safe.”

Liz studied her hands. With every fiber of her being, she longed to contradict the pastor. She wanted to talk about God’s constant protection from harm and the earthly abundance that rewarded true faith—all those lofty promises.

But she had walked in Africa. She had seen great pain, hunger, disease, poverty, need. She knew that the finest and most faithful of Christians often suffered more than anyone.

“The bad things that have happened to me,” Stephen went on, “are teaching me that I must trust God more. I must be willing to give everything to Him. Even…even my wife and my children…even my only son. My Virtue.”

As he said the name, Stephen bent over again and covered his face with his hands. Liz saw his shoulders shaking as he wept, but she knew that nothing she could say or do would change the realities in this man’s life. She couldn’t bring back the village
on the shores of Lake Victoria and the family he had loved there. She couldn’t heal Mary’s scars, or erase Charity’s memories of the steel water drum, or save Virtue from violence.

This was the same reality she faced every sleepless night as she stared at her photographs. If she went to Africa and worked her whole life in a refugee camp, what difference could she truly make?

“God has a strong plan for me now.” Pastor Stephen sat up and rubbed his eyes. “This is what I have seen, this task. Do you know—one night when I first came to St. Louis, I was talking to Joshua Duff about Paganda. I told him about the old days when the men of my tribe were warriors. I said I did not become a warrior, because the British changed our tribal system when they ruled Paganda. But I made a challenge to Joshua. I told him that he is a warrior, and he must use his courage and skill to protect the innocent people in this city. Now I understand that I, too, must become a warrior.”

Dread prickled the back of Liz’s neck. “What do you mean, Stephen? You can’t seek revenge on the men who shot your son.”

“Revenge?” He scowled at her. “Revenge is for cowards. No, God has chosen to shape me into a man like those brave warriors of the Bible. You remember the ones I am telling you about? Daniel was put into a pit of lions. Jeremiah was put into a pit of mud. Deep pits! Paul was whipped and locked in prison. And Stephen? The man whose great name I took when I became a Christian and received my baptism? Do you remember what happened to him?”

“Stephen was stoned to death,” Liz said softly. “But what are you saying? God doesn’t expect every Christian to die for the faith.”

“To be
willing
to die!” Now his eyes flamed. “I have been brought to this city to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ! I shall do that! I can now see how it must be for me…”

As he continued to speak, Liz heard her phone ring. Holding
up a hand to silence the man, she dug in her purse until she found it. The ID showed the caller—Joshua Duff.

“Joshua,” she murmured. She stood and stepped away from Stephen. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, how are you?”

She let out a breath. “I’m fine—at least I think I am. Pastor Stephen is…I don’t know whether he’s losing his mind or making perfect sense. He’s agitated. He’s pacing the room right now—telling a nurse about his plan to preach the Gospel to St. Louis. The man has had so much trauma. I’m afraid he’s coming unglued.”

“You can tell him I found his wife. She’s okay.”

Liz turned away so Pastor Stephen couldn’t hear as she spoke to Joshua. “Where is Mary?”

“Here at Haven. I found her in the room. She was pretty nervous when I went in, but I got her calmed down enough to talk. She speaks English better than we knew. I realized she was understanding me, so I used a few subtle techniques to get her talking.”

“How did it go?”

“Not good. She’s unhappy about everything.”

“Because you still haven’t been able to find her brother?”

“She didn’t even mention the brother. It’s like she forgot all about him in her frustration with this situation she’s in. As near as I can tell, she hates her job, America, the city, even the new apartment I found for the family. Liz, I need your help. You’ve got to try to talk to Mary. Can you swing by here on your way home tonight? This is really important.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Stephen,” he said. “Mary is planning to leave him.”

Joshua opened Haven’s door to let Liz inside. She brushed past him, trying not to make contact.

It was a wasted effort. He took her in his arms, kissed her gently, held her close. The cavernous room around them was dark and silent.

“Thank you for coming,” he murmured. “How’s Virtue?”

“They moved him into the ICU. Stephen and Charity were with him when I left. The doctor gave us a little more information. There was a lot of bleeding. Virtue is weak. The doctor told us it was touch and go for a while in the OR. But he said they expect Virtue to make a complete recovery.”

Joshua tilted her chin. “What about you? Are you all right?”

“Tired. It’s been a long day. My nerves are jangling. Where is Mary?”

“Upstairs. Their room. Terell and Sam have both tried talking to her. Sam’s fiancée was here for a while. Ana made a stab at it, too—but nothing. Mary won’t look at anyone, won’t do more than mumble a few words. It’s PTSD. I can see it in her demeanor, Liz. Somehow I need to convince her that she can’t just surrender. She has to keep living, keep moving and breathing and trying one day at a time.”

Liz couldn’t resist running her fingertips across the stubble on his jaw. “Are you talking about Mary—or yourself?”

“It’s a journey we’re both making. I want to get well, Liz. I have a lot of good reasons to heal. But Mary seems to have given up.”

Hands entwined, they crossed the room and started up the stairs.

“You can’t force this woman to embrace life, Joshua,” she told him. “Do you know the terrible things…the atrocities that happened in Paganda during the last conflict? Hundreds of thousands of women and children were raped. Babies as young as ten months were ravaged by warring soldiers. I read the accounts. Physicians reported having to do surgical repairs because of rape that involved sticks, guns, even molten plastic. The doctor tonight at the hospital—he mentioned it, too. He started to tell about some of the things he had seen, and then he noticed Stephen’s face.”