Dr. Dad To The Rescue

He cried her name over and over, was whispering it hoarsely when Dwight and half the county found him hours later still clinging to that tree trunk, even though the water had receded.

They wrapped him in blankets, but the shivering didn’t stop. He didn’t think it ever would, and right then he didn’t care.

Dwight pried the story out of him. Strangely, his uncle wasn’t angry that Holden had risked his life over a dog. He set a forearm across Holden’s shoulders and gave them a squeeze.

“She’s gone, son,” he said. Whether he meant Mama or Elsa wasn’t clear.

Holden hunched his back in resistance and denial. But he couldn’t hold back the truth: He had no one now. No one.

With a sob, he pressed his face against his uncle’s side and cried for all he had loved and lost this day. He cared nothing for the treasure left in the cubbyhole on the edge of the river. That river had taken from him something much more precious. God had taken from him something much more precious.

And he would never, ever forget.

Leaning back in his heavenly throne, God gave a heavy sigh, anguished as always by his children’s pain. Right now, Samuel McKee was waiting at the pearly gates for the arrival of his soul mate. Yet here was another soul who stood aching and alone.

It was not the boy’s time, though. Holden McKee still had much work to do before he would be called home. It was why his canine companion had been placed there, to save the boy. And why God had given man such a creature—to bring the human spirit the example of unwavering trust and hopefulness and faith, which he wished for all his children to find.

“But how to bring them to such trust?” he mused. “Its promise is made on Earth every day—in the bloom of the rose, the rising of the sun, the birth of a child...”

Great fingers drummed a low rumble like thunder on the celestial armrest for a long moment, yet only a blink in time. Then his eyebrows parted like the clouds; eyes cleared like the dawn breaking.

“Of course!” he said. “How else on Earth can you glimpse a little bit of heaven?”

He peered lovingly down upon the boy Holden McKee as he was led home in the darkness.

“Have faith, my son,” God whispered. “I have not forsaken you. In good time, the answers you seek will be yours.”

Chapter One

Dallas, Texas, present day

There came a time in every little boy’s life, Holden supposed, when he was forced to accept the inevitable and often painful fact that the ability to fly was reserved for birds, airplanes, comic book heroes—and certain “illusionists” who performed this amazing deed on prime-time television.

How often had Holden himself listened to such tales of disenchantment as he’d set collarbone or leg, stitched a split lip or patched up the odd contusion sustained as a result of some young man’s literal leap of faith?

Telling himself this instance was no different, Holden shot a sidelong glance at his son, who sat next to him in treatment room three at the Brookside Physical Therapy Associates. Sam’s face was pinched and pensive. Stoop-shouldered, the six-year-old cradled his splinted forearm against him as if protecting a newborn.

Somehow, Holden was not convinced.

Too bad the cast had had to come off this morning, just when Sam seemed to be getting used to it But there was still a lot of healing on his broken arm that needed to be done outside of such a protective shell.

“Are you having any pain?” he asked the boy.

Lips thinning, Sam shook his head.

Holden shifted in his seat, stretching an arm along the back of the empty chair on the other side of him. “That’s good. You should have little discomfort, actually. You heard the orthopedist say the X ray showed the bones had realigned perfectly, didn’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

He reached into his suit coat pocket. “You could put on some more of this lotion if your skin itches.”

“I’m okay.”

Holden felt his own mouth crease. He would have asked Sam what was the matter, what he could do for the boy, but he didn’t think Sam would tell him. Ever since Sam’s accident, the gap between father and son had grown, especially after Holden had tried to impress upon him the folly of allowing make-believe to take precedence over common sense.

He simply didn’t know what to do or say or ask next, and had told the grief counselor Sam had been seeing just that. The man had given him the rather simplistic advice that Holden should let Sam make the next move. So far, his son had done nothing.

And so the gap widened, imperceptibly.

Yet what if Sam came to him with a question Holden couldn’t answer, a problem he couldn’t fix?

I’m scared.

And I miss her so much.

With a sigh, Holden dropped his chin and massaged a persistent and painful knot in his jaw muscle. He’d always had a tendency to clench his teeth when under stress, but if he didn’t ease up soon, he’d crack every molar in his mouth.

“dead?”

Holden lifted his head. “Yes?”

“I just wondered if—” Sam was looking at him anxiously. Not often did the boy see him showing any sign of vulnerability. After all he’d been through, Holden made sure of that.

He straightened his spine and asked again, “Yes?”

Sam’s gaze slid away. “If I could, you know, hit the bathroom before the therapist comes in.”

“Oh. Sure. I saw one when we came in. Down the hallway.”

Resisting the urge to offer help, he watched the boy disappear, the door swishing shut behind him. Left alone, Holden let his head fall back against the wall behind him with an oath of self-censure. He really needed to pull himself together, once and for all, for Sam’s sake, if nothing else.

But things had gotten so complicated, so close, lately.

He stared at the recessed spotlights above him and wondered if their brutal illumination, so like the flash-bulb brilliant lighting in the ER, might help him find the distance he usually donned as easily as a stethoscope. At least pondering the subject gave him something to concentrate on, take his mind off of...things.

Like how hard he’d been working. He’d thought leaving the job at County Hospital in Chicago and the daily dose of senseless death would help put his life on a more even footing. Yet even within the less-intensive atmosphere of a private suburban hospital, he continued to feel as if he slogged through a mire as thick as quicksand.

Holden realized the lights had burned hot spots on his retina only after he heard someone say his name. All he could see was a reddened aura surrounding the figure before him.

He closed his eyes, giving them a second to recover.

“Holden McKee?” the still faceless woman repeated. There was something strangely soothing about her voice. Yet rather than calming him, Holden recognized trepidation mingling with the sense of powerlessness he’d been fighting.

“Yes, I’m Holden McKee,” he said blindly, not liking the sensation. “Who are you?”

“I’m here to help your son,” she answered. She had a faint drawl he found rather attractive. “You, too, it would seem. Are you all right?”

“Yes, of course. It’s just temporary. Stupid of me, looking into the light like that—”