From Humbug To Holiday Bride

Visiting patients in the hospital was a regular part of his job, and he liked it because for the most part the people he visited seemed so pleased that he was there. Visiting her, however, had little to do with his job. He had come because Mrs. Billings had been so emotional. And insistent. “How do you know her?” he had asked his graying housekeeper. Over the years, Mrs. B had become more than a housekeeper. She had seen him through crises, sadness and death, and now she helped raise his daughters. She’d told him that B. J. Dolliver, the woman lying wounded in the hospital bed, had been a college classmate of her niece, Deborah.

“I knew all about her, even if I only saw her a few times when Deb brought her home for holidays. I feel, though, as if I know her well,” she’d added sadly. “It’s been easy to keep track of her since she left college.”

B. J. Dolliver, it seemed from tabloid reports, had at age twenty-seven collected nearly as many photographic awards as she had men. “She was really something,” Mrs. B had said. “When she was with us during vacations, Deb said there was never a dull moment with B.J. around.”

Their former close friendship, however, had not been enough for Deb to gain entry to B.J.’s room to offer comfort.

“Deborah’s a nurse and works in the hospital,” Mrs. B had said, “but B.J. won’t see anyone. Not even her own family. Her mother is dead, but her father lives on the West Coast. Deb thinks B.J. hasn’t told him.” Mrs. B’s eyes had been narrowed with concern. “Deb thinks because B.J.’s face was badly damaged, she doesn’t want anyone to see her. Deb could have just walked into her room anyway, but knowing B.J., she decided to respect her privacy.”

Mrs. B had described B. J. Dolliver’s brush with death after she drove her German sports car over a cliff, and the injuries that her orthopedic surgeon said would prevent her from ever walking again under her own power. “She’s spittin’ mad. Deb said the nurses don’t like to be near her.”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” Hamish had concurred, then finally asked, “Exactly why do you want me to see her?”

There was a searching hesitation before Mrs. Billings had answered on a long, drawn-out breath. “Because when she finds out she’s never going to walk again, she’ll just go out and finish the job. Deb says B. J. Dolliver can’t live without the full use of her body.” She expelled the words as though the sentence would die unfinished if she stopped to breathe. Her last few words came out choked. “Frankly, I’ve always had a soft spot for B.J. She seemed to be so, well, so…alone.”

B. J. Dolliver’s parents divorced when she was a small child, and her mother died shortly afterward, Mrs. B had explained. B.J. was raised by her father, Patrick Dolliver, the owner of a country-wide, sports equipment franchise.

“She spent her young life trying to prove to that man that she’s as good as any of his jock heroes,” Mrs. B had scoffed. “And a lot he ever cared….”

So the Reverend Hamish Chandler, pastor of Trinity Union Church in Kolstad, Minnesota, familiarly known as simply the Kolstad Church, let his concentration fall once again to the woman lying on the bed. He wondered why this particular assignment had been put in his path, especially now, especially today, when the second anniversary of his beloved wife’s death had just passed.

He sat in uncomfortable silence, unable to look away from the battered body of the sleeping woman.

“Spinal injuries,” Mrs. Billings had said, obviously quoting from Deborah, the nurse. “Pelvis broken into pieces, too many to put ‘em all back together. Broken right shoulder, smashed right arm, facial lacerations.”

He saw the lacerations, the tiny scar on her cheek, the healing scrapes on her neck. Then he looked at her left arm, the good one resting above the covers with the fingers curled over her palm. He saw where stitches had been removed and where myriad small cuts had been left to mend without stitches.

His gaze roamed to the clear collapsing sack attached to the back of her right wrist, and the small trapeze suspended a foot above her chest. As a photojournalist, she had naturally been a physically active young woman with two strong legs and arms and the agility to climb and jump carrying the equipment of her profession. It was nearly impossible to envision her as Mrs. B had described, running and confident, capturing the world and its people through her lens.

He clasped his hands together between his spread knees and felt sadness overwhelm him for a vibrant life nearly destroyed. Nearly. But not completely, for she still lived, and was recovering.

He had seen worse, of course, during his violent life as a teen. Much worse. Before he was fifteen, he had come to accept that people were wounded, maimed and killed during the course of the fight for survival. Thank God that life was in the dark past, forever behind him.

What would he say to her? What was there to say? He didn’t have a clue what he was meant to do here, and yet he’d been sent, so there must be a purpose.

A flash of pink caught his eye and he turned to see a nurse slip quietly through the door, a pale pink sweater draped over her shoulders. She smiled at him and lifted the woman’s limp left wrist to take a pulse.

Her patient’s eyes suddenly flew open, staring in fear and confusion. Her body twitched once, and then again more violently, and Hamish heard a soft “No!” escape her lips before her eyes pinched shut in a harsh grimace. Her body arched, and she quivered in the grip of a suffering he could not fathom.

He saw the nurse’s hand rest gently on the patient’s abdomen, and she whispered something, while her other hand gestured in jerking movements for him to leave the room. He slipped out the door just as the woman’s groan broke into an eerie deep-throated howl that sent needles up his back. It was a lament of pain so deep he felt it had been wrenched from her very soul, and he found himself leaning helplessly against the wall outside her room until it subsided into soft gasps and moans.

The nurse rushed past him a few moments later. “Spasm,” she muttered.

Hamish stepped back into the room and moved to the side of her bed where she lay, face beaded with sweat, eyes glistening, her breathing ragged. “What can I do?” he asked.

“Go away,” she rasped, her voice hoarse and whispery. She closed her eyes to reject him, and he saw that she was forcing herself to breathe deeply and slowly. He saw the pulse in her neck slamming rapidly under her skin.

He took the wet washcloth from the stand alongside her pillow and held it under hot water from the goosenecked faucet Then he squeezed it out and laid it across her forehead. He felt rather than heard her sharp intake of breath when the cloth touched her skin. He felt her relax a little, then he used the warm, wet cloth to daub at her face.

“You new here?” she asked in the same hoarse whisper, her dazed hazel-green eyes fixing on him with an effort.

“Sort of,” he replied, giving her a weak grin.

“Lay it over my face. It feels good,” she whispered.

He did, as gently as he could. After a few seconds, the pulse in her neck began to slow, and her left hand came up and took the washcloth away. She flopped her hand backward and let the cloth drop so that Hamish had to jump to catch it before it hit the floor.

“Where’s your uniform?” she rasped.

He grinned, then watched her raise her left hand and fumble to reach the little trapeze overhead. “I’m not a doctor,” he said before reaching up to adjust the apparatus lower so she could reach it.

“Then go away,” she ordered, and turned her head away.

But when he looked down moments later, she was staring at him with barely suppressed rage and wariness. He looked away from her face. Why shouldn’t she be wary, lying helpless for three weeks flat on her back and knowing nothing would ever be the same? And he was a stranger to her.

“My name is Hamish Chandler. Deborah Billings’s aunt asked me to see you,” he said as he made a final adjustment to the trapeze. “Is that better?” He gave the apparatus a yank.

She frowned at him, then raised her left hand and gripped the bar. Her lips turned up at the corners, more of a sneer than a smile, but the change was encouraging nonetheless. She was a fighter all right, Hamish thought.

“You ought to be one,” she whispered.

He dug his hands into his pockets. “One what?”

“Doctor.”

“Yes, I appreciate your keen observation. It took a great deal of skill to do that properly.”

She didn’t acknowledge his attempt at humor. “And the cloth. Do it again,” she rasped.

He swished the cloth under the hot water and twisted out the excess moisture. This time he placed it in her left hand, and she flopped it over her face, slowly patting it over her features in circular motions, avoiding the small jagged scar on the right side. After it had cooled, she once again flopped it over the edge of the bed for him to catch if he could. He interrupted its fall and laid it on the stand close to her pillow. “More?” he asked.

“Got a mirror?” she asked, still whispering.

“Afraid not.”

“Look around. In the drawers over there.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

“Why?”

“Damn you.” She pressed her eyes closed for a few seconds. When she opened them again, they were blazing with frustration. “I want to see.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think?” she whispered.