Darkness Before Dawn (38 page)

Hearing a voice, he glanced up. “Did you say something?” he asked Meg.

Sweat was pouring down Meg’s face. Her hospital gown was drenched.

“I was praying,” Meg answered.

Nodding, the doctor asked, “You want to pray together?”

“That would be nice,” Meg moaned, as another series of sharp pains hit her.

“Okay,” Dr. Meyer answered. “Seeing as how you’re so involved in making those breathing
exercises work, I’ll start.

“Lord, each child is special, and we all know that. But I can see that this child
has a very special mother, a mother who can teach him more with a gentle look than
most people can with a lifetime of words. Please, give us the ability and the faith
to use what we’ve learned to give this child life. We now entrust our abilities and
training to Your hands. Amen.”

“Amen,” Meg breathed.

Molli hurried back into the room. “Everything’s set. Everyone will be here in a matter
of seconds.” Then, stopping to look at the monitor, she cried out, “Doctor. The baby’s
heartbeat has increased to fifty!”

The door burst opened and four more figures rushed in. “Jones here, Dr. Meyer. Sorry
we haven’t had a chance to meet until now.”

“No problem,” Meyers told the newest member of his team. “Will you take over for me,
doctor, while I scrub.”

“Can you sign this?” Jan asked Meg. Despite the pain, Meg reached out and scribbled
her name on the release form. Taking the form and laying it aside, Jan took a cloth
and wiped Meg’s face. “We’re going to make it, kid, don’t worry.”

Meanwhile, Molli was scrubbing Meg down and prepping her for the delivery. All was
proceeding as it had to.

Dr. Meyer rushed back into the room, now ready to go in. “Where’s the anesthesia?”
he demanded.

“I ordered it!” Jan shot back.

Moving up to where Meg could see him face-to-face, the doctor leaned over and softly
informed her, “If I don’t get something for you in the next thirty seconds, I’m going
to have to use a local. It’ll still probably hurt really bad.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Meg replied. “Don’t lose my baby. You go for it! Do it now!”

“She’s here,” Molli cried.

Standing over her head, anesthetist Jenny Cheek began to frantically rattle off all
the standard questions. “Are you allergic to anything? What is your height and weight?
When did you last eat?”

“We’ve got to have it,” the doctor urgently pleaded.

“I know, I know,” Jenny said. “It’s just taking a while to work on her. She’s too
pumped up. Give me just a little more time.”

“We don’t have more time,” Dr. Meyer answered, his voice still calm but now showing
the urgency of the moment.

“I think it’s beginning to take effect,” Jenny assured him.

Meg grew dizzy, but she could still focus enough to see the doctor raise his hand,
a scalpel in it, and plunge it toward her stomach. Then, just before the blade touched
her, the lights went out and she drifted off to an empty, black void.

O
H, MY STOMACH, MY STOMACH
.” M
EG MOANED
.

“Hey, how are you doing?” The man’s voice sounded as if it were twenty feet away.
Meg wondered why in the world he was talking to someone else rather than her. After
all, she was the one who was hurt so badly.

“My baby, my baby?” Meg mumbled. Her eyes were now open but unable to focus, yet she
was beginning to remember what she had been through.

“My baby, my baby?” she pleaded.

“Seven pounds, ten ounces.” The man’s voice now sounded much closer. “She’s a girl.”

“Oh, thank God,” Meg sighed and almost drifted back into the black void she had just
left.

A few minutes later, she came out of it again. This time her mind was clear and she
recognized the hospital’s newest doctor standing over her. He was smiling. Judging
from the fact that he didn’t look like he’d shaved recently, she must have been out
of it for a while.

“I’ll tell you what,” the doctor said, grinning broadly. “When we put you under, we
really put you under.”

“What time is it?” Meg asked.

“About nine,” Meyer answered and then added, “at night!”

The presence of the doctor scared Meg a little. They usually hung around and waited
for patients to come out from under anesthesia only when they had bad news. A chill
ran down her spine as she realized that her baby might not be perfectly healthy. Scared
to know the truth but afraid to wait, Meg blurted out, “Is she okay?”

“Well, considering what she put us through to get here, she’s probably in better shape
than anyone who was in that room this morning.”

He paused to make sure Meg was following all he was saying. “We’ve got her in the
special care unit as a precaution and also because Nurse Greer didn’t want to let
her out of her sight, but her Apgar was five over eight. So, you can see that she’ll
be fine. As a matter of fact, I’m sure that she feels a whole lot better than you
do.

“You know,” the doctor rambled on, “I was reading the paper after we got you out of
trouble and realized that your baby was born at the exact moment of sunrise. I was
wondering what the odds were of that?”

“I don’t care, just so he’s healthy,” Meg answered.

“Watch yourself, nurse,” he warned. “The baby is a girl.”

“Oh, yeah,” Meg sighed. “I was so sure that it was going to be a boy. I was going
to name it Steven after his father. I guess I’ll have to come up with something else
now.”

“Meg, I heard about your husband.” Dr. Meyer’s tone was now soft and sincere. “Jan—I
mean, Nurse Greer—told me. I’m very sorry.”

“Well, I’ve kind of worked through it,” Meg explained. “That is, if you ever work
through something like that.”

“I’m not sure that you ever do.”

His words and the manner in which he said them made Meg believe that he had been through
something similar.
Carefully choosing her own words, she said, “I’m guessing that you lost someone once.”

Getting up from his chair, the doctor stuck his hands in his coat pocket and walked
to the window. Opening the blind and looking outside, he grimly stated, “My wife and
our child . . .”

Waiting a moment, he turned back toward Meg. “Lisa and I had been married for only
three years, and Missy wasn’t planned. I guess the best and worst things in life aren’t.
She was a year old. I was in my last year of med school and the two of them were on
the way home from her mother’s one day. They hit a wet spot in the road.” He paused
a moment to compose himself, then continued. “They didn’t even live long enough to
get to the hospital. It was nobody’s fault. I still wish that there were something
or someone I could blame. But there isn’t. It just happened.

“You know,” his blue eyes were fixed on Meg’s brown ones, “For six years I was so
mad, I couldn’t even pray. This morning when we were fighting for your baby’s life,
you broke through all of that anger. I didn’t want to have someone else lose a wife
or a child and so I turned back to God. I prayed for the first time in six years.
I did it because I didn’t want your husband to have to go through what I went through.
Later, I found out about the accident. Kind of ironic, I was praying for someone who
had already died. You were the one who showed me a thing or two in there today!”

Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Finally, Meg broke the silence.

“Sometimes when we hurt, we forget that others hurt, too. It sounds like you buried
yourself in your work. Well, I buried myself in my hate and I almost killed someone
with that hate. I certainly hurt a lot of folks. You, at least, devoted your life
to helping people. Yet, at a moment when a life hung in the
balance, I broke down the wall I had constructed between myself and God. Who knows,
maybe now, you have, too.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said quietly. “I think that deep down inside, I’m still
bitter and angry. But maybe I’m ready to start working through it. Maybe I tore a
brick out of the wall anyway.”

“If I can help . . .” Meg smiled.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got a great deal of my energy invested in you. I’ll check in on
you—and often. Now, I’m going home and getting some sleep. You take advantage of this
opportunity to rest, too. You may not have another one for a long while!” With that
warning, he walked through the door and disappeared.

Grabbing the pager on the side of the bed, she called the nurse’s station. “Nurse?”

“Yes?” Meg immediately recognized Jan’s voice.

“When can I see my baby?”

“I’ve scheduled a visit right after her college graduation,” Jan explained. “She’s
mine ’til then.” Waiting a moment, she continued. “How about an hour or so? Less,
if you’re good. But I guarantee you, she’s still going to like me better!”

Meg pushed the button and called back, “Hey, Greer!”

“Yeah,” the nurse finally answered.

“You’re still not funny.” Meg then dropped the intercom back on the bed. As she moved
in an attempt to find a more comfortable position, she felt the stabbing of pain caused
by the C-section. “I didn’t realize that it would hurt this much,” she moaned.

Just when she finally got comfortable, she detected the sounds of footsteps—the squishy
kind that only nurses’ shoes made, and seconds later, Molli and Jan robustly knocked
her door wide open.

Meg grinned as Jan said, “It’s about time that you were awake. You’ve been lazy for
too long!”

“We’ve got some questions for you,” Molli added.

The two nurses pulled chairs up to the side of Meg’s bed, and Molli, taking the top
off of her pen, readied herself to record the answers.

“This morning,” Jan began, “you fogged out on us before we had a chance to ask a very
important question. This case cannot be closed without the answer.” Glancing across
the bed she asked, “Nurse Cassle, are you getting all of this?”

“Oh, yes, inspector,” Molli answered.

“Oh, don’t make me laugh,” Meg begged. “It hurts too much.”

Taking no pity, Jan continued. “Nurse Cassle, I told you she was a wimp, didn’t I?
Next, she’ll be begging off and asking for pain meds. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes.
So, before you find some other reason to wimp out and go to sleep for another ten
hours, we thought we’d better get this down on paper. Otherwise, the way you make
decisions and answer questions, your child might end up suffering from some kind of
long-lasting trauma.”

“Are you ready for a visitor?” Meg heard the door open again, and this time it was
Heather asking the question. As Meg looked up, Heather continued. “I think she’s ready
for you.”

Heather held a tiny, wrapped bundle in her arms. It seemed to take her a lifetime
just to walk the five steps from the door to the new mother’s bed. Meg automatically
reached out for her child. She was ready for a mother’s most magical moment.

“Not yet,” Molli said. “Let’s get you sitting up first.”

Grabbing the control, Jan warned, “Meg, this is going to pull on those stitches. So
be ready for some pain.”

Meg didn’t feel a thing as the bed rolled upward. Oblivious to the pain that must
have been there, Meg once again held her hands out and this time, Heather carefully
handed the slightly
squirming form to her. After peaking at the round face, the red nose, the hairless
head, and the blue eyes, tears began to flow, not only from Meg’s eyes but from the
three other nurses, too.

“My baby, she’s perfect,” Meg cooed, gently touching the little girl’s face. “Thank
you, Lord,” she silently breathed, kissing the child on the forehead.

“Meg,” Jan interjected, “we need a name.”

“A name,” Meg thought. She’d been so convinced it would be a boy she had never considered
a girl’s name. As she stared at the tiny beautiful face, a small hand curled around
her own finger. Meg marveled at the child’s innocent beauty and slowly shook her head.

“Tell you what, girls,” she sighed. “If I had known just how bright this day would
be, I might have not struggled for so long in the darkness.”

“Meg,” it was Molli’s voice this time. “We need a name. She can’t go through life
being called Female Richards.”

Suddenly remembering the time of her daughter’s birth as well as a friend who had
brought another kind of light, Meg smiled and whispered, “Her name is Dawn. Yes, that’s
it. This is Nancy Dawn Richards!”

Discussion Questions

1. Would you have advised Meg to view or not to view her husband’s body? What do you
think you would have done in her shoes?

2. Why did Steve’s death cause Meg to walk away from her faith?

3. If Steve had died in a different way do you believe that Meg would have responded
differently?

4. Why do you feel Meg didn’t want to keep her baby? If you had been her friend what
would you have said to make her change her mind?

5. Nancy knew she was dying. Do you think it would be easier or harder for a person
in her position to embrace faith and feel the Lord’s hand? Why?

6. District Attorney Web Jones put his own ambitions ahead of his responsibilities.
Do you think most people in his position would have done the same thing?

7. Do you believe that our court system favors those with money and influence? Why
or why not?

8. Do you think the punishment Jim Thomas received from the courts was the right one?
If you were the judge, what penalty would you have assessed and why?

9. Meg sought her own kind of justice. What would you have advised her to do if you
were her friend?

10. Meg’s mother tried to connect with her daughter but just couldn’t do it. Why do
you suppose this was the case? Whose fault was it?

11. Meg’s prayers were answered. She had Jim Thomas right where she wanted him. Why
do you believe she didn’t
walk away and claim victory? What drove her to save him?

12. Who was the wisest person in Meg’s life and why?

13. Jim came to help Meg when she was in trouble at the meeting. What drove the young
man to challenge the audience to listen?