Miracles (18 page)

They reached the hospital in no time, and she jumped as the ambulance doors burst open. Her gurney was jerked out, and she had the strange sense of falling as they raced with her gurney toward some unseen target.

She heard crying and wailing around her, doctors calling out orders, nurses talking loudly to other patients.

“Glass and metal fragments in the eyes,” someone beside her yelled. “Vitals are stable. She was just pulled out of the rubble at General American.”

Fingers touched her face, probed her eyes. Pain shot through her as they pried her eyelids apart . . . but she still only saw darkness.

Sirens approached, and she heard the rumble of an engine growing near. And then she had the sense of abandonment, as if everyone surrounding her had moved on to someone else.

“Is anybody there?” She reached around her, groping at the air. “Please . . . I can't see.”

“In a minute, honey,” a woman yelled. “We're helping the more critical patients first.”

She thought of Carl, with his crushed legs, maybe even a broken back, and Andy, with seared lungs.

And others around her, in even worse shape.

Bree knew that time was important if her vision was to be saved, but how could she demand attention when people around her were dying?

She lay there, praying in a loud whisper, begging the Lord to take her blindness away. “If You do, Lord, I promise I'll devote my life to serving You.”

But the prayer felt limp and lifeless on her lips, for her faith was weak, and she feared that the Lord had plans to use her blindness.

She thought of Paul on the road to Damascus. He'd been living for himself, and for some made-up God he thought he knew, when the Lord struck him blind. He'd been blind for three days, long enough to realize that the Lord was dealing with him. When his sight was restored, he was never the same again. Was the Lord dealing with her too? Would her sight be restored, or would the time ticking by make it more and more impossible for her to be healed?

Bree stopped the direction of her thoughts and decided to be grateful instead. She had been buried alive, and God had sent someone to rescue her. He knew of her plight.

The truth was that she didn't have an ounce of control over anything that happened. Her eyes, and her family, were in God's hands.

4

C
HAOS REIGNED AT THE HOSPITAL AND AMBULANCES bottlenecked in the emergency room drive. Doctors stood in the driveway treating patients as they came out of the ambulances, performing emergency triage, rating the patients according to the severity of their conditions.

Carl moaned as they pulled him out of the rescue unit and surrounded him, evaluating his injuries. “Broken bones in both legs, possible vertebral fractures. Immobilize him and give him something for pain.”

“Doctor, can't we get him into X-ray?”

“Yes, but he'll have to wait in line. Life-or-death first.”

He started to protest, but the group around him dispersed. Then a nurse ran back with a syringe. She fed it into the IV they had inserted in the ambulance. Would he be paralyzed for the rest of his life? Or would his remaining days be plagued with chronic pain? He thought of Jacob, who'd wrestled with God and wound up with a dislocated hip. The Lord had used that in Jacob's life, and had later made a nation out of that stubborn man. Was this affliction supposed to bring about some change in Carl's life? Was he supposed to accept whatever his condition meant and expect God to work around it?

He didn't want to accept it, any more than he wanted to work around it.
You saved my life, Lord. Please save my legs.

In moments, relief from his pain seeped over him, and the day grew blurry as he fell into a shallow sleep.

They gave Andy oxygen on the way to the hospital, but breathing came with great difficulty. Once there, they did some respiratory tests and inserted a tube from his nose into his lungs. Then they left him there trying to breathe.

He lay still, slightly panicked, feeling the assault of abandonment. If only someone would come back!

Had they been able to help Bree yet? Was Carl in surgery? Or were they, like him, relegated to the end of the triage line, waiting their turns for treatment?

At least he had a room, unlike those lying on gurneys all over the parking lot and in the halls. He'd probably gotten special attention because they considered breathing a life-or-death event and they needed to attach him to this machine.

Still, he felt as lonely as he'd ever felt in his life. Even if he could speak, there was no one to speak to.

He thought of his voice, seared and broken. Would his vocal cords ever be restored, or had he been condemned to silence for the rest of his life? They had worked hard keeping him breathing, but no one had looked at his vocal cords to see what was wrong. What if they waited too long to address that?

He thought of another man who had been struck mute—Zacharias, in the Bible. He'd questioned God one too many times, and in answer had been struck dumb until his son, John the Baptist, was born. Andy had questioned God many times. Was he being punished for that now? Would there be an end to this trial, as there had been for Zacharias? If so, when?

A team of nurses and orderlies rolled another man into the room with him, distracting him from his thoughts. The man was unconscious and lay helpless and silent. Another patient was brought in, this one awake but groaning in pain.

Loneliness gave way to a sense of inadequacy. He longed to help these people whose needs weren't being met, but he couldn't think of a thing he could do for them . . . except pray.

5

B
REE HEARD HER NAME CALLED THROUGH THE crowd of injured, and she tried to sit up.

“Bree, thank God you're all right!” Her mother's voice reached her before she did, and Bree groped toward it in her darkness.

“Mommy!”

It was her children's voices. She moaned with shivering relief, and in seconds they were at her gurney, their arms around her.

She clung to them. “You're all right!”

Her mother touched her face with careful hands. “Honey, your eyes . . .”

“I'm blind, Mom. I can't see. And they're so busy with the others . . .”

Her seven-year-old, Amy, began to wail, and Bree pulled her close again. She wished she could see her face. “What's the matter, honey?”

“I'm scared. Look at your face, Mommy!”

She heard her son sniffing, and she reached out for him too. “You're not crying, are you, Brad? Mommy's okay.”

“Your eyes! They need to fix them.”

“They will, honey. Real soon.”

It sounded as though Bree's mother was crying too. “What can I do for you, sweetie? I want to help you, but I don't know—”

“You can take the children home.” Bree kept her voice calm and steady. “Now that we each know the other is all right, you should take them home and let the doctors deal with me here. The kids don't need to see me like this. It's upsetting them.”

Her mother pushed her hair back from her face. “But we don't want to leave you.”

“It's a madhouse here, Mom. There are too many people. They'll get to me soon. Just go home and pray.”

When her mother finally kissed her good-bye and took the children away despite their cries to stay with her, Bree fell back onto her pillow, exhausted but grateful. The Lord had answered two of her prayers: she'd been rescued, and her children were fine. She prayed that someone would come and tend to her wounds soon so that she could go home to her children and hold them as they fell asleep tonight.

Later that night, a doctor made it into her room. He stood beside her bed with his hand on her shoulder, and she wished she could see him. “We're doing surgery on your eyes in the morning,” he said, “but there's significant damage.”

His weary voice didn't sound hopeful. “Will I see again?” she managed to ask.

There was a long pause. “We'll do the best we can, Ms. Harris.”

“What does that mean?”

He sighed. “Nerves have been damaged, and the cornea was lacerated. I'll try to get the glass and metal out and repair as much as I can, but I can't promise that your sight will return.”

After he left, Bree lay in the silent darkness that cloaked her. She was too numb to think, too numb even to pray. Finally the pain medication worked through her system, and Bree fell into a dreadful, shallow sleep.

6

T
HE NEXT MORNING, BREE FELT THE LIGHT OF DAY through the window, warming her face. Slowly, she opened her eyes.

She saw light! She turned her face to the window, where she saw clouds floating through the sky, a tree just beyond the glass. And around her, she saw the other injured patients.

“I can see.” She sprang off of her gurney and looked around for a nurse or doctor. “I can
see!”

Had they done surgery on her last night when she'd been asleep? Wouldn't she have awakened for part of it? Wouldn't she have bandages?

She saw a bathroom, ran into it, and looked into the mirror. The cuts on her face and eyes were gone, and she looked as unharmed as she had yesterday before the quake. How could that be? No surgery could have healed her cuts that quickly, restored her vision, and erased her scars.

She came back out of the bathroom, and a nurse rushed toward her. “You should have called me, honey. I would have helped you.”

“I can see! Look at me.”

The woman clapped her hands over her own face and stared at Bree. “How can that be?”

“I don't know.”

“But they didn't do surgery yet. They didn't do anything!”

Her heart hammered with realization. She had been healed, not by doctors or equipment or cleverly mixed drugs.

God had healed her.

“I'm going to get the doctor!” The nurse raced out the door.

Bree went back to her gurney, looking around for someone else to tell.

On the gurney next to her lay a high-school boy, blood caked on his disfigured face. Clearly frightened and traumatized, he looked up at her and met her eyes.

Flash
.

The boy was no longer a teen, but a child, kneeling in a dark attic, screaming and banging at the door to get out. “Daddy, please let me out. I'll be good. I promise I'll be good.” He had a black eye, and his face was pale as if he hadn't seen the sun in days.

Flash.

Bree blinked, then stared at the boy, who was once again a teen, once again stretched out in front of her on the gurney. What in the world had just happened? Here she stood, in a busy hospital room, staring at a boy who had just been through an earthquake, yet she'd seen a little boy in an attic . . . and she knew it was him.

Had it been a vision of some kind?

She was shaking, she realized, and she turned her eyes from the boy. “I need to go home.”

Her heart pounded as she tried to get away from the boy whose past she had just glimpsed, and she walked through the gurneys toward the door.

The nurse bustled back in. “Ma'am, the doctor will be here soon. You need to lie down until he comes.”

Flash.

It was nighttime. She saw the nurse tending to her sick husband. He was ill and could hardly move for himself. Vomit stained the sheets, and the woman moved around like a zombie, exhausted by her work schedule by day and her caring schedule by night.

“It's okay
,
honey,” she whispered as she stood over her husband. “I'll clean it up.” She worked the sheet out from under him, cleaned his face and his neck, changed his shirt, then managed to change his sheets out from under him.

Exhaustion and dejection painted her features as she lay down beside him and slid her arms around him. “You're going to be okay, honey. I'm here.”

But he wasn't there, not really, and loneliness radiated from the woman's broken heart.

Flash.

The nurse reached for her to move her back into bed.

Bree started to run, dodging the gurneys, zigzagging through the people, until she finally got out into the sunlight and took off running, running, running, until she came to a convenience store where she went in and asked for a phone.

Desperately glad to be out of that place, she called her mother to come and pick her up.

7

C
ARL WOKE ON THE SAME GURNEY HE'D BEEN brought in on, still strapped down . . . but the pain was gone. He wiggled his fingers and managed to get one hand free, then felt his legs. They seemed straight and whole.

Wanting to see for himself, he managed to pull the brace off of his neck and slowly sat up and looked down at himself. His pants were still torn, but the blood was gone, and the legs that he'd seen last night—all mangled and bent like pieces of wire twisted in all directions— looked perfectly normal.

Slowly he peeled back the straps holding him to the bed and pulled his legs free. They moved without pain or trouble.