More Than This: Contemporary Christian Romance Novel (35 page)

“Well, look who just showed up. It’s Loverboy himself.”

Liz spun around to find herself gazing at the only dream that she had ever wanted to come true. He looked more than a little wary, but he was here. She walked over to him and put her arms over his shoulders.

Gently he kissed her and hugged her tightly.

“I was hoping you’d show up.”

“Where else would I be?”

Friday night when the last customer was gone, and the lights were out, the three of them stood by the door, not quite ready to leave.

“So,” Liz said as she stood in the shadow of Jake’s protection.

“So,” Mia replied.

“I guess this is it,” Liz said, rocking back and forth.

“I guess so.”

For as excited as she was about tomorrow, Liz did not want to see tonight, this minute, go. Good-byes had never been her strong suit. Mia looked at her with eyes that said everything that was in Liz’s heart.

“You know I’m going to miss you, girl.” Mia stepped toward her, and Liz took her friend into her arms. “And you’d better come back. Often.” When they stepped apart, Mia was wiping her eyes. Then after only a second, she stepped over to Jake. “And you.”

Jake wrapped her in his arms as if he’d done it a million times.

“You take care of this one, you hear me?”

He nodded. “You got it.”

Mia came out of his hug, and he replaced his arm around Liz.

“Well.” Mia swiped at her eyes and laughed. “I guess we’d better get on home. No sense standing around here blubbering all night.”

Together they went out into the cold, which really was cold. Much too cold to stand on the sidewalk and say lingering good-byes.

Mia locked up and bundled up in her coat. “Don’t be strangers.”

“K. Take care of yourself.” Liz hugged her one more time, and then seeing no way to prolong things, she reluctantly turned with Jake the other way.

They walked halfway down the block before he looked at her. “You okay?”

“No,” she said honestly. “But I will be.”

The next morning at the Literacy Center, Liz headed off in one direction to start her training, and Jake went the other way to the testing center. IQ tests. He hated the term.

During one of the breaks, Mrs. McLaughlin came over to see how things were going.

“Well, compared with the MRI, these aren’t too bad,” he replied when she inquired about the testing.

“So I’ve been told,” she said with a laugh. “I just wanted to express my thanks, Jake. We haven’t had a lot of time to really talk about things, but I know what a special young man you must be. I know how highly Liz thinks of you.”

He ducked his head and kicked the toe of his shoe on the carpet.

“I also know what a difference you are going to make to so many people out there even if you don’t see that right now.”

The praise felt out of place and too heavy. He shrugged as he looked up at her. “I’m just Jake.”

But she shook her head. “Oh, I beg to differ. You, my dear, are a Godsend.” She nodded thoughtfully. “We’ll talk later about everything.”

“Jake?” the testing person said, and he look over at her with a sigh.

They were ready. Time for more tests.

“Liz,” Mrs. McLaughlin said at eleven o’clock.

“Yes, ma’am?” Liz stood at the summons and tugged her shirt down in the back. Fascinating. It was all so fascinating.

Mrs. McLaughlin ducked closer so the others wouldn’t hear, and fear rose in Liz. “Dr. Melody, the optometrist, just got here. She’s going to be testing Jake. I wondered if you would like to come observe with me.”

More fear. Liz looked at her mentor with saucer-wide eyes. “Is that allowed?”

“It is, and I think it would be good for you to see.”

“O... okay.” Tugging at her shirt again as she followed the woman, Liz prayed that Jake wouldn’t be upset by her presence. She knew how close to the vest he played this part of the game.

They went across the center to a room on the far side. It was medium-sized with olive-gray walls and a temporarily-placed optometry chair on one side. A tall, thin woman with large eyes stood from the little table and extended her hand to Liz.

“I’m Dr. Melody Taylor.”

“I’m Liz.” The second her hand was back in her possession, she stuck it in her pocket.

“You’re welcome to sit in those chairs. I just talked to Carla. They’re almost finished with the first round of vision tests.”

They nodded and had just started to the chairs when Jake walked in, looking like he’d just shown up for his own execution.

Dr. Melody was the first to move. “Hi, Jake.”

“Hi.” He shook her hand, his eyes going wide and fearful though it was clear he was trying to be brave.

“It’s so good to meet you,” Dr. Melody said. “This is like a marathon, huh?”

He considered that and then nodded. “Kinda.”

She headed over to the chair as Mrs. McLaughlin and Liz took seats directly in front of it but several feet away. Liz hated feeling like she was part of the audience. In fact, that chair look a bit like an electric chair to be really honest. She sent up another prayer for him.

Across the room, he followed Dr. Melody slowly as if being dragged there, all the way until she turned and pulled him up short.

“Before we get started, I just want to tell you a little about what we do.” She smiled a bright smile with lots of teeth. “I know this all looks daunting, but it’s really not as bad as it seems. I’m just going to have you sit here.” She took hold of Jake’s jacket and guided him to the chair where he shifted twice before getting settled. “Now, pretty much what I’m looking for is how your eyes move together. We’ve done some of the testing of this with the computer.” She nodded at Jake who nodded back. “This is going to give us some visual indication of how your eyes work.”

Reaching over, she took a small ball on a long thin wire stick. “First, I’m going to move this ball in front of you, and I want you to keep your eyes on the ball. Ready?”

Jake shifted, settled, and nodded.

“Okay.” Dr. Melody started moving the ball side to side, then up and down, then in arcs around him.

Liz wasn’t sure what she should be watching for, but then Dr. Melody stopped and took the ball away. Immediately Jake reached up to wipe his eyes.

“You’re doing great.” Dr. Melody got set again. “Now this time, I want you to follow the ball.” She started it in motion. “And I’m going to ask some very easy questions.”

Jake’s eyes curled and circled, catching on to the movement of the ball.

“Good. Now, what is 1 + 1?”

The hesitation was slight but obvious.

“2.”

“Good. What is 5 + 2?”

This time he blinked as his eyes shifted, losing track of the ball for a whole second. “7.”

“Good. Now spell your name.”

It was almost as if something or someone else had snatched control of his eyes. They shook and shifted in the five seconds before he started. “J. A. K. E.”

This time when Dr. Melody took the ball away, it was several seconds of eye-rubbing before Jake stopped blinking. It was as if someone had just flashed a bright light right into the back of his eyes. He rubbed, and Liz could see his eyes watering from all the way across the room.

“You’re doing great,” Dr. Melody said, and Liz was incredibly impressed by the woman’s ability to be so reassuring. She vowed to work on that. “Now, I’m going to take the ball, and I want you to follow it from here.” She held it out about ten inches from him. “All the way in to your nose. Okay?”

Jake nodded, but Liz saw the fear.
God, he needs you. Help him out here.

He let out a long exhale and readied himself.

“Okay.” Dr. Melody held the ball out, and he anchored his gaze to it. She slowly drew it toward his nose.

Liz completely expected his eyes to cross like hers would have, and one of them, the right one, actually tried. The other stayed almost straight forward. Dr. Melody nodded as she withdrew the ball back toward her.

“One more time.”

Sure enough. The same thing. Liz gulped a large slice of air. She fought not to react. Dr. Melody stopped and stepped back so she could talk to all of them as Jake went into desperately-trying-to-get-his-eyes-to-stop-watering mode. He rubbed and sniffed and rubbed again. And when he stopped, there were red rings around both eyes.

Dr. Melody turned to them. “One of the central issues with reading is the ability of the eyes to team, or work together.” She moved the ball in front of her eyes. “They should be able to pass the information easily from one eye to the other. To come in, to go out. What we’re finding is that some kids who are diagnosed with dyslexia actually are having problems with their eyes. As you saw, Jake’s eyes ‘shake’ when he tries to hold focus and think through even something simple. It’s as if he can do one or the other, but not both. Because his eyes and his brain are working so hard at taking things in visually, it leaves precious little processing power for comprehension. As you’ll see in a little while when we look at the computer generated tests, not only are his eyes requiring a lot of concentration to team, they are also not smooth when he reads. They jerk back and forth. They don’t always go all the way to the left of the page and then all the way to the right.”

Then she stepped over and smiled at Jake. “But the good news is, almost all of this is fixable. It just requires teaching the eyes to team and strengthening those muscles so they can.”

“And that will fix the dyslexia?” Liz asked.

“That will bring him to a place where he can begin to process things reliably and quickly through his visual system. Then it’s a matter of reteaching how to decode words and getting everything to work together instead of fighting for brain space.”

At 12:20, they walked out of the LC hand-in-hand, headed for a little cafe down the block.

“That was rough, huh?” Liz asked him.

Jake thought through the question and shrugged. “Actually it was kind of interesting.”

She nodded. “You look wiped.”

He smiled. “Exhausted. Thanks for asking.”

She angled her steps into his. “But happy?”

Reaching around her, he grabbed the door, opened it and held it. “Very.”

It was a good thing Jake was holding onto Liz’s hand when they got back to the center. Had he not been, he might not have stopped running short of Canada.

“We weren’t planning to do this quite so quickly,” Mrs. McLaughlin said, meeting them at the door, “but everyone is here, and with Christmas coming up, we might not have much of a chance until well after the holidays.”

“To do what?” Liz asked for him because Jake’s voice was gone.

“Well, Dr. Bjorn came to drop off Jake’s records, and Dr. Melody and Carla are both still here. They’ve been doing some other testing.” Mrs. McLaughlin pleaded with them with her eyes. “I know this is sudden, and I really wouldn’t do it if they hadn’t just shown up.”

True he wanted to run, but the greater truth was, he wanted to get this over with. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Mrs. McLaughlin looked at him unsure she had heard the word correctly.

“Yeah.” He nodded and shrugged. “Okay. It’s cool.”

“Fabulous. Let me get everyone and we can go to the conference room.”

When she was gone to get the others, Liz looked up at him and smiled a smile of soft hope and awe. “You’re amazing, you know that?”

“I’m sorry. Did I miss you slipping and hitting your head on the way over here?” Humor seemed the best route. Everything else just looked like sheer terror.

“I’m being serious, Jake. I’m proud of you.” And she wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed. “And if you’re real lucky, I’ll show you how much later.”

“Hmm.” He bent and tweaked her nose with his. “It’s a date.”

“Hm.” Mrs. McLaughlin was back, and they broke but didn’t let go. “We’re ready.”

Ready had always seemed such a nice word. So innocent and benign.
Your table is ready. Your steak is ready.
Today it was anything but.

Still, clinging to Liz’s hand, Jake followed her, praying he would make it out of here in one piece. In the room, which was only barely medium-sized with a six-seat table in the middle, Jake pulled her chair out and followed her down. Immediately she put her hand back on his knee, and he put his arm around her chair back willing himself not to be sick right there.

“First, I want to thank you all for coming,” Mrs. McLaughlin said. “I had scheduled to do this in January, but with you all here... Well.” She looked down at her notes. “Dr. Bjorn, would you like to start?”

The short half-bald, half-grey-haired man stood and shuffled the papers in front of him. “I happened to have a small light board in my car.” He pulled the thing up and plugged it in before flipping on the light.

Liz dragged in a breath. It was something to look at X-rays with. She glanced back at Jake who looked positively ashen.

Dr. Bjorn attached one X-ray and then another to the thing. “Now, over here we have the primary visual cortex. And here, you will notice a slight imbalance between the left and right hemispheres. This is very common in a case where a disruption in the optical system has taken place. Basically without putting too fine a point on it, the right brain or creative side, has had to shoulder more of the load from the left side, the side that decodes.”

“Is...” From behind her, Jake cleared his throat, and she jerked around to look at him. “Is that really
my
brain?”

With soft eyes, Dr. Bjorn looked at him. “Yes, Jake it is.”

“Are..?” He sounded so shaky and unsure. “Are you sure?”

Terror traced across Liz’s heart. They had come so far. Surely he wouldn’t run now. She glanced around the table only to be met with three very compassionate faces. They all seemed to say they understood completely. But she didn’t, and she was worried.

“Yes. I’m very sure.”

“Jake?” Liz turned to him and laid her hand on his thigh, willing him to look at her and be all right.

“I...” Jake’s gaze fell between them. “I just... I always thought... there would be something... missing.”

Her heart fell at the hopelessness in his voice. “Oh, Jake. Sweetheart.” And he collapsed forward as she turned fully and caught him coming forward. She understood the tears. He had been wounded so deeply. It just surprised her that he would let them fall here.

“It’s not an unusual reaction,” Dr. Bjorn said softly with almost a hint of a smile. “Many people just like you have assumed the very same thing. But it is not true. There are some things in your brain that are not functioning quite the way they should be, but your brain is no different than any of ours in this room.”

Jake pulled up, blinked at the tears, and shook his head. Then he closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

“No. No. Please,” Dr. Bjorn said. “By all means, this is very important, life-changing news. I think we would all be quite moved by it.”

Another nod, and Jake sniffed the tears away. “I’m sorry, Doctor. Please continue.”