Sacred Trust (32 page)

Mercy glanced toward the bed. “She's asleep again. Why don't you give me your number so I can call you later?”

It took a moment for Ivy to locate and read the number to Mercy. “So you're saying Dr. Bower was on duty last night?”

“Yes, thank goodness.”

“Okay.” There was a long silence, then, “Oh, boy.”

“Mom?”

“He saved her life.”

“Yes. He even came up to ICU last night to check on her. We had a long talk. Mom, do you know Lukas is a Christian?”

There was another long pause. “How do you know?”

“I accused him of it, and he admitted it. He's a very caring person. He said some things last night that really made me think.”

“That doesn't prove he's a Christian.”

Mercy bit her lip. This was not a good time for a fight. “If you had heard Lukas talking about his relationship with God, you wouldn't doubt his sincerity. Why are you determined to find fault with him?”

Ivy replied with a deep sigh.

Mercy glanced over at her daughter's bed and saw that she was awake. “Tedi, your grandma's on the phone. She wants to talk to you.”

Tedi eagerly sat up, threw off her blanket and climbed out of the tall hospital bed. She looked pink and healthy and wonderful. Mercy held the phone out for her, and she took it gladly.

“Grandma? How's the hike going?”

Mercy couldn't help smiling at her daughter, at the expression of joy on her face, at the way she seemed to be bouncing back from yesterday's pain and fear. Now if only there was a way to keep the fear away….

L
ukas took the stairs to the second floor, anger and frustration hitting him like salt in a fresh wound. It was happening again. He'd fought hard to earn a good reputation at Truman, so why had he left there? So a half-crazy old doctor and a drug addict could ruin him again?

“Why am I here, Lord?” he muttered. “I thought this was where You were leading me. Why can't I feel Your peace any longer? What have I done wrong?”

He stepped out of the stairwell and turned left toward Clarence Knight's private room. But instead of stopping there, he walked to the end of the hallway, where a window overlooked the staff parking lot.

“Are You trying to teach me some kind of new lesson?” he whispered to God. “Did You really want me to be a doctor, or did You just want to taunt me with the possibility, then let me fail?”

Why were Jarvis George and Bailey Little capable of wielding so much power over this hospital? And why did things always have to be so political? Since when did
treating patients turn into a popularity contest instead of a career using finely honed knowledge and skill?

As if God had spoken, Lukas immediately recalled a simple passage of Scripture from the book of John:
In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

There was no true peace in this world, and he needed to stop expecting perfection from others. He did, however, need to start working harder on himself.

It occurred to him that if he had shown Jarvis George all the respect the man had tried to command, and if he hadn't told Ivy Richmond how he felt about her mother's code…If he hadn't written an incident report on Jarvis for the missed needlestick protocol and hadn't resisted Dorothy Wild about the disaster drill…But how could he, in good conscience, have continued with the drill when real patients needed him? Some things he would do again, and some things he would change.

“Help me, Lord. Show me what You want.”

He caught sight of Mercy's ten-year-old Pontiac in the parking lot. She was still here. Good. He would check on Clarence, then find Mercy before he left. Then he would go home, pack and drive to Mount Vernon. That would give him three hours to think and pray about this situation.

A familiar deep growl reached him just before he walked into Clarence's room.

“I can't even get out of this bed to get to the john,” came Clarence's deep, complaining rumble. “The bed's broken.”

“You're not supposed to go to the bathroom,” the nurse said. “You're supposed to use this urinal. We need to measure it.”

“But I can't sleep! I'm tilted on my side.”

“I can't help you right now, Mr. Knight. You can't expect me to lift you all by myself.”

Lukas stepped to the doorway and peered in to see the nurse standing with her hands clutching her clipboard. The big guy looked pathetically back at her, his body scrunched onto a tilted hospital bed.

Lukas fought the rush of anger that hit him and tried to remind himself to stay calm. He cleared his throat. “Nurse, may I see you out in the hallway for a moment?”

When she joined him, he gestured for her to take a few steps away from Clarence's door. “Do you know what OSHA would say if they saw this patient in a broken bed?” He kept his voice soft, unthreatening.

The young, slender woman gave an irritated shrug. “I can't help it. Everyone else is busy right now. Surely you don't expect me to switch beds for him myself.”

“Why not? He's ambulatory.”

“He'll just break another bed. Do you know how much he weighs?”

“Do you know how much he's being charged for a bed in the stepdown unit? And at this moment he's listed as a cash patient. Let's give him some quality here. Clarence Knight is a human being and deserves to be treated with as much respect and kindness as you or I would want if we were sick.”

She scowled and held up the chart. “See all this? Heart problems, diabetes, who knows what else they'll find, and he brought it all on himself.”

“How do you know that?” Lukas demanded. “Are you familiar with his life history?”

She gestured toward the room. “Overeating has been his life history. I don't need a chart to see that.”

“Did it ever occur to you during your years of nursing school that you would be dealing with real people who had real problems, many of which they'd brought on themselves? Would you react the same way with someone who suffered from anorexia nervosa? How about emphysema or heart disease from too much smoking?” Don't the schools teach compassion these days?

A deep flush rushed up her neck and face.

“Get a bed in here now,” Lukas ordered. “I'm not leaving until Clarence Knight is comfortable, and I don't want to hear any more remarks about his weight.”

Her eyes widened. She stared at him a second longer, then swung away and rushed down the hallway.

Lukas glared at her retreating back. Not only did this hospital not hire enough staff, the staff it did hire lacked compassion, even common human decency.

A moment later, he sighed slowly. This nurse was like millions of others who judged by appearance and not by the heart, but wasn't he judging, too? Why did he have to be so quick to condemn people? God loved people like this nurse, even as He loved Clarence. Jesus Christ would have found a way to be tender with her, to gently show her the error of her ways instead of wounding with harsh words as he had just done.

Of course…there had been the time with the whip in the temple. And Jesus had never been too tender with the religious leaders of His time. “White-washed sepulchers” and “vipers” had been a couple of His favorite terms for them….

“Hey, Doc, that you out there?” came Clarence's booming voice.

Lukas forced a smile and stepped back through the threshold to the room. The huge man lay on the drunkenly tilted bed, his sheet-covered body nearly enmeshed in the stainless-steel rails on both sides.

“How are you feeling, Clarence?”

“Feels like I'm in a vice.”

“Do you want me to let the rails down?”

“No, I'll fall out.”

“We're going to remedy that. Maybe we can try to get some padding over the rails when your new bed comes. Other than that, how are you feeling?”

“Fat. I don't think I've lost any weight yet.” He gestured toward the door. “I heard what you said to that gal.”

“Sorry you caught that. People surprise me with their insensitivity.”

“Thanks, Doc. I thought you'd be mad at me 'cause I didn't listen to you when you tried to get me in here in the first place.”

Lukas grinned. “It took a woman's touch. Dr. Mercy did all right.”

Clarence growled.

“Give her a break, Clarence. Her heart's in the right place.”

“You mean she's got one?”

“I'm pretty sure she has.”

Clarence thought about it, then nodded. “Guess you're right. Guess she probably has a lot going on in her life right now, too.”

Lukas blinked in surprise.

“I should've gone to school to be a psychologist.” Clarence tried to shift his weight, got stuck in the bars, and gave up. “Take that nurse just now. Jeannie's her
name. It was her first time in here, but I knew when she walked in the door that others had been talking to her about me. It was like she'd been warned not to react when she saw me, but she couldn't help it. Maybe I could pay hospital bills if I joined a circus.”

“You won't have to resort to that,” Lukas said drily. “Dr. Mercy has already made arrangements for a social worker to come in and talk to you on Monday.”

Clarence growled again, but his dark eyes held no animosity.

“I know you hate the thought of accepting state aid, but we've been over this before.”

“I know, I know.”

“You're doing this for your sister.”

Clarence nodded.

“She's worth it. You're doing the right thing. You'll have to improve your bedside manner, though, if you intend to become a psychologist.”

“Nah. I'd be great with fat people. We could relate. You oughta take some pictures of me the way I look now. When I get this weight off, we could take more pictures and publish the before and after shots together. I'd be the most popular weight-loss guru of the year.”

“Of the century. Start writing your memoirs.” Lukas had never seen the big man so expansive. It was encouraging. Something was going right, for once.

The nurse arrived with a bed and an orderly. She avoided looking at Lukas while he helped Clarence out of the broken bed and into the new one, but her attitude with the patient, though still stiff, was better. As they finished up, Lukas followed the nurse out into the hallway again.

“Jeannie?” he said quickly before her escape pace took her out of earshot.

She stopped and turned back with obvious reluctance. She glanced at him warily.

“Thank you,” he said. “I'm sorry I was so sharp with you earlier. I could have been gentler.”

She hesitated, then took a tentative step back toward him. “I'm sorry I was rude with Mr. Knight. While I was getting the bed, I tried to imagine how I'd feel if I were him. It's got to be awful.”

Lukas smiled, encouraged out of proportion to the incident.

“Thank You, Lord,” he murmured as he went back into Clarence's room to say goodbye. After that he checked on Mercy, who was preparing to take her daughter home. Time to hit the road, and he was ready.

 

Theo lost the sale. He sat watching the men from the West Coast drive away in their rental car, back to Century 21, with whom they had decided to deal and for whom they had postponed their flight back. He pounded his fist against the steering wheel of his car and shouted curses at their brake lights as they stopped at the traffic signal two blocks away.

He'd busted his rear, called them over and over again, and abandoned his daughter so he could meet them and show them the place, and they'd shown no more appreciation for his efforts than if he'd been a mindless computer.

The door to the office opened and Gordon walked out, head down, hands in his pockets. It was a sure sign he'd been chewed out by the boss, and now it was Theo's turn.

Gordon looked up, saw Theo, and his eyes narrowed.
His hands came out of his pockets, and he strode down the sidewalk toward the car.

Theo was tempted to turn on the engine, put the car in gear and drive away.

Gordon reached the passenger door, opened it and stuck his head in. “Did they bite?”

Theo took a deep breath. “No.”

Gordon glared at him. “You'd better do something, and do it fast. Johnson's looking through the accounts and making calls to the bank.”

“Why is he looking through the accounts? You keep the books.”

“I don't know. Just do something, Theo. Quick! How're we going to cover this?”

“Would you relax? You're being paranoid. He's not an accountant. You covered your tracks, right?”

“Yes, but I'm not an accountant, either. I've never done anything like this before. And tell me how we're going to make our money back on that investment. My loan's coming due, and I'm not going to get a second mortgage on my house.”

“Gordon, use your brain. You've got a good pal at the bank. You can get the loan extended.”

“No, I can't! I want out. You thought this was such a good deal, you come up with the extra cash and take care of this.”

“How?”

“I don't care how, just do it!” He slammed the door and stalked to his own car.

Instead of going inside to face the boss, Theo started his engine and drove away. Johnson could hunt him down if he wanted to ask questions, and besides, it was almost lunchtime and Theo hadn't eaten breakfast yet.

The lunch crowd had not yet arrived when he reached the Golden Lion. That suited him fine. He wasn't interested in any company right now, except for good ol' Jack Daniel's.

He ordered a double with his lunch special and downed it before the food arrived. He ordered another to wash down the steak.

It didn't help. His head hurt. The food felt like sawdust in his mouth.

He raised a hand to gesture a waitress over. “This steak's overdone,” he snapped, shoving the plate to the side of the table. “I ordered medium rare.” He pressed the center of the steak with his fork. “Do you see any blood running out of that?”

She started in with her soft-voice apologies, and he held her hand up. “I don't want to hear it. Just give me my money back and get me another drink.”

She hesitated, watching him warily, the way Tedi sometimes did when he was relaxing with a beer in the evening. He glared at her. She picked up the plate and walked away. When his drink came, a different waitress brought it along with a generous dish of their dessert specialty, bread pudding with whiskey sauce.