The Nine Lessons (19 page)

“You mean both of them could…?”

She nodded ever so slightly, followed by a very subdued, “Yes.”

I nodded back, and then took Erin’s soft hands in mine. She looked away, not wanting to face the reality of the possible outcomes. She had waited too long, on account of my stubbornness, to be denied motherhood at this late stage of the pregnancy. And now the thing that she’d hoped and prayed for threatened her very life. Worse yet, it threatened the life of her child—
our
child. It was at that fateful moment, when the realization that I might not end up being a father after all hit me over the head like a club, that being a father suddenly became the most important thing in my life.

“Mr. Witte,” the doctor continued, yanking me from my epiphany. “We need to get your wife upstairs right away. I’d like to ask that you stay in the waiting room while we decide the best way to proceed. Is that all right?”

I nodded again. The resident and an attendant wheeled Erin out of the small, curtained space in the emergency room, down a wide corridor through automated doors that swung inward as they approached, and then were gone from my view.

“She’s in good hands, Mr. Witte,” Doctor Olds assured before leaving to find an open operating room.

I followed the doctor into the main hallway that connected the ER to rest of the hospital. Halfway down the hall, on my way to the waiting room, I passed an orderly pushing a young mother-to-be in a wheelchair. The first thing that caught my attention was the girl’s plaid purse clutched tightly in her fingers. It looked strangely familiar. Then my gaze moved up to her face. Her eyes were locked on mine, and we recognized each other in the same instant. “It’s you!” we said in unison.

“The veterinarian,” she gasped.

“The Teenage Drama Queen,” I said, equally surprised at running into the young woman who had successfully snookered my wife and me out of a purse and its contents—including over a hundred dollars in cash—only to return it all a few weeks later. The man pushing the wheelchair stopped when I spoke. “What… what are you doing here? You’re pregnant?”

Moisture filled the corners of her eyes. She nodded.

“Wow. Were you… already… that night?”

She nodded again. “That’s why we were stealing money.” A single tear rolled past her eyelid, but she wiped it bravely away before it could trickle onto her face. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I said, trying to comfort her. “Everyone makes mistakes now and then.”

The man standing behind her leaned around so she could see him. “Ma’am, we should get you up to Labor and Delivery.”

“Oh—you’re delivering—tonight?”

The girl placed her purse on her lap and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “My water broke.” She waved gently as the orderly started walking.

I waved back, and then they were gone.

My thoughts turned instantly back to Erin—and our baby.

CHAPTER 21

Prayer never seems to work for me on the golf course. I think it has something to do with my being a terrible putter.

—The Reverend Billy Graham

L
ondon was already seated
in the waiting room when I got there. He had saved me a seat next to him. “How is she?” he asked.

I sat down and carefully articulated everything that had happened, including a word-for-word dramatization of the doctor’s prognosis. When I was through, I buried my head in my hands. “It’s just not
fair,
” I growled.

“No, it’s not.”

“If anything happens to the baby right now, after I put Erin off for so long, then I’m to blame for this. It’s my fault.”

“Hogwash. Nobody is to blame. These things just—happen.” As much as my father wanted to help put my worried mind at ease, nothing he said would make things right. Nothing could. We sat quietly for a few minutes on an uncomfortable vinyl couch, but sitting didn’t quell my panic, so I got up and tried pacing back and forth through the crowded room. My mind was wrapped up in the infinite chaos of life and what I was beginning to perceive as the miserable hopelessness of mortality. I remembered the bitter things my father had written on his scorecards on the day my mother died, blaming God for the injustice of it all. In all fairness, I could scarcely begrudge his past animosity, because those same feelings were quickly filling up my heart, too, as the possibility started to sink in that I could lose my wife and child in one fell swoop. Questions without answers burned my thoughts.
Why do we bother struggling and toiling for some tiny shred of happiness that can be taken away at any moment? Is God so cruel that he dangles joy in front of us like a carrot, only to yank it away just when we’re reaching out for it?

Five minutes of pacing around mumbling about an unmerciful God still didn’t calm my nerves, so I sat back down. Dr. Olds showed up a minute later.

I bounced to my feet when I saw her coming. “How are they?” I asked apprehensively.

“Well, we’ve seen enough on the ultrasound to confirm what I suspected. The placenta has peeled away. The good news is that we now know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

“And the—bad news?”

She pursed her lips. “As always in such situations, since we don’t know when the separation started, we have no way to know how long the baby has been in distress or exactly how much blood Erin lost. The fact that she just started spotting tonight when the pains started is actually a good sign. Hopefully the tear happened this evening. But it’s conceivable that she’s been slowly bleeding internally for—who knows? A day, a week, maybe more. They are prepping for surgery right now, which is the most important thing, to get her opened up and get the baby out. Assuming everything goes well, we should have your baby delivered and your wife fixed up within an hour or so.”

I couldn’t decipher by either her words or her expression whether I should be relieved or more worried. “And if it doesn’t? Go well I mean.”

“We’re doing all the right things, Mr. Witte,” she said, touching my arm with her hand. “I’ll have you paged if there’s any news.”

When she was gone, London stood and patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back, Son.” I didn’t mention it to him, and whether he knew it or not I don’t know, but that was the first time in my life that he’d ever addressed me simply as “Son.” Usually he called me Lad, or Laddie, or Augusta. But never until that moment did he ever call me Son. Use of the word caught me by surprise. I didn’t know whether to thank him for making the gesture or scream at him for not having done so earlier in my life. Either way, I liked the sound of it. He hurried out of the waiting area and slipped through the front doors of the hospital. When he retuned a few minutes later he was carrying a single golf club.

I cringed when I saw it. Other people in the waiting room watched with curiosity as he strode through, gently swinging the club back and forth. “What on earth are you doing?” I whispered, trying to keep my voice low to avoid unnecessary attention.

“I said you needed nine lessons before this baby is born. We’ve only had eight. C’mon, The Doc said we’ve got an hour. That’s more than enough time.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “You really are nuts! We’re in the hospital, for crying out loud.”

“C’mon,” he urged again.

“Until I’m sure that my wife and child are okay, I’m not going anywhere.” I paused, letting the gravity of the moment envelop me. “Don’t you realize that they could both—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I pounded my fist on the couch in frustration, then retreated to a less crowded corner of the waiting room. London followed quietly.

“You’ve got to have hope,” he said as I stopped near the far wall. Dad gently wrapped one of his thick arms around me. I didn’t shrug it off as I once would have.

“Hope for what?” I replied. “That I won’t walk out of here a widower?”

He smiled sympathetically. “Hope that God knows what He’s doing.”

A single, cynical laugh escaped my throat and I stepped out from beneath my father’s grip. “He doesn’t. You, me, Mom—Erin back there under the knife—we’re all a testament to that.”

London looked me up and down, measuring me with his probing eyes as he had so many times throughout my life. Only this time it didn’t feel like a judgment was being made, but rather a routine evaluation by a concerned parent. “C’mon, Son,” he said, using the unfamiliar title again. “Let’s go finish your golf lessons.”

“Golf can’t help anything right now!”

“I beg to differ,” he said politely. “Come. It won’t take long. Golf has at least one more lesson that you need to learn. Right now.”

“Dad!” I hissed quietly, looking around to make sure we weren’t causing a scene. Only a curly-haired little boy with his arm in a sling was paying us any attention. “Lay off! This is real life here—not some stupid game. I’m not going with you to swing a golf club while Erin is off bleeding on an operating table.” I paused again to make sure he was getting what I was saying. He stood there fingering his driver, content to let me blow off some steam. “And don’t you dare say ‘golf is life,’ ” I added. “Golf is
not
life!
Life
is life—even
death
is life, but not golf.”

“You’re right,” he said sincerely. “You’ve taught me as much these past months. You’ve probably been trying to teach me that your whole life, only I didn’t start paying attention until recently.”

I stared at him quizzically. “So—what? You agree with me now?”

He managed a feeble smile. “Since your mum passed away, I know I’ve used golf as a bit of a crutch to limp through life. It’s how I dealt with the pain. I missed out on a lot of joy over the years because of that, but—” He stopped and looked me straight in the eyes, as though the words he was searching for might be hiding there.

“But?”

“But… somehow, without either of us even recognizing it, I’ve been given a mulligan.” He grinned again. “The best bloody mulligan in the world—a second chance to be a father. And soon to be a grandfather! A second chance to simply be part of your life, if only once a month.” He slid both hands into his pockets and leaned back against the wall, staring down at the floor. “That’s more than I probably deserve.”

I was awestruck. Was this the same man who I’d hated for so long? Was it he who had always cared more about improving his handicap than spending time with me? Was it the same guy who kicked me off the golf team as a teenager without ever bothering to tell me why? “So then… we don’t need that last lesson, right?”

“Wrong,” he said, jerking his head up. “Nine lessons. That was the deal. Golf may not be life—and life certainly isn’t a game—but that doesn’t mean we should ignore a good lesson when it comes along.”

“Okay,” I replied sarcastically, “if you think this lesson is more important than my wife, then—”

“It’s not more important than her. It’s
for
her.”

“For Erin?”

“And the baby.”

I allowed my reluctance to dissolve into a heavy sigh. “Fine. But it’s got to be quick. I want to be close by if anything happens.” I stopped on the way out of the waiting room to speak to the attending nurse. “Please,” I said, “if you hear anything about Erin Witte—
anything at all
—page me immediately on the intercom. I won’t be far.”

The woman gave me a questioning look, but the young receptionist who I’d dealt with earlier was listening intently and answered on her behalf. “Don’t worry, Dr. Witte. We will.” She leaned closer to the nurse. “He’s a neurologist,” she whispered as I turned and walked away. “Or something like that.”

We took a hard left turn down the nearest corridor and then a right past the gift shop, but we couldn’t find anywhere that offered the right combination of privacy and space to swing a golf club.

“I have an idea,” said my father, stopping momentarily to survey a map of the hospital. “This way.” A few minutes later we were standing in the hospital’s chapel. It was completely vacant. “Perfect,” he smiled.

“Yeah,” I deadpanned and took a seat on the back pew. “I’m sure God is a huge golf fan. He won’t mind this a bit.”

Dad looked at me disapprovingly. “Don’t make jokes. It’s perfect,” he asserted again.

“What? Who’s joking? Didn’t you see the sign on the door? ‘All Faiths Welcome.’ You play golf religiously, so I figure that counts.”

“Seriously,” he said, more sternly. “No jokes. Don’t forget, right now this is about Erin and your baby much more than it is about golf.”

I looked up at the thick wooden beams running the length of the ceiling. “It’s easier to joke than to face reality,” I groaned.

My father paced to the front of the chapel. He stopped in a large vacant space between the front pew and the pulpit. “You’re hopeless.”

“
I’m
hopeless? This whole situation is hopeless. Look at us. Two grown men with nothing better to do than practice our swing, while my wife lies—somewhere—dying.”

“You don’t know that she’s dying,” he countered.

“And you don’t know that she’s not! But either way, there’s not a single thing I can do to help her right now! So am I hopeless? Yeah—we all are.” I slumped down and leaned my head against the back of the bench.

Dad remained near the pulpit, studying me as he jostled the club back and forth. “I used to think so, too,” he said.

“I know. I read all about it, remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” He gripped the club tighter in his hands and took a slow, arcing practice swing. “You know what your problem is?”

“No.”

“That’s okay—it was a rhetorical question. Your problem is your stance. I’ve noticed that you stand too vertical during your swinging motion, and then you lift your head right before you hit the ball. A good golfer keeps his head down and his knees bent.”

“Well fortunately I’m not a good golfer, so I’m exempt from those two things.”

He grimaced. “Maybe the only reason you’re not a better golfer is that you don’t do them.”

I sat up and leaned forward in my seat. “Would this happen to be the all-important lesson that you dragged me in here for?”

“Good guess.” He grinned. London pointed the club at me and motioned for me to join him. I didn’t see the point of it, but I stood and walked up the center aisle anyway. He handed me the driver and I gripped it just as I had thousands of times before, interlocking my pinkies around the smooth leather handle and pointing my thumbs straight down the shaft. I took a couple of quick chops with it, clumsily banging the club face on the Berber carpet with each downswing.

“How’s that?” I asked.

“Not bad,” he replied in jest, stepping behind me to get to the pulpit. He pushed a button to turn on the small microphone. “But you still look like a bloody trout out of water.” His voice echoed throughout the room. “Bend your knees more, and take a legitimate swing this time—you’re not chopping wood.”

I bent my knees a little more and swung.

“Better,” he commented, “but I still want to see more flex. And keep your head down all the way through the motion, until the force of the club brings it up naturally.”