A Fragile Hope - Cynthia Ruchti

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attempting to reassemble the bits. With duct tape and superglue.

      Some people should not sit on walls. Period.

      He told his legs to carry him out the building to his car. Home. Instead he found himself walking through the open door of a room marked Intensive Care Family Waiting. A foreigner, he crossed the border into unknown territory. The familiar scent of cinnamon grounded him, oddly enough, like finding a sign written in English in the heart of Darfur. Or Kosovo. Or some other desolate, ravaged place.

      He picked one of several identical plum couches, the one facing the wall clock, and planted himself. Less than fifty minutes and he’d be expected to go back in there again. To sit with Karin Alecia “Gomer” Chamberlain—the Gomer of biblical Hosea and unfaithful Gomer fame—and the thing that grew inside her.

      The plaintive cry of an unborn child woke him. A child who called him by name.

      “Josiah?”

      Karin’s mother stood over him with her warm, satiny hand on his forearm. “We hate to wake you, dear, but—”

      Eyes wider than necessary, Josiah shot upright, sharp slivers of pain tracing the pattern of nerve endings in his neck. “Catherine. Stan. I’m so glad you’re here.”

      It seemed the right thing to say.

      His mother-in-law sank onto the couch beside him. Stan stood, jingling change in his pants pocket, the lines in his face contorted into a topographical map Josiah hadn’t seen before.

      “How were the roads?”

      “Good,” Stan answered. “Almost clear now.”

      “Josiah, how is she?” Catherine’s words cut through small talk with the efficiency and bloodlessness of a cauterizing scalpel.

      He glanced at the clock. He’d slept through his opportunity. And theirs. He’d been asleep an hour and fifteen minutes. What kind of husband gambles away his chance to see his dying wife for the sake of a little sleep?

      Dying? The word tasted like paint thinner.

      He forced calmness he didn’t feel. These people deserved hope. He didn’t have any to spare but could fake it in brief spurts. He softened words like internal injuries and critical and fragile as if editing one of his lectures for an ultrasensitive audience. In their eyes, he read their efforts to translate what he said to what he really meant.

      “You can see her in a little while. Top of the hour. For ten minutes.”

      Catherine’s eyes glistened. “Will she recognize us?”

      “She’s not conscious.”

      For a moment, Josiah hated what his wife had done to her mother. The older woman’s frame collapsed on itself, bone turned to limp pasta. He caught her from one side, Stan from the other.

      “I’m okay,” she insisted, lifting her chin and blinking back tears. “We have to be strong. For Karin.”

      Yes, let’s all rally around the fallen woman. Let’s whisper how sorry we are she had to go through all that misery. Married to Josiah Chamberlain. What a horrible tragedy. Good thing she found an escape route.

      No one had asked the “What happened?” question more often than Josiah. He owed it to these innocent parents to listen while they wondered aloud.

      “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have taken her to Paxton, Josiah.” Stan hung his coat and Catherine’s in a narrow locker designated for the purpose. “Perfectly good hospital there, isn’t it?”

      “For its size.” Josiah moved a coffee table out of the way so his in-laws could navigate to the couch.

      “Then . . . ?”

      Catherine patted her husband’s arm in a gesture Josiah had seen many times over the years. Correcting or calming, it always came across as loving. “Stan, we’re asking the wrong person. I’m sure Josiah was as surprised as we were that the ambulance brought her here. Right?”

      About that and a few dozen other things about your daughter. “Right. We’ll get answers eventually. Right now the primary concern is—” His wife’s name caught—unvoiced—in his throat.

      “No sense worrying about that, I guess,” Stan said. “The choice of hospitals, I mean. I found it curious, though. Maybe had something to do with insurance.”

      He’d heard of that before. Ambulances taking a longer route to the hospital with which it had a contract.

      Would Karin rally enough to explain any of the curiosities? Josiah had written a family crisis manual that not only made the best-seller list but had become a staple at airport bookstores and bookstands. At the moment, he couldn’t remember any of its sterling points.

      Something, something, something, you’ll get through this.

      And readers bought that? Could his life’s work be as meaningless as it sounded in an ICU family waiting room?

      Chapter 5

      Sometimes all hope needs is a little oxygen.

      ~ Seedlings & Sentiments

      from the “Hope” collection

      Karin’s parents hadn’t let him surrender his top-of-the-hour slot, despite his having snoozed through the last one. So he stood at her lifeless side. No change. No movement. Not even an eye twitch or a grimace. Josiah didn’t want to know how they had surgically relieved the pressure building in her brain. The bulky bandage on the right half of her head gave a hint.

      Seismologists in San Francisco could have measured the shift in his heart. Confusion and anger gave way to the breakdown he’d resisted for hours. He muffled his sobs with first one hand then the other, shudders racing through his body, unearthly moans rising and receding only to return stronger than the last wave. What if she didn’t make it? How was he supposed to go on? She’s the only woman he’d ever loved like that. Seeing her so utterly shattered erased all the questions. Nothing mattered. Nothing except keeping her alive.

      Karin’s battle lay in the physical realm. Josiah stared at the floor tiles at his feet as if he’d stepped onto a battleground full of mental and emotional landmines. One wrong step—

      “Water?”

      Blurred eyes saw a Styrofoam cup of ice water near his hands. He murmured his thanks and drank a sip before looking up. One of the nurses he’d seen before in the room. Her distinct Latin heritage made her memorable. “Thank you. And I apologize for that”—he gestured with one hand—“that scene.”

      She smiled. “Mr. Chamberlain, you call that a scene? This is a place where that would be considered not only normal, expected, but pretty healthy. And just so you know, it probably won’t be your last.” She handed him a cool, wet washcloth. “This might help. Or not. But it can’t hurt.”

      He used the cloth to soothe his swollen eyes. No all-nighter for a tight deadline had done this kind of number on his eyes. Or the ligaments in his throat. Or the bands across his gut.

      “You timed that well,” the nurse said as she pushed a button to stop an alarm on one of the IV pumps. “I hate to be sticky about the ten minute rule, but—”

      Josiah stood from the chair he hadn’t remembered finding. “No. I understand.”

      “If you’re nervous about finding a spot to kiss her, you can kiss her hand. Some people think that doesn’t register in a patient’s brain in cases like this. I disagree.”

      Nothing in the raw, lifeless shell that he once knew as his wife, knew intimately he thought, gave any clue that it

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