Chapter Five

I wasn't raised Baptist. My friend Janise and I, baptized in the Lutheran Church as infants, snickered at the Baptists across the way that sang of plunging in the blood of Jesus. We thought they were strange for not dancing or going to movies, and we rolled our eyes at the old men who chastised us for playing cards on our front porch. But Sunday afternoons, when my parents handed us cheese sandwiches and apples for lunch and told us to eat outside, we could smell the fried chicken and cherry cobblers through the open doors as their congregation spilled out onto the stairs, paper plates bending with the weight of food and tall cups of homemade lemonade bleeding icy perspiration.

On Halloween, when my friends and I would dress as witches and ghosts and tubes of toothpaste, they'd gather at the church for the Harvest Festival. I'd lug home my pillowcase of candy, and I'd see them riding through the streets on hay wagons, their faces wet from bobbing apples, arms looped through each other's, singing and laughing. They laughed a lot, even when we stuck our tongues out at them and called them holy rollers.

I thought they all just had the happy gene until I walked in on Donna Jean in the girls' bathroom in tenth grade. Though she'd barricaded herself in a stall, I could hear her crying. I almost backed out. I'm ashamed to say I'm one of those who don't deal well with discomfort, and hearing Donna Jean sobbing like a willow tree was uncomfortable. But before I could turn around and leave, she opened the door and froze on seeing me. I asked if she was all right, 'cause I didn't know what else to say, and she nodded and said she needed more toilet paper. She'd used it all up, and so I stood awkward as she got more from the next stall and blew her nose and tried to collect herself. I didn't know her that well. She was a grade above me, a flouncy cheerleader with perfect hair and the football wide receiver as a boyfriend, and a Baptist to boot. But she stood there sniffling, mascara black under her eyes, and I couldn't very well turn and leave or ask her to move so I could go pee in the only stall now that had toilet paper. So I asked her what was wrong.

"Jim broke up with me," she sniffed. "He said if I wasn't going to put out, he could find a dozen who would. He said he's tired of waiting around for me to be ready." She blew loudly. "He's already given his ring to someone else."

I wasn't about to try to give Donna Jean love advice, seeing as she was gorgeous and flirty and everything I wasn't. I'd never even had a boyfriend let alone come close to putting out. But I couldn't say nothing, her standing there all weepy, having bared her soul to me, so I said what came into my mind at the moment, which is hardly ever a smart thing for me to do. I said, "Don't he know you're a Baptist?"

She gave me a funny look, the kind adults give right before they say, "Well don't kids say the darndest things!" And then she smiled a little. "I guess he didn't." And she straightened her shoulders, threw her tissues in the trash, and fairly marched out of the bathroom.

I certainly didn't mean it as a compliment. Just that everyone knows if you want to get laid, it's not the Baptist kids you hang out with. But she took it as a compliment, and after that she always smiled at me in the halls and from the sidelines of the football field. I heard two years later that Jim got some girl knocked up right after prom, and they got married, had three kids, and are now divorced.

I remember that, not because it was some meeting of God moment for me or anything, but because in the bathroom that day I realized it meant as much to Donna Jean that she was Baptist as it did to me that she was a Baptist. Only in a good way. And I realized it never meant anything to me to be Lutheran. And I began wondering if there wasn't something wrong with that.

I stuck that memory away for awhile. After Logan was born I told Travis, who wasn't any religion at all, "I think I want to go to the Baptist church. If we're going to raise children, it seems they ought to know God." And he just shrugged. So that's how we became Baptist.

Which didn't seem important at all, until all them god-fearing folks from First Baptist start pouring into Children's Hospital with flowers and balloons and goldfish, assuring us that God would heal Ashley.

~~~~

Brenda and Yolanda are the first to barge in. They immediately push past Dr. Benton and right over to Ashley, the smell of wild flowers and Aqua Net hairspray filling the room. "Oh, Baaaaby, how arrrre you?" Brenda drawls, leaning over to hug Ashley and crushing her with her oversized bosom. "We got here as soon as we heard." She lets go and looks around for a place to tie the dozen Mylar balloons decorated with the face of some Disney teenybopper. When I read the word officious in the week-five vocabulary list in the SAT book, I thought of Brenda.

"Over here," Yolanda says, hip-checking the tiny table with the ice chips on it until it rolls to the corner where she sets a plate of brownies. "We know how bad hospital food is, so we brought you some goodies."

"She can't have any of those, now," Dr. Benton says. He maneuvers around the ladies, picking up the plate and handing it back to Yolanda. I can see her lip curl just a hair, and I know she's forming an unfavorable opinion of my favorite doctor. "Ashley's on a special diet for the next few days."

"Aw, a few brownies can't hurt her none," Brenda says, stepping in and batting her over-mascara-d lashes at him. She gives him her best sugary sweet smile, Marvelous Mango lipstick smudging her front two teeth. He doesn't fall for her flirting, and I love him even more for this.

"In fact, they can hurt her very much." He turns to Travis and me and says, "I'll let you all visit for a few minutes alone." To Ashley he says, "No food." Ashley don't look like she even cares about the brownies, which is a first.

Yolanda watches him leave, and then says, "He's a stick in the mud, ain't he?"

"I think he's cute," Brenda says. "Not everyone can be plied with your cooking."

"What's wrong with my cooking?"

"Maybe you should ask your husband. He seems to always be starved at the church suppers."

Travis clears his throat. They both stop suddenly and look at us.

"Goodness, look at us bickering and adding to your suffering 'stead of helping out like we should be."

"We aren't suffering," I say. "Why are you here?"

Brenda's eyes get wide and hurt. "We're here to see Ashley. We thought y'all might need some encouraging. The church always visits people in the hospital."

"That's why they call us the hospital-ity group." Yolanda jokes. I don't laugh, and she looks around to see if anyone else got it.

"We want to check on Ashley and see if there's anything we can do for y'all."

"I don't know," I say. "We ain't been here long enough to find out what's wrong. And now you done chased the doctor out, and who knows how long 'til he comes back and we find out."

Travis steps up next to me and puts his hand on my arm. "We sure do appreciate y'all coming all this way out here. It means a lot to us to know people in the church care that much." Yolanda don't look like she thinks we are that appreciative. "We'll probably be needing help later on, but we really don't know much yet, and the doctor was just about to fill us in. You understand." I can tell they don't at all.

"There's more of us coming," Brenda says.

"The committee wanted to be here for your family," Yolanda adds.

There's awkward silence. Then Travis says, "You know, I don't think Logan has eaten yet, and he's bored to death in here. Do you think you could take him to the cafeteria for us?"

Logan shoots Travis a look to kill, but Yolanda and Brenda don't see it, and they brighten immediately. Feeding people is their specialty.

"Gloria is bringing barbecue sandwiches. And Dot's got a fruit salad. We could set up a little feast for y'all, and you could come down when the doctor is done and get some nourishment."

"That would be a great time for us to fill you in," I say, warming to this idea, as my stomach is growling like a grisly bear at the smell of the brownies. They are both smiling now, our dismissing them forgiven.

Yolanda pats Ashley on the head. "I'm sorry, bunny. I wish the mean ole doctor would let us give you some."

Ashley, bless her heart, manages a smile and says, "That's okay. I'm not hungry anyway."

Yolanda tousles her hair like she's a stray dog, all pity. "You're such a brave girl." She leans over and whispers in her ear loud enough for all of us to hear, "We're all praying God will heal you quick. The God who heals the lame and raises the blind will make you healthy, too."

"Now," says Brenda, wrapping her ample arm around Logan, "let's go put some meat on those bones." She flashes a smile at me. "We'll check back with you in a bit."

I sink into the chair again. Ashley waits until they're gone before she asks, "The doctor says everything's going to change for us. You think God will make it so it don't?"

I think of Logan, and how the milk allergy just kinda went away and then about Travis, who still can't eat bacon and eggs. "We can pray, I suppose, but I don't know if it will do any good." Travis gives me a look to kill, and then puts his arm around Ashley.

"We should pray that God will get us through this however he sees fit."

"Can we pray he'll heal me? Do you think God will?"

I look at Travis, who looks back at me with something kin to a warning. "I don't know," I say. "He can, for sure. But just because He can don't mean He will."

"Why?"

"I don't know," I say again.

"Because," Travis says, "sometimes we become better people-- stronger--by going through adversity."

A tear slides down Ashley's face. "I don't think I want to be stronger," she says. "I think I just want to be normal again."

I move to the other side of the bed and hold Ashley's head against me. "I know, baby girl. I want that, too."

~~~~

By the time Dr. Benton comes back, Ashley is asleep again. It's as if she's suddenly let go of trying so hard to be well and has given in to being sick. I wonder how hard it's been on her the last few days trying to stay functional if she's been this sick all along.

"It's all right," he says, looking at Ashley and then at his watch. "It's almost noon. I should get back to my own office and see my other patients. I'll drive back after the office closes and we can talk then."

"Your office? Don't you work in the hospital?"

He laughs. "No. I go in occasionally when one of my patients needs me, but mostly I work in my private practice."

"You're gonna drive all the way back home, and then back here tonight?" Travis asks.

"Sure. It's only about an hour." We don't answer that, but I'm sure Travis is thinking the same thing that I am: that an hour might as well be cross-country for us.

When he leaves, Travis and I feel alone in the room. There's some machine hooked up to Ashley that keeps beeping every few seconds, and her breathing is still more like a fish flung on the floor, but as we are the only two awake people in the room, the unquiet quiet feels unnatural.

Travis breaks the awkwardness by standing and making a big deal out of stretching his arms over his head, which expose his belly hanging over his belt. "Should we go see if we can get a Dr. Pepper or something?"

"I'm not going and facing those women."

"I thought they were your friends."

"They aren't. Just 'cause we go to church with them don't mean we're friends. I don't have the energy right now to deal with them, and if there are four of them down there by now, it'd take all the oil wells in Houston to get me enough energy."

He shrugs. "How 'bout a coke machine?"

We find the machine in the waiting room at the end of the PICU wing. Travis pulls a wrinkled bill out of his pocket and tries to feed it into the machine. The machine don't like it and spits it out. He smoothes it down and tries again. Again it comes out.

"For Pete's sake. You got any money?" I don't have to check my wallet 'cause I don't carry cash. At least, not the bill kind. I start pulling out everything in my purse to see if there ain't some change at the bottom when a lady thrusts a crisp, new bill at us.

"Here. I have a pocket full of them. I get them at the bank down the street. I ask for new bills there, because otherwise I might never get a drink here."

Travis thanks her, trades his wrinkled dollar for her starched flat one, and slides it in. It eats it immediately and deposits a can with a loud clunk. He pops the top and takes a long swig and hands it to me. I wave it off and thank the lady. "You visiting someone?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "My son's in here. He was in a bike accident. He fell down a ravine and hit his head and broke a few bones."

"That's awful," I say, but not meaning it wholeheartedly because right now I wish Ashley only had a few broken bones.

"What kind of bones did he break to land him in PICU?" asks Travis.

I elbow him to give him the signal he's been rude, but the lady tears up and suddenly I'm looking for the tissues. "He's in a coma. He slammed his head pretty good. It ricocheted his brain against his cranium and now. . ." She trails off, and I feel awful for thinking what I did about Ashley.

"Motorcycles are dangerous things," I say, trying to be sympathetic.

She stops sniffling a moment and looks up at me confused. "Not a motorcycle bike. A bicycle. He's eight."

My vision of a teenager careening down a hill comes to a halt. I think of Logan when he was eight, still innocent and fun. He'd stopped hugging me by then, but he still let me wrap my arms around him and tell him I loved him. To lose him in those years. . ..

"I'm so sorry."

"Yes," she says, dabbing at her eyes. "Me too."

~~~~