A Rose Revealed (24 page)

Recognizing a challenge when he heard one, Jake pushed himself up, but his arms were shaking from the effort.

“I’m going to put my arms around your chest whether you like it or not,” I said. “When you give the word, we’re both going to move you.”

I put my arms around him as I’d said, resisting the urge to rest my head on his shoulder. “Ready when you are.”

Eventually he was lying comfortably, covered by a sheet and a blanket I found in his bathroom. A wide-mouthed pan I’d snatched from Mary’s kitchen sat within easy arm’s reach.

“I felt fine when I called you for lunch,” he muttered. “In fact, you took so long to come down, I ate my own sandwich. Then all of a sudden I was in trouble.” He swallowed a couple of times and we both reached for the pan. In a minute he relaxed. “Not this time. Sheesh, I hope this is only the twenty-four-hour kind.”

“Shush,” I said. “Just sleep if you can.”

“Mmm.” He closed his eyes.

I bent down and kissed his forehead as much to check for fever as for affection.

Without opening his eyes, he mumbled, “I won’t love her.”

“I know.” I brushed his hair back. “I know.”

He was so weary from the virus and the efforts to get into bed that he soon fell asleep. In repose, his often forbidding expression was soft and vulnerable. His chest rose and fell as he breathed, and he rested one arm along his side and had the other flung up beside his head.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in a pattern of illness, cleanup, sleep. Whenever he had the energy to be angry, Jake was grumpy and out of sorts with me.

“Is your bedside manner always so heavy-handed?” he groused one time.

Then, “If I’d realized I was renting to Florence Nightingale, I’d never have done it.”

And “You think because you smile at me, I’m going to be happy you’re here? Ha!”

But once when he slept and I leaned over to check on him, I laid my hand on his cheek. Without consciously knowing, he turned his face into my palm and kissed my wrist.

Oh, Jake, what are we going to do?

Oh, Lord, help us find Your way!

It was almost dark when I heard the front door of the main house open. Jake was sleeping, and I had been sitting in his living room reading. I put down my book and went to see who had come home.

Mary and John looked at me in surprise as I walked from Jake’s apartment.

“Jake’s sick,” I said. “The stomach virus.”

Mary gasped and started toward his door.

“Stop,” John said in firm, soft command.

Mary stopped.

“You’re caring for Chake?” John asked me.

I nodded.

“Does he mind?”

I grinned. “He hates it.”

Mary started for the door again.

“Stop, I said.” John looked at his wife. When she had stilled again, he turned to me. “Will you keep caring for him?”

I nodded.

John looked at his wife. “You will fix supper. It has been a long day with Annie and Rachel. You don’t need anything else to do. Rose will care for Chake.”

Mary looked at the floor, obviously not happy with John’s decisions. After a minute, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and walked to the kitchen.

I followed her. “I borrowed one of your pans for Jake. I hope you don’t mind.”

She shook her head as she all but threw a large cast-iron frying pan on the cookstove. The clatter of iron against iron was deafening.

“Wife!”

Mary spun and looked at John. Neither spoke, but communication flashed through the air faster than the speed of sound. Finally Mary sighed, nodded, and turned to her pan. She picked it up and set it gently back on the stove.

John made a satisfied grunt.

Soon canned beets and lima beans were warming while pork chops sizzled. After I set the table, I found sweetened iced tea in the refrigerator and placed the pitcher on the table. Mary had just put the pork chops on a plate when Elam and Esther walked in, cheeks rosy, smiles broad.

“The cows
iss
all milked and cared for,” he said.

Esther grinned shyly at Elam and nodded. “Everything is fine for the night.”

John grunted and Mary didn’t respond at all. No one seemed to even notice the fact that Elam and Esther had done the work together, something they had never done before.

We sat down to eat.

“Only five of us?” Elam asked.

“Jake’s sick,” I said. “Stomach virus.”

When Esther served us her pound cake for dessert, I said, “I’ll take my cake and go check on Jake.”

“No, you don’t have to,” Mary said, “I’ll go.”

As she started to rise, her eyes caught John’s. Immediately she sat again.

I took some ginger ale with me, thinking that maybe Jake would be able to keep it down. I didn’t want dehydration to become a problem. When I walked into his bedroom with the soda in one hand and my pound cake in the other, he was awake.

“Do you always desert your patients in their hour of great need?” he demanded, hostile and antagonistic.

“Do you always speak so nicely to those who help you?” I countered.

For an answer, he sneered. I gave him my most seraphic smile, and I think I saw steam come out of his ears.

As I handed him a glass of ginger ale, I said, “Time to take those heavy stockings off.”

I had to pull the covers out of his hands as he was overcome with a sudden attack of modesty. I carefully rolled down the TED stockings he wore to keep his legs from swelling. I could feel his eyes on me, watching for my reaction as I saw his legs for the first time. They were painfully thin, the muscles atrophied. I couldn’t help but think how strong they must have been before and what he had lost.

I was very careful not to let any of the sorrow I felt show on my face. I acted the consummate professional, not like a woman in love. When I did look up at him again, at his fierce eyes and strong brows, at the stubborn set of his jaw, I was struck by the sheer strength of his personality. Legs were only legs. Force of character and will made the man, and Jake had both in abundance. Certainly he had more than enough for me.

Jake’s front door opened, and I heard Sam and Becky’s voices.

“I’ll go see what’s up,” I said as I pulled the covers up over him. “Will you be okay?”

He glared at me, and I could see him trying to think up a smart-mouthed retort.

“Don’t waste the energy,” I said, bending to brush a kiss on his forehead. “You need it to get better.”

“I won’t love you,” he whispered.

“I know.” I kissed him again. “I know.”

I went into the living room and greeted Becky and Sam.

“Where’s Jake?” Sam asked.

“In there sick as a dog,” I said, pointing to the bedroom. “Stomach virus.”

Sam walked to the door and peeked in. “Hey, guy, when I get sick, can I borrow your nurse?”

I heard a low rumble from Jake but couldn’t make out the words. It was just as well. He was probably offering me to Sam on a silver platter. I walked over to Becky.

“How are you doing?” I gave her a hug.

“It depends on the minute,” she said. “One minute I’m in tears over Trevor, the next I can hardly breathe, I’m so happy Samuel’s here. My head aches, my breasts ache, and I wonder if my heart will ever stop hurting.” She looked at me through tears. “In other words, I’m a mess.”

“That’s not surprising. In fact, it’d be surprising if it were different.”

She stared down at her hands. “I find a lot of comfort in the fact that God knows how it hurts because He let Jesus die.” She drew a long, shaky breath.

Sam came up behind her, put his arms around her, and gave her a kiss on the top of her head. She turned, wrapped her arms around his middle, and held on for dear life.

“It’ll be okay, sweetheart,” Sam said softly. “It’ll be okay.”

Becky nodded, but I imagined she wasn’t any more convinced than he was.

Sam looked at me over Becky’s head. He seemed to want to change the subject. “He’s a pretty grouchy patient, isn’t he?”

I glanced at the bedroom door. “I think it’s having me as his nurse.”

“The man doesn’t know how lucky he is.”

I smiled at Sam. “Becky, you’ve picked a man of taste and insight here.”

She pulled away from Sam and smiled at him through her tears. “I know.”

Sam wiped the tears from her cheeks and said, “Do you mind if we sit in here and talk? We’re having a hard time finding somewhere to be alone.”

“I’ll bet you are,” I said.

“We’ll be good,” Becky said quickly. “You don’t have to worry. We’ve already talked about that, and we know we can’t sleep together until we’re married.”

“We made so many mistakes before,” Sam said. “But now that we both love Jesus, we want to obey Him. We will be pure.”

I smiled at them. “I think that’s wonderful. And just the way it should be. You sit and talk. I’ll go back to my patient.”

“We applied for a marriage license today,” Becky said shyly just before I left the room. “Of course, we can’t marry until after Trevor’s buried. And we need to decide whether to live here or go back to Ohio.” She looked at Sam, pain etched on her face. “I don’t know if I can leave here if Trevor’s buried here.”

When I entered the bedroom, Jake glowered at me, his arms folded across his chest. He continued to grump and complain as I took his temperature and wiped down his back and chest again.

“Oh, shut up,” I finally hissed.

Surprisingly, he did. He catnapped through the evening while I read. Every time he woke up, I forced some more ginger ale on him. He scowled ferociously but said nothing. The peace and quiet was refreshing.

Becky went home around ten, Sam settled on the sofa about eleven, and I sat watch through the night. Once I had Jake roll over, and I rubbed his back for him. He forgot himself and almost purred with contentment.

At about midnight he fell into a deep sleep. Enviously I stared at him, exhausted. With last night’s lack of sleep and this morning’s interrupted sleep, I was running on empty. I thought longingly of the sofa in the living room, close enough that I could hear Jake if he needed me. But Sam’s tall form already filled it.

I looked at Jake’s floor. Too hard. I looked at the rocker I’d dragged into the room. Too cramped. I looked at his bed and grinned.

I grabbed the quilt I’d taken off the bed earlier and wrapped it around myself. Then I lay down on the edge of the bed and fell immediately asleep. Nothing woke me until morning when the sounds of Jake moaning pulled me from a warm and cozy dream that I couldn’t remember when I awoke.

I sat up so quickly that I rolled off the bed and landed in a heap of quilt on the floor. The very hard floor.

If I’d hoped for sympathy from Jake, I could hope again. He was feeling so vile that he barely noticed me as I picked myself up. I unwound myself from the quilt and we began yesterday’s pattern of illness, cleanup, and sleep all over again. Mary spelled me while I ate breakfast and lunch, but otherwise Jake’s care was my responsibility. My privilege. His worst nightmare.

I was dozing in the rocker shortly after lunch when a peeved voice said, “Don’t you think you’d do better sleeping in your own bed? Then I could get some clothes on.”

I sat up straight and faced Jake, also sitting up straight and radiating health and energy. He looked terrible, his heavy beard shadowing his jaw, his hair hanging in his eyes, his T-shirt a mass of wrinkles, but his eyes were alert and staring at me.

I knew I must look every bit as terrible as he did. I hadn’t brushed my hair or washed my face in twenty-four hours. I, too, had slept in my clothes. The only thing I was missing was the beard.

Suddenly my stomach clenched, my mouth filled with saliva, and I raced for the bathroom. I fell to my knees just in time to heave my lunch.

His twenty-four hours might be over, but apparently mine were just beginning.

Chapter 13

I
was huddled in my bed, about twenty hours into my twenty-four-hour virus when I heard Jake in my living room.

I told myself it was my spinning head; I was hearing things. When his voice continued, I told myself I was hallucinating. When he appeared in my doorway, I told myself I was having a full-blown psychotic episode. Anything was better than the truth.

He wheeled into my room looking beautiful, all cleanly shaven, freshly pressed, and in appallingly good humor. At least that’s how he looked to me without the aid of my glasses. They were somewhere on my night table, but I hadn’t the strength or will to find them.

I, on the other hand, was a mess. My mouth tasted like a swamp, my flannel nightgown was wrapped about me like a mummy’s grave clothes, and my eyes were bleary with pain.

“Hey, Tiger,” he said as he smiled at me. “How are you doing?”

His aftershave made me gag, and I grabbed for Mary’s pan, now my constant and faithful companion. As I made ghastly wretching sounds, so ladylike and endearing, I understood clearly his resentment of me in his room yesterday.

“How did you get up here?” I muttered with great ill-humor when it became obvious I wasn’t going to throw up after all.

“Elam helped me. First he carried the chair. Then he lugged me.”

I made a mental note to do something terrible to Elam in revenge, but I was too weak to come up with a decent plan at the moment.

“I’m a mess,” I said in massive understatement.

He shrugged. “Probably no worse than I was yesterday.”

“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.”

I thought about pushing myself into a sitting position, but all that would accomplish was a wave of dizziness and another bout of nausea. I lay there ignominiously on my back, hair plastered to my forehead, face a ghastly avocado green, teeth so fuzzy they could have been harvested for chenille.

I closed my eyes and wondered if I could feign narcolepsy. Recognizing that as a foolish idea the instant it crossed my mind, I glared at him and asked with a deplorable lack of civility, “Why are you here?”

“Well, I could say I’m your landlord checking to see if you’re taking good care of my property.”

“Like you need to do that while I lie here feeling like roadkill.”