Aging with Gracie (23 page)

Thank you, Lord
.

The night staff executed the fire escape plan as if they had practiced it the day before, and within minutes, all of the residents were huddled in the safety zone of the front parking area. As the Manhattan Voluntary Fire Department headed toward the building with their equipment in tow, Grace looked toward her residents to take another mental roll call.

Thank you, Lord. Everyone is safe
.

She looked toward the group again and stiffened in fear. Where was Theodore? He’d just been there a minute before!

She scanned the crowd for his thick white hair, but she only found Marianne frantically rushing from person to person.

“Theodore!” Grace heard her friend cry. “He was standing right here only a second ago! I have to find him. I have to find my husband!”

Grace caught her as she headed toward the front door.

“Marianne, you can’t go in there!”

“He’s my life, Grace. I have to find him!”

Grace was struck by Marianne’s words in a way that cut deeply into her heart. She tried to put herself in her friend’s place, and at that moment, realized what must be done.

“Stay here,” Grace told her. “I’ll find him.”

And with that, she threw caution to the wind and headed back into the burning building.

“Miss! You can’t do that!” Grace heard the call from behind her, but she was already inside before the fireman could detain her.

Surprisingly, there was not much smoke in the building, and she was able to follow the path Theodore might have taken without having to crawl down the hallway.

She felt the door of the recreation room and, finding it cool, decided to take her chances. She opened it but found no one. She turned around and headed toward the other end of the building. She knew that the fire was in that area, but she really had no choice. It was the only place Theodore could have gone in such a short span of time.

Before she made it halfway down the hall, she spotted him. To her surprise, he was not alone. Richard Watson and Agatha North were standing between him and the exit.

“What’s going on here?” Grace asked.

“
Duh
,” she could imagine Abby’s voice ringing in her head. It was more than obvious what was going on.

“Merry Christmas, Miss Woodhouse,” Richard Watson flashed his coffee-stained teeth in an evil grin straight out of a bad horror movie. “Glad you could join us. We’re having a little barbeque to celebrate the holidays.”

“And you forgot to invite me?” Grace moved closer to Theodore. “That wasn’t very nice. And after all I’ve done for you.” She knew that it would only incite him further, but she couldn’t resist. She figured that she was toast anyway.

“Precisely, you prissy little─”

“─Now no name calling.” Grace was beginning to sweat. “Of course, I suppose I could call you an arsonist and a murderer.”

“We haven’t killed anyone...yet,” he dragged out the word. “Too bad old Theo here couldn’t follow directions and stay with the rest of those meddlesome drains on society.”

Grace reached Theodore’s side and, careful not to frighten him, gently grasped his hand.

“Marianne! I found you!” he exclaimed.

“And now we have to leave, dear,” she whispered.

“I don’t think so,
Grace
,” Agatha North finally spoke.

It was then that Grace noticed that the other woman had a nasty-looking knife in her right hand.

“You ruined everything for us, and now you’re going to pay.”

As Nurse North advanced toward them, Grace moved away from Theodore in an effort to protect him from the woman’s crazed actions.

Think,
she told herself.
What did Kira say about self-defense
?

With a burst of energy, Grace darted to the right, barely escaping the downward arc of the blade. Back and forth, she parried until she was breathing hard, sucking in air to replenish her tired muscles with oxygen. Her lungs filled with the irritating smoke with every breath she took, but finally, she was able to see that Agatha was tiring from her efforts, as well. The woman’s movements were getting slower, her aim more inaccurate with every swipe of the blade.

Just when Grace thought that she had given up, she glanced to the left and found Richard Watson moving toward Theodore with a murderous look in his eyes.

As fast as she could, she moved to his side. She was a second too late, though. Instead of stopping Richard with a swift kick to the face as she had planned, she ended up shouldering the brunt of his advance and found herself propelled into the corner of a wall.

Her head cracked with the impact, and she collapsed onto the floor. A moment later, Grace felt something heavy drop across her torso.

I’m dying in an old folks’ home, and I’m barely twenty-three years old
.

The words were on a reel, spinning over and over in her mind.

How can this be happening to me? Please, Lord, help us
.

I am here, Grace
.

The words rang clear through the fog of her mind.

“It’s okay, Marianne,” another voice interrupted. “I’m here with you, my beautiful girl. The bad people are gone now.”

Grace tried to move, but it was impossible. The blow to her head must have done some serious damage. She couldn’t even lift her head. As the heat and smoke surrounded them, she knew that it was too late. There was no way that Theodore would get out now. She had failed him. Failed Marianne.

They were going to die. The thought of burning up with the building was horrifying, but Grace could barely move. And of course, Theodore seemed to have no idea what was going on. He was content to just sit there with “his Marianne.”

“Please Theo,” she whispered though the harsh smoke. She tried to brace herself against the wall, but her head was spinning so fast that all she managed to do was make herself nauseated. “Go outside. Go get Ellie,” she pleaded.

It was to no avail, however. He simply sat by her side and caressed the hair away from her face. She felt the tears forming in her eyes and knew that they were caused by much more than the smoke. She was dying. Theo was dying. Her dream was dying.

She breathed deeply and prayed that the smoke would overcome her before the fire reached her section of the building.

I am here. Everything will be okay.
The comforting voice echoed through her mind again.

“I’m here. Everything will be okay, my dear,” she heard Theo’s assurance.

“I’m here, Grace. Everything will be okay.”

A new voice? Grace was barely conscious now, but the voice sounded so much like Jack’s that she struggled to open her eyes.

“Don’t leave me, Grace,” the voice said. “Don’t leave me. I love you. Don’t leave me.”

Grace closed her eyes and surrendered to the pain.

Chapter Thirteen

The Visit

“I’m here,” the voice drifted through the smoky haze that was Grace’s mind. “Everything will be okay.”

Theodore
?
Jack
?

No. It was neither of them. The voice didn’t fit. Grace recognized it, though. She’d heard it for years.

Daddy.

She opened her eyes to find her father sitting in a chair with his elbows on his knees and his head bowed. The chair was pulled close to the bed where she was lying. In Grace’s opinion, it looked like a hard place to rest. The lines were all wrong, and the upholstery pattern was already giving her a raging headache.

She must have made a sound because her father looked up and leaned forward to take her hand.

“Oh, thank you, Jesus!” He squeezed her hand, his eyes darting across her face with the joy of someone who had witnessed a miracle.

“Daddy?”

“You’re finally awake, Sugar Plum! You’ve had us worried.”

“What happened?” Her voice was almost unrecognizable. It was deep and raspy, and her throat hurt worse than it had with the case of strep throat she’d had in college.

“I was starting to wonder if my little girl was going to sleep the New Year away.”

“New Year?”

“Not yet,” he shook his head. “But you were cutting it pretty close. Today’s the twenty-ninth.”

Grace tried to sit up, but he shook his head. “I need to get your nurse, Sugar Plum. Doctor’s orders.”

“Where am I?” Grace asked as he walked toward the door.

Her father had already pressed a button, but he seemed too anxious for the nurse to wait any longer. He opened the door and began to peer down the hallway.

“Atlanta Medical. They even brought you down here in a helicopter.” He smiled, but Grace could tell that he was only doing it to calm her fears. There were tears in his eyes.

The sight shocked Grace. She had never seen her father cry, and it was sobering.

He paused as if to wait for her permission to leave.

“Go on and get the nurse,” she managed to tell him as she reached to adjust the oxygen tubing in her nose. “You can explain everything when you get back.”

Five minutes later, Grace found herself being questioned and examined by a nurse whose name badge identified her as “Judy RN”. She was all business and didn’t smile much. Her uniform was neon pink, and although Grace thought it looked great with the woman’s hair color, it was too harsh for Grace to focus on for more than a few seconds.

She tried to close her eyes, but the nurse refused to let her. Instead, she pried Grace’s eyelids open one at a time and flashed a light toward her pupils. Whatever her eyes did in response, it earned a smile from “Judy RN”.

Grace sighed more from the chance to finally close her eyes than from the relief that her eyes had reacted the way they were supposed to react.

“Everything checks out,” the nurse announced. “I’ll give the neurologist a call. He’ll probably keep you for another day or two, but I don’t see any indication that you’ll have to stay beyond that.” She draped her stethoscope around her neck and walked toward the sink.

“Excuse me,” Grace croaked.

“Yes, Miss Woodhouse?”

“Uh, can you tell me what happened?”

Although her joints were aching and her head was busting, Grace moved to sit up in bed. Her body would have preferred to drift back into oblivion, but her mind was too curious about her predicament to miss the opportunity with the nurse.

“I mean, I remember the fire, and the fight with Mr. Watson, but after that, everything is a blank.”

“I don’t know all of the details of what happened. I can only comment on your injuries.” The nurse tucked her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “You have an open head injury. Twenty staples.” She raised her brows as if the fact was impressive.

Good for me
, Grace thought.
But that doesn’t tell me anything
.

She reached up to the sore spot above her left ear and found a bandage taped neatly in place. It seemed that someone had shaved part of her head during the ordeal, as well.

“What else,” Grace asked. “Besides my new hairdo?” She tried for humor but found that it hurt too much to laugh.

“A decent case of smoke inhalation. Your ABG was pretty bad. Even with the head injury and loss of consciousness, that alone would have kept you in Intensive Care. You didn’t move out of there to this step-down unit until yesterday.”

“What is ABG?”

“Arterial Blood Gas,” she explained. “The smoke caused you to inhale carbon monoxide instead of oxygen. Many times it is fatal. An ABG lets us know how your breathing is affecting your blood levels of things like oxygen and carbon dioxide. We also do a test called a Carboxyhemoglobin─”

“Thanks, but that’s enough for now.” Grace knew that she’d been rude to interrupt the nurse, but she could only take so much of the medical jargon. It certainly wasn’t helping her headache. “I’m sorry to be rude, but I probably won’t remember what you’re telling me anyway. Plus, I’ve got a killer headache.”

“You’ve been out of it, dear,” the nurse informed her. “Your CT scan and MRI were clear, but you wouldn’t regain consciousness. You had everyone pretty concerned. Not to mention all of those visitors of yours.”

“Visitors?”

“I’ll let your Daddy back in, then I’ll run get you something for that headache.”

“Okay,” Grace smiled. “And thank you, Judy.”

“Don’t mention it.” She smiled in return and walked silently toward the door.

The door squeaked open, and Grace’s father walked back in. He was smiling now. Grace assumed that “Judy RN” had given him the good news.

“Sugar Plum, is there anything I can get for you? Water? Jell-O?”

“Tell me what you know about the residents, Daddy? Is everyone okay? Is Theodore okay?” Since waking up and getting her wits about her, Grace had been crazy with worry.

“Everyone is fine,” he assured her.

“Tell me the truth.”

“That’s the God’s honest truth, Sugar Plum.” He took her hand. “Not that I’m happy about you almost killing yourself making sure everyone was safe.”

Grace looked at him for a moment and decided that he was telling her the truth. She knew in her heart that she hadn’t saved anyone, though. God had worked the miracle at Mansfield Park. He had been there all along.