Evidence of Mercy (6 page)

“A what?”

The woman sighed. “Mrs. Varner, did you say you have a lawyer?”

“Yes, but—” She stopped, pinched the bridge of her nose, and tried to temper her voice again. “I can't reach her right now. And no one else will represent me because I—I don't have much money. Do I have to have a lawyer to do this?”

“It would help. Then a judge would review it and decide whether to arrest him or summon him back to court. But usually, if there was no violence involved, and if he didn't threaten you in any way, the judge doesn't opt for jail time.”

“Threaten?” Paige asked. “You don't think it's threatening for him to show up at her school and tell her teacher that I told him to pick her up? Do we have to wait until he attacks one of us again or until he kidnaps her and takes her so far—”

“I'm just telling you your options, Ma'am. Now, if I were you, I'd contact my lawyer right away.”

“But if there's no guarantee he'll even be put in jail. . . .” Frustrated, she half turned away. “You don't know my husband. He'll just get madder and then come after me. And he's smart. He probably already knows that he can't be arrested unless he's caught. That's why he's getting so bold.”

The woman behind the desk softened a little. “Look, I can give you the name of a shelter for battered women. We could get you in there tonight if you want.”

Paige thought about that for a moment. Her mind was too muddled, and she couldn't think.

“Mommy, I want to go home,” Brianna said.

“Just a minute, honey.” Wiping her face, she tried to take a deep breath. “He knows where the shelter is. He told me that if I ever went there, he'd drag me out.”

“But he
can't
know, Mrs. Varner. It's a very well-kept secret. He was probably just trying to scare you.”

“You don't know him. He has ways of finding things out.”

“Mrs. Varner, every woman in that shelter has an angry man looking for her. You just have to trust the staff to know how to handle these things.”

“I can't trust anyone,” Paige said dismally.

“Well, here's the number anyway if you change your mind.” The officer handed Paige a piece of paper. “Good luck, Mrs. Varner.”

But as Paige carried Brianna back to their car, she realized she was going to need a lot more than luck. What she really needed now was Lynda.

I
have to tell you,” Mike said as he approached Lynda's bed, “for a few minutes there I didn't think I was ever going to see that smile again.” He pulled a chair up to her bed and sat down. “So how do you feel?”

“Like I've been spared,” she whispered.

He leaned his elbows on his knees and rested his chin on his hand. “It
was
a miracle, you know. When I saw that plane hit the ground, I didn't see any way in the world either one of you would make it. Who could have believed you both would?”

“Jake's not even out of surgery yet, much less out of the woods.”

“Yeah, but he has a lot of people praying for him out there.”

“Really?” she asked, sitting partially up. “Who?”

“Some of the people here from your church.”

“My church.” Wearily, she wilted back down. “I'm surprised they remember me; it's been so long since I darkened the doorstep.”

She looked at the man she had known for the last two years, the man with whom she had talked airplanes and flight reports and weather, the man who was as close a friend as she had. Only now did she realize how little they really knew about each other.

“Mike, I want to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For offering to pray for us today,” she whispered.

Tears came to his eyes, and he struggled to blink them back. “What else was I gonna do, Lynda?”

“Oh, I don't know. Stay busy. Throw up your hands. All I know is that I wasn't doing much praying up there. Yours are the ones that got answered.”

A
s long as he was still breathing, Jake figured he was alive, even if he couldn't manage to open his eyes or move an inch or speak.

There was something in his mouth impeding his speech and something else holding his eyelids down.

Panic struck him, and he wanted to sit up, cry out, run away, but his body wouldn't cooperate.

He could hear quiet voices around him, a steady beeping of machinery, and he felt hands probing. . . .

The crash, he thought. He had survived the crash.

Or had he?

Panic seized him, and he opened his mouth to cry out, but something in his throat choked him. Concentrating all his effort on the task of clearing his mouth, he lifted his hand—but he moved it only an inch or two before he felt something sting and someone laying it back down.

“Calm down, Jake,” a soft voice said. “You're going to be okay. Just rest.”

He struggled to open his eyes but failed. Once more he tried to cry out, but the voice was back again. “Don't try to talk, Jake. There's a tube in your throat. Tomorrow you can talk if you want.”

But Jake's panic needed answers, and it needed answers now. He tried to formulate a question to ask but found that his mind was too fuzzy. Then the voices seemed to fade farther away, as numbness crept like mercy through his limbs.

And soon he forgot about those questions and surrendered instead to the darkness.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
he rain began as Paige drove home from the police station, her brain reeling from the injustice of the system that left her entirely on her own. But it wasn't the first time she hadn't known where to turn.

She turned on her windshield wipers and tried to concentrate on the slippery road. The last thing she needed now was an accident. Lynda's was bad enough.

Then again, maybe a four-car crash on the highway was just what she should expect. Maybe she deserved all she'd been going through. Maybe, as Keith had said so many times, Paige was petty and selfish and stupid. Maybe she had brought all this misery on herself.

Lightning flashed, followed by a quick clap of thunder, and she touched Brianna's knee to reassure her. What did it really matter what Paige deserved, she argued. It was what Brianna deserved that mattered. Brianna deserved peace and she deserved safety and she deserved security and stability. She didn't deserve a father who could sing her a lullaby one minute and crack her mother's jaw the next.

The child was just drifting off to sleep as Paige turned onto their street and glanced ahead to her house halfway up the road. It would be good finally to get home, make Brianna a bowl of soup, and put her to bed for her nap.

Then she saw it: Keith's car in the driveway.

Slamming her foot on the accelerator, she flew past the house, skidded around the corner, and headed as far away from the neighborhood as she could.

Her breath came in gasps as she watched her rearview mirror for a sign of him. Terror clutched at her heart. Where could she go to be safe? Not home—he was there, sitting in her house, waiting for her.

Trembling, she pulled into a Walmart parking lot and groped for her purse. Grabbing out two quarters, she circled to a pay phone on the edge of the lot. Afraid to get out of the car, she inched as close as she could to the phone then rolled her window down. The rain poured in, soaking her arm as she reached for the receiver. Quickly she dialed 911.

“You've got to help me!” she cried when the dispatcher answered. “I have a restraining order against my ex-husband, but he's in my house waiting for me right now. You have to send an officer out immediately. They have to see him there!”

She rattled off the address, then restated the urgency. When she'd hung up, she tried to catch her breath.

She'd go back, she told herself. She'd go back to make sure they got him. If he was still there, maybe she'd go in and try to reason with him. Maybe that would hold him there until they came.

But what if it didn't? What if he took Brianna?

No. She couldn't risk it. Instead, she would drive by the house to make sure he was still there. Then she would watch from the corner, and when the police came, she could follow them into the driveway.

The rain pounded harder against the roof of the car, and the wind whipped more viciously, but Brianna stayed asleep as Paige, weeping softly, made her way back to the neighborhood and turned up her street. Holding her breath, she peered through the rain-blurred windshield to see if his car was still in her driveway.

He was gone.

Slamming the heel of her hand against her steering wheel, she cried harder. This was
hopeless!
He was out there somewhere, looking for her. . . .

And the women's shelter would be the first place he'd look if she didn't come home. He'd told her more than once that he knew where all of them were, and if she ever went there, he'd go after her and make her sorry.

Leaving the street as fast as she could, she went back to the Walmart parking lot and dug through her wallet for money. She had thirty dollars and an ATM card. There might be fifty more in her account if her checkbook balance were right. That was enough for a hotel room, she told herself, trying to calm down. It would get her through until tomorrow.

She took a few deep breaths, trying to calm down, scanned the roads nearby to make sure he was nowhere in sight, and then pulled back into the street.
Don't even think about tomorrow right now
, she cautioned herself.
All you can deal with is one day at a time.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
he creak of her hospital room door woke Lynda from her shallow sleep. Squinting her eyes open, she watched the plump nurse come in, her nylons making a brushing sound as she walked and her white Reeboks squeaking on the floor. It was the same nurse who had attended to her the last time she'd awakened—Jill something—and Lynda watched her set down her tray of medications and flick on the dim light over Lynda's head.

“How are you feeling?” the nurse asked in a voice loud enough to wake the comatose patients on the floor above her. “Any pain?”

“Some,” Lynda mumbled.

“Well, that's expected.” Pulling a thermometer out of her pocket, she covered it with plastic and shoved it into Lynda's mouth. “If I had as many stitches in me as you have, I'd be hurting, too. The doctor said they pulled half the plane's windshield out of you.” She took the thermometer, made a notation on Lynda's chart, then adjusted the IV. “We've given you something for pain, but if it's worn off, I can give you more.”

Lynda moaned. “No wonder I've slept most of the day. No, I don't want any more.” She watched the nurse wrap the blood pressure cuff around her arm. “Jill, do you know if Jake is out of surgery yet?”

Jill stared at her watch for a few seconds then slipped the cuff off again. “As a matter of fact, he is,” she said, making another notation. “He's still critical, though. I don't have any of the details.”

Lynda tried to sit up. “I want to see him.”

“Sorry.” The nurse gently pushed her back down. “He's still in ICU. No visitors.”

“But I'm not a visitor. I was in that crash with him. It was my plane.”

Jill snapped her chart shut and put it back in the pocket at the foot of Lynda's bed. “He isn't even conscious yet. Wait until tomorrow, and we'll see if we can get you permission to visit him. But not tonight, Lynda. Besides, you're still too weak to get out of bed.”

“No, I feel fine. I just want to make sure he's all right.”

“I'm sorry, Lynda. You'll just have to take our word for it tonight.”

Lynda closed her eyes as the nurse left and tried in vain to steer her thoughts to something besides Jake's life. What weren't they telling her? Critical. What did that mean?

She tried to turn over, but a cut down her leg made it uncomfortable, so she shifted to her other side. The sheets were rough beneath her skin, and she wondered why they couldn't manage to get sheets that covered the whole bed, instead of those stupid half sheets that folded halfway down, overlapping another one that covered the end. It made changing the beds easier, she supposed, but that didn't help the patient's comfort any, especially when the patient was covered with cuts and scrapes. She longed for her own smooth sheets and the big bed she had shopped for a month to find.

She was so uncomfortable she might
never
fall back to sleep, and what good was lying here when Jake could be dying? If she could just see him, maybe she could relax tonight and let go of the guilt that was causing more pain than her broken ribs. If the only way to see him was to sneak through the halls and slip into ICU, she was willing to give it a try.

Making the decision almost as quickly as the thought came to her mind, she sat up and moved her feet over the side of the bed. The checkerboard floor was cold beneath her feet, and she felt a wave of vertigo as she sat up. Fighting it, she stood slowly. Her muscles strained, and she touched the place on her abdomen where her spleen had been removed. The pain in her head got worse, and she stood still a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass.

Steadying herself with a hand against the brick wall, she put one foot in front of the other, stepping carefully until she reached the door. Already she felt soul weary, but she knew that ICU was just one floor up. If she could just get to the elevator. . . .

Opening the door, she peered up the corridor. A visitor was going into another room, but she saw no one else. She closed the door behind her and took a barefoot step up the hall.

Miraculously, a wheelchair sat parked against the wall. Mumbling a “Thank you, Lord,” she dropped into it. For a moment, she tried to catch her breath, but then, fearing she'd be caught if she didn't hurry, she grabbed the wheels and tried to push herself along.

Her left arm was stiff and sore, and pain stabbed through her ribs, making her perspire, but she pushed on nonetheless, passing the nurse's station without being noticed. She made it past the waiting room, where two or three people sat watching television, and breathed another “thank you” that none of them knew her.