Topaz Heat (Christian Romance) (The Jewel Series) (30 page)

DOCTOR
Woodworth grabbed another sponge as the machines around him screamed alarms. “I need another set of hands,” he said through gritted teeth. “I can’t stop this bleeding.”

“Doctor –” the anesthesiologist said, the warning in his voice conveying all the information the doctor needed.

“I know. I know!” Woodworth said. He grabbed the intern’s hand and said, “Here. Press right here. Don’t move until I tell you to.”

He grabbed the tweezers and a needle and thread and stitched the hole as fast as he could. Blood still poured out from somewhere else, though, and as fast as the nurse could replace the sponge, it filled up.

“Get some more volume in him,” he ordered, gritting his teeth. “He’s losing blood faster than we can get it into him.” The nurse next to him wiped the sweat on his brow. “Clamp,” he ordered, holding a hand out.

“Doctor,” the anesthesiologist said, as the heart monitor next to his chair flat lined.

SARAH
rested her head on Maxine’s knee while her sister ran her hand through her hair. She closed her eyes and prayed, prayed for the doctor, for Derrick.

Her stomach muscles tightened, her heart paused for a moment and then beat furiously. Sarah gasped and sat up, hand to chest, while nausea swirled in her stomach. She pushed herself to her feet, shooing away Barry’s hands that suddenly appeared, ready to catch her should she collapse.

“We need to pray,” she said insistently. She gripped Barry’s hand tightly and looked up at the giant, feeling a little bit crazed. “We have to pray right now. Something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong.”

Robin stood and took Sarah’s face in her hands. “Okay. Let’s pray.” She turned and gestured to her chair. “Looks like a good prayer bench to me.”

Sarah collapsed on her knees and started praying, uttering words like, “Please God,” and “I beg you, Father.” Her spirit, though, spoke volumes to God, speaking for her while her mouth simply just couldn’t form the words.

Her family knelt next to her and they all prayed together. Fervently. Passionately. Faithfully.

DOCTOR
Woodworth stitched the hole as fast as he could, listening to the alarm of flat line. “Come on come on come on,” he said under his breath, willing his fingers to work faster, more efficiently, more proficiently.

The second he could, he raised his hands out of the chest cavity. “I’m clear!” he said.

The internal paddles were placed on the newly repaired heart and a jolt of electricity was sent through it, hopefully to spark it back to life.

Every eye in the room was trained on the monitor. One breath. Then another. Nothing.

“Push an amp of epi and charge to 50.”

While the defibrillator charged, he re-examined his work. Double checking to make sure that every hole had been sealed – that none of the life giving blood continued to seep from wounds. “I want another X-ray,” he said. “Before we seal him up I want to make sure we got all the metal.”

“Ready,” said the doctor with the defibrillator. “Clear!”

AN
hour went by. Then two. Sarah’s knees started to ache before they finally went numb. Eventually, she shifted up into a chair, but she didn’t stop praying. She held the hands of her sisters, who held the hands of their husbands, who held the hands of Peter and Melissa and her mother. In a circle, they prayed. Sometimes out loud, sometimes quietly.

The intensity of the feeling she originally felt started to abate. The grip on her heart loosened. Knowing she had started the praying and that they would end it only with her, she finally whispered, “Amen.” Around the circle, a chorus of “amens” echoed and one by one, and hands were released.

Sarah rolled her head on her shoulders and stood to stretch. The she noticed the doctor standing in the doorway.

With a voice that screamed fatigue, he said, “I didn’t want to interrupt, but I need to speak to the family of Derrick DiNunzio.”

Sarah didn’t recognize him, but she hadn’t worked surgery in a long time. “We are his family.”

The doctor scanned the faces in the room and finally slipped his do-rag off his head. “I’m Doctor Woodworth,” he said by way of introduction. “I – I don’t know how to explain this.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Derrick was in bad shape. The bullet fragmented when it entered his body, and there were pieces of metal everywhere.”

Sarah focused on the word “was”. Past tense. What did that mean?

The doctor continued. “We worked as fast as we could, but he lost a significant amount of blood. I couldn’t…” Tears burned his throat and he had to clear it to continue speaking. “While we were in there, a fragment pierced his heart. I couldn’t work fast enough to stop the bleeding.”

Sarah’s head started reeling. No. Not possible. “I couldn’t,” were
NOT
the words that the doctor was supposed to say, especially when speaking in the past tense. He was supposed to say something like, “It was a fight, but he’s in recovery now.”

The family let out a collective gasp. Someone started crying. Sarah reached forward and gripped the doctor’s wrist. “Please,” she whispered.

Male hands touched her shoulders, trying to comfort her or restrain her, she didn’t know which.

“At some point, I was certain all was lost. As I worked, I started praying for God’s help. As I came in here and saw you all in such intense prayer, I know how what happened … happened.”

A glimmer of hope sparked to life in Sarah’s heart.

The doctor continued. “All I know is that Mr. DiNunzio should be dead, and there is no reason why he’s alive and in recovery right now other than God deemed that it would be so.”

A loud sound of relief moved through the group like a wave. “In recovery?” Sarah said.

The doctor smiled. “Yes. I’m sorry. I am in such awe of what happened that I forgot to start with that information. He is severely critical. I’m not even going to guess his chances, medically. But he shouldn’t even be alive and he is. So, let’s go with that and trust God.”

With a sob of happiness, Sarah threw her arms around the doctor’s neck. She started crying and didn’t know how to stop. All she could do was say, “Thank you, God,” over and over again.

Sarah continued her prayer; ignoring the nurse who rushed in moments later, ignoring the deep sigh that the doctor breathed, ignoring the deafening silence that fell over the entire room.

“PUT
your foot here,” Derrick said, gripping Sarah’s slim ankle in his hand and helping her find a solid toehold. “Now reach above you and grip that piece of rock with your right hand.”

“What piece of rock?”

Derrick pointed. “That one.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes. “There’s no way that’s going to hold me.”

Derrick grinned. “Trust me.”

With a huff, Sarah reached up and grabbed the little piece of rock jutting out of the mountain face. She pulled herself up and Derrick followed, providing instruction and advice as he lifted, pulled, tugged, and maneuvered both of them up the mountain side.

Sarah stood in the small crevice and put her hands on the small of her back. The hot sun beat down on them, causing her face to glow with sweat. She pulled her canteen off her belt and took a small swallow. “You okay?” she asked him as he pulled himself up and over onto the rock next to her.

With a habitual movement, he rubbed his chest. “I’m perfectly fine,” he said. “This is the best thing for me.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t want you over doing it.”

“Yes, doctor.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “Just nurse. I’m only thinking about doctor.”

“You can do it. You can do anything.”

She offered him the canteen and he gratefully accepted it. “As long as you’re rooting for me, I believe I can,” she said with a smile.

Derrick turned and looked at the view. The magnificence of God’s creation stared back at him from their vantage point high above the beautiful Masachusetts wilderness.

“You know, I stood here, in this spot, about eight months ago.”

“Oh?” Sarah asked.

He walked up to her and slipped an arm around her waist. “Yes. I was distraught.”

Sarah tilted her head back and grinned at him. “You? You’re the picture of contentment. What had you distraught?”

Derrick shifted until he faced her. He slid his hands over her shoulders and down her arms until he held both of her hands in his. “My love for you,” he said, looking deep into her eyes.

Sarah, whose heart had started beating double time with the touch of his hands, felt her chest clench and her breath hitch. She looked up at him, feeling like she would drown in the brown depths of his eyes. He was so strong, so handsome, and she had come so close to losing him that sometimes she had nightmares about it. “I wouldn’t want our love to cause you distress,” she said in a whisper.

With a crooked smile, Derrick raised her left hand and kissed the gold and stones that graced her ring finger. The day he got out of the hospital, long weeks after the bullet fragment pierced his heart, he took the ring with the square cut topaz out of a drawer in his bedroom and, in front of their family, knelt next to where Sarah sat on his couch and claimed his love for her, his adoration of her, and told her how much the topaz paled in comparison to her beautiful honey-brown eyes. He asked her to marry him, and he barely had the question out before she had her arms around his neck as she said, “Yes, yes, yes,” over and over again.