Wildflowers from Winter (8 page)

But not her own. This decision wouldn’t change her life for the better.

The woman pointed to the tabbed signature lines. “We just need you to sign.”

Robin tried to focus on the sheet in front of her but couldn’t make anything out except fuzzy black print. What if the doctors were wrong? What if there was a chance he would recover?

A chair creaked. “Robin?” Bethany said. “Are you okay?”

The woman leaned forward and held out the pen. According to her, people were waiting for Micah’s organs right now. People whose lives would be saved, or improved, all because of Micah’s death. Maybe knowing this should have offered comfort. Maybe it should have brought a sense of meaning to such a loss. Some sort of twisted silver lining. But it didn’t. She wanted Micah’s organs to stay with him. She wanted him to wake up and pull her to his side and whisper that he loved her, that he was sorry for putting her through this. Especially now.

She covered her stomach with her hand. Micah didn’t know. Maybe if he knew, he’d wake up. The woman lifted the pen higher. Robin shifted away from the offensive offering.

Lord, I can’t do this
.

“Mrs. Price? I’m so sorry you have to go through this, but we need your signature if we’re to move forward with the procedure.”

The procedure?
What they were about to do to her husband could
hardly be called a procedure. She clamped her mouth shut, squeezed her eyes closed, and turned her face away, fighting off the dizziness swirling in her head. Without thinking, she pushed her chair from the table and stood. “I’m sorry.” She clutched her hand to her chest and tried to suck in oxygen, but the thick air refused to comply. “I just need …”

Bethany placed her hand on Robin’s elbow.

Robin swayed, then regained her balance before turning away from the gray-suited woman. She stumbled down the hall, past the waiting room filled with Micah’s family, and slipped inside his room. She leaned against the wall, heart beating like a fast-paced concerto. She didn’t look up until she heard someone move.

Dr. Markson’s presence startled her. He stood over Micah’s bedside with a file in his hand, and for one brief and frantic moment, she thought he’d turned off the machines before she had the chance to tell Micah the news. But the
whoosh
ing of the ventilator soothed her fear.

Dr. Markson moved to her side.

She looked from Micah to the doctor, and the words she’d wanted to say since they’d performed all those tests poured from her mouth. “How do you know?”

Technology was always advancing. Always improving. Was it really that unreasonable to think Micah might recover someday? “How do you know he won’t wake up?”

Dr. Markson tucked the file under his arm.

“I was looking on the Internet, and there are stories. Stories of people who woke up from comas months, even years later.”

The doctor examined her kindly. “Micah’s not in a coma, Robin.”

She shook her head and took a good, long look at her husband. Three bags of fluid hung near his bed. Blue tubing ran from a large white machine and attached to his mouth.

A sob bubbled in her throat.

Wake up!

The words echoed through her. Micah didn’t move.

“We’ve run every test there is to run.”

She knew. She’d watched doctors shine lights in Micah’s eyes and stick tongue depressors down his throat, all the while holding out for good news. But it never came. No corneal or gag reflex. She watched them inject radioactive isotopes in Micah’s bloodstream to measure the blood flow in his brain. When the results came back, she’d demanded they do it over. Nothing changed the second time around.

“I wouldn’t say this if I wasn’t one hundred percent positive, but Micah’s gone.”

His words, though not the first time she’d heard them, stole her breath. “I need a moment.”

Dr. Markson nodded and left the room.

She approached Micah’s bedside, recalling the first night of their honeymoon, when she’d touched his arm after he’d fallen asleep. He’d jumped up in bed, almost out of his skin, so fast that she screamed and swatted him for scaring her so thoroughly. Then they both laughed, and the sound of it chased away her fear.

Holding her breath, she reached out a tentative hand and touched his arm. But this time he didn’t jump. He didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t do anything. “Micah.” The warmth of his whispered name blew across her lips and floated away, just out of reach.

She squeezed his hand.

Nothing.

Please, Lord, bring him back
.

It wasn’t a hopeless prayer. Or a halfhearted one. She believed God could do it. She believed with every ounce of her being that God could give her Micah back if He wanted. The God of the universe—who had spoken the heavens and earth into being—could surely breathe life into her
husband’s brain. It felt like such a simple request compared to the creation of the world.

Please, Lord …

The bed creaked as she eased herself onto it. She took Micah’s hand and placed it over her stomach. She leaned over his body and brought her lips to his forehead. The warmth touching her skin stirred her soul. He was alive and she was pregnant. After eighteen long months of trying, of negative pregnancy tests, of dashed hopes, of pokes and prods and Clomid galore, their dream was finally coming true. Only Micah had collapsed before she could tell him the news. Once he knew, his eyes would open, and he’d look at her and he’d smile. She moved her lips across his forehead, the softness of his hair brushing against her chin.

“Micah.” She kissed his temple. “Please wake up.”

Nothing.

She stared at his closed eyes, willing them to open. Desperate to see that look of his—two parts intimate, one part mischievous, as if he had a private joke just for her. She wanted to gaze into the depths of his hazel-green eyes and see her love reflected there. She wanted him to open them and give her that thousand-watt smile he was so famous for.

She wove her fingers through his. “I have something to tell you.”

Should she say the words? Was she ready? She took a deep breath. What if she said them and nothing changed? The organ procurement coordinator was down the hall, pen in hand, ready for her to sign. The surgeons were standing by, ready to fly Micah’s organs in a dozen different directions. His family waited outside, preparing to say good-bye so they could begin the grieving process.

But what if they didn’t have to grieve? What if she could run into the hallway and cry out that Micah was awake? Her chest swelled. Jesus brought Lazarus back to life. Was it really too much to ask Him to do the same for her husband?

She wove her fingers tighter, squeezing his large palm in her own. He
would wake up. Their dreams—plans to have children, open a café, and grow old side by side—were fused together, welded into a whole that could not be separated. And with a positive pregnancy test and plans for the café down on paper, they were too close to their future for God to take it away now. She bent over and brought her face next to his. She shut her eyes and poured the words into his ear.

“Micah, I’m pregnant.”

She imagined them working through his ear canal and snuggling deep inside his brain. She imagined them fixing whatever was broken. She took a breath. Then another. And another. Her heartbeat gathered momentum, picking up speed until the thunderous pounding drowned out the
whoosh
ing of the ventilator.

She opened her eyes, one at a time. His lids were still closed. His lax expression unchanged. She jiggled his hand.

Nothing.

She shook it harder.

Nothing.

“Wake up.” She placed her hands on his shoulders and pressed them against the bed. “Didn’t you hear me? I’m pregnant.”

Her hand slapped his bicep.

His eyes stayed closed.

She grabbed his chin, as if he were a naughty child who’d said a bad word. His head lolled. The Micah she knew would jump at the news. He’d let out a whoop, grab his cell phone, and start calling everybody he knew. The Micah she knew wouldn’t leave her to deal with a pregnancy on her own.

Something violent burst inside her, snapping all reason. She balled her fists and hit his chest. When he didn’t respond, she pounded all the harder. She cursed Micah’s name. She screamed for him to wake up until her throat burned.

When her rage was spent, she crumpled in a ball at Micah’s side and
surrendered to the tears. Surrendered to the pain of lost dreams, an empty future, and a child who would never know its father. And after that, when there was nothing left but her hollowed-out soul, she stood from Micah’s bed. She brushed her wet lips against his cheek. She pressed her palms against her swollen eyes. She smoothed her rumpled clothes. She walked down the hall. And she signed the papers.

Bethany stood in the hallway, trying to close her ears to Robin’s lament, but it was as if she were twelve years old all over again, overhearing Pastor Fenton and Mom talking about her father. As much as she wanted to plug her ears, she couldn’t.

Frustration and helplessness swirled inside her. How was her being here helping anything? Robin had Micah’s family. And God. She did not need Bethany.

She stepped closer to the wall.

The waiting room, filled with Evan’s family and a white-haired man who called himself Pastor Gray, blocked her exit. Evan sat with his head in his hands while his father wrapped his arm around Loraine. Evan’s oldest brother, Bryan, paced the room. His wife, Amy, clutched her purse in her lap. Evan’s youngest brother—whose name Bethany had forgotten—mimicked Evan’s posture, except that his shoulders shook, and Amanda wiped at a steady stream of tears leaking from her eyes.

The scene unfolding in front of Bethany brought her back to a time when it had been her family waiting for news, her father the one tied to life by a fragile set of tubes, her mother the one weeping. Bethany pushed the memories away and took a tentative step toward the elevator just as Robin emerged from Micah’s room and drifted down the hall toward the place where the organ procurement coordinator had explained everything.

Within moments, the waiting area emptied. Some followed Robin, and the others disappeared into Micah’s room. Only Evan remained, his head still buried in his hands.

The elevator
ding
ed.

Now was her chance. She’d done her duty. She’d comforted Robin. And as far as Dan—well, keeping him inside and quiet was a practice in futility. Her job in Peaks was over. It would be pointless to stay another few days. The elevator doors slid open, and two men dressed in scrubs stepped out.

She needed to move toward them, but Evan’s deflated posture pulled at something in her chest, and her feet took on a mind of their own. She walked toward Evan instead, her mind screaming its protest as she eased onto the edge of a nearby seat. Bethany reached out, her hand hovering above his shoulder blade, and stared at the cotton shirt outlining Evan’s muscles.

She was not his mother. Rubbing his back would do little to offer comfort and much to add to her already frazzled nerves. So she moved her hands under her knees and pressed them against the chair.

Evan turned toward her, his upper body bent over his knees, his hazel eyes shadowed and strained. “How did you get through it?”

The scratchy whispered question raised goose flesh on her arms. “Through what?”

“Losing your father.”

What did Evan know about her father? How much had Dan told him? Did he think their losses somehow united them? That she would let the pain of losing a beloved family member gather them beneath the same umbrella of grief? She’d forced herself out from under that umbrella a long time ago. She had no connection to Evan. He was just a farmhand on her grandpa’s farm.

But his eyes … They begged for an answer. They begged for comfort.

She touched his forearm. “Somehow, you just do.”

He looked at her hand, at the spot she touched, his eyelashes dark and wet.

Bryan reemerged from Micah’s room, Amy at his side, dabbing a tissue beneath her eyes. Bethany jerked her arm away.

Evan stood and disappeared inside the room. It was the strange desire to follow him, to grab his hand the way Amy held on to her husband’s, that brought her back to her senses. With Evan gone, and Bryan and Amy wrapped in a hug, she swung the strap of her purse over her shoulder and strode to the elevator, urging it open before anybody could catch her escaping.

The elevator
ding
ed, and the doors slid apart. She stepped inside and jabbed the button for the ground floor several times. She didn’t exhale until she reached the parking lot. The tension in her shoulders leaked away with every step toward her car. The farther away she got from Peaks, the better.

EIGHT

B
ethany inhaled the scent of Pine-Sol and freshly cleaned carpets and ran her fingertips over the mahogany surface of her desk. After her three-day leave, she returned to work to find a pile of memos, e-mails, and voice mails waiting for her. She plucked a file from her desk and scanned the printouts inside, tapping her pen against the manila folder.