By the time the third ambulance had been called to the scene according to the police scanner, Agnes and Bess piled into the older woman’s car with Daniel in tow to head to the hospital themselves. They might not know the special codes the operators used to communicate over the police channels, but they could certainly tell that the bank robbers were not the only gunshot victims being talked about.
Bess held a fuzzy Daniel to her breast, where her heart was beating so rapidly, she found it hard to catch her breath. Agnes grabbed her by the waist, as if to help her stay upright, as they entered the hospital. “I hate that you have to meet the other wives under such strained circumstances,” Agnes said. “They’re some of the nicest women.”
Bess just nodded dumbly, noticing the movement all around her as just a kind of blur in her periphery vision. “Where do we find out about Judd?” she whispered, looking everywhere and nowhere all at once.
“We don’t know that Judd is here, dear,” Agnes assured her, but the voice, usually so steady, cracked just a little bit. “Why don’t you sit down right here with the baby, and I’ll see what I can find out?”
Bess sank into the blue bucket-style seat Agnes indicated and began rocking back and forth subconsciously, making hushing noises to the baby. She embraced the numbness with a sinking feeling that too soon, her pain would be real and piercing.
Agnes returned a few moments later, her face pinched, affirming the worst of Bess’ fears.
“How bad is he?” she forced past her lips, past the tight feeling in her throat that shot daggers into her chest.
Agnes snaked her bony fingers through the space between Bess’ arm and her torso and squeezed hard enough to cause Bess pain. “They have him in the operating room now. The surgeon will be out when there’s news. That’s all they would tell me.”
“He’s not going to make it,” Bess mumbled, voicing her worst fear, that fate or God had a target on her back, and she was not allowed to have any goodness or peace in her life.
“Don’t you think that way,” Agnes scolded, and the bony fingers sunk into Bess’ arm with even more power behind them. “We keep our hope on God, who loves us, Bess.
“Everyone I’ve ever loved leaves me, Agnes. If that’s what God’s love means, I don’t know that I want any part of it.”
Bess was sorry for the words almost before they left her lips. Agnes’ eyes, already sad, became stricken with grief. She cast them toward the ceiling and asked the monotone hospital tiles, “How do we plant these seeds into good soil, Lord?”
Bess kept her own counsel after that, refusing to go to the chapel with Agnes because she wanted to be where she could hear about Judd’s condition as soon as possible. Agnes left her reluctantly, but with her own need to feel even closer to the God she always carried close to her heart evident in her watery eyes.
Bess wasn’t waiting very long by herself before she was joined by several other women. They introduced themselves, but Bess didn’t remember any of their names. They were the wives of the men who worked under Judd. At least one of them had a husband who was also in surgery. Bess looked at the woman, with her stringy, straight brown hair and worn eyes and wondered if she were the wife to the deputy who had driven Bess home.
She had just returned from putting a new diaper on Daniel when a doctor walked into the waiting room, his scrubs splattered with blood, the lines around his eyes deep and dark. “Mrs. Taylor?” he said to the room at large.
Bess couldn’t make her mouth work, so she stepped up to him instead. He smiled gently at her. “The bullet clipped two of his ribs and punctured a lung. He was lucky, a few inches either direction, and he’d be dead on arrival. With a lot of TLC and rest, he should be up and going in no time.”
Bess would have fallen if the surgeon hadn’t reach out to grab her by the elbows. He made sure she was seated before standing to return to the operating arena. She reached out her free hand and grabbed his before he could leave her. “Can I see him?”
“He’s in recovery right now. I’ll have a nurse come and get you as soon as we get him into a room. I promise.”
Her considerable grip relaxed. “Thank you,” she said. She was seated only a moment longer before she stood to find the hospital chapel so she could tell Agnes the good news.
One of the women walked over to Bess. “Let me look after the baby for you,” she offered. “I’ll be right here the whole time.”
Bess hesitated, but only for a moment. She knew her roiling emotions weren’t doing Daniel any good. She kissed the baby’s head and handed him to the other woman.
A minute later, she found Agnes sitting in one of the pews of the small room dedicated to God on the hospital’s first floor. The other woman suddenly looked her age sitting there, her thin back hunched, her body drawn in on itself like an armadillo warding off an enemy.
Bess sat beside her and laid a hand that shook slightly on Agnes’ back. “The doctor says he’ll make it,” she blurted. “I’m sorry, Agnes, for the things I said.”
Agnes lifted her eyes then, and they were bright spheres that shined with a golden light. “Don’t be apologizing to me, now. Just, when the time comes, and you remember what you’ve said, you also remember that God has big shoulders to bear all the hurt of this world and an infinite capacity to forgive.”
Bess sealed the advice inside herself and continued. “He’s got some broken ribs, and they had to inflate his lung. We can go see him when he’s out of recovery. They’re supposed to send a nurse out.”
Agnes grinned. “When he’s out of recovery, they won’t have to send a nurse. I’m afraid the whole hospital will know.”
“Are you saying Judd doesn’t make a very good patient?”
Agnes patted Bess on the back. “I’m saying that boy has a hard time giving up control, kind of like somebody else I know.” She looked at Bess hard, so that Bess cast her eyes up toward the front of the chapel, where a stained glass window allowed the evening light to stream into the room. “Giving your heart to Jesus completely is the ultimate act of surrender, telling Him you trust Him to be the guiding force in your life. It’s a big step. I’m glad you’re not taking it lightly.”
Bess turned her eyes to Agnes, surprised at the praise, disappointed that she couldn’t just embrace Agnes’ beliefs for Agnes’ sake. But, if she had learned anything over the past months, it was that Bess’ relationship with God had to be on terms that were between God and Bess alone, not because of another human being.
Agnes stood up then and reached out her hand to Bess. “Let’s get back to that waiting room, so we’ll be ready when Judd starts roaring.” They were out in the hall when she added, almost as an afterthought, “I take it one of the officer’s wives has our little Daniel?”
Bess blushed. “Yes. I didn’t catch her name. There were too many of them, and I was too distracted. She has long, blond hair and almost purple eyes, about so high.”
Agnes nodded. “Gladys. She has seven of her own running around at home. Daniel couldn’t be in better hands.”
“Seven?!!” Bess exclaimed, thinking how much work even one supremely well-behaved baby was requiring. “She must be a saint. I hope her husband isn’t one of those who was wounded?”
“Not this time,” Agnes told her. “But the man has at least two pieces of shrapnel in him from his time in Korea.”
Bess walked with Agnes in silence for several steps before she worked up the courage to tell her mother-in-law. “I don’t know if I can take Judd being Sheriff after this. Please don’t be offended, Agnes, but somehow this is hitting me harder than even Daniel’s death. Maybe it’s because I’ve known Judd longer, or because it’s happening right here in front of me and not thousands of miles away?”
They stopped by the cafeteria as Agnes laid a staying hand on Bess’ forearm. Doctors and nurses in scrubs and uniforms flitted in and out of the wide, double doors that served as the cafeteria’s entrance. Surprisingly pleasing aromas of fried chicken and heavy, cheese-laden sauces filled the hallway just outside.
“Maybe it’s because you share a deeper connection with my Judd than you did with his brother. I know my sons, Bess. Truth be told, I would not have picked you for my Daniel in a thousand years, not to last anyway. But I’d have walked across broken glass to nab you for my Judd. They’re both fine men, but that’s the truth of it. It’s all right, Bess, to love one of them more.”
Bess felt the searing pain of her fear for Judd press in on her, and images of his black glare in those moments, too many, when she’d somehow disappointed him also filled her brain. The peaceful wholeness of the afternoon, before a bank robbery and bullets shattered everything, blasted her senses. The ups and downs of it, all at once, were suffocating. She struggled for breath and gave Agnes an almost desperate look. “If this is love, Agnes,” she breathed, “I’m not completely sure I want it.”
Agnes shook Bess’ arm slightly. “Of course you want it. Think how dead your life was before it happened to you, Bess. There’s no going back now.”
As they made their way to the waiting room, Bess struggled to keep her mind from exploding into a thousand different directions. One thing at a time, she thought. Get Judd well. Hope for no further mysterious threats. Think about giving up control to God. Talk Judd out of his dangerous profession when she had no right, really, to ask even one more thing of him when he had already given so much and she so very little.
They sat back down in the waiting area while Daniel slept contentedly in Gladys’ arms and visited quietly with the other policemen’s families until the first bellow sounded from a distant room. The nurse met them halfway up the hallway with a rueful grin, merely pointing toward the open door where Judd’s explosive commands made the walls in the hospital ring.
It was going to be a long, long night.
goodchristianfiction 