I have tried. I even learned a prayer once, but…”
“What is it? What prayer did you learn?”
He stared at her for a moment then squeezed his eyes shut and whispered, “Our Father, Who art in heaven.”
“Hallowed be thy name,” Kaylie joined in, repeating the familiar words of the Lord’s Prayer with him. At the end, she added her own. “Please, Lord, if it can be within Your will, spare Stephen the loss of his skating. Surely You have given him the talent and desire to play hockey for a reason. Show him what that reason is, to Your glory. Amen.”
“Amen,” he whispered.
A throat cleared, and Kaylie turned to find that the doctor had once more entered the cubicle. She gripped Stephen’s hand and waited for the verdict.
Surgery. Kaylie was right about that.
Please, God, Stephen thought, let her be right about everything else.
He almost laughed at himself. Praying at the drop of a hat now, was he? As if God had ever listened to him! The Chatams, on the other hand, when Kaylie or her aunts prayed, it was as if they summoned the very presence of God into the room, as if that Power drew close and cloaked them in peace.
Stephen knew that he had clung to Kaylie all that morning like a toddler clinging to a security blanket, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. Thankfully, she didn’t appear to mind. More than likely, she considered it a part of her job, so he hesitated only a moment before asking if she would be there with him during the surgery.
She tilted her head, her long, sleek, dusky red hair sliding freely about her face and shoulders. He caught his breath. With her hair down around her clean face and those big dark eyes glowing with concern, she looked too beautiful to be of this earth. Only the presence of the doctor and the entry of another nurse into the room kept Stephen from foolishly reaching up to clasp the nape of Kaylie’s neck and pull her down to him for a kiss.
“I’m sorry,” she told him softly. “The operating room is one place I cannot go, but I’ll be right here, praying for you.”
Stephen gulped and nodded. Then, as if aware of that longed-for kiss, she bent and pressed her lips to the center of his forehead. A sense of peace and well-being filled him. It flowed into the all the dark, lonely crevices of his soul, bringing light and something else along with it, something he had a difficult time identifying.
Hope, he decided woozily.
Not the hope for any one thing, but the mere chance, the opportunity, that something in his life might finally go right, that it might all somehow come together finally.
The feeling was almost embarrassingly intimate and, at the same time, comfortingly ordinary. It somehow set him apart from, yet united him with, all humanity. It elated and terrified. In an instant, the whole world and his perspective of it shifted from one of disappointment and struggle to one of teeming possibilities. He couldn’t bear the thought that it might be imaginary, ethereal, fleeting, and in his clumsy way he attempted to grab on to it.
“Hey,” he teased, swirling a finger around his forehead, “let’s skip the meds from now on and just go with that. What do you say?”
Kaylie laughed and stepped back. Only then did he realize that he was about to be wheeled away. An orderly and an orthopedic surgeon had been summoned and an operating room cleared for immediate use, he was told.
“A smaller hospital sometimes has its benefits,” Kaylie said.
Stephen nodded and reached out to her as he rolled past. She brushed his fingertips with hers.
“I know Dr. Philem personally, and he’s one of the best orthopedists around,” she assured him, keeping pace with the head of the gurney as it traveled down the gleaming corridor.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” she went on softly, “not even the nightmares. I think we can even take care of those.”
Nightmares.
With that one word, she destroyed the first truly bright moment he had known in years. The nightmares unlocked all his horrors, all his failures, all his fears. All his guilt. As her face receded from his view, the all too familiar black pit of despair, disappointment and shame opened inside him, swallowing whole his momentary joy.
For what could possibly ever “take care of” the fact that he had killed his best friend?
Chapter Six
Rubbing her arms lightly, Kaylie studied the displays on a variety of