Rachel's Hope. Carole Page Gift

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СКАЧАТЬ the first time since entering the waiting room, she dared to let her gaze focus on the other clients. A young couple, surely just teenagers, sat close to each other on an orange vinyl couch. The girl, in a flannel shirt and bib overalls, flipped idly through a baby magazine. The boy, tall and lanky with stringy, shoulder-length brown hair, studied the walls and ceiling with an intense concentration while tapping knobby fingers nervously on the arm of the couch.

      “Look at this beautiful nursery furniture, Jeff,” Rachel heard the girl say. “Whitewashed oak! Wouldn’t you love to have that for the baby?”

      The boy glanced at the picture, grunted and stared back at the ceiling. “Your mother doesn’t have room in her house for that kind of stuff,” he answered hoarsely. “We’ll be lucky to squeeze in a crib.”

      “Poor kids,” Marlene murmured from behind her magazine.

      Another woman, dark haired and plain—perhaps in her early thirties, like Rachel—sat serenely reading a book. Rachel couldn’t help staring. The woman was huge, monstrous. She was obviously due any moment now. Had Rachel been that large when she carried Brian? She couldn’t have been, but she couldn’t remember. It had been thirteen years ago.

      The woman looked up, catching Rachel’s stare. They exchanged quick, embarrassed smiles and turned their eyes away.

      Rachel had to admit there was something fascinating about a woman who could sit patiently reading when at any moment all of her life forces could be called into action for the delivery of a child. For Rachel childbirth had been an awesome, turbulent experience, something for which she had conscientiously prepared her entire mind and body, right down to the nerve endings. But when Brian was born—when the pains had started and the waves and turbulence had swept over her—she had realized that no amount of preparation was quite enough. It had been a breech birth. Touch and go. Brian had come out a pallid blue and struggling for life. She could have lost him. She would never forget the cold terror of those harrowing moments.

      But the woman across from Rachel appeared totally untroubled, as if she were quite ready to accept whatever pain or discomfort she would have to bear. Rachel envied her, for rarely could she herself sit back calmly and let things come as they would and pass over her. Somehow it was too important for Rachel to be in control, in the driver’s seat, steering her life the way she felt it ought to go.

      Not that she always steered so well, though!

      Rachel shifted uncomfortably in her chair, willing the time away. It occurred to her she should pray for a negative report so she could get out of this crackerbox office and forget this absurd fear that she might be pregnant.

      But what if she was pregnant? What then?

      “David will have a fit,” she said aloud.

      Marlene rallied from her magazine. “What’d you say?”

      “David—he’s so involved in…in other things these days. One thing our marriage doesn’t need is a baby!”

      “It’s a little late for regrets, isn’t it?”

      “It’s too late for a lot of things.” Please, dear Lord, don’t let it be, Rachel willed silently. Please don’t let there be a baby!

      Marlene reached over and squeezed Rachel’s hand. Her round, doughy face held a beatific shine. “Remember, gal, there’s no problem too big for God. When my Harry died, I felt like I hit rock bottom. That’s when I knew Christ was real. He took me by the hand and said, ‘Honey, it’s all right. You’re going to be okay. Just walk with Me.’”

      Rachel grimaced. “Might as well have asked you to walk on water or something.”

      “No, Rachel, even losing weight I don’t imagine I could walk on water. But walking with Him is possible.”

      Rachel looked away. “I try to live my faith, Marlene, I really do. But lately it’s hard enough just plodding through each day.”

      “Maybe you’re trying too hard,” said Marlene. “Following Jesus is so simple, so beautiful. Are you still digging into God’s Word every day? And letting the Holy Spirit get hold of your life?”

      “I try, but…” Rachel’s words drifted off.

      “Well, stop trying, gal,” Marlene boomed, loud enough for everyone to hear, “and let God do it. Put your burdens on Him. His Son is a real person. Not just a man in history. We’re not talking pie-in-the-sky religion here.”

      “Maybe we should talk about it later,” Rachel suggested. She realized she was still holding the forms the receptionist had given her. She searched her purse for a pen and scribbled into the blank spaces the information requested. Name. Address. Telephone number. Insurance. She couldn’t remember whether their insurance covered pregnancy. She would have to check with David. No, she would call the insurance company instead.

      She laid the forms aside and glanced at her reflection in the oval mirror on the opposite wall, noting with relief that, in spite of her discomfiture, she looked intact, perhaps even attractive. Her makeup was correct. She had good eyes, she was confident of that. Clear cerulean blue, thickly lashed. Her brows were a trifle too arched and her mouth perhaps too full and wide to be pretty. But her medium-length honey brown hair had been done that morning. Jenny from the Carousel Beauty Salon did her hair each week, making the thick, tawny curls fall softly onto Rachel’s forehead and caress her high cheekbones.

      Even if she wasn’t a classic beauty, David considered her pretty. And she was still young—wasn’t she? Surely thirty-two couldn’t be old—not these days when women even in their fifties were having babies. Long ago, when she and David were dating, he had told her she had the grace of a Madonna. He said no one walked with as much grace as she.

      Rachel smiled inadvertently. Did David really say things like that once? It must have been some other lifetime, some other Rachel—the old Rachel. The girl she was when they were first married. The high school girl who could hardly wait for graduation, who less than two weeks later became Mrs. David Webber in one of those gaudy little wedding chapels in Las Vegas. That naive girl in rose-colored glasses had been gone for a long time, Rachel acknowledged mordantly.

      Rachel shifted in her chair. Waiting for the nurse to call her name was a royal pain. What was there to do but to think and remember? Or talk to Marlene. But Marlene had her nose buried in another magazine. With a sigh of resignation Rachel sat back and permitted the reels of memory to spin through her mind like old film clips.

      She thought of Brian. What would he think about a baby? He was an awkward thirteen, a loner. He would be fourteen when the baby came—if a baby came. Hard to imagine that it was thirteen years since Brian had been born. Had it really been that long? She and David had been married only a year, and David had still had another year before he would receive his engineering degree from California State University at Long Beach. Rachel had had to give up her typing job and her cherished drama courses to take care of Brian, and David had taken a part-time job at night to pay the rent on their small Long Beach apartment.

      “It’s never been easy,” Rachel murmured. She didn’t realize she’d said the words aloud until Marlene looked up and asked what she had just said.

      “Nothing important. Just thinking out loud.”

      “So tell me.”

      Rachel shrugged. “To be honest, I was thinking how СКАЧАТЬ