Carry The Light. Delia Parr

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СКАЧАТЬ had anchored the Welleswood business district for years—before heading back to the workroom again.

      An hour later, with her heart still glowing from her visit with the Arbors, Charlene headed toward home. When she hit the highway, she polished off the half sandwich left from lunch and chased it down with a diet soft drink. Dinner on the run was a frequent occurrence in her life now, but that, too, was a blessing of sorts. She did not manage to get home for dinner with Daniel very often these days. Her hour-long commute each way solved the problem of sitting at the dinner table each night in silence with the man she had married forty-one years ago.

      Once their two children had grown up and left home, the awkward quiet between them was like an uninvited guest, at first. Now the silence was an invisible, integral part of their relationship, a testament to the struggle of maintaining a marriage that neither of them seemed to know how to revive.

      Dwelling on the sorry state of her marriage, however, was not how Charlene wanted to spend the rest of her drive home. Using her hands-free cell phone, she called her son, Greg, a physical therapist living in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Margot. When he did not answer, Charlene left a message and tried reaching her daughter, Bonnie, now a high-school guidance counselor who had moved to New York City straight from college to share an apartment with several friends who also had a love for the faster-paced city life. No answer at Bonnie’s, either, so Charlene left a message.

      She often played telephone tag with the children, and it seemed that this, too, was another sign that the pattern of her life had changed. After being a full-time homemaker and stay-at-home mother, she found owning and operating her business just as demanding, but in different ways. Her mothering days might be well behind her now, but she was blessed to have the kind of store where she could channel her instinct to nurture to her customers.

      Nothing, however, seemed to ease the yearning in her heart for the happy marriage she had once shared with Daniel.

      For the better part of an hour, she concentrated on the heavy traffic and set her worries aside. When she finally pulled off the highway onto Magnolia Road, she hesitated for a moment, then called Daniel to let him know she was just fifteen minutes from home. To her surprise, he didn’t answer, so she left him a message, too, and then remembered that he was bowling with friends this evening.

      A few moments after she hung up, her cell phone rang. She answered without reading the display screen, keeping her eyes on the road.

      “Is this Mrs. Butler? Mrs. Charlene Butler?”

      Charlene stiffened at the sound of the unfamiliar voice. Aside from her family, no one called her on her cell phone for one very simple reason: she never gave out the number. She rolled her eyes, resigned to the idea that telemarketing had invaded the world of cell phones, too, and made a mental note to see if she could add her cell phone number to the national Do Not Call list. “What can I do for you?”

      “Is this Mrs. Charlene Butler?”

      A deep sigh. “Yes, I’m Charlene Butler, but I can assure you that I am definitely not interested in buying anything you might be selling. As a matter of fact—”

      “Mrs. Butler, this is the emergency room at Tilton General Hospital. Your aunt, Dorothy Gibbs, asked that we call you. She arrived here about twenty minutes ago and—”

      Charlene’s heart pounded hard against the wall of her chest, and her mind raced with questions that she hurled at the caller. “Aunt Dorothy? Are you sure? I was just with her. She was fine. What’s wrong?”

      “The doctor is with her now. She appears stable at the moment, but she’s asking for you. We couldn’t reach you until she found the paper she had written your cell number on. Can I tell her that you’ll be coming to be with her?”

      “Yes. Absolutely. Of course I will,” Charlene cried, blinking back tears as she looked for a place to turn around. “Tell her I’m on my way. It’ll take me an hour. Just tell her I’m coming,” she directed, praying that the good Lord would continue to keep watch over Aunt Dorothy.

       Chapter Two

       C harlene pulled into a parking space in the visitors’ lot across the street from Tilton General Hospital just after nine o’clock—well ahead of her husband, who was on his way from the bowling alley to meet her. She slammed the car into Park, grabbed her purse and locked up with a quick click of the remote.

      She practically jogged toward the emergency room on the east side of the hospital, where she could see the steady pulse of the flashing red lights on the ambulance parked at the entrance. Her purse, which hung from her shoulder, swung in a short arc with each pounding step, mirroring the emotional pendulum that dragged her from fear that Aunt Dorothy might be seriously ill to the hope she had just had another one of her little “spells.”

      When Charlene finally reached the entrance, she paused to whisper a prayer before passing through the automatic double doors. Inside, a security guard seated behind a desk cocked a brow, and she shifted the strap of her purse. “My aunt…Dorothy Gibbs…They brought her here…I need to see her,” she stammered.

      His gaze softened when he handed her a visitor’s pass. “Information desk is straight ahead. Then take a number. Take a seat.”

      She swallowed hard and glanced around the emergency room to get her bearings. Like most people, she supposed, she was not fond of hospitals. She had been fortunate to have raised two active children without ever needing to visit an emergency room.

      As she might have expected, the air was heavy with anxiety and suffering, but also held a peculiar sense of boredom or, perhaps, a sense of resignation that she found disturbing.

      Straight ahead, a bank of signs hung from the ceiling over a long, low counter in front of a series of five small, semi-partitioned areas. One sign read Information. Three were labeled Patient Registration. One read Intake. Non-medical personnel in business attire toiled with computers and paperwork at their stations, serving visitors and patients at the counter.

      Charlene got in the information line behind two women and looked around. Through an opaque wall behind the security guard, she could see a good two dozen people seated in a stark, gray-painted waiting room, but Aunt Dorothy was not among them. Several children were lying on the floor, coloring or reading, while other youngsters raced back and forth between the restrooms and the water fountain.

      The gray plastic chairs along the walls were nearly all filled with patients and their loved ones. An elderly woman sat alone in a wheelchair in the corner. Another woman lay on a gurney, her face to the wall. Everyone was waiting for medical attention. Charlene didn’t know if Aunt Dorothy had had to wait, too, or if she had arrived by ambulance. Either way, Charlene’s heart trembled with regret that she had not been by her aunt’s side.

      At that moment, a pair of metal doors swung open on Charlene’s right, revealing the very heart of the busy emergency room, where she caught a glimpse of medical personnel hustling to care for patients behind curtained treatment rooms.

      “Next.”

      With her visitor’s pass in hand, she stepped up to the counter, where a middle-aged woman with frizzy orange hair sat filing a broken fingernail. Her name tag read Joy Wohl, but her bored expression was certainly joyless. “My name is Charlene Butler. I got a call from the emergency room saying my aunt had been brought here and that I needed to come right away. Dorothy Gibbs. Her name is Dorothy Gibbs,” she explained, anxious to see her aunt as quickly as possible.

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