Into the Fire

CHAPTER FIVE

CM passed an attractive woman on her way down the hall, her face puffy from crying. When she reached the double doors leading into the ICU, her Mom came out to meet her, her eyes like the woman she’d just passed. Her Mom reached out and hugged her only child.
“Come in and talk to your father. Thank you for getting here so quickly.” Her words lurched from her mouth.
CM wanted to reply but couldn’t and numbly followed her mother.
Her Dad lay in the hospital bed with a heavily bandaged leg. His handsome face, though lined and telling a bit of the tale of his fast living, was bruised, and a rather wide bandage spread across his forehead with a hint of blood leaking through in the center of it. Several tubes grew from his arms, his color pale, almost ashen.
After letting CM take in his appearance, her mother stated, “He’s lost a lot of blood. They’re going to operate soon because they think he’s bleeding internally.” Her Mom stopped a sob with a deep breath.
CM struggled with the reality of the situation, and she fought against fainting. She could feel her sight being threatened by a blackness creeping around the sides of her eyes. She looked for a chair, found one and sat down fast, dropping her head between her knees.
Immediately her mother knelt down in front of her. “Honey, are you going to be alright?” she asked softly.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said weakly, keeping her head down. “You don’t need this.” She sucked in some deep breaths, furious with herself. Finally she dared to raise her head, taking another deep breath. She placed her arms on the sides of the chair.
Hearing the voices, Eric Rutheford became conscious again. “CM,” he said softly.
CM took another deep breath and turned in her chair. “Yeah, Dad. I’m right here,” she managed to say quietly.
With considerable effort, he moved his arm over so he could reach her hand. She clasped his hand. “Mom said you have to have some surgery,” she said, trying to keep her voice level.
“CM, I need to tell you a few things before I go,” he labored to say.
“Dad, please, it’s too hard for you to talk right now. You can tell me after surgery. I’ll be here. We’ll both be here.”
“No,” he replied quickly and more firmly. “Honey, it has to be now.”
Her Dad hadn’t called her “honey” since she was a little girl.
“I’ve been a terrible father to you and a worse husband to your mother. To tell you the truth, I didn’t really understand it until a few months ago.” He coughed, pain in the sound. CM forced deep breaths again and strained to hold back tears. “I thought—as stupid as it sounds—I thought I was just living my life. That this was just me.” She watched him strive to get his thoughts in order. “Please, help me,” he whispered, looking above him at the ceiling.
CM jumped up. “What do you need, Dad? The nurse? Some water?”
A trace of a smile crossed his lips. “No, just bear with me, honey. Sit down. I’m trying to get this out in case I don’t make it out of surgery.”
“Dad, don’t be saying that! Of course you’re going to make it out of surgery. You know what? You shouldn’t be trying to talk. Mom, tell him. He should rest up for surgery.” She babbled. Her tears flowed. Out of control. Everything beyond her control. Why in the world was there never any control?!
“Honey, listen to me now,” he said with more strength but with a kindness she couldn’t ever remember him having when he gave instruction.
“I’ve been a louse. I hurt your mother and you to the enth degree. I was a coward—I was afraid of settling down and taking on responsibility. I wanted to be the dashing playboy because I was so afraid that I’d be a rotten father. I never gave myself a chance to be one. I bailed on your mother and you for the first time after only two years of marriage even though I loved her. CM, I’ve always loved your mother and you.” The tears began to drain from her father’s eyes, causing her to nearly convulse from holding back her sobbing. “The other women were toys. I know that’s ugly, and I’m truly ashamed, but I thought I needed them to make me feel like a man, to make me feel like I was worth something. I gave up real love with you and your mom for this counterfeit empty sex thing, and I want you to know how terribly sorry I am. I am just so, so sorry.” He began to sob, and CM fell apart.
“I love you, Dad,” she managed to say.
“Then will you do me a favor, honey?” he asked wearily, his strength ebbing.
“Yes, Dad. What?”
“A little bit ago, I met Jesus Christ. I asked Him to forgive me for what I’d done to you and your mom and everyone else in my life. He’s become my Savior, so if I don’t make it out of surgery, I’ll be with Him in heaven. I’ll be alright either way, CM. I don’t blame you if you can’t forgive me for what I’ve done, but I hope you can find a way—the only way I know to find forgiveness is through God. Would you consider investigating the Lord for me, CM?” He paused and took a labored breath. “Please, honey, would you do that for me?”
She looked at her dad, unable to compute what he was saying to her. He might as well have asked her to eat a big horned toad. She looked at him as if she’d never seen him before and then she looked across the bed to her mother who sat expectantly, holding on to his other hand with both of her own, a faint smile on her lips.
“Will you, honey?” he asked with less strength and his eyes closed.
Just then the attendants arrived with a gurney to transport him.
“CM?” he asked as he forced his eyes to look directly into her stunned blue eyes.
“Sure, Dad. Yeah, I’ll do that for you,” she managed to answer a little above a whisper.
“Thank you, sweetheart. So much,” he said before they took him away.
CM sat in the chair unfamiliar in this world. She glanced toward her mother who’d stood when they took her father, still staring down the hall, now empty. Her mother seemed to be in control of her emotions now—how such a thing would ever be possible again for herself CM had to wonder. My dad met Jesus Christ? He might as well have said he met Superman or the Green Hornet. Was he delirious from medication? She almost wished he was.
“Looks like we’re going to be here for awhile,” her mother said quietly. “Want to go get some coffee?”
CM stood and nodded.
As they sat in silence in a corner of the ICU waiting room sipping their coffees, a slender man about 5’8” tall with slightly curly dark brown hair, a moustache. and dark eyes to match walked into the room, approaching CM’s mother. He wore Levis and a red and black flannel shirt with a black Carhartt vest, noticeably handsome in a rugged sort of way.
“Millie?” he asked, his voice quiet, gentle. When she looked up, he said, “We spoke on the phone. I’m Pastor Bill Chambers.”
Her mother stood and shook his hand. “This is my daughter—our daughter—um, she likes to be called CM,” her mother said.
“Please, sit down,” he said to her mother and reached over to shake CM’s hand. “I’m sorry to have to meet you both for the first time under these circumstances,” he said with genuine concern and sadness. “I was here before you got here but it’s been a bad day of sorts. I was called away to another person’s hospitalization a few blocks away. Is there anything new?”
CM listened as her mother explained her dad had been taken into surgery. CM liked this man, an instant decision she thought remarkable since she reserved judgment on almost every single person she’d ever met in her life—except maybe Matt. Something about Matt’s eyes . . . As soon as his name came to mind, tears fought their way into her eyes. She stifled the emotions.
“Eric said you were his pastor?” her mom inquired, barely above a whisper.
The man laughed slightly. “Not at first,” he said, unable to suppress a smile.
“What do you mean?” She attempted to return his smile.
“Well, Eric got a DUI about nine months ago. He was just barely past the legal limit, but he got a tough judge who actually sentenced him to a year in prison with a suspended sentence if he completed the judge’s designated community service.” The pastor looked down for just a moment and rubbed his thumb over his mouth. “His assigned community service was how we met.”
The man spoke softly and was very articulate. His concern for her Dad was evident throughout his explanations about how they’d met and formed their friendship.
“The church I pastor has what we call an ‘outreach’ downtown. We provide temporary shelter, clothing, and meals for those who are willing to comply with our simple set of requirements. Most of the people who now work there were once those who had to seek shelter there, so they have a particular understanding for and interest in the others who walk through our doors. No one can minister to someone quite as well as someone who’s been through what they have, you know?” He paused to look at the two women assessing their interest in what he was saying. He continued to explain. “Eric came in with an attitude like a lot of people do when they see what they consider to be the dregs of society. So we put him on the food line—he served meals. Within a couple of days his attitude changed dramatically—so dramatically that I knew the Holy Spirit was beginning to work on him. At the end of his four hour shift he was required to report directly to me. After the third time he’d completed his service, he sat down in my office and began to talk with me. The prior two times he never sat down even though I invited him to discuss his feelings about the place and what we did there. He refused politely and handed me his requirement slip to sign and document.”
The pastor pulled out a bottled water from his vest pocket and took a long drink. “I’m coffee-d out, and it’s been a long day.”
“What did Dad want to discuss?” CM asked, curiosity getting the best of her.
“Well, the first thing he asked me was what had happened to these people. I could tell he was really uncomfortable, but I wasn’t sure why. I told him the reasons for and the experiences of some of these people ending up here were as diverse as the reasons some people experience success. He got real quiet, and I was sure he was going to get up and leave, but instead he looked me right in the eye and said, ‘I could’ve just as easily been one of them.’ Now you have to understand what a profound statement that was. It wasn’t a conclusion you come to without God’s help. When a proud person realizes he or she could at some point have given up or given in or given out and become helpless, that’s a clue from the Lord that we don’t experience any kind of success without His help. Just because we don’t see it that way doesn’t change the fact it’s true.”
The pastor leaned over and put his hands on his knees. “Then we just started to talk, you know? Man to man. Not pastor to potential believer or authority to someone under his control, but man to man.” He took a deep breath and sighed, sat up and looked at Millie with a mixed expression of compassion and embarrassment. “We discovered we had a lot in common.” He paused. “And we became friends. Real friends. Like we’d known each other our entire lives. Then when Eric decided he wanted to know Jesus Christ for himself, we became brothers.”
CM saw the tears form in the pastor’s eyes, and she could no longer hold her own back.
Just then a doctor appeared with a somber expression on his face. Millie stood and the pastor turned abruptly in his chair to face the doctor.
“I’m very sorry,” he said quietly, still holding his surgical mask in his hand.
CM watched her mother rock forward and immediately the pastor was up to engulf her in his supportive arms as she broke down and cried. It all seemed to happen in slow motion, the voice of the doctor as he explained her Dad had lost too much blood and they weren’t able to get to all the injuries in time—it was all faraway and unintelligible. She was frozen in her chair, helpless. She watched her mother crying on the pastor’s shoulder, and she saw how difficult it was for him to hold back the tears in his own eyes, having apparently just lost a close friend. She didn’t realize the tears were flowing down her face until they landed on her folded hands in her lap as she leaned forward on the edge of her chair and stared with blurred vision at the doctor as he walked solemnly back down the hall.
“My dad’s dead,” she said to herself. And then she remembered what she’d agreed to do for her Dad’s final request of her. “Oh great.”

Sweet Release (Romance/Women’s Fiction)