A Borrowed Life Read online

  Earlene is my across-the-street neighbor, and was unofficially running our congregation long before my husband took over as pastor. If God were bossable, she’d likely take Him on as a project, but since He’s out of her reach, she contents herself with managing people. Since Thomas isn’t any more open to her opinions than God is, she generally presents them to me.

  “We need to love her back to Jesus, not cast stones.” Kimber’s tone is pure holier-than-thou. “I invited her over for dinner after church last week.”

  “And got all the salacious details, I’ll bet. Come on, spill.” Annie’s eyes, alight with mischief, meet mine. I want to grin at her, but it’s my responsibility as the hostess of this Blankets for Babies Knitting Circle and the wife of a holy man of God to curb wagging tongues.

  Personally, I have sympathy for Marjorie, the gossip meal of the day. Her husband is a lout. I know, but can’t say, that he beats her. I’ve watched the two of them come in for marriage counseling, heard Thomas advise him to love his wife the way Jesus loves the church, and reassure her that her love in Christ will save the marriage. He’s prayed over them more than once.

  Prayers are useless over a man like that. God’s not going to smite him down, no matter how often he smites his wife. If she’s left the brute and moved in with an unbeliever who, reportedly, has a gun and is willing to use it in order to protect her, she has my sympathy.

  I steer the conversation toward safer waters.

  “Tell us all about the wedding, Amy. Has Lisa chosen a dress?”

  It’s not the smoothest segue in the world, but none of them notice. Weddings and babies are the only topics that rival juicy gossip, and fortunately we have a wedding coming up.

  Amy drops her knitting so she can gesture with her hands. “Oh, the dress is beautiful, although it is a little too revealing in the neckline, I feel. I spoke to Lisa about that. I said, ‘Honey, it’s best to leave the treasure out of sight until the wedding night,’ and she laughed at me. Laughed! I’m worried about what the two of them are already up to.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time a premature baby weighed eight pounds,” Annie murmurs, and Amy bristles.

  “How dare you imply—”

  “You implied. I was just being comforting.”

  “She’s young.” Earlene’s needles click nearly as fast as her tongue. “And she’s a bride. I’m sure the dress is beautiful. That groom of hers, now . . .” She shakes her head, indicating that she could say things if she wanted to but is holding her tongue.

  “What about him?” Amy demands.

  “Well, there was that incident with alcohol . . .”

  “He was sixteen! A lot of kids experiment as teenagers. He’s got that great job now, at Vaagen’s.”

  “Easy now,” Earlene says. “I didn’t mean to start a war.”

  She did, of course. Earlene thrives on teapot tempests. Bored as I am, spats and hurt feelings are not diversions I am fond of.

  This time, Felicity changes the subject. “Do you think next time we might try a pattern for the blankets? Or maybe some prettier yarn?”

  She’s the new youth pastor’s wife, a pretty little thing, all big eyes and enthusiasm. She’s not yet indoctrinated in the unwritten bylaws under which the knitting circle operates, but she’s about to be educated. Amy and Earlene drop their feud and turn on her, instant allies in the face of this threat to the status quo.

  “Fancy yarns are more expensive,” Earlene says. “The idea is to make these blankets as cheaply as possible so that the babies of drug-addicted mothers will have one special thing.”

  “If some are nicer than others, some babies will feel left out,” Amy chimes in.

  “And the idea of just making all of the blankets cute is preposterous, of course.” Annie’s voice holds an edge, half humor and half something darker that connects with my own mutinous soul. If I weren’t the pastor’s wife, Annie and I might be friends.

  I glance at the clock. Four twenty. I’ve accomplished two more rows. At this rate, I’ll still be knitting this blanket when I’m eighty. How many minutes, how many seconds, is that?

  Felicity’s blunder has opened the door to a hazing.

  Amy, mother of the young and hopefully still-virginal bride-to-be, leads the charge. “So, Felicity—Lisa tells me that your husband has a . . . different way with the young people.”

  “How do you mean?” Felicity asks, walking right into the trap.

  “More contemporary. Less . . . biblical.”

  “The music they’ve been playing!” Earlene adds. “Drums and guitars and such. No offense, but I’m not entirely sure it’s appropriate within the house of God.”

  “God is probably grateful for the change.” Annie keeps her eyes on her knitting, not looking at me this time. “Think about it. All of the congregations, year after year, singing the same old songs. He’s probably bored to tears.”

  “You are entirely too flippant about the Almighty,” Earlene snaps.

  Felicity huddles deeper into her chair, bending her head so that her long chestnut hair hides her face, but not before I catch a sheen of tears in her eyes and a flush of embarrassment on her cheeks.

  Church gossip has it that Annie is part of a growing faction agitating to replace Thomas with a pastor who is a little less repressive and a lot more open minded. Felicity’s husband is a step in that direction. It’s easier to bring new blood into the youth group than the general congregation, half of which is old and set in their ways.

  Laying aside my knitting, I get to my feet. “Anybody ready for tea and cookies?”

  It’s way too early for refreshments, but these are dangerous waters we’ve strayed into. I’ve got to stop this now before the tension escalates further, and I can’t think of any topic of conversation that will serve the purpose.

  “Not for me. It’s not even five o’clock.” Leave it to Earlene to point out the obvious.

  A loud crash cuts across my reply.

  “What in heaven’s name?” Earlene exclaims, the clacking of her needles pausing as she listens for more.

  We’re suspended in an oasis of silence. No clicking of tongues or needles. No rustling of knitting bags or unrolling of yarn. We all wait for Thomas to step out of his study. To say, “All is well, ladies. I caught a book with my elbow. I hope nobody was alarmed.”

  Seconds tick by.

  The silence continues. Thomas does not appear.

  No footsteps. No indication of Thomas tidying up. He would never just leave a fallen item to its fate, any more than he would overlook the opportunity to save an erring soul.

  After what seems like a small eternity, Earlene’s needles resume clicking and the rest follow her lead. A strange sensation coils in my throat, right above my collarbones. It’s difficult to breathe past it.

  “Excuse me,” I murmur. “Let me just make sure Thomas doesn’t need any help.”

  My shoes whish over the carpet of the living room. Tap-tap on the hardwood in the hall.

  The study door is closed, and I hesitate, listening.

  I know better than to disturb him when he’s behind a closed door. He’ll be preparing a sermon. Engaged in prayer. Maybe on the phone with a troubled parishioner.

  But I hear nothing.

  Lightly, I tap on the door, braving his displeasure. Whisper, “Thomas?”

  No answer.

  I tap louder, say his name out loud, even though I know all ears in the living room are tuned in this direction. Even though they will all hear his patient reprimand.

  But he doesn’t answer. Doesn’t say, “Elizabeth. Can it wait?”

  The doorknob feels cold and dangerous in my palm. I turn it, then stare in confusion, trying to make sense of what I see.

  Thomas lies on the floor of the study, eyes closed.

  For one confused instant, I think he’s decided to take a nap.

  My eyes take in the details. The office chair tipped over on its side. The cup of chamomile tea I’d fixed before the circl
e, spilled, little rivulets of greenish liquid spreading toward the computer keyboard. Thomas’s legs bent at an awkward angle, his arms flung wide.

  His Bible is splayed open on his chest, the pages bent. It’s this disrespect for the Word of God, more than the fact that he doesn’t seem to be breathing, that finally wakes me up and tears a scream from my throat.

  I hear a stampede of feet in the hallway, feel bodies jostling in the doorway behind me.

  “CPR,” Earlene commands. “Who knows CPR?”

  I wait for one of them to run forward, drop to her knees, start resuscitating their fallen shepherd.

  Their faces are shocked, stricken. Nobody moves.

  “Always skipped those classes,” Annie moans. “Didn’t think I’d need it.”

  “Me, too,” Kimber admits. “Somebody do something!”

  “I’ll call nine-one-one,” Felicity says. “Oh my God. What’s the address here? I can’t even think.”

  “I’ll call,” Earlene overrides.

  I turn back to Thomas. He’s no longer the slim man he was when I married him, and there’s no room to kneel between his body and the bookcase on one side, or the desk on the other. I pick my way forward and sit astride his belly.

  My skirt rides up over my thighs, and I wait for his reprimand. “Elizabeth Lightsey, the world can see China.”

  But he says nothing.

  His face is a color skin was never meant to be.

  I hear Earlene’s voice behind me, talking to somebody on the phone. “I don’t know. Just a minute. Elizabeth, is he breathing?”

  “No.” There is no movement of his chest, no sound of air moving in and out of his lungs. I press my fingers to the skin of his throat, where the pulse is supposed to be, but it’s pointless. I can feel the way he isn’t here, the absence of him.

  “Does he have any medical conditions?” Earlene shouts. Too loud, as if I’m in the backyard instead of just a few feet away from her.

  I position my hands over his breastbone. Press down. His chest doesn’t even give. I push harder, put all of my weight behind it. This doesn’t feel at all like the resuscitation dummy I practiced on.

  “Tanya wants to talk to you,” Earlene shouts.

  I look up, confused, compressing Thomas’s chest again. Surely even Earlene knows I’m not free to chat right now.

  But she holds the phone out toward me, then says, “Wait. What am I thinking?” and pushes a button.

  A voice comes through on speakerphone.

  “Mrs. Lightsey? Elizabeth?”

  “It’s not a good—”

  “This is Tanya. From church. What’s happened to Pastor?”

  I stop compressions, staring at the circle of pale, stricken faces gaping back at me. They all expect me to answer, and that finally jars loose the important detail. Tanya works for dispatch. Colville is a small enough town that I know half the people in it. Tanya is my 911 contact.

  I take a breath. “He’s—lying on the floor. I found him this way.”

  “Is he conscious?”

  “No, he’s just lying here.”

  “Did he fall? Hit his head?”

  “He’s not breathing, Tanya. His heart isn’t beating. I don’t know—”

  “An ambulance is on the way. Now, I need you to start CPR. Okay? Can you do that?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good, that’s good. Oh, dear God help us. Okay. I’ll count with you. Are you ready? One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand . . .”

  Somebody is weeping, and from the strange place my brain has wandered off to, it feels irrational. If I had any breath left over, maybe I’d say, “What are you crying about? He’s not your husband.”

  My arms feel like jelly. My breath burns in my lungs, my heart is laboring.

  Guilt sets in. This is all my fault. Just this very morning I asked God for a space of my own, and He’s punishing me for my selfishness.

  “Time to give him a breath,” Tanya says. “Tilt his head back, seal his nose with your thumb and forefinger . . .”

  I try, but Thomas does not cooperate. His skin is clammy and his neck is stiff and I’m doing this wrong, all wrong. I pinch his nostrils and get set to deliver a breath. His lips are cold and taste sour, and my stomach lurches.

  Nausea is a luxury I don’t have a right to.

  I take a new breath and try to blow it into him. It feels like blowing up an overly stiff balloon. My own lungs burn with the pressure, and I don’t think any of the oxygen is transferring from me to him.

  Which means his head isn’t tilted back properly, but any time I take to try to fix his airway will be time that his heart isn’t beating.

  “All right, back to compressions,” Tanya’s voice says, and I abandon the botched breathing thing and resume my inadequate chest compressions.

  If Abigail were here, she’d know how to do CPR, would probably already have her father up and talking and requesting a fresh cup of tea.

  One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, four . . .

  Thomas is an annoying breather. At night he snores, sighs, makes puffing noises. In the daytime he tends to snuffle and snort even when he’s reading or watching the news on TV. It irritates me some days until I want to scream at him to stop.

  And now he has, and I’d give anything for him to start again.

  My own breath is coming hard and fast. My heart is pounding. The ambulance has begun to feel like a myth.

  “Are they coming?” I gasp.

  “Just a few more minutes. Keep going. One-one-thousand, two-one-thousand . . .”

  My arms and shoulders are beyond aching. I can’t do this anymore, but I also can’t stop.

  “They’re here,” Annie’s voice says. I hear footsteps in the hallway and look up to see a woman in uniform, a man behind her.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the woman says.

  “There’s no room to work,” the man responds. “We’ll have to move him.” His hand rests on my shoulder. “Ma’am, you can stop now. We’ve got this.”

  I keep going, like a mechanical toy, but he hauls me up to my feet and passes me off to Earlene’s none-too-steady hands out in the hallway. We squeeze into the space between a wheeled stretcher and the wall. I notice a trail of muddy snow on the hardwood floor. Thomas will have a fit about that when he wakes up. Maybe I should wipe it up, now, while we’re waiting.

  The EMTs shove the visitor chairs against the wall and drag Thomas out from behind the desk. The man resumes CPR, brisk, professional. The woman puts a mask over Thomas’s nose and mouth and starts breathing for him with a bag, then stops to slap sticky pads on his chest and hook him up to an EKG machine.

  A heady rush of relief flows through me. These people are so competent. Everything will be fine after all. Later this evening, Thomas will be gently chastising me for my failure and suggesting CPR refresher classes, and this time the resuscitation doll will get my full and undivided attention.

  But my rush of hope disintegrates rapidly. The EMTs are intense, focused. They speak to each other in short, abrupt words that sound like code.

  Not one of them speaks to me. Not one of them says, “It’s okay, Mrs. Lightsey. We’ve got this. Your husband will be just fine.”

  “No rhythm,” the woman says. “Let’s shock him.”

  I hear footsteps running in the hallway. A pair of warm arms circles my waist, gently tugging me back away from the door.

  “You don’t need to watch this,” a familiar voice says. “Come away.”

  “Val. He’s . . .”

  “I see. Come on now.”

  Val’s voice is reassuring, calm. She works in a nursing home; this isn’t her first encounter with a medical emergency. I let her lead me down the hall, into the living room. When she puts her arms around me, I lean into her, bury my face in her shoulder, and she rubs slow circles on my back, making small shushing noises as if I’m a child. Her hair smells like bacon and tobacco, oddly comforting.

  Val is my nei
ghbor to the left, not a member of the fold. Thomas has tolerated our fraternizing because I’ve told him I’m witnessing, trying to save her soul. He knows nothing of the clandestine friendship that has sprung up between us. Coffee in the backyard on summer afternoons, or in one of our kitchens in the winter. Shared excursions to the grocery store. An occasional movie night when he’s out late at a meeting.

  I hear the stretcher wheels in the hall and turn to watch it roll by. One EMT continues chest compressions while another propels the stretcher with one hand, squeezing the breathing bag with the other. I follow them out the door and into the cold dark of a January evening.

  The stretcher wheels leave tracks in the snow between the porch and the ambulance.

  A small crowd of neighbors has gathered across the street. The knitting circle ladies huddle together on the porch. Both groups are whispering, gawking. Thomas has become entertainment. A spectacle. They shouldn’t see him like this. He’s a holy man of God, not a resuscitation dummy.

  Val’s arm steadies me as the ambulance team loads Thomas into the ambulance. Earlene prays aloud, hands clasped.

  “Our Father, please be with our pastor in this moment. You are the Almighty Healer, you have the power to work miracles, and you know how he is needed here on this earth. We ask that you work a miracle now on his behalf, and yet we bow to your will . . .”

  “You can ride with us if you’d like,” the woman EMT says. Something is wrong with my brain and my muscles. I can’t bring myself to say a single word, to do anything more than blink at her.

  “I’ll bring her,” Val says. “That will be better.”

  The EMT nods and closes the doors on her partner, who is still delivering compressions, then springs into the driver’s seat. Lights and sirens start as they drive away.

  I’m shivering. Snow is drifting down, swirling in the light of the streetlamps. My feet in my slip-on pumps are wet, my toes burning with cold. The gathered crowd has turned their stares on me.

  Val’s arm tightens around my waist, and she tugs me into motion. “Let’s get your coat and some boots, and then I’ll drive you to the hospital.”