CHAPTER 26
1440 Words
CHAPTER 26
A nurse came in sometime in the middle of the night and recorded Kennedy’s vitals. Whatever medicines they had given her were starting to wear off, and she itched and tried to get comfortable for another hour before dozing off again. In the morning, a nurse checked her bandages one last time and told her she would get her discharge papers ready. “Your pastor said he’d come pick you up in about an hour.”
Kennedy wondered what it would be like to go back to the real world after an ordeal like this. Would she ever feel safe on the streets of Cambridge again? Would she ever feel safe in her own dorm? She thought about the pregnancy center, about the big Thursday dinner that would go on as if none of this had happened. Could people really go on living in such blissful ignorance? She couldn’t. Like an over-stretched rubber band that can never resume its original shape, she couldn’t close her eyes again and forget it all.
Her dad would tell her he had been right all along, of course. He would probably chide her for following Dustin the night he came to her room. Kennedy had been worried about Willow, that was all. And her compassion could have killed her. She wouldn’t mind, though. Her dad could rage for an hour as long as Kennedy could hear his voice. As long as she could sit with the phone to her ear and listen to that strong, familiar, lecturing tone. All the homesickness of the past two months collected itself into one massive swell that came crashing down with tsunami-like force all around her. It wasn’t like drowning. It was like being hit by a ten-foot brick wall.
“Excuse me. Do I have the right room?”
Kennedy squinted at the man in the doorway.
He smiled. “So here you are. Remember me?”
There was something familiar about that red hair. The guy from the subway. The journalist. What was he doing here? He gave her a casual smile and strode to her bedside.
“I saw your picture come up on my news feed. I never forget a face.” He held up his camera case.
Oh no. Was he here for pictures, then?
Kennedy raised the back of her hospital bed so she was sitting up. At least she was in her street clothes already. What was he doing here? She wasn’t sure if she should be talking to the media at all. Or was that only what they told victims in novels?
“I’m not here to interview you or anything.” He patted his bag and kept it closed.
Kennedy stared. So he was a mind-reader, too? Or was he just used to people not trusting him because he was with the press? “It’s just that I don’t meet too many young people from Jilin Province. And, well, I guess when I saw you were involved in all this, I wanted to check in. Make sure you were all right.”
His endearing smile only took away a fraction of Kennedy’s misgivings.
He sighed. “Well, what do the doctors say?” He eyed her hospital room with a calculating, meticulous care. Was he some kind of Sherlock Holmes? What could his trained eye learn about her condition simply by observing her surroundings?
“I’ll be just fine. Maybe a week or two of taking it easy. You know, after I catch up on all the homework I missed.”
He crossed his arms. A little dimple dented his right cheek when he smiled. “I was a lot like that my first year, too.”
She didn’t ask him what he meant. She thought she was already learning.
He shook his head. “So you probably heard Anthony Abernathy was shot.”
A shudder started in the base of her back and sped up her spine. She winced when it reached the spot of her injury.
“They’re saying he did it because of his wife.”
Kennedy felt her face scrunch up in about a dozen unasked questions.
He leaned forward. “Moriah Abernathy? Did you guys hear about her over there in Yanji?”
The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Kennedy couldn’t place it.
“Anyway, she was pregnant when they diagnosed her with aggressive cancer. She refused chemo. No abortion, either. She died a few weeks after her son was born.”
“Charlie.”
“Pardon?”
Kennedy shook her head. “Never mind. So this is all some sort of vengeance because his wife died?”
He tightened the strap of his camera case. “I guess he figures if she hadn’t gotten so much pressure from the pro-life camp, his wife wouldn’t have been so adamant. Maybe she would’ve gotten the medical care she needed.”
Kennedy wondered if it was the exhaustion or the pain meds that were most responsible for fogging up her brain.
He leaned forward. “Between you and me, there’s chatter about other motives for hiding the girl’s pregnancy, too. Selfish ones. Meant to hide incriminating evidence, if you catch my drift.”
Kennedy squinted. Did he mean what she thought he meant? And if so, was she really surprised?
“But that’s all spec at this point. You know how it is.”
No, she didn’t, but she wasn’t going to tell him so.
He leaned against the end table by her bed. “You hear about the computer they recovered?”
She still hadn’t figured out if this was an interview or some strange and unexpected courtesy call. If it was an interview, he was revealing lots and gleaning hardly anything, at least nothing she was giving him verbally. What was it her dad always said about Kennedy trusting strangers?
“I guess it had all kinds of incriminating evidence,” he went on. “Wayne Abernathy’s itinerary, blueprints of his election headquarters. Sounds like they were also planning to target some pro-life fundraiser later on this week.”
Kennedy couldn’t keep her poker face and felt her eyes grow wide. “But they stopped it?”
He shrugged. “As far as I know. I’m sure they’ll have extra security just in case. You might want to tell your pastor to plan for more guests.”
A nurse bustled in before Kennedy could figure out how he knew so much about her and about the whole situation. “I’ll have to ask you to leave,” she told the reporter. “We have some discharge directions from the doctor to discuss.”
He cracked another wide smile, his dimple pierced his cheek, and he was gone before Kennedy learned his name. She had a hard time focusing while the nurse went over all the paperwork. She wished she could go home to her parents for a long weekend. Why couldn’t they live closer?
The nurse left, and Kennedy reached over for the Bible on her nightstand. Had someone left if for her there? She couldn’t remember seeing it last night, but she had been so drugged up and exhausted she could have missed anything. There was a note inside the front cover.
To Kennedy ~ Psalm 139.
Psalm 139. It sounded like a passage she should be familiar with. The pages crinkled as she turned them.
You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. How many times in Yanji had she ached for God to show himself to her, for him to let her know he cared for her, not only the missionaries and evangelists of the world?
You know when I sit and when I rise. She looked back on the past thirty-six hours. The whole time, God had known where she was. He had a plan to rescue her all along.
You perceive my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Her life, as isolated and lonely as it had felt for the past few months in the States, was an open book her heavenly Father had memorized. There wasn’t a lab write-up, a calculus problem, a late-night snack of dry Cheerios that he didn’t know about. And he loved her.
Kennedy was only halfway through the Psalm when Carl nudged open the door carrying a colorful bouquet of flowers and brandishing a huge smile. “Grab your things. Sandy insists you spend the next few days with us while you recover.”
Kennedy wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him that she needed to get back to her dorm, back to her classes. She couldn’t even guess how far behind she already was. But the dull ache in her back had grown exponentially since she woke up until she was sure she could feel Anthony behind her, stabbing her in the same spot repeatedly whenever she shifted her position. The doctor had assured her it would get better and ordered her to rest. Well, there wasn’t time for that. Not with labs and calculus and Crime and Punishment ...
“She’s already baking you muffins.” Carl rolled a hospital wheelchair to the side of the bed. “She said the food back in your dorm won’t heal you up half as fast as her home cooking.” He reached his hand out and helped her down. “You ready?”
There was no point arguing. “Yeah.” Once in the wheelchair, Kennedy put the new Bible on her lap. She had to swallow twice before she could trust her voice again. “I’m ready.”
- Writer
