Solemn Oath

“Settle down,” Lauren warned. “I can’t get a good reading if you get all worked up, and it’s not going to help your recovery any, either. Come on, Buck, you’re a fireman. You can handle a stressful situation. You know your wife better than that, and you know she’s going to be fine. You two have had your spats before, and it just makes your marriage stronger. She knows better than to let go of a hunk like you.” She checked his arm to take another reading.

“Lauren, do you have to get a reading right now?” Buck asked, jerking his arm away. “This is my marriage we’re talking about.” He looked at Lukas. “What am I supposed to do?”

Lauren, as always, was the one who answered. “Well, Buck, you pray about it, and you wait a while, then you call Kendra on the telephone and tell her how much you love her. Then arrange for her to pick you up when you’re released, and she will have gotten over it. Isn’t that right, Dr. Bower?”

Lukas quirked an eyebrow at her. “Why are you asking me? I’ve never been married. And neither have you. What makes you think—”

“Ever been dumped, Doc?” Buck asked.

“You haven’t been dumped,” Lauren insisted. “You know she’s just scared. She’s still—”

“Yeah, well, I’ll feel better when I’m back home in my own bed, and I don’t feel Kendra’s foot shoving me out the door.”

Mercy walked into a surprisingly calm waiting room. Josie had sent home most of the patients who could reschedule, and there were only a few scattered around in comfortable chairs, reading the well-stocked library of periodicals with resigned expressions. They perked up when they saw her walk through. She waved and greeted them and apologized without breaking stride as she marched toward her office.

Josie saw her first and scrambled over to her side. “Dr. Mercy, before you go into your office you need—”

“I know, I’ll hurry. I’m sorry—”

“No, you don’t understand—”

“Just let me change lab coats. I got some blood on this one, and it’s all—” She threw open the door to her office, then gasped aloud at the sight of her ex-husband, Theodore Zimmerman, sitting in the straight-backed chair in front of her desk.

“Dr. Mercy, I tried to tell you,” Josie said, stumbling in to stand behind her. “He insisted he had to see you today because he’d made a promise, and I didn’t want to leave him sitting out in the waiting room so you’d have witnesses when you killed him.”

Mercy stared at the man with five years’ worth of loathing. “Get out of this office. How dare you come in here like this?” She turned to Josie. “Start showing the patients to the exam rooms. This won’t take long. I’m going to call the police and let them know he’s here.” She picked up the telephone, almost expecting him to jump up and knock the receiver from her grasp and start shouting obscenities at her—his usual conduct.

He didn’t move. “Please don’t, not yet,” he said quietly. “They released me.”

“I’m supposed to believe that?” She stood staring at the man she had hated for so long she couldn’t remember feeling any other way about him. At times she’d dreamed of killing him—actually dreamed it. And they had been good dreams. Mom would be horrified at some of the thoughts that went through her mind. So would Lukas. So would Tedi. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to tell you how sorry I am.” He said the words quickly, as if afraid she would shut him up before he could get them all out.

Mercy had heard that one lots of times before. Her hand tightened on the telephone receiver. What if he was lying about being released? What if he’d escaped?

“And I want to find out what it would take for me to see Tedi again.”

A stab of fear chilled the anger momentarily. One of Mercy’s worst nightmares was that he would be able to come back into their lives and take Tedi away from her again. She would die before that would happen.

“I don’t mean I want to see her alone,” he said quickly. “I wouldn’t ask that. You would be there, and Ivy, and anybody else you wanted. I’d be willing to talk to her through the bars of a jail cell if I could just talk to her.”

“Which reminds me, why aren’t you in jail?” She still could not believe she was standing here talking to him and actually listening to anything he had to say.

Strangely, however, he had said nothing accusatory or threatening, and he hadn’t even tried to twist her words around to use them against her—a favorite of his. She couldn’t smell any alcohol on his breath, and the whites of his eyes were actually clear, giving good definition to the light blue of the irises. His blond hair was short and neat. He wore jeans and a gray plaid flannel shirt—not his usual style. People who met Theo Zimmerman for the first time had commented—occasionally within Mercy’s disgusted hearing—that he was the handsomest man in Knolls. At six feet tall he didn’t exactly tower over other men, but he stood out, and he knew how to do it to his best advantage. He’d used his physical attractiveness like a tool when he worked as a real estate agent—before he was fired for embezzlement.

His eyes held hers steadily. “I did everything they told me to do.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “The day I hit Tedi I wanted to die. I wanted the police to stick me back in the darkest and farthest cell and throw away the key.”

Mercy still did, yet she was aware of the fact that Theo had been the one to call the police on himself.

“I can never make it up to you or to Tedi,” he continued. “Or to anybody else who’s suffered because of me.” He frowned, still watching her. “They appointed an attorney to my case, and he convinced me I could make amends a lot better outside of prison than inside. But he told me something surprising, Mercy. Somebody paid my debts. The embezzlement charges were all dropped because the money was returned.”

She replaced the receiver on its base. “I’ve got patients who need me.”

“Why did you do it? You didn’t have to. You could’ve sold the house and car and kept the money.”

“Don’t flatter yourself that I did it for you, Theo,” she snapped.

He frowned, and his eyes narrowed slightly. “Oh, don’t worry. I wouldn’t be that stupid. You never—” he began, then caught his words, closed his mouth, shook his head.

“And don’t expect me to do it again,” she said. “I was your meal ticket for too many years, and I’ve run out of meals.”

“I’m not after a free meal, either. Can’t you just listen to me for once?” That old blue blaze flickered in his eyes, then was forcibly doused. “No, Mercy, that’s not what I’m here for.”

“Good. Tedi didn’t deserve to have an alcoholic father who not only tried to kill her, but was being dragged through the courts on embezzlement charges. She’s had a hard enough time because of you.”

He exhaled sharply, then inhaled again, as if to curb a quickly rising temper. “Look, I know that, okay? I’ve been locked up for it, the courts know it, everybody knows it! Why do you have to rub my nose in it, too? Can’t you see I’m trying to change?”

Mercy held his glare until the fire in his eyes once more died, then she turned her back on him. “Get out.”

Chapter Five

T edi Zimmerman always felt the darkness before she saw it. It wasn’t really a feeling, though. It was more just a sudden discovery that something was watching her, waiting for her to close her eyes, to fall asleep, to forget for just one night. That was when it pounced like a monster.

And so she lay awake with her light on, staring at the lumps and bumps of texture on the white ceiling and fighting the sleep that weighed down her eyelids when she wasn’t paying attention. She’d finished her homework hours ago. She’d come to bed hours ago, too, but she mustn’t sleep, because tonight was one of those nights when she knew what was out there. Sometimes it caught her before she could brace herself.

Should she go climb into bed with Mom? The monster could never get her there, and she always slept so well then. Mom didn’t, but she’d told Tedi to wake her up when the shadows got too close. Tonight they were lurking everywhere.

She reached up to pull the blankets back when she saw it, actually saw it! Darkness puddled in the closet corner, seeping across the wall in slow motion, trying to creep up on her. She pulled the covers back up over her chest and tried to breathe quietly. It wasn’t supposed to come this close, not in the light!

Surely it couldn’t come any closer than the corner. It was kind of dark in that spot—the darkest place in the room. It would have to wait there until she turned the light off, and she wasn’t going to do that.

She lay frozen for a long time, watching the blackness as her eyelids grew heavier and heavier. Then the blackness moved. It crept a few inches from the corner, then slowly inched across toward the door along the white glow of the wall. A small tendril poked out from the rest of it like a huge bony finger. It nearly reached the light switch before she realized what it was doing.

“No! You can’t do that! Stop it!” Her voice wouldn’t reach across the room. The tendril snatched off the light, then grew to fill the room with its evil. It tried to suffocate her.

“No! Mom, stop the monster! Mom!” She couldn’t make any sound. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even move her hands from her sides. The monster filled her mouth and nose and ears and slid over her face.

And then something changed. A warmth spread down her legs, wet and heavy, and the scream she had been trying to make finally broke through, loud and—

She woke up to find the light still on in the bedroom. The light snatched the monster away before she could see it. The door swung open, and Mom rushed in, her long hair tumbling across her face.

“Honey? Tedi, what is it?” Mom’s voice sounded strong. It sounded wonderful. She sat down on the edge of the bed and reached forward.

Tedi’s face contorted in tears, and she scooted forward into her mother’s embrace, hating the sharp smell that rose from the covers. She was too embarrassed to admit what she’d done, but still too scared to let go.

“It came again, Mom. He tried to get me again.”

“It’s okay. I’m here and he can’t get you now.” Mom’s grip was firm. She held Tedi and let her cry for a moment. “Come back to bed with me. I’ll keep that ol’ monster away from you.” She released Tedi and leaned back to look at her. “Okay with you?”

Tedi wiped her eyes and nose with the back of her hand and tried to keep the tears from falling, but her chin still trembled. “I can’t.” This was the third time since she’d been living with Mom that this…kind of accident had happened. She was sitting in a puddle of pee, and it was seeping everywhere. It felt awful, but how could she admit—

“Of course you can.” Mom straightened and stood from the bed, then reached down and pulled the comforter back. “Get your pajamas off and go clean up while I throw this bedding in the washer.”

The relief came strong and fast. Tedi looked down and grimaced. “How’d you know?”

“You never cry this hard over a bad dream.”

Tedi thought about that for a few seconds and realized that was right. Usually the dreams went away soon after she woke up.

“Besides,” Mom continued, “I know what urine smells like.” She sighed and shook her head, her dark eyes resting on Tedi’s face with sympathy and love. “It hurts worse when your whole body lets you down, doesn’t it?”

Tedi nodded.

“I know. It happened to me when I was eleven, too.”

“Does it still happen?”

Mom grinned. “Well, I don’t wet the bed anymore, but our bodies will always let us down. That’s why I decided to be a doctor. It’s a part of life.”

Tedi climbed out of the soggy sheets, taking care not to drip on the floor. “Does it have to be so embarrassing?”

“I always wondered that myself.” Mercy bent down and kissed Tedi’s forehead. “Come on. If we hurry we can catch a couple more hours of sleep before we have to get up and get you to school.”

Tedi grimaced as she peeled off her stinky pajamas. Today was Thursday, and Mr. Walters always gave tests on Thursday. She had to go to school. Mr. Walters constantly told her what a good job she did, not just on test days, but lots of times. He liked her, she could tell.

She ran into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Mom liked her, too. Parents were supposed to love their kids, but they didn’t always seem to like them or want to spend time with them. Tedi knew some kids at school whose parents didn’t seem to like them very much, and she felt sorry for them. That was what she’d felt like when she’d lived with Dad.

By the time Tedi was clean and dry and in fresh pajamas, she wasn’t scared anymore.

Mercy shoved the sheets into the washer with a little extra force, glad she’d decided to buy the protective mattress pad this summer. Tedi’s brilliant, wonderful, little-girl mind was working out some nightmare issues that nobody should ever have to face—issues Theodore Zimmerman had caused. And how would he have reacted to tonight’s mishap? With ridicule.

She slammed the lid on the washer. And now he thought he could just dance back into Tedi’s life and turn it upside down again. He was the most selfish, thoughtless—

“Mom?”

Mercy turned to find Tedi watching her from the laundry room door. “What, honey?”

“Are you mad at me for wetting the bed again?”

Mercy realized her jaws were set and she was gritting her teeth. “You’ve got to be kidding.” She made an attempt to relax her facial features into a smile and went over to put her arm around her daughter. “When have I ever been mad at you? You’re the most important person in my life.” She buried her face in Tedi’s hair and squeezed her close for a long moment. If only she could make the nightmares go away. “I hate to see you going through this. Come on. Let’s get to bed.” She walked with her arm around Tedi to the master bedroom.

Tedi was silent for a moment, then said, “You’re mad at Dad again, aren’t you?”

Oh boy. There was no hiding anything from this child. Mercy motioned for Tedi to crawl into the queen-size bed—a newly purchased luxury. “You’re far too discerning for an eleven-year-old.” She switched off the bedside lamp and reached over instinctively to tuck the covers around Tedi’s shoulders.

“Will you always be mad at him?” Tedi asked into the darkness.

Mercy was tempted to tell Tedi to just go to sleep and stop worrying so much. But Tedi would keep worrying, and Mercy knew how that felt. Her own mom had done the same thing to her. Of course, Ivy had not only been a mother but a shield for Mercy when Dad got drunk, and sometimes a punching bag.

And after all that, Mercy had married a guy just like him.

“So will you, Mom? Always be mad at Dad?”

She had to be honest. “I don’t know.”

There was a long silence, and Mercy had just decided Tedi had fallen asleep, when the small voice came again.

“Will I?”

Mercy winced at the quivering sound of her daughter’s voice. “I don’t know, honey. For your sake, I hope not.”

“Me, too. Grandma says we should always be able to forgive people who hurt us, or we’ll just be hurt worse. I don’t know what she means by that.”

“Well, medically speaking, when we harbor anger within ourselves it hurts us physically. It makes us sick, gives us ulcers, and scientists are discovering a lot of other things it can do.” And why was she lying here filling Tedi’s head with more things to worry about? She glanced at the lighted numbers of her clock. It was four-thirty in the morning. She didn’t feel up to a deep philosophical discussion.

“I asked Grandma how you’re supposed to forgive someone.” Apparently Tedi was in a philosophical mood.

“What did she say?” Mercy asked.

“She said it’s a hard thing to do without God’s help. Grandma uses God’s help a lot.”

Three months ago Mercy would have been irritated by her mother’s attempts to indoctrinate Tedi into her spiritual thought processes. Funny how things could change in such a short time. Mom had been a Christian for the past five years, and there seemed to be a peace about her that wasn’t there when Mercy was growing up. The peace seemed to increase with time, and Mom seemed to grow stronger, even through Grandma’s horrible cancer and death this spring, and Mom’s own heart problems, and the horror and helplessness of seeing Theodore mistreat Tedi.

Mom’s God was also Lukas’s God. After many talks with Lukas about it, Mercy had recently begun to consider the possibility that she might be interested in getting to know more about Him. But why would He want to get to know her? Her skepticism still ran deep.

Still, there was something about Christianity—not with every person who claimed the belief, but with enough people that she couldn’t help noticing the difference. And lately she felt surrounded by those people. Even Arthur Collins, in the midst of all his pain the other day, had prayed for her. She’d thought about it often….

“Mom?”

Mercy’s eyes flew open in the darkness, and she realized she’d dozed off. “Mmm-hmm?”

“Has Dad talked to you yet?”

Okay, that was a powerful wake-up. “Yes, Tedi.” And how did Tedi know about that? What was going on here? Remain calm. “Did he talk to you?”

“Yes. He came to the school the other day to spy on me. Abby saw him standing in the trees, and she made me go talk to him.”

“She made you?”

“Well, you know, she talked me into it.”

Mercy kept her breathing even, rehearsing the speech she would give Tedi and Abby on peer pressure later. What was Theodore up to?

“He asked if he could see me.”

Tedi didn’t say anything else for a moment, probably trying to determine how much more she could safely share. Mercy knew she had been far too indiscreet in the past about her bitterness toward Theo.

Mercy waited until she felt she could control her voice sufficiently, then asked, “How do you feel about that, honey?”

“I don’t know. He apologized.” Tedi paused for a moment. “He’s done that a lot of times before, hasn’t he, Mom?”

“Yes.”

“But Grandma’s always talking about how we should be willing to forgive over and over again. I forget how many times, but it’s a lot.” She hesitated. “Do you want me to see him?”

No! Never again! Why couldn’t he just cease to exist? If he truly realized the damage he had done to Tedi, why didn’t he leave the state and never come back? The truth as Mercy saw it was that he still didn’t care who else he hurt. He just wanted to charm his way back into their lives.

“Do you, Mom?”

Mercy sighed. It was far too early in the morning for this discussion. “I want to do what’s right for you. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that is right now. I think I’ll hold off on a decision until you and I can make it together and be more sure about how we feel.”

Tedi let out a little sigh, and Mercy could tell she’d given the right answer for the moment. Minutes later, the deep, even breathing of a somnolent child whispered through the room. Mercy relaxed.

But she did not sleep. Fear and anger filled her mind. If not for Tedi, this hatred wouldn’t have such a stranglehold. Mom kept talking to Tedi about the concept of forgiveness, but that was such a foreign concept when it came to her embittered relationship with Theo. Would it ever be possible? Was it even advisable?

At six o’clock Thursday morning Lukas finally awoke to an intermittent alarm and reached out toward the bedside table to slap the off button. The shutoff didn’t work. He hit it again, but it kept ringing. He opened nearsighted eyes, put on his glasses and realized he’d been abusing the call room telephone. He picked up the receiver.

Claudia, the RN on duty, didn’t wait for him to say anything. “Good morning, Dr. Bower.” Her mellow alto voice was pleasant and soothing, as it always was with patients. She knew how to tread lightly with a deadhead in the morning. “You’ve had at least four good hours of uninterrupted sleep, and it’s time for you to get to work.”

He slowly pushed the blankets back with his free hand. “Yes, Mother.”

“Don’t get smart with me, young man.” Lukas could hear the matronly nurse smiling through her words. “We’ve got an eleven-year-old girl in exam room three who is covered in blood and needs your attention. Looks like she’s been playing jump rope with barbed wire. Her parents are in worse emotional shape than she is.”

“I’ll be right there.” Lukas replaced the receiver and climbed out of bed, combing his hair with his fingers as he stumbled out of the room. Maybe Claudia had gotten really smart and brewed some of that typical E.R. coffee that took fifteen cubes of sugar to kill the taste.

After reading Claudia’s initial assessment, he entered the exam room to discover that, as usual, the nurse had not exaggerated her description. The eleven-year-old girl, Abby Cuendet, lay on the exam bed in pink pajamas with bloody rips in both legs. Lots of blood. Lukas frowned.

Abby tensed when she saw Lukas come in, and her dark eyes, behind thick-framed glasses, did not leave his face. Her parents, a young couple looking tear-streaked and shaky, hovered at her left side, and they, too, had blood on their clothes. Claudia worked on the other side of the bed, taking vitals and gently removing the pajama bottoms.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Bower.” Lukas stepped over to the parents and held out his hand.

They introduced themselves, separately, as Jason Cuendet and Lindy Cuendet. Not Mr. and Mrs. Cuendet.

“I’ll be checking Abby out this morning,” he said, noting as they shook his hand that they avoided getting close to each other. “Can you tell me what happened?”

Lindy shot her husband a sharp glance before she answered. “Abby got up earlier than usual this morning, and we didn’t know she was awake. She went out to feed the dog, and she got caught in a broken roll of barbed wire we had out back.” Her eyes narrowed at her husband. “Jason just had to bring it home because it was such a good bargain.”

Her husband didn’t reply, but his chin jutted out and his face flushed with barely restrained anger.

Lukas smiled at Abby. “You’re Tedi’s best friend from school.”

Abby’s face brightened and she nodded. “You recognized me.”

“Of course. Tedi talks about you all the time, and I remember you from the school picnic a couple of weeks ago.”

“Tedi’s supposed to spend the night with me tonight,” Abby informed him.

“Well, we’ll just have to get you all fixed up so you can do that.” He watched Claudia set up the suture tray, and he saw Abby’s eyes widen with fear.

He bent over the wounds. “Now, don’t worry, Abby. I’m just going to see what these look like right now.” She had three gashes on her left leg below her knee and one on her right ankle. They didn’t look as bad as Lukas had expected from all the blood. They weren’t deep puncture wounds, which was good, but they were fairly gapped, and a couple of them would need two-layer closures.

He bent to examine one of the gashes more closely, and Abby winced.

Her mother inhaled sharply, then let out a low moan. “I can’t do this,” she muttered and rushed out of the room with her hand over her mouth.

Lukas let her go. It was easier on the child for the parent to leave the room than to pass out or become sick right there by the bed. He returned to the wounds, noting with concern that there was still some active bleeding, but since there was no involvement of the muscle, he didn’t worry too much about it.

“Jason, when was Abby’s last tetanus shot?” he asked. “Does she have any drug allergies that you know of?”

The man glanced at the wounds, then at Lukas, looking helpless. “I’ll have to go ask Lindy.” He left to find his wife.

Lukas gave Claudia instructions for skin prep and topical anesthetic, then left to get more information from the parents. He had just reached the central desk when he heard low, angry voices in the entrance to the first trauma room.

“You have to blame me for everything, don’t you?” Jason Cuendet spat. “But you can’t even be there for your own daughter when she needs you most.”