Yet God did.“Lord, what should I do?”
He felt a whisper to send Gen a message.A kind one.Gentle.That treated her as Jesus would.So he tapped out a message.
And prayed.
* * *
“Dr.Rivas?We have a child coming into trauma two.”
Gen nodded, stuffing in the last of her ham sandwich, as she completed her report and pressed submit.Today had felt immeasurably long, and she just wanted to get home and sleep, but even home was hardly a sanctuary these days.
Mom had frozen her out.Bella’s fears only exacerbated her own.Then there was the constant threat of Kyle, of when he’d show up, what he’d do, what his parents would do, that made her wonder what legal recourse she could take.Mom had hinted at that this morning when she’d taken a second to stop growling, but Gen wasn’t sure what kind of protections they could have.Gen’s was the name on Bella’s birth certificate, not Kyle’s, so that seemed fairly solid.But who knew what money and connections could do?
The doors crashed open as paramedics accompanied a gurney, holding the unconscious, blood-stained figure of a girl.
“What do we have?”
“Head wound, possible broken arm.Found at the bottom of the stairs.”
“Name?”
“No ID.But a neighbor says her name is Lily.”
Her heart thumped.“Lily?”Not—?
She checked.Ohno.
The next minutes passed as her training battled with fresh fears.Patients shouldn’t gain favorite status in her life, but this one had.Lily Hendrickson had been schlepped from foster home to foster home and battled a bewildering amount of injuries along the way.It had reached a point when Gen had even wondered if she should step in and volunteer to foster Lily at her home.But the system wouldn’t allow it, so she hadn’t, instead waiting for the awful certainty that the girl would return to ED one day, battered and bruised again.
Throughout it all Lily had been sweet, stubbornly hope-filled, a little Orphan Annie, sure the sun would come out tomorrow.And yet time and time again she was shrouded with clouds instead.
Once again the emergency room’s trauma team worked as a machine, each person playing their role.
“We need to intubate.”Gen glanced at Francis.“I’ll do that while you check the X-ray.”
She glanced at Marcie, whose pressed lips showed this had hit her hard too.So many of them had helped Lily over the years.The portable X-ray soon revealed a fractured skull.
How could this have happened?Poor girl.Gen blinked back tears, calling on all her years of medical training to focus and get the job done.Lily did not need her tears.She needed Gen’s help.
She glanced at the support worker.“Any news on the foster parents?Anyone know how this happened?”
“Sorry, nothing.”
A few minutes later her course of action was clear.“I’m sending her to the OR.I suspect there’s bleeding on the brain, but a CT will confirm it, and if so, it needs to be carried out straightaway.”
She gently grasped Lily’s arm, wishing she knew the right words to say, the right words to pray, even.But what was the point?How could God—if He did exist—let this happen to such a sweet girl?What was the point of praying to Him, even if He was real?
“Let’s go.”
The gurney was whisked away, and she shuddered out a breath, trying to keep it together as the rest of the team exhaled.
“How can people be so wicked?”the anesthetist muttered.
She nodded.Wickedness wasn’t a concept she thought about often, but in this case it seemed apt.It almost felt like Lily was a target for an evil spirit or something that liked to take potshots at the weak and vulnerable.Which sounded veryHalloween-like of her, but while she’d always hated watching horror movies, and Kyle used to laugh at her for being lame, she also knew that there were some things in this world that medical science couldn’t explain.
Like people who got healed miraculously.People who suddenly presented with mental illness challenges, as they snarled and appeared to take on a different persona, speaking in voices that led psychiatrists to initially label the condition as one thing, yet further psychiatric testing revealed nothing to support that claim.
She’d seen it all.And wickedness, deliberate actions motivated by malice and evil intent, hurt her heart.Especially when perpetrated against a child.
