Carry the Light Read Free Page B

mind raced with questions that she hurled at the caller. “Aunt Dorothy? Are you sure? I was just with her. She was fine. What’s wrong?”
    â€œThe doctor is with her now. She appears stable at the moment, but she’s asking for you. We couldn’t reach you until she found the paper she had written your cell number on. Can I tell her that you’ll be coming to be with her?”
    â€œYes. Absolutely. Of course I will,” Charlene cried, blinking back tears as she looked for a place to turn around. “Tell her I’m on my way. It’ll take me an hour. Just tell her I’m coming,” she directed, praying that the good Lord would continue to keep watch over Aunt Dorothy.

Chapter Two
    C harlene pulled into a parking space in the visitors’ lot across the street from Tilton General Hospital just after nine o’clock—well ahead of her husband, who was on his way from the bowling alley to meet her. She slammed the car into Park, grabbed her purse and locked up with a quick click of the remote.
    She practically jogged toward the emergency room on the east side of the hospital, where she could see the steady pulse of the flashing red lights on the ambulance parked at the entrance. Her purse, which hung from her shoulder, swung in a short arc with each pounding step, mirroring the emotional pendulum that dragged her from fear that Aunt Dorothy might be seriously ill to the hope she had just had another one of her little “spells.”
    When Charlene finally reached the entrance, she paused to whisper a prayer before passing through the automatic double doors. Inside, a security guard seated behind a desk cocked a brow, and she shifted the strap of her purse. “My aunt…Dorothy Gibbs…They brought her here…I need to see her,” she stammered.
    His gaze softened when he handed her a visitor’s pass. “Information desk is straight ahead. Then take a number. Take a seat.”
    She swallowed hard and glanced around the emergency room to get her bearings. Like most people, she supposed, she was not fond of hospitals. She had been fortunate to have raised two active children without ever needing to visit an emergency room.
    As she might have expected, the air was heavy with anxiety and suffering, but also held a peculiar sense of boredom or, perhaps, a sense of resignation that she found disturbing.
    Straight ahead, a bank of signs hung from the ceiling over a long, low counter in front of a series of five small, semi-partitioned areas. One sign read Information. Three were labeled Patient Registration. One read Intake. Non-medical personnel in business attire toiled with computers and paperwork at their stations, serving visitors and patients at the counter.
    Charlene got in the information line behind two women and looked around. Through an opaque wall behind the security guard, she could see a good two dozen people seated in a stark, gray-painted waiting room, but Aunt Dorothy was not among them. Several children were lying on the floor, coloring or reading, while other youngsters raced back and forth between the restrooms and the water fountain.
    The gray plastic chairs along the walls were nearly all filled with patients and their loved ones. An elderly woman sat alone in a wheelchair in the corner. Another woman lay on a gurney, her face to the wall. Everyone was waiting for medical attention. Charlene didn’t know if Aunt Dorothy had had to wait, too, or if she had arrived by ambulance. Either way, Charlene’s heart trembled with regret that she had not been by her aunt’s side.
    At that moment, a pair of metal doors swung open on Charlene’s right, revealing the very heart of the busy emergency room, where she caught a glimpse of medical personnel hustling to care for patients behind curtained treatment rooms.
    â€œNext.”
    With her visitor’s pass in hand, she stepped up to the counter, where a middle-aged woman with