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big red pickup disappear into the cold darkness. Kendra’s condition was stabilized. She had recovered, clinically, from the carbon monoxide poisoning and now sat between Buck and Clarence on her way to four days of forced hospitalization in Springfield.

      This was the right thing to do; Mercy knew it.

      So why did it hurt so badly to remember the look of betrayal in Kendra’s eyes when the men placed her gently into the cab of the truck? Mercy shivered at the wind and stepped back inside the waiting room, though she didn’t shut the door.

      As she watched tiny flakes of snow glitter in the light from the front step, other memories haunted her—of seeing her daughter terrified and in danger, and being unable to help; of feeling frightened herself by her own father’s alcoholism. She’d lived with past pain for so long she frequently had trouble enjoying the present.

      Another gust of wind scattered tiny flakes across her face, and she finally closed and locked the door behind her. “Lord, help Kendra to see the truth of Your love,” she whispered. “Heal her, Lord. And please complete the healing in me.”

      Mercy had begun, in the past few months, to put her patients in God’s hands as quickly as possible when her worry for them began. All she had to do now was learn to leave them there, to stop trying to control every situation.

      She went into the front office and e-mailed the final pages they would need at Cox North for Kendra’s admittance.

      The telephone rang beside her as the information was posted, and she picked up quickly.

      “Hi, Dr. Mercy, this is Vickie over at Knolls Community. I thought you might still be in your office. I just wanted to let you know that Crystal and Odira are both settled in, and Crystal was already asleep when I left the room. We’ll keep a close eye on both of them tonight.”

      Mercy felt a little easing of tension at the nurse’s reassuring tone. “Thank you, Vickie. I’ll be over in the morning to check on Crystal.”

      After hanging up, Mercy walked back into her office.

      She stepped over to her desk and plopped down into the leather chair for a moment. She stretched out her arms and flexed her shoulders, rolled her head around and took a few deep breaths. Odira hadn’t looked healthy tonight. Maybe in the morning Mercy could check her out.

      Time to go home, but right now she was too tired to move. Would she ever again get a whole eight hours of sleep in a row? Should she consider getting a partner to take part of the load? At one time she’d hoped Lukas might stay around and help her with the influx until the E.R. was complete. She’d even dropped a few hints on several occasions, during those rare times the two of them had been together in the past three months. He hadn’t caught the hint. She hid her disappointment, telling herself that he was, at heart, an emergency physician. Family practice would probably bore him.

      But deep down she found herself wondering was he, for some reason, avoiding her?

      She knew he cared for her. She knew it. She could see tenderness in his eyes when he looked at her and hear gentleness in his voice. He cared a lot about Tedi, as well, and the two of them spent hours together laughing and talking and working on homework assignments when Lukas was in town.

      Mercy couldn’t help the doubts that surfaced, memories of last fall when Lukas had told her he couldn’t see her anymore. But hadn’t all that changed? During the explosions at the hospital, Mercy experienced a more powerful explosion in her own life—she’d realized she could no longer deny God’s power or her need for Him. She had accepted Christ and had announced her newfound faith to a congregation of people at the Covenant Baptist Church. Since then she had witnessed the power of her new faith in many ways. The most obvious was her sudden ability to get along with Theodore—not with perfect ease and not always without resentment, but enough to make Tedi comfortable when they met together.

      She glanced at the framed snapshots she kept of Tedi on the credenza—baby pictures, and then school pictures from kindergarten to the most recent sixth-grade shot. Tedi was the joy of her life. Just spending time with that bubbly, outspoken child renewed her, made her laugh and gave her courage. After everything Tedi had been through, from the divorce nearly six years ago to the near-death experience last year, she was recovering and growing every day. No parent could be more proud.

      And then Mercy’s gaze drifted to the unframed snapshot of Lukas, the only picture she had of him. She still remembered the day she’d snapped it. He was covered in mud from a hike in the rain. His glasses were steamed up enough to camouflage the blue of his eyes, but not enough to hide the smile that radiated across his face, relieving a habitually serious expression. In the picture, his light brown hair was darkened to coffee. His well-built five-foot-ten frame carried him well, and somehow the way he stood and looked at the camera revealed his affection for her. Or maybe his demeanor had impressed itself upon her so much since last spring that she automatically saw it when she looked at him.

      She laid her head back and closed her eyes. She would never forget their first hike together in the Mark Twain National Forest in August last year. The spiderwebs were thick across the narrow, overgrown logging trail they followed. Lukas had insisted on walking ahead of her, watching for snakes, knocking down the webs for her, even though he hated spiders. His thoughtfulness was one of the many traits about him that endeared him to her. She didn’t have the heart to point out that she’d been hiking those trails for years and was used to the spiders and the snakes and the ticks and the chiggers. She let him help her over the rough spots, as he had been doing in her life since April. But she was in another rough spot now, and he wasn’t here.

      Did he know how much she needed him?

      Lukas paused at the threshold to the E.R. call room. A big black spider at least an inch in width skittered across the wall and behind the curtain beside the twin-size bed. Lukas hated spiders. His oldest brother, Ben, had been bitten by a brown recluse years ago and would always bear a deep, ugly scar on his right forearm, just above the wrist. He’d been in the hospital for a week and a half. Lukas was only eight at the time, and the memory had scarred his psyche worse than it had Ben’s.

      Good thing Mercy wasn’t here to see Wimp Bower in action. Of course, if Mercy were here, he would put on a brave front and chase the spider down and kill it, gritting his teeth and shuddering with every move. And Mercy would be laughing because she knew how much he hated spiders. And he wouldn’t mind, because he loved to hear her laugh. She laughed so much more now than she did when he first met her.

      And here he was thinking about her again.

      Ignoring the slight scent of mildew that hovered throughout the call room, he stepped inside and crossed to the student desk placed beneath the wall phone.

      And just then it rang. He jumped backward, as if the spider hovering somewhere in the darkness had suddenly growled an attack signal.

      Irritated with himself, he grabbed up the receiver. “Yes.”

      “Dr. Bower, a man just came in by ambulance,” said the new, inexperienced secretary, Carmen. “They say he looks like a stroke. He’s strapped down, and Tex had just left to go down to the cafeteria to find something to eat, and I’m all alone here.”

      “Is he responsive?” Lukas hadn’t heard an ambulance report, and he’d only walked back here a couple of minutes ago.

      “Just a minute and I’ll ask.”

      “Never mind. I’ll be right there. Have Tex paged over the speakers.” Lukas hung up and returned to the E.R. to the overhead blare of Carmen’s voice. He walked into the cardiac room to find Quinn Carnes and Sandra Davis—the paramedic and emergency tech—transferring a seemingly unconscious elderly man from a gurney to the exam cot. The patient was fully immobilized, arms and all, to a long spine board, with head blocks, C-collar, the works. He had a hundred percent nonrebreather mask over his face. But no IV. No ET tube, so his airway was not protected.

      “Hey there, Doc,” Quinn said, walking over to the desk in the exam room and tossing his paperwork down. He reached up in a habitual gesture and scratched at the thick,