Silent Pledge. Hannah Alexander

a breathing treatment started.”

      Clarence Knight just happened to be in Ivy Richmond’s kitchen, raiding her refrigerator and practically swallowing three frozen chocolate chip cookies whole, when the phone rang for the second time Saturday night.

      He jerked backward and knocked his head on the overhead compartment where Ivy had been hiding the treats from him. He thumped his elbow on the door and spilled crumbs down the front of his size 6XL T-shirt in his rush to get to the phone before the ringing could wake Ivy. If she came in and found him eating, she would roast him whole over an open fire, all four hundred twenty pounds of him.

      He jerked up the receiver, then realized his mouth was still full. He chewed and swallowed. “Mmm-hmm?”

      “Hello? Who is this?” It was a man’s voice. Sounded familiar. Sounded upset. “Clarence?”

      “Mmm-hmm.”

      “Is Dr. Mercy there?”

      Clarence swallowed again. “Hmm-mmm.”

      “Do you know where she is? This is Buck. I just tried her at home, and I couldn’t get her. I need her bad. Kendra tried to—” His voice broke. “She needs help. I’ve got to get her somewhere…got to get her on some oxygen.” There was another crack in his voice. “Clarence? You there?”

      Clarence swallowed again. “Hol’ up, Buck. Ith’s okay.” One more swallow. There. “Mercy dropped Tedi off here a little bit ago, ’cause she was on her way to the clinic for some emergency. What’s the matter with Kendra?”

      Buck took a breath. “She tried to kill herself. Carbon monoxide poisoning. She was running her car motor out in the garage when I found her. The doors and windows were all shut.”

      Clarence grunted as if he’d been hit in the gut with a football. “Oh, man.” Poor Kendra. And poor Buck. “She okay? Where are you?” He knew they were still having trouble in their marriage, but was her life bad enough for her to want to die?

      “We’re still at home. I’ve got to get her to Dr. Mercy’s,” Buck said. “There’ll be oxygen there.”

      “Yeah, Dr. Mercy’ll check her out. Want me to call the clinic and see if I can let her know you’re coming?”

      “Yeah. Thanks, Clarence.”

      There was so much relief in Buck’s voice, Clarence went even further. “You’ll be coming right by here on your way….” He hesitated. He’d just started getting back out into public after losing all that weight, and he still had a long way to go. Could he do this?

      Yeah, he’d do anything for Buck. Buck had been there for him when he was in trouble. “I could meet you out at the street. All you’d have to do would be stop and let me get in and ride with you. Then you wouldn’t have to do this all by yourself.” And maybe he could talk to Kendra some. He knew firsthand what depression could do to a person.

      There was a pause, and he braced himself for Buck to turn him down. He’d lost over a hundred pounds since last spring, but he’d still draw a big crowd at a circus sideshow. He was big and clumsy and took up two seats wherever he went, and strangers stared and laughed, and he knew the few friends he had were probably ashamed to be seen—

      “You’d do that for me, Clarence?” came Buck’s relieved voice. “It would help.”

      Clarence blew out a bunch of air he hadn’t realized he was holding in his lungs. “Sure would, pal. Look at what you did for me last fall. I’ll be waiting out front when you get here.”

      He hung up and glanced toward the hallway that led to Ivy’s bedroom suite. Good. No lights, and he thought he could hear her snoring over the hum of the refrigerator. Mercy’s daughter, Tedi, had gone straight to sleep in the spare bedroom without waking her grandma. He guessed neither of them had heard him on the phone.

      Ivy had once compared his voice to a derailed locomotive running loose through the house, and she really griped when he woke her up in the middle of the night. Especially when she caught him eating.

      Clarence and his sister, Darlene, had come to live with Ivy Richmond—Dr. Mercy’s mom—three months ago when their health got too bad to live on their own. And Ivy had bullied him every day since then to eat right, exercise, take his vitamins, exercise, take his medicine, drink a bucket of water a day and exercise. She’d even tried to make him go to church with her. He’d done everything but that.

      Since he couldn’t bend over and pick up all the crumbs he’d scattered on his way to the phone, he shoved them aside with his foot. Though sloppy and crude, it might save his life. He had to hurry and brush his teeth and get out to the curb. He wanted to be there when that pickup truck came rolling by.

       Shouldn’t’ve taken that Lasix a couple of hours ago. He knew from Mercy that the medicine kept him from retaining fluid, but it also kept him running to the bathroom all night long.

      Crystal Hollis lay on Mercy’s softest, most comfortable exam bed in an overheated room, with a pink teddy-bear sheet draped over the lower half of her body. Some of the color had returned to her face, and the sound of her breathing was not as labored, nor her lips as blue, as a few moments before.

      Mercy pressed the warmed bell of her stethoscope against the little girl’s chest. “Take a breath for me, honey.”

      Seven-year-old Crystal had the body weight of a five-year-old, with stick-thin arms and legs and a slightly protruding abdomen—clearly the cystic fibrosis affected her pancreas as well as her pulmonary system. Which meant Crystal could eat as much as an adult and still not put on weight. It was a constant battle. She had an aura of maturity in her longsuffering expression and sad gray-blue eyes that befitted someone seventy years older.

      Her chest sounded a little better, but not enough. She coughed and Mercy grimaced. The breathing treatments weren’t going to cut it this time.

      “How’s she doin’, Dr. Mercy?” Odira’s deep voice rumbled from her chair four feet away. She leaned forward, her puffy face filled with tense worry.

      Mercy sighed and placed the stethoscope back around her neck. She tucked the sheet back up over Crystal’s bony shoulders and took the little girl’s hand in her own. “I’d like to see her breathing better, Odira.” She perched on the exam stool beside the bed and faced the child’s great-grandmother. “The X-rays don’t show what I suspected, but this could be early pneumonia. I’d like to have her checked out by a pulmonologist in Springfield. I could transfer her to St. John’s and…” The expression of sudden fear in Odira’s face halted her words.

      “But you’re her doctor,” the older woman argued. “You’re the one we trust. Couldn’t you just do one of those consults they talk about on TV? That big place up in Springfield would be so scary for Crystal, and they might not even let me stay with her. You know how those big places are.”

      Mercy patted Crystal’s hand and released it, then stood up and walked over to the chest X-rays placed in the lighted viewer box. The films most definitely indicated bronchitis. Time to blast those lungs with high-powered antibiotics. Odira always made sure Crystal received the nutritional support Mercy suggested, including the pancreatic enzyme supplements and vitamins, but Mercy would increase the caloric intake even more for a while. Crystal’s fever had dropped a little, but Mercy didn’t want to take any chances.

      Accompanied by the unrhythmic sound of Odira’s loud breathing, Mercy checked Crystal’s heart once more. With severe disease, right-sided heart failure could occur, but there was no sign that the CF had progressed that far. Would it be possible to keep them here?

      Mercy turned around. “Odira, are you feeling okay?”

      “Don’t worry about me, Dr. Mercy. I’m just worried about keepin’ our girl in Knolls. You people know how to take care of us right.”

      “I’ll try,” Mercy said. “I’d like to get her temperature down before I decide.”

      “You