Silent Pledge. Hannah Alexander

      Broad-shouldered Tex was in her early thirties and could probably throw the whole biker gang on their kickstands if they got too rowdy. She was also Lukas’s next-door neighbor in a duplex at the edge of town. Her first cousin was Lauren McCaffrey, who was once one of Lukas’s favorite nurses down at Knolls—until she got him involved in this mess.

      Lukas pulled on a pair of sterile gloves as he followed Tex’s athletic form to the curtained exam cubicle. She had set out 5.0 nylon for the suture and the requested lidocaine for anesthetic. Good. He glanced at the patient’s name on the chart again, hoping he could pronounce the last name properly. Proper name enunciation helped raise the patient comfort level, and he really wanted this particular patient to be comfortable.

      “We’re ready to start, Mr. Golho—”

      “I told you when I came in, don’t call me mister,” the muscled, tattooed man growled from beneath the ice pack on his nose. “Nobody calls me mister when I’m on the road.”

      Oh, yeah. Lukas glanced at a note Tex had penciled in on her chart. So much for proper name enunciation. How could he have forgotten? “Catcher.”

      “Ha!” came a voice from the other side of the curtain. Apparently Catcher’s antagonist hadn’t fallen asleep after all. “Why don’t you tell ’em where you got the name?”

      “Shut up.”

      “You want to know where it came from, Doc? They called him that ’cause he used to ride without a shield, and he caught bugs in his teeth.”

      “I said shut up!” Catcher came halfway off his exam bed before Tex grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back.

      “How do you feel about another tattoo, Catcher?” she asked, giving him a leering grin as she eased him back onto the exam bed. “Dr. Bower, here, is gonna test your pain tolerance.”

      While Lukas cringed at her choice of words, Catcher repositioned the ice pack on his nose and laid his head back against the pillow. “No prob. Go to it.” He closed his eyes.

      Lukas nodded. “Okay, Catcher. Have you ever had an allergic reaction to any anesthetic in the past?”

      One eye came open. “Why?”

      “Because I’ll be injecting lidocaine into the wound.”

      “No, you won’t.” Both eyes were open now, and their dark brown-gray gaze held Lukas in a hard stare.

      “Excuse me?”

      “No ’caines. Can’t do them.”

      No lidocaine? No anesthesia? Lukas did not want to hear this. He did not feel safe sticking a needle and Dermalon into the flesh of an already combative drunk. “You mean you’ve had a reaction in the past?”

      “I mean I’ve been busting a cocaine habit, and I’m not going back to that.” Catcher took a firmer grip on his ice pack. “Just do it.”

      Lukas looked at Tex and shrugged. Coming to work in Herald had been a big mistake. Oh, Lord, let my fingers be tender, because any moment I may have to eat them.

      “Am I gonna die now?” Crystal’s matter-of-fact tone stabbed the silence in the exam room.

      Mercy turned from her vigil by the telephone, where she’d been waiting for Dr. Boxley to return her call. Thank goodness Odira was still in the other room. “No, honey.” She got up and crossed to Crystal’s side and pressed the back of her hand against the child’s face. “You’re just sick again. Are you feeling worse?”

      “No.”

      Mercy gently stuck the wand of the tympanic thermometer into Crystal’s ear. She waited a few seconds to get a reading. The temp was almost back down to normal. “Aren’t you feeling any better?”

      Crystal tilted her head sideways, seriously considering the question. “Yes.”

      Mercy sat down on the exam stool next to the bed and took Crystal’s left hand in both of her own. “Then why do you think you’re going to die?”

      Crystal’s clear water-blue eyes held Mercy’s for a long, quiet moment. “A girl at school told me.”

      “Then don’t listen to her.”

      “But then I asked Gramma. She said I might, but when I do, I’ll go straight to heaven and I’ll never get sick again.” She paused for a few seconds. “I’d like that.”

      As a mother, Mercy couldn’t help imagining her own daughter saying those words. She’d never heard a child so young expressing a wish to die. What hurt the worst was the realization of Crystal’s suffering, both physical and emotional. From a year of treating Crystal, Mercy knew that the little girl, with her soft heart, worried more about her great-grandma Odira than she did about herself. Odira wasn’t in the best health, with her excess weight and high blood pressure. What would become of Crystal if anything happened to her great-grandmother?

      “But, Crystal, we want to keep you here with us longer,” Mercy said softly. “I know it might be selfish of us, when heaven is so wonderful, but do you think you could be strong for Gramma and me?” Jesus, what do I say? How can this be happening? She tried not to think about the situation, but the questions grew too numerous too quickly. Her faith still felt so fragile.

      “Gramma needs me,” Crystal said quietly. “I’ll stay awhile.”

      They heard the sound of Odira’s footsteps and heavy breathing, and then she came lumbering through the open exam-room door. “I didn’t even think about using a Popsicle to get Crystal’s temperature down. Here’s a red one, her favorite. You’ve got a nice little freezer in there. Looks like you’ve got that back room all set up like an emergency room. I bet you use it a lot, what with the hospital—”

      They heard the crash of a door flying open out in the waiting room, then the boom of a familiar voice—like a jet during takeoff. “Dr. Mercy! You in here?”

      Clarence held the door open for Buck to carry Kendra through. “Dr. Mercy!” he called again. “Got those patients for you.” He tapped Buck’s shoulder and gestured toward the open doorway that led to the exam rooms at the back of the waiting room. When he’d telephoned Mercy she’d told him just to bring Kendra to the first exam room. Clarence knew where everything was. He should. He’d been here enough times.

      After he’d finally lost enough weight to get around on his feet a little better, Dr. Mercy had made him come to her office once a week so she could weigh him and check him over. He hated going, hated the way the other patients in the waiting room stared at him and whispered. Still, when Mercy asked him to do something, he did it. If she asked nice.

      Mercy came rushing down the hallway, her long dark hair drawn back in a loose ponytail, wearing baggy old jeans and a thick wool sweater. Her dark eyes looked tired. “Hi, Buck. Bring her back here. I have a bed ready for her. I’ll need you and Clarence to help keep an eye on her.” She reached forward and laid a gentle hand against Kendra’s cheek, and some of the tiredness cleared from her eyes. “Hang in there, Kendra. We’ll get you on some oxygen.” She pulled the stethoscope from around her neck, warmed it in her hand for a second, then placed it against Kendra’s chest.

      Clarence watched Mercy as she guided Buck into the exam room and helped him lay his wife on the bed. He enjoyed watching her work. When she treated patients, she acted as if they were a part of her own family. Of course, that also meant she nagged them like family. At five feet eight, she was four inches shorter than Clarence, but there were times when she seemed bigger than life, especially when she stood over him as he balanced on that dinky little exam bed wearing nothing but his shorts and a sheet.

      But the times she made the biggest impact on him were when she saw his depression and bullied it out of him. He didn’t get that way as often as he used to, but some days the heaviness of his thoughts messed him up big-time. Those were the days he didn’t want to diet, didn’t want to exercise, didn’t even