“It sounds like you’ve got your hands full running this town.”
Nika shrugged; she didn’t want him to think she felt that way. But it was the truth, nevertheless. Port Orlov, like so many Inuit villages in Alaska, was a wreck. With far too few social services and way too many problems, there were times when she felt marooned in the wilderness. Even if the town could just manage to get a decent, full-time medical clinic, it would be a huge step forward, but try finding the money for it, much less a doctor to staff it. For all of her noble intentions, Nika only had two hands and there were only so many hours in the day.
“We make do with what we’ve got,” she finally said.
“Sometimes,” he sympathized, “the satisfaction has to come from knowing you’ve done all that you can. No matter what the odds.”
She had the feeling that he was talking about his own work, too, and she wondered what terrible scenarios he might be revisiting in his mind. He had the look of a man who’d seen things no one should see, done things no one should ever have to have done. And despite their differences—not to mention that fact that they’d gotten off to a bumpy start at the hockey rink—she was starting to feel as if Slater might prove to be a kindred spirit.
In a backwater like this, they weren’t easy to come by.
Chapter 16
“Who do you trust?” Charlie asked, staring into the Skype lens attached to his computer.
“You mean which doctor?” the woman asked, confused. “I don’t know, they’re all so confusing, talking about carcinomas and—”
“Who do you trust?” Charlie broke in, his powerful hands gripping the wheels of his chair.
The woman on the screen visibly drew into herself, shoulders hunched, head down. Her straggly hair looked plastered to her skull.
“Who gives it to you straight?”
“You do?” she ventured, like a student hoping she’d found the right answer.
“Wrong!” he exploded.
She shrank further.
“I’m just the vessel, I’m just the messenger. Jesus gives it to you straight. ‘Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ Jesus is saying, put your faith in me—all your faith, not just a little bit, not just whatever you think you can spare—but the whole enchilada.”
“I do,” she pleaded, “I do believe in the whole thing, in God, but—”
“No ‘buts’ allowed! God says give it all, and I will return it all, one hundred fold. What’s holding you back?”
She paused. Children’s voices could be heard from another room. “I’m afraid,” she said in a furtive voice. “I’m so afraid.”
Charlie realized he was losing her; he was coming on too strong. This woman was still in the grip of worldly concerns, she was afraid of dying, and she was putting her faith in all the wrong places. He deliberately lowered his voice and adopted a more consoling tone. “I was once like you,” he said, “before God took away the use of my legs. I lived in fear, every day, fear of losing whatever I had—my health, my family, the love of my friends.” Even Charlie had to admit that the love of his friends was a bit of a stretch, but he was on a roll and could be forgiven. “And then, God gave me a good hard slap, he wrapped my canoe around a rock in the Heron River Gorge and stuck me in this wheelchair like he was planting a turnip in the ground.” In the time before the Forestry Service had gotten there to rescue him, Charlie had seen Jesus, as plain as he saw this woman on his computer screen now. He was wearing a long white robe, just like in the pictures, only his hair was long and black and the crown of thorns sparkled, kind of like it was made of tinsel. “And I have been growing ever since. My body has shriveled, but my spirit is as tall as a sequoia.” He had never seen Jesus again, but he knew that that day would come—either in this world, or the next.
Just out of range of the lens, and in a low voice not meant to be picked up by the computer, Rebekah said, “We’re going to be late.” She was standing in the doorway to the meeting room, her coat and gloves already on.
He waved one hand behind him, again too low to be seen, to signal that he had heard her. The woman on the screen was crying.
“I’m not as strong as you,” she murmured. “Between the biopsies and the scans and all the tests, I’m just … exhausted.”
“I hear you, Sister.” He called all of his online parishioners either Sister or Brother. “But God never gives us more than He thinks we can handle.”
“Bathsheba’s waiting in the car,” Rebekah hissed.