Ket’s eyes flew open and she gasped. “Give me a husband! Surely that’s not what God’s saying to me!” But she lay there pleading to God for a long time, and the impression did not cease.
Finally Ketura took a deep breath. All right, God. If I’m going to have a husband, You’ll have to give him to me because I’m not hunting for Prince Charming on my own anymore!
Chapter Three
Ketura laid her pen down and flexed the fingers of her right hand. They were aching from writing steadily in her diary for the past hour. Now as she leaned back and studied what she had written, a wry thought came to her. Here I am like a teenage girl, keeping a journal. How sophomoric!
Perhaps it was unusual for someone to keep a journal faithfully for so many years, but it had become a part of Ket’s life. The first page went all the way back to when she was seven years old and had announced firmly to her mother, “I’m going to keep a diary all my life.” Her mother had smiled indulgently, but Ket had found putting her thoughts and emotions on paper a good way to analyze who she was. The shelf in her closet now was filled with a line of blank books bought at the bookstore, all of them filled. From time to time she took them out and studied the careful, adolescent handwriting of her early years, finding that almost as interesting as the contents. It had amused her at times to see how earthshaking and traumatic certain events were to a fourteen-year-old, such as making an error in a softball game, which had cost the team the championship. She had written plainly “I think I’ll kill myself!” at the end of that entry.
Now, however, her life as it was capsuled onto these pages had become more important to her. Ever since she had started feeling like a giantess, as she put it, and lacked the prettiness that attracted boys, she had recorded her feelings on the pages instead of sharing them with someone else.
Now as she half closed her eyes and thought how horrified she would be if anyone were to read her journals, the impulse came to burn them all. It was not the first time she had thought of such a thing, but she knew she could not do that for these books had become like old friends to her.
Maybe one day when I’m an old, old woman I’ll read these, and what I’m thinking will seem as foolish as my actions do at the present. She leaned forward, straightened, arched her back and read what she had written.
April 6
I hardly know how to put down what I feel. I have always been so resistant and even had superior feelings for those who said, “God told me to do such and such.” It always seemed to me that they were boasting that they had a straight line to God that the rest of us lacked. I still feel that way—but for the past three days I have been haunted by what has happened.
Does God really speak to people in dreams and in visions? Oh, I know He did speak in such a way to characters in the Bible, but surely now we have the Bible. And why would He speak to me? It would seem likely that if He spoke to anyone so directly, it would be to His chosen vessels—missionaries on the field, evangelists, people working in hard situations in the inner city. Those people whom I admire so much need a direct voice from God.
I can’t get away from it! I heard nothing that could have been caught on a tape recorder or was an audible voice, and yet still within my mind, or heart, or soul—or wherever it is that that part of us who talks and listens to God resides—it keeps coming back over and over again, “and thine ears shall hear a Word behind thee saying, This is the way, walk ye in it.”
Oh, Lord, I am ready to listen to any Word You have to say—but what Word! Are You really saying that You’re going to bring a man into my life who will be my husband? My head is full of strange, confused thoughts, and I haven’t been able to work as I should for the past three days. People are starting to give me strange looks, but still that verse keeps coming into my heart. Is it from You, or is it what a psychiatrist would call wish fulfillment? I have no idea, but, Lord, if it’s not from You, I pray this morning that You would take it completely out of my mind!
Quickly she put the top on her pen, closed the diary and put it in the drawer beneath her underthings. She wondered if the diary was safe there from prying eyes, and the ridiculous notion came, Well, what if I got killed? They would find it and read it.
Giving a short laugh, she rose and said, “I wouldn’t care then. I’d be in heaven. Maybe they’d get a good laugh out of it.”
Going downstairs, she ate a quick breakfast, then left at once for the hospital. She had learned to handle the Dallas traffic, and taking every shortcut and weaving in and out she arrived with fifteen minutes to spare. Getting out of the car, she looked up at the massive, white marble with which Mercy Hospital was built. Appreciating once again the fact that she had had a good year, her first year as an L.P.N.—licensed, practical nurse. She remembered how frightened she had been when she had come there for the first time.
Entering briskly, she went at once to the third floor and found Maggie Stone waiting for her, her brown eyes were snapping and her sandy hair escaped out from under her white cap. “You’d better watch out for Dr. Bjelland. He’s on the war path today!”
Fastening her cap more securely, Ket took a deep breath. “What’s it about this time?”
“I don’t know. Does he need a reason?” Maggie was one year older than Ket and wanted two things in this world, and she kept neither of them a secret. First she wanted to finish her nursing degree. Second, she wanted a husband, a goal she would announce straightforwardly to anyone. “Not a doctor. A stockbroker perhaps,” she’d specify. “Someone who doesn’t bring any problems home with him.” Why Maggie should have thought stockbrokers had no problems, Ket could not imagine. But now as the two left the dressing room and went down the halls, she listened as Maggie explained why the man she had been dating definitely would not do.
The two young women were caught up at once in the busy life of a huge hospital. Ket was assigned to the cardiac ward, a duty that affected her more profoundly than she had ever known. It was worse to her than the emergency room. There the cases often entered in critical conditions sometimes, with patients dying and always frightened. That was difficult, of course—but in the cardiac ward there was an ominous air that seemed to permeate even the furniture and the walls. Fear was a part of the atmosphere that all patients shared, and as Ket went about her duties she made it a point to spend as much time with those who were most anxious and apprehensive.
It was midway through the morning when Ket spotted the interns following Dr. Lars Bjelland as he entered her unit on his rounds. Bjelland was a Norwegian with a trace of his roots in his speech. Rotund with a square face and a shock of iron-gray hair, at the age of fifty-five he looked more like a plumber than a skilled surgeon. His eyes were pale blue and he had the huge hands of a farmer. He attacked medicine the way that his ancestors probably attacked a Saxon village: with all his strength and dragging everyone along with him.
While Ket found Dr. Bjelland abrasive, she knew he was a good doctor and she admired his skill and experience. Still, she was not in the mood for one of his confrontations today and tried her best to avoid him and the flock of interns that followed in his wake. Just like every other woman on the unit, she couldn’t help but notice Jared Pierce among the group, standing a head taller than the others and twice as handsome. While some of the nurses seemed determined to throw themselves in the path of the roaming herd, Jared’s presence was another reason for Ketura to sidestep them.
But to her dismay, she was looking in on Denny Ray when the entire group filed into the room. Ketura felt like a salmon, swimming against the stream as she tried to quietly make her way to the door. With her gaze down, she slowly worked her way toward the exit, weaving her way around the interns while, across the room, Dr. Bjelland lectured.
“Excuse me…excuse me…” she mumbled, working her way through the crowd. Ketura had almost reached freedom when suddenly she collided with something—or someone. She stumbled for a second, then a strong grip seized her shoulders and helped her regain her balance.