Chapter Four A: Dazed and Confused

Aaron shook his head to clear the ringing out of his ears. He had to get out of the car. They always explode after an accident like this. He’d seen the movie. Car goes over an embankment and then boom, everybody is blown up and fried in an explosion.

He fumbled with his seatbelt and realized he still held a piece of the steering wheel in his hand. He tossed it behind him and then managed to release the seatbelt. He pushed himself up and felt the searing pain in his ribs that told him all he needed to know about their condition. His briefcase was jammed into his side below the pain point, so he struggled to push himself away and crawl over the open side of the car with the briefcase clutched in one hand. He lay in the snow beside the road weeping with the pain. He had to get help.

He fumbled in his left pocket for his cell phone and pressed and held 2. Jack would help him. That was the quickest answer. He held the phone to his ear but there was no sound from its earpiece. “Damn! I’ve got to get some help,” he moaned. “I’ve got to try to get to the church.” With the phone still clutched in one hand and the briefcase in the other Aaron leveraged himself up out of the snow. He was disoriented. Still too close to the car. He looked up at the church just 50 yards ahead. Fifty agonizingly long yards. He tried to yell, but his side hurt so badly he couldn’t make a noise. It was so quiet out here that he could hear his own heart beating against the bruised ribcage.

It took forever. One painful silent step at a time up to the church steps. He stood for a moment looking at them, gathering the courage to lift his feet and climb. Absently searching for icy spots so he wouldn’t fall again. At least if he got to the church it might be warm. He wouldn’t freeze to death before anyone found him. What day was today? Friday? There’d be people here on Sunday, surely. He’d last. Man! Jack would be mad if he didn’t show up for poker.

He reached the door and pressed hard on the handle latch. It gave, but the door didn’t budge. Then he realized he was pushing. These doors would open outward. He pulled, gasping in pain again. The door opened and he stumbled into the cold, dark church. Cold, but still warmer than the biting wind outside.

Phone, he thought again. Maybe there’s a landline in the church. He’d look. Soon.

He collapsed on the floor just inside the door. As soon as he rested a bit.

It was a sound that woke him—like a distant voice. He came to slowly trying to reconcile his surroundings with the pain in his side. Slowly the accident came back to him. He was cold. He prised his eyelids open a crack to look at his surroundings. He was lying on a rug on a tile floor. Well, that certainly didn’t help the way he was feeling. He came in here to find a phone. He rolled to his left side and pulled his knees up under him. Then he pushed away with his left hand and made it to his hands and knees. It hurt to put his right hand down, so he just kept pushing with the left until he managed to find his feet under him.

The little foyer had a shelf with a couple hymnals and a few leaflets for a familiar charity on it. There was a wooden offering plate on the rack under it. On the other side of the little foyer was a stand with a guestbook open on it under a small dark window. It must be stained glass. There seemed to be a faint colored glow coming from it. There was not much else except a bell rope, carefully wrapped and hung out of reach. They probably had a problem with kids coming in and pulling on the bell at all hours. But it was a hope. He’d need something to stand on to get it off its hook. But if he could manage to ring the bell, surely someone would come and investigate. They would help him, surely. He just needed a little boost to reach it.

He leaned against the door in front of him and it opened into the sanctuary. He’d find a chair, he was sure, and drag it to the bell rope. Things seemed to move in slow motion. Each inch that the door swung open was another degree of pain in his broken ribs.

It was lighter in the sanctuary. There weren’t lights on anywhere that he could see, but he could make out the shapes of the pews and the aisle up the center. There were no chairs near the door, but there had to be chairs up on the chancel someplace. And it was lighter near the front of the Sanctuary. He would just have to keep walking. The voices seemed to become clearer as he struggled forward. He just couldn’t make out anything they were saying. And he couldn’t pinpoint the location they were coming from.

The pews, he noted, were wooden—not much more than benches really. There weren’t even padded seats. Pity the poor congregation that worshipped here, he thought vaguely. Then again, even lying down on one of these would be better than this walking agony. He shook his head again. A voice had just clearly said, “We can’t waste you on the Senate race. It will be more effective to put you in the governorship if we can.” Aaron jerked his head up. The voices had become a mere murmur again, but they seemed to come from ahead of him. All he could see was the pulpit in the center, a single chair to one side, and a huge stained glass window behind it all.

Funny, the window seemed to glow. That’s what lit the sanctuary so he could see. There must be a light outside on that side of the church to light the stained glass. It was beautiful. Reminded him of something, though it had been so long since he’d been inside a church that he couldn’t recall the Bible scene exactly. There were three glowing figures in the center on a hill. Crouched in darkness below them were three others, obviously lesser figures. Maybe it was an allegory of some sort. Perhaps the three at the bottom were spying on the three in glowing robes.

He heard a snatch of the conversation again. “This isn’t going to be easy for you, but we’re pleased with what you’ve become. You can do it.” There must be something behind the panel beneath the stained glass, Aaron thought. Someone must be here. He abandoned his quest for the chair and decided to call out to the unseen speaker. His voice cracked and when the words came out they seemed muffled, not the cry for help he thought he was issuing. And again, the voices receded into the silence. Aaron struggled forward one last step and had to rest. He sank down on the front pew and looked up at the stained glass. As soon as he caught his breath, he’d get that chair and ring the bell. They wouldn’t ignore him then.

He was hurt worse than he realized, he thought. The figures in the stained glass were moving. They weren’t your typical Biblical figures. Well, one was. It was hard to focus on that one, though. Like it was the light behind the glass and not a figure at all. The other two wore business suits. A fat man and a starched woman. A vague familiarity. Who was he dreaming about now?

When he came to, he was lying on the floor inside the front doors of the church. A woman was kneeling over him with a cell phone in her hand talking to someone. Aaron tried to tell her that there was no cell service out here, but she seemed intent on talking anyway. No, she wasn’t talking—no sound was coming out of her mouth. Just lips moving. He tried to raise up but the pain drove him back to the floor.

She spoke to him, but his ears weren’t functioning correctly. He caught the words “ambulance coming,” and “don’t move.” She kept talking to him, he thought but it was like a bad radio connection with only occasional words coming through the static that was building in his head. His eyes roamed around the foyer. Near his right hand a rope hung down. Next to it was a chair. He had done it! He had gotten a chair and rung the bell. Someone came to save him. He couldn’t remember getting the chair or ringing the bell. Couldn’t remember hearing it ring. But there were strange images still drifting in his memory of a stained glass window that moved and talked.

Lord! He must have banged things up in his head pretty badly. More words were coming through to him as he heard an unmistakable wail of a siren in the distance.

“The ambulance is almost here. It’s a miracle you got out of that car alive. I’d just gotten home when I heard the bell ringing. It’s always meant an emergency for as long as I can remember. Probably a lot longer. You’re going to make now. The ambulance is here. They are going to take care of you.”

Aaron managed to get a few words out of his mouth as the EMTs loaded him onto a stretcher. “Thank you,” he said. “You must be my guardian angel.”

“I’ve been called a lot of things in my career, but never that,” she laughed. It was a beautiful sound. Even through the pain it was beautiful. He closed his eyes and focused on that beautiful sound. When he opened them again, he was in the ambulance and they were closing the door.

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