Page 53 of The Midnight Hour
She shrugs, seeming peacefully pragmatic. “We won’t knowuntil it happens, will we? But we’re only seventy miles from Hartford. There’s bound to be something, isn’t there?”
“Maybe.”
“Not much we can do about it but wait,” the woman replies. “I’m Dorcas, by the way.”
“Dorcas.” He nods a greeting. “I’m Daniel.”
“A good biblical name.” She speaks lightly, with a smile. “I’m named after the woman in Acts who made clothes for the poor. She died and then Peter raised her to life again. Do you know that story?”
He half shakes his head, half shrugs. “Sort of.”
“Well, this is my version of making clothes,” she says as she spoons soup into a mug. “Because truth is,” she explains with a rusty laugh, “I don’t know my way around a sewing machine at all.”
“Aren’t you worried about being attacked?”
“For a little soup and some coffee?” She raises her eyebrows as she hands him the mug. “When the good Lord decides my day has come, well then, my day has come. Until then, I’ll be here, doing what I can.”
Daniel is both moved and shamed by this simple statement of faith; his own actions have been so far from it—desperate, calculating, selfish. He doesn’t know how to be any different; faith, he reflects, is a nice idea until you have to put it into practice with something—or someone—you really care about. He’s not going to risk his son’s life for a step of faith of any size. It feels like a holier version of virtue signaling, although that is clearly so far from what Dorcas is doing.
“I’m afraid I haven’t got any milk or sugar,” she tells him as she hands him a cup of coffee, which Daniel takes with murmured thanks.
He balances both the soup and coffee in his lap. “I need gas,” he tells her, blurting it out. She is, unsurprisingly, unruffled.
“Gas is pretty hard to come by,” she muses. “The gas stations were the first to be looted, along with the grocery stores. Some people have left already, heading out west, hoping it’s better there. They needed the gas.”
Daniel nods. “Understandable.” He takes a sip of soup, savoring its warmth. He’s so tired, he feels as if he could drift off right there, lulled to sleep by the woman’s kindness, the warmth stealing through his body.
Dorcas frowns at him. “Are you all right, Daniel?” she asks. “You’re looking a little flushed.”
“I’m tired,” he admits reluctantly. And, he fears, maybe sick.How sick?
Dorcas presses the back of her hand to his forehead. Her hand is cool and soft and reminds him, bizarrely, of his mother’s. For a wonderful, blessed moment, he feels like a child. “I think you have a fever,” she says with concern. “I’ve got some Tylenol somewhere…” She reaches for her purse, a voluminous bag of fake black leather, and roots around it. Daniel takes another sip of soup, and some of it dribbles down his chin. Until Dorcas said it, he didn’t realize just how truly sick he felt, but now it crashes over him, pulls him under, and part of him wants to go. He craves that release.
He blinks fuzzily, the whole world seeming to come in and out of focus. “I’m sorry…” he begins, and she shakes her head.
“It’s all right. Take this.” She presses two tablets into his hand, and for a second he wonders if he should trust her. Maybe she has poisoned him with her soup—but he knows she hasn’t. He’s just sick,sosick…and he didn’t let himself realize it until he was sitting in a warm place, sipping soup.
Now all he wants to do is sleep, forget…
“Daniel…” Dorcas says with concern.
His eyes flutter open, and he tries to focus. “I’m sorry…” he says again, but the words are slurred. The cup of coffee slips from his hand; he hears the thud on the carpeted floor, feels the splash of hot liquid against his leg.
That’s the last thing he remembers.
He wakes slowly, blinking in the dim light, conscious that he is in bed, and feeling instinctively that he shouldn’t be. Memories trickle slowly through him at first, and then with a sudden, alarming jolt.
Sam. Jenny.
He bolts upright, breathing hard. “Where—” he begins, only to stop in confusion. He’s in a bedroom, with a home-made quilt draped over him, and embroidered Bible verses on the walls.Seek ye first, he reads before he jerks his gaze away.
“Dorcas!” he calls, his voice hoarse and rasping. “Dorcas…”
A few seconds later she comes into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. She is wearing jeans and a fleece, and she is smiling like a nurse who has seen her patient improve. “Oh good,” she says. You’re finally awake.”
Finally…? He’s reminded of when he first started this hellish journey; he’d had a fever for a whole week. He’d been devastated to learn just how much time he had wasted, but now, he realizes, it is so much worse. He left his son and mother-in-law in a car, completely undefended, virtually helpless, in the freezing winter. What if they’re both dead?
A gasp escapes him, a ragged, desperate breath. Dorcas gazes at him with concern.
