Alice, Cat, and the Seven-Day Chest

Or "Why Tall Furniture Should be Attached to a Wall"
From Stories from Jones Farm
Copyright May 1992

[part 4]

Another nurse was carrying Alice, and the pediatrician looked at the nurse who was our neighbor.

“Will you go with us if we have to go to Johnson City?” he asked her.

“Yes, Doctor,” she replied, and we looked at each other. Johnson City was the site of the University Medical Center where patients with serious head injuries were taken. I began to feel woozy.

On top of everything else, I had one other consideration—my husband and I were pretty sure our third child was on the way. Now I had to tell the nurse because, if I passed out, who knows what medication would be indicated, and it might be something that would hurt a baby on the way.

“By the way, if I should pass out,” I tried to sound cheerful. The nurse took me by the shoulders and settled me down into a chair. As I told her about the possibility of our third child she said, “Bless your heart.” It’s a common phrase in this part of the country, but she meant it. This was a Seventh-Day Adventist hospital, and they could mention God anytime they wanted to, along with many blessed hearts.

My Alice had left in the arms of a nurse—my Alice Anna with her Bible name and her fairy tale name. “Anna” was for the prophetess who had been promised she would live to see the Christ Child. “Alice” was, of course, from the stories by Lewis Carroll. During our college years and our early career years, we had always felt our children were a promise God would fulfill, and we’d told friends their names would come from our favorite stories, since our life together was so much like a fairy tale—romantic, with occasional ogres and cliff-hangers, like any good story. Now Alice had been one of God’s best promises to us and had, besides, turned our whole world into a wonderland of discovery. We just couldn’t lose her.

“Don’t take her, Lord, unless it’s your will.” I had known the Lord since I was eight years old. I knew him too well not to trust him with this. I would have to trust him with the end of the story. It was God himself who had invented happy endings, giving us the first “happy ending” in Christ’s resurrection. He was the one who had made it possible for us to “live happily ever after.”