She put her arm around me and pulled me closer. “No,” she said softly, “there isn’t.”
The next day Jamie couldn’t get out of bed. Because she was too weak now to walk
even with support, we read the Bible in her room.
She fell asleep within minutes.
Another week went by and Jamie grew steadily worse, her body weakening.
Bedridden, she looked smaller, almost like a little girl again.
“Jamie,” I pleaded, “what can I do for you?”
Jamie, my sweet Jamie, was sleeping for hours at a time now, even as I talked to her.
She didn’t move at the sound of my voice; her breaths were rapid and weak.
I sat beside the bed and watched her for a long time, thinking how much I loved her. I
held her hand close to my heart, feeling the boniness of her fingers. Part of me wanted to
cry right then, but instead I laid her hand back down and turned to face the window.
Why, I wondered, had my world suddenly unraveled as it had? Why had all this
happened to someone like her? I wondered if there was a greater lesson in what was
happening. Was it all, as Jamie would say, simply part of the Lord’s plan? Did the Lord
want me to fall in love with her? Or was that something of my own volition? The longer
Jamie slept, the more I felt her presence beside me, yet the answers to these questions
were no clearer than they had been before.
Outside, the last of the morning rain had passed. It had been a gloomy day, but now
the late afternoon sunlight was breaking through the clouds. In the cool spring air I saw
the first signs of nature coming back to life. The trees outside were budding, the leaves
waiting for just the right moment to uncoil and open themselves to yet another summer
season.
On the nightstand by her bed I saw the collection of items that Jamie held close to her
heart. There were photographs of her father, holding Jamie as a young child and standing
outside of school on her first day of kindergarten; there was a collection of cards that
children of the orphanage had sent. Sighing, I reached for them and opened the card on top
of the stack.
Written in crayon, it said simply:
Please get better soon. I miss you.
It was signed by Lydia, the girl who’d fallen asleep in Jamie’s lap on Christmas Eve.
The second card expressed the same sentiments, but what really caught my eye was the
picture that the child, Roger, had drawn. He’d drawn a bird, soaring above a rainbow.
Choking up, I closed the card. I couldn’t bear to look any further, and as I put the
stack back where it had been before, I noticed a newspaper clipping, next to her water
glass. I reached for the article and saw that it was about the play, published in the Sunday