104
When Alex and Nara were alone, he started to tell her how thankful he was that she was okay, but she cut him off. “I need to say something, Alex. And I need you to just listen. Is that okay?”
Alex was losing strength, but he sensed the importance of this moment to Nara. He nodded and focused on her eyes, those alluring eyes that had first drawn him to her.
“I’m going back to Beirut, Alex. My mother will be in prison for a long time, and my father is committed to finishing his book and rebuilding his mosque. I have to finish my studies, and I believe that I have been given a special opportunity to speak about the plight of women in the Muslim faith. Right now, the whole world is listening. I can’t walk away from that responsibility.”
Alex wanted to tell Nara that she could do that here in Virginia Beach. What about Hezbollah? What about the men who had threatened them both with death if they tried to tie Hezbollah to the honor killings?
“It’s not safe there,” Alex said.
“Beirut’s my home.”
“Make your home here with your father. Your voice can be heard from America.” Alex turned up his palm and reached out for her. “I was hoping we could spend some time together.”
She took his hand in both of hers and moved a half step closer to the bed. “You’re one of the most remarkable men I’ve ever met, Alex Madison, and the things that happened between us were real.” She stopped herself and thought for a moment. Alex could tell she had more to say, and he squeezed her hands for reassurance.
“But our relationship was built on a common goal of defending my father. We’re very different people from very different worlds.”
She looked down at their hands and shifted her weight. “I don’t know how to say this, Alex, so I’m just going to put it out there. The Hezbollah agents in the train car in Beirut were a setup.” She stopped and gauged the effect on him.
“After Hamza Walid cancelled his deposition, I was sure that my father would be convicted of something he didn’t do. I knew we didn’t have the evidence we needed. So I set the whole thing up with some close friends to make it seem like we had been kidnapped and threatened by Hezbollah. I trusted you, Alex, to do your best. But I knew, if all else failed, I could testify about our kidnapping and plant reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors.”
Even in the mellow world of the opiates, the revelation shocked Alex. He had been envisioning a future together, and she had been deceiving him all along. Not only that, but she had put him in mortal fear of death in order to manipulate a verdict in favor of her father.
Not to mention the fact that one of her friends had punched him.
The train incident had caused him weeks of apprehension and paranoia. If he had put Nara on the stand, she would have perjured herself. She had been lying to Alex. She was prepared to lie to the court.
And then it hit him. Al toqiah. His head churned with the implications.
“Why did you tell me now?”
Nara shrugged. “I couldn’t go back to Beirut without telling you. I’m tired of all the lies and deception and everything it’s done to my family.”
She bit her lip and gently rubbed his forearm. “I wish we weren’t separated by half the world and this religious divide and everything else…”
Alex knew he should be angry. She had lied to him! Used him and misled him for her own purposes. But somehow, none of that really mattered.
“It doesn’t have to be that way.”
“But it is that way. I’ve seen you preach, and you believe what you say. You live it, Alex. And I can’t abandon my faith and my father after all that we’ve been through.”
Alex felt the tears pooling in his eyes, the wet tracks forming in the corners and running down the sides of his face. The last thing he wanted was for Nara to see him cry.
She reached out and gently wiped the tears away. “I’m sorry, Alex.” She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. Then she stood and waited, holding his hand one last time.
She squeezed his hand, placed it gently on the bed, and turned to walk away.
“The waves are better here,” Alex said. “We’ve got wide beaches and white sand.”
Nara turned and gave him that lopsided smile he had come to love so much. “But we can go surfing in the morning and skiing in the afternoon,” she countered. “Come over sometime and give it a try.”
“Maybe I will,” said Alex. But they both knew he was lying.
He watched her go, then lay back on the pillow and closed his eyes. He felt empty. Maybe it was the drugs. Maybe it was the sense of betrayal. Maybe it was just the grim reminder of his own mortality that the would-be assassin’s bullet had provided. Whatever the cause, Alex felt a profound sense of sadness settle into his psyche. The carefree and noncommittal surfer who had inhabited his body earlier that year had been irrevocably replaced by a more serious and melancholy man.
Maybe in a few weeks he would get back on his feet. Maybe in a few months he would be surfing again. Maybe someday the Alex Madison mojo would return.
But for now, he mourned quietly and faded off to sleep.
Epilogue
one year later norfolk, virginia
Alex Madison pulled his pickup into the designated clergy parking area, grabbed his Bible, and walked briskly toward the emergency room door. Last year, the Mobassar case had consumed his December, and Christmas had totally snuck up on him. This year, he was determined to enjoy every moment of the holiday season.
He walked through the automatic doors, feeling a little like Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol, determined to make up for lost time. “What’s up, Bones?”
The old man with the wiry gray hair looked up from his magazine. “Bah, humbug,” he said.
Alex reached into the pocket of his down jacket and pulled out two tickets to the Old Dominion basketball game on Saturday night. “Merry Christmas to you, too,” he said, handing the tickets to Bones.
“Good message Sunday,” Bones said. “Except it was about twenty minutes too long. I think I read someplace that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was only ten minutes.”
Bones had been coming to church for the last three months. When he first came, he told Alex that he hadn’t darkened a church door in nearly forty-two years. Now he was a faithful attender, and he never missed a chance to complain about the length of Alex’s sermons.
“If I were Jesus, I could get it done in ten minutes too,” Alex said. “But then again, if he were in my shoes, preaching to the folks in my congregation, he might take forty-five.”
They bantered for a while, and Bones gave Alex the room number for Billy Canham, a church member who had just endured a total hip replacement. Billy only came to church on Easter and Christmas and to watch the grandkids in the vacation Bible school program, but his wife was a longtime member. Alex had been by earlier, before the surgery.
When Alex got to Billy’s room, Judy Canham hugged him and told him how thankful she was that he had come. “They’ve had trouble getting his blood pressure back up, so they can’t give him enough pain medication,” Judy explained. “He’s in a lot of pain.”
Billy was squirming on the bed, his face contorted. “Get me out of here,” he demanded. “Preacher, my back and hip are killing me.”
“He’s got to relax,” Judy said.
Billy gritted his teeth. “Easy for you to say. Get that doctor back in here! I can’t take this!”
It took every ounce of Alex’s patience to get Billy calmed down as nurse after nurse came in to check his vitals and determined his system was still not ready for drugs. Eventually, his blood pressure stabilized enough for the anesthesiologist to start pumping him full of morphine. By the time the medication had circulated, the tight lines on Billy’s face had relaxed. Soon he was sleeping like a baby.
“I’m so glad you came,” Judy said.