The nurse came in and added something to the IV. “She’ll sleep now.”
Dawn fought to keep her eyes open. “You should go home, Jason.”
“I’m staying.”
She awakened on the gurney as they moved through the hospital corridor to another room. Two orderlies lifted her gently onto a bed. Jason stepped around one of them and took her hand again. A nurse tucked warm covers around her, checked her vitals and the IV.
Rousing again later, she saw Jason in a chair beside her bed. He slept with his head on his crossed arms. Running her hand over the short-cropped hair, she thanked God she had a husband who loved her enough to stay so long at her side. He woke and leaned over her. “Do you need anything?”
“No.” Just him.
He sat down again and took her hand, rubbing it against his cheek. He needed a shave.
“You must be AWOL.”
“I called Cap.” Jason put his hand on her forehead. “Good. No fever.” He let out a deep breath. He looked older than his twenty-six years. “Try to go back to sleep. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Okay? Without their baby?
Once, at fifteen, she had feared she might be pregnant. Now, Dawn wondered if she and Jason would ever have children. God willing, someday. She would hold on to that hope.
Alicia came over to visit. Watching Lalo play made Dawn feel her loss more acutely. She grieved even more when she went to the commissary and saw young mothers with babies. Unwilling to burden Jason with her emotional state, she called Granny, who told her it wasn’t unusual to have a miscarriage and not to let it get her down. Then she talked about how wonderful it would be when Dawn had babies, how she’d forget all about the pain of losing this one.
On the phone, Mom listened while Dawn talked. Dawn had to ask her to say something. “I turned away from the Lord, Dawn, and I learned my lesson. I turned back because He was the only One who understood. He became my comfort.”
Dawn hadn’t opened her Bible in a week. “Why did you turn away?”
“I was afraid of Him.”
Dawn had learned to wait until Mom was ready to speak. Mom wasn’t uncomfortable with silence the way Granny was.
“I didn’t think God loved me. I thought everything that happened to me was punishment because I couldn’t measure up.”
“But now you know that’s not true. Don’t you?”
“Do you?”
Dawn cried then. She’d been asking herself for weeks what she had done wrong. “Oh, Mom…” Shoulders heaving, she sobbed into the telephone.
“I learned God loves me. Even when I felt down for the count, May Flower Dawn. He loves you that way, too. He’ll lift you up. Just hold out your hands and give your sorrow to Him.”
48
1996
Jason got orders for Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Dawn admonished herself for being surprised. After three years at Fort Leonard Wood, she forgot Jason could be transferred anytime and anywhere the Army wanted. She’d just put in roses. She wouldn’t be around when they bloomed.
The inspecting officer came through. All the walls would have to be repainted white. She had known the rules, but the thought of her hard work being undone depressed her.
Jason hired two privates to paint the interior walls on their off-duty hours. They needed the extra money. Dawn needed their help. The Army movers arrived. Dawn supervised. She had all the boxes labeled and kept an inventory list in her purse. As soon as the moving van left, Jason and Dawn threw two suitcases into the trunk of the Sable and headed out.
Jason had leave before reporting in at Fort Bragg. So they took the scenic route, wanting to see more of the country on the way. They spent nights in St. Louis, Nashville, and Chattanooga. After the flatlands and wind of Fort Sill and the low hills and bluffs of Fort Leonard Wood, Dawn drank in the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains. They took their time driving the Blue Ridge Parkway, stopping at overlooks, snapping pictures of one another, and staying two nights in a bed-and-breakfast. Fall had come with a burst of reds, oranges, and yellows among the myriad evergreens.
Fort Bragg wasn’t like little Fort Lost in the Woods. It had over 170,000 inhabitants, schools, churches, hospitals, golf courses, bowling alleys, and theaters. It even had a mall! While Jason worked, Dawn drove around, getting acclimated to her new surroundings. When the Sable broke down, Jason decided it was time to sell it and buy another car. Dawn spotted a van and said it would come in handy when she started going to garage and estate sales. Jason took it for a test drive, had a mechanic look it over, and made an offer. After a few months, with things so spread out, Jason decided they both needed transportation and bought a used GMC Jimmy. Dawn teased him about his “cheap jeep.”
Their new house was twice the size of the last.
Uninspired, she made a replica of their last master bedroom, turned another into an office, and left the door of the last bedroom closed. The living room looked bare and uninteresting. She needed to find one piece of something to inspire her, so she drove eighty miles up to Raleigh to see an art sale. Within the first hour, she found what she needed to fire her imagination: an oil-painted reproduction of John William Waterhouse’s Knight. The handsome young man in full armor sat on a stone wall, his sword set aside, a beautiful red-haired lady kneeling at his feet with her hand over his and an expression of adoration.
“You like that, huh?” The vendor, an old man with thinning gray hair and one arm missing, said he had worked twenty years for a museum in New York, painting reproductions of various masters.
“It’s gorgeous.” She could see the whole living room coming together around it.
He wanted three hundred dollars for the painting. Dawn’s heart sank. He might as well have asked for a million. Dawn smiled with regret, told him it was worth that and more. Unfortunately a knight’s wife couldn’t afford it.
She searched for two more hours and came up empty-handed. She had to get home so she’d be in time to fix dinner.
“Milady,” the old vendor called to her as she came abreast of his booth. “I still have it.”
Surprised, she walked over. “No offers at all?”
“Oh, I had offers, but none that made me want to hand it over. I took a lot of time on this one. It’s special.” The old man propped it up so she had to look at it again. “Is your husband as handsome as the knight?”
Dawn studied the painting and smiled. “As handsome as that knight is, mine is more so. Thanks for letting me look at it again. I know you’ll find the right buyer.” She started to walk away.
He called after her. “Where would you hang it if you could afford it?”
She turned and looked at him. “In the living room, of course, where everyone would see it first thing when they walked in. And I’d tell everyone who did the reproduction, if he gave me his card.”
“Well, that’s a whole lot better than having it hang in a guest room.” He wagged his fingers at her. “Give me whatever you’ve got before I change my mind. Okay, okay. Calm down. You’re welcome. I’ll even wrap it for you.”
Dawn drove home, singing praise songs. She couldn’t wait to get started!
Jason noticed the painting when he walked in the door. He stood in the living room staring at it. Dawn slipped her arm through his. “Romantic, isn’t it?”
He grinned at her. “I can hardly wait to see what you do with the rest of the place.”
A laugh bubbled out of her. “A man’s home should be his castle. Don’t you think?”
He pulled her close. “It’s good to hear you laugh again, Dawn.”
They both knew why she hadn’t.
1997
They’d been stationed at Fort Bragg six months when Dawn took a home pregnancy test. She hadn’t mentioned the morning sickness. She didn’t want to get Jason’s hopes up or worry him. When she checked the test results, joy flooded her. Fear quickly followed. She saw it in Jason’s eyes, too, when she told him the news.