Revival Season - Monica West (recommended ebook reader TXT) 📗

anxiety—I placed my right hand in the middle of Micah’s forehead, spreading my index finger by her hairline and my pinky by the bridge of her nose.

“Lord, touch and heal Micah. Restore her to her full power in You.” Or was it Return her to her full power in You? Prayers that I hadn’t said in weeks—hadn’t thought about saying to a God who had forsaken us—clattered in my mouth like stones. I pressed harder on her forehead. If I kept talking, she would hear me and wake up. I snatched the Lord’s Prayer and the twenty-third Psalm out of the ether to speak over her, relieved that I hadn’t lost those trusted prayers.

“In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ you are healed.” My hand flew from Micah’s forehead and shot to my lips as the forbidden healing words reserved for Papa and men like him—only men—slipped from my tongue. My chin immediately shot to my chest in penance; just then, the door pushed open, and my prayer ended mid-sentence. Micah’s eyes were open in my lap, and her pupils were fixed on me.

“What happened?” Mrs. Nesbitt rushed to my side. She peeled Micah’s torso from my lap and rested her on the carpet. Someone must have called Ma; she was standing under the glowing red letters of the exit sign, making the room suddenly claustrophobic. Somehow Hannah had gotten to her, and she was wrapped in the folds of Ma’s skirt, staring at me with a focus I had never seen before in her eyes. A chill shot through me, then a wave of heat.

“She passed out a few minutes ago, but she just woke up.”

“I’m okay,” Micah said. Her voice was strained as though each word had to push through a sandpapery throat to get to her lips. She tried to sit up, but Mrs. Nesbitt pinned her shoulders to the ground.

“Don’t get up. The ambulance is coming. Your mom is coming from the sanctuary too.”

“You didn’t have to do that, Mrs. Nesbitt. I’m feeling better. I think Miriam—” Micah tilted her head to look over at me.

“What happened with Miriam?”

“Nothing,” I chirped. Micah was the worst at keeping secrets. “I just sang to her. That’s all. Hannah likes it, so I thought she would too.”

The blare of sirens in the distance grew louder until it sounded like they were right on top of us. Micah’s mother entered the room in a cloud of perfume and crouched next to her. Seconds later, the paramedics burst in and strapped Micah onto a stretcher. She mumbled something that I couldn’t hear as they placed a clear dome over her nose and mouth and took her away, her mother clinging to the edge of the stretcher like a barnacle.

A blue uniform walked closer to me. His lips were moving but words didn’t seem to be coming out. The face came closer, inches from mine, and the lips moved again. “You were with her when she passed out. We need to ask you some questions.”

Some questions. He pulled out a clipboard even as my legs wavered beneath me. My eyes bounced around the room’s familiar walls before landing in the corner where Ma and Papa stood. When had Papa gotten here? I tried to wave him away, to tell him that we had sorted it all out, but my arms—too heavy for my body—hung by my sides. I couldn’t answer the paramedic’s questions in front of them, but it would be more suspicious if I asked to speak somewhere else.

“What did you see?”

“I didn’t see anything. But I heard her fall.”

“Did she hit her head?”

“I don’t know.”

“And about how long was she unconscious?”

They were asking the questions so quickly that I had a hard time keeping up. “Don’t you need to take her to the hospital? Do you need to keep asking me questions?”

“Answer him, Miriam.” Ma’s voice was stern.

“I don’t know. A couple of minutes.”

“We’ll follow up if we need more information.” The paramedic wrote down my name and phone number before tucking the clipboard under his arm and walking through the open doors to the waiting ambulance. Papa jogged away from us and leaped into the back of the ambulance—we all watched as he laid his hand over Micah’s head and spoke words of healing. Words that I had just uttered a few minutes earlier. He stayed inside until the paramedic gently motioned for him to go. There was no siren as the ambulance pulled away—the engine gunned and the tires screeched over the parking lot. Then silence.

There had been so much activity and noise, and now my ears rang in the echoing cavern that the ambulance had left behind. Everyone stayed in the position they had been in when the paramedics left: Ma was by the door with her hands pressed against her cheeks while Mrs. Nesbitt was crouched on the ground, kneading the carpet as though Micah’s body was still in front of her.

Soon Mrs. Nesbitt rose and opened the annex door—I followed her, Hannah, and Ma into the late-summer breeze that stirred the trees, feeling each tendril of wind curl under my skin as though it had been ripped off in one sheet, leaving the fleshy pink parts underneath exposed. As we walked across the lot to the entrance of the multipurpose room, I peeked at my arm in the sunlight. The skin still looked intact—there was no rash or other outward sign of the fire raging beneath.

“What happened back there?” Ma asked when we reached the hallway outside the multipurpose room.

“I think—” My mouth formed around the confusion that had resided in my body for the past half hour. Papa’s voice came through his closed office door down the hall.

“What were you saying, honey?” She leaned closer. Her nods coaxed words out of me, but Papa’s voice echoed as though he was speaking into a megaphone.

“Nothing. I wasn’t saying anything.” I shook my head to dislodge the thoughts of Micah’s body in front of me,