A Sparrow for Job

Prologue

Prologue

December 12, 2000. Bleeden, Texas

“It’s time.” With a grunt, Cheryl James rocked herself up to her feet from the worn, sagging couch. The words she'd been dreadfully waiting to say for nine months came out flat. There was no giddy excitement, no bubbly anticipation, just a terrible sense of finality.

Darrel grumbled at her.

Cheryl stood looking down at him, one hand on a hip, the other on her swollen belly. "I said, your son is about to be born."

Darrel didn’t move. He didn’t even take his eyes from the television screen. But he did take another swig of beer before scratching himself. “Can’t you wait until my show is over at least?” he said at last.

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“It does now.”

“C’mon. We have to go,” Cheryl screeched.

“Calm down, woman. Damn, you act like just because you’re having a kid the whole world should stop turning.” Still, he didn’t move.

Cheryl huffed at him before turning, her long dirty blonde hair whipping out behind her, and pacing the small living area. She stepped on scattered car magazines and dirty paper plates that had never found their way into a trashcan. Her back was killing her, and the pressure between her legs was building. She gave Darrel a withering look as she made a pass in front of the couch.

“Get your fat ass out of the way,” he yelled. Cheryl flipped him the bird and kept walking.

Damn, I wish I had the money for my own place. Maybe I’ll be able to with the government checks I’ll get for being a single mom. This little hellion better be worth it. I doubt it. I’ll probably have to get a job. Then, who’ll watch this little monster? She took another look at Darrel and shook her head. Guess I’m stuck with him. Asshole.

“Just give me your keys, Darrel,” she barked. “I’ll drive myself to the blasted hospital.”

“Like hell,” he snapped.

Someone who didn’t know Darrel might have believed he didn’t want her driving herself because he actually cared about her well-being. Cheryl knew better.

“I wouldn’t trust you in my car. You’d probably drive right across the country and leave me with nothing.”

Cheryl rolled her eyes. “Because clearly, I’m in the perfect condition to drive across the country,” she said, pointing to her engorged stomach.

“Just shut up and get in the damn car.” He stood and stretched his arms over his head, causing his shirt to rise. Cheryl got a nice glimpse of his small, hairy, tattoo-covered potbelly before he let out a loud belch. I am so lucky.

Cheryl glared at him before finally turning and marching toward the door. She snatched up the diaper bag that was lying on the stained carpet and waddled out the door, headed for Darrel’s beat-up Ford Fiesta. The white paint chips resting on the ground around the car looked like flakes of dandruff on the shoulder of a black sweater. Cheryl had long ago stopped counting the holes that were rusted through on its hood and doors.

The passenger side door squealed in protest as Cheryl opened it. She plopped down on the seat, feeling the shocks sag in protest. She watched through the spiderweb of cracks in the front windshield as Darrel lumbered outside. He stopped and leaned against the railing in front of their apartment. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and took several long drags in a row.

A contraction caused Cheryl to yelp and grab at her stomach. “Hurry up!” She pounded her hand on the dashboard and yelled out the window of the car. “Or maybe you’d like my water to break on your seat?”

“Dammit.” Darrel threw down his half-smoked cigarette and joined her in the car.

They drove to the hospital, Darrel alternating between cursing her and the other motorists the entire trip. The contractions grew more painful and closer together. Just my luck. I’ll probably have this freaking kid in a disgusting car with no one but Darrel to help me.

“Could you try and not drag this out?” Darrel asked when they’d almost reached the hospital. “I gotta work tomorrow, and I can’t be late just because you went and decided to keep the brat. This could’ve been taken care of a long time ago.”

“I didn’t get this way on my own, you asshole. This is partly your fault.” Another contraction wracked her body, and Cheryl squeezed her eyes closed and tried to focus on taking shallow breaths.

“So, you say. For all I know, that’s the mailman’s kid.”

“Our mailman is a she, you idiot.”

Darrel grumbled something in response, but she wasn’t paying attention to him any longer. Cheryl was too busy trying to keep the kid inside her body, at least until they made it into the emergency room.

She made it, but only just. A few minutes later, Cheryl was in a bed, her feet set up in stirrups, an IV in one arm, and a heart monitor across her belly. Darrel refused to go any farther than the waiting room.

Cheryl gave up trying to stop the labor. “I need to push!” She hollered, not caring if the whole hospital heard her.

A nurse came bustling in. “Do you want the father to be in here with you?”

“Hell no,” Cheryl snapped. “I just want it out. Now.”

The nurse’s eyes widened, and her mouth straightened into a disapproving line. She stepped out of the room and returned a minute later with a doctor in tow.

“Okay, Ms. James,” the doctor said as he washed his hands, “Nurse Suzy says. “The baby is almost here.”

“No offense, doc, but I’m not in the mood for small talk,” Cheryl said.

“Okay by me.” He sat down on a rolling stool and positioned himself between her bent, spread legs. “You’re fully dilated. Now, we just need you to push. When you feel a contraction coming, that’s when you will want to get ready to bear down.”

Cheryl’s forehead broke out in a sweat, and she spent the next two hours pushing, cussing, and then pushing some more. She decided then and there she would never get pregnant again.

Suzy Brown had been a labor and delivery nurse for fifteen years, and she’d seen all sorts of people. Unfortunately, people like Cheryl and the gentleman she’d come in with were all too common. She often wondered why God gave them children when it was so obvious they didn’t want them and couldn’t care for them.

As she cleaned off the little girl who’d just been born, Suzy smiled down at the bright blue eyes that stared up at her. “You’re going to be just fine,” Suzy whispered. “God sees you. In fact, there isn’t a sparrow that falls from the sky that he doesn’t see and care about. God will guide your steps.” She wrapped the child and then walked her over to her mother.

“Here’s your little girl, Ms. James,” Suzy said, leaning down to hand the child over to its mother, though it was the last thing the nurse wanted to do.

Ms. James took the baby and stared down at it. Suzy saw no look of wonderment in the mother’s eyes, no sense of amazement, only detachment. Ms. James simply observed the little child. It made Suzy’s heart hurt. “What’s her name?” Suzy asked.

Ms. James looked up at her, and Suzy saw puzzlement as if she hadn’t before given the subject of the child’s name any thought whatsoever. “I don’t know.”

The nurse huffed. “Well, I have to put something on the birth certificate.”

“What would you name her … if she was yours?”

Suzy looked at the little girl and ran a finger down her cheek. “I would call her Sparrow.”

Ms. James shrugged. “Sparrow James it is then.”

“You really hadn’t thought about a name before today?” Suzy asked.

“I didn’t know what I was having. I asked the father what he thought, but he said he didn’t give a crap what I named it, boy or girl, so … I guess Sparrow’s as good as any.” She shrugged.

Suzy pushed the little clear bassinet next to the bed so that Ms. James would be able to reach it. “I’ll just go let the father know that he can come in.” Ms. James didn’t respond, and Suzy found herself praying for the little Sparrow. These two people didn’t seem to care that they’d been given a miracle. She prayed for God’s protection over the child and for the girl not to grow bitter as she grew older, even though she was, no doubt, in for troubling times ahead.

When Suzy went home that night, she continued to pray for the child she’d named Sparrow. For the next eighteen years, she never forgot the girl. Suzy prayed daily for her. The nurse had never been able to have kids of her own and, in some strange way, she felt God had brought Ms. James to her that night. Even after Suzy left labor and delivery to become a surgical nurse, she still prayed for Sparrow. After all, there were ten other nurses on the floor that evening, but it was Suzy who delivered little Sparrow James.