Charity’s Garden – Chapter 1

This is an excerpt from my new book, Charity’s Garden, the prequel to The Gates of Shiloh.

Snowflakes swirled in the wind, washing the world in white as the milk truck careened down the sloping road, its tires sliding along the ice-slick asphalt. With each twist of the steering wheel, the driver fought for control, but the truck finally crossed the centerline.

The elderly man in the oncoming car had seconds to react—a gasp, a tightening grip on the wheel, a fleeting prayer whispered into a gray sky. Shattering glass and the sound of crumpling metal punctuated the wintry calm. The car gave way; its front end was now a gnarled sculpture of ruin, steam hissing into the sky, and neon coolant forming a puddle on the asphalt.

Inside, the driver was pinned, the steering wheel pressing against his chest, his heartbeat erratic. Beside him, his wife lay motionless, but breathing.

The wail of sirens grew louder as two emergency vehicles approached. The red lights of Charity McBride’s ambulance cast an eerie glow on the pristine white landscape. As they neared the scene, Charity’s mind raced at the sight of the mangled wreckage. Although she had only a couple of years of experience, the EMTs of her volunteer crew recognized her leadership skills and made her their crew chief.

Charity leaped from the ambulance before it had fully stopped. She flung open the side compartment of the ambulance and grabbed a plywood backboard and bag with immobilization equipment, then rushed toward the crumpled car. Her partner followed, carrying a trauma bag and oxygen tank. A fire engine pulled to a stop behind the ambulance.

“Sir, ma’am, can you hear me?” Charity called out.

The man’s eyes opened, glazed with pain and confusion. “Help… my wife,” he gasped, his breath fogging the frigid air.

Charity nodded, her blonde hair whipping in the wind as she turned to her EMT partner. “We need the jaws of life, now!” she shouted.

As firefighters approached with the hydraulic rescue tools, Charity climbed in the back seat and, after securing his neck in a cervical collar, asked the man where he hurt most. “My ribs,” he moaned.

“Sir, I’m going to put an oxygen mask on you. Try to take slow, deep breaths,” Charity said as she slipped the mask over his face.

The whine of the generator powering the jaws of life filled the air, accompanied by the crunch of metal as the firefighters began their work. Charity focused on the elderly man, monitoring his breathing and pulse as the rescue efforts continued around them.

“What’s your name, sir?” she asked.

“George,” he wheezed through the mask. “My wife… Eleanor…”

“We’re going to get you both out of here, George,” Charity assured him. “Just stay with me.” Although Charity and her team were unpaid volunteers, they worked with precision to rescue the trapped victims. Charity noticed George had an open fracture of his left forearm, but she could not immobilize it until he had been freed from the car. His breathing became more labored. His eyes widened with panic, darting frantically between the rescue crew and his wife.

“George,” Charity said, “you’re doing great. We’ll have you out in a minute.”

But George’s eyes began to flutter as his consciousness slipped away. Charity checked his pulse and found it barely detectable.

“We need to get him out now!” she shouted to the firefighters, her voice carrying over the sound of the generator.

With a final screech of twisting steel, the jaws of life tore away the last of the wreckage. Charity and her team moved swiftly, sliding him onto a backboard.

“He’s in cardiac arrest!” Charity called out. “Start CPR!”

As her partner began chest compressions, Charity provided mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The firefighters who had been treating Eleanor removed her from the wreckage and placed her on a backboard, then immobilized her broken legs. Both patients were loaded into the ambulance.

The siren wailed as the ambulance traversed the snow-covered roads toward the hospital. Inside, Charity squeezed the bag-valve mask, forcing oxygen into George’s unresponsive lungs, while her partner performed chest compressions.

“Come on, George,” she whispered, sweat beading on her forehead. Beside George, Eleanor lay on the bench seat, still unconscious, with two EMTs treating her injuries.

Suddenly, George’s body convulsed. Charity closed her eyes as a stream of vomit erupted from his mouth, splattering across her face. She grabbed a towel and wiped off her face, then she and her partner released the gurney straps and turned the backboard on its side, allowing the vomit to drain from his mouth. She turned on the portable suction machine, cleared the contents from George’s mouth, laid the backboard flat, and continued squeezing the bag valve mask. Charity looked at her partner, a short, stocky man in his twenties whose black hair was drenched with sweat. “Jake, do you need a break?”

Jake quietly counted compressions. “Let’s switch at the end of my next compression cycle.”

A moment later, Jake stopped compressions. Charity felt for a pulse.

“Nothing,” she said and crawled behind Jake to continue chest compressions. Jake took over ventilations.

“What’s our ETA?” Charity shouted to the driver.

“Five minutes!” came the reply.

“Call the ER,” Charity said, “and tell them we have two elderly MVA victims, one in cardiac arrest, the other is unresponsive with multiple extremity fractures.”

“Will do,” the driver replied.

Charity continued chest compressions. “Come on, George,” she said, willing life back into him. “Your wife needs you.”

The ambulance came to a halt outside the emergency room doors. In a flurry of motion, the team rushed George’s stretcher into the hospital while a second gurney was brought to the back of the ambulance. Eleanor was moved onto it and taken inside.

Charity gave the emergency room physician a report. “Elderly male, cardiac arrest following MVA. He was pinned behind the steering wheel. CPR in progress for approximately fifteen minutes.” Charity and Jake transferred George to the ER bed while an ER technician took over chest compressions.

Charity wheeled the gurney outside to the ambulance bay, where she found a hose and began spraying off blood and stomach contents from the gurney’s mattress. Absent-mindedly, her gaze followed a blood clot as it mingled with motor oil and radiator coolant meandering toward a drain as the stream from her hose melted the new fallen snow. She knew George would soon be pronounced dead and wept as the last minutes of his life swept over her. She removed a wad of half-digested celery from her hair and tossed it on the ground. As she stood there, adrenaline ebbing from her body, she felt the tug of something beyond the physical realm.

Charity’s shadow, cast by the emergency department bay lights, stretched across the pavement, reaching into the dimmer recesses where unseen eyes watched.

Zolgreth stood nearby, observing her. His demonic form, twisted over the millennia by envy and spite, clung to the darkness. His heart filled with malice as he watched the woman who stood there, representing everything he was not—a being born of light unknowingly engaged in a spiritual battle. Charity was oblivious to the malevolent being who, at that moment, plotted her demise.

Valdor drew near his pupil. His tall, lean frame was draped with contempt, and his sneering face contrasted the kindness etched upon Charity’s features. He surveyed the scene with an arrogant tilt of his head, his lip curled as though the very sight of human virtue soured his tongue.

“Look at her,” Valdor said. “The heroic Charity McBride loses another one of her beloved patients.” Zolgreth said nothing. There was much he wanted to learn from his master.

“Compassion,” Valdor continued, his tone dripping with amusement, “is but a crack in the armor—a gateway.”

Though Charity stood just yards away, the gulf between her spirit and the entities that sought her undoing was vast. She remained unaware of the plotting, her mind immersed in the many transports she had done that ended tragically.

Zolgreth whispered to his tutor, “She does not falter. Each tragedy she witnesses, every scream that pierces the night… they should erode her, yet she stands firm.” A junior in the ranks of demons, Zolgreth’s failures gnawed at him far more than any reprimand he might receive from Valdor. In her unwavering compassion, Charity had become an enigma he was tasked to unravel, and each attempt only tightened the knotted web of his inadequacy.

Valdor watched Zolgreth wrestle with the problem of how to defeat Charity with a condescending chuckle that encircled them like a ring of smoke. “You mistake her resilience for invincibility,” Valdor observed. “Her empathy is the fissure through which we shall seep, turning her strength into her demise.” The senior demon straightened himself. “To manipulate these foolish creatures is to craft despair with an artisan’s touch. One does not bluntly beat upon the soul but rather, one must carve doubt with patience and precision, finding the most vulnerable spot and pressing on it until it fractures. Watch, listen, and learn, Zolgreth. Her vulnerabilities will manifest, and in those moments, we strike.” Zolgreth understood that Valdor’s instructions carried the force of command—an expectation of obedience that allowed no room for doubt or question and the promise of severe punishment for failure.

Charity’s Garden is available through the links below: