Mary Nealy - Ten Plagues

“Your faith was never in danger, Paul.”

Paul gave a quick jerk of his head. “Absolutely not. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t get pretty mixed up for a while. Not about believing in Jesus. But about where I was meant to be, what I was being led to do with my life.” He bounced their hands gently between them. “What I was supposed to do with you.”

“Had trouble with me, did you?” she asked.

Paul shrugged and let go of her hand and reached into the pocket of the dark blue sweatpants he was wearing. He pulled a little velvet box out of his pocket. “Not so much trouble that I didn’t go out and get you this.”

He handed her the box and she glanced from the box to him and back to the box about five times before she regained control of her eyeballs. Then, she still wasn’t in control of them because they started leaking.

He brushed his thumb across her cheek and murmured, “I hope those are happy tears.”

“V–e–ry.” Her voice broke. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Very happy.”

“Will you marry me, Keren? I love you. I think you’re so wonderful. The perfect woman for me. But more than that, I think God had you in mind for me from the moment of our births. I feel like I’ve found the other half of myself. I can’t imagine my life without you.”

“That’s the most beautiful proposal I’ve ever heard.”

“Really?”

Keren nodded. “You’re really getting better at it.” She took a swipe at her tears. “We’ll probably fight. We have been almost from the moment we met.”

“What we were fighting was this.” Paul leaned over and kissed her again. A real kiss, the kind of kiss a Christian man shouldn’t give a Christian woman if he wasn’t planning to marry her.

Her arms went around his neck. He lifted her off her chair and settled her on his lap. He pulled away first, to give her a chance to open the velvet box.

She smiled and opened it.

“It’s not very big, Keren. I’m not a rich man and I never will be. But we’ll have enough. The Lord will provide.” He lifted the solitaire diamond out of its velvet bed. “And it’s offered with love.”

She extended her hand so he could slip it on.

He said, “Not yet. You haven’t said the words yet.”

Keren looked away from the beautiful ring and smiled at him. She said with a sassy arch of her eyebrows, “And exactly what words are those, Rev.?”

“How many times have I told you not to call me Rev.?”

“Try ‘I love you,’“ a groggy voice broke in.

Paul and Keren jerked their heads up and looked at the source of that advice. LaToya, her eyelids heavy, gave them a weak smile.

“LaToya.” Keren jumped off Paul’s lap, not all that sure how she’d gotten there.

Paul rounded the bed so they were on opposite sides of her.

LaToya said, “Don’t let me interrupt. I was enjoying being a Peeping Tom. Then you started getting sidetracked, and I thought you needed help.”

“You’re awake.” Paul reached for her hand. He held it gently. “We’ve been so worried about you.”

LaToya’s eyes fell shut. “You didn’t look all that worried to me.”

“Where’s the CALL button? We need to get a doctor in here.” Paul looked along the side of the bed.

“I’ll go find someone.” Keren disappeared out of the room.

“She seems nice.” LaToya squeezed his hand.

“Yeah, and I was about to have her all sewn up, when you started talking.”

From behind him, Keren said, “Don’t give up. You can sew me up, yet.”

Paul turned just as two nurses came rushing into the room. He let himself be shoved out of the way.

“You’d better hand over the ring,” Keren said. “Before we forget what we were talking about.”

“We won’t forget.” Paul turned to her and pulled her into his arms. “I think I’m going to enjoy shutting that smart mouth.”

As his head dipped to kiss her, she gave him the words he’d been fishing for. “I love you, Paul. I want to marry you and send our children to that little Christian school. I want that ring.”

“It’s not big,” he warned.

“It’s a beautiful ring.” Keren poked him in the shoulder. “I don’t ever want to hear a word against it.”

“Yes ma’am,” Paul said.

“I want to spend my spare time helping at the mission.” She thought they might as well talk a few things through.

“I’d really appreciate that.”

“But the thing I really want is… you.”

Paul hesitated long enough to get the ring on her finger, then he kissed her.

Rosita chose that moment to appear for her daily visit. When she saw Paul and Keren in each other’s arms and LaToya awake, she looked like she didn’t know who to talk to first.

Keren stepped away from Paul.

“Don’t quit on my account,” Rosita said, with the first genuine smile Keren had seen on her face since she’d been kidnapped.

“Do you have any interest in a long engagement, Kerenhappuch?” Paul asked.

“Not on your life.” Keren shook her head. “I’d like my folks to come and I’d like my pastor to marry us.”

“How about this Saturday?”

“That’s four days!” Keren shouted.

Rosita said, “LaToya ‘n’ me wanna be bridesmaids.”

One of the nurses said, “You can get a blood test right down the hall.”

The other nurse said, “Kerenhappuch?”

Keren slugged Paul for that. He gently rubbed Keren’s sore arm as if worried that punching him might hurt her.

“When will Rosita get out?” Paul asked the nurse.

The nurse gave him a stern look, but a smile lurked behind her glaring eyes. “If she’s not out by Saturday, it wouldn’t be the first wedding we held at someone’s bedside.”

Paul looked at Keren. She said, “Oh why not? I guess I can be ready by Saturday. Can O’Shea come?”

Paul said, “I already asked him to be my best man.”

“You talked to O’Shea about this before you talked to me?” Keren snapped.

Paul kissed her quiet, and, when she had forgiven him—or maybe forgotten what was the problem—the two of them turned to smile at their friends.

Keren said as she looked at LaToya’s smiling face, “The plague has really finally ended.”

“Not the way we’d have hoped. It sounds like you led Francis as close to the Lord as anyone can,” Paul said with a solemn shake of his head.

“He had to make the last step himself.” Keren frowned. “And even now, even seeing what I saw, I can dance around in my head and hope God gave him one more last chance before his soul departed his body.”

Paul looked at Keren.

She read such love in his eyes that her heart pounded and her knees went weak and she had to hold on to him tight.

“ ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.’“ Paul planted a kiss on her temple, then her nose, then her lips. He quit just when it was getting good. “That has never been so true as it is for me right now.”

Keren smiled at the ancient words that were God’s blessing on the first marriage. The room and all its distractions melted away. “ ‘I will make a helper suitable for him,’“ she added with a sassy smile. “That’s me. I’ll help you, Rev.”

“I’m counting on it,” Paul said. “Let’s go call our parents. And we’re getting married whether they can come or not.”

“Getting us married’ll be the first thing I help you with.”

With a quick nod at a glowing Rosita, who waved them away and went to watch over LaToya, they left the room. They left behind the sadness of the plague that had brought them together.

In the hall, they had a moment alone. Paul turned her to face him and pulled her into his arms. “Your courage is something that will humble me for the rest of my life. The way you faced a demon… the way you tried to help a man so many people would have killed…”