The Path of Kindness

By David Mueller

A kindness thread weaves through this story. It disappears and appears when least expected. Its path moves in time, in places, and in society, with surprises, but always with faith and caring. The characters face challenges with hope even in dire situations. At times, our strange living earth is examined in its awesome beauty. One would be surprised by what's lurking under the sea in the MUDD.

Joe is a physician's assistant living in New Orleans. His life is good but not good enough to reach his dreams. He's gifted and can sense things most people cannot. His faith saves him when death is imminent.

Joe's true love is found in the jungle, but trouble is there as well. Just when his hometown, New Orleans, appears safe and comfortable for his family, he encounters greed, heartlessness, and murder. He and a nurse friend, Jenn, come across tragedy and death in an eldercare facility. They also become seconds away from their death trying to expose the crime. Espionage looms over Joe and his family. The government moves in strange ways to protect its secrets. Jenn's terminal illness threatens her life, but Joe is instrumental in a cure with the help of the unusual family dog and a research laboratory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: May 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098071523

Book preview

Chapter 1

It was a steamy, busy June morning on the Mississippi. Barge traffic was moving upriver while oil tankers from Baton Rouge were heading downriver to the sea.

Tina had come to the river with her boyfriend, Carlos. They were so in love. Carlos was Latino, an extremely handsome light-skinned young man. He was the perfect match for Tina who was African American and absolutely gorgeous. Tina looked like a model in the Macy’s ad in the Sunday paper. When they were alone, Carlos was smitten, and Tina was on fire. Now, Tina was two months pregnant with his child.

Tina remembered how she rode her bike to this spot just off River Road while growing up. She took the back roads from Metairie because, while the river was probably only two miles by highway, it was not safe for bicycle travel. When she was a child, her daddy brought her to the river to picnic. Together they counted ships and read the names of the home ports printed on the sterns of ocean vessels. After he died in a car accident, Tina couldn’t bring herself to visit this spot, the one that held the most joy-filled memories of her childhood. Finally, her daddy’s younger brother, Ed, convinced her to return to the spot, offering to accompany her. Uncle Ed and Tina rode bicycles through four miles of side streets to arrive safely to the spot, just off River Road, just as she had done with her daddy before the accident.

This morning, Carlos and Tina lay entwined on a blanket on the grass. Tears filled their eyes as they held each other. Carlos was a good kid but had gang affiliations. He had been convicted of selling pot to minors, high school kids. Although this was his first offense, he was caught selling too close to a school. Thus, this offense required mandatory jail time of six to ten years. In an hour, Carlos had to present himself to a bondsman at a restaurant at the end of St. Charles. The bondsman would take him to the county jail. The couple was in such primal agony. Tina could feel the baby methodically rock in sadness in concert with their continual embraces. Tina promised fidelity forever, but that was no relief from his pain. This was a family death that was slowly occurring. Prayers and promises could not heal on this day.

It was time. They got into Tina’s old Dodge minivan and headed down River Road. The bondsman was waiting by a black SUV that had security windows and screen between the driver and back seat passenger, not unlike a police vehicle. He gave his apologies to the couple and cuffed Carlos. Like a doorman at a fine hotel, he opened the SUV rear side door, and Carlos got in. The black sport wagon slid into traffic and headed down St. Charles. Carlos was gone. Daddy was gone. It seemed her life was approaching a cliff, a drop-off into eternal emptiness.

Tina stood there a moment, trying to gather herself. She reached for her purse to retrieve some tissue, but it wasn’t there. I must have left it in the car, she thought. She hurried to her minivan. Her purse wasn’t there. Suddenly, she remembered she had put it in the picnic bag that was sitting by the picnic table. She fired up the old van that was becoming crankier of late. As she rolled over the levee and railroad tracks, she could see the picnic table with her bag still sitting aside it. Tina was relieved to find everything intact. She sat down at the table facing the river. She remembered from Sunday school the time Jesus was as crushed as she in the garden. He prayed, and angels came to comfort him. She prayed that Jesus would comfort her.

Tina closed her eyes. Strangely, her stress began to fade. Her spirit sensed that Jesus was there, sitting next to her. Her heart began to warm. She could hear him say, God loves you. She opened her eyes.

The sun reflected off the river, giving it a glorious shine. Little waves danced upon the surface of the gray water. Tina noticed that the birds were noisier than normal for this time of day. In a nearby bush, she could see a mother mockingbird fighting off a small snake trying to get at the eggs in her nest. Tina watched the whole bird community join together to frighten the snake. They succeeded. The birds in flight tormented the snake, pecking at its head from all directions. The snake withdrew, and the mockingbird returned to sit on her eggs. As the bloody snake slithered away, a red-tailed hawk, which had watched the event unfolding, quietly closed in on the wounded snake. Tina heard Jesus say to her, Peace be with you. Even as this mother bird will live to raise her young, so shall your community support and sustain you and your family. Tina was stunned. Her spirit was lifted. She hurried to her minivan to go and tell her mom.

Chapter 2

The Gulf Coast Rail Line freight train was exiting west out of the New Orleans metro area and building speed. Its flatbed cars were carrying machinery from Asia that was just loaded at the Port of New Orleans. The train was not long as east-west trains go, but it carried a heavy load and was slow to accelerate. The engineer had hoped they could be on their way to Shreveport and Dallas by 8:00 a.m., but it was close to 11:00 a.m. when they finally left the city. The engineer was telling his apprentice engineer, Shirley Johnson, at the helm that there are plantations open to the public just over the levee to the right before the interstate highway bridge crosses the river. Then Shirley noticed an old minivan traveling down the dirt road running parallel to the tracks. A quarter mile away, the road gradually crossed the tracks with the road and the tracks making an elongated crossing segment. She had already acknowledged the intersection by blasting the horn three times.

As a child, Shirley loved trains, and her passion stayed with her. In high school, Shirley and her guidance counselor wrote to the railroad companies to find out what educational prerequisites were needed for one to become a train engineer. Like ship and airline captains, there was an apprentice program. One doesn’t just jump into the senior position of a two-mile-long continental train and pilot it to the western mountains. Shirley earned her degree in mechanical engineering and found an apprentice program. She spent a year in the switchyard and two years on the US railways as an observer and aide. Finally, she was assigned to copilot the US continental Southern rail routes. She was about to experience what every train operator fears, hitting a vehicle, a large object, or people.

She blasted the horn again, holding it this time. The van appeared to pick up speed and would easily cross the tracks by the time the train reached the intersection. There was no automatic signal or descending gate to block the road. There was only a beat-up old wooden train track sign. Shirley cautiously relaxed a bit. However, she knew there was no way now that the train could stop before entering the intersection. The van started to slow. It stopped about halfway across the tracks, and then it started backing up. It stopped again off the tracks, but the right forward portion of the car was in the train’s travel plane. Shit! Shit, we’re going to hit that van! cried Shirley.

Exploding metal is a horrible sound. The approaching train clipped the van’s right side with surprising gentleness, scraping the right side, ripping off the side mirror, and creating a scar that went about two-thirds of the vehicle. Because the tracks were raised like a mini-levee, the train moved the car quickly away from the tracks. The van came to rest on its left side. Tina lay unconscious against the jammed closed driver’s side door. She was bleeding profusely from a chest wound. The screeching train proceeded down the track, coming to a halt about a block from the accident scene.

Chapter 3

Joe Bourgeois was just crossing Esplanade on his bike when his cell phone vibrated. The text read, Get your butt over here. We have a train/car collision with female victim in transit from an upriver levee park. The patient has a serious breast tear that the EMS folks have stabilized but the wound needs immediate repair and closure. You’re it, man. There are no trauma surgeons or plastic surgeons available. Move that bike!

As a child, Joe had been fascinated by living things. In elementary school, Joe could be found in the school library paging through books on biology during study hall. He liked the encyclopedia sections about animals, the weird and scary species, in particular. He was also drawn to the transparencies, all those organs! In high school, he and a friend made plans to place a plastic window in the belly of his pet guinea pig, Josie. His mother put a stop to that. His curiosity introduced him to infectious organisms, including African sleeping sickness. Wow! People just sat in a corner and passed away. When I die, that’s the way I want to go, he thought. Joe was enthralled by educational material, professors, and books; he simply couldn’t learn enough. Socialization, science, music, and a living faith drove his life from an early age. High school was a breeze for Joe. College introduced him to women. Women liked Joe. However, music and close relationships took too much study time. Joe’s grades began to fall, especially in advanced science and math, courses required for medical school. Music and women kept him out of medical school. In hindsight, Joe realized passionate moments and relationships were worth very little.

Fortunately, one of his professors sensed his natural zeal, intelligence, and potential value to medicine. Dr. Lee, chief of staff at University Hospitals, offered him a position in the physician assistant graduate program on strict probation. The fact that Dr. Lee knew Joe’s dad, a well-known internist, may have helped his decision. Dr. Lee watched Joseph reevaluate his past mistakes. His grades became stellar and his focus acute. Joe specialized in trauma and emergency care, becoming the favorite surgical tech for the hospitalists and orthopedic staff at the regional medical center. Joe appeared to thrive under medical emergency pressures. He finally felt complete. He was living his dream, supporting human life in its fragile and uncertain health situations. His conscience, founded on humility, integrity, and compassion, seemed to permeate into his practice. His patients said they experienced an inviting peace when he visited and treated them. After his first year of employment, he received the most valuable employee award, something that had never happened before.

This wasn’t the first time Joe had to make like his macho mountain bike was an emergency vehicle. However, this was a weekday morning, so the trip wasn’t too hazardous. Any other time, the tourists plug the French Quarter streets. A few angry drivers and pedestrians shook their fists and had choice words for him, figuring he was just a student who was late for class. The EMS vehicle and he arrived at the emergency entrance at the same time. He looked briefly at the young woman on the gurney, parked and locked his bike in the area reserved for medical personnel, and charged into the prep area to scrub in for the surgery.

Tina’s injuries included a bruised head resulting in a concussion, a broken left tibia and fibula, and the breast wound. Her arm was also drawing a crowd because she was going into compression syndrome, a serious condition. If not alleviated, inflammation fluids gather and compress the arm under the skin. If not corrected, the arm could require amputation. So the left side of the operating table was busy; and Joe, feeling rather alone, addressed the seriously injured right breast.

His mind drifted in awe at the beautiful woman lying before him. Then he caught himself and silently prayed that God would guide his hands as he assessed and reconstructed her breast. It was an errant piece of glass that did the damage. The right rearview mirror glass had flown through the open window and struck her breast. The wound was deep but clean. The EMS team had cleaned it with the appropriate disinfectants during transit. Blood flow was curtailed but not completely stopped. He noted that this was an awaking breast. The woman was in her second trimester of pregnancy. In six or seven months, the breast will be producing milk for her baby, that is, if he was able to repair it so that it was functional. This surgical repair was more than routine medical care. It was ministry to Joe. Joe remembered his thoughts about her beauty, and his prayer, Jesus, guide my hands.

The patient’s chest X-rays were available in the surgical suite. He quickly homed in on the other breast and studied the left breast’s internal structure with great resolution and acuteness. Like a sculptor, he would match her vessels, support tissue, and ducts to appear as a mirror image of the left breast. His stitches were smooth and strong, designed as best he could for the breast maturation growth that was in high gear. He worked carefully to cause as little inflammation as possible. Like a jeweler placing the precious stones in his masterpiece ring, Joe placed his sutures with perfection, matching surface tissues, ducts, fat deposits, and skin to appear as if they had never been violated. The trauma surgeon said, Hey, Joe, are you playing Michelangelo or something? And then the team that was working on the opposite side peered at the magnificent repair to the young lady’s breast. The surgeon on call gave him a little hug and said his work was the finest surgery he had ever witnessed.

As Joe rode home that evening, he recalled that first case of the morning. Never had a case left an impression on him like the train-accident woman. His hands, his hands, they were not mine doing the surgery, he said to himself. He saw it happen but could not recall the touch, the mental exercise, the usual anxiety. He could only remember a confident feeling of peace. He had been the healing hands of Jesus.

As he arrived home, the ugly, turbulent sky finally broke loose with sheet rain so typical of late summer afternoons in New Orleans. He hurried up the stairs to his shotgun flat with his bike in one hand and backpack in the other. His flat had a little back porch with an old roof that was home to all kinds of crawly critters. He never remained there long for fear of black widows and brown recluse spiders. He thought of spraying the roof with insecticide a few times just to lower the multilegged population but never did. Tonight, he quickly locked his bike and went inside. He had barely gotten out of his scrubs when the sun appeared and the earth started steaming. It was going to be a hot evening. He put on some soccer shorts, his favorite T-shirt, Tevas, and headed for the refrigerator. Jackpot! There were two Turbodogs and a half of two-day-old muffuletta in the fridge. He grabbed them and hurried down the stairs to the courtyard. No, this courtyard was not like the Ponce de Leon Hotel. It had a six-foot fence on one side, the rear of a garage in the back, and a six-foot fence with a stone path leading to the street on the opposite side. At the end of the path was a traditional wrought iron gate entrance at the sidewalk. The courtyard featured a little rock garden and pond that had seen better days. The decorative foliage was okay