The Waiting Room

By Steven Kamradt

Brent, a fourteen-year-old boy who loves baseball, playing the violin, and delivering papers, is severely beaten by a gang of four boys for an indiscretion he didn't commit in the year 1972. He awakens from a coma and catatonic state after more than three years. He has an amazing tale to share about the time he spent in the Waiting Room, a place spirits go to await disposition while their bodies are in a coma or catatonia. While in the Waiting Room, Brent learns to love God's Word and reads and studies it with fervor. In the meantime, his family, who'd like nothing better than to punish the four boys, now in prison, experiences changes in their lives that lead to changed hearts and the capacity for forgiveness. The four gang members also experience changed hearts, despite terrible things that happen to them while in prison. This is a story of how God changes hearts and how even badly wronged people can have a spirit of forgiveness, if only they have the strength of will to ask God for it.

Brent begins his God-given commission of telling the people about God's love and forgiveness after his spirit is returned to his body and he awakens from his catatonic state. His first assignment is as the guest speaker at the high school graduation, which would have been his graduating class if he hadn't spent more than three years of his life in a catatonic state. Though his family is relieved that the entire ordeal is over, Brent knows that it's not. In fact, it is just the beginning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9798892434492

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The Waiting Room

Steven Kamradt

ISBN 979-8-89243-448-5 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89243-449-2 (digital)

Copyright © 2024 by Steven Kamradt

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Part I

The Attack

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part II

The Waiting Room

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

The Beginning

A Sneak Preview into the Sequel

About the Author

Foreword

As Steve's pastor, I was flattered when he asked me to proofread and write a foreword for his book, The Waiting Room, which, for Steve, has been a five-year-plus labor of love. It is a great honor for me to be asked to introduce you to his baby.

To write a story that will grab a reader's attention is a daunting prospect. To do so, the author must be thoroughly familiar with his subject matter and maintain a clear focus on the target audience as well as the message he or she wishes to convey. In his story about a young boy entering adolescence with all its fears, joys, and challenges, I believe Steve has done admirably well on both counts. He writes from his heart—a heart that is informed by the gospel of Jesus Christ and schooled in the reality of life as he has lived it. In short, he writes from his personal experience of both faith and life.

Not all books with a Christian focus are theological tomes that explore the deeper meaning of our relationship with our God nor should they be. But all Christian literature should relate the story of the love of God and the gracious mercy of God for his creation and especially his people. God's love and mercy change hearts! That is the message of this book, and it comes through loud and clear as you journey with Brent, his family, and his enemies through their ordeals.

Rev. Raymond D. Parent, MDiv

Our Savior Ev. Lutheran Church

Crestview, Florida

Acknowledgments

There are many people involved in the successful writing of a novel or any other work for that matter. This book is no exception. If I leave anyone out, I apologize. First and foremost, I thank my heavenly Father who not only planted the idea for this novel into my head but also helped me through the process every step of the way. A special thanks to Pastor Parent who proofread the book before submission to make sure I wasn't too far offtrack in the spiritual aspects. Thanks to Deaconess Heather Bien who proofread the book for any medical discrepancies. My first reader was my fabulous wife, Carlene, who supported me and encouraged me in everything I did. I also got positive feedback from my sisters, Roxanne Wheeler and Bonnie Plahetka, and also from my best friend and brother-in-law, Mike Wheeler. Thanks also to my brother Mike who served as inspiration for many of the stories in the book, as did the aforementioned sisters and brother-in-law. Mom and Dad, I hope you are smiling down at this work from heaven. A big thanks to Marie Lewis and Carlene Mullen at Christian Faith Publishing and to all the editors and other staff members who participated in bringing this novel to fruition. Lastly, thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to read this novel. May it affect a change in your heart. God Bless all of you.

Steve Kamradt

Part I

The Attack

Chapter 1

Some will say the Waiting Room does not exist, but is merely a fabrication. Others will say I grossly exaggerated this tale or, at the very least, embellished it. Some will say that the Waiting Room existed only in my severely injured brain. The physical details that preceded the Waiting Room and those that came after cannot be denied, as the witnesses are many and credible. I relied totally on the witness of my family for the details of what transpired in the earthly realm while I was in the Waiting Room—the spirit realm. I assure you, as the writer of this tale and the one who personally experienced the Waiting Room, that nothing is contrived. Nothing is embellished or exaggerated. Rather it happened just as I tell it here, with nothing omitted and nothing added. The Waiting Room is real. I was there. So, dear reader, here is my testimony.

Monday, August 23, 1971

I really dreaded the first day of the school year. Particularly this school year. I was entering the eighth grade and a new school that was monstrous compared to the very small elementary school I had attended from kindergarten through sixth grade and just as monstrous to the small twenty-room school where I attended seventh grade. So not only was I dealing with the discomfort of new classes and new teachers, but classrooms that I had no idea how to get to, zillions of other kids I did not know, bused in from other neighboring towns, new locker assignments, new cafeteria and cafeteria food, and on and on. I suppose some kids found it all very exciting. Being the very shy and introverted boy that I was, I found it to be intimidating beyond measure.

In addition to this terrible teenage anxiety I had to deal with, the beginning of the school year also meant the end of a summer filled with Little League baseball, delivering papers on my paper route in the lovely weather of Northern Ohio after spending most of the day playing all manner of sports with my friends, including basketball, kickball, football, lawn darts, croquet, and badminton. I would much rather be outside enjoying summer activities than stuck in a boring classroom learning about things that I had zero interest in learning about. But all good things must come to an end, and so it was on this day.

As I waited at the bus stop for the bus to come and take me to my new junior high school, I thought about how this very dreary day matched my mood. Very fitting, I thought, that the day should be overcast, cool for a late August day, and misty. It seemed as if I could not only smell the humidity in the air, but taste it as well. The dog days of summer had been rudely interrupted by a rogue early cool front that mixed with the warm air in place and created this annoying rain. There were three places in the booming metropolis of Pascho (pronounced Pas-ko), Ohio, population 2,000, where I could catch the bus, and on this day, I chose the one farthest from my home, despite the lousy weather. I was hoping to meet up with and ride the bus with my good friend, Lenny Paxton, who lived just across the street from this particular school bus stop. We shared a common interest, which was a subject of ridicule and derision among so many others. Lenny played the violin, and I played the violin and viola. I wish I had a dime for every time some mean moron called me a faggot simply because I carried a violin case. Luckily, it was a small group of repeat offenders. We weren't exactly outcasts, but it did separate us from the more popular kids in school. Not that I really gave a hoot. I didn't want to be popular, but just to be left alone in my own little bubble of the world. Besides, I knew that other kids were sometimes mean because they lacked understanding and maturity—they simply had not experienced the joy that music making can bring to one's soul. For most of them, their musical experience ended with listening to brain-rotting rock-and-roll or country and Western on the radio. Playing the violin made the world and all its problems go away for me, if for only a brief time. It cleared all the junk out of my head and replaced it with indescribable joy and beauty. The sound of the violin and the fact that it was me making those sounds filled me with a sense of pride and accomplishment. Years of private lessons, diligent study, and hours of practice didn't turn me into a virtuoso, but I was quite advanced for my tender years. Though I was only fourteen, I was already working on the Bruch G Minor Concerto with my private instructor, Betty Grayling, formerly of the Chicago Symphony, but now a retired performer and a kickass teacher. You may think it odd that a fourteen-year-old boy could have such mature feelings and thoughts, but my mom always said that I had been born mature.

Pascho had only one school—an elementary school for grades kindergarten through sixth, and it was under the eave to the entrance of this school, out of the mist, where I waited now. Pascho was a small little town stuck out in the middle of a bunch of Ohio cornfields, a town with no stoplights, one small gas station with a single pump, where everyone knew everyone and everyone knew everyone else's business. I loved growing up in a small town with a small circle of very close friends; the immense size of the school that I was about to be bused to every day, with over one thousand kids, unnerved me to no end. As a cost-saving measure, I'm sure, they decided to build one large school in Porter, a town ten miles away, and bus all the kids from the surrounding small towns there. I considered my childhood a charmed childhood, and despite my lack of fondness for school, I was busy forging lasting memories every day. As my parents had taught me from the time I was a baby, each day is a blessing from God. Live each day to the fullest, because you never know when it may be your last is what my momma always said. Sometimes, it was a quote from the Bible, This is the day the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Or God made this day especially for you, so make it a good one. I sometimes found this very difficult, though—to marry this attitude with how I quite often felt about school boarded on the impossible. Especially first days. But things had a way of getting much better as adjustments were made and comfort levels began to normalize.

I was not disappointed with my choice of bus stops. I made small talk and chitchat with several kids I hadn't seen all summer and with a few I had. Then I watched as Lenny came running through some neighbors' yards across the street, leaping over a small hedgerow with relative ease, taking the shortest distance between two points, and finally arriving, rather breathless, at the elementary school's safe haven from inclement weather. Lenny was not one of my summer friends despite being a very good friend during the school year, because he was not at all into sports, whereas I was a baseball fanatic and spent most of my summer days, every day, on the baseball field (when I wasn't practicing the violin) as did most of my summer friends. This dedication to daily baseball practice is the reason why, as a Little League team, my team, the Bashers, won five out of six Little League seasons, advancing from juniors to intermediates to seniors. It was only in the most senior year that we lost the championship playoff game, 2 to 1. This game was a real heartbreaker, with some very obvious cheating from the fathers of the other team's players who had volunteered to umpire bases. I was especially devastated since I was the losing pitcher. My disappointment was somewhat mitigated when the second baseman for the winning team apologized to me for his father cheating on two very important calls. Nevertheless, my last year in Little League was a total success, pitching two no-hitters and seven shut-outs. My fastball was amazing and often resulted in my catcher having a left hand swollen to nearly twice the size of his right hand by the end of a game. I also threw a pretty mean slider and a pitch very few pitchers ever perfected called a screwgie. Though I was a right-handed pitcher, my screwgie broke away from left-handed batters, like a curveball from a left-handed pitcher. Sometimes, I really messed with right-handed batters by throwing the screwgie, which broke into them. Not only was it a rare pitch, but it was even more rarely hit. I could count on it to get me out of a jam every time.

Hey, Albertson! Lenny often greeted me by my last name as opposed to my first name, Brent. How was your summer, dude?

Couldn't a-been better. And why didn't I see your ugly butt at any of the home baseball games? Shame it had to come to an end. So what did you do this summer—sit at home and play the violin all day? I asked.

Lenny was a lousy violinist, so I knew the answer to this question, asked tongue-in-cheek, before I even asked it.

What are ya, a knucklehead? Heck no. I worked with my dad out at the gravel pits and made some money. That's how I got these really cool tennies. Bought them myself, Lenny said, beaming, obviously very proud of his newfound self-sufficiency.

Lenny was sporting the latest in tennis shoe fashion: high-tops. Always a casual dresser, Lenny was also wearing a T-shirt with the rock band Queen on it and a pair of old, faded blue jeans. Everyone living in Pascho was either low-middle income, like my family, or just downright poor. However, I was dressed a little more upscale, with a button-down short-sleeved shirt, khaki slacks, and a pair of brown loafers. Mom always insisted that I not dress like a bum going to school and, as an additional insult to my fourteen-year-old manhood, refused to allow me to use any of my paper-route money to buy my own clothes. I would, however, win the argument on some occasions.

Aww, man, here comes the stupid bus, said Lenny, in the tone of a boy who just lost his dog.

Sure enough, the big yellow monster was just turning the corner and beginning its final approach to the bus stop.

Well, what did ya think, goobs, that it would have a flat tire or breakdown or something on the very first day? I replied snarkily. Like we should be so lucky.

I was hopin', said Lenny, laughing at his own ridiculousness.

About twenty kids were getting on the bus at this stop, and it was where most of the kids got on. Typically, about six to ten got on at each of the other two stops. As I walked past the driver on my way to sitting in the same bus seat with Lenny, I said to him, Hello, Uncle.

George Small, the driver, smiled and replied, Hello, nephew.

George Small was my aunt Celia's second husband. Her first husband had died some years earlier of a massive heart attack. He had been a very heavy smoker and drinker and died when he was only fifty-two. My dad, Tony, had two siblings: a brother Doug and a sister Celia. Uncle Doug passed away when I was twelve also from a heart attack; he was only forty-seven years old. Uncle Doug was also a lifelong smoker and heavy drinker, alcoholic in fact, and quite overweight to boot. His choice of booze was beer, so he had the resultant typical beer gut. Aunt Celia, like her second husband, was also a school bus driver and made the best apple pie in the world, as far as I knew. Well, maybe second best, next to my mom's.

I knew there were huge advantages with having my uncle George as the bus driver—no one, and I mean nobody, was going to mess with me on those bus rides. It was a total no-brainer that bullies left me alone on the bus. It was one of the few places I never got called a faggot for carrying a violin case. Yes indeed, having my uncle as the bus driver definitely had its perks.

Seems like nothing ever goes smoothly on the first day. Murphy's law will have its way. As kids were getting situated and finding their preferred seats just before the bus was going to take off, one boy named Daniel, always a troublemaker and always goofing off, came tearing out of his seat for some unknown reason but, in his carelessness, hit his knee hard—very hard—on the metal support of the bus seat. It did not take a genius to see something was very wrong right away. Since he was wearing shorts, despite the cool, rainy start to the day, it was easy to see that Daniel's kneecap, oddly enough, was now on the side of his leg instead of in the front. He was in obvious pain, though not crying or making any kind of fuss. Pretty brave if you ask me. I wanted to scream and puke just looking at it. The bus was about to take off, so I stood up and encouraged Daniel to tell the bus driver and helped him shuffle to the front of the bus. Daniel managed to hop on his good leg while leaning on me. Uncle George saw us coming, stopped the bus before it had hardly even started in motion, and waited. Daniel showed Uncle George his leg, and Lenny got his wish, though a bit delayed. We sat and waited while another student exited the bus at a dead run for Daniel's house, which was about two blocks distant. About fifteen minutes later, his mom, a pile of emotions ranging from anger and resentment from being pulled away from her beauty sleep, to fear, pulled into the bus stop area, helped her son into the car, and took off for the hospital. I bet he never forgot this first day of school.

During the wait, I returned to my seat and resumed the friendly banter characteristic of two adolescent teenaged boys. The murmuring and hushed tones of all the kids on the bus following the incident was a bit unnerving to me.

Well, that was exciting. What a way to start a school year, I said. I wanted to lighten the mood and put the scary moment behind us, so I asked Lenny, Would you like to play a kind of a game?

What kind of a game? replied Lenny warily.

All you have to do is follow my directions, I said.

Yeah, right, said Lenny suspiciously, drawing it out in the way only a skeptic can. If I follow your directions, I'll probably end up in worse shape than the kid who just busted his knee.

Just humor me, I said solemnly, giving him a hard look.

I took out a pencil and a small booklet, but kept it hidden from Larry's prying eyes.

Give me a silly word, I said.

Say what? asked Lenny, quite stupefied at this odd