Every Waking Moment by Chris Fabry Read Free Book Online

hands.
    “Before coming here,” Miriam continued, “I served in a VA trauma unit. I was frustrated with the care the patients received. There was a man, thin and hardly breathing . . . They were working with him to find a vein for an IV. I simply spoke to him. Calmed him while they worked. He had won the Congressional Medal of Honor. But he was just an old man in a wheelchair to me when I started.”
    “And your point is?”
    “Value people not just for the income they provide us. Value them because of the lives they’ve lived. Value each person who pushes a broom or cleans a bedpan. And value the girl whoselife is marred, yes, but who gives these people more than any doctor ever will.”
    Millstone smiled, sickly sweet. “And this is the Miriam Howard shorter catechism?”
    Miriam’s eyes narrowed; then she composed herself. “Ms. Millstone, you can run this facility any way you want. But you’ll be making a big mistake if you hamper that girl from doing what God has gifted her to do.”
    She turned and walked briskly down the hall and didn’t slam a door until she was in her office.

CHAPTER 7
    DEVIN SLUNG his backpack toward the chair he had bought on sale at OfficeMax, and it rolled back on the plastic mat. The cherry desk and hutch had been 50 percent off. These were the only things that were “new” in the office. The rest came from Goodwill. A gray desk from a WWII battleship sat in the corner.
    Devin had jumped at the chance to sign a year’s lease in a strip mall that had seen its better days. Businesses had come and gone and there were several storefronts that had nothing but red For Lease signs in the windows. This office had previously housed a tax preparer who had moved to a busier intersection and hired a woman to dress up in a Lady Liberty costume and stand by a nearby stoplight twirling a sign. An insurance agent occupied the office before that, and the first tenant had been a carryout pizza restaurant. There were still sauce stains on the ceiling, and a doughy odor lingered in the carpet.
    Instead of installing new walls and configuring the office the way he wanted, Devin had negotiated the rental price down a hundred dollars per month. And then he made Jonah a full partner. It was the least he could do since Jonah and his mother had done so much for him.
    Devin studied the battered phone and the unlit messagelight. The phone system was a leftover from the tax preparer, as were the plant and two tattered chairs that sat in what was termed the lobby.
    Jonah Verwer stepped into Devin’s office with one hand in the pocket of his khakis and the other around a twenty-four-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew Code Red. He was pudgy, dutifully carrying the extra weight of his sedentary life. He spent much of his day in front of a screen consuming high-sugar and immensely caffeinated beverages, along with fries and burgers from the dollar menu at a local fast-food restaurant. He was probably thirty pounds over what might be considered a moderately healthy existence, but Devin knew he wouldn’t change until the heart attack twenty years down the road.
    “Let me guess. The bank offered you a loan and you’re frustrated because you don’t know which editing software you want to buy.”
    Devin moved his backpack and sat in the chair that tilted a little too much to the left. “We didn’t get it.”
    “Shocker. What excuse did he give?”
    “The same. Bad business model.”
    “We have a business model?” Jonah ran his hand along the impressive collection of DVDs lining a dusty bookshelf. “So where do we stand?”
    Devin told him about the Garrity funeral and how the family had responded. He tried to show grit and fight in the face of hurricane odds.
    “Did you ask for a check?”
    “Come on, it was a funeral. You think I’d ask to be paid when the casket is still open?”
    “You should’ve held the video until they paid. Like a ransom.”
    “I’ll remember that next funeral.”
    “They’ll