The Chicken Who Saved Us by Kristin Jarvis Adams

Author:Kristin Jarvis Adams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Behler Publications, LLC

Chapter 19

As I walked through the hospital lobby doors into the frigid December air, I calculated that six weeks had passed since Hannah’s blood work confirmed a match. I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for. Another surgery? A single doctor willing to put his or her career on the line for an experimental transplant? The stars to align?

Making my way to the parking garage, I noticed the planters outside the main entrance were devoid of flowers. In their place, construction paper Christmas trees and snowmen were glued to the front of wooden tongue depressors and spiked into the frosty soil. A sign taped to the wall read: ‘Happy Holidays from Mrs. Grant’s second grade class’.

When I arrived home, our neighbor’s Boy Scout troop was scaling the front of our house with a colorful menagerie of Christmas lights. A lone Christmas tree stood in front of the garage door with tiny notes of encouragement tied to the end of each branch. Putting up a tree, or decorating for the holidays, was far from my mind, so when I saw the boy’s playful banter on my front lawn and realized my book club had decorated the tree, I nearly cried. I stood wondering if these were the ways God was showing up for me—a Boy Scout, a neighbor, my book club friends, the barista at Starbucks who knew I liked honey in my peppermint tea, even the stranger in the grocery store who bought our family dinner.

A rain-soaked boy approached, asking me where to hang the next string.

“Right around those windows,” I said, pointing to the kids’ rooms on the second floor.

Hannah would be thrilled. Our house had become an empty shell, a place for Jon and me to dump-and-run, leaving unopened mail, discarded clothes, and empty fast food containers in growing piles around the house. Neighbors were taking care of the animals, de-pooping the front yard, petting our lonely and surly cat, and collecting eggs from under two of our chickens that had gone broody on us and were violently pecking anyone who dared to come near. Even Frightful seemed out of sorts. Her usual barnyard chatter was all but silenced and her silky feathers were now splotchy and thin in places.

My mom dropped Hannah off one evening and hollered from her car, “The house looks beautiful! When did you have the time?”

I told her about the night I found the Boy Scouts climbing the front of our house. “They just showed up and lit up our world. It makes me happy when I come home at night,” I said.

“What a great idea!”

She flashed me a smile and gave me two thumbs up before backing down the driveway. It came as no surprise to me that my mom and six-year-old niece showed up at the hospital the next morning with wrapping paper, ribbon and stockings.

“We’re bringing Christmas to you!” she said.

My niece had made a fist full of cut-out paper snowflakes and a cross-eyed felt reindeer she named, “Moose.” Moose was roughly taped to the window below a cascade of snowflakes.

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