Confusion! Yelling! Blood covering everything!

Millie tried to push the images out of her mind. Every time a patient came in who had been hurt at the nearby cloth mill, Millie felt like she was watching Charles die all over again. She shuddered and put her hands over her face.

"He's finally sleeping." A younger woman entered the room and looked down at the blood on her apron. "It isn't going to come out, is it?"

Millie looked up. The tone of Rachel's voice frightened her. Millie had never heard her speak with so little emotion.

"He is going to die, isn't he?"

"It's fine, Rachel. We can save his arm. He isn't going to die." Millie spoke softly as she led the young nurse to a chair. She was glad to be able to focus on someone else's pain instead of her own.

Rachel took a deep, ragged breath, "His name is Thomas. He told me he wants to be a preacher."

As Rachel began to cry, Millie left. She was afraid to let this young woman see her break down into sobs. She set up a cot in a spare room, and told Rachel to get some rest. She knew it was hard to be a new nurse seeing someone in Thomas's shape.

Later that night, as Millie walked by the room, she saw a shadowy figure beside the cot. Surprised, she silently stepped into the room. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw that it was Rachel kneeling by the cot, praying. Millie turned to leave, but one of the floorboards let out a slow moan.

"Hello Millie. I didn't see you," Rachel quickly brushed the tears from her eyes.

"Why do you bother to pray? Do you really think it will make a difference?" Millie spoke softly into the dark room.

"Yes!" The reply was instant, definite. "I know that it makes a difference."

"Not for Charles…," Millie breathed the words as she turned and left the room, shutting the door firmly behind her.

During the night, Thomas developed a high fever that lasted all morning. They changed the dressing on the wound and gave him a little food and water when he seemed awake enough to get it down. As Millie watched him throughout the day, her sense of dread grew. She knew that if his fever didn't break soon he would die. She began to wonder if she had done the right thing by trying to save his arm. Though Rachel's praying didn't seem to do any good for Thomas, it gave Rachel an obvious peace as she helped to clean his arm and the bandages.

That afternoon, as Millie was putting away paperwork, Rachel burst into the small office.

"Millie! The fever broke! The fever broke!"

"Calm down child, and dry your hands! You're dripping soapy water all over my floor."

"I was scrubbing the floor a few minutes ago, when I heard a voice say 'Where am I? Why does my arm hurt so badly?' It was Thomas. The other nurse, Lisa, walked over, calmed him down, and took his temperature," Rachel drew in a breath. "It was normal!"

Millie rushed from the office to the room where Thomas was staying. She grabbed a thermometer and took his temperature. To her amazement it was normal.

"But…but it's not possible…,"Mille shook her head and left the room as quickly as she had entered, leaving the other nurses gathered around the bed very confused.

Rachel was still standing in the small room, enjoying the rare scent of books in a place that reeked of antiseptics.

"Why!?" Rachel jumped at Millie's angry cry.

"Why what?"

"Why did God let Charles die and that boy live!? It's not fair! What is God doing! Why does he answer your prayers and not mine!?"

Rachel's voice was quiet when she answered, "I don't know Millie. I really don't."

Millie couldn't think of a response, and even if she had, the lump in her throat kept her from saying anything.

"But I know that God is good, and that all things work together for good to them that love Him. My brother died from an injury in the cloth mill. The only way I got through it was knowing that God has a perfect will. When Phillip got hurt, it opened a whole new world to me. I didn't know the pain and worry people went through, because I didn't want to know! God used my brother's death to show me what was important in life: Himself. I learned to trust and lean on Him, even when I don't understand my circumstances. Because Phillip died, I learned a compassion that I had never known before."

Millie had stopped weeping, and was staring thoughtfully at the floor, "I ran from God. I blamed Him for it. How was it for good? I lost my husband, my best friend," she tried again to swallow the lump in her throat.

"Would you have been a nurse if he hadn't died?"

"No,"

"If you weren't a nurse, that boy would have lost his arm, his life, or both. God is in control of our lives! He sits on the throne, and we can rest in that."

Millie nodded, still struggling with the bitter thoughts that had built in her life the last ten years.

"Rachel," she whispered, "Will you…will you pray with me?"

As she kneeled and prayed to Lord to forgive her bitter heart, Millie felt a peace she hadn't experienced since before Charles's death. After they prayed, both women stood to their feet. Millie slowly pulled the door open and walked determinedly to Thomas's bedside.

"Young man, God is going to do something amazing in your life," she said. His smiling blue eyes meet her brown ones.

"Yes ma'am, I know He will."