Sands Of Time

By Sarai Curtiss's best analysis, Sasha Bednov had less than twenty-four hours to live. Just long enough for his mother to watch him slip into a coma, for his governor-candidate father to win the election and for Sarai to hear the door of opportunity close with a soft and definitive click. So much for trying to ease suffering and save lives in the vast wasteland of Siberia, Russia. She'd trade everything she'd worked for over the past two years for the right medicines to save this thirteen-year-old boy's life. Medicines she would also like to have had to save the countless others she'd tried to treat. She took his limp hand and pressed it against her forehead, frustration pushing to the surface, burning tears into her eyes. She closed them, fighting a whimper. Sasha lay in the bed, his pallor gray, his shallow breathing giving off a sickly sweet odor. Maybe if she'd gotten here earlier. Then again, an earlier diagnosis would have meant intervention. Drugs, dialysis, maybe a transplant. Not a chance of any of that in a country that still couldn't manage indoor plumbing for seventy percent of its inhabitants. How did an otherwise healthy teen die of acute renal failure? She heard conversation outside Sasha's bedroom door, where bodyguards and a maid murmured platitudes to his mother. Sarai set down his hand, ran hers over his smooth skin. Maybe, if she was in Moscow at the International Clinic...definitely if they were back home, at Johns Hopkins. Sasha would be heading home in a week, pink cheeks, a smile in those blue eyes. Sometimes, despite her years invested in the backside of Russia, she hated the motherland. Loved the people. Hated the lack of resources. Loved the friendships. Hated her own limitations. All she prayed for was that God would use her medical expertise to minister to the lost in Smolsk, and to be His tool, His girl. Instead she got heartache and failure. It made a girl wonder what she might be doing wrong. She rose, hearing the muffled sobs from the next room. She stood above Sasha's bed, her throat thick. Genye was out there, Bible in his hand, hopefully speaking words of comfort to Julia Bednova. But what comfort, really, could he offer an atheist who had to say goodbye to her only son? Her onlychild. Pain centered in Sarai's chest and she fought the grip of despair.God, please...intervene. She opened the door, stepped out into the tiny hall. Even for a palatial Russian politician's flat, the penthouse apartment felt cramped. Sterile. Fake plants hung from the gold wallpapered walls, framing a beveled mirror. Under it, a mahogany-veneered side table held a Kazakhstani vase. On the black velvet settee in the next room, Julia sat hunched over, her head in her soft, manicured hands, looking every inch the trophy wife in her size four turquoise suit, her alligator stilettos. But her broken expression and the trails of mascara down her sculpted face as she looked up told Sarai the truth. Grief would wedge through the hairline cracks in her composure and furrow scars that would mark Julia for eternity. She understood scars. Sarai had never recovered from her own broken heart. Not really. In her darkest, most private moments, the day she walked away from Roman Novik still felt as raw, as searingly painful as it had thirteen years ago. Andshehad a Savior who gave her life purpose beyond that moment. Julia had--what? A powerful husband, a bodyguard, a chauffeur, a glamorous apartment and enough fur coats to clothe every child in orphanage twenty-one back in Sarai's adopted village of Smolsk. "Nu,how...is he?" Julia rose, extended her hand and Sarai caught it. Julia's long fingernails pressed into Sarai's palm and Sarai opted to pull the woman into a hug. She felt Julia's bones dig into her as the woman trembled. Sarai hung on a bit longer than Julia might have expected for a medical doctor. Over JulWarren, Susan May is the author of 'Sands Of Time', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373785681 and ISBN 0373785682.