Susan Saves a Life (No Thanks to Bryce)

The day was young and bright when God set in motion his plan to save the life of John Lucas. He had no intention of John dying today and he knew that it lay in John’s destiny to lead America to a better and brighter tomorrow as a future president, but that wouldn't happen if he died at Target. Granted, a lot of people would prefer to die at Target (as opposed to Walmart or their obstetrician’s office), but God didn’t mean for John to die today. He would live, he would thrive, and he would work hard to make lives better for so many people.

There was one being that God intended to use to keep John from dying, and her name was Susan. Well, two if you counted the cat. Bryce the inglorious stray-turned-housecat who had lost his most precious tail in a street fight with a rival cat gang–he would be instrumental in getting Susan to save John. God had it planned, and he intended to make sure that John got another day.

***

When Susan woke up that Saturday morning, she stretched and took in the soft golden light streaming in through the blinds. Bryce was already awake, staring at her with eyes poised either to snuggle or kill, but there was no differentiating between the two. Susan scratched his rump with its bobbed stump of a tail, and for the moment her hands remained unscathed. Her usual Saturday routine involved making homemade pancakes and drinking an excessive amount of coffee. She wrapped herself in her fuzzy pink robe and Bryce trailed close behind her to the kitchen, alternating between meowing and hissing in a way that made it clear that his breakfast would come before pancakes or coffee. Out of fear for her toes, Susan obliged and dipped his food into his bowl. 

As she pulled the carton of eggs out of the fridge to start the pancake batter, that’s when God made his move. 

Phase one: activate agent pigeon. God sparked the pigeon’s interest in the glass door (an easy thing when you’re manipulating an animal with a grand total of three brain cells) which caused the small bird to think he was looking at a fellow winged aviary creature. The small bird perched on the window sill, cocking his head in all directions and looking at his reflection with great interest. Phase one complete.

Phase two: Bryce attacks. Easiest step; Bryce is a cold blooded killer waiting to pounce. Phase two complete. 

Phase three: attack causes egg casualty. Like clockwork, the suddenness of Bryce’s attack on his newly pronounced feathered arch nemesis occurred at the exact moment when the precious eggs that would be a fundamental part of Saturday morning festivities were at their most vulnerable. Susan jumped back from the ferocious cat and as she raised her hands in front of her to protect herself, every valuable egg from that carton dropped and splattered to the floor. Phase three complete.

Phase four: Susan goes to Target to get more eggs, thus placing her in the prime location to save John Lucas. The plan felt locked in place at this point. Susan hadn’t strayed from her Saturday morning breakfast routine in a year, and God knew that a simple matter of needing more eggs wouldn’t stop her today. In quick succession she would clean the eggs from the floor, pick up her keys, and go to Target. God sat back, enjoyed his handiwork, and prepared for victory. 

Just like he planned, Susan cleaned the messy remains of the egg casualties from the floor, but then she said, “Well, looks like I’ll be having oatmeal this morning.”

God spat out his heavenly coffee. Looks like he’d have to execute plan B. 

***

Plan B involved the killer cat and his drug of choice–catnip. 

Susan sat down after her invigorating bowl of oatmeal with her second cup of coffee (or the elixir of life as she called it) ready to dive into the next chapter of her latest read–Little Women. She was enthralled by the story of the March sisters, and there was nothing that would stop her from reading and finding out what happened next. 

God had based his plans on that thought as he prepared to reactivate Bryce.

Phase one: release catnip. God had ensured that the temperature on this hot summer day would slowly begin to rise with the sun as it moved higher into the sky. Susan could feel her home starting to warm up, and just as soon as the thought came to her, the air conditioning turned on. Susan sat in her chair in the living room, enjoying the sweet breeze of bought air as it wafted through the space. On the coffee table sat a small, previously-opened packet of catnip, precisely where God had intended for Susan to leave it the day before and which had been weighed down by the hefty volume of Little Women until ten minutes before. As God saw fit, the small packet was dislodged from the coffee table at the trigger of the air conditioner and particles of the heavenly drug (Bryce’s words, not mine) were released. Phase one complete.

Phase two: activate drug-crazed feline fiend. Easiest step of plan B. Bryce simply couldn’t resist the aroma of the drug that now circulated in the room and chaos was the only answer. The tail-less orange cat lunged from his perch on the window sill, diving in a wild frenzy towards the source of the intoxicating fragrance…

…And careened headlong into Susan’s precious copy of Little Women. It was a massacre. Pages ripped to shreds and the book was left in shambles. Louisa May Alcott herself would be appalled at the state of her precious novel when the carnage ceased, and you might say it seemed like Bryce was possessed by the way that he destroyed the book so completely (but in reality it was a chance of fate and particularly good ‘nip). Phase two complete.

Phase three: Susan goes to Target to get another copy of Little Women. The plan was as good as done. Susan had no other plans that Saturday other than to digest every twist and turn of this story, and God knew that she would not be thwarted. She picked up her phone (obviously to search Target and make sure they had a copy of the book, which God already knew that they did), but then she did another unexpected thing. Susan opened the application for her local library…and checked out the eBook to read on her Kindle. 

With all the frustration of a thousand stars, God slapped his palm to his face.

***

Thankfully, plan B was implemented with an automatic fail safe that led directly into plan C.  God didn’t think he would need the fail safe (He didn’t even think he’d need plan B), but as fate would have it he did. This last and grandest plan would be the one that took Susan to Target, for the sake of John and preserving his life. (Don’t forget, this is really about saving John). 

The morning crept on and Susan continued reading Little Women on her Kindle as Bryce’s frenzied twitching from his catnip crazed binge slowly started to fade. While he was intoxicated from the splendid substance, he crawled his way to the center of the living room and collapsed in a rather undignified position. He lay there, eyes glazed and staring at the blob that he thought was Susan lounging on the couch. 

Phase one: Bryce eats too much catnip. Completed in phase two of plan B.

Phase two: Bryce vomits on carpet. Now, as many of you already know, vomiting for a cat is almost as second nature as breathing. All it took was one more breeze from the air conditioning to take a whiff of catnip past Bryce’s nose and it was all over. The contents of his stomach emptied themselves onto Susan’s rug, painting it with a beautiful mosaic watercolor of desert tones. Susan jumped off of the sofa and fussed at Bryce about how she was simply never going to get this stain out of the rug…she may as well go to Target and get a new one as she’d been meaning to. Phase two complete.

Phase three: Susan finally goes to Target. This was it, the moment that God had been waiting for. He had finally accomplished his good work, and Susan was sliding right into his plans. She was about to put on her shoes and go to Target to get a new rug. There was one she had been eyeing the other week, and God helped her remember how pretty it was and how nicely it would go with the color scheme of the room…

…But the same rug was on Amazon with free two day shipping! Why go to Target when she could just order the rug and have it delivered? After all, she didn’t actually need it today. 

God let his jaw drop open and collapsed on his cloud, head spinning with disbelief that he had failed to get a twenty-seven-year-old girl to go to Target. With any other girl, he would merely have had to put the thought of Target in their head once, and they would have been there, but Susan? Susan was impossible. And although Bryce the cat had played his part admirably, even he couldn’t get the stubborn girl to go. John would need CPR soon, and Susan wouldn’t be there to participate in the resuscitation efforts. And sure, God could use another human trained in CPR to save John, but he had really planned on using Susan. 

With that, it seemed that John would die at Target and Susan might never meet the man that could become her husband and the fifty-first President of the United States. But you couldn’t say that God hadn’t at least tried to get Susan where she needed to be. He just couldn’t control her fate.

***

Fifteen minutes later, when Susan had cleaned and removed the stained rug, she read the first sentence of a new page of Little Women and thought to herself, pizza would be good on a lazy day like today…I should go get one from Target.

God rolled his eyes. Pizza. He had just needed to try pizza.

***

Later that evening, the tune for the nightly news rang across the house and the local stories came up. Susan had just showered and was pre-heating the oven for her pizza when the news anchor started recounting a familiar incident.

“And today at Target, one young man should count himself very lucky. Thirty-year-old John Lucas went into cardiac arrest while doing his shopping, but the quick actions of twenty-seven-year-old Susan Green saved his life. The nurse went into immediate action and performed multiple rounds of CPR before medical professionals arrived on the scene. John was taken to Mercy Medical in critical condition, but we have just been informed tonight that his condition is improving. Susan sure seems like a good person to have with you at Target…”

Susan chuckled at the lame joke at the end and scratched the sweet spot behind Bryce’s ear. God looked down at the scene and sighed, relieved that Susan’s free will today had still taken her where she needed to go.