(Editor’s note: Each weekend we’ll publish one chapter of the new Christian novel Which One of You? here at Christian Heartbeat.)

The mental health wards made a sandwich of the hospital. Adults on the bottom floor, kids on the top, the “regular” hospital layered in between. The kids themselves called their facility “the eighth floor,” as in “hey man, you ain’t been in school.” Answered with, “yea, I got sent to the eighth floor.” Enough said.

At one time or another I had been a visitor on both floors. The adult venue was harder to tolerate. People there had been sicker longer or were just sicker. More hopeless. Not a matter of behavior but of brokenness. Nothing tears my heart more than to see some brave soul reduced to a bundle of fears hiding under their covers.

Residents of either floor are likely to have arrived in a sheriff’s squad car. To “Baker Act” someone was to take away their freedom, to put them under state control for a minimum of 72 hours to protect themselves or others. Call it what you will, you were in custody and not free to leave. Sagan had gone quietly, but not willingly. Now his time was up.

“I’m here for Sagan,” I told the woman behind the glass, nodding toward the double security doors. “Do I need to go through?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “They’re processing him out right now. You can wait out here.”

The waiting room wasn’t used much. People were buzzed in to see their loved ones and then scurried off. Visiting hours were 6 to 8 p.m. You didn’t come as you pleased like on the other hospital floors. I had just sat down when Helga opened the big doors. Helga was a clinical social worker, one of the therapists who had 72 hours to teach the adolescents to fly right after a lifetime of developing bad habits. The law allowed another 54 hours without going to court if a doctor believed it was needed.

“Pastor Dietrich,” Helga said.

I stood. “Yes Helga.” I had met her on several occasions involving Sagan and others.

“Come on in if you will.” She stood in the doorway. “I’d like to go over a couple things.”

Helga’s office was a shoebox -- not where she held sessions -- and I had to pull my long legs in close to my chair. Helga pulled open the file drawer of her desk. I thought she was going for Sagan’s file but instead rested her left foot on the edge of the drawer. She wore cloth house slippers and when she saw me look at them, smiled and said, “Just kind of relaxing tonight and cleaning up some paper work.”

“Did you have a chance to meet with Sagan?” I asked.

“Oh yes, several times.” Maybe 35 years old, Helga had sharp features, high cheeks, but was careless with her appearance -- like with the slippers.

“And …”

“Well, I can tell you he feels terrible about what happened,” she said. “How he ran into the other boy …”

“… Scott.”

“… and knocked him down.”

“He feels like a bull in a china shop. Not fit for living with a decent family.”

“That’s silly,” I said, leaning close to her. “I hope you told him in no uncertain terms, that is completely silly.”

“Well,” she said, “I mean, that’s not how we work. I encouraged him to, you know, find his own comfort level, strengthen his own identity so he‘s less reactive. A high school senior this year, right? Almost 18 you know. It‘s time he start taking responsibility …”

“Jesus!” I was thinking how Sagan’s mom said he always comes out of here worse than he goes in. I stood to leave.

“Don’t get upset.”

“No offense Helga, but what he needs is to know he’s loved no matter what. You shouldn’t need a Ph.D. or a masters of social work to see that.”

She followed me through the doors into the waiting room, still pleading her case. I turned and asked the woman behind the glass if Sagan had come out yet.

“Why yes,” she said. “He was sitting right over …”

“Great!” I yelled, heading for the hallway and the elevator down and out. Behind me I could hear Helga saying she had written a plan she wanted to give me. I ignored her and kept going. As I look back now from the perspective of a new life, I remember this moment as the beginning of labor pains. The first moment in the process of being born again. The pain would get worse before the final glorious moment, but I remember this pain with fondness because of what it finally produced. Mothers will understand, even though the pain itself is very real.

I hoped Sagan would be waiting for me in the hospital’s main lobby on the first floor. No luck. Same for the parking lot. I wondered if he might have taken a bus. But to where? Did he have any money? I wasn’t sure. I left the parking lot and within seconds was speeding east on SR 92. Four lanes each direction. The speed limit is 45 but no one pays attention to it and neither did I. But then up ahead I saw him standing in the twilight darkness on the paved shoulder, practically in the roadway, holding out his thumb as cars whizzed by dangerously close. I hit my brakes hard and came to a stop just feet from him with Sagan shielding his eyes from my headlamps. My window came down and I leaned my head out and called, “get in son.”

Sagan paused several seconds and then walked slowly to the passenger door.

Underway again, I looked over at him. My voice a little pained. “Didn’t you realize I was there to pick you up? No one told you I was in with the social worker?”

He refused to look at me. “I don’t know, maybe.”

The silence remained for another mile. What was he thinking? Helga had said, “not fit for living with a decent family.” Where was he thinking he’d go, to his mother’s?

Ahead I saw a string of fast food joints. I was hungry and figured he was too. I was pretty much off the trash food these places serve but what the heck, there’s a time for everything.

“You hungry Sagan?” Any parent can tell you the way to a teenage boy’s attention is through his stomach.

“I guess …yea, sure,” he said.

“McDonald’s, Wendy’s, what do you want?”

Taco Bell?”

“Alright,” I said, “Taco Bell it is.”

We used the drive thru and were soon back on the road. Sagan was tearing though his six-pack of tacos like he hadn’t eaten in days.

“They didn’t feed you in there?

“I don’t know; they feed ya but I didn’t eat much. I kinda lost my appetite. I can’t stand the smell of that place.”

I pushed a CD into the player, keeping the volume down, and let him finish eating. The Platters’ signature song, The Great Pretender, was playing and I sang along, almost to myself, as I chewed my burrito, “I’m not you see what I seem to be …” Sagan finished his last taco and stuffed the wrappers in the bag. Still sipping his coke through the straw, he leaned back in the seat and I could see his face soften. Nothing like a load of greasy fast food to ease a boy’s tension.

“So how’s Scotty doing?” he asked.

“Real good,” I said. But Sagan spotted something.

“Will he be there when we get … home? I want to tell him I’m sorry about … you know … what happened.”

“He knows; everyone knows it was an accident.”

“But I want to say it. He’s like a little …”

“… like a little brother to you?”

“Yea. Somethin’ like that. Will he be there when we get home?”

“Actually, he’s staying over at his grandmother’s tonight. You’ll see him soon enough. But he knows … I mean look at how you’re built … head to toe dude … God really blessed you kid … I mean, people say I’m pretty buff -- for an old man anyway -- but I have to work at it. After you were gone Saturday, we were all joking and Scott … Scott says he was glad to be of service because if you hadn’t pulled up trying to avoid him you might have hit the wall and brought the whole dang house down!”

I laughed as I spoke, trying to lighten the atmosphere but it wasn’t working which made it all feel forced, which it was, and I could feel my cheeks tighten, could hear it in my voice, words not quite syncing up with the vibe I was putting out. Sagan chuckled to ease my strain but his laugh wasn’t spontaneous either, just an attempt to go along. That’s what killed me about this kid, for all the loss in his life, all he’d been denied that others take for granted, he was so sensitive to other people‘s pain. Most of his unhappiness came from his inability to end the hurts of others -- starting with his mother. No matter what it cost me, I wasn’t going to betray that instinct in him. In fact, I wanted to make it a model for a brave new world. Crazy. I had become his foster father to make myself feel good, Mr. Nice Guy, the one who gives to the needy, and instead I got back more than I dished out. Crazy. The kid made me the student.

“I didn’t get a chance to tell you before the trouble started,“ he said, “Coach Abernathy called me Saturday morning and asked if I’d come out for football in August.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I’d never played before, except just screwing around. Not with equipment or anything -- you know, on a real team. But he said he’d find a job for me I could handle.”