Rebecca's Return (The Adams County Trilogy 2) Page 22

  “I guess so,” Rebecca agreed, feeling numb. “It was all just a mistake.”

  “I guess it was,” Miriam said, her voice low, pulling the door of the room shut.

  They walked out silently. Rebecca climbed into the buggy and held the reins as Miriam untied the horse and then got in and took her own seat. The snow began to fall again, as they reached the outskirts of West Union and continued all the way home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Rachel Byler filled the sink with the hot water and prepared to wash the breakfast dishes. There had been nothing special about the breakfast, just the usual fare she fixed on a weekday morning—oatmeal, scrambled eggs, toast, and a slab of homemade sausage.

  Reuben was still in the house, lingering over his coffee. Rachel let him enjoy the coffee, its steam rising over the rim of the cup, spreading its warmth. Reuben appreciated the rich aroma with every sip of the dark delight. Rachel had made sure to add pure cream to his cup, though she could ill afford to spare it.

  This morning at just the right moment, she had another plan to implement, and she felt that this one perhaps had a better chance of success than the last one. At the very least, she figured, it was high time they had a long talk.

  There was now a great sense of urgency because she knew she was with child. That she should be bearing a child again at her age was still a mystery to her, but those were things best left in the hands of the Almighty.

  The women at church would soon notice her condition, and with it would come approval and admiration. She was certainly looking forward to that.

  “Do you want something?” Reuben asked, startling her.

  Her mind spun, as the proper moment had not yet arrived. “Ah, yes—no,” she managed.

  “It must be something,” he said dryly. “It wouldn’t be another sin you’ve seen in the church? You know I told you no more of that. Only the bishop—he will assign those things from now on.”

  His voice had an edge to it and cut painfully. The morning was already threatening to spin out of control, as this was not going as planned. Yet the matter simply had to be discussed. She plunged forward. “But the baby. What about the baby?”

  “What about it? It’s going to be born. Da Hah sei lohbed,” he said in a voice reflecting the praise he just offered so reverently.

  “How can you preach to me?” she asked, her voice rising in frustration. When she caught sight of his astonished look, she lowered her voice. There would be no winning this way. “You shouldn’t use that tone,” she tried again.

  “I wasn’t preaching,” he said simply. “We are just blessed.”

  This brought a rush of emotion. She struggled to keep it out of her voice as she asked, “How can you say we are blessed? We are as poor as church mice. Even they might have peanut butter to eat once in a while. How are you going to feed another mouth?”

  “Children are a blessing of the Lord,” he said, paraphrasing a familiar Bible verse.

  “You ought to think about us once in a while. About me and Luke and the kind of girl he’s bound to get with his meager life. What has he got to offer a girl? He’ll have to end up settling for that Susie Burkholder. What is she? Her parents have less money than we do. And all the while Emma sits over there with all our money and you preachers do nothing. And now she’s not in good health. Why can’t you be of some good for once, when it really matters?”

  “I see,” Reuben said knowingly. “So that’s what the little Ezra event was about. You have concluded that Emma’s inheriting your father’s estate is a result of sin in the congregation? No wonder Da Hah keeps women out of running the church, to say nothing of the world.” He sighed and rolled his eyes.

  She glared at him with fire in her eyes, but he held her gaze, his eyes steady as a rock. Confound his deaconship, she thought bitterly. He never dared look at me like that before. Little poor farmer’s boy that he is.

  “I was just trying to help,” she said out loud, keeping her voice down. “The baby’s coming, and we have no money—not even for the midwife.”

  “Why is Emma’s money such a big thing all of a sudden?”

  “It belongs to us. It has always belonged to us,” she said.

  “You shouldn’t be so eager for money. Riches—ill gotten—bring no good.”

  It sounded like another quote to her, and her temper flared again. “So we just sit here and do nothing? Isn’t that what we’ve done all these years?”

  “Really?” He raised his eyebrows, his cup of coffee almost done. “That’s what you think?”

  Something in his tone warned her to be careful. The man wasn’t angry, but he was annoyed. Whatever it was seemed best left unprovoked.

  “So you want to do something?” he asked it another way.

  “Yes,” she said cautiously. “I think Emma should make things right with her own will and give the money to the family as it was supposed to be done all along.” Watching his face, she almost started to hope. He at least seemed to be thinking.

  “I wasn’t suggesting we do anything about Emma,” he finally said, draining the last of the dark liquid, his face serious.

  She felt disappointment flash through her, “Then why torment me like this, if you’re not going to help?”

  “I want to do something about our money situation.” Reuben wasn’t looking at Rachel now but at the top of the tablecloth, moving the flowery piece back and forth under his fingertips. There was hesitancy, frailness, and vulnerability wrapped up in his body language, all at the same time.

  If Rachel hadn’t been so disappointed, the words might not have made it out of her mouth, but the syllables came out in a gush, “When have you ever been good at making money?”

  He didn’t flinch, and she was a little astonished. In fact he seemed to be gathering his courage, “It’s true the baby is coming. That we need money. That we don’t have any. I’ve been bothered by that too, but we don’t need Emma’s money.” He paused as the tablecloth moved again under his fingers and noticed that she waited with an air of skepticism on her face. “I would like to do something about this. Something… like making money. Maybe by raising goats. Nubians. I think we could make money at it. Extra money.”

  “Goats?” She was totally in shock.

  “Nubians,” he repeated. “They’re good for milk.”

  “You…raise goats? You can’t do that,” she said, suddenly realizing he was serious.

  “We need the money,” he admitted. “They practically raise themselves. That’s what Mose Stuzman said the other Sunday. His nephew in Ohio started raising them last year. Said Nubians were the only way to go. The milk sells at a great price. They ended up going into the business full time. The money was that good. Of course I wouldn’t do that.”

  “But you don’t have any money.” She had forgotten her dishes. “And they don’t raise themselves.”

  “They’re hardy creatures, and we have the room here,” he said. “They work good on pasture with meat cattle. Eat the weeds and stuff.”

  “Money.” She couldn’t help herself as her voice rose. “To buy these stinky things? Where’s that coming from?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “We’ve been making steady payments on the farm. The bank should give us good marks. With that record, there might be money available to borrow.”

  “No,” she said firmly, “we’re not borrowing money.”

  “We have to,” he said, “if we want to make more. It would be necessary to buy the goats and the feed.”

  A thousand images of late payments, dying goats, animals lying around the barnyard as skinny as rails, money being spent while they starved, and Reuben sleeping through it all flashed through her mind. “No,” she said. “No goats.”

  “We have a child coming and not enough money,” he said flatly, not looking at her. “I’m just not going to sit here and do nothing.”

  “You can add a few more cattle this spring.”

  “There’s not enough money in cattle alone.” He look
ed up, his eyes flashing with an inner light. “We have to make more money.”

  The thought flashed through her mind, and she spoke it, “You think the Lord will bless you because you’re a deacon? Even with an impossible task like raising goats?”

  He said nothing, his eyes on the table again, his fingers not moving.

  She thought he was finished…that she had stopped him cold.

  Then Reuben said quietly, “No. I am just like other men. I have to make money. There will be no special blessing because I’m a deacon. I am going to raise Nubians. We’ll start as soon as we can.”

  “Well,” was all she could manage.

  “I’m doing the work,” he said, in answer to what he knew she was thinking.

  “What if we die of hunger in the meantime?” she asked bitterly.

  “Then I’ll be first to go.”

  To this she had no answer.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The morning sun filtered through the hospital drapes, playing on the floor, bouncing upward to the ceiling. It seemed to hang in limbo, suspended above the patient in room 201.

  John’s face flushed for a moment, the slightest hint of red coloring his cheeks. One arm stirred. He opened his eyes, blinked, but remained motionless. Out of a deep fog, he sought meaning to his surroundings. Slowly his eyes swept across his field of vision, the muscles in his forehead tensing in pain from the movement.

  He found nothing that made sense, nothing that indicated home or where he belonged. The stark white walls bore no resemblance to anything familiar. Trying to turn his head, the pain shot upward with a fury that brought tears to his eyes. He tried to move his fingers, his hands, and then his feet and was left uncertain of the results.

  From the depths of his soul rose a fear, so nameless, so awful in its silent dread, that he felt himself spinning off into a cloudy nothingness. His thoughts swirled wildly—and then the world went dark again.

  The slight creak of the opening door failed to rouse him.

  The hospital’s head nurse, Mrs. Madison, walked in, pushing her cart in front of her, and glanced briefly in his direction. He had been this way—motionless—for many days, and she expected nothing different this morning. She quietly exchanged his IV bag, checked his vitals, and then left the room, closing the door as she left.

  The click of the door latch reached him, the sound coming from across the room like thunder. The echo of her fading footsteps registered in his mind, and he opened his eyes again. He teetered between two worlds, the pain and dread facing him in the sunlight on the ceiling and the nothingness lying behind him. It felt as if the choice were his, to go forward or to let go and slide back to where he had been.

  He moved his parched and dry lips. His throat ached intensely, burning. He moved his tongue. It felt so dry and rough, no comforting moisture. But more than the unfamiliar physical sensations, there were the more urgent questions: Where am I? What happened to me?

  He thought of letting go, of seeking relief by drifting away again. But then her name came to his mind. Rebecca. It came with an intensity greater than the thunder from the closing door, and it willed him to stay, to not turn back to the darkness.

  “Rebecca,” he said in a harsh whisper, tearing at his vocal cords. With all the strength he could summon, he called out to the light above him, “Rebecca…where are you?”

  The thunder in his head seemed to break loose pieces and bits of his memory. But it made no sense. The darkness of the town. The sound of a horse’s hooves on the pavement, sounding even louder in the still night air. A car approaching from behind. And then…the sound of crunching wood. The feeling of being airborne. Then that nothingness. He could remember…but it still made no sense.

  In the midst of it all, he saw her with blinding clarity—laid against the backdrop of his pain, the image overriding everything else. She was sitting in her parents’ living room just before he left for home that night. She was getting up now. He saw her so clearly. Her usually sparkling eyes clouded when they lifted to his. The gas lantern, hanging from the living room ceiling, hissed from above, the sound seamlessly joining the buzz of his own thoughts.

  He opened his mouth to cry out, but no sound came out. He remembered with a clear and fierce jolt—he was losing her. It came back with a force that made the throbbing in his head go momentarily unnoticed. “Rebecca,” he said again, ignoring the pain. “Rebecca.”

  The moisture forming in his eyes burned its way down his cheeks, leaving a trail of glittering wetness against his pale skin. He mustered all possible strength to lift his arms, to try to sit up, to even swing his feet out of this bed, but the pain prevented him. He thought of calling out louder to her, to anyone, but restrained himself.

  He was Amish, and even in these conditions, he remembered that. He knew that there was honor to uphold, a faith to remember, a tradition that overshadowed his very existence. Even here, in this moment of horrible awakening, the tentacles of belief wrapped themselves around him, relieving him, supplying him with strength.

  “I am John,” he told himself, seeking sanity in this utter senselessness surrounding him. He remembered his father’s name and said it out loud, “Isaac.” He let the comfort of the sound soothe him. He searched for another name, bothered that one was not readily apparent to him. Then he found it. “Miriam,” he said. “Mother.”

  His head still hurt. He ignored the pain, searching for an answer to why no one was here and why he couldn’t move. He tried to turn his head and found it possible despite the pain.

  Then the door to his room opened, letting in the white-clad nurse.

  “Well!” she said in surprise. “I thought I heard something. You’re back with us! A lot of people are certainly going to be glad about that.”

  He struggled for words, whispering, “Where am I?”

  “Water,” she said, offering him a cup with a straw protruding from the top.

  He sucked on the straw, letting the moisture slide down his throat. So cool and soothing. “Where am I?” he managed.

  “Adams County Medical Center,” she said. “I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake.”

  “Why am I here?” he asked, the words coming out smoother, his throat now moist.

  “You had an accident,” she said. “Someone hit your buggy.”

  “When?”

  “Friday night,” she said.

  “How long?”

  “Six days,” she said.

  “Has Rebecca been here?” His eyes were pleading.

  “There was a young girl here the first day,” she said, studying his face. “Maybe the day after, but I haven’t seen her since.” She saw him nod slightly. “I’ll be back soon. I want to let Dr. Wine know about you. Please rest now.”

  The door shut with its click again.

  He could feel the fog clearing slightly. Rebecca has been here but has left. She has seen me like this and did not return. He let the thought settle into the hurt in his head.

  The numbness in his body could only mean one thing—he had been paralyzed. He heard the dreaded words say themselves in his head, sounding as if some disemboweled voice were pronouncing them—paralyzed. Useless.

  Of course Rebecca would not stay with him. What girl would want a husband who was unable to move, unable to earn a living or to raise a family? Of course she had left. It made perfect sense.

  John felt like sobbing, but the tears wouldn’t come. Nor were they allowed. No, it would simply not do to have someone come into the room and find him broken down. So he let the tears run silently from the corners of his eyes.

  He heard the door open again, this time admitting a young man, the doctor apparently.

  “Mr. Miller,” the man said. “You’re awake. Good. Let’s see what’s going on, shall we? Any pain here?” the man asked, squeezing John’s leg.

  John could see the hand squeezing but couldn’t feel anything, so he shook his head.

  “Anything here?” The man moved his hand higher.

 
John shook his head again.

  “This leg?”

  John winced.

  “That’s good,” he said.

  “Here?” The man’s hand was on John’s chest.

  John thought his heart, from the way it was hurting, should surely have sensation from the doctor’s touch, but he felt nothing and shook his head.

  “This side?”

  John nodded. “A little.”

  “Here?” The doctor’s fingers touched John’s throat.

  John nodded again, the fingers soothing the throbbing of his still parched throat, their coolness diminishing the burning sensation.

  “I see,” the man said, his words full of meaning.

  “It’s not good,” John volunteered more than asked. “I’m paralyzed.”

  The man cleared his throat. “I guess I didn’t introduce myself, John. I’m Dr. Wine. I was on call when they brought you in from the accident.”

  “I broke my neck.” John’s voice was a whisper. “I’m paralyzed for life.”

  “No,” Dr. Wine said slowly. “It’s not a broken neck. You had a skull fracture and bleeding into the brain, a subdural hematoma. The blood had no place to go, so it pressed into your brain. The mass is stabilized now—as of yesterday—confirmed by the CT scan we did then. Apparently the hematoma must be decreasing, but we don’t know how much damage has been done.”

  “I’m paralyzed for life,” John said again.

  “We don’t know that,” Dr. Wine said quickly. “It’s more like a stroke than a broken neck. There’s always hope that it won’t be permanent.”

  John nodded because that seemed like the proper thing to do.

  Dr. Wine turned to the nurse. “Schedule another scan as soon as possible. If things are stable, we can see about when he can go home. His mother can be notified when she comes in.”

  Their voices trailed off as they left the room. The thought of seeing his mother should have brought him joy, but it was the name he hadn’t heard that was preventing the glad emotion. Neither the doctor nor the nurse had said anything about Rebecca. It was—it seemed to him—as if she had never even come in to see him.