“Ja.” She stood and faced him. “Are you ready for us?”
“Whenever you’re ready. Let’s see what we can do to make these two youngsters more comfortable.” When she started toward the door, the doktor looked at Isaac. “Why don’t you come in, too? It’ll be simpler with two sick children to have both parents there.”
“Isaac isn’t their daed.” A bright pink flashed up Rachel’s cheeks. “He’s a... He’s a...”
“I’m a fellow volunteer in town,” Isaac said quickly. “Isaac Kauffman.”
“I see.” The doktor hooked a thumb at the door. “If you don’t mind volunteering right now, Isaac, it’ll make the exam easier for everyone.”
Standing, he nodded. The doktor walked through the doorway, and Rachel followed, pushing the stroller. She didn’t turn her head in time for him to miss her expression. She wasn’t happy about him coming into the examination room. He’d stuck his nose in where it didn’t belong with no more excuse than her kind had thrown up on his boots. He’d have to find a way to apologize later.
The doktor was washing his hands when Isaac joined Rachel and her daughters in the examination room. Like the waiting room, the walls were covered with posters. A table topped by a paper sheet dominated the room, and three plastic chairs were set along the wall.
“I’m Dr. Kingsley.” He dried his hands and walked to the examination table. “What’s wrong with these cuties, Mom?”
“They’re running a slight fever,” Rachel replied. She pointed to each kind as she spoke their names. “Loribeth, the older one, had a temperature of one hundred point two, and Eva had ninety-nine point eight.”
“Any other symptoms? Fussiness? Coughing? Vomiting?”
“All of them.”
The doktor glanced at Isaac, his gaze slipping to Isaac’s boots. “Ah, so I see.”
“I wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way,” Isaac said, annoyed at the doktor’s jesting tone.
“No one can be fast enough to escape every time.” Dr. Kingsley motioned for Rachel to put Loribeth on the exam table and for her to remove the kinder’s dress. Picking up his stethoscope, he said, “My oldest once stood at the top of the stairs and vomited. She hit every step. My wife and I were grateful we’d pulled out the old carpet days before.” After warming the stethoscope between his palms, he cupped it so Loribeth could examine it.
The little girl ignored him, whining and holding up her arms to her mamm in a wordless request for comfort. Rachel soothed the little girl but glanced at the stroller as the other kind began crying. Raising her remarkable eyes, she shot Isaac a pleading glance.
Hoping he remembered the skills he’d learned when his siblings were tiny, he unlatched the straps holding the toddler in the stroller and scooped her up. She retched, and he steeled himself, but she didn’t throw up. He cradled the kind until the doktor had finished examining her sister.
While Rachel held Loribeth, he put Eva on the table and stepped back to let Dr. Kingsley check her, as well. He was pleased to hear the doktor announce the kinder were fine except for the stomach bug. He prescribed something to ease their cramps and help them sleep.
“If they’re feeling better tomorrow,” Dr. Kingsley said, “and I suspect they will be, you can discontinue the medicine. However, they’re contagious. You all are. You should go home and stay away from other people until at least tomorrow. If you don’t have any symptoms by noon tomorrow, you shouldn’t be able to pass along the germs any longer.”
Isaac bit back his groan. He was supposed to be finishing the preparations for a new foundation today. “If I’m working outdoors, will being around other people be a problem?”
“It won’t be a problem as long as you don’t breathe around them or touch anything they touch.” The doktor gave him a regretful smile. “I know it’s difficult, but the best way to avoid this spreading is to stay away from others for twenty-four to thirty-six hours. I suspect we’ll be seeing more children from the day-care center today and tomorrow.”
Accepting the inevitable, Isaac stood to one side as Rachel dressed her kinder. She thanked the doktor and put the girls into the stroller with Isaac’s help. As soon as they were on the street, she began to apologize again.
“It’s not your fault, Rachel. God decided I need a day off. I’ll spend the time doing the paperwork Glen has been after me to complete. It’s better I skip a day than infect everyone else.”
When he asked if she needed help getting the kinder home, she shook her head and thanked him as she walked away.
He watched her push the stroller along the sidewalk. Odd. He hadn’t paid much attention to her until this morning. He’d noticed her, of course, because she was a lovely woman and a dedicated volunteer.
Maybe he should have looked more closely. He’d turned thirty-five and no longer had the obligations he’d had for the years when his daed had been impaired by alcohol. It was time to find the perfect wife. He wasn’t seeking a great romance. His heart, he knew, was too practical.
He’d escorted plenty of girls home in his courting buggy when he was a teenager. Not once had he been interested—nor had they—in him taking them home a second time. As he grew older, the pool of available women had lessened in their district and the neighboring ones in Lancaster County before his family moved north. His hope he’d find his match waiting for him in northern Vermont hadn’t worked out, either.
He knew what he wanted in a wife. An excellent cook. A wunderbaar mamm for their kinder. A hard worker who wouldn’t hesitate to join him in making the farm he intended to buy a success. Someone who loved animals. A woman of deep faith.
As Rachel crossed the road, heading away from him, he smiled. He’d seen that she fit one of his criteria. She was a dedicated mamm. What about his other requirements for a perfect Amish wife? Did she meet them?
It could be, he decided, time for him to find out.
Copyright © 2020 by Jo Ann Ferguson
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Photo credit: Amanda Nuckles Photography
Vannetta Chapman has published over one hundred articles in Christian family magazines and received over two dozen awards from Romance Writers of America chapter groups. She discovered her love for the Amish while researching her grandfather’s birthplace of Albion, Pennsylvania. Her first novel, A Simple Amish Christmas, quickly became a bestseller. Chapman lives in Texas Hill Country with her husband.
Photo credit: Ben Lawson/Studio 16
Jo Ann Brown has always loved stories with happily-ever-after endings. A former military officer, she is thrilled to have the chance to write stories about people falling in love. She is also a photographer and travels with her husband of more than thirty years to places where she can snap pictures. They have three children and live in Florida. Drop her a note at joannbrownbooks.com.
LoveInspired.com
ISBN-13: 9780369700247
Amish Beginnings
Copyright © 2020 by Harlequin Books S.A.
A Widow’s Hope
First published in 2018. This edition published in 2020.
Copyright © 2018 by Vannetta Chapman
His Amish Sweetheart
First published in 2016. This edition published i
n 2020.
Copyright © 2016 by Jo Ann Ferguson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Amish Beginnings Page 38
