Angels Watching Over Me

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “You’re finished with school?” Charity had sounded pleased with her achievement, but Leah was shocked. “How can you be?”

  “Our bishop sees no purpose in school beyond eighth grade. Wisdom and understanding are much more important than knowledge and facts.”

  “Your bishop decides when you quit school?”

  “I know all the important things,” Charity countered. “I can calculate. I can read. I speak English and German. I have memorized many pages of Scripture. I know all that is necessary to be a wife and mother.”

  “A what?” Leah was stunned. “Don’t you want to go to college?”

  Ethan moved to stand beside his sister. “You cannot go babbling to outsiders, sister. The English do not understand our ways. You make us sound foolish.”

  Leah felt a flash of anger. “You don’t have to bite her head off. I mean, we’re just talking. And I’m trying to understand your ways. Which sound pretty primitive to me.”

  The two Amish teens stepped back, as if Leah’s anger had stung them. They both looked confused, and Leah was embarrassed. But it was Rebekah’s cry that diverted everyone’s attention.

  “Don’t yell at each other,” she pleaded.

  Both sister and brother turned and tried to console her.

  “Are you mad at Leah?” Rebekah asked. “She is my friend. Don’t be mad at her.”

  Leah felt her anger dissipate. “No one’s mad,” she said. “I’m sorry, Rebekah. I didn’t mean to yell.”

  “And we’re sorry too,” Ethan said. He cast a glance at Leah. “Forgive me for speaking unkindly to you.”

  Leah shrugged, not trusting her own emotions. Ethan might have been one of the best-looking boys she’d ever met, but he was also the most unusual. She didn’t know how to react to him.

  Molly, the nurse from yesterday, breezed into the room. “Time for meds.” She introduced herself to Rebekah, Ethan and Charity, checked Rebekah’s IV and hung a new bag of clear fluid on the IV stand, chattering as she worked.

  When she got to Leah, she said, “I’m supposed to take you down to X ray.” She returned with a wheelchair, and when Leah protested, saying that she could walk, Molly shook her head. “No way. Every patient rides.”

  Leah was glad to get out of the room for a while and escape the tension her words with Ethan had caused. “Do you know anything about the Amish?” she asked Molly.

  “A little. There’s a large community of them up in Nappanee, along with a tourist attraction called Amish Acres. The Acres lets you take a peek at Amish life as it was a hundred years ago—which, incidentally, is about the same as it is today. These people live very simply. And they’re not only exceptional farmers, they’re also outstanding craftsmen, especially in carpentry work.”

  “Well, I think they’re weird,” Leah declared. “And I do mean weird.”

  “Not weird … just different. They call themselves plain people because they don’t believe in adornments of any kind. They separate themselves from the rest of us, whom they call English—the out-worlders.”

  Leah recalled Ethan calling her “English” and “an outsider” back in the room. “They’re plain, all right. Did you know that Charity doesn’t even go to school because some bishop thinks she should just get married and have babies? Is that backward or what? I’ll bet they treat women like slaves.”

  “You’re wrong. The Old Order Amish have built their lifestyle on the values of love, forgiveness and peace. They’re such pacifists that Congress has exempted Amish men from military service. Mostly they just want to be left alone.”

  Leah shook her head. “Doesn’t sound like much fun to me. What’s wrong with civilization?”

  “Plenty, to their way of thinking. They believe the outside world will contaminate their culture and change them and their ways. They avoid such contamination at all costs.”

  “But if that’s so, then everything in this place is a contaminant.” It unsettled Leah to think of herself that way.

  Molly stopped the wheelchair in front of a door marked “Radiation Lab.” “Well, fortunately they aren’t against modern medicine. Good thing too. Rebekah is one very sick little girl.”

  Molly’s statement sobered Leah. “She is? All she told me was that a spider bit her.”

  “Yes, a brown recluse spider. That can be bad enough, but now a strep or staph infection has set in and is moving up her arm from the site of the bite. Her doctor’s got her on a powerful IV antibiotic. That’s why she’s in the hospital.”

  Leah was worried about Rebekah. And she felt protective of the child, although there was no need for that with Ethan around.

  A technician stepped up to Leah. “You ready?”

  She started, having forgotten for a moment why she was there. “I’m ready,” she said.

  “I’ll come back for you,” said Molly as she left the room.

  The technician wheeled Leah into a small lab. “First thing we do is inject a little radioactive fluid into you,” he said. “Your bones absorb it and then show up nice and clear on the film.”

  After the injection Leah had to kill time in a tiny waiting room that had been decorated for Christmas. Candy canes and glass balls were strung on a tinsel garland hanging along one wall, and a tiny artificial tree with blinking lights sat on a TV set. A lopsided angel perched atop the tree. One of her wings was bent. Leah felt a wave of self-pity sweep through her. She’d just as soon skip Christmas this year. The holiday was all tinsel and glitz and had no meaning.

  The technician returned and led her into a room with a table and an enormous machine with a flat, glasslike plate. “This is the camera,” he explained. “You climb up on the table, lie flat and be still. The camera will move along your body and photograph your skeleton one part at a time. This will give your doctor a look at your entire bone structure.”

  “What’s my doctor looking for, anyway?”

  The technician shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him. All I do is take the pictures.” He settled her on the table and left the room. Soon his voice came through a speaker. “All ready?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  The huge camera moved with a mechanical clunking down her body. After a short time the technician announced, “All done.”

  Leah returned to the wheelchair and waited for Molly. It seemed as if she sat there forever. Just when she’d decided to wheel herself back up to her floor, Molly hurried into the room, visibly upset. “Leah, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to leave you stranded down here, but we’ve had a minor disaster on the floor.”

  “What kind? Flood? Tornado? Fire? Is everyone okay?”

  “Nothing like that. Someone stole the Christmas tree for the pedi floor.”

  “Stole it?”

  “It’s a big artificial tree, a really good one. We take it down every year and put it in the same storage room. But this year when we went to haul it out, it was missing.”

  “Sort of like the Grinch stealing Christmas.”

  “Worse. If I ever find out who did it …”

  “So what’re you going to do about a tree?”

  “Well, we’re taking up a collection to buy a new one so we won’t have to postpone tomorrow night’s decorating party.”

  “I could put in a few dollars,” Leah said, thinking of Rebekah. She wondered if Amish children had ever heard of Santa Claus.

  Molly patted her shoulder. “Patients shouldn’t have to help bankroll a Christmas tree. But thanks for the offer.”

  When Leah returned to her room, Charity was sitting in a chair beside Rebekah’s bed, knitting. Ethan wasn’t there. Rebekah was sleeping, so Charity pulled the curtain that separated Rebekah’s and Leah’s beds and took a chair over to Leah’s side of the room. “Would you like to sit and talk?” she asked.

  “Where’s the watchdog?” Leah asked.

  Charity giggled. “You mean Ethan? He’s exploring. Neither of us has ever been to a hospital before.”

  “Hospitals are pretty boring. Especially w
hen you feel fine.” Leah filled Charity in about what was going on with her medically. “Basically, they aren’t telling me anything.”

  “They will tell your parents, won’t they?”

  “My mother,” Leah corrected. “Neil’s not my father.”

  “Doesn’t your real father know you’re in the hospital?”

  “No. He died when I was ten.”

  Charity looked startled. “Oh—I’m so sorry, Leah. You’ve never even known your own father?”

  Her words stung, but Leah quickly realized that Charity was only curious. From the viewpoint of Charity’s supertight family, a family with no father might seem as strange as a two-headed dog. “He took off when I was three. My name, Lewis-Hall, is the last name of both my parents put together,”

  “My mother took my father’s name,” Charity said. “I thought every woman took her husband’s name.”

  “Lots of people hyphenate last names. And some women don’t change their names at all. If I took a new last name every time my mother remarried, my name would be a foot long.”

  “How many times has she married?”

  “Neil is number five.” Charity looked so shocked, Leah felt compelled to explain. “But she’s done better every time. You know, some women work for a living, some marry.” All at once she felt foolish under Charity’s incredulous stare. “Well, don’t Amish women ever remarry?” she asked.

  “Only if they are widowed.”

  “You don’t believe in divorce?”

  “Under some circumstances it is allowed, but marriage is a holy union. It is a covenant, like the one God made with his people. It should not be broken.”

  Leah rolled her eyes indulgently. “Not anymore. Don’t you know what’s going on in today’s world?”

  “No. And I’m not sure I want to know.”

  Charity’s naïveté was beginning to get on Leah’s nerves. “Well, here’s a news flash: People don’t stay in bad marriages anymore.”

  “People think we are strange because we choose to be the way we are,” Charity said softly. “But what’s normal about taking many spouses and not having a family home?”

  Leah stiffened. “Different strokes for different folks.”

  Charity studied her with her clear green eyes until Leah began to feel squirmy. She decided to change the subject. “Um—so, how’s Rebekah?”

  Charity’s brow puckered. “Not so good.”

  Leah sat up straighter. “She’s not improving?”

  “It’s slow. But many people are praying for her—” She stopped abruptly.

  “It’s all right. You don’t have to watch every word you say around me. I had friends back in Dallas who prayed.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “I just never got into religion.” Now Leah felt self-conscious about her lack of sophistication in a world that Charity knew intimately. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this stuff. I—I like you and I don’t want to say anything more to hurt your feelings.”

  Charity’s face broke into a generous smile. “I like you, too, Leah Lewis-Hall. I have never had an outsider friend.”

  An outsider. That’s what Leah had been all her life. She and her mother had moved so often, she’d never felt as if she belonged anywhere. And despite the defiant confidence she showed Charity, she was embarrassed by her mother’s five marriages. Why couldn’t her mother just get it right so that they could live like regular people?

  Leah asked, “So is your mother coming later today?”

  “She can’t. I haven’t told Rebekah yet because it will upset her. Baby Nathan is sick with a fever, and Mama must stay with him. Papa is coming tomorrow—Saturday. Until then Ethan and I will have to substitute for our parents.”

  “Maybe you could call your mother later tonight and let Rebekah talk to her.”

  “We have no phone.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “None of the Amish where we live have phones.”

  “But how did your mother let you know about the baby?”

  “She went into town and used the phone. We are not opposed to using phones, we just do not believe in owning them.”

  This made no sense to Leah. “But if you use phones, why not have one in your house?”

  Charity smiled patiently and, leaning forward, said, “We have no electricity, no cars, no modern things. Life on our farms is as it was a hundred years ago. The Bible says that Christians should separate themselves from the world, that we should be ‘in the world, but not of the world.’ We ‘hold fast to that which is good.’ For us, faith is lived out in our community. We marry our own kind, birth our own kind, bury our own kind.

  “We believe that God created all things and that he sustains all creation. We believe that man is sinful and that only the blood of Jesus can redeem us from our sins. We expect to die and go to heaven and glorify God forever. We are not like you, Leah. But also, we are not backward, or stupid, or foolish. We are Amish. And I am not ashamed.”

  Leah listened dumbstruck. Charity was so certain of what she believed that she could speak about it without stumbling over words. And without apology. Leah knew she should respond but she didn’t know how. The sudden buzz of the phone rescued her. Quickly she rose to answer it before it could ring again and wake Rebekah.

  “Hello?”

  “Leah, darling! Neil spoke with your doctors just an hour ago. Can we talk?”

  “I’m stuck in the hospital, remember?” Leah replied. “What else is there to do but talk?” She held her hand over the mouthpiece and told Charity, “It’s my mother.”

  Charity waved and slipped behind Rebekah’s curtain.

  From faraway Japan, her mother’s voice said, “Don’t act sulky, Leah. You’re being cared for.”

  But not by you, Leah thought. “So what did the doctor tell you?” she asked.

  “Not a darn thing! Honestly, I hope they know what they’re doing at that place. You’d think they could tell us something by now.”

  Leah was disappointed. “They still don’t know what’s wrong with me?”

  “Evidently, according to Dr. Thomas,” her mother said, then quoted, “you’re ‘manifesting symptoms that are consistent with any number of health problems.’ As if that’s supposed to pacify me. At any rate, they’ve scheduled more tests starting Monday morning, and once they can evaluate the results, they might be able to diagnose you. There’s no excuse for dragging this thing out.”

  “I don’t want to spend Christmas in the hospital.”

  “I’m sure you won’t have to. But until I get some sort of definitive word from your doctor, I’m not cutting my honeymoon short. That seemed okay with you the last time we talked.”

  “Sure, it’s fine.” Leah forced herself not to sound disappointed.

  “But don’t you worry. We’re flying into Indianapolis December twenty-third, just like we planned. We’ll come straight to the hospital and spring you. Then it’s home to the farm for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We’ll put up a tree and put out all our presents. Why, I’m even planning to cook a turkey with all the trimmings.”

  “But what if they still don’t know what’s wrong with me?”

  “Then we’ll find another doctor after Christmas. But I’m sure that won’t be necessary. Now, is there anything else we need to discuss?”

  Leah could think of a hundred things. She wanted to say “I’m scared” but couldn’t get the words out. She wanted to say “I love you.”

  “Um, Mom, I—”

  “Whoops! Sorry, dear, I’ve got to run. Someone’s at the door. I’ll call you before Monday. Ciao.”

  Leah held the receiver for a long time, listening to the dial tone that only moments before had been the voice of her mother. With tears welling in her eyes, she hung up.

  She decided to take a belated morning shower and put on her makeup, hoping it would make her feel better. She was just adding the finishing touches—not easy with her broken finger—when Molly came in to take blood pressu
res and temps. By now Rebekah was awake, but she lay in the bed listlessly. She looked feverish. Charity tried to soothe her while Molly worked.

  “Did you find the missing tree?” Leah asked, coming out of the bathroom as she spritzed on an expensive perfume.

  “Still missing,” Molly said.

  Leah told Charity what had happened.

  “Stealing is wrong,” Charity said, sighing. “This outsider world of yours is not a very nice place, Leah.”

  Was she asking Leah to defend the world at large? “There are good people too,” Leah said. “Aren’t there, Molly?”

  “A few saints. An angel or two.”

  “Where’s the angel?” Rebekah asked.

  “The angels are watching over you, little sister. You just can’t see them,” said Charity, smoothing Rebekah’s damp forehead.

  “Can you see any angels, Leah?” Rebekah asked.

  “Not really.” Believing in angels was a little like believing in fairies and elves, Leah thought. Interesting mythology, but not scientifically valid.

  Molly said, “I think you’re an angel, Rebekah. Now, why don’t you close your eyes and let this good medicine do its work.” She adjusted the drip on Rebekah’s IV.

  Rebekah sighed. Molly turned to Leah. “You look pretty. Got a date?”

  Leah ran her fingers through her thick hair. “Actually, I think I missed my date with the lunch tray. I’m starved.”

  “My fault,” Molly said. “I didn’t get you back up here in time. But don’t worry, there’s plenty to eat in the rec room. Pizza, sandwiches, fresh fruit—go help yourself.”

  “Do you want me to bring you something?” Leah asked Charity.

  “No, thank you. We ate already.” Charity smiled at Leah.

  The rec room was more crowded than before. The giant-screen TV was now showing The Little Mermaid for a group of engrossed kids, as toddlers climbed on the plastic play equipment. Some of the children were hooked to IV lines that hung from poles standing next to them. Some were bald from chemotherapy treatments. Some had broken limbs in casts. A candy striper aide sat in a corner, overseeing the group and running interference when two toddlers had a confrontation.