by Leslie Gould
As I sped over the bridge spanning the Ohio River and then on to I-376, I took a couple of deep breaths, and then finally said a prayer for Marie, Gordon, and Caden. Then for Jessica and her husband, Silas, and their little girl, Ruby, named after one of our ancestors from the Revolutionary War.
Then I said a prayer for my Mamm and our strained relationship. It had gotten a little better after Marie left the church and joined Gordon’s Mennonite congregation because, to Mamm and the church, what Marie did was worse than my never joining the Amish at all. Jah, Mamm was annoyed with me, but she wasn’t shunning me. Of course I took no joy in Mamm treating me better because she was now treating Marie worse.
After watching Mamm constantly push Jessica away while she held Marie too tightly, I’d learned early in life to avoid my mother. I spent as much time as I could with Dat and sidestepped Mamm whenever possible.
Now, each time I came home, she’d chastise me about leaving and admonish me to come home, sometimes even saying I was in danger of God’s wrath and that I’d been created to be with family, in my community. She told me more than once Englischers would never “be there for me” the way my family and the Amish would have been if I hadn’t left. She was still predicting God would punish me and someday, once I acknowledged the truth, I’d come to my senses and return to both my church and family.
“You’ll never make it on your own,” she’d say. “God will do whatever it takes to bring you back. And if you marry an Englischer, God will never bless your marriage.”
Each time, I would ignore her. I didn’t believe God was as punitive as Mamm, but honestly her words made me doubt. When I was tired or discouraged or overwhelmed, there were times when her words played over and over, like a podcast streaming in my brain. Maybe I couldn’t make it on my own. Maybe she was right.
As a result, I’d gradually built my world atop an invisible line that I tried to navigate. I would keep my faith and some beliefs particular to the Anabaptists—nonresistance being the biggie—but I would also embrace my education and my future professional life.
And in the end Mamm’s predictions of my failure simply made me want to be as self-sufficient as possible and not rely on anyone. I could make it on my own—well, with a little help from Nick.
Because I was so close to becoming a nurse, I guessed that now she might be even more direct about me abandoning my dream and joining the church. It was ironic that Jessica, the daughter Mamm had never gotten along with, was now the only one who was Amish. And that it was Marie and I who’d so thoroughly disappointed our mother.
Outside of Pittsburgh, the landscape quickly changed to emerald green hillsides and the occasional farmhouse and barn. It wasn’t quite as idyllic as Lancaster County, but it was beautiful, and even with my anxiety about Marie, I felt myself relax.
Still, I’d loved living in Pittsburgh from the very beginning. It was so vibrant, so alive in a different way. So different from my childhood. Mamm didn’t understand how I could tolerate the sound of traffic and living in such close proximity to hundreds of thousands of other people. But the constant hum of cars and trucks and people gave me energy—especially the people. Almost everything about humans fascinated me. Their bodies. Their genetics. Their histories.
Based on my social awkwardness, one might think others fascinated me in only a clinical way, but that wasn’t true. Their motivations, responses, emotions, and reactions also intrigued me. I’d never met a person for whom I didn’t feel compassion, which I think I learned from my father.
Dat had had no formal medical training, but he had lots of experience, first in a Mennonite clinic in Vietnam back in 1967, then as a sort of healthcare consultant. Now, as a trained nurse, I couldn’t recommend freelancing the way he did, although he had never had any problems with his practice. He’d done a lot of research on vitamins, supplements, and natural remedies, and he eventually began sharing them with friends and relatives. Soon, friends of friends and friends of relatives started asking him for advice. They’d come to the house and he’d talk them through their ailments and then either recommend vitamins and supplements or encourage them to see a chiropractor or a physician. Most took his advice, and it seemed he always erred on the side of caution.
By the time I was eight or so, I was trying to eavesdrop on his conversations with people. Eventually, he brought me into his study as a helper. At first I’d inventoried his vitamins and supplements. Later he had me doing research for him.
When I was seventeen, he allowed me to take the certified nursing course. When I decided to get my GED, I told him and he didn’t forbid it. Even though I never told him about my aspirations to become a nurse, I think he suspected it. I’d planned to tell him about my dream to go to college—and that I’d applied and been accepted—but then he fell ill.
He’d denied it, saying his cough was just allergies. After far too long, I convinced him to go to the doctor.
He was diagnosed with lung cancer and died four months later.
I’d cared for him, delaying my admission to nursing school by a semester. I didn’t tell him my plan, not wanting to add to his worries.
Caring for him cemented my desire to go into nursing. I knew it was my calling.
Traffic was light, and my trip was going quickly, but by the time I reached the Somerset exit I was drowsy. I’d worked nights and gone to school during the day and slept weird hours for the last four years. It had gotten me through school with fewer student loans than I would have otherwise; however, I was almost always sleepy.
I pulled into the parking lot of a diner where I sometimes stopped on my way to Lancaster County. Dusk was falling and the evening had grown cool. I walked into the diner, inhaling the strong scent of coffee. I already felt more alert as I ordered a cup to go at the counter.
As the waitress took my money, someone called out from the back of the diner. “Terri!”
One of the other waitresses headed toward the voice and then yelled, “Call 9-1-1!”
I started to dial but then realized I had no idea what the address of the diner was.
“I’ve got it.” The waitress pulled her phone from her apron pocket.
I jumped off the stool and headed toward the back. A man in the last booth had his head slumped to the side, propped against the wall. A woman with long dark hair had her hands on either side of his face. Two children sat on the other bench, frozen.
“My name is Leisel. I’m a nurse,” I said as I approached. Almost a nurse, anyway, I thought. “May I check on him?”
The woman nodded and slid out of the booth, her big brown eyes wild. “He was talking with us a second ago and then he just stopped.”
My own heart raced as I slid into the booth and felt for a carotid pulse. I couldn’t find one. “Did he mention anything? Chest pains? A headache? Does he have a medical condition?”
The woman shook her head. “His blood pressure runs a little high, that’s all.”
I caught sight of the children’s faces. A boy and girl, probably ten and eight or so. They seemed more confused than frightened.
I pointed to the two men in the next booth. I hoped my voice was calmer than I felt. “Could you help me?” I was five feet three inches and one hundred pounds. I’d never get the guy out of the booth on my own. “We need to get him on the floor.”
As the men moved him, I asked Terri, the waitress who had called 9-1-1 if there was an AED on-site.
She gave me a puzzled look.
“An automated external defibrillator,” I explained.
She shook her head.
That was a shame. I asked Terri to take the children to the front of the restaurant, and thankfully the kids followed her without protesting. The woman told me her husband’s name was Sonny. “He’s only forty-one.” As she spoke, my palms grew sweaty and my pulse quickened even more. He was too young to die.
Once he was flat on the linoleum, my training took over, and I recruited the two men to help with the chest compressions. I showed t
he first exactly how to position his hands, hoping it wasn’t obvious mine were shaking. Then I did the breathing, two to every fifteen compressions, thinking of four years ago when my brother Arden had had a heart attack at Dat’s burial and Jessica and I performed CPR. I’d only done it twice since then, both on residents in the care facility without DNR orders.
At the center, I could get up on the bed and get a good bounce going, but not on a diner floor. I didn’t have the strength these men did. I had to coach them to push harder and faster. I knew it was possible they might break the man’s ribs, but better that than not getting his heart started. All the while I was aware of the man’s wife standing to the side.
I gave the man two more breaths. It was probably my imagination, but it seemed Sonny’s lips were already cooling. Even with compressions shifting his body around, he was lifeless.
I checked his pulse again.
I’d never felt anything so beautiful. Sonny’s heart had started beating. As the emergency team arrived, a seed of hope began to grow in my own chest. After the next cycle of CPR, the two men and I moved back so the paramedics could get to work.
Immediately, they started bagging him, forcing oxygen into his lungs through a bag-valve mask. As they readied to transport him to the ambulance, I asked Sonny’s wife if she wanted someone to drive her and the kids to the hospital.
“No, I’ll do it,” she said.
“Do you live around here?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Can you call someone to meet you?” I nodded toward the children, who still stood beside Terri near the front door of the restaurant. It was always good to have another adult around in an emergency.
“Yes, my parents.” She appeared calm, but I could recognize the signs of shock. She certainly wasn’t frozen, but she had that deer-in-the-headlights look. “Will he be all right?”
“His heart is beating.” I knew nearly ninety percent of people who suffered out-of-hospital cardiac arrests died, but if the cardiac chain of survival was enacted in the first few minutes, it could double or triple a person’s chance of survival. Then again, maybe he hadn’t had a heart attack. Maybe he’d had a stroke or an aneurysm or something else. “I’ll pray he’ll be all right,” I said.
She nodded and then moved toward her children. She urged them through the door to the parking lot before the paramedics would pass by them with their dad on a stretcher.
I thanked the two men, who had returned to their booth. They nodded. Both seemed a little dazed.
The waitress came toward me with my cup of coffee and change, and then we both watched out the window as the paramedics loaded Sonny into the ambulance and the mom and kids climbed into their car.
“Hopefully he’ll make it,” Terri said.
I nodded.
“Where are you headed?” she asked.
“Lancaster.”
“Can I get you another cup of coffee?”
“No, thank you,” I answered. Now that my adrenaline levels were soaring, I hardly needed the first. But I took it anyway.
As I walked out the door, Sonny’s wife drove off and the little girl waved at me. I waved back. I’d probably never know how things turned out for their family. But no matter a girl’s age, losing her father could change her life forever. I prayed that wouldn’t be the case.
It wasn’t until an hour later, as darkness swallowed the landscape, that it hit me. The man in the diner—Sonny—might be dead now. His wife, a widow. His children, fatherless. He was young. And yet, in the moment it took for his head to hit his shoulder, his whole life might have changed. And his family’s.
My clammy hands gripped the steering wheel. I wasn’t one to cry, and I didn’t now. Instead, I swallowed several times and then took a deep breath, willing my trembling chin to stop. It wasn’t just Sonny. It was Mr. Weber too.
And it was Marie. She had to be all right. She had a husband and baby. I contemplated calling Nick and talking with him as I drove, but I didn’t want the conversation to land on the Air Force. Instead, I continued on in the dark, passing trucks and cars, zipping down the interstate. The darkness felt so heavy, so oppressive.
It was nearly eleven o’clock by the time I reached the hospital in Lancaster. Once I parked in the garage, I texted Nick to let him know I’d arrived. He texted me back right away, asking what took so long. I hadn’t been delayed that much, but I texted back about the man at the diner. Sonny. But it was easier if I thought of him as the man.
A half second later, Nick called as I entered the hospital lobby and marched across the polished linoleum toward the elevators.
“Leisel,” he said, after I’d told him the whole story, “that’s crazy.”
“I know, right?”
“Do you think he made it?”
I paused before the elevator bank. “He had a pulse by the time the paramedics arrived, so maybe.”
“I hope so,” Nick said. “This is too much. With what’s going on with Marie and Mr. Weber dying too.” Nick’s voice calmed me. He knew me so well.
“I know, right?” I said again. “I’ll text you tomorrow,” I added, “once I find out how Marie is.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I hope you get some rest.”
“You too,” I answered.
After we said our farewells, I slipped my phone into my sweatshirt pocket and hit the Up button for the elevator. A few minutes later, I poked my head into Marie’s room. Gordon slept in a recliner next to the window. For the moment, Marie was asleep in the bed, a white sheet pulled up to her chin.
I asked the nurse in the hall for an extra blanket, set my alarm for six, and knelt to say my prayers, concentrating mostly on Marie, although I said one for Sonny too. And Mr. Weber’s daughter. Then I settled in a chair in the waiting room. I’d always had the gift of being able to fall asleep anywhere and anytime—it was the only way I’d made it through the last four years—but this time it took me quite a while. Marie was just down the hall. Sonny had either lived—or died. Mr. Weber’s daughter was now planning his funeral instead of his ninety-third birthday party. Nick was in Pittsburgh, wanting to join the Air Force. I felt unsettled to my core.
When my alarm buzzed, it took me a minute to remember where I was, then it all came back to me. I unfolded myself from the chair and headed to the bathroom, where I brushed my teeth and washed my face.
When I entered Marie’s room, a nurse was checking her vitals and Gordon was gone. Hopefully he was grabbing a cup of coffee and some breakfast from the cafeteria.
I stepped up to the bed. “Marie,” I said. “I’m here.”
“Leisel?”
I reached for her free hand. “What’s going on?”
Her long hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and draped over her shoulder. Her face was pale and her dark eyes dull. “My stomach problems got really bad Thursday night. I couldn’t keep anything down. Gordon took me to urgent care. We thought I had appendicitis, but the doctor said that wasn’t what it was and sent me here.”
“What tests have they done?”
“Some blood work. An endoscopy,” she answered.
“What are they checking for?”
“Cancer.”
I gripped her hand. From what she’d told me before, I hadn’t expected that at all. Stomach cancer could be swift and furious. What if I’d checked back with her about going to the doctor a month ago? “When will they have the results of the endoscopy back?”
“It could be a week but hopefully a little sooner. They’ll call with the results.”
That sounded like forever.
“I was dehydrated,” she said, “but hopefully I can go home today.”
Marie introduced me to her nurse. “This is my sister, Leisel. I want her to have access to my chart.”
The nurse said she’d get the form to make that possible.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” Marie squeezed my hand. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it to your graduation and that you had to leave right after. Bu
t thank you. Just having you here makes me feel better.”
3
Later in the morning, Gordon went home to shower and pick up Caden. I said I could go hang out with the little guy, but Marie insisted I stay with her. “Jessica is at Mamm’s with Ruby.” The children were a year apart and becoming the best of friends. “Gordon will take Caden over there.”
“Is Mamm all right with that?” I asked.
“Well, she’s never thrilled when I stop by, but I don’t think she’ll take that out on Caden.”
I hoped not.
Marie had signed the paper giving me permission to read her chart, so I scanned through the electronic document as she slept. She first started having stomach pains two months ago. I winced. She’d had them for a month before she’d called me. And then she hadn’t gone to her doctor until two weeks ago. Why hadn’t I followed up with her?
She’d lost ten pounds, but the doctor thought perhaps it was postpartum weight. He did a pregnancy test, as any good provider would. It was negative. He also ordered tests for H. pylori bacteria, which can cause ulcers. That test had come back negative also. He asked her to make a follow-up appointment, but she hadn’t. Instead, Gordon had taken her to urgent care. At that point, she’d been vomiting for twelve hours and had stomach pains, which is why they thought it might be her appendix.
The urgent care doctor gave her another pregnancy test, which also came back negative, and prescribed anti-nausea meds. The doctor then sent her on to the emergency room, thinking it might be her appendix too. However, the emergency room doctor ruled that out right away. The chart said that Marie hadn’t had much appetite for “a few months.” By the time she was weighed yesterday, she’d lost another five pounds in the last two weeks.
The hospitalist had then ordered an ultrasound, which showed a small mass in her stomach. That was why he’d ordered the test for cancer.
The rest of the chart listed her vitals, along with the anti-nausea meds and painkillers that had been administered. Her blood pressure ran low, but her heartbeat and oxygen levels were normal.
