Zach studied Cassie’s face. Was she eager to see Elmer Lee or just eager to help?
Zach heard a faint crack as Titus’s toothpick snapped in two. A deep line appeared between his eyebrows. “Norman says not to come until you’re dressed Plain. He says as long as you’re staying with Mammi and Dawdi, you should show them respect by honoring our ways.”
Cassie seemed to freeze in her tracks. “Oh. I see.”
Linda heaved a sigh but didn’t say anything.
Titus laced his fingers together and bowed his head sheepishly. “Aunt Esther says to wear the dress she made you, and Elmer Lee says he’d really like to see you in pink.”
Zach couldn’t help himself. He muttered between his teeth. “Did Luke have anything to say on the matter?”
“He needs a Band-Aid,” Titus said.
At least one of Cassie’s brothers was staying out of it.
Titus pulled the toothpick from his mouth. Zach got the feeling that he only did that when something was particularly important. “I apologize, Cassie. I promised I’d deliver the message.”
Anna pointed a knitting needle at Titus as if she wanted to skewer him. “For goodness’ sake, Titus, go tell Norman to get off his high horse.”
Titus seemed momentarily confused. “He’s not on a horse. He’s got his boots ankle-deep in mud.”
Linda lifted Priscilla off her lap and stood up. “I’ll go help, Cassie. You can read Priscilla another book.”
Cassie held up her hand. “It’s okay, Linda. Priscilla needs you, and it won’t be long before the baby will want to eat. I’ll change into the pink.”
The muscles in Zach’s neck tightened until he thought he might pop an important blood vessel. Cassie had to walk by him to go to her room to dress. It was all he could do to keep from stopping her, to keep from telling her that she didn’t have to give in to Norman’s demands. Norman was a bully, and Cassie willingly handed control over to him.
But if he stopped her from going, wouldn’t that make him just like Norman? He had as little right to boss Cassie around as Norman did.
Zach pressed his lips together and watched Cassie walk down the hall and into her room and shut the door behind her. He wanted to growl. Or pop Norman in the mouth with his fist.
Standing there staring at Cassie’s bedroom door, he resolved to do two things: Win Cassie’s heart and put Norman in his place.
He’d look forward to both tasks.
Chapter Fourteen
“Well, I’m glad you’re not dead.”
“Sorry I didn’t call sooner, Mom. It was a sixteen-hour shift and then I came home and crashed.”
“I’m relieved to know you didn’t die.”
Zach flexed the hand where the worst burns were. He wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t experienced it personally, but he’d barely noticed the pain during his shift. He hadn’t been able to do much with the awkward gauze pads getting in the way while he treated patients, so he’d taken them off and used his hands as much as ever. He’d wrapped up the blisters on his fingers so they wouldn’t burst, but he had needed his hands free. It had been almost as if he hadn’t burned himself at all. Had it been due to Cassie’s prayer?
Whatever the reason, he was grateful for the sixteen-hour reprieve, because the red welts across his palms were starting to sting as if someone had swiped a barbed whip across them.
“Zach? You okay?”
“Kind of. I burned my hands yesterday.”
“How bad?” Mom said, switching into her concerned mother voice.
“Second-degree. Nothing serious, but it really hurts.”
“Have you got some aloe vera? Or lavender oil is even better. Should I send you some?” That was his mom. Tell her your problem, she’d tried to solve it for you, even from two thousand miles away.
“I’ll see what I can find at the health food store.”
“Is there a health food store in Shawano?”
“I don’t know.”
She grunted. “Now you’re just humoring me.”
“Mom, can I ask you a question?”
She must have sensed the subtle change in his voice. “Anything, sweetheart. What is it?”
“Do you remember when you dragged me to that musical when I was in high school?”
“Which one? As I recall, I dragged you to several musicals as my date.”
Zach sat on the sofa and concentrated on what he wanted to say. Was it weird to talk to his mom about this? “The one about Don Quixote?”
“Man of La Mancha?”
“That sounds right,” Zach said. “I don’t know why I remember this, but in one of the songs he talks about reaching the unreachable star, or something like that. Does that sound familiar at all?”
“Zach, it’s only one of the most famous songs in all of musical theater history.”
“Whatever.”
Mom squeaked as if she’d been stuck by a pin. “Whatever? I’ve failed as a mother.”
Zach smiled. “You paid for braces and made tacos every Sunday night. You did okay.”
“The name of the song is ‘The Impossible Dream.’” She started humming it over the phone.
He let her finish the whole song. “Lovely, Mom.”
“Thank you.”
“So there’s a part in that song that says, ‘This is my quest, to love pure and chaste from afar.’”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it’s possible to do that? For someone like me, I mean?”
Silence on the other end. Had she stepped away from the phone to have a heart attack?
“Mom?”
“You’ve met somebody.” Did he detect a tinge of eagerness in her voice?
“I love her, Mom.”
Again with the silence. Was his being in love some sort of earth-shattering event?
Yeah.
“Mom?”
“I’m trying not to overreact,” she said.
“You’re afraid if you act too happy, you’ll spook me?”
She laughed. “I don’t want you to get the impression that I’ve been praying for this for months and months.”
“Why would I ever suspect that?”
“What’s her name?” Mom said. “Give me all the details.”
“She’s the one who made you all those flowers.”
“I love her already.”
He heard the grinding sound of the old pencil sharpener. “Mom, you’re not taking notes, are you?”
“Of course. To tell the ladies at the auxiliary.”
“Not a word, Mom.”
“I’m teasing, Zach. I wouldn’t gossip about something this important. But I am taking notes. I don’t want to forget anything. What’s her name, and do you know how to spell it?”
Zach chuckled. “Her name is Cassie.”
“Is it short for anything, like Cassandra?”
Zach brushed the back of his hand back and forth across the whiskers on his chin. “Cassandra doesn’t seem like an Amish name.”
More silence. She was probably choking.
“She isn’t Amish anymore,” Zach interjected, before Mom suffocated. “But her whole family’s Amish. And she’s very religious and, okay, virtuous, and okay, Mom, I might as well come out and say it. I’m wondering if a guy like me could ever hope to deserve her, especially since she’s a virgin and I’m not.”
Zach could almost see Mom’s eyebrows fly off her face in the silence on the other end of the line. “Did you strain any muscles trying to get all that out?” she said.
“Come on. It’s a little awkward confessing my sins to my mom.”
“You think I didn’t already know?” Mom said.
“Well, yeah. I knew you knew, but saying it is kind of embarrassing. It doesn’t matter. I need your advice.”
“Your dad was always better at stuff like this.”
The scorching memory at the mere mention of Dad usually had Zach panting for air in a matter of seconds. But tonight, he thought of long talks in the garage working on th
e Honda and dark nights under the stars solving the world’s problems with his dad and a jumbo package of hot dogs. The hundred-percent-beef kind.
They were good memories. Cassie said Dad wanted him to be happy and God did too. For some reason, he almost believed it.
“I’m not very good at dispensing advice,” Mom said. “Do I understand you right? You want to prove yourself to this girl, show her a pure and chaste heart, like in the song?”
“Yeah, and she thinks that the only thing I want from her is to get her into bed.” His head felt heavy just thinking about it.
“You didn’t try that, did you?”
“Give me some credit, Mom.” His confidence plummeted. If his own mother assumed the worst, what chance did he have with Cassie?
“I give you all the credit in the world,” she said. “You’re my son. The fact that we’re having this conversation is a sign of your good heart.”
Zach leaned back against the sofa cushion. “I don’t know how to make her love me.”
“You can be your own wonderful self.”
“It’s not enough. She knew me in college.”
“You can’t do anything about your past except learn from it. If she’s truly a Christian, then she knows people can change. And you know it too. I took you to church for seventeen years. Something should have sunk in.”
“Should I tell her?”
“Tell her what?”
“That there will be no touching, no hand-holding, and no kissing until I’ve won her heart. Like, ‘Hey, Cassie, have you noticed how I’m trying to love you pure and chaste from afar?’”
“It sounds a little odd when you put it like that.”
“Okay. I won’t tell her. I’ll show her. I’m going to prove to her that I love her enough to control my passions, because my greatest desire is to be with her.”
Mom sighed. “That is so romantic.”
“I don’t know if it’s romantic, but it’s the truth.”
“You could sing her that song.”
Zach rolled his eyes. “Oh, yeah, because that’s not odd.”
Her voice got quiet all of a sudden. “Thank you for going to musicals with me. I know it was pure torture.”
“I did it because I love you. I don’t regret a single one. Except maybe Oklahoma—the stupidest play ever written.”
“You’re bordering on sacrilege there, young man,” she said.
“As long as you still love me, I don’t care.”
“I love you forever.”
“You too, Mom.”
Chapter Fifteen
Was it an unwritten rule of hospitals that they had to stock the world’s most boring magazines in their waiting rooms?
She should have brought her GRE book so she could have gotten a little study time in. Instead she was stuck perusing the AARP magazine and a three-year-old copy of Car Craft. Running her fingernails down a chalkboard would have been more pleasant, even if she had just read how to rebuild a carburetor.
Dawdi seemed perfectly content with his issue of Consumer Reports with a flip phone on the cover. Cassie glanced at the date. 2004. Surely someone at the hospital should be alerted to the magazine problem immediately.
She glanced at the clock. Zach, Dr. Reynolds, said the surgery would take about half an hour. It should be any minute now.
Dawdi pointed to a picture in his magazine. “These new phones look mighty fancy.”
Please, Doctor. Please come before Dawdi starts comparing service plans.
Oh, if she could always conjure him up so easily. He came around the corner just as she wished for him, looking as handsome as ever in his pistachio green scrubs. His head was bare, but she could tell he’d been wearing some sort of surgical hat because his hair was attractively mussed just the way she liked it.
He caught sight of her, and his smile could have lit up a soccer field in the middle of the night. Cassie nudged Dawdi, still engrossed in reading about 911 calls on a cell phone, and they stood together to greet the doctor.
He reached out his hand and shook Dawdi’s vigorously, then offered his hand to her. It was probably the most fleeting handshake she’d ever experienced. He released her hand almost before he’d even touched her, as if he’d been burned, even though she knew his hands were better. He’d burned them over a week ago.
“The surgery went very well. Better than expected,” he said, still beaming like a lighthouse. “We took some skin from her thigh and grafted it onto her foot. I performed the surgery and Dr. Mann observed. He was pleased with the results.”
“Can we see her?” Cassie asked.
“Sure,” the doctor said. “They just took her to recovery. I’ll show you the way.”
They followed him down the hall, through two sets of doors, and into a maze of alcoves and curtains. Dr. Reynolds pointed to a space set apart by a hospital curtain. “She’s behind there.”
Dawdi nudged aside one end of the curtain and ambled into the room to be with Mammi.
Dr. Reynolds looked at her as if he were about to ask for a lock of her hair. “It will be a few minutes before she comes out of anesthesia. Can I introduce you to someone while you’re waiting?”
“Yes. Of course.”
His smile only got wider, and he motioned with his clipboard. “This way.”
They walked side by side through the two sets of double doors and back into the main hall. “I’m glad surgery went well,” Cassie said.
He stopped and turned to her, his eyes sparkling with their own light. “I felt it. I wanted you to know that I actually felt it.”
“Felt what?”
“Your prayer. I know it made a difference.”
Right before they had taken Mammi, Cassie had quietly suggested that they pray for a successful surgery and Mammi’s quick recovery. She hadn’t wanted to offend Dr. Reynolds, but she had sensed a change in the last couple of weeks and thought he might be willing. He was. Surely, God was changing his heart. “You think God helped you through the operation?”
He nodded. “I’ve never done that kind of surgery before. It was almost as if God took hold of my hands and guided me. Dr. Mann said I looked like a veteran.”
“I’m so glad.” She felt as warm as a potbelly stove. Not only because Dr. Reynolds’s faith was growing, but because he had trusted her enough to agree to the prayer. She’d judged Doctor Reynolds harshly in the first place. Instead of the jerk she’d thought him to be, he was kind and thoughtful, unselfish and good-natured.
And she liked him, more than she would ever have thought possible. It amazed her how easily she could talk to him and how comfortable she felt being with him. He bristled every time Norman came to Huckleberry Hill and clenched his teeth whenever anyone mentioned Elmer Lee’s name. It was very endearing.
She almost regretted not saying yes when he’d asked her out.
Because he wouldn’t ask again.
He called her Miss Coblenz and avoided touching her at all costs. seemingly determined to keep a professional distance. She truly appreciated that. Or rather, she used to appreciate that. Now it frustrated her no end.
Didn’t he realize that a girl could change her mind?
“I know you want to get back to your grandma,” he said, “but there’s someone I’ve been wanting you to meet. Are you okay if we take the stairs? Some days it’s the only exercise I get.”
Cassie led the way into the stairwell, a dank and dim space with gray stairs and even grayer walls. Dr. Reynolds followed behind her as if wanting to be near just in case she fell backward. “For as much as health professionals tell people they should use the stairs,” he said, “this stairwell is very unfriendly.”
“This and the magazines.”
“We have unfriendly magazines?” he said.
“Old and boring ones in the waiting rooms. Some of them could probably be worth some money if you sold them as antiques.”
He chuckled. “I don’t know if I can do anything about the stairwell, but surely the administrat
ion could spring for some new magazines. I’ll get right on that.”
She turned and smiled at him. “Will you please?”
On the second floor, they walked halfway down the hall, and Dr. Reynolds tapped on one of the doors. “Come in,” a muffled voice said.
He opened the door for Cassie, and she walked into the brightly lit room. A little boy, so skinny he looked like a pile of bones covered with skin, lay in the bed. Dark circles made half moons under his eyes, and his skin seemed to have been stretched over his face. He watched TV with a woman who sat in a chair next to the bed.
Cassie recognized the woman. She looked to be in her late thirties with light brown highlights in her dark brown hair. Her eyes were dark under long lashes and heavy brows. She was thick around the middle with that motherly figure that came from bearing children.
The little boy exploded into a smile when he saw Dr. Reynolds. “Zach!” he said. “Messi scored two goals yesterday.”
Dr. Reynolds smiled back. “I know. And did you see Mathieu save a goal with his head?”
“Yes. That was so sweet.”
The boy with the scarf.
The reason that Dr. Reynolds was willing to talk to God again.
With a boyish grin, Dr. Reynolds held up his hand for a high five. Austin gave him one. Cassie thought the doctor had never, ever looked so attractive.
“Barca’s playing Madrid on Saturday,” the doctor said. “Are you going to watch?”
“No. The game starts in the middle of the night, and this stupid hospital TV doesn’t get any good stations.”
Dr. Reynolds nudged Austin’s arm. “Austin, this is Cassie Coblenz. She’s a friend of mine.”
Austin tensed. “Are you going to give me a shot?”
“No,” Cassie said. “I’m just here for a visit.” She held out her hands to show they were empty.
Austin exhaled in relief.
Dr. Reynolds motioned to the woman who had stood up to greet them. “This is Jamie, Austin’s mom.”
Cassie reached out her hand. “You look familiar.”
“I go to the Bible church near the high school,” Jamie said.
“Of course,” Cassie said. “I should have remembered. I’ve only been in town a few weeks, so I haven’t learned everybody’s names there yet.”
Huckleberry Hearts Page 17
