The Patch of Heaven Collection

by Kelly Long

  Mamm bent to kiss Father’s still face, and Sarah did the same. Then the doors opened and closed on the gurney and Grant shepherded them into the waiting room.

  CHAPTER 16

  The waiting room was cluttered with magazines, puzzles, and vinyl chairs. Despite the late hour, two other families, both with young children, were waiting and looked up as they entered. A television played CNN without sound and a cheerful old woman in a pink jacket, sitting at a desk with a telephone, greeted them.

  “Come in, folks, and make yourselves comfortable. There’s coffee and juices over there, and just let me know of anything that you might need.”

  The Kings murmured their thanks while Grant smiled and waited until the ladies had chosen seats on the far side of the room before asking if they wanted anything.

  “No thank you, Doctor,” Mamm said.

  Grant shook his head. “If you’ll allow me to insist, you’re going to have some orange juice. Both of you look rather pale after that elevator ride.”

  “Jah, it was my first time.” Mamm laughed.

  Grant went to the juice stand, noticing the covert looks his two companions were receiving for their obvious difference in dress. It bothered him. What a person wore should not be a source for whispers and stares. He smiled to himself. Yet how many times had he categorized patients who seemed to resemble their pets? He grabbed three plastic bottles of juice from the ice and took them back.

  Sarah and her mother stared at the plastic lids, and he showed them how to peel them back to reveal the juice inside. He was glad to note that a little color came back into Sarah’s cheeks when she’d drunk deeply of the liquid.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’re not going to sit here and torture ourselves with waiting. Believe me, I know what it’s like. So, you two are going to give me a sampling of some good old home remedies that would probably put that doctor downstairs to shame, and I’m going to take notes.” He withdrew a small notepad from his shirt pocket and a blue pen.

  He clicked the pen. “All right . . . I’m ready.”

  Sarah stared at him in dismay. “But we need to pray now.”

  “Can’t you pray and talk at the same time?” he asked innocently.

  Again he’d managed to coax a smile from Mamm. “You’re a good doctor, and yes, we will help you and pray at the same time. What remedies do you want?”

  “Oh, anything, really. I find that many homeopathic cures work the same for both animals and people. And I’m also interested in the more curious cures—the ones that have been passed down for generations. Heirloom cures, you might call them.” He shot a look at Sarah while Mamm nodded in affirmation.

  “Jah, all right,” Mamm began. “We’ll start with the old cures. Some are superstitions, but they’re fun to remember. But maybe these are not what you want?”

  What he wanted was to keep the two women occupied while the time went by, and if he needed to listen to folklore, it made no difference to him. He also recalled how slowly time passed when he was ten and had to wait with the Bustles while word came about his father and mother. He had no desire to repeat that scene in his life, so he smiled broadly.

  “I’ll take the fun folklore first.”

  Mamm elbowed Sarah slightly. “Kumme, Sarah . . . we’ll play and see who remembers the most. Father wouldn’t want you to sit around with a long face.”

  “Jah, Mamm.”

  “Now, when you get warts on your hands, you know?”

  Grant nodded, scribbling on the paper.

  “You get the warts from handling toads.”

  “Even I’ve heard that one.” He laughed. “What’s something else?”

  Mamm pursed her lips in thought. “Do not cut your hair in the dark of the moon; it will cause baldness.”

  Sarah sighed. “That’s not true, Mamm.”

  “I know that; We’re having the fun. Now play along, boppli, like a good girl.”

  Grant watched Sarah draw a deep breath. “The root of rhubarb worn on a string around your neck will keep you from having a bellyache.”

  “Really?” He arched one golden brow at her.

  “No . . . not really,” she snapped. “The root of rhubarb is good for growing more rhubarb.”

  “Ah . . . I see.”

  “Now, for the more serious . . .,” Mamm spoke. “When a baby gets the croup, you mix cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, ginger, and mustard with some lard to make a paste. You put this on the baby’s chest with a warm piece of flannel.”

  “That sounds like it would smell good,” Grant offered as he wrote.

  “Jah, and when your stomach needs cleansing because you’ve eaten too much, tell him what we do, Sarah.”

  “We jump up and down on the person until he throws up.”

  “Sarah!”

  “All right,” she sighed. “You mix lemon juice, cayenne powder, maple syrup, and water, and then you drink it fast.”

  “And then you throw up?” he asked.

  “Only if you’ve a mind to, Doctor, and I think that if you must write something down, it should be useful.”

  “Such as?”

  “If you want to keep bugs off your plants, make a mixture of water, dishwashing soap, and vegetable oil and spray the plants with it.”

  “So that’s folklore?”

  “No, it really works.”

  “Miss King, I do believe you’re trying to take all the fun out of—”

  He stopped as a surgeon entered the room. The man searched the waiting room with a quick glance.

  “The King family?”

  “Jah.” Mamm raised her hand.

  The doctor approached and Grant rose in a defensive posture, not wanting a repeat of what had happened earlier with the younger doctor.

  The surgeon offered a quick hand all around. “Mrs. King, your husband had another minor heart attack during the heart cath; we discovered that two of his main arteries are blocked to his heart. We’re going to perform surgery to remove those blockages, with your permission.”

  Mamm had sunk back into her chair, and Sarah put an arm around her.

  “This is fairly routine, though, Doctor, is it not?” Grant asked.

  “Oh yes . . . extremely. He should be fine and home within the week.” The surgeon paused. “Oh, and I need to ask—does he have a living will?”

  “A living will?” Sarah asked in confusion.

  The surgeon patiently explained, and Mamm shook her head. “Ach, no. He doesn’t have this.”

  “Okay . . . well then, We’ll proceed. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or so. Why not go down to the cafeteria and have a bite to eat? And you can stop by the business office and get things squared away on that end. I’ll call out to the phone here when he’s out of surgery.”

  The surgeon left and Grant thought uneasily of the medical bills. He’d read that the Amish had no type of health insurance but was unsure if it was fact or fiction. He cleared his throat as they left the waiting room and entered the hall.

  “Mrs. King, about the billing office . . .”

  “Jah, we have no health insurance, as you call it.”

  “All right,” Grant said, wondering how he could make it happen that the bill would mysteriously be paid by an anonymous donor.

  “Our community will pay; they will help us,” Sarah informed him.

  Grant found it hard to grasp that a mostly agrarian community would be able to come up with the amount of money needed to cover the costs of open-heart surgery. Mrs. King patted his arm. “Now, I tell you not to worry, Dr. Williams. Perhaps you should tell us of some of your home remedies.”

  Grant smiled. “Saw through that, hmm? Well, if you say people will help, then I guess you know what you’re talking about.”

  “Jah,” Sarah said. “We have helped others many times; now they’ll help us. It’s the way the Bible says we should be.”

  “That’s true enough, but sadly not always true of the world.”

  “In our world, it’s true,” Sarah s
aid with finality and Grant decided to let the matter drop. He felt at a loss when Sarah spoke so definitively about the differences between his world and hers, and he wondered how or if he could close that gap or even bridge it. And at the rate his heart was becoming involved with this Amish girl, it was something that required a lot of purposeful prayer.

  Sarah felt like she was in another world—the Englisch world, in fact—and she longed for the solace and quiet of her garden. Instead, she followed Mamm and the doctor to the cafeteria and took the orange plastic tray he handed her, clutching it against her chest like a shield. The bewildering array of foods and crush of uniformed people made her stomach drop, and she didn’t know how she could possibly eat a thing.

  “You’re biting your lip.” Grant bent to whisper in her ear.

  She stopped immediately and picked up an apple to put on her tray, only to find that it was made of plastic and part of a display. She hurriedly replaced it and frowned at Grant’s laugh.

  “You’re not the first one who’s tried to buy that, I bet. It looks remarkably real. Try this instead.” He put a salad on her tray and added a pear. Sarah glanced at Mamm, who somehow navigated through the crowd with ease and was dishing up soup for herself from a large metal container.

  Grant ordered pizza for himself while Sarah tried to ignore the looks she was getting from a clutch of nurses. She knew her dress was supposed to be a symbol of her apartness from the world, but at the moment, she felt like she’d give anything to blend in. Then she decided that such thoughts were vain, and she immediately repented of them as the doctor led them to the cash register and paid for their meals.

  He found them a small table in the crowded room and they all bowed for a silent grace before eating.

  “The soup is good,” Mamm pronounced. “But they use a bit too much salt.”

  “Hospital food has the reputation of being bad.” Grant grinned.

  “Not bad . . . just salty. Ach, I wonder how Father is doing?”

  “Me too,” Sarah murmured, poking listlessly at her dry salad.

  “Eat something, Miss King. Then we’ll go back up and see what news there is.”

  She was relieved when they’d finally eaten and Grant guided them back upstairs to the waiting room. The phone at the little desk was ringing as they entered, and the old woman answered it cheerfully.

  “The King family?” she called out, and Grant stepped forward to take the receiver.

  Sarah watched his solemn, handsome face and thought how grateful she was to have him with them during this time.

  “Yes . . . I understand . . . Thank you.”

  Grant handed back the phone and turned to them with a smile. “Mr. King is well. He came through the surgery with no problems. You can see him soon.”

  Mamm began to cry softly, and Sarah put her arm around her mother. The two women clung together for a moment, then Mamm quickly embraced Dr. Williams.

  “We thank you, Doctor, for helping Father right from the beginning.”

  Grant smiled. “But it was Sarah who called for help.”

  Mrs. King nodded with a smile.

  Sarah ducked her head shyly. “It was the first time I used the telephone . . . and hopefully, the last.”

  After the difficult visit to the intensive care unit, Sarah longed for a place where she might lay her head. The doctors and nurses seemed confident and happy about Father, but to Sarah, he looked devastatingly pale and ill. There were more tubes than ever and more machines than she could count that went off in alarming discord. Mamm had chosen to stay in what the nurse called the sleeper chair beside Father’s bed, while Grant had gotten all of the necessary paperwork done so that Sarah might stay in the hospital’s hospitality suite, which really was a converted floor of nurses’ dormitories from when the place had been a teaching institution. It was a long walk from the ICU, and Sarah felt sure she’d never find her way back.

  “Do you want me to write down the directions? Hospitals are like mazes sometimes,” Dr. Williams asked.

  “No . . . I’ll be fine.”

  They turned the corner and came to a pink-painted corridor with cheerful flowers stenciled on the walls. They found her room number, and Dr. Williams gestured down the hall. “There’s a laundry there, bathrooms, and the women’s showers. Are you sure you’re going to be all right here alone?” He glanced dubiously down the quiet hallway.

  “I’ll lock the door.”

  “All right.” He took the key from her and opened the door, flicking on the lights to reveal a spacious room with a flowered bedspread and television. Long curtains covered the windows and he went to draw them back for her, revealing a disheartening brick wall.

  “Not much of a view,” he commented. “I feel concerned about leaving you here alone.”

  Sarah shook her head and smoothed the polyester bedspread with one hand. She turned to face the full-length mirror on one of the closet doors and was surprised to see herself in one piece since they had no large mirrors at home.

  “I’ve gotten taller,” she told him, staring into the mirror.

  “Since this morning?” he asked, moving to stand behind her.

  She blushed and shook her head and moved to step away, realizing she was behaving with vanity.

  “Wait,” he said, holding her still before the mirror. “Tell me what you see.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, the quiet of the room at once seeming close and intimate.

  “What do you see?”

  “I see me.”

  He smiled. “Let me tell you what I see, if you can perch for just a moment, little hummingbird.”

  She stood still, her eyes meeting his in the length of the mirror.

  “I see a beautiful girl, with a face like fine porcelain and gentle strands of light brown hair shot through with gold. I see soft lips that get bitten far too often. I see hazel, forest green-brown eyes. And you may be taller, but just right, with straight shoulders and gentle hands. I see . . .”

  She put her hands to her ears. “Stop, please. It’s not right for you to speak to me so.”

  “Why not? Should I tell you instead what I see that’s not in this mirror? Your fine mind, generous heart, kind soul . . .” He eased her hands down.

  “Nee, you shouldn’t tell me anything.”

  “That may be truth,” he breathed, bending to press his mouth close to her ear. “But I can’t help myself.” He brushed his mouth against the fine line of her neck and she watched, mesmerized, in the mirror, as her irises grew darker green, and she shivered when his lips found a tender spot behind her ear. She closed her eyes against the wash of sensations and nearly fell when he pulled from her.

  “My apologies, Sarah. You seem to bring out the best and, shall we say, the worst of my Englisch nature. I’ll say good night . . . or good morning, but lock your door.”

  He slipped from the room while Sarah struggled to catch her breath. She locked the door behind him, then sagged to her knees against the wood and prayed once more for direction.

  When she rose, she felt something lumpy in her apron pocket and discovered the journal Chelsea had given her for her birthday. She’d intended on writing in it that morning, and now she withdrew it and went to the small desk in the corner of the room. A pen and paper lay nearby for guests to use, so she took up the pen and opened the journal.

  She’d used to love to write in school, especially poetry. It had always given her a sense of freedom or release to put down in words what she was feeling inside. She began to write.

  There are two of me, it seems,

  Wood with twice-toned grain

  One, the straight and narrow

  Like the gate to my garden

  One, the wandering path

  Like the deer trail through the forest.

  But I am not fleet,

  Cannot run on stag’s feet

  To escape the touch and sound

  Of his breath blending round

  I shudder then recall

&n
bsp; That I am one and all

  Still my father’s daughter

  Still like deep pond water

  Where no one can tread.

  She put her head down on the open journal and drew her breath in and out as if she ran through a forest glade, being pursued by herself, and him—she wrote his name slowly.

  GRANT.

  And then, GRANT ME GRACE.

  CHAPTER 17

  Sarah awoke feeling refreshed. She needed to have Mamm come and sleep downstairs because there was no way the sleeper chair could be as comfortable as the firm little bed with its starched white sheets. She unlocked her door, peered down the hallway, and then went along to discover the mysteries of the shower. Once she’d washed and redressed, she went back to the room to tidy her hair and reapply her kapp, trying not to think about the doctor standing behind her in the mirror. She pocketed her journal and left the room as neat as she’d found it and then began the complicated journey back to the intensive care unit. She took a wrong turn, though, and was standing, debating outside a gift and flower shop, when a woman called to her.

  “Are you lost, boppli?”

  Sarah entered the shop, amazed to hear her home language, and then she looked at the woman’s face. A thin scar ran from behind her ear to her chin; it was Mrs. Fisher. But a Mrs. Fisher that was scarcely recognizable except for the scar. This woman wore a cheerful pink jacket and had a becoming shoulder-length hairstyle. Her face was made up and she smiled widely.

  “Sarah King . . . do you know me?”

  Sarah was so surprised that she hardly knew how to answer. If an Amish family left the community, they were not to be acknowledged by any of the community. Yet Sarah could not bring herself not to respond politely; the woman looked so radically different and happy.

  Jah . . . Mrs. Fisher.” “

  “Yes . . . well, it’s Ms. Fisher, actually. I divorced Mr. Fisher—he’s moved out of the state—and I’m living here in Lockport now and have this job, which I greatly enjoy.”

  Ach . . .” Sarah trailed off. One part of her wanted to rejoice “that the woman had gotten away from the man who had so abused her, but the other part of her mind wrestled with the difficult concept of divorce and all of its implications.