by Tami Hoag
“Sarah!” Ingrid said on a gasp.
Sarah looked right past her, her terrified gaze focusing on Matt. “Matt!” she exclaimed, her eyes huge in a pale face. “It's Jacob. He's terribly ill. You have to come. Please say youTl come right away!”
“Of course, I'll come,” he murmured, so stunned by her sudden appearance that he had yet to react.
“Now!” she insisted, flying across the room to grab his hand and pull him up off the couch. Her fingers were like icicles, wet and white and painfully cold. She tugged him like an anxious child, sobbing, teeth chattering. “There's no time to lose! I'm afraid. Oh, mein Gott, I'm so afraid he's going to die!”
She began crying then and Matt instinctively pulled her into his arms, offering her his warmth and strength for an instant… and his love. It poured out of him unchecked, and he squeezed her tightly, not caring that her cape was wet or that her hair was dripping on his cashmere sweater. The hurt he had been struggling with was instantly set aside, concern for Sarah and for Jacob overriding all else.
“Hush, sweetheart,” he whispered, stroking a hand over the damp tangle of her hair. “Everything's gong to be all right. Tell me what happened.”
“Jacob … he's ill. So hot … in such pain. I'm going to lose him,” she whispered, trembling violently in Matt's arms. Her legs and arms ached from clinging to the back of the horse she had ridden there bareback, and now her knees threatened to give way beneath her. She was scared out of her wits thinking about Jacob, thinking about how they had waited too long to try to save her own little Peter. “Please, Matt, she sobbed, sagging against him. “He's going to die!”
“Nobody's going to die,” Matt said firmly, standing her back from him. “Do you understand me, Sarah? Nobody's going to die.” He grabbed the jacket Ingrid tossed him and shrugged into it, his eyes never leaving Sarah's. “Not as long as I can prevent it,”
Ingrid drove because she knew the way and had experience driving on gravel. The horse Sarah had galloped to Thornewood on had been hastily locked in the barn. No time had been spared to see to the animal's needs because Jacob's-life hung in the balance.
The trio burst in on the Maust family like marauders, flinging back the kitchen door and storming into the house in a swirl of rain and wind that made the lanterns flicker in protest. A stunned Isaac raced into the kitchen to meet them, his feet bare, his suspenders dangling.
“Sarah! What is the meaning of this?” he demanded in a thunderous voice. “Why do you bring these people into my home? How dare you-”
“I dare because Jacob is dying!” she shouted in his face.
“Nonsense! The boy has been to see a doctor—”
“I won't take the time to argue with you on that point, Mr. Maust,” Matt said, shouldering his way past Sarahs father. “Sarah's word is good enough for me. Where's the boy?”
“Upstairs. Hurry!” Sarah shouted, well beyond the verge of hysteria. “Hurry!”
Ignoring the stunned faces of the rest of Sarahs family, Matt turned and took the stairs as fast as he could, blocking out his own pain with the need to get to Jacob as quickly as possible. Footsteps rumbled like thunder behind him. At the top of the stairs he hesitated, uncertain of which direction to go and Sarah nearly bowled him over, running into him and shoving him down the hall.
In Jacob's room, he set about the business of examining the boy as best he could without benefit of any of the tools of his trade. The old cool settled inside him. His hands were steady. His mind functioned with the flawless precision of a computer, absorbing information, analyzing it, considering and discarding options and answers. He rattled off questions in rapid succession.
“When did he first become ill? How long has his fever been this high? Is he taking any medications?”
Anna Maust answered him in a thin, trembling voice as she stood beside the bed looking down on her youngest with tear-filled, worried eyes.
“The doctor said flu is all it is,” she murmured almost to herself. “He prescribed aspirin.”
Matt didn't waste energy commenting on Coswell's diagnosis or on the idiocy of prescribing aspirin to a child with a high fever in view of the latest findings on the dangers of Reye's syndrome. He concentrated on Jacob, checking his pupils, feeling glands, running his sensitive hands gently over the boy's belly, frowning as his lightest touch brought groans of pain from Jacob.
Sarah fell to her knees beside the bed on the far side, sobbing, reaching out to touch the child she had always loved as her own. Ingrid and the rest of the Maust family stood back, watching, silent except for Isaac.
“We don't want you here, English,” he hissed vehemently. “We have a doctor. Your interference—”
Matt straightened from the bed and wheeled on the man, his face a mask of stone. “My interference is going to save your son's life if we can get him to a hospital fast enough. His appendix is on the verge of rupturing.”
Isaac Maust turned white, the seriousness of the situation penetrating his anger. He stared into Matt Thome's eyes and saw nothing but the grim truth.
“What can we do?” he asked.
“Pray.” Matt was already in motion.
There was no phone to call for an ambulance or time to wait for one. Jacob was wrapped in the blankets from his bed and carried out to the back of Ingrid s station wagon, where Matt and Sarah climbed in beside him. Ingrid dove behind the wheel and the elder Mausts settled in the backseat, slamming the doors as the car's wheels spun on the gravel driveway.
Jesse Community Hospital sat on the north edge of town, a modern U-shaped one-story structure of red brick that housed a nursing home in one wing and a small number of hospital beds in the other. There were no more than five cars in the lot. Ingrid halted the station wagon at the glass doors emblazoned with the word Emergency in red, and Matt led the way into the hospital with Jacob curling against him in his arms, the boy moaning and crying. Sarah ran beside him, her fist gripping the sleeve of Matt's leather jacket, tears streaming down her cheeks. The nurse on duty, a stout, middle-aged woman with a puff-ball of red hair and a name tag that proclaimed her to be Velma Johansen, R.N., rushed around from behind the desk to meet them.
“I'm Dr. Thorne from County General in Minneapolis,” Matt announced in a voice that rang with authority. “We've got a boy here with an appendix that's just about ready to blow. I want him prepped for surgery stat. Where can I scrub?”
“Down that hall on the left, Doctor,” Nurse Johansen answered efficiently, pointing with one hand and yanking a gurney away from the wall with the other. “I'll call the nurse-anesthetist. Well have him ready for you as soon as possible.”
“Make it sooner,” Matt barked, bolting down the hall.
He nearly collided with Dr. Coswell as the older man stepped out of an office to see what all the shouting was about. Coswell hefted his bulk out of the way at the last instant, jerking his cigarette out of his mouth.
“Dr. Thome! What brings you here?”
“I don't have time to chat, Coswell,” Matt said, shrugging out of his jacket. “I've got an emergency appendectomy to perform.”
“You can't just come in here and take over my hospital!” Coswell bellowed, incredulous.
Matt gave him a cool look. “Watch me.”
“This is completely irregular!” Coswell exclaimed, his face turning an unhealthy shade of purple. “I won't stand for it!” he said, his smoker's cough choking off the end of his sentence.
“Yeah, well, I'll cut that kid open with a pocketknife before I let you get near him with a scalpel, so you'd better get used to the idea,” Matt said. He left Coswell sputtering and went to ready himself to save Jacob Maust s life.
The wait seemed interminable. Sarahs parents sat on a low couch, huddling together under the glow of the fluorescent lights, offering one another quiet support. Sarah felt too frantic to sit and paced along the end of the waiting room with one arm wrapped around her midsection and her other hand pressed to her mouth to keep from crying out
or screaming in frustration. Her hair still hung loose and she had made no effort to comb it, letting it dry in a wild tangle of waves that fell past her waist.
Ingrid got up to pace with her, putting an arm around Sarah's waist and leaning her head against the taller woman's shoulder. “Matt's a great doctor,” she said softly. “And he's not just talented, he's as stubborn as a two-headed mule, to boot. Hell take care of Jacob.”
“I know,” Sarah murmured, hugging her friend. “I would trust him with my life.”
Ingrid gave her a long, speculative look. “Would you?” she asked, and Sarah knew they were no longer speaking of Matt's abilities as a physician.
The question stopped her cold but just as she started to ask Ingrid what she had meant, Matt emerged from a door at the end of the hall. He limped toward them looking tired and rumpled in baggy surgical greens. Lines of worry and concentration had etched themselves across his forehead and around his mouth, making him look ten years older. As he neared the waiting area he pulled his surgeon's cap off and mussed his hair with his hand. He stopped first to say a few words to Anna and Isaac, who listened intently, then bowed their heads in prayer, then he turned toward Sarah, his dark eyes fastening on hers.
“He's going to be fine,” he said softly.
Her whole body shuddered with relief. She closed her eyes and said a quick prayer of thanks, then the tears started to flow. Without hesitating, she sought the refuge of Matt s embrace, pressing her cheek to his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her temple.
“It's all right, sweetheart,” he whispered tenderly. “It's all right. Everything's going to be just fine.”
He held her that way for a long while, not caring in the least that her parents were watching. If he couldn't have her forever, at least he could have her for now, and he could give her comfort if she wouldn't take his love.
“It's all right,' he murmured, brushing his lips against her hair.
Sarah looked up at him and sniffed. “Thank you for saving him, Matt. I love him so much.”
“I know.”
“And I love you,” Sarah whispered, lifting a hand to stroke her fingertips down his cheek.
But not as much, he thought sadly. Not enough.
Eventually he took them to see a groggy Jacob. While Sarah was busy fussing over her brother, Isaac drew Matt out into the dark hall.
“I've done you a disservice, Matt Thome,” Isaac said humbly. “You saved my son's life. For this I thank you.”
“And for Sarah?” Matt asked, meeting the old man's gaze head-on.
“Let her go,” Isaac said. There was no anger in his eyes now, only sadness and pleading. “She belongs with her people. You know nothing of our ways, nor she of your world.”
“I love her.”
“How can you love in so short a time? I think you cannot even know her.”
“That's funny.” Matt's mouth twisted into an ironic little smile that held no humor as he thought of Sarah with her hunger to learn and the inner fire she had yet to release. “I was just thinking the same thing about you. You've had her with you her whole life, and I don't think you know her at all.”
“I know that she is Amish, as is her family,'
Matt said nothing. He turned and looked into the room to see Sarah bent over her brother Jacob whom she loved like a son. She was smiling and teasing him, her face glowing. I would have given her sons, he thought, pain tightening its fist inside him. I would have given her a family. I would have given her anything.
But she hadn't asked.
He turned slowly then and walked away, wondering if the town of Jesse had a bar.
A shooting victim, an assault victim, a botched suicide, a bleeding ulcer, a dozen cases of the latest Asian flu strain, and a motorcyclist who hadn't had the foresight to put a helmet on before hurling himself into the side of a garbage truck. Just another day on the job.
Matt slumped onto the orange vinyl couch in the doctors' lounge, dropping his head down on the squeaky tufted arm. He was tired, but his fatigue didn't have anything to do with the hours he'd been working. This was a weariness that went deeper than his muscles and sank into the essence of his being. He'd been back in Minneapolis a week and on the job for four days. The chief of staff had protested his early return, but not with much sincerity. His life as Matt Thorne, head honcho of County General ER, had fallen quickly back into the routine he remembered.
Only he didn't remember it being so emotionally empty. He had never before met the flirtatious teasing of the female members of the staff with a complete lack of enthusiasm. He didn't remember ever dreading going home to his apartment at night. He vaguely remembered charging at his job headfirst, but the man in those memories was a stranger to him. These days he operated on a kind of automatic pilot system—efficient and more than competent, but detached.
The city he had always loved and partaken of had lost some of its shine for him, as well. He found himself missing the rustle of cornstalks and the quiet of the country night. More than anything, he missed Sarah. Every time he thought of her riding on a bus full of strangers to Ohio his heart ached.
He had let her go and returned to “his world” only to find it wasn't the world he wanted to live in anymore. He had returned to his job because he was dedicated to helping and healing people, but this was no longer the way he wanted to go about it.
“Are you just resting or should I call the morgue?”
Julia flopped down into a chair of the same eye-burning orange vinyl as the couch and propped her big feet on a batde-scarred coffee table cluttered with old magazines and abandoned coffee cups. She wore the most relaxed version of “nursing whites” she could get away with—a lab jacket over an oversize T-shirt and baggy white sweatpants. Her wild red mane was more or less contained in a single long braid that hung over her shoulder like a length of rope.
“The juiy's still out,” Matt said. He pushed himself upright and mussed his hands through his hair, leaving it standing on end in tufts. “You want the truth, McCarver?”
“Always.”
“I don't want to be here anymore.”
“I know,” she admitted quietly, picking at the end of her braid.
“It's not that I don't care,” he went on. “It's just … I've done my tour of duty, that's all.”
“I know.”
He arched an eyebrow. “What? No fiery lecture on how needed I am?”
“No. This isn't the only place on earth that needs good doctors. You want the truth, Dr. T?”
“Usually.”
Julia sat up and leaned forward, dangling her long hands between her knees. “I think I bugged you about coming back more because I missed my buddy than anything else, and now I feel like a guilty slug because you're miserable. I think maybe you'd better go back to that cornfield. You know in Field of Dreams it turned out to be heaven.”
Matt made a face. “It wasn't heaven, it was Iowa.”
“Oh, big deal.” She scowled at him. “Don't screw up my lines here, Thorne. I'm trying to tell you what you should do with your life.”
“Pardon me.”
“Go back, get married, be happy.” She beat out the time of the sentence with one hand like a choir teacher
“That sounds like a plan,” Matt said with a sad smile. It was a plan he dreamed about during the long nights since his return to the Cities. He would hang out his shingle in Jesse, drum Coswell the Quack into retirement, marry Sarah, give her a dozen babies, and live happily ever after. Only Sarah wasn't there, and he didn't know if she ever would be there for him.
“It's not that easy,” he whispered, looking down at his sneakers, his voice smoky with emotion.
Julia gave him a long look of empathy and said, “Nothing worth having ever is.”
Sarah sat on her bed, staring at her suitcase. Her trip to Ohio had been postponed because of Jacobs illness, but her brother was back to his sweet, mischievous self now and she was to board the noon bus.
She wa
sn't going to go through with it. Day and night she had struggled with the conflicting emotions inside her. She had never felt so torn. She hated the thought of losing her family, especially of losing contact with Jacob. But Jacob was not her son and she couldn't live her life only halfway because she wanted to cling to him. It wouldn't be healthy for either of them. She loved her family, but remaining in the Amish faith out of duty alone was hypocritical and her other reason for staying—cowardice—was even worse.
All her life she had wanted something different. All her life she had known deep inside that she wasn't Amish, she was just pretending. All that time she had dreamed of other things and not reached out for them because she was afraid to leave the safe haven of her small close-knit community. That was what Ingrid had been asking her when she had wondered aloud if Sarah would really trust her life to Matt. Did she trust him enough to leave her people and give her life to him?
The answer to that was yes. The next question she had no answer for. Did Matt love her enough to teach her about his world and protect her from the worst of it? Did he love her enough to accept what she wanted to give him? Not knowing made her stomach tie up like a pretzel. He had left her. He had gone back to the city. He may have forgotten her already but she hoped and prayed not, and she was going to find out for a fact.
The bedroom door opened, and Anna stepped in. She had a beautiful quilt of purple and black folded over her arms like a giant muff. “You are ready to leave then?”
Sarah looked up at her with eyes that begged understanding. “I'm not going to Ohio, Mom.”
“I know,” Anna murmured with a sad smile, tears sparkling like stars in her eyes. “I've always known you wouldn't stay with us, Sarah. You belong to another world in your head and in your heart you belong with your English doctor.”
“Please don't hate me for it,” Sarah said. “It can't be wrong. I love him too much.”
“I couldn't hate you, bussli. You were all along meant to leave us. Es waar Cotters With.”
