A Simple Faith

by Rosalind Lauer

  And if her panic jags weren’t bad enough, there was also the fact that she was too frightened to drive now. Dylan had told her that it was a normal reaction, and at least her father understood. He had rearranged his schedule so that he could drive her to the hospital and school. And he’d left his easy chair in front of a televised football game so that he could drive her here, to Clara Estevez’s funeral.

  The bell of the old church was ringing. Calling Clara to heaven, Haley thought. She still clung to Graciana’s words about her daughter being taken by the angels. It was such a beautiful image, even if Haley had trouble believing it. Of course, she believed in God, but sometimes she wondered if the rules and stories set forth in the Bible had any place in the real world these days. Somehow it was easier to believe that angels existed back in the old days, before filmmakers could make transparent angels seem real, before people could actually fly through the skies on commercial jets.

  As she reached the church steps, the soft patter of horses’ hooves sounded from a distance. Lifting her gaze, she saw the procession of horses pulling carriages in the street. Haley didn’t know much about horses, but these creatures were large—taller than any man—and each pulled a boxy gray buggy. Although she’d grown up seeing Amish people traveling this way, she was now struck by the charm of their lifestyle, a world nearly free of cars and cell phones, of televisions and mesmerizing computer screens.

  She waited for the carriages to unload and greeted her friends quietly outside the church. Inside, seated between Rachel and Elsie, she felt a certain peace wash over her as the service began. Dressed in black, her face hidden behind a dark veil, Graciana seemed distant. She was supported by a man and a woman on either side of her, and they entered the church together, followed by other mourners. The organ music, the white coffin moving up the aisle, the grieving family, many of whom had flown in from the Dominican Republic—all of it stirred a certain sadness deep inside Haley.

  But there was also a barb of anger for the girl who had been killed.

  Clara, I did not know you, but I’m suffering from your bad choice. And all around me I see good people suffering because of you.

  Harsh words for a dead girl, Haley knew that, and she was ashamed of herself. Especially when she saw the forgiveness of her Amish friends, whose calm faces radiated peace in the hollow chamber of the church.

  I’m just an unforgiving person, she thought as the congregation bowed their heads to receive God’s blessing. Cold and unforgiving, that’s me.

  When the service had ended, Elsie told her that they were driving to Graciana’s house to deliver some food and baked goods.

  “But you’ve been at the hospital every day … all day,” Haley said. “How did you find time to bake?”

  Elsie shrugged. “It didn’t take much time. And to tell the truth, I’ve been having trouble falling asleep.”

  Haley put a hand on Elsie’s shoulder. “It’s the accident.”

  Elsie nodded. “I can’t get it out of my head.”

  “Talk to Dylan. He’s right over there.” Haley had noticed Dr. Monroe in the back of the church when the service ended. “He wants to help. That’s why he’s here.”

  “Some other time,” Elsie said. “We have to get going.” She patted Haley’s wrist. “You talk to him today. Let him help you.”

  Haley squinted. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know the expression about the pot calling the kettle black?”

  “Can I get a translation?”

  Elsie tilted her head in that way that made her seem wise for her years. “You wore your sunglasses through the whole funeral. I don’t know why you’re hiding in there. I just know that sometimes we hold the hurt inside and hope that no one else will see it.”

  Reflexively, Haley touched the corner of her sunglasses. “I forgot that I had them on. That must have seemed rude.”

  “The sunglasses are not the problem, honey girl,” Elsie said sweetly.

  Before Haley could object, Rachel came to fetch Elsie, and after a quick round of good-byes the Amish visitors were streaming toward their buggies.

  Haley stood on the church steps, watching as a plastic milk crate was placed on the ground for Elsie, to accommodate her shorter legs climbing into the buggy. She liked the way the Amish took care of each other.

  It was time to call her father for a ride home, but Haley felt as if her feet were too heavy to move, stuck in invisible muck. Her whole body felt weary, though she had been getting sleep with the help of some blue pills, an over-the-counter sleep aid that left her groggy in the mornings.

  “How’s it going, Haley?” Dylan was suddenly beside her, looking down the road at the horses and buggies.

  “Okay, I guess.” She tried to sound positive, but her voice was thick with emotion. She felt a storm approaching, and she was powerless to get out of the rain.

  “I’d like to schedule a group session this week and see who will attend,” Dylan said. He went on to describe his conversations with Rachel King, and Samuel Mast, the bishop, and some other Amish people, but Haley couldn’t listen over the roar of turmoil rising inside her. It bubbled up like a boiling pot, spitting at the air and sloshing over the rim.

  Suddenly, Dylan touched her shoulder. “Haley? What’s going on?”

  “I can’t stop crying,” she sobbed.

  “Okay. It’s okay to cry. Your pain is real, and crying is one way of expressing it.”

  “But I can’t stop. I cry all the time now, at the drop of a hat. And my heart races and sometimes my chest gets so tight I can barely breathe.”

  “Sounds to me like you’re having panic attacks. Has this ever happened to you before? I mean, before the accident.”

  “No.” Her breath was trapped in her lungs, and she had to make an effort to push it out. “I feel like I’m dying.” She grabbed his arm, desperate for relief. “Help me, please. Help me.”

  20

  “And then the dark SUV swerved across the yellow lines. The lights seemed so bright, and the direction of the car was so wrong.”

  “What was your reaction at that moment?” Dylan asked.

  “Fear. Panic. I know I hit the brakes, hard.” Haley sat back, her hands gripping the armrests as if the chair itself might spin out of control and she needed to hold on for dear life.

  So far she had been an exemplary patient. Her story of the accident was clear and cohesive, and she didn’t seem to mind repeating it three times. In fact, the repetition of the story often helped patients see it from a new angle. Reducing the events to a story often helped extract the sting from the memory.

  “And then what happened?”

  “Then Clara’s vehicle hit the van and, like in slow motion, there was this explosion of glass and the loudest noise you’d ever want to hear. The SUV sort of got caught on the van, and the two vehicles spun around together. There were sparks underneath where the metal hit the highway, and I remember thinking it would have been a spectacle if it weren’t so awful. Then the van shot around toward my car and groaned to a stop. And the SUV shot off in another direction and disappeared.”

  Dylan noted that Haley’s skin was no longer flushed with fear, and her frozen posture had softened. She was improving already, and he wanted to sag with relief. He was way too vested in this patient. He was falling in love with Haley Donovan, and he knew that could mean trouble.

  “What did you learn from the accident?” he asked, drawing her away from the crash scene momentarily.

  “I learned that anything can happen, at any time, and … we’re all just flesh and bone. Our bodies are really so fragile. They’re not built to last and … and we’re all going to die.”

  “Our time here is temporary, that’s true. I think part of the human psyche denies that as a way to keep going and take chances.”

  She nodded, her face calmer now. “Am I ruined for nursing? I mean, now I look at people and see their anatomy, as if they’re some plastic model you could take apart and put back togeth
er.”

  “Some healthcare workers experience what you’re going through. In some ways, a medical professional needs to reduce things to flesh-and-blood components—the mechanics of science. But that’s forgetting the one thing that makes human beings unique in the animal kingdom. Each person has a unique personality, a certain energy. The spiritual self. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  “When you label it personality, I definitely see it. But spirituality sounds hokey to me. Next you’ll want to hold my hand and sing ‘Kumbaya.’ ”

  He grinned. “We can leave that for another session.” He went to a cabinet in the back of the small conference room and removed a light strip that he had stowed there just yesterday. “I hope you’re not losing patience, because I’m going to ask you to recall the incident one more time.”

  “I don’t mind talking about it,” she said. “Every time I go there, it’s a little less painful.”

  “That’s what we’re aiming for.” He propped the horizontal bar of lights on the table and plugged it into the wall. “Now, can you follow these lights with your eyes as they move back and forth?” He turned the switch, and the row of lights blinked from right to left.

  Haley watched cautiously. “Is that it? They’re not going to explode or pop or anything?”

  “No. They’ll keep blinking in the same direction.” He sat down, glad to see that she was getting more relaxed, her breathing slow and steady. “This time when you recall the event, I want you to keep following the movement of these lights.”

  “Okay. So … starting from the beginning. I was driving home on Route 30 when a dark SUV began to stray out of its lane. It swerved across the double yellow lines, and the headlights—they seemed so bright.…”

  Dylan coached her along, watching to be sure that she kept her gaze on the movement of the lights. At this point, Haley recited the sequence of events by rote. That simple familiarity was another way to give the random event order in her mind and make it easier to put it behind her.

  He leaned back in the upholstered chair. This room was perfect. Thankfully, he had secured this space in the back of the library just two days ago, after meeting with the head librarian and the mayor of Halfway. To effectively serve the people of Halfway, it was essential that he have a place right here in town to hold sessions and meetings, and the library was about as centrally located as you could get.

  “The room is set up for conferences,” the librarian, Crystal Lenowski, had told him. “But aside from the weekly book club meetings, we don’t have much use for it.”

  “Our people are hurting from that accident,” Nancy Briggs, the town mayor, had said. “I’d like to get behind any program that’s going to offer them assistance.”

  And in the blink of an eye, he had a venue for therapy sessions in Halfway. After so many years of requisition forms and board meetings, Dylan was impressed by how things worked out here in the country. Crystal had given him a copy of the key right then and there. A good thing, because he’d needed someplace to take Haley when she began to break down at the church. He had known she was struggling with post-traumatic stress the other night when she’d been unable to drive home from the hospital, but at the time, he hadn’t realized the extent of her distress.

  “And then the van stopped spinning and I stayed in the car, sort of frozen with fear. That’s when I called 911,” Haley finished.

  “Okay. You’re doing great. Keep watching the light bar and tell me about the moment when you realized that you were safe.”

  She paused, her eyes moving with the flickering lights. “I think it was when I threw open the door of the car. The dispatcher on the phone was asking me something, and all I could think about was that I was fine—still in one piece—but those people needed help.”

  “So you did have a moment when it dawned on you that, although death can come in an instant, you were spared.”

  “I did.”

  “But you didn’t linger to celebrate your narrow escape. You threw open the door of the car and went to help the passengers in the van. You tried to restore life.”

  “I did my best.”

  “That’s all anyone can do, Haley.”

  He turned off the light bar and studied her. Her color was back to normal and her stance in the chair was relaxed. Crisis averted.

  “Are we done?” she asked.

  “We can be. Or we can repeat the exercise one more time with the light bar on.” He sat back in the chair, not wanting her to feel rushed. “How do you feel?”

  “Better. Much better. You’re a really great doctor!”

  “O ye of little faith.” He smiled. “You’re an excellent patient. You followed all my instructions.”

  “Of course I did. I was so desperate for some relief, I would have run naked through the streets of Halfway if you’d told me it would take that horrible knife out of my gut.”

  “Wow. I’ve never come across the research on running-naked-through-the-streets therapy.”

  “I can’t believe how much better I feel,” she said.

  “We’ll want to do another session or two. Just to make sure that you remain asymptomatic.”

  “I think it’s a miracle. Two miracles. One that the SUV didn’t knock the van into me, too. The other that you saved me from a total meltdown.”

  Her smile seemed to cast a light through the shadowed room. Dylan believed in miracles, but he wasn’t sure that Haley was on the same page.

  “Your breathing seems to have evened out,” he observed. “Do you still feel that pressure on your chest? The dagger in your ribs?”

  She took a deep, steady breath, then relaxed as she exhaled. “It’s gone. That awful feeling is gone and I feel this new energy. It’s like the pain has been replaced with these awesome fuel cells. I feel like I could lift a building and run a marathon.”

  “Maybe tomorrow. For today, see if you can get some rest.” There was still more healing to be done, but Haley had made some real progress today. “You did good, kid. If you’re ready, I’ll drive you home.”

  She pushed out of the chair and found her coat. “You’d better put your magic lights away. You’ll definitely want to hold on to those suckers.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Where did you get those, anyway?” she asked as she wrapped a striped muffler around her neck.

  He had purchased them online, but that sounded too boring. “Some kid traded them to me for a handful of magic beans.”

  When she laughed, it was a joyous, refreshing sound. “Okay, then. Let’s hit the road, Jack.”

  21

  Thursday morning dawned bright, with a smudge of pink glowing over the roof of the carriage house that Dat and Caleb had been working to repair.

  Such a beautiful sunset. If only Dat could see it.

  Although Elsie’s father had opened his eyes from time to time in the week or so since the accident, the nurses and aides told her that he could not see her. It was a reflex, they said. Elsie sensed that they were right, because when she searched for the love and care and concern that had always shined there, she found only a blank stare.

  Dat’s spark was gone.

  But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t come back. Gott could heal him.

  She closed the curtains on the window and looked down at herself. “Look at me, still in my nightgown.” Normally she would be dressed by now with beds made instead of mooning over a sunrise. But she was moving slow these days. Making mistakes and forgetting things. Her thoughts were scattered like seeds in the wind, mostly from lack of sleep and worry about Dat.

  And maybe she was dragging her feet because she dreaded the big meeting at the hospital. It had been more than one week since the accident, and since Dat’s condition was unchanged, the doctors thought it was time to discuss a “treatment plan for Thomas Lapp.” All the doctors who worked with Dat would be there, and they had asked that the family be present. Fanny had sent Caleb round to invite Bishop Samuel and Dave Zook, the preacher. Such good thinking
on Fanny’s part. Elsie didn’t know how poor Fanny kept a clear head through all this, with her blood pressure going crazy and her husband unconscious in the hospital. Gott bless her.

  And Dat … she needed to pray for Dat. As she began to get dressed Elsie searched her mind for the words, but she felt like she was groping in a dark hole. Had she used up all the words she knew to beg Gott for Dat’s safe recovery?

  She would have to rely on a prayer she knew by rote. The Our Father.

  With a heavy sigh, she began. “Unser Vater in dem Himmel! Dein Name werde geheiligt …”

  The hospital conference room was brimming over with people, both Amish and Englisher. Elsie recognized the medical staff who sat on one side of the table. The younger doctor, Dr. Pohawalla, checked on Dat a few times a day, and he always asked Fanny how she was doing. At one point, they had even joked that they were getting two visits for the price of one doctor. Two of the nurses, Jenny and Courtney, were there. The graying, bespectacled Dr. Stransky reminded Elsie of Bishop Samuel, with his slow, thoughtful movements and crackly voice. And the other very familiar face on that side of the table was Dylan Monroe, who had spent a lot of time in Dat’s room, talking and waiting with the family.

  Dr. Benton was speaking quietly with Fanny, his head bent down to meet her eyes when the meeting started.

  “So many family members here!” Dr. Stransky threw his arms open wide in a boisterous gesture as he took in Elsie and her siblings Caleb and Emma. Even Will and Beth had been allowed to come to this meeting. Will sat straight as a stick beside Caleb, and Beth sat on Elsie’s lap due to the shortage of chairs and a touch of insecurity at all the strange faces. “It’s good to see family support,” Dr. Stransky added.

  “This is small for an Amish family,” Preacher Dave pointed out. “But then, Thomas and Fanny are still working on theirs.”

  Dat’s brother Jimmy and his wife, Edna, were there. Their son James was still in the hospital, and their other children had been left at home to run the orchard.