A Marriage of the Heart (18 page)

“It will be all right, John. You’ll see. I’ll just go and put the horse up.” Asa excused himself and went back out into the swirl of snow.

“First pregnancies are always difficult to gauge. Has she been having regular contractions?” Anna slipped off her boots and gathered up her bag.

“
Jah
. . . they were six minutes apart . . . but . . . that’s not all. She’s in here.” He led the way to the master bedroom as Anna registered his vague comment. Concerns were already swirling through her mind when she heard the cough followed by a faint groan from the woman in the bed.

“Hi Deborah, I’m Anna, Ruth Stolis’s niece. I’ve delivered a lot of babies, so you’re in good hands.” She entered the
bedroom with deliberate cheerfulness, talking as she walked, and glanced around at the variety of inhalers and prescription wrappers on the carved wooden bureau. “Do you have asthma?”

Deborah was pale and obviously between hard contractions. “
Jah
.” She coughed.

Anna got out her stethoscope and approached the comfortably piled bed, a fixed expression of encouragement on her lips.

Chapter Two

Asa led his horse into the Loftuses’ warm barn and turned up another kerosene lamp. He stared at the small, glowing flame for a moment and thought about Anna Stolis’s generous red lips and the flash of her smile. She’d appeared from behind Ruth Stolis’s door like some sparkling thing, the catch of sunlight on a white splash of creek water, or the freshly washed windows of home in the springtime. But in the few minutes of knowing her, she’d also managed to bring back all of the hurt and pain he thought he was good at hiding—even what he thought he was over. But it was there, raw and open and aching until he had to bend his head against the warmth of Dandy’s side to regain control. And even then the memory of his intoxicating
rumschringe
—deceptive in power and poignancy, like dandelion wine on a hot day—forced images of Jennifer back into his head and heart.

Jennifer and her incomparable beauty, her way of smiling and making others serve her, her whispered words and his desperate desire to do anything she wanted, no matter the cost. His horse shifted and he lifted his head, wiping the damp sleeve of his coat across his face as he realized he’d wasted precious moments when the midwife might need help inside.

He made his way back out into the storm and considered what everyone else had told him over the last few years—that he was going to end up an old bachelor. He’d come to rather believe it, he supposed, and viewed the girls at meetings or
hymn sings with a detached interest. Truth was, he’d rather go fishing than spend time with any of the ladies of his community, but maybe that was because
Derr Herr
had never allowed anyone like Anna Stolis to cause him to think beyond his own hidden self.

He stomped his snowy feet on the porch and opened the door. It was quiet inside the house except for the sound of the wood burner popping. He slipped off his boots and placed them on the mat by the door, then hung up his heavy coat and took off his hat. He felt like he was intruding somehow and wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He padded over to a rocking chair near the stove and eased his large frame into the carved wooden seat. He jumped up a moment later though, when a door opened and Anna walked briskly from a room off the kitchen.

“What’s wrong?” he asked in a low voice, searching the tense lines of her face.

She walked toward him, and he was surprised that he had to resist the urge to look at the sweetly curving swells and sway of her body. He concentrated instead on her expression. She reached his side, and he had to bend from his much greater height to hear her whisper. Her breath smelled like summer, and her gray eyes, with their tangle of lashes, held his steadily.

“She has asthma, but I think it’s gotten worse because she’s caught the flu too. Her regular medication isn’t getting her breath where it needs to be. I have a small portable tank of oxygen in my bag; I think that should help. Once the baby comes, I’ll give Deborah a steroid shot, which should also help, but I don’t want to worry John about it now. I told him to sit
with her. The baby should come anytime. John suggested a few poultices might work to clear her chest, so I wondered if you’d help him brew up some things. They can’t hurt and might help; that way I can focus on Deborah and the baby.”

Asa nodded, then caught her arm gently when she turned away. “You’re a good doc.”

She flushed.
“Danki.”

He watched the fabric of her skirt swish against the end table as she walked back to the bedroom, then pulled himself up to start on his task. John emerged a few moments later from the bedroom, his blond hair rather on end and his eyes dazed.

Asa approached him the way he would a riled-up horse and laid a hand on the younger man’s shoulder.

“Doc says we should make up those poultices for Deborah’s breathing. I know a few remedies from taking care of
Daed
in the past. Can you show me where things are?”

“
Jah.
” John nodded. “I’ll be glad of something to do. We’ve got a cabinet of herbal medicines stocked, but maybe we should have gone to the hospital . . . I should have suggested that.”

“
Should haves
are worthless in life, I’ve always believed,” Asa said. “You just keep moving forward into what the Lord gives you.” The words convicted him even as he spoke, as he realized he had spent years doing the exact opposite.

“You are right, Asa.
Danki
.”

The two men soon had multiple kettles on the boil full of wild cherry bark, honey, and melted horehound candy. Ground mustard, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, allspice, and lard were also brewing, and John was beginning to look more relaxed. Asa
glanced now and then at the closed door of the master bedroom and prayed that all was going well for the Doc and her patients.

Anna ignored the abrupt sound of a branch scratching the window and concentrated on the pale face of the woman in the bed. Deborah’s reddish brown curls had all but escaped her
kapp
, and her traditional long-sleeved white nightdress was damp with perspiration. Anna slid a long plastic drape beneath her and arranged it to fall over the bottom edge of the bed. Then she opened packages of large, flat, absorbent pads and arranged these as well. As she expected, Deborah’s water broke after the next few contractions.

The young woman instinctively gasped at the rush of fluid.

“It’s all right, Deborah. Your water’s broken, and I have a feeling that things are going to move fast now. You’re doing great! Do you want me to get John?”

Deborah shook her head as she inhaled from the oxygen cannulas. “
Nee
, not yet—he gets sick to his stomach, even at calvings.” Her faint smile melted into a grimace as she arched against another pain.

Anna strained with her. “Hold my hands. Let me carry the pain with you, just like
Derr Herr
does,
jah
?”

Deborah gasped. “
Jah
, you are right.” She regained some composure after a moment. “Do you have children of your own?”

Anna shook her head. “
Nee
, so I don’t know quite how you feel, but I can imagine.”

It was a question that she was asked often. Each time she
answered, she had to remind herself that the Lord had blessed her with the chance to serve others and to see new life come into his world. But there was one part of her that longed for a husband and children of her own. Sometimes the most elated moments in her practice were also the loneliest, when the new baby came and she watched the mother take it to her breast. It was like there were two Annas—the professional and the woman . . . or the girl, as Asa Mast had called her.

Deborah’s sharp cry brought her back to the moment. Realizing that the contractions were becoming more intense, she glanced around the cozy bedroom, with its simple, carved cradle, seeking a distraction for Deborah’s mind, when she noticed the Turkey Tracks patterned quilt hanging on a display frame near the bureau. The wide, feathered patterns in each square did indeed resemble turkey tracks, but Anna knew another story about the quilt.

“You have a beautiful Turkey Tracks quilt, Deborah.”

The woman glanced in the direction of the bright red pattern and nodded, the tension in her brow easing a bit.

“
Jah
, John’s mother gave it to us . . . a wedding gift. I forget now what she said about it . . .”

Anna breathed with her through another contraction and then began to speak. “Actually, one of the first names of that pattern wasn’t Turkey Tracks—it was Wandering Foot. The story goes that any boy who slept beneath the quilt was destined to lead a life of endless wandering, never having a home or family. So mothers renamed the pattern.”

Deborah smiled. “That’s right . . . and my John would never wander.
Danki
for reminding me.” She grimaced again,
and Anna adjusted the pile of quilts that covered her patient’s chest. She bundled up the plastic sheet and put it in a trash bag she pulled from her midwifery case. Then she put down sterile towels and pulled on a pair of sterile gloves. She began laying out supplies from her bag, including the antibacterial wash.

“Deborah, I’m just going to check you again because I think you’re very close, okay?”

“
Jah
, I think—I have to push.”

“Okay, just hold on.” Anna was quick. “You’re right—it’s time to push. Do you want John?”

Deborah nodded with visible concentration.

Anna opened the door and peered out into the kitchen where Asa and John were talking to each other by the stove.

“John, it’s time now.”

Anna took in the blanched face of the father-to-be and ushered him to the door. Then she saw Asa’s encouraging smile, as if he held her responsible for the whole moment to come. She quickly checked her vanity and reminded herself she’d be returning the next day to Pine Creek. The thought sobered her as she eased the door closed on the man she’d just met but who had made a surprising impact on her. She refocused and followed John to the bed.

She turned up the oxygen to three liters and concentrated on encouraging Deborah. Anna always made it a habit to allow the couple to feel comfortable and in control of the moment while she was there to provide reassurance and spiritual, mental, and physical support. When John looked rather lost as to what to say as his wife squeezed his hand, Anna suggested that he climb behind Deborah in the bed and be a support for her to lean
against. John latched onto this idea, and soon both husband and wife were working together as Deborah delivered a healthy firstborn son to the Loftus house. Anna laid the baby on Deborah’s belly and then clamped the umbilical cord and worked on her own chores with the afterbirth as the new parents murmured thanks to
Derr Herr
over their child in soft Pennsylvania Dutch.

“Would you like to cut the cord, John?” she asked after a few minutes and was surprised when he nodded and snipped the area between the two clamps with calm precision. Anna smiled as she made a brief examination of the child. She lifted the baby onto the portable sling scale. “Seven pounds, five ounces,” she announced as she laid the baby on the end of the bed to clean and dress him in the traditional tiny undergarments, gown, and head covering that had lain waiting in the cradle. Then she swaddled him in a yellow patchwork baby quilt and handed him to John, who’d moved to stand by the bed, while she finished her cleaning and eased Deborah into a fresh nightdress. John laid the infant in his wife’s arms, and Anna smiled in satisfaction.

“You both did great! Now I’m going to check Deborah’s lungs and give her a little shot to help her breathing and we’ll see if we can’t get the oxygen turned down. But”—she eyed John—“I want them both to be seen tomorrow at the hospital in Paradise, just to make extra sure that everything’s all right.”

John gave a solemn nod, seeming to have grown older in just a few minutes. “We’ll be there, Doc.”

“Great. Now what are you going to name this handsome little man? I’ve got to fill out the paperwork.”

They spoke in unison, “John Matthew.”

“After his father,” Deborah murmured.

Anna nodded. It was common to have three or four people with the same name in an Amish community, and it made it all the more confusing when a midwife got a nervous phone call and someone forgot to leave an address. “All right, I’ll give you three some alone time.” She walked toward the door, then turned back around with a smile. “By the way, I have to make it a habit to check my watch at each delivery. Your son was born on Second Christmas, 12:05 a.m.” She closed the door on the happy family and walked out to the kitchen table, which was laden with covered trays of Christmas cookies that Deborah must have prepared before her labor began. She saw Asa folding white tea towels and dipping them with tongs into the steaming kettles, which filled the room with rich, spicy scents. He must have taken her instructions about herbal remedies to heart. He turned and laid the tongs aside when she sat down.