Angels Watching Over Me (6 page)

Leah couldn’t deny that horrible things went on in the world every day. “All right, I agree. The world’s not a perfect place. But why not try to change it instead of hiding from it?”

He shook his head. “The elders tell us that it is far more likely that the English will change our ways than that we will change theirs.”

“Do you always do what the elders say?” Both he and Charity quoted rules and words of others. Did they ever think for themselves?

“
Gelassenheit
,” he said. “That’s German for patience and resignation. It means obedience to the Amish community. It is not something we
do
. It is something we
are
.”

Leah had been raised to be on her own. Her mother’s many marriages, their frequent moves
and different schools had taught her to be independent. But she saw quite clearly that for the Amish, individuality was not a virtue. It was a curse. She stood. “Well, it looks like we’ve come full circle, Ethan. You were right after all—the English and the Amish can’t mingle.”

He stood too. “But we can care about one another,” he said carefully. “We can always care.”

She knew he meant
care
in a brotherly way. But after spending time with him, she didn’t want to be just another sister to him. She wanted to be a girl who mattered to him the way Martha Dewberry mattered. Except that Leah wasn’t Amish. And she never would be.

That evening, Leah overheard Ethan tell his sisters that he was returning home on a shuttle bus. Rebekah reacted immediately, asking him not to leave her and Charity. Leah reacted too, but quietly, deep inside herself. She knew she was going to miss him.

“Papa needs me to work, but I will be back,” Ethan said.

“When?”

“Tomorrow evening. By suppertime.”

Leah’s heartbeat accelerated.
Good. He’s coming
back
. When he left the room, he passed the table where she sat, trailed his fingers across the surface and softly brushed her arm. She met his gaze and felt a rush of yearning. She wanted to stand up and throw her arms around him. Instead, she sat perfectly still.

She was preparing to go to bed when Dr. Thomas came into the room. Leah was surprised to see him there so late on a Friday night. “I got tied up in the emergency room with a leg fracture; that’s why I’m so late making rounds,” he explained.

“I’m not going anywhere.” She felt apprehensive. “So, do you know anything about what’s wrong with me yet?”

He shuffled her chart, laden with X rays and papers. “I know that I want to do a biopsy on your knee first thing Monday morning.”

“W
hy do you have to do a biopsy?” Leah asked Dr. Thomas.

“A biopsy is nothing more than a diagnostic tool—”

Leah cut him off. “I
know
what a biopsy is! That’s how the doctors discovered that my grandmother had cancer.” She gasped. “Do you think I have cancer? Is that why you want to do a biopsy?”

“Now, calm down. There are some cancers that have a hereditary factor, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have cancer. I don’t want to make a false diagnosis, and since we don’t know what’s wrong with you yet, I want to do this test. I’ll put you under an anesthetic, take
out a tiny sample of bone tissue from your knee, and send it to the lab for evaluation. Your knee might be sore for a day or two, but that’s all.”

Leah felt afraid. “Do whatever you have to.”

The doctor patted her arm. “You’ll be okay, Leah. We’ll take good care of you. I’ll see you Monday morning.” He smiled reassuringly as he left.

Leah pulled the bedcovers up to her chin and closed her eyes. She didn’t want Charity or Rebekah to see the tears that were about to roll down her cheeks as, for the first time since entering the hospital, she surrendered completely to memories of her grandmother.

Grandma Hall had tried to stay involved in Leah’s life even after Leah’s father had abandoned them. It wasn’t easy. For reasons Leah still didn’t understand, her mother had tried to keep Leah away from her grandmother. Her mother didn’t want Grandma Hall to see Leah at all. But Grandma Hall found ways to keep in touch. She sent Leah letters, even when they lived in the same city, and whenever she could, she stopped by Leah’s school during recess to visit.

Leah remembered her grandmother as
cheerful and smiling. She carried hankies that smelled like roses, and she loved to wear red. Most importantly, she was Leah’s only tie to her father—the father her mother wouldn’t allow her to mention. The father Leah longed for, instead of the steady stream of men who had dated her mother.

Leah’s grandmother had told her stories about her father when he was a little boy and showed her photos of him as a child, as a soldier in Vietnam, as a new father proudly holding baby Leah. And when she’d ask, “Why did my daddy go away?” Grandma Hall would say, “He just had to go, honey. But he always loved you. And he still does.”

When Leah was ten, Grandma Hall had gotten sick, and Leah’s mother had relented slightly about allowing Leah to visit her. Although feelings between the two were strained, Leah’s mother had often brought Leah to the hospital. “Hi, darling,” her grandmother would say, and she would stroke Leah’s hair tenderly.

Leah had hated the hospital. Her grandmother looked awful, gaunt and pale, with IVs stuck into bulging blue veins. Leah hated the way the place smelled and feared the equipment, tubes, and syringes, as well as the nurses
who shuffled in and out, dispensing medicine but bringing her beloved grandmother no relief. Secretly Leah hoped one day to walk in and see her father visiting his mother. But it had never happened.

Grandma Hall lived three months from the time she was diagnosed. She might have survived longer, except that one day when Leah and her mother went to visit, Grandma Hall was sobbing uncontrollably. “He’s dead, Roberta. My boy’s dead. I got a letter from some hospital out in Oregon. They found him unconscious in an alley.”

That was when Leah knew her father was gone forever. And after that, Grandma Hall went downhill quickly. She died, a shadow of herself, hooked to machines, in pain, alone in the hospital.

And now
, Leah thought,
here
I
am, all alone, in a hospital
. Grandma Hall, if she had been here, would have held Leah’s hand and told her not to worry, that she’d protect her. But Grandma Hall was dead. That left Leah’s mother—and tender loving care had never been one of her strong suits.

Leah wiped her eyes with the edge of her bedsheet and rolled over. Charity was preparing
for bed on a roll-away cot that had been brought into the room. “How’s Rebekah?” Leah asked.

“Her fever’s down.” Charity was wearing a long nightdress of cotton flannel, and her light brown hair hung down her back in a long braid. “And the swelling on her arm has gone down too. I have prayed for these things to happen. And I have asked God to let her go home in time for Christmas. It wouldn’t be the same without all of us together.”

“Are you trying to tell me you believe your prayers made her well, and not the medicine she’s been taking?”

“Of course the medicine helped her. But prayer is strong medicine too. Sometimes it is all we have when nothing else works.”

“You know, I want Rebekah to get well, but I’m going to miss the two of you when you leave.” And Ethan too, she thought.

“What did your doctor tell you?” Charity asked. Leah explained about the biopsy. “I will say extra prayers for you that this biopsy gives your doctor the answer he is looking for,” said Charity.

They told one another “Good night,” and Leah switched off the light over her bed. Dim
light from the hallway leaked under the bottom of the door, and the wall switches glowed in the dark. As her eyes adjusted, Leah could see Charity kneeling beside her bed, her hands folded and her head bowed. The simplicity of the pose brought a lump to Leah’s throat. She wondered if there really was a God after all. Then she thought of her beloved Grandma Hall, dying in the hospital. Leah was touched by Charity’s taking the time to pray on her behalf. But nothing had helped her grandma when she was sick: not prayers; not doctors; and not all the love Leah held in her heart for her. What could possibly help Leah?

Leah was awakened by a night nurse for vitals, but long after the nurse had left the room, she remained awake. She kept thinking about Ethan and how attracted she was to him, in spite of his simple and unsophisticated ways. Maybe that was what attracted her. He was singleminded and focused, confident of what he believed, positive of the direction his life would take.

Leah couldn’t say any of those things about herself. She meandered through school, doing just enough work to get by. She’d vaguely
thought about college, but only because it seemed like the thing to do, not because there was anything particular she wanted to study or learn. Yet she didn’t want to be like her mother either, drifting from place to place, marrying and remarrying, always searching for something more or better or just different.

Leah sighed. All this thinking wasn’t helping her go back to sleep. She turned over. With a start, she saw a woman standing beside Rebekah’s bed.
When did she come into the room?
Leah peered through the gloom and recognized her as the nurse who’d come in the night before. The woman leaned over Charity’s cot and smoothed her covers. Then she went to Rebekah’s bed and took the child’s small hand in hers. Leah heard Rebekah giggle quietly, then begin animatedly whispering with the nurse.

Watching the scene, Leah realized this nurse really had a way with children. And Molly had certainly done a lot to make Leah feel cared for and comfortable.
Nursing
. Maybe that would be something she’d like doing. Leah toyed with the notion, turned it over in her mind, and discovered that she liked it.

Leah continued to watch the night nurse and
Rebekah whispering, and slowly a calming peace stole over her. Her eyelids grew heavy, and as the silence of the night closed around her, she fell fast asleep.

“I’m hungry.” Rebekah’s voice woke Leah and Charity.

Leah rubbed the sleep from her eyes and saw the little girl sitting up in bed with her doll in her lap. Morning sunlight flooded the room. “Are you okay, Rebekah?” she asked.

“Yes, but I am hungry.”

Charity got out of bed and scurried to Rebekah’s bedside. She felt her forehead with the back of her hand. “I think her fever is gone.” She flashed Leah a smile. “It seems she is well.”

“That’s a relief!”

Molly walked through the doorway. “What’s a relief?”

“We think Rebekah’s much better,” Leah said.

“I’m hungry,” Rebekah repeated.

“That’s a good sign,” Molly said with a grin. “The breakfast trays are on their way, so let’s get a temp before you eat.” She slid a digital thermometer under Rebekah’s tongue. While
she was waiting for the readout, she asked Leah, “Did you sleep well?”

“Except for when the nurses came for vitals in the middle of the night. I didn’t think I’d ever get back to sleep. Then another nurse came in, and watching her and Rebekah must have made me sleepy, because the next thing I knew it was morning.”

“What other nurse?”

“Gabriella,” Rebekah said around the thermometer. “She’s my friend. She comes in and talks to me.”

“Gabriella? She must be brand new.”

“She’s nice,” said Rebekah.

“Well, it must be nice to have that much free time.” Molly removed the thermometer when it beeped. “But that’s the difference between the day and night shifts. Maybe I’ll switch and not have so much work to do.”

“Who’ll I talk to all day?” Leah kidded.

Molly chuckled, turned to Charity and said, “Good news. Your sister’s temperature is normal.”

Charity clapped. “Wonderful! When can she go home?”

“Not until her doctor says she can. Infections
can be ornery. We want to be sure it’s truly gone before we release her.”

Leah thought of how lonely it would be without company in the room. “Are you leaving me, Rebekah?”

Rebekah’s face puckered. “Oh, Leah, you are my best-ever friend. I’ll come visit you. Won’t we, Charity?”

Everyone laughed, but Leah knew that once the two girls were gone, they wouldn’t be back. Leah doubted that Charity’s parents would allow her to make the trip again when there was no reason other than a social call.

Later that morning, after Leah had showered, washed her hair, and put on makeup, she went to the library on the pediatric floor and checked out some books about nursing. She was reading at the table in her room when Ethan came in, smiling.

Rebekah squealed with delight. Ethan beamed at his sisters, then cast a sparkling blue-eyed glance at Leah. “I told you I would return. And guess what? I have brought you all a big surprise.”