What, may I ask, are you doing in your street clothes?”
Candice stood in the doorway of Elijah’s hospital room with her stethoscope draped around her neck and her hands planted on her hips. “I didn’t see any discharge instructions in the doctor’s progress notes.”
“I haven’t been released technically, but I can’t stay here and do nothing.” Elijah fumbled with the hook and eye on the front of his tattered shirt. With his arm immobilized in a sling and the thick bandages holding his ribs in place, even simple things were difficult to do.
“Let me help you.” Candice fastened the hooks, then adjusted the arm sling. “How’s your pain?”
“Manageable.”
Candice smiled. “I have to advise you that you shouldn’t leave until the doctor discharges you. Your lungs are still weak, and your ribs haven’t healed. Your head and leg have stitches that need to be removed. And your shoulder needs physical therapy. Plus, there’s a good chance of infection.”
“Advice taken.” He touched his temple where it had been sewn back together. The stiff thread was knotted at the ends, and the stitches along his inner thigh had already started to itch. But stitches weren’t difficult to remove. He’d done it before when one of the mares he was training sliced open her leg. Couldn’t be that much different to remove his own.
But he’d forgotten about the emergency workers cutting his pant leg up to his thigh until he put on his pants. He made a spectacle of himself with the flopping open pant leg that left him exposed. Too bad his duffel bag with his extra clothes was lost somewhere in the wreckage.
“Does that mean you’ll stay?”
“Nope.” He found his socks balled up in the bottom of the bag that held his pants, shirt, boots, and suspenders.
Candice sighed. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Please don’t leave while I’m gone.”
“It’ll take me that long to put on mei socks and boots,” he said as Candice left the room.
Elijah sat on the chair next to the wall and readied the first sock. Hopefully she wasn’t planning to rally reinforcements to convince him to stay. It wouldn’t work. If he stayed it would only prolong reuniting with Catherine, and that wasn’t something he was willing to put off any longer. Too much time had already lapsed between them.
Candice returned with a clipboard and pen. “Any chance you changed your mind?”
“Nope.”
She handed him the clipboard. “In that case, I need you to sign some forms stating you are choosing to leave against medical advice.”
“Where do you want me to sign?”
Candice pointed to the line. “I wish you would wait until you’re stronger.”
“I can’t. I have to go nau.” He signed where she indicated and handed her back the forms. “Thank you for your wunderbaar care.”
“I was just doing my job.”
“If I’m ever in the hospital again, I hope you’re mei nurse.”
“And you might end up readmitted if you don’t take it easy.” She tore off a copy of the signed document and handed it to him along with a packet of other papers. “You’ll need to come back to have your stitches removed in a week. Make sure you follow these patient instructions. It’s important to keep your wounds clean. Inside the information packet is a list of things to watch for. Be sure to read it. If you become short of breath, you must go to the emergency room. Remember, your ribs are still broken.”
“Jah, I will.” He folded the papers and tucked them into the plastic bag marked Patient Belongings.
“This is something from me.” She handed him an envelope. “It isn’t much.”
Elijah stared at his name scrawled on the front, not sure how to respond.
“Open it.”
Peeling it open, he eyed the cash. Elijah lifted his gaze to hers. “This is very generous. But you can’t give me money. You work hard for this. Here.” He tried to give it back, but she took his hand and folded it around the cash.
“You’ll need this,” she said, her eyes aglow with kindness. “I don’t do this with all my patients. Actually, I’ve never done this before. I believe God prompted me to give you this money, and I also believe God will bless me for being obedient. So don’t you dare steal my blessing by giving it back, you hear?”
Elijah smiled. Before leaving Posen, he’d only pinned a few dollars into the waistband of his pants. The rest of his money he packed in his duffel bag, which was somewhere lost in the wreckage. Not that he had a lot of money. He’d counted on picking up odd jobs once he got to Florida.
“I don’t know what to say. You’ve blessed me already. You’ve not only taken care of me, but you tried to get information about Catherine’s whereabouts, and now you give me this. Thank you so much.”
“It’s a gift from God, so don’t thank me. It’s all about Him.”
“Jah,” he said, feeling put in his place. “I stand corrected. All gut gifts are from God, aren’t they?”
“Absolutely.”
He lowered his head. Father, danki for this gift. I pray You will bless the giver and meet all of Candice’s needs according to Your will.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” She dug her hand into the front pocket of her shirt and removed a handful of safety pins. “These should help keep your pant leg closed.”
“Ach! Danki—thank you,” he said, relieved to have something to close his pant leg. The woman was an angel.
“I put my address inside the envelope. Will you drop me a note and let me know when you find Catherine?”
“Jah, I will for sure.”
“I’ll be praying for you, Elijah.”
“Keep Catherine in your prayers too.”
“Absolutely!” She walked over to the bedside table and picked up the phone. “Where do you want the cab driver to take you?”
The presence of several news vans had caused a traffic backup along River Ridge Road. With so many of them leaving the accident area, Elijah’s pulse quickened. Surely they wouldn’t leave until all the lost passengers were found. He shifted on the back seat of the cab to get a better look outside.
“This road has been jammed ever since that accident the other day.” The driver looked at Elijah in the rearview mirror. Recognition dawned in his expression. “That’s how you injured your arm and why you have those stitches in your head, ain’t it? You’re one of the passengers.”
“Jah,” Elijah admitted reluctantly. He never liked drawing attention to himself.
“I knew it.” The driver smiled in the rearview mirror at him. “I noticed the bloodstains on your clothes and how you had your pants pinned up the seam.”
And he’d been picked up at the hospital. “Do you think they’ve found the missing passengers and that’s why so many news vans are leaving?”
“My guess is they’re chasing another story. If they found any of them, they’d still be filming.”
Elijah’s excitement withered. He hoped they weren’t leaving because the search had been called off. Would they do that? It wouldn’t be dark for a few more hours, and the sky didn’t look as though a storm was brewing.
The driver stopped the car several yards from where the accident took place. “How long are you going to be here? You want me to wait?”
“Nay, I’m joining the search.” He paid the driver, then slid out from the back seat.
The driver rolled down his window and stuck his hand outside. “Here’s my card. Call me if you need me to come pick you up. Once they look at you all bandaged up, I doubt they’ll let you volunteer.”
“Thank you.” Elijah took the card out of politeness. With no phone he had no means of contacting the man.
He limped down the road, feeling the hard pavement with every step. He managed to slip past a lingering news van and make his way around a row of parked trucks with empty dog pens in the beds of the vehicles. He spotted a tent set up under a stand of pines several feet away and froze as the words of the cab driver replayed in his mind. What if the cab driver was right and the authorities didn’t allow him to stay? Where would he go? As winded as he was now, he wouldn’t get far if he was sent away. He wouldn’t even make it to a pay phone to call the cab driver back— that’s if there were pay phones around here.
It didn’t matter if they turned him away; he wasn’t leaving. He would find Catherine on his own.
Elijah slipped off the arm sling, shoved it under his shirt, then tucked the shirt into his pants. He headed toward the tent and the group of people milling around the area drinking from steaming Styrofoam cups.
A man wearing a bright orange hunter’s coat and matching hat turned in Elijah’s direction and acknowledged him with a nod. “Good afternoon.”
“Good afternoon to you too.” He scanned the small gathering of men and women. “Mei name is Elijah Graber, and I would like to join the group of volunteers searching for the missing accident victims.” Eyed by several in the batch, Elijah straightened his shoulders and tried to mask his pain with a smile.
“Looks like you’ve taken quite a blow to your head recently.” The man looked Elijah over, his line of vision stopping on the safety pins holding his torn pants together, then moving up to meet Elijah head on. “I’ve been down to the bottom of the ravine and it’s a difficult undertaking.”
He’d been down to the bottom once too. “I can do it.”
The man with the orange coat looked at the others standing with him, then back to Elijah. “Do you have dogs?”
“Nay, but I’m a hunter and a gut tracker.”
“See Officer Bennett inside the tent,” the man in the orange coat said. “You’ll need to show your driver’s license in order to sign the volunteer roster.”
Elijah swallowed hard. He didn’t have a driver’s license or any other proof of identity, for that matter. “Has anyone been found yet?”
The man shook his head.
Another man in the group whose downtrodden expression reflected the grave situation said, “It’s beginning to look like the bodies might have gone through the ice, and if that’s the case, the undercurrent would have swept them away.” He took a drink from his cup, then tossed it into the trash can next to the tent. “It’s sad. We might not find them till spring.”
No, God, please . . . say it isn’t so. Elijah’s throat swelled. Catherine did not go through the ice. She didn’t drown. He turned and coughed into his hand, trying to dislodge the lump obstructing his ability to swallow.
One man whistled and three dogs jumped down from the bed of a nearby truck. “I’ll take my team down the east side and work toward the river.” He pulled his knitted hat over his face, covering everything but his eyes, nose, and mouth, then made a hand signal to his eager bloodhounds, and they were off.
Not wanting to waste any more time, Elijah went to the tent, pulled back the tarp, and stepped inside.
The man seated behind the table glanced up. “I’m Officer Bennett. May I help you?”
Elijah moved closer to the table. “I’m here to help with the search.”
“Have a seat.” The officer motioned to an empty chair opposite his.
Elijah eased onto the chair. It felt good to sit. His facial expression must have given his thoughts away, because Officer Bennett’s brows drew together.
“I’m guessing you were a passenger in that accident?”
If he was reading the officer’s expression correctly, he was about to be asked to leave. He couldn’t let that happen. Elijah tilted his head slightly off center and pretended to be confused. “Excuse me?”
“You held your breath every step you took, and you look like you’ve been through battle. Which bus were you on?”
Elijah lowered his head. “Budget Bus.”
Denied volunteer placement on the search team on account of his recent injuries and determined not to let anyone stop him, Elijah ambled toward the road, then when he was sure no one was watching him, he cut through a small stand of trees toward the ravine.
He crossed the guardrail and began easing down the slope.
Elijah’s foot slid on a patch of snow. He grasped a nearby tree limb and hung on long enough to catch his breath. Maneuvering the terrain with his ribs wrapped and a useless arm that should be in a sling was much more difficult than he expected.
“You could puncture your lungs again or rip your stitches open. Infection . . .” The nurse’s warning played in the back of his mind.
Slow and steady. Stay focused. Don’t hurry. If he took the wrong step, he might find himself at the bottom of the forty-foot drop incapacitated with more broken bones. Then he would hope the bloodhounds found him. Although he’d probably be counted as one of the lost.
He climbed down a few more feet. Finding a level spot to rest, he calmed his breathing. His hands were raw and sticky from pine sap. At least the white pine trees’ branches were flexible and forgiving. He didn’t trust the branches of a birch not to snap under his weight, and he’d made the mistake of grasping a wild raspberry bush, and its thorns pierced his hand.
He continued to inch down the steep incline. A sheet of snow moved under his feet, and he fell. Tumbling out of control, he was sliding headfirst, belly on the ground with no use of his injured arm and not finding anything to grab hold of with his free hand.
His chest hit a large rock and stopped him. “Lord!” Pain riveted him to the spot. For a long moment he didn’t move and silently assessed his injuries. A spasm in his rib cage stole his breath. He wouldn’t have long if he punctured his lung again, exactly what Candice had warned him about.
Dogs barking echoed in the distance. The chopping sound of helicopter blades became louder. He couldn’t let them delay their search for survivors working on him.
Elijah clenched his teeth and continued. Wet and shivering, he reached the bottom of the slope, rested a few minutes, then pushed off the ground and lumbered along the edge of the ravine toward the wreckage.
By the time he reached the area where the treetops had been cropped, Elijah’s legs were wobbly and threatening to buckle. Then he glimpsed something reflective shining a few feet away. He limped toward the metal object. Drawing closer, he realized it was a panel of the bus. Glass littered the ground. He trudged through a swampy area, finding more remnants of the bus on his way.
The moment he saw what was left of the mangled bus lying on its side, tightness filled his chest and he gasped. The way the front section was crushed, it had probably rolled several times. His eyes brimmed with tears as he gingerly approached the torn metal. The ground turned slushy. Melting snow—no, melting ice. Until now, he’d been so focused on getting to the bus, he hadn’t paid attention to the surrounding cattails dusted with snow, nor had he considered the marshy wetlands where they grow. He’d reached the river, and the bus had landed partly on it.
Elijah stepped gingerly toward the metal structure, acutely listening for sounds of ice cracking.
“The one you have come to find is not here.”
The deep baritone voice startled Elijah. He paused and listened for the voice again but didn’t hear anything. Elijah made his way around the massive heap lying on its side and stopped at the opening. Peering inside, his attention was immediately drawn to the hole in the ice where windows had been blown out and sheet metal curled up. He climbed inside.
His stomach roiled, hearing the lapping sounds of water movement. Counting the number of seats, acid rose to the back of his throat. Catherine had been seated at what looked like the point of impact—where water was now seeping into the cabin.
With every morsel of breath in him, he cried out, “Why, God? Why Catherine? Why nett take me?”
“It isn’t for us to understand the mind of God, child. Some things are only revealed in time.”
Elijah turned and faced the stranger. A ray of sunlight illuminated the older man’s features. His bright red hair and the gold specks swimming around the man’s pupils, in particular, captured Elijah’s attention. He blinked a few times and pushed the tears away from his eyes with his sleeve.
“Don’t look for her here. She’s gone, Elijah.”
How does he know mei name? He’s a volunteer. Someone from the top probably saw him go down the ravine and radioed the others.
“It isn’t safe to be here,” the man said. “The ice is already fractured.”
“I’m nett ready to leave.” Elijah turned his back to the redheaded stranger. He stared hopelessly at the hole, his eyes burning with tears. How can I go on? Bowing his head, he sobbed. His entire body shook, the movement sending sharp pains down his injured side, which he ignored.
He remained in the bus several minutes, grateful for the time and that the stranger had respectfully left him alone. Over and over, he asked the Lord “why” while at the same time, scriptures from the book of James crossed his mind: “Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city . . .’ You do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”
“Lord, You are the giver of life. You alone decide the number of breaths. Even so, Lord, help me to understand Your will. Your love . . .”
A few minutes later, Elijah climbed out of the bus. He spotted the man standing off in the distance. He lowered his head and walked toward the stranger. Once he reached the man at the base of the ravine, he stopped long enough to look back at the bus. “Is it true the authorities are assuming the people who are missing are underwater?”
“Yes,” he said solemnly.
“And the bodies.” He cleared his throat, finding it hard to think on these terms. “When will they be . . . found?”
“Not until spring.”
Elijah tilted his head toward the sky, tears pooling. God, I need You. What am I supposed to do? I don’t want to accept that she’s gone.
Barking dogs drew closer. Elijah opened his eyes as a pack of hounds circled around a large oak a few feet away and began clawing at the trunk. His gaze traveling up the tree, Elijah’s jaw fell slack. Several feet up, a woman was tangled in the branches.