Chapter 24

“Rachel?”

Dimly, she heard someone calling her name.

“Rachel, honey?”

She felt a mild annoyance when a hand touched her arm and shook her gently.

“Wake up, sweetheart.”

She grimaced. The last thing she wanted to do was wake up. What she wanted to do was to burrow back into the comforting deep sleep where she had been.

“Rachel?” The man’s voice was vaguely familiar, but she did not open her eyes. If she kept them closed, perhaps whoever was talking to her would go away.

“RACHEL!” A woman’s commanding voice startled her. Her eyes snapped open to see Aunt Bertha standing over her.

“It is time to wake up,” Bertha said with deep disapproval. “You have frightened everyone long enough.”

Frightened? What was Aunt Bertha talking about? Was it time for school already? She often had trouble waking up in time for chores. Aunt Bertha seemed to think sleeping in was a spiritual weakness. But Aunt Lydia said she was growing so fast that her young body needed more rest than they did. Aunt Anna simply sneaked her another cookie, giggled, and left her alone no matter how early or late Rachel was in rising.

Her mind felt fuzzy, as though she’d been ill. And where was her daddy?

She glanced at the man standing near her bed. He seemed familiar, but she didn’t know who he was. The room was not at all familiar. It was white, and there were lots of electric lights. Rachel frowned. The aunts did not have electric lights where they lived.

“Rachel!” Bertha took her face between her hands. “Look at me!”

Rachel looked and was surprised to see that Bertha had gotten old.

Her arm itched and she tried to scratch it, but her fingers encountered tape. When she lifted her head to see, she realized that there was a plastic tube running into her skin. Was there a needle in her arm? She hated needles.

“Say something,” the man said. “Please tell me you’re okay, sweetheart.”

She did not understand why this strange Englischman was calling her love names. All she knew for sure was that she was thirsty.

“May I have some juice, Aunt Bertha?” she asked.

The blank look Rachel gave him made Joe take a step backward. It was as though she had never seen him before. The complete absence of recognition in her eyes was a little creepy. Where had the strong, confident woman he loved gone?

And that voice! She sounded like a small child. A very confused small child. Had she really asked for juice? Rachel never drank fruit juice. She was strict about keeping her body in shape. Part of her discipline, she had told him, was that she preferred to eat her calories instead of drink them. Rachel almost always drank water.

“I will go find some juice for you, Rachel.” Bertha’s face was creased with worry. “Joe, will you come help me?”

“Of course.”

Out in the hallway, with the door shut behind them, he was so terrified by Rachel’s behavior, he could hold back no longer. “What’s wrong with her? She sounds like she’s Bobby’s age, and she never drinks juice.”

“She drank juice when she was a child,” Bertha said. “It was her favorite thing when she was upset.”

“But she’s no longer a child.”

“I think she does not know that right now.”

The impact of Bertha’s words hit him like a physical blow. When Rachel collapsed at the car show, his first panicked thought was that she’d had a heart attack. She always tended to take on too much responsibility, as though the world sat squarely on her shoulders. She was young, but heart attacks didn’t happen just to the old.

When he ascertained that she was still breathing and her pulse was strong, his second thought was for their baby. Had something gone wrong with the pregnancy?

His third thought was that perhaps collapsing was what happened to pregnant women who were working too hard.

The ambulance team assured him that they did not think it was her heart. By the time they got there, she was awake—or seemed to be. Her eyes stared into space, but she said nothing and responded to nothing—not even when the ambulance drivers questioned her.

The more hours they spent in the ER doing tests, the more she seemed to regress. They suspected a stroke until that, too, was ruled out.

His wife was physically as healthy as a horse, but her mind was…well, her behavior was one of the most bizarre things he had ever experienced.

“What’s wrong with her, Bertha?”

“I am no doctor,” she said.

“I want to see Rachel,” Anna demanded as she and Lydia joined them.

“I don’t know if that’s wise.” Joe feared what it might do to Anna if Rachel didn’t recognize her, either.

“I want to see Rachel!” Anna grew more insistent. “I want to see Rachel!”

“If we don’t let Anna go in, there will be trouble,” Bertha said. “And it is not a good thing for Anna to get upset, with her own health issues.”

“Go on in and see her, Anna,” Joe said. “But don’t stay long. We’ll be here if you need us.”

They stood at the door and watched.

Anna plopped herself onto the side of Rachel’s bed and began to stroke her face and hair. It was as though Rachel were a kitten that Anna felt needed to be comforted.

As Anna sat there, Rachel looked up at her and whispered something. Anna nodded with understanding and whispered back, their faces close together.

“Should I go in?” he asked.

Bertha watched the interaction between Anna and Rachel with rapt attention.

“Not yet,” Bertha said. “When Rachel was young, she would talk to Anna about things she would not speak of with Lydia and me. It was like one child talking to another. There was a great trust between them.”

When Anna came out, her normally sunny face looked troubled.

“What did she say?” Joe asked her. “Did she give you any idea what’s going on?”

“Uh-huh.” Anna nodded.

They waited for Anna to say more, but she didn’t volunteer anything else. Instead, she appeared to be deep in thought.

“What did Rachel say?” Bertha prompted.

Anna startled. Then she frowned. “Rachel is afraid.”

“Of what?” Joe asked.

Anna shrugged and twisted a handkerchief in her hands. She did not answer.

He glanced at Bertha. “What’s going on?”

“Anna has trouble putting things into words,” Bertha said. “Sometimes we have to wait awhile before she finds those words.”

He left the sisters standing in the doorway and went back to Rachel’s bedside. His wife was curled into as much of a fetal position as she could get at three months’ pregnancy. He smoothed back her hair, tucked the thin blanket a little more firmly around her shoulders, and kissed her on the cheek, but Rachel never acknowledged him. She had gone away again.