On Monday morning, Hal went to visit Elton in the hospital. After she found out he’d been released, she offered to take him home, but he refused. He said he’d wait for Jane to come in their buggy. He’d been pacing around his room to get exercise. Hal thought he seemed strong enough to stand the carriage ride so she didn’t try to persuade him to pick a different method to get home.
A couple days after Elton had time to get used to being home, the Lapp family went for a visit after supper. As friendly to her as the Bontragers seemed, Hal was nervous about being in the same room with Elton now he’d gotten most of his strength back. So far he didn’t seem to have giving her a lecture on his mind. Right now he was just glad to be alive. He was happy to see the whole Lapp family including Hal.
Once Elton felt better, his mind turned to fall field work, and he didn’t like the idea of staying in the house. He asked John how the harvest was coming. John told him they were going to start on his corn field in the morning.
“Gute, I feel like helping now,” Elton said.
“Oh, Elton,” Jane protested.
Elton gave his wife a hard look, and she didn’t say anything else.
John said bluntly, “We do not want you to help this year. Your neighbors will harvest the corn. You need to get gute and well before you try working again.”
“I am doing all recht,” Elton protested.
John shook his head. “You will do even better at getting well if you are watching from the window this time. The doctor said you need rest and a chance to give your heart time to heal. We do not want to stop cutting your corn to take you back to the hospital because you are having another heart attack. You have helped many farmers when they needed it. Now it is their turn to help you, and they are glad to do. Think about it, Elton. If you ever saw a frog sitting on top a fence post, you know it did not get there by itself. It had help,” John advised.
“Sure enough,” Elton gave in. “Just call me Goliath.” He winked at Daniel, sitting by Hal. Elton got out of his chair and walked over by Hal’s chair. He picked up her hand from her lap. She dreaded what was coming. “And as for you, Nurse Hal, you seemed to be the lady that put me on that fence post.” His voice held a pretend sternness before he broke out in a smile. “I am so grateful to be alive today. I want to tell you denki.”
“Oh, Elton, you are very welcome,” Hal said. “I’m glad I was here when you needed me.” She stood up and gave him a big hug. She knew the inevitable was going to happen sooner or later, but she was just as glad it wasn’t at that moment.
Later the next afternoon, John stopped at the Bontrager house to tell Elton how the harvest was going before he went home to milk.
“I watched from the window as the shocks went up across the field. All the time, I wished I could be out there helping my friends in my cornfield,” Elton admitted.
“Not this time, Bruder Elton. Remember you are the frog on the fence post for a while,” John said grinning. “I catch you out in that field, and I will tell Nurse Hal on you.”
Elton nodded but he didn’t smile. He studied his hands with his mind already somewhere else.
“You for sure feeling fine? Is there something wrong?” John asked.
With slumping shoulders, Elton managed to say the words but they were like pieces of heavy lead stuck to his tongue, “Stella Strutt was here this afternoon. She said she came to see how I was doing. In truth, she heard about Nurse Hal taking me to the hospital in her car. She wanted to know if I have made a decision about punishment for Nurse Hal since she continues to use her car.”
John grimaced. “Stella should be more considerate of you when she knows you have not been feeling pretty gute. She is like an old dog with a bone. She is going to growl over it and chew on it until she has gnawed all the gute away.”
“Jah. For sure, Stella is the watchdog of our community. She noses around for wrong doing all the time. John, she is pushing me to take a stand.”
“Have you?”
“Jah, Nurse Hal should come see me about this matter tomorrow night. I need to talk to her so she is prepared. She must be in church Sunday for a member meeting. She needs to make her things recht before God and the church members. I fear Stella is spreading the word about how Hal keeps breaking the Ordnund rules. I am well enough to be at the meeting this Sunday. We must not put this off any longer for Hal’s sake. I know she is fretting about this,” Elton said gravely. “If Jane is recht about what she suspects, and she usually knows the signs when she sees them, Hal should not stay so worked up.”
John cocked his head to one side. “If Jane thinks Hal is going to have a baby, she is recht.”
“We are glad to know this news,” Elton said, smiling.
John pulled his straw hat off and ran his fingers through his hair as he stared out the window at the cornfield. “Elton, sometimes, I wonder if I’m up to the kinds of difficulties that comes with being an Englisher’s husband. The English temptations she was raised with will be as hard to get shed of as burrs in a horse’s hair.”
“You have a gute wife. She is an asset to this community, John Lapp. Do not give up on Hal. She will learn our ways. Remember the gem cannot be polished with friction, nor the man perfected without a few trials,” the bishop said sagely.
“Think there will ever come a day, my gem of a wife will be at least polished enough that we can live in peace and harmony so that my trials will not be so great? I long for that,” John told the bishop sincerely.
Elton looked at the doorway and spoke softly so Jane couldn’t hear him from the living room. “In secret, I can advise you I am thinking that day never comes completely for any married couple.” He chuckled and winked at John.
That evening, John hated to tell Hal about his talk with Elton but she had to prepare herself. After the kids went to bed, he blurted out, “Bishop Bontrager wants to see you at his house. He needs to talk to you tomorrow evening about you going before a member meeting at church Sunday.”
When Hal stiffened her back, John braced for her angry words, but she said quietly, “All right. Actually, I’m glad the time has come. I’ve been waiting for this to happen and worrying about it for too long. I’ve done something wrong several times over so just saying I’m guilty is not enough atonement. That is part of this Plain life I wish to live. I’ll take my medicine and learn from my mistakes.”
John sighed in relief. Hal was trying to understand their ways. “This is one of the reasons why I love you. I appreciate how hard you are trying to conform. I know living with our ways is not easy for you recht now,” John said and he kissed her.
The next day, John left right after chores to finish Elton’s corn harvest. He’d be gone all day. Hal said she needed to keep busy so she wouldn’t have time to worry about the member meeting. Emma suggested they pick through the red delicious apples stored in the basement and can some. Peeling the apples took most of the morning and cold packing the jars took part of the afternoon. They cleaned up the kitchen to the tune of ping, ping, ping as the jar flats sealed.
“Hallie, we’re going to have to get your wedding gifts out of the closet and put them away one of these days,” Emma told her, still looking for something to keep Hal busy.
“I’ve been thinking about that. Every gift I received we already have at least one of in this well stocked kitchen except for my beautiful quilt and cedar chest. Right?”
“I think so,” Emma said slowly, wondering where Hal was headed with this.
“When you leave me to start a home of your own and take your hope chest with you, I’ll be left with the wealth that’s already in this kitchen. Right?” Hal asked.
“Jah, what is here is yours. You married Papa.”
“All right. Why don’t you take all those gifts in the closet and put them in your hope chest. You can have them to stock your kitchen,” Hal said.
“I do not think that will work, Hallie. Will it?”
“Who is to know but me and you. I want you to take those things with my blessings,” Hal assured her. “You know I don’t need them, but you will.”
The sudden rumble of the generator broke the silence. Noah and Daniel were in the barn, getting ready to start evening chores. Hal looked out the kitchen window. A billowing gray cloud of dust rose on the road a quarter of a mile away. Was it a whirlwind or did she hear the sound of a racing horse. She walked out on the front porch.
“Emma, come here,” Hal called as the buggy appeared out of a dust cloud and raced down the driveway. “Who is that?”
“Hamish Yost,” Emma said, frowning. “Must be something terrible wrong. Hamish would never run his horse.”
The man pulled the winded horse to a stop near the house. He jumped down and rushed at Hal who ran to meet him. “I need help terrible fast. Nurse Hal, get me John Lapp.”
“What’s wrong?”
“My son, Jonas, is caught under our corn binder. He is screaming terrible awful. The sickles cut him. He’s bleeding real bad,” Hamish said, choking on the words.
“Anyone with him?” Hal asked.
“David Bender and Laverne Keim. I hired them to help us with the corn harvest. We cannot lift the binder off Jonas by ourselves. We need help,” Hamish said, choking on the words. “Is John Lapp home?”
“No, he is over at the Bontrager farm harvesting Elton’s corn. I’ll send for him and the other men helping him. Wait a minute while I get my nursing bag.” Hal rushed to the table in the clinic and grabbed her bag. She opened a cupboard door and swiped a couple boxes of different size gauze into the bag.
As Hal ran across the driveway to the barn with Emma behind her, she said over her shoulder, “You and I will go help Hamish’s son.” She shouted in the barn door, “Noah, come quick.” When the boy appeared, she said, “There has been a farm accident at the Yost farm. Hamish needs our help. Hop on a horse and race over to Elton’s cornfield. Tell your father Hamish’s son is penned under their corn binder. Men are needed to lift the binder off him. Emma and I are on our way there.”
Hal rifled through her nursing bag for her phone. “Get in the car with me, Hamish. We can get there so much faster than in your buggy. Your horse is worn out.”
“I cannot,” he faltered.
Hal paused with her hand on the door handle. She didn’t have time to debate with Hamish the sinful risks of riding in the same car with her. “Won’t you ride in back? This is the fastest way to get help to your son.”
Hamish hesitated a second. “Jah,” he agreed and climbed in.
Hal started the car and dialed 911. “Hallie Lindstrom, Home Health nurse. There is a machinery accident at the Hamish Yost farm. A man was caught under a moving corn binder and cut numerous places by the sickles. He’s losing a lot of blood.”
“Ambulance will be on its way. Need a rescue airlift?”
“Sure sounds like it. I’m on the way to the scene. We will need plenty of help to lift that heavy binder off the man. I’ve sent for my husband and some other farmers to meet me at the field. From what the father says, the man’s injuries are extensive.”
“A deputy is out your way. I’ll head him to the farm,” the dispatcher told her.
Hal sped down the road, hitting almost every pothole and leaving a cloud of dust in her wake. She could clearly imagine what the young man looked like when she thought about the clattering binder sickles slicing through him as they did the corn stalks.
Emma twisted in the front seat and asked of Hamish, “How did this happen to Jonas?”
“A fox ran out of the corn rows in front of the horses. They spooked and took off. Jonas had a gute hold on the lines. The horses jerked him off the seat and over into the binder’s path. The horses pulled the binder recht on top of my son,” he said, barely able to get the words out. “Before we could settle the horses down, my son was cut all over as the binder drug him with it.”
A fearful feeling ran through Hal when she thought about the day she watched John run the corn binder. The same thing could happen to him. Horses were so unpredictable.
Following Hamish’s directions, Hal soon turned off the road into his cornfield. Across the flat land to the east, she saw the ambulance miles away, coming from Wickenburg. The siren wail was faint as it raced along the black top. She stopped the car back from the binder so she’d be parked out of the emergency vehicle’s way.
John, Samuel, Luke and Levi were already standing by the binder with two other men. John frowned at her car when Hal climbed out with Hamish in tow, but she didn’t have time to worry about being in trouble again. She had work to do. “John, how did you get here so fast?”
“We rode our horses across the fields.” He pointed to the line of red horses tied to the fence.
The sight of all those hoof stomping animals tied up made Hal nervous. She didn’t want any more horse accidents right away. “There’s a helicopter going to light in the field, and the ambulance coming with its siren blaring. Also, a sheriff car will be screaming in here any minute. All that noise, emergency equipment and people rushing around will likely scare those horses.”
“You sent for a helicopter?” John looked troubled at yet another transgression on her part.
“Not me. It was the decision of the 911 operator when she heard what the accident was,” Hal said, hoping that explanation would suffice.
Jonas cried out in pain. John glanced at the binder and said under his breath, “Sure enough, what happens here is Hamish’s decision to make. It is his son that is hurt.” He turned to Levi. “Turn the horses loose from the fence recht away so they can run free until after we are done here.” He said to Hal, “What do you want us to do?”
“Recht now we need to get the binder off Jonas so the paramedics can work on him. Are there enough men here to lift the binder and sit it off to the side?”
“We will do it,” John said with determination.
“Let me see the injuries first.” Hal hadn’t been able to see Jonas from the back of the binder, but she’d heard his painful cries. The other men paced helplessly around the binder, wanting to help and not sure what to do. Emma was already on her knees, patting the young man’s leg. Hal knelt between the rows and moved Jonas’s leg off a corn stab. “Jonas, this is Nurse Hal. Help is on the way. We are going to get this corn binder off you now and get you to the hospital as fast as we can.”
He squalled, “Please hurry. It hurts so terrible awful.”
Emma swallowed hard before she said, “We know.”
“Pray for me,” Jonas groaned.
“John, what is the best way to lift the binder?” Hal asked.
“By lifting on the tongue, we can bring the front end up. We’ll have to pull Jonas out,” he answered.
Hal turned to the men. “Two of you take hold of Jonas’s legs. Emma and I will be ready to get his shoulders so we can carry him away from the binder as gently as possible. Emma, let’s pray like he asked. Speak good and loud so Jonas can hear us.” Hal started the Lord’s Prayer in Pennsylvania Dutch, “Unser vater der du bist im himmel, geheiliget werde dein name zu komm, uns dein reich, dein viille geschehe auf, erden vie im himmel, gib uns heit.
Emma joined in, and the men chanted the prayer as they surrounded the binder tongue. Luke and John bent over Jonas’s body and each took a leg and put a hand under his waist.
Hal stopped praying to say, “John and Luke, watch out for these corn stabs. We don’t want Jonas lying on them after we move him. You other men, lift the binder together on the count of three. One, two, three. Lift!”
Their faces masks of wincing grimaces, the men strained and grunted. The binder rose up off the ground. John and Luke tugged on Jonas’s body until Emma and Hal could get his shoulders and help lift him to safety. The movement made the young man’s pain more intense. His screams caused everyone there to hurt for him.
The men set the binder down and backed up to give Hal room to work. She knelt in the dirt with her bag and searched for a packet of sterilized gloves. While she tore into the packet and put on the gloves, she shoved the bag at Emma and told her to hunt for scissors. Emma handed the scissors to Hal and took Jonas’s limp, blood covered hand. Though she didn’t want to look, the girl stared in wide eyed dismay from her blood stained hand to Jonas’s horrible wounds. She had to watch Hal if she was going to be a nurse.
Hal cut away the tattered shreds of the man’s shirt hanging from his bloody body to keep the material from drying in his wounds. She stuffed gauze in the many gashes and holes in the man’s chest where areas of skin and flesh had been sliced away. She plastered gauze on his face to slow the blood pouring from where his nose used to be. Pieces of flesh lay back in slabs, exposing cheek bones on both sides his face. No sooner had Hal placed gauze on all the open areas then she started covering all the bloody gauze with a layer of clean ones.
The ambulance screamed in the gate hole with a deputy sheriff car skidding to a stop behind it. Over the farm house came the vibrating rumble of chopper blades. The helicopter circled and landed in the picked field behind the binder.
The paramedics moved in, their life saving equipment and stretcher ready. With a count of three, they lifted the moaning man onto the stretcher and walked as fast as they could in the unlevel field to the chopper. They leaned low under the slowly whirling blade as they placed the patient inside. Within moments, the helicopter rebbed up and rose, headed in the direction of the hospital.
Hamish said, “I want to go with my son.”
Hal turned to John and her eyes met his warily. “I have to help him.”
John nodded. “Do what you need to do.”
“I don’t know how long this will take. Elton wanted me to come see him tonight,” Hal reminded John.
“I can explain to Elton. He will understand,” John said adamantly. “Go now. Quick!”