Chapter Five

Lavinia’s mudder and dat were sitting at the table drinking coffee when she walked into the kitchen.

“You look tired,” Rachel said as Lavinia bent to kiss her cheek, then her dat’s. “I saved you a plate. It’s in the oven.”

“Danki.” She took off her bonnet and hung it on a peg by the door. After she set her purse on the bench there, she walked over and washed her hands.

“I had a sandwich while Abe ate his supper, but that was hours ago so I’m hungry again.”

She dried her hands on a dish towel and peeled the foil from the plate as she carried it to the table. “Mmm, looks gut.”

“I hope a sandwich wasn’t all you had to eat today.”

“Nee. I had lunch with Abe’s eldres. I was concerned they hadn’t eaten much on the trip home.”

She took a bite of her mudder’s baked chicken and sighed. “The hospital food was gut, but there’s nothing to compare with your cooking, Mamm.”

Rachel patted her arm. “Danki, sweetheart. So tell us about Abe. Has he been able to move his legs yet?”

Lavinia winced. “Nee. He had more tests today. The doctor told him not to get discouraged, but I can tell Abe is worried.”

Amos rose to refill their coffee cups. “Lavinia? Want coffee?”

She shook her head. “Nee, danki. I had too much at the hospital.” She got up and poured herself a glass of iced tea from the refrigerator.

“Mamm, Abe asked me to make him some brownies. Is it allrecht if I do that tonight?”

“Schur.”

“As long as you leave one for me,” her dat spoke up, his blue eyes twinkling.

She smiled at him as she sat again and resumed eating. “That goes without saying. My favorite guy always gets the first of whatever sweet I bake.”

He nodded. “That’s as it should be.”

“I think he married me because of my peach pie,” Rachel said, giving him a fond smile.

“And your pot roast,” he told her. “The first time you invited me to your house for supper and made pot roast, I knew you were the maedel for me.” Then he shook his head. “I’m joking. It’s not true that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, although mine has been happy I’m married to such a gut cook.” He patted his plump stomach and grinned. “We can be fickle creatures, loving the comfort of a delicious meal, the comfort of a well-kept home. But a wise man looks for a maedel with a heart that shines with love for God, for all His children and creatures.”

He looked at his fraa. “Your mudder was that woman for me. She’s even prettier now than she was when we married, but it was her heart that won me.” He reached for her hand and squeezed it.

Lavinia stared at her dat and blinked against the tears that threatened to fall. He was a man of few words, but when he spoke they were always wise and wonderful.

Her mudder’s face was smooth and unlined and her hair still a rich brown, although her dat’s beard and hair were beginning to show streaks of silver. They were a handsome couple in their fifties—younger than Abe’s parents.

“Well, it’s time to take a last walk around in the barn, see that all our creatures are ready for a night’s rest.” He stood, set his mug in the kitchen sink, and left them.

Rachel turned to her and must have seen the emotion Lavinia was feeling. She nodded and gave Lavinia a gentle smile. “He’s such a wunderbaar man. What he doesn’t realize is that he couldn’t have thought I had a gut heart if he didn’t have one himself.”

“Abe has a gut heart,” she said slowly. “That’s why it hurts so much to see what he’s going through. It’s not fair that he works so hard and helps others so much and he’s feeling so broken right now.”

“He’s going to be allrecht,” Rachel said. “You need to believe that.”

“I know.” She sighed and rose to put her plate in the sink. Then she turned on the oven to preheat, reached into a cabinet, and found a big pottery bowl. She mixed the ingredients for brownies, poured the batter into a greased pan, then set it in the oven. As she walked over to place the bowl in the sink, her dat came in from the barn. He grabbed the wooden spoon from her and she shook her head at him.

“Just in time,” he said with a chuckle, as he licked the spoon then put it into the sink.

“Just like a little bu,” her mudder said.

He sauntered off to the living room, where he’d sit in his recliner and read The Budget, and her mudder would find him dozing off when she went to tell him it was time to go to bed.

“I sold three of your rag rugs today,” Rachel said as she turned the gas flame on under the teakettle. “The big brown-and-black oval one and two of the smaller round red ones.”

“That’s wunderbaar.” She’d begun making rugs from scraps of cloth as a kind and hadn’t thought much of it. She’d gone into town with her mudder during the holidays and summers when she was little. After she’d helped dust and sweep the shop and straighten shelves, she’d entertained herself by playing with some fabric left over from whatever quilt her mudder was sewing.

Then one day an Englisch woman had walked into the shop, seen her working on a simple rag rug, and exclaimed over it.

“My grandmother made these during the Great Depression,” she’d told Rachel. “Back then, nothing went to waste.”

Lavinia hadn’t known what she meant. Wasn’t depression what people felt when they were sad? The woman had explained when she saw Lavinia’s confused expression, and then she continued to watch her wind the fabric strips into the circular rug.

And so Lavinia’s rugs joined the dozens of crafts that lined the shelves of her mudder’s shop, which featured the works of Amish men and women in their community. Her skill had improved as she grew older, of course, but the rugs remained a simple but lovely way to use up scraps of material and provide a warm, decorative splash of color on a floor.

Lavinia washed up the dishes in the sink, then sat for a cup of tea with her mudder and waited for the brownies to bake. She was yawning by the time the oven timer went off. After they cooled, she cut them into squares, served one to each of her eldres, then set the rest in a plastic container.

“Better hide those, or you won’t have any to take to Abe tomorrow,” her mudder warned when Amos came into the kitchen wanting a second brownie. After he left the room with one, she turned to Lavinia. “On second thought, take the container up to your room. You know how he is with sweets.”

Lavinia chuckled and did as she suggested. After all these years, her mudder knew her mann. She climbed the stairs to her room and set the container on her dresser.

After she’d changed into a cool cotton nightgown, Lavinia sat on her bed to brush out her hair and yawned again. She slipped between her sheets and breathed in the gentle scent of the lavender sachet she kept under her pillow. Her thoughts went to Abe. She should take one of the sachets when she visited him tomorrow. The scent would be soothing to him, and maybe it would help overcome the antiseptic smell of the hospital.

On that thought, she drifted off to sleep.

*  *  *

Abe sighed.

“I can tell you’re feeling better,” Jodie, his night nurse, said as she checked his temperature.

She was his favorite nurse. She had the same brisk, efficient air about her as his day nurse, Susan, but she spent more time explaining things to him in a calm way that reassured him. He didn’t know if it was because she had more years of experience or because things were quieter on the unit at night or what. Although he didn’t think it was quieter at night. Maybe Jodie’s other patients slept during the night, but since he’d had various nurses and people coming in and out at all hours, he didn’t think so.

“You really think I’m better? How can you tell that?” Because he schur didn’t feel much different than when he’d first woken up in the hospital.

“You’re bored.” She tapped keys on her laptop. Then she looked at him and gave him a sympathetic smile. “No visitors this evening?”

“I sent them home.” He told her about his eldres and Lavinia and how tired they’d looked, and before he knew what he was doing, he sighed again.

“That was very loving of you, but now the hours are moving like molasses, aren’t they?”

He nodded, and this time managed not to sigh. “I tried to read the paper Lavinia brought me, but I’m having a little double vision.”

Her fingers stopped the tapping. She frowned as she looked at the laptop screen. “I don’t see where you complained of this earlier.”

“Not today, no.”

“I’ll make a note of it for the doctor, and if it gets more severe tonight, I want you to tell me, all right?”

“I will.”

“Best to avoid too much television,” she said as he began playing with the remote.

“Because I’m Amish?”

“Because it might aggravate the double vision.”

“Oh.”

“You can try it if you want.”

“Maybe later.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, if you keep doing as well as you are now, I think the doctor will be moving you to a regular room in another day or so. Then you can have more visitors and for longer. That’s something to look forward to, right?”

“It is.”

She smiled. “You let me know if there’s anything you need.”

“I will. Thanks.”

He sighed again, then looked at the clock on the wall. Lavinia was probably getting ready for bed now. She hadn’t eaten much at supper when she sat with him while he ate. Susan had said she could send for a tray for her, but Lavinia thanked her and said she’d picked up a sandwich from the cafeteria. But he noticed she didn’t eat much of it.

Was she making brownies? He knew he’d been selfish to ask her to make him some. She’d already done so much for him since the accident. Had he thanked her enough for looking out for his eldres since they’d arrived?

He picked up the remote and figured out how to turn the television on and then adjust the sound when it blared. There were many channels to choose from: news, movies, programs for kinner, sports. He settled on watching a volleyball game. It was a favorite pastime of his, one he enjoyed playing with other young men from his community.

But watching it proved painful. His gaze went from the television mounted on the wall to his arm encased in plaster and suspended from the ceiling. The broken bone would heal, but would he ever be able to move his legs? He forced his attention on them, sent all the power of his thought to them.

They didn’t move. Not one little inch.

So he prayed, prayed harder than he’d done since he fell off the roof, prayed harder than he ever had his entire life.

Nothing.

Frustrated, he wanted to throw something, but the only thing within reach was the remote, and that belonged to the hospital.

He changed the channel, tried to lose himself in a movie about a man stuck on an island. He hadn’t seen a movie in years—not since his rumschpringe. He frowned. The man was talking to a volleyball he’d drawn a face on. Abe squinted, blinked. Surely he was seeing things.

Nee, that’s what was happening.

Well, he might be having a hard time with things, but so far he hadn’t gotten to talking to things like that poor man in the movie. He yawned as he watched and yawned again.

How beautiful the island looked. He’d never been to an island. Never been outside Lancaster County. Dairy farming didn’t lend itself to vacations, although his eldres had traveled to Pinecraft in Florida last year when his dat retired. His mudder had sent him postcards.

He marveled at how blue and vast the ocean was, and as he drifted off to sleep, he felt rocked by its gentle waves….

The sand was pleasantly warm under his feet as he walked over to join the man and the volleyball on the beach. The man introduced himself as Chuck and invited him to share his drink in a coconut.

Abe turned to the volleyball.

“So your name is Wilson?”

The ball just sat silently.

He turned to Chuck. “He won’t talk to me.”

“That’s because he’s my friend, not yours.”

“Well, I have friends back home,” Abe said, feeling a little defensive.

He looked around at the island and the blue sweep of the ocean. He’d never seen the ocean. It was so very pleasant to sit and watch the waves roll in, roll out.

But he didn’t want to be here.

“This is a nice place, but I want to go home.”

“Don’t we all. It’s not as easy as it was for Dorothy,” Chuck said sadly as he opened another FedEx package, took out some papers, and looked disappointed. “You know what everyone told her. Go follow the yellow brick road.”

“The yellow brick road?” He stood and searched for it. “All I see is sand.”

Then he heard mooing. He had to be close to home. That was Bessie he heard, wasn’t it?

“Bessie?”

*  *  *

Abe opened his eyes and stared into the face of a cow.

“Bessie?” he whispered, and blinked hard.

Nee, not Bessie. It was the stuffed cow Lavinia had brought him. Wow. What a dream…nightmare. Whatever.

The television was still on. The man on the island was home now, in his Englisch home, off the island with no volleyball in sight.

Home. Abe had a sudden, overwhelming desire to be home. Surely everything would be allrecht when he got home.

He knew some of his friends who farmed plant crops like corn and wheat and vegetables didn’t understand his love for dairy farming. That was fine. Lancaster County was the biggest producer of milk in the state, and dairy farms such as his made up a third of all farms locally. So he had plenty of fellow dairy farmers—Amish and Englisch—who loved it the way he did, and they met every so often for support and friendship. A card signed by a number of them had already been delivered here to the hospital, and it was propped on a nearby table with a vase of flowers.

Jodie came in and glanced at the television, then at Abe. “How’s the vision doing? You’re not seeing double?”

“No.”

“I saw that movie when it first came out. Great story.” She sat and flexed her feet. “Makes a good point.”

“Point?”

“Sure. Chuck spends years trying to survive on the island. And we see surviving isn’t just about living, is it? Or getting through the physical challenges. It’s about surviving emotionally. Chuck finally realizes he has to find a way off the island or he won’t survive emotionally.”

They both watched the movie for a few minutes.

Then she turned to him. “You’re going to get well,” she said kindly. “You’ll get to go home.”

“But will I walk again?”

She met his gaze directly. “I don’t know. Your doctor seems to feel the paralysis is temporary, and he’s usually right. But you know it’s not in his hands.”

Another nurse poked her head into the room. “I need your help.”

“Be right there.” Jodie stood, looked at Abe. “What if you can’t walk again? Would that be the worst thing for you? Or would you try to find a way to get home the way he did?” she asked, jerking her head toward the TV.

She didn’t wait to hear his answer but hurried out of the room, leaving him to think about what she’d said.