20
Leisel
Aenti Suz stopped under a streetlight in the church parking lot as we completed the loop back to the church.
“So my grandmother was a nurse.” I sighed. “I’m so glad she survived the war. They were so in love.”
“Jah,” Aenti Suz said. “World War II brought my parents together and changed all of our lives.”
I nodded in agreement. It had set our family on a new trajectory. Jah, they stayed on the farm, but I couldn’t help but wonder how Martha’s influence had shaped my Dat and Aenti Suz, and, in return, influenced my sisters and me. Still, I was surprised Martha chose to live Amish, especially when Joe was so willing to leave.
“Did she ever regret it?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m sure there were times she did. Once I saw her looking longingly at an Englisch woman driving a station wagon.” She laughed. “And once she mentioned how nice it would be not to hang the wash out in the winter, but you have to remember that she grew up with no electricity and with a wringer washing machine. And her grandfather never had a car, of course. It wasn’t as if living Amish was a drastic change for her, not like it would be now.”
“But wasn’t it hard for her to give up her nursing career?”
“No, it really wasn’t,” Aenti Suz said. “Back then, most women stopped working once they married.”
“What about the Amish in the community? Did they accept her right away?”
“At first people in the community were suspicious of her, but then a neighbor mangled his arm in a hay baler and she saved his life. Another time, a neighbor was horribly ill and Mamm went over with her stethoscope, diagnosed him with pneumonia, and contacted an Englisch neighbor to take him to the hospital. She probably saved his life too. Others in the community sought her out after that. Sometimes, when we were old enough to stay by ourselves, she and Dat would go out in the middle of the night to check on a neighbor. Or Gus would go with Mamm instead of Dat.”
“What about you?” I asked. “Were you interested in medicine?”
She shook her head. “No. For the longest time I fainted at the sight of blood. I got over that, but I was never good in an emergency. I’m better now, I think.”
“How about Jake?”
She smiled a little. “He wasn’t exactly made for medicine either. But it was a better match for him than fighting, so he did his best.”
I thought of Joe and Martha and their years together on their farm. They’d both died long before I was born, and I really hadn’t been told much about them over the years. Now I wondered if Mamm had discouraged talk about them because of their service during World War II. I know she didn’t want Dat talking about his time in Vietnam or Haiti or any of the other trips he took.
“Will you tell me more about them? And about you and Jake?”
Even in the dim light, I could see Aenti Suz’s face contort.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No, it’s fine.” She turned toward the front door of the church. “It’s hard for me to talk about him, but I’m fine answering your questions.”
“Do you have any regrets?” My voice was low. “About Jake?”
Aenti Suz shuddered a little. “Do I have any regrets? Jah. The problem is, I’m not sure if I have one or a million.”
“What would the one regret be?”
“That I didn’t go to Vietnam with him.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“There were other Mennonite women working at the clinic. I wish Jake and I had married and gone together.”
The idea shocked me. “Is that what Jake wanted?”
“We’d talked about it.” She clasped her hands together. “Things were so odd during that time. Jah, Vietnam was a war zone, but missionaries and medical people came and went all the time. Other people did too. Businessmen. Adoption workers. It wasn’t prohibited in any way. There had been an incident nearly a decade earlier when some American and Canadian medical providers had been kidnapped, but the compounds where the clinics were located were relatively safe—or at least that was the thinking when Jake and Gus decided to go.”
“Did your parents not want you to marry Jake and go to Vietnam?”
“They were surprisingly resigned to letting me make that decision. They knew I didn’t plan to join the Amish. They knew I planned to marry Jake. They didn’t seem to think we should wait.”
“So why didn’t you marry and go with him?” I asked. “Were you afraid?”
Aenti Suz shook her head. “I wasn’t afraid of the danger—I was afraid of being judged.”
“By whom?”
“Our community.”
“But you were leaving it.”
Aenti Suz smiled a little. “It doesn’t make any sense, I know.” She exhaled. “I didn’t know any women who’d ever done such a wild thing.”
“Except your mother,” I challenged.
“Right,” Aenti Suz said. “But I had no idea of her story at the time.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I knew she was an army nurse, but I didn’t know any of the details. It wasn’t something they talked about or that the bishop wanted them to talk about.”
That made sense. “But what about the ancestor Marie told me about? Annie, right? The one who cared for soldiers during the Civil War and then married a man who was Brethren.” I snapped the fingers of my free hand. “And how about that great-great-Aenti who Ruby is named after? Didn’t she go to Valley Forge? And then marry an Englischman? They both took huge risks too.”
Aenti Suz nodded. “You’re right. But I didn’t know about those stories at the time either.”
I took a step backward. “When did you find out about them?”
“My Mamm and Dat told me their stories after we buried Jake. And then my Aenti Faith told me about Ruby and Annie sometime after that. They were all so worried about me, and I think they were just trying to distract me. They didn’t realize that the stories reinforced my wish that I’d married Jake and gone with him.”
I reached for her hand and squeezed it.
“Because I didn’t have any examples to follow, I felt going with him would further ostracize me from my community.”
I still didn’t understand.
“Jake’s folks had a farm not too far away, so I would be living close by,” she continued. “The folks in our community already looked down on me for courting a Mennonite boy. I had this idea that everyone would talk less behind my back if I did everything as normal as possible, meaning waiting to marry until Jake returned.”
“You never seemed to me like the type of person who cared what people thought.”
“Oh, I did back then,” she said. “Not enough to deny my love for Jake, but enough to draw as little attention to myself as possible. I wanted to wait out the year he was gone, living with my folks, and then Jake and I would both join the Mennonite church together when he returned.”
“What made you decide to join the Amish church instead?”
“At first, I wasn’t sure I would. I had this idea I’d go ahead and join the Mennonites anyway and then travel with different mission groups, in honor of Jake. But then his parents were so heartbroken when he died that they sold their farm, moved to Indiana, and retired in a Mennonite settlement there. My Mamm’s health grew worse, and I began caring for her. Gus married and had the twins. About ten years after Jake died, I realized I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“How about when Dat went off to places to serve? Did you want to go with him?”
“At first I did, but I had our parents to look after. And then after a while I grew complacent and it didn’t seem as important to me.”
I inhaled deeply, thinking of how much I enjoyed assisting Dat as he recommended vitamins, supplements, and healthy eating to friends and neighbors who sought out his good advice. And how much, at one time, I’d looked forward to serving with Nick. I hadn’t realized I would be following in a family tradition.
My grandparents had both served in a medical capacity during World War II, yet I wouldn’t have anything to do with Nick when he decided to serve in the Air Force. Was I that closed-minded? Would I be content working in a clinic forever? Or being a doctor’s wife and not working at all?
Aenti Suz started walking again, and I shone the light at her feet. In the distance, the front door to the church was open. Nick stood in the light. I’m not sure if he saw us or not, but my heart ached at the sight of him. After a moment, he turned around and closed the door.
He was certainly following his dreams. At some point, I needed to figure out my own.
When had they changed?
Or, more accurately, when had I?
The next morning, as I washed my face in the ladies’ room, I thought about Aenti Suz and Jake and the tragedy of his death. My heart seized again, just as it had yesterday at the sight of Nick.
A few minutes later, I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my backpack and the slip of paper with the number of the wife back in Somerset came out with it. I groaned. Was I ever going to deal with that? I was sure she hadn’t forgotten me, just as I hadn’t forgotten her. Hopefully, she hadn’t gone back to the diner and found out I actually had her number. I really was the queen of avoiding conflict.
Aenti Suz was already in the kitchen, cooking scrambled eggs for the crew. I was surprised to see David flipping hotcakes. I greeted him and asked if the tornado had touched down on his farm.
“No,” he said. “We were a couple of miles north of its path.”
“Did you just happen to show up? Only to find Aenti Suz here?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Your Mamm left me a message. She said Suz was headed up here to this church. I hired a driver this morning to see how I could help.”
I was surprised Mamm had called him. Did she contact him often? Nick sat at a table with the other nurse and the doctor who had stayed too.
After I filled my plate at the counter between the kitchen and fellowship hall, I stepped back to the stove to eat where Aenti Suz was scrambling another skillet of eggs, not wanting to join Nick’s group. Aenti Suz gave me a funny look but didn’t say anything.
When it was time to get our assignments, our leader sent me to the school, along with the doctor and Aenti Suz, while David stayed back at the church. Nick and the other nurse were sent to a different site.
We had one more day of triage. Aenti Suz greeted people, offered them a snack, and kept up with the paperwork as I examined patients. I continued to feel a surge of adrenaline, but not as intensely as the day before.
A boy had stepped on a nail while helping to clear debris. His mother had no idea when his last tetanus shot had been, so we sent him on to his general practitioner. Then we had a man who’d sprained his ankle. Most of his barn had been blown into his field, and he fell off the foundation as he was trying to untangle the remaining boards.
Just after noon, Nick joined us. He said the other nurse had headed home. Aenti Suz asked him when he needed to leave. “I’ll stay until supper,” he said.
“Until after supper, I hope,” she added, before he could answer. “In fact, I insist.”
He smiled at her. “Thank you. I will.” He glanced from Aenti Suz to me. “How late are the two of you staying?”
“We’re leaving when the van goes.”
“Tonight?”
I nodded. “I work in the morning.”
We continued on with our tasks. I asked Nick for a second opinion on a cut to a little Amish girl’s leg—if butterfly bandages were enough or if I should send her to a clinic to get it stitched. After we both consulted with the father, he decided butterfly bandages would do the trick.
After I’d finished, Nick stepped over and complimented me on how I’d handled the situation. “You let the parent make the decision with the necessary information,” he said. “Good job.”
It wasn’t a big deal, but still his comment warmed me. I remembered how encouraging he was, how he made me feel as if I could do anything. A lump formed in my throat and I simply nodded.
When we returned to the church for supper, David was flipping hamburger patties in the kitchen. After we washed up, Aenti Suz and I filled our plates, and once we were sitting down and eating, Nick joined us. He bowed his head and prayed before taking a bite of his burger.
As we all ate, our leader approached us and asked if Aenti Suz or I could stay another night. Aenti Suz quickly volunteered. I explained I worked the next day and couldn’t.
“You rode here in the van, right?”
I nodded.
“Oh dear,” she said. “I’ll need to go speak with our driver.”
Before she stepped away, Nick said, “I can give you a ride. No problem.”
The leader sighed. “That would be great. I’d hate for our driver to have to go all the way to Lancaster and then back again.”
I wasn’t thrilled with spending so much time with Nick, but I didn’t say anything. After our team leader left, I asked Nick what time he planned to leave.
“As soon we’re done eating,” he answered.
“All right,” I said. “I just need to grab my things.” I finished before he did and left while he and Aenti Suz were talking. When I returned with my backpack and sleeping bag, David had joined them. He sat next to Nick, across from Aenti Suz.
“Leave your plate,” Aenti Suz said to Nick. “I’ll clear it.”
We told Aenti Suz and David good-bye, and then we headed out to the church parking lot. The sky was overcast and a misty rain fell. I slipped my pack and sleeping bag behind the seat of Nick’s pickup and noticed his things were already stashed on his side.
As I climbed in, I thought of when he’d given me that first ride home from class. Then I’d learned to drive in this pickup. I’d arrived in Pittsburgh for my new life in it. I’d had my first kiss, outside my apartment, in it. A thousand jagged memories shattered my heart all at once.
Neither of us spoke as he turned onto the highway. A beam of light from the lowering sun shone through the clouds, and the raindrops on the windshield glistened until he turned on the wipers and they were swiped away.
“I hope you’ll have some time with your family tonight,” I said.
Nick smiled a little. “I’ll hang out with Mom and Dad. The girls are pretty busy, but I’ll be in town through the weekend.”
“Are they proud that you joined the Air Force?”
He gave me a sideways glance. “Honestly?”
“Dad was pretty mad at me.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t talk it through with you first.”
I didn’t answer.
“I know you don’t want to talk about this . . .”
I kept quiet, expecting him to say more. But he didn’t.
We rode in silence for a long stretch, and then he said, “Dad said he saw you at Wal-Mart on Saturday.”
“Jah,” I answered. “It was good to see him.” I didn’t say anything more about that either.
“Dad said you wore a Mennonite dress.”
I nodded. “I’ve been going to Marie and Gordon’s church. I’ll probably join in the spring.”
“Oh.”
There was another stretch of silence. Then he cleared his throat. I knew what was coming next.
“Dad said you were with a guy.”
I nodded again, even though the light was so dim now that he probably couldn’t see me. “Stephen,” I said. “He goes to my church.”
“Dad recognized him from the hospital.”
“Jah, Stephen works there. He’s a surgeon.”
Nick leaned back against the seat. “Is he the doctor who bought you the study program?”
I hoped the dim light would hide my wince as well. “Jah,” I whispered.
More silence.
“Are you happy, Leisel?” Nick asked a few minutes later. “Because I’ve been rehearsing a speech in my head for the last three months that I’d like to say to you, but if you’re happy, I’ll keep it to myself.”
I looked straight ahead. “I’m happy.”
His voice was an octave deeper than usual. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” I snapped.
We rode in complete silence after that, until we were a few miles from Lancaster. “Your car’s parked at the church, right?” His voice was low and quiet. “Just north of town?”
“That’s right.”
My car was the only one in the parking lot, and Nick pulled up next to it, under a streetlight. He turned the engine off and climbed out of the pickup. I opened my door before he could reach it, but he held it as I climbed down and retrieved my things.
“Thank you for the ride.” I unlocked my car and dropped my pack in the back seat.
“You’re welcome.” Nick’s eyes grew watery and he looked away. “I really hope for the best for you, Leisel.”
“Thank you.” I fought the urge to run as fast and far as I could. “I wish the same to you.”
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, but it only lodged itself more securely. “This is . . .” I started to turn toward my car, not sure what to say.
“This is confusing?” He didn’t move. “Frustrating? Awkward?”
I nodded. “All three.” But it was more than that. I reached for the driver’s-side door handle. “I need to go. Thank you for the ride.”
He stepped back by his truck, and I slipped into my car. He waited for me. As I drove away, he waved. I expected the expression on his face to be angry, but it wasn’t. He was still fighting back tears.
The next morning I thought of everyone in Chester County who would be clearing away debris and repairing houses.
Then my thoughts turned to the conversation on the ride home. I hadn’t lied to Nick. I was happy. But I was also still in grief. It appeared we both were. But time healed all wounds and it would ours too.
By the time I reached work, the sun was shining and the day was warming up. And so was I. I texted Stephen. How about dinner tonight? As long as you don’t mind boxes stacked around my apartment.
He texted, Of course not! 8?
I texted back, Perfect. See you then. That would give me time to go to the store and then get dinner cooked.
“We have a packed schedule today,” one of the doctors said to me after I’d stowed my purse in the employee closet and readied the exam rooms. “All the regular appointments, plus a virus seems to be making the rounds already. And we had several cases of strep yesterday.”
“Good to know,” I said.
The day progressed like all the others. I truly enjoyed the people, but honestly my most valued skill was that I knew Pennsylvania Dutch. Jah, I could draw blood and give shots and all of that, but it wasn’t as if I were learning anything new. Or doing anything challenging. It was fine work. Important work. It would have been the perfect nursing job for lots of people. But it wasn’t satisfying to me.
It wasn’t that the work I did in Chester County over the weekend was a lot different, but there was an unpredictable element to it. I liked that. It kept me on my toes.
During the last appointment of the day, I found myself yawning just before I gave an Amish toddler her booster shots. I covered my mouth, changed my latex glove, and then explained to her what I was doing in Pennsylvania Dutch. As she screamed and screamed anyway, I tried to soothe her, but of course her mother did a much better job.
As I stepped around the table, my skirt got caught on the corner of one of the metal trays that jutted out a little. It had happened before but this time the skirt stuck. As I stepped forward, it tore a little.
“What a shame,” the mother said.
I nodded. It was. And wouldn’t have happened if I’d been wearing scrubs.
After work, I stopped by the store and bought chicken breasts, a jar of artichoke hearts, veggies for a salad, a loaf of French bread, ice cream for dessert, and a needle and thread to mend my dress.
The first thing I did when I arrived home was change into my jeans. Then I put together my specialty chicken dish, popped it in the oven, and assembled the salad.
I timed everything to be done by eight. And it was. And then I waited. A half hour later I had a text from Stephen that he was on his way. Then I waited some more. From my clinicals in hospitals, I could imagine Stephen being called back for another question or another order or another emergency. I knew he couldn’t help it.
As I mended my skirt, my phone dinged. Autumn had texted Paisley and me. Passed my boards! Doing a happy dance!
We both congratulated her. She’d taken her time before taking it a second time. I understood her trepidation.
Then she texted me to tell me she had a job waiting at the hospital in Wilmington where Paisley was working. You’ll have to come visit us.
I responded that I’d love to.
She texted back and asked how Lancaster County was and what I was up to that particular night.
I made the mistake of telling her I was waiting to have dinner with a doctor.
What?! she wrote, practically unleashing on me. You’re dating already?! How could you do that to Nick?!
When I didn’t answer because I couldn’t figure out what to text back, she apologized.
I told her it was okay, that I understood her confusion. And the truth was, I did.
Finally, Stephen arrived.
As I opened the door, he said, “Only an hour late.” He grimaced. “It could be worse.”
I nodded.
As we ate the dried-out chicken and the wilted salad, he talked about his day. He’d had an emergency appendectomy at four thirty in the morning, then appointments at his office, and then rounds at the hospital.
After a while, he asked me how my day was. “Pretty boring,” I said. “Especially compared to volunteering after the tornado.”
“Oh, that’s right! How was that?”
I gave him a quick synopsis of my two days in Chester County, leaving out that I’d seen my ex-boyfriend.
Then I said, “I’m thinking about applying for a job at Lancaster General. I saw a position is open on the neuro floor.”
He leaned back in his chair. “But I thought you really liked working at the clinic.”
“I’m not learning anything new.”
“Oh. There aren’t many people who are nurses and speak Pennsylvania Dutch though, right? Don’t they really value you?”
“I think so.” I scooted my half-empty plate forward. “But I can’t make my career choices just by what language I speak. I made a big investment in nursing school. I’d like to keep learning and growing.”
He smiled kindly. “Well, that’s great.” His face grew more serious. “But don’t you think that would be awkward for us to work at the same place?”
“The position is on the neuro floor. All of your patients are on med-surg, right?”
He took a drink of water and then said, “Well, sure. I mean, if the census is high, I might have a patient go to that floor. But, you know, because we’re dating . . .” He smiled again.
I shook my head. “I don’t see that there’s any conflict.”
He glanced at his watch. “I can help with the dishes before I need to get going. I have another early morning tomorrow.”
I waved him off. “Go ahead. It’ll only take me a minute to clean up.”
He thanked me for dinner, gave me a hug and a quick kiss, and then dashed out the door.
Before I washed the dishes, I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans. My life had changed so much in the last year. I thought I’d be working in a hospital. Marrying Nick. Going to grad school. Maybe relocating to somewhere like Montana.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket. I missed Nick, but it would be crazy to contact him. No good would come from it. I didn’t have many more pieces of my heart left to lose.