Rebekah and Thomas’s childhood home seemed somehow solemn as it sat, veiled in raindrops, against the backdrop of gray thunderclouds that darkened the horizon.
Are those raindrops or teardrops?
Rebekah bit her tongue to keep the words from spilling out into the freshly tense world around them. She bounced Dawson absently in his bopplin sling.
“The house looks sad,” Thomas said. “Does it look sad to you, too?”
Joseph shot Rebekah a look over Thomas’s head. She ignored it.
Yes, yes it does. It looks as if it is in mourning. If a house could mourn, that is.
Rebekah’s throat tightened around the words, lest they escape.
In tandem, the trio strode up to the Stoll homestead.
***
The house inside was cool and dark. The normally bustling living room, filled with hand-hewn furniture, quilts, and lifetimes of warm, bright memories, was silent.
Waiting.
Rebekah dared a peek down at Thomas. “Everyone must be upstairs in Ma and Pa’s room.”
“Shall we join them?”
Thomas nodded and slipped his small hand into hers. “Jah.”
Together, Rebekah, Dawson, and Thomas led Joseph up the stairs, which still never uttered a creak or a groan thanks to their fater’s excellent craftsmanship, into the upstairs story of their home.
“Where are our brothers?” Rebekah whispered to Thomas. “It is much too quiet.”
“When Fater took sick, Ma asked that we all go to the Stoltzfus’s homestead. That was where I dropped off the boys and came to get you.”
Rebekah’s lips turned up into a smile. Thomas, one of the youngest Stoll children, sounded so grown up as he spoke to his big schweister about having taken care of his brothers, all but one older than himself, before coming her get her.
She gave his hand a squeeze. “Such a good brudder.”
Thomas wore a look of consternation, complete with downturned lips and a furrowed brow, as they arrived at Samuel and Elnora’s door. “Do you think Pa is…”
Rebekah sucked in a breath and opened the door. There, next to the window in a chair that Samuel had made for her during their courtship, sat her beautiful mother, Elnora. She wore the black bonnet, one that was to be worn by married women, and faced the window. Her dress, pale, cornflower blue, like the spring Indiana sky, was wrinkled as though she had slept in it before wearing it again today.
I doubt that she has slept at all.
“I knew you would be here as soon as you could, dochder.” Elnora sighed, her back still to them. “I did not want to worry you prematurely.”
Before she could go to her mother, Rebekah caught a glimpse of the bed. There, beneath a quilt and looking smaller than he ever had before, lay her beloved fater, Samuel.
“Oh, Pa,” she whispered.
From behind her, Joseph appeared and silently took Dawson from his sling.
She rushed to her fater’s bedside. “Pa?” She felt for his hand. It was cold. “Oh Ma, is he…”
Elnora finally turned her face toward them. Her cheeks were tear-streaked and puffy in odd places. Sadness cloaked her like a quilt. “No, he is not passed,” she said in broken Englisch to her dochder’s unasked question. “At least not yet.”
Rebekah stared at him. He did not appear to have an ounce of life left.
“His chest, it rises. He is breathing.” Elnora assured her.
Or perhaps she is assuring herself.
Whenever she became emotional, her grasp on the Englisch language loosened and her native German dialect shone through. “His chest hurt beginning last night. Then he fell to sleep.”
“He is so cold.” Rebekah held her fater’s cool, limp hand in hers, and studied his face. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead, and his breath came in shallow, strange, jagged rasps. “Oh no, Ma. Oh, this is not good. Not good at all.”
She glanced back at Thomas, whose wide eyes were waiting for just that moment. The answer to his is time to worry yet question had come. As if on cue, he knelt down on his knees and began to pray.
Elnora’s face bespoke pain, both pain of the heart and pain of tradition. As a member of the Amish faith, contact with outsiders, known as Englischers, was strictly forbidden. However, since Elnora and Samuel had taken in an orphaned Englischer child as her own, which is how Rebekah came to be their daughter. Since then, the Amish rule of not dealing with Englischers was more bent than broken.
Rebekah thought for a moment. Well, perhaps it has been broken a time or two.
Elnora cleared her throat. “Last time, there was the Englischer doctor. He saved your fater’s life.”
Rebekah nodded. “Joseph can go for the doctor, Mater.”
“I can go and be back…” Before he even finished his sentence, Joseph turned and started out the door.
“It is no use.” Elnora turned back toward the window. Fresh tears glistened on her cheek. “It is no use. Jeremiah went last night.”
“He did?” Thomas sounded slightly hurt. “I would have gone.”
Elnora continued. “It was no use,” she repeated. Emotion broke her words. “There was no doctor there anymore.”
An air of hopelessness settled around them, filling the room with a stifling sense of desperation. “Was there no one who could come to help?” Rebekah’s voice squeaked as her cracking words mimicked her mother’s.
“I do not know. Jeremiah begged of anyone to come help. People are so busy these days, getting ready for planting season…” Elnora’s voice trailed off. “Gelassenheit,” she whispered to nobody in particular. “Your fater’s health is in God’s hands, now.”
Silence shrouded them for what seemed like an eternity. Not even baby Dawson made a sound. Only Samuel’s jagged breathing broke the tension.
“Hey,” Thomas said. “What is that?”
He pointed out the window to a speck in the distance.
Joseph stepped over to investigate.
“Looks like an answer to a prayer if you ask me.” Joseph’s voice rose in hopeful tones. “It looks to be a man, coming up from the direction of town.” He laid one hand gently on his mother-in-law’s shoulder. “And he is carrying a medical bag.”
***
Another long roll of thunder met them as they opened the door to the stranger with the neat, gray beard and kind, blue eyes. “I heard tale from a very excited boy that you folks may be in need of some medical assistance.”
“That would be my brother, Jeremiah,” Rebekah said. “And he is right we are in need of a doctor, but we heard one was not available in town.”
“Might I ask who you are, sir?” Joseph, ever logical, narrowed his eyes.
The tall man, wearing a smart black coat with matching britches, removed his top hat with one smooth gesture. “Certainly. My name is Fogarty. Fogarty Thomas Johnson.” His smile, though mostly obscured by his beard—the likes of which Rebekah had never seen, even in all her travels. It lit up his eyes with a grandfatherly warmth. “I am the newest addition to Montgomery. I only recently relocated here from the young township of Clearwater, Minnesota to open my barbershop. Since the clinic closed down when the good doctor moved west,” he nodded toward Rebekah as if in answer to her comment about the lack of a doctor in town.
Fogarty continued. “I inherited most of his patient load.” He replaced his hat. “I suppose it lends credence to the truism that even doctors can be struck by the fever. Gold fever, that is.”
“Thank you for coming out.” Rebekah stepped back so that Fogarty could step inside. “It looks like you just beat yet another storm.”
“Keen eye you have, Miss—”
“Graber. Rebekah Graber.” She stuck out her hand as she had so often when dealing with the Englischers.
“I would have been here sooner, if not for the previous storm.” Fogarty took her hand and bent slightly at the middle. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Graber.”
“This is my husband, Joseph, and our son, Dawson.”
Fogarty greeted them both in turn, in a strange, gentlemanly fashion that she had not encountered, even on the streets of New York City.
“My brother, Thomas,” she continued, “and my mater, Mrs. Stoll, are upstairs with my fater. It is he who took sick.”
He touched the tip of his hat and nodded toward Thomas, who had appeared behind them. “Hello, young man. Might you be able to take me to see Father?”
“Yes sir.” He motioned with his arm. “This way, Mister Foghorn.”
The man’s chuckles were joined by Rebekah and Joseph.
Thomas tried to smile, but his little lips simply didn’t allow themselves to be turned upward. “I apologize for messing up your name.”
“Not at all,” the older man said. “How did you know that was my nickname in primary school?”
Normally, that would have spurred on a conversation with Thomas about what life was like when Fogarty was in primary school, where he lived, and what he thought of people giving him a new name. But not today. “Pa is upstairs.” Thomas turned and trudged dejectedly up the stairs, with heavy steps.
“After you, sir.” Joseph gestured toward the stairs.
Joseph held out his arm for his wife. Rebekah melted into his side. Neither needed to speak their shared thought. Hopefully, this Englischer gentleman really is an answer to Thomas’s prayers.
***
Once they reached the bedroom and he had greeted Elnora properly, Fogarty knelt at the bedside. He took his time examining Samuel. Slowly. Methodically. Beginning at Samuel’s head, Fogarty felt her fater’s scalp and down his neck, all while wearing a severe frown of concentration.
Rebekah’s heart sank as she watched the examination. I am shocked that Pa is sleeping through this. He should be moving or at least responding.
Joseph’s squeeze around her shoulders told her he understood, even though they had shared no words.
The old barber looked in both of Samuel’s ears and turned his head this way and that.
Working his way down, he felt under her Pa’s arms and down to each of the fingers. Ever gentle, he pressed each fingernail and examined the reaction carefully before moving to the next one.
Rebekah, Joseph, and Thomas watched intently. Elnora, however, had accepted baby Dawson from Joseph and together, grossmammi and the bopplin sat in the rocking chair that faced the window and rocked absently. Elnora did not watch as Fogarty examined her husband. Instead, she stared forlornly out the window as tears tracked silently down her cheeks.
After Fogarty had pressed each fingernail, he held Samuel’s wrist gently in his hand and, eyes closed, began to count quietly.
“Mm-hmm,” he muttered. Then, turning away from his patient, he produced a tiny book from the black bag and scribbled something down. He replaced the notebook in the bag and turned his attention back to Samuel. “On to the chest and belly.”
The old man poked and prodded, felt and observed every part of her fater. By the time he finished, Samuel’s eyes had begun to flutter.
“Good morning, Mr. Stoll. I am Fogarty Johnson, the town doctor of Montgomery, for all intents and purposes. You have a wonderful family.”
Samuel grunted and Rebekah saw him squeeze Fogarty’s fingers.
“May I ask you a few questions about your health?”
Samuel grunted again.
“I will take that as a yes.”
Fogarty was just as precise in his questioning, as he was in his assessment. And so respectful, as well.
“Have you had this before?”
Samuel managed a tiny nod. “Heart,” he breathed, “sea- sea- sea-”
“Seizure,” Rebekah whispered. “A heart seizure.”
“I see.” Fogarty narrowed his eyes. “Have you had any pain in your legs?”
Samuel managed another nod. “Left.”
“A shooting pain that calms to a dull ache?”
“Jah.”
Fogarty flipped back the blankets and examined her fater’s legs. First, the right, which appeared to be normal. Then the left, which gave him pause. On the back of his lower leg was a swollen, red area that looked quite out of place.
Fogarty replaced the blanket over Samuel’s legs and sat back on his heels. Taking off his glasses, he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I think,” he began, “that your heart is just fine. But it’s your blood that is the problem. It is clotting where it should not.”
“What do you do for that?” Elnora had quietly joined them as they watched their fater’s assessment. Elnora’s voice brought a tiny smile to Samuel’s lips.
She saw it and sat down beside him, taking his hand in hers. “My husband is very strong, you see.”
Fogarty stood up and smiled at the family. “I can see that he is. And so very loved.”
“Is it treatable, Fogarty?” Joseph’s voice sounded concerned in the sense that if Fogarty told him that if he brought back milk from the moon, Samuel might have a chance, he would do it.
“There are three things to do for contrary blood that clots in the wrong places.” Fogarty replaced his hat and smoothed the hair around his ears. “Rest. Prayer. And leeches.”
Rebekah’s mouth fell open. Before she could speak, he continued.
“You, good people, will provide the first two. I shall return with the third in short order.”
Nobody, not even Joseph, had the words to respond to the strange Englischer and, instead, only watched as he walked across the room and out the door.