Amish Circle Letters II: The Second Circle of Letters (26 page)

“Mary Ruth!” He was calling for her from the bottom of the stairs.

A frown crossed her lips. She started to turn around, to call out that she was talking with Melvin in his bathroom. But, as she did, she could hear his footsteps pounding up the stairs. There was a sense of grave urgency to his approach that caught her off guard and before she could answer, he was standing in the doorway.

“What
’s wrong, Menno?”

“You best come downstairs,” he said solemnly. “A driver
’s come to fetch you.”

“
Fetch me?” She jumped to her feet. “What’s happened?”

Menno glanced at Melvin. Clearly Menno did not want to share whatever bad news he had in front of his son. “There
’s been an accident at your parents’ farm,” he managed to say. “Katie fell off the pony.”

“
Katie’s hurt?”

Mary Ruth turned back to Melvin and placed her hand on his arm. “I
’m sure it’s nothing,” she reassured him, although from the way Menno was staring at her, she wasn’t entirely certain if that was true. Then, as if having a second thought, looked back at Menno. “Right? It’s nothing,
ja
? She’s not hurt, is she?”

“You best be coming,” he said, a serious look in his eyes and Mary Ruth knew that whatever had happened, it was most definitely more than just a simple fall from a pony. Without another word, she stood up and followed her husband down the stairs, her heart in her throat as she wondered just how bad it really was.

“What’s happening?” Steve asked as he stopped short in the doorway. He was too aware that Mimi’s
daed
was behind him, peering over his shoulder at the sight of Mimi seated on the bench by the table, her hands covering her face as she wept. Quickly, Steve hurried to her side. “Mimi?”

He caught a look that passed between her parents. It was a look that he had seen before, only between his parents. It usually meant that they knew something, shared a moment of understanding between the two of them.

“John? What’s going on here?” he asked, putting his arm around Mimi’s shoulders and pulling her so that she was pressed against his chest.

No one responded.

“Is Mimi ill?”

“Steve,” her
mamm
began slowly. “Mimi is not feeling well, it’s true.”

“What is it?”

Her
mamm
averted her eyes and seemed to contemplate how to respond. It took her a few seconds to formulate her words and when she did, he was stunned.

“Mimi hasn
’t been taking her medicine,” her
mamm
said softly. There was a sorrowful expression on her face as she explained this to Steve. “She suffers from depression and needs her medicine.”

“Depression?” He felt Mimi
’s shoulders shake as she cried, her hands in her lap rather than holding onto him. She felt like a lifeless doll in his arms. “I don’t understand.”

John cleared his throat and stepped forward. “We thought you knew.”

“She told me that she’s stopped taking the medicine after you were married,” her
mamm
admitted. “That she was feeling so happy and wonderful, she felt she was cured.”

Stunned, Steve held the weeping woman in his arms and tried to digest what he had just been told. Depression? He had known older people who suffered from it but never anyone close to him. He replayed the events from the past few weeks since they had married: her anxiety over not living with him, her displeasure with the
grossdaadihaus,
and her annoyance at the milking schedule. He had thought it was just a young woman getting used to married life. After all, he had continually told himself, she had not been raised as a farmer’s daughter so she had an even bigger adjustment than usual, and one that she needed to make progressively.

For weeks, he had been doing what he could to show her patience and understanding. He had let her sleep late in the mornings, only asked for her help in the barn when he really needed it, and tried to encourage her to do the things that he knew she liked doing, such as baking bread or making pies. He had never thought that she was suffering from an underlying mental illness.

“Why didn’t she tell me?” he asked, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. He didn’t expect an answer because he already knew what it was: fear. She had been afraid to tell him before they were married and she certainly was even more fearful to explain herself afterwards, for fear that he would think that she had deceived him on purpose in order to get married to him.

Placing both hands on her cheeks, Steve stared into her face, wiping the tears from her skin with his thumbs. He tried to smile at her, even though his heart was breaking for the pain that he knew she was feeling.

“
Fraa,”
he said softly. “We will get through this together, as a married couple…as a family,
ja
?”

“I
’m so sorry,” she whispered, trying to look away but he forced her to keep eye contract. “I should have told you.”

“First things first,” he responded. “If there is medicine you need to be taking, we must get it. We can talk about the rest later…when you are feeling better.” And he meant it. Now that he knew what had been bothering her, he wanted to help her. But he also knew that they would have to address the fact that she had hidden this from him. A marriage
’s foundation could not be built upon deceit and, surely, she had deceived him. There would come a time to reconcile with that but only after she was well enough to explain herself.

There were four buggies and three cars in the Fisher driveway when Mary Ruth arrived. The entire way to the house, she had fretted in the back seat, rubbing her hands together nervously while Leah sat up front, worrying aloud. Her sister’s constant flow of worry was making Mary Ruth feel even more distressed and she wished that she could ask her older
schwester
to stop talking.

It had been almost an hour ago that Rachel had received the phone call in the telephone shed. She had been walking outside, headed toward the mailbox for yesterday
’s mail when she heard the phone ring. To her surprise, it had been Ella on the other end of the phone. When she heard the news about Katie, Rachel had immediately called for a driver before heading over to Leah’s house across the lane.

They had quickly decided that Rachel would watch Leah
’s
kinner
while she would fetch Mary Ruth to return to the Fisher farm across town. With Elijah being so poorly, it was agreed by both of them that it was best if Rachel stayed behind. Surely there would be a need for prayer and support at the Fisher’s.

During the short car drive, Mary Ruth repeatedly asked Leah to explain what Ella had told Rachel but Leah never quite answered. Instead, she wiped at her wet eyes, expressing her sorrow that sweet little Katie should have been injured and why she was on that wild pony anyway? After five minutes of listening to her and avoiding the question, Mary Ruth gave up and sat quietly in the backseat of the car, knowing that she
’d have her answers soon enough.

“
Mamm
!
Daed
!” Mary Ruth could scarcely contain herself as she hurried inside the house. The bishop was seated at the table as well as three of Mary Ruth’s
aendis
and two
onkels
. In the corner, three Englische women stood, watching the scene quietly. Mary Ruth didn’t need to be introduced to know that they were the drivers.

Seated on the sofa, Miriam looked up as Mary Ruth rushed to her side. With wide and frightened eyes, Mary Ruth reached for her hands. “What happened? I can
’t get any answers out of Leah!”

“She was riding the pony alone in the fields,” Miriam whispered, her hands wringing a handkerchief. Her face was blotchy, the color having drained from her cheeks. “Her saddle must have turned and she fell and hit her head.” She quickly explained that the pony returned by itself to the barn, without a bridle and with the saddle turned around, hanging from its side. It was Isaac who went to look for Katie in the big field. Wiping the tears in the corner of her eyes, Miriam practically sobbed. “He found her lying motionless and holding onto the pony
’s bridle”

A gasp escaped Mary Ruth
’s lips and Leah began crying once again. All too often, children were injured from hitting their heads. It wasn’t that long ago that one of their neighbors’ sons died from being kicked in the head by a horse. “Where is she now?”

“The hospital,” the bishop responded, his face long and grim.

“She wasn’t moving when they took her,” Miriam added, her voice barely audible. “You don’t think she might be…”

“Hush now,
Mamm
!” Mary Ruth scolded gently, reaching for her
mamm
’s hand and caressing it as she tried to reassure her mother. “We can’t think like that, can we?” She glanced around the kitchen, disappointed in Leah for continuing to cry instead of helping. “Where are the
kinner
?”

“Ella and John David took them back to their home,” Elias said. “Felt it was best to distract them. Benjamin was the most worried and John David can put him to work to ease his mind.”

Mary Ruth nodded. Busy hands kept the mind occupied. “Will someone be taking us to the hospital then?” she asked, looking directly at the women standing in the back of her
mamm’
s kitchen. “Might be best to be there to hear first-hand how she’s doing?”

To her surprise, it was the bishop who first cleared his throat and answered.
“Nee
, Mary Ruth,” he said. “Anna and Isaac specifically requested that we stay put and pray. They need to focus on Katie’s needs now. We’ll just have to wait for them to contact us.”

The thought of sitting there and waiting, possibly for hours, was not something that sat well with Mary Ruth. She needed to know how the little girl was doing, to understand the extent of Katie
’s injuries. No one knew anything besides the fact that she had fallen and hit her head. The lack of information was not something that Mary Ruth could accept for a long period of time.

Taking a deep breath, Mary Ruth started to walk to the basement stairs, pausing to grab Leah by the arm. “Help me, please, Leah,” she said as she dragged her older sister with her. “They
’ll need more chairs from downstairs.”

Reluctantly, but without complaining out loud, Leah helped carry up folding chairs. They set them out in a semi-circle, knowing that more people would certainly arrive to pray with the family. For Mary Ruth, keeping busy was the only thing she could do to stop herself from constantly thinking and worrying about sweet little Katie lying in a hospital bed.

While her
mamm
’s sisters sat down and tried to comfort each other, the men drifted to the other side of the room. Their faces were long and drawn. Despite years of practice dealing with accidents and emergencies on the farms, none of the men seemed to know what to say to comfort Elias. Mary Ruth quickly realized that, until someone knew the exact status of Katie, there would be no comfort for anyone.

Thirty minutes later, Mary Ruth excused herself from the gathering. She slipped outside and hurried across the driveway to where the phone shanty was located near the barn. By her own calculations, it was almost two hours since Katie had been taken to the hospital. Surely someone would know something, she prayed.

It took her a few minutes to contact information and locate the phone number for the emergency room at Lancaster General. Her fingers trembled as she dialed the phone number that she had quickly memorized. She hadn’t grabbed her shawl when she had left the house and the cold tore through her, despite being in the shelter of the small shanty.

“Answer, please answer,” she whispered to herself.

In the distance, she heard the familiar rumbling of an approaching buggy. She glanced out the dirty window and saw the blinker was on. The buggy was pulling into her parents’ driveway.

“Lancaster General Emergency, please hold,” a nasally voice said into the phone.

Mary Ruth groaned and rolled her eyes.

The buggy was closer now and Mary Ruth squinted to try to make out who was driving it. To her surprise, she saw that it was Menno. When she recognized him, she almost hung up the phone but quickly remembered why she was on hold. Instead, she waved her arm so that he would see her.

“May I help you?”

“Oh
ja
!” Mary Ruth clutched the phone in her hand. “I’m calling to check on the status of a Katie Fisher. A young girl bought in about two hours ago.”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone and Mary Ruth thought she heard some clicking noises. After a far too long pause, the woman finally spoke. “I have no information yet, I
’m sorry. You’ll have to call back later or speak to the immediate family directly.”

“
Wait!” Mary Ruth interrupted. “Is she…is she all right?”