The Hand that Rocks the Ladle (3 page)

“Well, the two of you might have somehow wormed your way past the board of directors and hospital administrator, but you don’t own the place.”

The battle-ax took a step closer. Her neck was now the size of a washtub.

“That might be, Yoder, but none of them are here right now. I, however, am.”

“You lay a hand on me again and I’ll sue!” I wailed. “I know both Johnny Cochran and Marcia Clark.”

“I bet you do.”

“But I do!" They’ve stayed at my inn. I even know Kenneth Starr!”

That seemed to make an impression on her, because she took two steps back. I dodged around her, but the second I reached the set of swinging doors, they swung open and I ran smack into Freni. Fortunately for both of us she is well padded.

“Ach!”

“Sorry! What are you doing coming back out? Where’s Jonathan? Where’s Barbara!”

“They went into the delivery room.” Her chin quivered. “They won’t let me in!”

“Then come, sit with me.” I dragged her back into the waiting room, and under the dour gaze of Nurse Dudley, held her hand while we waited. And waited, and waited. And while we waited, I worried. The Redigers had yet to show up with Mose. What if they’d taken a wrong turn and were headed south toward

Maryland? I’d been weaned on tales of folks who’d crossed that line, never to return.

Finally I could stand the wait no longer. I hoofed it over to the admissions desk.

“I need to use the phone.”

“It’s for staff use only.”

“Then where’s the public phone?”

Nurse Dudley smiled sadistically. “It’s outside, but I’m afraid it’s out of order.”

“Then can you at least tell me what’s happening in the delivery room?”

“No can do.”

I pointed to Freni. “But that’s her son and daughter- in-law in there! Those are her grandbabies! What am I supposed to tell her?”

“Tell her to keep waiting. This is, after all, a waiting room.”

“Well, we’ll just see about that!” I strode back to Freni, grabbed one of her tiny hands, and pulled her through the swinging doors.

Alas, we had barely set foot in the hallway when a second set of double doors swung open and there, coming straight at me, was Dr. Luther. I gasped. He growled.

“You!” he said, wagging a finger at me in a presidential manner. “What are you doing back here?”

I stood my ground. Under normal circumstances—say, if I’d met the man at church—I would think him a very handsome man. My sister Susannah says he looks like Clark Kent. I do not watch television, but I will say this: there have been a couple of times when I’ve dreamed of Luther and woken up feeling very guilty. But don’t get me wrong. He’s a mean and spiteful man. Malicious even. He once had me thrown out of Bedford Community Hospital.

“Where are the Hostetlers?” I demanded.

“That’s none of your business, Yoder.” He pronounced my name to rhyme with otter, which is not how one should pronounce it.

“But it’s her business!” I pointed at Freni who was ringing her stubby hands. “Those are her grandbabies being born.”

The evil man glowered at me over horn-rimmed glasses. “Get out of my hospital before I call the police!”

“Call. See if I care. For your information, buster, the chief of police here is my brother-in-law.”

Alas, those words are true. Melvin Stoltzfus is married to my sister, Susannah. The man—and I say this in all kindness—is a twit. He once sent his favorite aunt a carton of ice cream in the mail.

Dr. Luther had the audacity to laugh. “Yes, I know he’s your brother-in-law. And from what I hear, the two of you can’t stand each other.”

“Yes, well, Melvin’s mother, Elvina, is Freni’s best friend.”

“Is that so? Well, in that case, I’ll make an exception for you, Mrs. Hostetler. In fact, I’ll personally escort you back to the delivery room.” He glowered at me again. “You, however—out!”

Benedict Freni beamed.

I, of course, was properly outraged. “Why I never! If Dr. Gabriel Rosen were in charge—”

Freni pinched my elbow. “Shush, Magdalena. He doesn’t want to hear about your new boyfriend, and I want to see my babies.”

“Your grandbabies, dear,” I reminded her. “They’re Barbara’s babies.”

“What did you say?” Dr. Luther demanded.

“I said, they’re not her babies. As far as Freni is concerned, Barbara is just a handy conveyance for Little Freni and her siblings.”

“Ach!”

“No, Yoder, before that. What did you say about Dr. Gabriel Rosen?”

“I said that.” Freni would wave for attention in a police lineup.

“Yes?”

My plump, elderly kinswoman not only smiled coyly at the evil physician, she went so far as to link her arm through his. “I said you didn’t want to hear about her new boyfriend. So now we go back and see my babies, yah?”

Dr. Luther shook Freni’s arm loose like a flake of dry snow. “This wouldn’t happen to be the Dr. Gabriel Rosen, the famous heart surgeon would it? I mean, I’d heard rumors that he had retired and moved to somewhere in this part of the state. I just thought they were too good to be true.”

“Heart-shmart,” Freni humphed. “If God would have wanted us to transplant hearts he would have put zippers in our chests.”

“You don’t even believe in zippers,” I hissed. “And yes, Doc, he’s the one. Like I was about to say, if he were in charge of this rinky-dink hospital, we’d be back there right now watching my little namesake being born.”

“Ach!”

Dr. Luther actually smiled at me. It was the first, and hopefully last time. Some folks really do look better grim.

“I don’t suppose you'd be willing to make an introduction would you, Miss Yoder?” His pronunciation of my name had now changed. “You see, it is my dream to someday add a cardiac care unit here. Maybe—just maybe, he would be willing to consult with us.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but not likely, considering the way you’ve treated me over the years.”

Dr. Luther turned the color of Freni’s pickled beets. “You have my deepest apology, Miss Yoder. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“You were thinking that I was a meddlesome nobody.”

His color turned even deeper. “I would like to make that up to you. Come”—he actually grabbed my arm—“we’ll put you in scrubs and you can watch your little namesake come into this world.”

“Ach!” Freni had latched on to me with a hand that only death could open. “Where she goes, I go, and the first little girl to be born will be named Freni, not Magdalena.”

The swinging doors flew open and in stumbled seventy-three-year-old Mose. Hot on his heels was the diabolical Dudley.

“He wouldn’t stay in a wheelchair,” she barked. “Ach, I’m not sick! I’m having babies.”

I rolled my eyes in embarrassment. I was, however, immensely relieved.

The loathsome Luther loosened his grip on my arm. “What did you say?”

Nurse Dudley laughed like a hyena on steroids. “He thinks he’s pregnant.”

Mose clutched his abdomen and groaned.

Dr. Luther nodded. “I get it now. You,” he said to Mose, “are my present from the staff of Bedford Community Hospital. Right? Their sick idea of a practical joke. What insensitive, politically incorrect name do you call yourself? A rental mental?”

Freni flapped her arms in alarm. “Ach, he’s just my husband.”

“It’s a sympathetic pregnancy,” I explained. “Although I must admit, he’s taking it too far. Labor pains, indeed.”

“But it’s true!” Freni wailed. “I felt the babies kick.”

Nurse Dudley pointed to her own head, and with a finger almost as thick as my wrists made a circular motion. “She’s just as crazy as he is.”

“Maybe he’s really sick,” I snapped. “Maybe he has appendicitis.”

“Don’t be ridiculous—”

Dr. Luther had put up a quieting hand. “Where exactly does it hurt, Mr. Hostetler?”

Mose pointed to the lower right quarter of his abdomen. “Here,” he moaned.

The doctor leaned forward, and using the first two fingers of his right hand, gently palpated Mose’s belly. “Hmm,” he said at last, “there might be something to this appendix theory.”

Nurse Dudley glared at me. “Just you wait,” she whispered.

Dr. Luther straightened. “Nurse, get this man into an examining room.”

The battle-ax didn’t budge. “You’re not falling for their little trick, are you?”

“Nurse!” Dr. Luther’s stock soared in my eyes.

“But—”

“Mama! Papa!”

Five heads swiveled to look down the hall to the second set of swinging doors. Jonathan Hostetler, still dressed in scrubs, was lurching toward us, a lopsided grin on his face.

Freni paled. “Ach! My babies! Are they all right?” Jonathan lurched close enough to give his mother a hug, but like me, he was genetically incapable of unnecessary human contact. He looked radiant nonetheless.

“Little Jonathan and Little Mose are doing fine.”

“And?” Freni coaxed.

“And Barbara too.”

“Ach, that’s not who I mean! How is Little Freni?” Jonathan shook his head. “Sorry, Mama, but there is no Little Freni.”

Freni gasped, momentarily depleting the hallway of oxygen. “What”—she struggled to say—“what do you mean there is no Little Freni.”

“He means,” I said gently, “that the third child is a boy.”

Tears filled Jonathan’s blue eyes, and his lower lip quivered. “No! There is no third child.”

I smiled reassuringly at Freni. “Don’t tease your mama like that, Jonathan. Of course there is a third baby. I drove Barbara into Bedford for all her checkups.”

Jonathan blinked. “Yah, but still, there are only two babies.”

Freni was as white as her homemade cottage cheese. “Are you sure?” she asked, lapsing into her native Pennsylvania Dutch.

“Yah, very sure.”

I whirled to face Nurse Dudley. “Get Dr. Pierce!” Nurse Dudley recoiled in shock.

“Go on and get him. He’ll tell you he heard three heartbeats. He’ll tell you he saw three tiny people on the ultrasound screen.”

“Dr. Pierce,” she said fiercely, “isn’t here.”

“What? I told Gloria Rediger to call him.”

Dr. Luther folded his hands, and then opened them, fingertips touching to form a tent. He cleared his throat, adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses, and cleared his throat again.

“I’m afraid Dr. Pierce is not associated with this hospital.”

“What does that mean?”

“Yah,” Freni wailed, “explain!”

Dr. Luther started to smile, and then wisely abandoned the idea. “It means that since we are a small hospital, many of the Bedford physicians can’t be bothered to affiliate. Dr. Pierce was one of them. He did, however, refer a number of his local patients to our staff obstetrician, Dr. Bauer. It was he who delivered the Hostetler infants.”

“Then get him!” I shouted.

“Magdalena, please,” Jonathan said, “there is no need. I was there. Just two babies—that’s all I saw.”

“Gut Himmel!” Mose groaned and collapsed on the floor at our feet.

Freni shrieked, Jonathan shouted, and I may have added to the din as well. While the three of us vocalized, the burly nurse and evil Luther carried Mose, like a sack of potatoes, into the nearest examining room. We tried to follow, but with one swift kick, Nurse Dudley was able to slam the door in our faces. And though I don’t recall ever seeing them at other hospitals, this hospital had locks on the doors.

“Ach, my Mose,” Freni wailed piteously, “what will I do without him?”

Jonathan prevailed over centuries of inbreeding long enough to put a clumsy hand on his mother’s shoulder. “He’ll be all right, Mama. I will say a prayer for him.”

“Yah, prayer is good.” Freni turned and grabbed my arm, her tiny fingers drilling into me like steel bits. “I must stay here to be near my Mose, so, Magdalena, it is up to you.”

“What is?”

“You must find my missing baby!”

“Me? What about Jonathan?”

“My Jonathan, he must return to his babies.”

“And to his wife, Barbara.”

Freni flinched. “Yah, to her as well. So you see, Magdalena, only you have the time to look for Little Freni.”

“But I don’t have time!” I wailed. “I have an inn full of guests and—ouch!” The steel fingers were about to strike bone.

“You’ll find her?”

“I’ll do my best, but—ah—stop that!”

“Do you promise?”

“I’ll find Little Freni!” I shrieked.

Freni smiled. A Yoder, she knew, never breaks a promise.

Well, we almost never break a promise. I promised to love and honor Aaron until death did us part, but I didn’t know at that time that he was already married. As a little girl I promised our parents that I would always look out for my baby sister, but how was I to know she would never grow up? And of course I’ve promised myself a lot of things that have never come to pass. But in general, one can count on a Yoder’s word.

Freni, the poor dear, found a folding chair and parked it in front of the examining-room door. Jonathan hoofed it back to the maternity ward, and I hoofed after him. I wish with all my heart Freni had been along. Her beloved son didn’t even peek through the nursery window, but headed straight to his wife’s side. When I saw how tenderly they greeted each other, I turned and retraced my steps to the nursery.

Little Mose and Little Jonathan were the only two babies in the room. They occupied adjacent incubators, and the baby on the right was being attended to by a nurse with obviously bleached blond hair. She saw me watching her through the window and beckoned to me.

I hesitated at the door. “I can’t come in. If Nurse Dudley sees me in there, I’m history.”

The blond nurse laughed. “I can fix that.” She walked over to a nearby desk, pushed a button, and the drapes closed. “Now put these on.” She handed me an ugly green gown and mask.

I did as I was bade and was straightaway led to the incubators. I stared in wonder at the newborns.

“They’re so tiny,” I said in awe. Believe me, I wasn’t going to say they were cute. Only one baby that I know of—moi—was ever born cute, and my looks have gone steadily downhill since then.

“Actually, they’re very large for twins. This one weighs five pounds eight ounces, and his brother a whopping six pounds two. They actually don’t need to be in incubators. It’s just a precaution.”