The Keeper (37 page)

He tried to speak but couldn’t because of the tubes running down his throat to allow the ventilator to breathe for him. The surgeon gave him a pad of paper and pen to communicate. Julia hung there, waiting for her father’s first words.

Slowly and carefully, with the doctor’s help, he scrawled, “When can I go home?”

Julia laughed for pure joy until she wanted to cry. It was a miracle. She could see the vein in her father’s neck pulsing. Deep in his chest, Menno’s heart was pounding a steady beat.

“All depends on how well you do, Amos,” the doctor said. “Minimum stay is usually a week.”

Julia was surprised. “That’s all?”

“Amazing, isn’t it? But he was in fairly good shape when he arrived—a lot of folks waiting for transplants are knocking at death’s door, and your father had been trying to stay in shape.”

Fern! Julia breathed a prayer of thanks for that bossy, wonderful woman, sweeping into their lives so unexpectedly. So profoundly.

“Besides, we find people heal better at home.” The doctor checked Amos’s responses, wrote some notes on his pad, and nodded to Julia. “We’ll keep him pretty heavily sedated today and see how he’s doing by evening. The respiration therapist will be working with him to keep the lungs clear. So far he’s handling the anti-rejection meds. There’s a catheter inserted in the side of his neck that enables us to take biopsies from the inside of the heart. We’ll take samples and test them five times a day. If all goes well, the samples will be tested daily for a while after you return home, then every other day, then every other week.” He paused. “For now, though, we wait.”

Julia looked at her father, resting there, and couldn’t hold back a smile. She was beaming! “And pray. We wait and pray.”

On Saturday afternoon, there was a great flurry of coming and going at Windmill Farm as ladies appeared and worked themselves to the bone—helping quietly and without fanfare. The church at Stoney Ridge was like that. The house was cleaned from top to bottom, the pantry and refrigerator were filled with food, the living room was emptied and benches were brought in as scores of friends and neighbors came through to view Menno, laid out in the front room. Fern remained at the house, directing traffic, while Julia stayed at the hospital with their father. Sadie felt almost useless.

She tried to help Fern but couldn’t concentrate on her tasks. Fern finally told her to go outside and get some fresh air. Too much had happened, too quickly. She could hardly believe how life had changed, in just a few days.

As she walked down the driveway, she found Annie at the roadside stand, as if she’d been waiting for Sadie. Beside Annie was one of Menno’s pups, now about five months old. Sadie bent down and scratched the pup behind the ears.

“It made Menno happy that you have one of his pups,” Sadie said.

The puppy wandered off to sniff around the mailbox.

Annie kept her eyes downcast. “Menno was real good to me.”

Sadie nodded. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t cry. Once she started, she didn’t think she could stop.

“Sometime, maybe, you could come pay a visit to me. Maybe we could talk.” Annie looked as if she wanted to say more but didn’t.

“I’d like that, Annie.”

“You know, you were special to Menno. You understood him best.” Annie whistled for the pup, just like Menno had taught her, and walked away.

Then the tears began for Sadie.

Sunday was, blessedly, an off-Sunday, and the family had a quiet morning before the taxi driver arrived to take them to Hershey. They were able to have a fifteen-minute, one-on-one afternoon visit with Amos. M.K. insisted on staying at home, despite Sadie’s urging her to join them, so Fern volunteered to stay at home with her. Sadie couldn’t hide her exasperation with her little sister. She knew M.K. was hurting, but she wouldn’t talk about it. What more could Sadie do? Sadie was hurting too. They all were hurting.

When they reached the hospital that afternoon, a nurse smiled when she saw them in front of the nurse’s central monitoring station. “Thirty-six hours and no signs of rejection, other than a slightly elevated temperature,” she volunteered, “which is common after major surgery. The doctor was just here. He said your dad is doing so well, he’ll be dangling soon.”

“Dangling?” Sadie asked.

“Sitting up, feet over the side of the bed. Precursor to standing on the floor.”

Julia and Uncle Hank insisted that Sadie go in first to visit with her dad. She had only seen him briefly, right after surgery. She wore a gown over her dress, a face mask, and paper slippers over her shoes—to reduce the chance of infection for Amos. As Sadie pushed the door open, she felt her stomach twist into a tight knot. Her father was connected to a network of wires and tubes—some attached to the heart monitor, an IV, a blood pressure cuff. Swathed under white sheets, he looked so small. It was a stark contrast to the rugged, deeply tanned figure of her father that was fixed in her mind from childhood. The lights were dimmed in the room, but the bank of machines that pumped and hissed with beeps of their own were still visible, their monitors casting a soft, diffused light. Her eyes filled with tears, but she fought them off. She needed to get used to this, if it was true what Fern had said—if she was a healer.

“Dad?”

Amos looked up, his eyes unfocused. It took him several seconds to focus. “Sadie?” he asked, his voice a mere whisper, then his eyes flew open wide with recognition.

The nurse stole quietly into the room. Slowly, she raised the head of the bed so he was sitting nearly straight up. Amos gasped as she moved his feet toward the edge, but he sat up with his own muscles.

“No rush now, we’ll take it easy,” the nurse said.

Sadie laid a hand on his shoulder when she saw Amos quivering.

“Okay, now swing your legs over slowly,” the nurse instructed.

Amos inched his heels toward the side of the bed, hanging onto the nurse’s forearm. Sadie held her breath.

The nurse scooted the IV line out of the way. “Good, you’re almost there. Feeling faint? Don’t forget to breathe.”

With his feet hung straight down from his knees, fairly close to sitting straight up, he let out a whoosh. “Made it.”

“Way to go, big guy.”

Amos gave her a thumbs-up sign.

“You did it. How’s it feel?”

“Wobbly. I don’t think I’ll be walking quite yet.”

“No, but standing by tonight.” The nurse put her stethoscope to Amos’s back. “Good and clear. Just what we like to hear.” She looked into Sadie’s eyes. “You want to hear?” When Sadie nodded, she slipped the earpieces into Sadie’s ears and held the disc against his back.

The nurse put the stethoscope back in her pocket. “You got a real thumper there. How you feeling?”

“Like I just plowed ten acres with a stubborn mule.”

When Amos was lying down again, with the bed propped back up, he puffed out his cheeks and blew out a breath. “You know, tiring as that was, I can tell I’m getting more air than I have for a long time. I’ve been weaker than this at times at home lying on the couch.” He glanced at Sadie and saw tears streaming down her cheeks. “What’s this?” He reached out a hand to her cheek.

“Dad, that’s Menno’s heart beating inside of you.” She leaned her forehead against his and held his hand against his bandaged-up chest. “Menno is part of you.”

Monday was a very big day. Five hundred and thirty-two people attended Menno’s funeral. M.K. counted. It was a way for her to keep her mind away from thinking about the pine box right in front of her that held her brother’s body. As soon as the graveside service in the cemetery was over, she waited until Fern’s back was turned, and then she ran. She ran as far as she could and didn’t stop until she was completely out of breath and had stitches pinching her side. She found the shortcut to Blue Lake Pond and walked down to the shore, holding a fist against her side. She flopped down on the shore and stared at the still water.

The sky was bright blue and the air was crisp, a hint of winter on autumn’s heels. The day was beautiful and it was cruel. It was Menno’s favorite kind of day.

Out of the blue, Jimmy Fisher sat down next to her on the sandy dirt.

She scowled at him. “What are you doing, sneaking up on me like that? Can’t you see I want to be alone?”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” he said. “I saw you run off. Thought you might need some company.”

“I don’t.”

But he didn’t leave and she was glad. They sat there for a while, watching the water lap the shore.

Finally, Jimmy spoke. “The game warden caught the bear and her cub. He took them up to the mountains. They won’t be bothering anyone anymore.”

M.K. rested her chin on her knees.

“My mother feels awful bad. A police officer came to our house and had her fill out a report about the accident.”

“I don’t blame her. None of us do. If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. It was my idea to take a shortcut through your cornfield. That’s the reason your mother got scared. If we were coming down the driveway like normal people, we wouldn’t have had to go through the chicken yard and make your dog even crazier than it is. Then your mother wouldn’t have started shooting at anything that moved.” She rubbed her eyes. “I should’ve stayed with him. I shouldn’t have left him. I knew he got confused when too much was happening too fast. I left him alone. He must have been so frightened.”

“The bishop said it was Menno’s time. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know how to sort all of that out.” He turned his head toward her. “Maybe it was just an accident. Sometimes, bad things happen and there’s just no explaining them.”

She kept her eyes straight ahead. “That’s as hard to get my head around as the bishop’s way of thinking.”

“Maybe because . . . the problem is . . . you can’t forgive yourself.”

A single tear leaked down her cheek, then another. Soon, tears were rushing down her cheeks. She started to sob. Jimmy patted her on her back, then finally threw an arm around her shoulder as though trying to impart some of his strength.

He waited until her sobs subsided before he said, “If the bishop was right, that it was Menno’s time, then I guess God has something else in mind for you to do.”

With a gentleness she didn’t think was possible of Jimmy, he wiped her tears away. He looked at her with earnest eyes. “I always did figure God had something special in mind for you. You’re not exactly . . . an ordinary girl.”

If this were any other day, and she weren’t so tired and so sad, she might have popped him one. Instead, she decided that she would ignore that remark. They sat companionably for a while longer until Jimmy rose to his feet.

“Let’s get back to the house before you’re missed.” He reached out a hand for her and helped her to his feet.

She hesitated, almost expecting him to let her hand go so she would fall back, the way she had seen him trick plenty of unsuspecting girls on the schoolyard.

But this time, at least for today, he didn’t.

The nurse stood right behind Amos, ready to catch him if he did fall. It was time to walk. Something he had done since he was a baby, and right now, it felt like he was climbing Mount Everest without oxygen.

“Okay, one foot at a time. Put them forward. Keep your back straight, let that walker roll forward, nice and slow.”