Читать книгу Between You and Me - Сьюзен Виггс - Страница 13

For a place of healing, the hospital was a cold, noisy institution. Folks were so busy working that they barely noticed the visitors and bystanders. As they rushed about their business, most of them skirted around Caleb as if he were a piece of furniture. He didn’t mind so much, though. He didn’t feel like fending off what the English referred to as “small talk”—a habit of filling the silence with pointless chatter.

The Amish had no equivalent Caleb could think of. If there was silence, they let it be. No one felt obligated to fill the void.

In this world, if there was no one present to talk to, people talked to their phones, which they connected to with headphones, or tapped the screen, shooting text and pictures back and forth. They did so even while they walked, barely watching where they were going.

Patients were referred to by their afflictions rather than their names. Sometimes they were called a “code” or “that liver biopsy in room ten” as if their illness defined the sum total of who they were. The hospital staff members didn’t seem to want to acknowledge that “the aneurysm” was somebody’s grandmother, or that “the bypass” had worked at the public library for twenty-seven years.

Jonah drifted in and out of sleep as the hours crept by. When he was awake, he seemed like a boy Caleb had never met before. He was hollow, joyless, with the look of someone being punished for a crime he hadn’t committed.

While Jonah was napping, Caleb went to the men’s room and washed up, using a kit given to him by a nurse, with soap, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and a plastic-handled razor. Then he changed into his newly cleaned clothes, which had been washed and pressed and folded into a neat packet. His plain shirt had never been so crisp at the edges, better than brand-new. In his own clothes, Caleb felt slightly more like himself and was grateful for the bossy, thoughtful Reese Powell.

Slightly refreshed, he inhaled the manufactured air blowing through the hallway. At the end of the corridor was a window framing the blue sky and the tall, modern buildings. He told Jonah’s nurse where to locate him, then made his way down the stairs and out the door. He had discovered a garden on the hospital grounds, and during Jonah’s naps he would step outside, trying to find his balance in the chaos. He sat on one of the wrought-iron benches and stared at the grass and trees, taking refuge from the glaring lights and manufactured air of the hospital’s beeping, hissing wards. Jonah had to endure that every second of the day; there was no escape for him. Caleb felt vaguely guilty for escaping the strange and harsh environment, even for a few minutes.

There had been further questions from Child Protective Services. Different people had asked him the same question a dozen different ways to determine if the accident was caused by negligence, either Caleb’s or the Haubers’. He talked to a half-dozen folks with clipboards and laptop computers and name badges, but after all the questioning—or “interviews,” as someone called them—it was determined that the incident was exactly what Reese Powell had said it was—an accident. No one’s fault.

But Jonah’s to suffer.

As the day wore on, and Caleb met with doctors and other staff members, one thing became clear to Caleb. Reese had been right about something else—Jonah’s recovery was going to take a long time.

It was going to cost a lot of money, too. Various staff members had asked for information about his “status,” which Caleb soon discovered was their way of trying to find out if he could afford Jonah’s care. It was probably well known to the hospital folks that the Amish almost never carried insurance, as purchasing commercial insurance violated the rules. The notion behind this was that the people in the community took care of their own, fiercely independent of outside help. Middle Grove had an aid fund overseen by a committee, and when a huge medical expense came along, the community banded together to raise money, holding fundraisers and benefit auctions.

But Caleb was a realist. Given what had happened to Jonah’s parents, he had been diligent about insurance coverage. Over the strident objections of his father, he had enrolled himself and the children in a comprehensive insurance policy. Here at the hospital, he’d shown them the card he kept in his wallet. He filled out forms, offered the necessary information, and everyone seemed to calm down.

It was one of the few things that had been easy about this ordeal.

In the garden, the shadows of the beech trees and of people strolling along the walkways lengthened, and the traffic sounds from the busy streets increased as folks hurried about their business.

Passersby sent veiled looks of curiosity in Caleb’s direction. Amish people were used to being stared at. As far as he knew, they were the only group of people in America who constituted a tourist attraction simply by being who they were. Folks came on tour buses and in their cars to the Amish towns in the countryside. Visitors seemed drawn to the sight of farmers and artisans going through their everyday chores. Most tourists were pretty respectful, treating the Amish like rare, elusive birds, to be spied on from a distance and photographed without their knowledge.

A few were bold to the point of rudeness, poking and prying at the Amish like a cat sticking its nose into a mouse hole. More than once, English girls in short shorts and halter tops had planted themselves beside him for a photograph or a phone selfie without even asking his permission.

Jonah used to think it was funny to posture for the camera lens, even though it got him in trouble with the elders if they caught him at it. Caleb wondered if that laughing, teasing boy would ever come back to him.

A long, slender shadow fell across the grass at his feet. He looked up to see Reese Powell with the sun on her hair and an uncertain smile on her face. “Caleb?”

He stood with automatic courtesy. “Is it something about Jonah?”

“No,” she said quickly. “He’s sleeping. His nurse said I might find you in the garden. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” She indicated the man beside her. He was dressed like a hospital worker, but his scrubs were greenish, not blue, like the ones Caleb had borrowed.

The guy stuck out his hand. “I’m Leroy Hershberger.” Beneath a trim mustache, his mouth curved into a smile. “I work as a physical therapist here at Mercy Heights. Reese told me what happened to your nephew. I’m real sorry.”

“Yah … ah, thanks.” Caleb had no idea what he was thanking this man for. His concern, he supposed. He felt a nudge of familiarity when he looked at Leroy and heard a certain cadence in his voice. Leroy Hershberger had what Caleb considered an easy face. Everything was out there, for all the world to see. It was a face that held no secrets. An honest face.

“Leroy’s my neighbor,” Reese explained. “We live in the same building, six and a half blocks down the street.”

“You’re going to need a place to stay while your nephew is in the hospital,” Leroy said. “Reese tells me you’re from Amish country, so I thought a home stay might work better than a hotel. I’ve got a spare room at my place.”

“I couldn’t impose,” Caleb said, though he was touched by the man’s kindness.

“It’s not an imposition,” Leroy said.

“But if Jonah needs me—”

“We’ll get you a cell phone so you can always be in touch.”

The offer was tempting, but Caleb shook his head. “I need to be close to Jonah.”

“You have to stay somewhere,” Reese insisted, “and like I said before, you won’t do him much good if you don’t take care of yourself. But it’s up to you, of course. You do realize the hospital isn’t going to let you live here.”

Caleb did understand that he couldn’t very well keep sleeping in his clothes and washing up in the men’s room with thin pink soap and paper towels. “Obliged to you,” he said.

“I’m happy to help.” Leroy really seemed to mean it.

Caleb looked from one to the other. “Somehow I have the feeling not everyone gets this treatment.”

“You’re right about that,” Leroy said. “There are hotels nearby for patients’ families. But Reese here—she said you were special.”

Caleb glanced at her and was amazed to see that her cheeks had turned bright red with a blush.

“And by special,” Leroy said easily in Deitsch, the German dialect, “I mean she might be sweet on you, but don’t let on I told you that.”

A short laugh burst from Caleb. “I knew there was something about you, Leroy Hershberger.”

Reese looked from one to the other. “It’s like you’re in some secret club.”

“Like a cult?” asked Leroy.

Caleb laughed again. It felt good to laugh, ever so briefly, in the midst of everything. And it felt entirely strange to hear Leroy say the beauteous and exotic Reese Powell was sweet on him. Like a hoax. And a stupid one at that.

“We’ll be heading home in about an hour,” she said. “Why don’t you check on Jonah and let him know the plan.”

When Caleb got back upstairs, Jonah was awake and reading a book in the cranked-up bed. “There’s a guy who’s invited me to stay with him while you’re laid up,” Caleb told him. “He’s ex-Amish.”