Angels Watching Over Me (9 page)

L
eah mumbled, “Well, I guess after you leave, Gabriella and Molly will be my only friends.”

Rebekah looked stricken. “You will be lonely.”

Leah tousled the child’s hair. “Don’t worry about it. My mom will be here Thursday.” She got out of bed. “Let me freshen up and then I’ll read to you.”

Leah quickly showered and was putting on her makeup when Rebekah appeared in the bathroom doorway, shyly looking in. “May I watch?”

“Sure.”

Rebekah had already dressed. She fluffed the
skirt of her dress and settled on the edge of the tub, where she studied Leah intently with saucer-wide eyes. “Why do you put paint on your face?”

Leah glanced down at her. “To look pretty.”

“But you already look pretty.”

“Well, thanks, but without mascara, my eyes disappear.”

“They do?” The child sat up straighter, squinting to examine Leah’s eyes more closely.

Bemused, Leah said, “I guess that doesn’t make sense to you. Let’s just say I put on makeup because it’s my custom, like wearing that cap on your head is yours.”

Rebekah seemed to accept this explanation, but when Leah turned the blow-dryer on her shoulder-length, precision-cut hair, Rebekah asked, “Why do you cut your hair off? The Bible says hair is a woman’s glory.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.”

Leah laughed. “I like my hair this way, and I think it looks best on me. I guess it’s hard for us to understand each other’s ways sometimes.”

Rebekah nodded and changed the subject. “My sister Sarah got married in November. She married Israel Kramandam.”

“That’s nice. Did they go on a honeymoon?”

“What’s a honeymoon?”

Leah realized that if the Amish didn’t believe in mingling with the world, it was doubtful they would indulge in this particular custom. “A kind of vacation two people take when they get married,” she explained.

Rebekah giggled. “Who would do their work? Who would feed the cows?”

“Sorry—I forgot about those cows. So, what do an Amish couple do when they get married?”

“They go around visiting people on other farms. They get to sleep over and get presents.” Rebekah’s face looked animated. “Then in the spring, they move into their own house. I liked Sarah’s wedding. Everybody came.”

“Who’s everybody?”

“All the plain people. Mama said three hundred were coming and for Papa to fetch enough chairs because no one was going to say that Tillie Longacre didn’t know how to put on a wedding feast,” Rebekah said in an imitation of her mother’s voice. “Mama and Oma cooked and cooked for weeks. I helped.”

“Wow, that’s a lot of people.” Leah thought about her own mother’s weddings. The last
three ceremonies had been attended only by Leah and one or two of her mother’s friends. “Was your sister’s dress pretty?”

Rebekah’s brow knitted as she considered the question. “All our dresses are plain.”

“Didn’t she wear a fancy wedding gown?”

Rebekah shrugged. “It was white. But not fancy.”

“Were there flowers?”

Rebekah shook her head. Neil and Leah’s mother’s wedding had been small, but Leah’s mother had worn an expensive dress of pale blue silk and carried an exquisite cascade of orchids and roses, and the ring Neil had slipped onto her finger had been huge and glittering. “I personally think your plain way is better,” she said.

Leah’s approval obviously pleased Rebekah. “When I grow up and get married, will you come to my wedding?”

“Could I come? I mean, since I’m not Amish?”

Rebekah pondered the question. “I’ll ask Ethan. He knows everything.”

The mention of Ethan made Leah’s pulse quicken. “Well, you have to grow up first,” she told Rebekah. “And by then, who knows
where I’ll be?” Rebekah looked as if she didn’t understand, and Leah realized that for a girl whose family had lived in the same place for generations, the concept of moving from state to state, city to city, rented apartment to rented house wouldn’t make any sense at all.

“Come on,” Leah said, taking Rebekah’s hand. “Let’s go read your book, and I’ll let you show me some more stories about angels. That way I’ll be able to recognize one if I see it.”

Rebekah giggled. “You can’t see them, Leah.”

Leah feigned exasperation. “Just my luck. So how am I supposed to believe in something I can’t see?”

Still clinging to Leah’s hand, Rebekah tilted her head upward. “Because you see them with your heart, not your eyes.”

Leah nodded, saying nothing but wishing she had the same simple faith.

Leah found Sunday afternoon unbearably boring. She didn’t want to watch TV, especially since Rebekah wasn’t used to it. The rec room was too noisy and the video game room was full of kids waiting to play. Even the library offered no refuge. She was standing in the
kitchen, ready to throw herself on the floor in frustration, when Molly walked in. “Rescue me!” Leah cried, grabbing the nurse by the shoulders.

“Bored, are we?” Molly asked with a laugh.

“Watching paint dry would be more exciting.”

Molly glanced at her watch. “I’m filling in for a friend who’s sick, but I don’t have to sign on for another thirty minutes. Why don’t you throw on some street clothes and I’ll take you downstairs to the main cafeteria. Maybe the change of scenery will do you good.”

Leah practically set a speed record dressing in jeans and a sweatshirt. She must have lost some weight—a quick check in the mirror revealed that her jeans looked baggy. But except for the plastic ID bracelet on her wrist, she didn’t look like a patient at all.

“You know,” she told Molly during the ride down in the elevator, “I’m going to be pretty miffed if they can’t find anything wrong with me after I’ve wasted almost a whole week in the hospital.”

“Is your knee still sore?”

“Yes.” Leah rotated the kneecap and winced.
“And my back too. Maybe it’s arthritis from waiting around this place for so long.”

Molly chuckled. “I don’t think so. By tomorrow night you’ll have a diagnosis. Hang in there.”

They entered the cafeteria, a spacious, carpeted room with banks of floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, the weather looked raw and blustery, with flurries of snow swirling wildly. Leah shivered, missing the sun-drenched Texas weather.

“This place makes the best cake. They call it Chocolate Decadence and believe me, it
is
!” Molly said. “Want to try a piece?”

“Is that a trick question? You bet I do!”

Molly went to the dessert area of the food bar and returned with a plate of triple-layer chocolate cake studded with white chocolate chunks, slathered with chocolate icing and drizzled with dark chocolate syrup. She also carried an extra plate and two forks. The cake tasted so good, Leah savored each rich bite with a sigh.

“Feel better?” Molly asked.

“Much.” Leah laid down her fork. “If I forget to tell you later, thanks for being so nice to me.”

“You’re easy to be nice to, Leah.”

“You really make me feel like a person instead of a medical dilemma. The doctors make me feel like I’m some sort of puzzle to be solved.”

“Doctors get so focused on a patient’s symptoms and medical data that they sometimes lose sight of the human element. I guess that’s where nurses come in. And I’m glad you feel that I’m your friend. For me, that’s an important part of nursing.”

Leah took another bite of cake. “I was thinking the other day about what it might be like to be a nurse. I mean, everyone has to do something for a job. Do you think I would make a good nurse?”

“It’s hard work,” Molly said. “And getting harder. I plan to go back to school in the summer just to learn more about certain diseases. Nursing isn’t for the fainthearted, Leah.”

“And maybe I’m not smart enough.”

“If it was just memorizing medical information, anyone could go into nursing, but in order to be a good nurse, you must genuinely want to take care of sick people. I’ve been on different rotations all over this hospital, and I’m telling you, some people are real pills. They’re demanding
and cranky and you have to keep reminding yourself that they aren’t purposely trying to make your life miserable.”

Leah laughed. “Is that why you stick to the pedi floor? Because you’re bigger and can make the kids do what you want?”

“How’d you guess?” Molly’s eyes twinkled; then her face softened. “Actually, I’m on the pedi floor because I really like the kids and hate seeing them suffer. And”—she took a breath—“because of Emily.”

“Who’s Emily?”

“She was my sister.”

“Was?”

“She died when she was just fourteen—more than twenty-five years ago. And I haven’t gotten over it yet.”

“Y
our sister died? What happened to her?” Leah saw pain etched in Molly’s face.

“It was leukemia. Back then we didn’t have the drugs and chemotherapy protocols we have now. Bone marrow transplants were highly experimental too. Most kids who got the disease died.”

Leah shuddered and thought of Grandma Hall. “How old were you when it happened?”

“Emily was diagnosed when I was eight and she was twelve, but I remember it like it was yesterday. My parents were beside themselves. And for a while, I was jealous of all the attention Emily was getting. But once I saw how
sick the chemo made her, I got over being jealous.”

“I never had a sister, but sometimes I wish I did.”

“Well, Emily truly was a special girl. She was smart, pretty, popular, but not the least bit stuck-up. I adored her. When she got sick, she was in the hospital for weeks at a time. We lived on a farm, and the only hospital that had a children’s oncology unit was three hundred miles away. Mom had to stay with Emily, and during the week Dad worked and stayed with me while I went to school.

“On the weekends, he and I would drive the three hundred miles to visit. I resented it at first, but one time when I got there, Emily was vomiting horribly and all her hair had fallen out from the medication. It was such a shock seeing her bald, I broke down crying and ran out of the room. Emily had had beautiful, long hair, and in less than a week it was totally gone.”

Leah saw the mental picture all too clearly. “How did you decide to become a nurse?”

Molly pushed her cake plate aside and leaned back in her chair. “There was a nurse on the floor, an elderly woman, who would sit with
my sister for hours when my mother had to get away and get some rest. She was so patient and kind. I’ll never forget her. She knew the special patients, the really sick ones, by name. She called them her little angels. Every time Emily had to return to the hospital, Mrs. Duncan was there to take care of her.”

“Did your sister have to go back to the hospital often?”

“Not at first. But when she was barely fourteen, she went out of remission, and then she was there almost all the time. The week she died, I stayed out of school. My dad had a neighbor look after the farm, and we all sat by Emily’s bedside, watching her die.”

Molly paused, and visions of Grandma Hall on her deathbed passed through Leah’s head. “It was terrible,” Molly said. “But Mrs. Duncan stayed with us the whole time. And at Emily’s funeral, she took the day off and drove to our place for the service. I knew then that I wanted to be like that lady. I never considered being anything but a nurse.”

Molly’s story had touched Leah. “I’m really sorry about your sister. And I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.” She told Molly briefly about her grandmother’s illness and
death. “I know how much Ethan and his sisters believe in God, but I wonder why God lets these things happen.”

“God doesn’t owe us an explanation,” Molly said. “But still, there’s something comforting about faith. And it’s hard
not
to believe in God when you live on a farm all your life. Every winter, all life seems to die. Yet every spring, life returns. Scientific explanations aside, it always seems miraculous to me.”

Leah thought about Ethan and his family. Maybe their faith sprang partly from their sense of belonging to the land.

Molly looked at her watch. “I’m late for duty.”

The two of them hurried back upstairs, Leah deep in thought. Maybe after this biopsy was complete and she was back on Neil’s farm, she could think about making friends at her new high school. Maybe this new life in Indiana wouldn’t be so bad after all.

If only my mother can just make this marriage work
.

Leah was given a pill to help her sleep that night, and early the next morning a nurse gave her a shot to relax her before her surgery. The
medicine worked; she was feeling very calm when an orderly arrived and rolled her on a gurney down the hall to the elevators and the surgical floor.

Once in the O.R. area, Leah was shifted to a gurney and hooked up to an IV line. Efficient nurses busied themselves with patients waiting in a line of hospital beds for one of the four operating rooms. Even though she was feeling relaxed, Leah wished at this moment that her mother could be there.

Dr. Thomas appeared. He wore a green surgical scrub suit and a green cap over his hair. “How’re we doing?” he asked.

“A little scared,” Leah mumbled.

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Well, once the anesthesiologist gets hold of you, you’ll sleep through the whole thing.” He patted her shoulder.