Courting Buggy: Nurse Hal Among The Amish (18 page)

“
You worry too much,” Adam wrote. “Hal managed
while you were at school all day.”

“
That is true,” Emma agreed.

“
It was the combination of Hal and her aunt
that was the problem. Aendi Tootie will go home soon,” Adam assured
her.

“
Maybe that was it,” Emma agreed.

Adam pointed toward the noisy barn. The frustrated
Holstein cows, bawling in the confines of the barnyard, competed
with the loud hum of the generator that ran the milking machine.
The unmilked cows walked straddled legged to line up at the door,
wanting relief from udders swollen with gallons of fresh milk.

Emma said, “Milk time. I know. Go!” Adam rushed
toward the barn as she yelled after him, “But before you eat supper
with me remember to wash your face.”

Supper was what it was after all the excitement. The
women set all the bowls on the table. John asked that they bow
their heads for a silent prayer. Hal feared what John was going to
pray for he didn't want to say out loud. Maybe he was asking God to
send her relatives home soon. He finished out loud with,
“Amen.”

Everyone started passing the bowls and filling their
plates. When the greens bowl came to Tootie, she was still out of
sorts. She whispered to Nora, “What is this?”

“
Greens. They're good for you,” Nora declared
quietly. “You know like turnip leaves, spinach and polk. Try a
spoonful. You can learn to like it. It will grow on
you.”

“
I prefer that eating weeds grows on
you want to eat it. I'll pass,” sniffed Tootie as she handed the
bowl on.

Chapter 12

The women were washing smoke off the kitchen
walls the next afternoon when the living room door burst open. That
startled all of them. They hadn’t heard a buggy drive in. Hal's
first thought was Peter Rogies was back.

An ashen faced, Jane Bontrager burst into the
kitchen. She spoke frantically in Pennsylvania Dutch to Hal and
Emma. Emma’s hands flew up to cover her cheeks. The looks on the
women's faces were enough to tell Nora and Tootie something was
very wrong.

“
What did she say?” Nora asked Hal as
Emma put her arms around Jane to hug her.

Hal explained, “There had been an accident in
a nearby field. Something has happened to young Johnnie Mast. He’s
just ten years old. Something to do with a team of horses. The boy
is hurt bad. Jane said it was a horrible sight. Eldon sent her to
tell me to come. Mom and Aunt Tootie, you stay with Redbird and
Beth while Emma and I go.” Hal said to Emma. “We can take the car.
Just let me get my nursing bag. You go to the barn and tell the men
what has happened. We need your father’s help. Dad and the boys can
finish milking.”

Emma raced to the barn, yelled at her
father and rushed to the car. Hal came out the clinic door,
carrying her cell phone and the neon green bag with the
words
Life Is A Blast
across
the front. The words were faded now from the bag's use but still a
part of Nurse Hal's identity. She called for the ambulance as she
raced to the car. With John and Emma in the back seat, Hal drove
passed Eldon Bontrager’s farm and turned at the intersection to
Butcher Ben and Edna Mast’s farm.

As they neared the farm buildings, Emma
cried, “Pull in. I see the team with farmers around them.”

Hal stopped the car behind a row of buggies
by the yard fence. Several farmers milled about with Butcher Ben
Mast in the middle of them. The team had been unhooked from the
harrow, a wicked looking contraption with curved tines designed to
tear through the earth. The men frantically tugged at the harrow,
unhooking sections. As Hal and Emma approached, the men lifted a
section and flipped it back to free the boy.

Wailing sirens in the distance told Hal the
ambulance was on the way. Emergency help would get there none too
soon to suit her. Every minute counted if the boy was to live.

Johnnie Mast was sprawled on the ground,
covered with dirt from sliding along the field under the harrow. He
was flat on his back. His clothes were torn and tattered. His face
was dirt caked. His nostrils and mouth clogged with dirt. His eyes
were open, staring into space. He didn’t move at all. He looked
dead. Hal knelt beside him and hooked her finger in his nose and
mouth to clear the dirt away. She wrapped her hand around his wrist
and in a minute said over her shoulder, “He has a faint pulse.”

Hovering close by, Emma’s eyes filled with
tears. She was this little boy's teacher.

The ambulance wheeled in and braked beside
the crowd. EMT medics came running full speed from their vehicles
with bags and equipment. The Amish men, who had lifted the harrow
off Johnnie, quietly stood nearby, waiting to see what would happen
next. Some of them had their heads bent in prayer.

Hal and Emma got out of the way. One of the
medics nodded at Hal. “How is the boy, Nurse Hal?”

“
Daryl, I cleaned the dirt out of his
airways as best as I could with my finger. He has a faint
pulse.”

Another medic, Steve, knelt by the boy. He
felt for a pulse and sliced the tattered clothes from Johnnie's
body so they could see the wounds. Daryl asked for the boy’s
name.

His father, Butcher Ben, said, “Johnnie.”

Steve called firmly and sharply, “Johnnie,
can you hear me?”

The boy was unconscious. The sorrowful and
sickened faces of the farmers gathered nearby told Hal they were
sure the boy was dead or would be soon.

Johnnie's mother, Edna Mast, came through the
squeaking house yard gate. She took the time to say to her other
children to stay in the yard out of the way. She wasn't running,
just walking fast. A robust, buxom youngish woman, her face and
arms dark from endless hours of toiling in the sun. Barefoot, in a
blue dress and a white apron, she approached and introduced herself
to the EMTs. The medics shifted slightly to make room for her. She
leaned over the crumpled, broken body of her son to called his name
and speak to him in Pennsylvania Dutch. “Johnnie, can you hear me?
Johnnie, these men are here to help you. Johnnie, please open your
eyes.”

Hal marveled at how calm Edna was. She didn't
show hysteria or tears. It was as if she'd prepared herself long
ago for such tragic moments as this. Hadn't Margaret Yoder told
Aunt Tootie when the Amish worked with horses as much as they did
accidents were bound to happen? Hal knew exactly what would be said
by Edna and Butcher Ben whether Johnnie survived or died. It was
God’s will.

Edna crouched down briefly and wanted to
brush her hand on her son's face, but she thought better of that
and pulled back so as not to interfere with the medics. She called
his name again. Still no response or movement.

The head medic, Daryl, spoke in curt
commands. He told a third medic, Ivan, to call for a helicopter.
Two-way radios blared. Hal knew how good the medics were,
completely focused and professionally efficient. She'd worked with
them before.

Ivan brought a small stretcher and blankets.
They slid the stretcher under the boy and continued working
feverishly while they waited for the helicopter.

Edna paced with her hands tightly gripped
together to keep them from noticeably trembling. She stopped again
a few feet from her son. This time she crouched by him with her
hand resting on her knee. She called to him. When the boy didn't
respond, she kept trying again, and again. “Johnnie! Johnnie!”

More sirens screamed. Wickenburg firemen
arrived and cordoned off the area. Hal and Emma moved out of the
way and stood by Samuel Nisely, one of the men who helped lift the
harrow off the boy.

Hal asked, “Samuel, do you know what
happened?”

Samuel quietly murmured his story. “Jah, I
was working in my field that adjoined the Mast farm. I saw Johnnie
driving the team, standing on the evener. The last time I looked, I
didn't see Johnnie on the evener. He wasn't on the ground behind
the harrow. All I saw was just the horses plodding across the field
toward the gate hole. I recht away knew what happened and rushed
out to stop them. By the time I got to the team, they had walked
through the gate hole and stopped by the barn. The horses hadn’t
run away. They didn’t realize Johnnie wasn’t driving them.

Somehow, Johnnie bounced off the evener and
got caught in the harrow’s teeth. The horses dragged him probably
an eighth of a mile. When I got to Johnnie his left leg was bent
backward and snapped in two. Luke Yoder was going by so I ran out
to the road. I told him to get some men to help get the harrow
apart and to send someone to get you.”

With sirens ringing across the land, farmers
stopped what they were doing. They were directed to where the
action was by the strobe lights and fire trucks parked on the road
at the Mast farm The farmers came to see if they needed to help.
The small crowd was cordoned across the road a good hundred feet
away.

Hal marveled at Edna and Butcher Ben's
composure as they watched the medics work. Their calmness came from
the depths of their quiet strength and faith in God. They were from
generations of tough independent people born to the land, stoic
forthright people who tilled the soil and lived fruitful lives of
quiet simplicity. They accepted adversity, affliction and tragedy
without question as God's will. They died as they had lived, close
to the earth that had sustained them.

While Edna stayed close to Johnnie, Butcher
Ben stood silently watching with his oldest son, Eli Mast and Eli's
wife, Mary, by his side. Butcher Ben didn't call his son’s name as
his wife did. From some deep untaught prompting, the two of them
knew the boy might hear his mother’s voice when all others were
lost to him.

Time seemed frozen, but minutes did pass.
There was no doubt in everyone’s mind that the boy was dead except
for his mother. She hadn't given up hope yet. Edna Mast bent
slightly forward, and calmly called her son repeatedly. She spoke
cheerfully and forcefully, as if rousing him out of bed at sunrise.
“Johnnie, Johnnie, speak to me! Johnnie, these men are here to help
you. Johnnie, do you want to go on a helicopter ride? The
helicopter is coming! Please, Johnnie, wake up!”

Her voice was the only sound, except for the
curt, intense voices of the medics, and the occasional jolting
blare of the two-way radios. “The helicopter is about to land, Mrs.
Mast,” EMT Daryl, warned, wanting her to know her time with her son
was about up.

Edna nodded she understood and continued to
call her son. Somewhere, from the subconscious reaches to where his
soul had slipped, the boy heard the echoes of his mother’s voice.
He stirred faintly. She had called him back.

He had been totally unresponsive. It was
probably about thirty minutes, from the time the men reached him
and freed him from the harrow’s teeth, but it felt like an eternity
to all those watching the scene unfold.

The medics realized Johnnie was stirring
before anyone else as they knelt beside him. They continued working
feverishly to strap him onto the stretcher, placed an oxygen mask
on his face and attached tubes.

Johnnie suddenly emitted a piercing wail of
pain and terror. He was awake, and feeling the excruciating pain
from his shattered leg and other injuries. His mother crouched down
and spoke to him to comfort him.

The throb of the helicopter warbled in
everyone ears as it flew from the east, and circled the field. It
swooped down and landed, directed by the firefighters who had
pushed all the neighbors back some more. The door opened. Two
medical personnel leaped out before the propeller blades stopped.
They bent low as they braced themselves in the swift air currant
and raced to the boy.

As the men transported him to the chopper,
Hal and Emma spoke to Edna and Mary Mast while John talked to
Butcher Ben and Eli. Emma talked to the other Mast children. After
a few words of comfort, the Lapps left as all the others had.
Neighbors had done all they could. As Hal, Emma and John got in the
car, the chopper lifted off, made a wide circle over them and aimed
east toward the Wickenburg hospital.

Chapter 13

On Wednesday evening, John and Jim hitched up their
buggies and loaded the family to go to Peter Rogies's birthday
party. Tootie stepped up into John's buggy. She sat down in back by
Daniel and smoothed out her dark blue dress. It was tempting to
take a deep breath to see if she could smell roses, but she
resisted. The last thing she wanted to do was call attention to
herself. She just hoped she hadn't applied one squirt too many.

Emma smiled approvingly. “Aendi Tootie, that is a
pretty fer gute dress.”

“
Thank you, Dear,” Tootie said, pleased that
the girl noticed.

Jim invited Noah to ride with him as he tried out his
sorrel horse one more time. If all went well tonight, he wanted to
somehow or other manage to convince Nora to ride with him
again.

Adam and Emma took up the rear of the possession in
Adam's buggy. Adam wrote on his notepad. “Tell me about what
happened at the Mast farm. He settled back in the seat and tilted
his head toward her to give her his undivided attention.

Emma said tearfully, “I could hardly stand seeing how
torn up and broken that poor boy was. I pray that he lives so I can
teach him another year.”

Adam patted her hand.

Emma took a deep breath and filled him in about
Johnnie's accident.

The Rogies family, Cooner Jonah, Anna and their five
children, came out on the porch and waited for the Lapp family to
get out of the buggies. “Wilcom,” Jonah called.

As the women went up the porch steps to greet Anna
and her four daughters, Cooner Jonah and his son, David, came down
to get a closer look at Jim's courting buggy. “You got yourself
quite a buggy there,” Jonah offered.