Angels Watching Over Me

by Lurlene McDaniel

  She was surprised to find she was glad to see him too. “I’m better now that the two of you are here,” she told him.

  Her mother squirmed out of her coat and flopped into a chair. “We’re exhausted. We flew from Japan to Los Angeles, then from L.A. to Chicago, but that’s as far as we got. All air traffic was grounded in Chicago because of the weather. So Neil rented a car and we drove the last two hundred miles in a snowstorm.”

  “Thank you,” Leah said to Neil.

  “We’re family,” he said with a grin.

  “How was Japan?” Leah felt obligated to ask. Now that the preliminary greetings were over, she felt awkward and overwhelmed.

  “Japan was wonderful. We’ll have lots of pictures to show you, but this isn’t the time to talk about it.” Roberta glanced at her husband and said, “Neil, be a dear and see if you can find us a hotel near the hospital. I need a hot bath and a good night’s sleep.”

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  “Order us a pizza.” She turned to Leah. “I’ve eaten so much fish lately, I’m about to grow fins.”

  Neil left, and Roberta climbed up on Leah’s bed and hugged her again. “It’s so good to be back in the good old U.S.A. I thought I was too old to get homesick, but when I passed through customs in Los Angeles and that customs agent stamped my passport and said ‘Welcome home,’ I got all teary-eyed.”

  Leah allowed her mother to unwind, knowing that she’d get a chance soon enough to tell her what had happened in the hospital. She was glad of the distraction. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say, or how much she wanted to tell her mother about the past week.

  Her mother picked up Leah’s bandaged hand. “So, this is what caused all the trouble?”

  “And this.” Leah tossed back the covers to expose her knee, still wrapped.

  “I find it hard to believe. Honestly, you’ve been the picture of health all your life.”

  “Dr. Thomas said that this kind of cancer mostly hits teenagers.”

  “I still think we should get a second opinion. Neil thinks so too.”

  “If … If it’s true,” Leah said hesitantly, “then I want to stay in this hospital.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I know the nurses. I made some friends.”

  Her mother sighed and rubbed her temples. “We’ll have to talk about it tomorrow. I’m too tired to think straight right now. But I will tell you one thing. If this Dr. Thomas doesn’t impress me, you’ll be out of here in the blink of an eye.”

  “I’m quite sure of my diagnosis, Mrs. Dutton.”

  Leah heard Dr. Thomas, but she kept her gaze on her mother. They were seated in his office, and her mother was regarding him warily.

  “It’s simply hard for me to believe, that’s all,” her mother said. “I mean, cancer.”

  Dr. Thomas picked up a stack of large gray envelopes. “Let me show you and Leah something.”

  He stood, turned and flipped a switch, and a light board attached to his wall glowed with fluorescent light. He extracted a piece of X-ray film from each envelope and snapped each one to the board. “Come closer.”

  Leah moved forward with her mother and saw a series of grayish white bones, from a skull all the way to bones in the feet. “Is that me?” she asked, fascinated.

  “Yes. This is your skeleton, top to bottom, from your bone scan.”

  Leah was impressed and a bit freaked out. It was strange seeing herself without skin.

  “So where’s the problem?” her mother asked.

  “Here,” Dr. Thomas said, drawing a circle around Leah’s right kneecap with a marking pen. “And here.” He drew another circle around her left forefinger.

  Leah squinted and saw that both areas looked dark, like small holes.

  “Remember,” the doctor said, “bones are dense and show up white on X-ray film. Dark space is the absence of bone.”

  “So?” Leah’s mother asked.

  “These dark areas indicate that the bone has been eaten away. This is very typical of bone cancer.”

  “But a few X rays can’t tell the whole story,” her mother argued.

  “True, but based on these, I did the biopsy.”

  “And what did that say?”

  “Here’s the pathologist’s report.” He picked up a file and handed it to Leah’s mother. “It’s inconclusive, unfortunately. But based on years of treating this disease, I think Leah has osteogenic sarcoma.”

  As he spoke, Leah began to feel icy cold.

  “You think?” her mother retorted. “This is just your opinion?”

  Dr. Thomas sighed. “My opinion counts, Mrs. Dutton. I’m a specialist who’s treated many cases of this disease.”

  “All right, all right. If this is true, how do you treat it?”

  Leah knew the answer already.

  Dr. Thomas didn’t answer immediately. Instead he laced his fingers together and leaned forward. “Long-term treatment, chemotherapy.”

  “Long-term? What about the short term?”

  “Sometimes drastic measures are needed to preserve a person’s life.”

  Leah felt a tingling sensation all through her body. He was leading up to something horrific. She could sense it. “Like what?” she asked, her heart pounding.

  “Like removal of the appendage with the tumors.”

  “Y-You mean, removing the tumors,” she clarified.

  “No. I mean amputating your leg and finger.”

  “No way!” Her mother exploded off her chair. “Leah’s a young woman with her whole life ahead of her. You cannot cut off her leg! I won’t let you.”

  Dr. Thomas shook his head sadly. “Mrs. Dutton, I don’t like telling you this either, but this is the only way to maximize her recovery. After the amputations, she’ll undergo chemo. Once she goes into remission, we’ll monitor her closely. The cure rate—”

  Leah stopped listening. She was numb. She tried to imagine her leg gone, her finger missing, a tube in her chest, needles and medicine. She began to cry.

  Instantly her mother was at her side. “Oh, honey, it’ll be all right.”

  Leah couldn’t talk. It would never be all right.

  “There are prostheses now that look very lifelike,” Dr. Thomas was saying. “You’ll go through rehabilitation. We’ll work with you.”

  “I don’t want you to cut off my leg!” Leah shouted. “I want you to leave me alone!” She pushed herself out of the wheelchair and limped out of his office as quickly as her aching leg allowed her to move.

  Leah lay in bed, facing the wall, refusing to eat or talk to anyone who came to see her. Not even Molly could raise her spirits. “I’m supposed to be off for a week starting tomorrow,” Molly said. “But I don’t want to go away and leave you like this.” When Leah didn’t respond, Molly squeezed her shoulder and added, “You have friends to help you through this.”

  Her mother paced the floor, muttering under her breath, sometimes stopping by the bed and saying, “We don’t have to take his word for this, Leah. I know X-ray technicians can do sloppy work. And the pathologist’s report isn’t even conclusive.”

  Leah let her mother voice all the anger and frustration she was feeling. But she still had to face her own fear alone.

  “I want to go home for Christmas,” Leah said, the first words she’d spoken in hours.

  “Don’t you worry. There’s no way I’d keep you here for the holidays.”

  “Then after Christmas—” Leah’s voice broke.

  “We’re not going to think about that now.”

  “When are we going to think about it?”

  Her mother leaned over Leah’s bed and stared into her eyes. “You know, Leah, for a long time I had to do things I didn’t want to do, just for the two of us to survive. I worked jobs I hated, left you with day care centers when I wanted to stay home with you. I even married men I didn’t honestly love so that you and I could have a better life.

  “I really love Neil and he really cares about us. He
’s the father you should have had all these years.” Leah winced at the mention of her father. Her mother continued. “But that’s not what I want to say. What I want to say is I’m not ready to give up this fight. Everything I have, I got because I fought for it.”

  Confused, Leah asked, “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to make Dr. Thomas run that bone scan test again before we check out.”

  “And the biopsy?”

  “We may do that again too, after the holidays, of course. I can’t explain why I have a bad feeling about that test, but I do.”

  The fervor in her mother’s voice lit a candle of hope inside Leah. “Do you really think the tests are wrong? Grandma Hall’s tests weren’t wrong.”

  Her mother shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. All I know is that I would never forgive myself if I let them cut off your leg when I have this gnawing doubt inside me.” She looked away for a moment, and Leah was shocked to see tears in her mother’s eyes. Her mother never cried in front of her. “I have some regrets about the way I treated you and your grandmother, Leah.”

  “What regrets?” Leah had not heard her mother discuss her grandmother since the day of her funeral.

  “I should have been kinder to her. She truly loved you, and I kept her out of your life for far too long.”

  Leah felt tears brimming in her own eyes. “Why did you? I loved her too. And I only got to be with her when she was dying.”

  Her mother sniffed and hung her head. “I was bitter about your father leaving us. He wasn’t well, you know. I mean psychologically. He couldn’t handle the responsibilities of marriage and a family, so he left. I took it out on your grandmother because I couldn’t get even with him. That was wrong of me. Then, once he died, my anger seemed so pointless.”

  Shocked by her mother’s confession, Leah stared. Her mother was asking her to forgive her for her past mistakes. “Is that why you want Dr. Thomas to run the tests again? So you won’t make another mistake?”

  Her mother smiled ruefully, hugged Leah with startling strength, and then straightened. “I owe it to you. And I owe it to her too. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to corner Dr. Thomas.”

  Dr. Thomas agreed to redo the bone scan, as Leah’s mother told her with a great deal of satisfaction. The test was scheduled for the following morning. Afterward, Leah would be checked out and sent home for Christmas. Once the holidays were over she would return to the hospital for reevaluation by a second bone specialist. Although she didn’t want to spend another night in the hospital, Leah very much wanted the test run again.

  Late in the afternoon, sensing that her mother was emotionally wrung out, Leah insisted that she and Neil go back to the hotel. “Come back in the morning,” Leah told them. “I feel better about everything now. And I have plenty of stuff to do to keep busy.”

  “Are you sure? I will admit that jet lag is catching up with me.”

  “I’m sure,” Leah said, waving them out the door.

  Neil gave her a grateful look.

  Once they were gone, though, Leah felt lonelier than ever. When she heard a knock on her door an hour later, she eagerly called, “It’s open!”

  The door opened a crack, and Ethan’s voice said, “Leah?”

  Her heart almost stopped. He was the last person she had expected to see. “Yes?” Quickly she raked a hand through her tousled hair.

  He entered the room, a serious, questioning look on his face. She swallowed and willed her hands to stop trembling. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Not so good,” she admitted. Her bravado slipped away and tears spilled down her cheeks. Quickly Ethan came to her and held her hands in his, and she sobbed against his shoulder. The fabric of his jacket felt rough on her cheek, but she felt safe and protected.

  Haltingly she told him of the diagnosis, adding through her tears, “I don’t want them to cut off my leg and finger. I’ve had them both for sixteen years. I’ve grown attached to them.”

  He peered into her swollen eyes. “Of course you are attached to them. But if they have the potential to kill you …” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “My mother thinks the tests may be wrong. Do you think that’s possible?”

  “All things are possible.”

  She clenched her good hand in frustration. “It’s not fair, Ethan! Why is God doing this to me?”

  “God is not the author of illness,” he said patiently.

  “Don’t defend God to me. If he’s God, he can do anything, can’t he?”

  “Yes—”

  “Well, then why did God let this happen to me?” she interrupted.

  “We cannot always see God’s purposes—”

  She waved his answer away. “I don’t care about purposes. What about my life? I don’t want to wear an artificial leg. I don’t want people staring at my hand and asking, ‘Why’s your finger missing?’ People will ask, you know. They’ll see me as a freak.”

  “Then that is their problem.” Ethan’s voice rose to meet the level of hers.

  She didn’t want pat answers. “It’s my problem, Ethan. It always will be. How many guys are going to want to date a girl with one leg? Not everybody in the world is a tolerant, kind Amish person, you know.”

  He recoiled at her sarcasm. “Do you think I don’t have questions for God, Leah?”

  “What questions could you possibly have?”

  His brow was puckered in anger, but his eyes were filled with sadness. “I do not understand why, when there are so many Amish girls, I have to care so much in my heart for an English one.”

  His words stopped her cold. Fresh tears welled up in her eyes. Then he was holding her face between his large, work-callused palms and kissing her cheeks, her eyelids, her mouth. She thought her heart would leap out of her chest; she thought she would suffocate from sheer delight.

  Ethan kissed her, then abruptly stopped and pressed his forehead to hers. She listened to his ragged breathing. “Forgive me,” he whispered.

  “No,” she said.

  “I should not—”

  She placed her fingers against his lips. “It happened. You can’t take it back.”

  “I did not come here for this.”

  “Why did you come?” It suddenly occurred to her that he had no reason for being there. And the trip to visit her so close to Christmas probably wasn’t approved by his family.

  “I dreamed you needed me.”

  “You dreamed?”

  His cheeks colored. “The dream was very real. I felt you were in danger, and that you needed me to be with you.”

  Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how much she did need him. “Will you get in trouble for coming?”

  He smiled. “Yes. But I do not care. I had to come.”

  “Does Charity know you’re here?”

  “She’ll figure it out.”

  “I don’t want you to get into trouble because of me.”

  “I will not leave you.”

  “Tomorrow, after the test, I’m going home.”

  “Then I’ll stay until you leave.”

  She felt suddenly shy, awkward. She understood what he was giving her. He was disobeying his community. She should make him leave now, but she didn’t have the strength. She needed him. And she wanted him. “Do you have a photo of yourself?” she asked. “I’d like to have it with me when I go home. And I’d like to have it when I come back to the hospital.”

  He shook his head. “The Amish do not like to be photographed. Preserving our personal image is thought to be prideful and indulgent.”

  She was disappointed. “But it isn’t against your religion, is it?”

  “Not strictly.” He looked pained and anxious because he couldn’t give her what she’d asked for. “I would like a picture of you, Leah.”

  “I have my school pictures at home. I’ll mail one to you.” She was glad to be able to give him something tangible of herself to hold on to.

  “I will always keep it.�
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  “So now what?” she asked.

  “So now we stay together until your test tomorrow.”

  “Ethan, I’m glad you had the dream. I’m glad you’ll be here with me all night.”

  He hugged her. “I knew I had to see you.”

  They played video games, they snacked on cookies and apples, they talked until very late. Leah didn’t remember falling asleep, yet she awoke with a start and realized that she was in bed in her room. A lamp had been left on, and she peered around the room, looking for Ethan. He wasn’t in the room with her. But someone was.

  Standing beside her bed was Gabriella.

  “What do you want?” Leah reached for her call button.

  Gabriella looked surprised. “Leah, why are you afraid of me?”

  “I—I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. I can see it in your eyes. I did not come to harm you.”

  Leah’s fingers touched the call button, but she didn’t push it. “Where’s Ethan?”

  “He went down to the lobby. He’ll be back soon.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “No. But I know where he’s gone.”

  Leah told herself to call for the night nurse, but she couldn’t make herself do it. “You’d better go away before the hospital finds out you’re here.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  Suddenly angry, Leah snapped, “Listen, I know you’re a fake!”

  “A fake?”

  “Yes. Molly found out about you visiting me and Rebekah and she’s really upset about it. She says she doesn’t know who you are or why you’re here. But she says you don’t belong here.”

  “Molly said that? But I know Molly well.”

  “Stop lying!” Leah balled her fist around the covers. “I’ve got enough trouble without you hanging around. I have cancer, Gabriella. The doctors want to cut off my leg and finger.” Leah was shaking with emotion and glaring at the young woman.

  Gabriella shook her head. “I know. I didn’t come to upset you, Leah. I came to help you.”

  “Then leave.” Leah fought to regain her composure. “You’ve been nice to me. I don’t want to have to turn you in to hospital security.”

  Gabriella stepped closer to the bed. “I will not see you again, Leah. But I would like you to do me a favor before I go.”