The Amish Nurse's Suitor

by Carrie Lighte

  Ivan was the only one who hadn’t taken up the family trade. He had a deeply rooted fear of heights, a fear Colin and Albert had reportedly accommodated by assigning Ivan administrative responsibilities in the shop. Although he was adept at accounting and customer service, Ivan soon grew restless. Rachel understood perfectly why building sheds was a better fit for his blend of carpentry skills and temperament, but Colin and Albert undoubtedly believed Ivan should have derived satisfaction from participating in the family business. Although he’d never written about any conflict directly, Rachel could imagine Ivan’s professional choice was met with nearly as much family opposition as Rachel’s decision to leave the Amish.

  Entering the barn through a new side door labeled Customer Entrance, Rachel surveyed the workshop, impressed by how bright and tidy the spacious interior was. Four small buildings in various stages of construction were situated in separate quarters of the work area. Metal shelving held an assortment of equipment, tools and other supplies along the periphery of the room on one side. A substantial quantity of lumber was stacked in racks near the wall on the other two sides, and what appeared to be recently installed overhead doors ran the length of the fourth wall. Rachel paused and inhaled the piney scent.

  Because Arden wasn’t in sight and the hum of the nearby generator was so loud, she shouted his name. Hunched over, he emerged from a little wooden structure that looked more like an oversize dollhouse than a shed. When he straightened to his full height beside it, he reminded her of an illustration of a giant in a children’s book, and she giggled.

  “If that’s the size of the house, I can only imagine how tiny its shed is.”

  Arden glowered. “It’s a playhouse for an Englischer’s eight-year-old dochder. It might seem frivolous to you, but it’s what the customer ordered and we need the business.”

  Rachel instantly regretted her joke. She wasn’t mocking his work—with its scalloped eaves and miniature window boxes, the tiny house was beautifully designed. It took her by surprise to see him come out of it, that’s all. “I forgot to ask which hospital Ivan is at, the one in Waterville or in Pittsfield?”

  “Neither. It’s the one in Belridge.”

  “Belridge? That must be new since I lived here. Can you tell me how to get there?”

  Arden squinted and rubbed his neck as if it was giving him a headache. “You take 202 through Unity.”

  “And then?” she prompted.

  “Don’t you have PSG?”

  Finding it ironic an Amish person would suggest she use technology, Rachel chuckled. “You mean GPS?”

  “Jah. You should use that. It’s more accurate, and I’m busy.”

  “Oh, okay,” Rachel replied, but Arden had already ducked back into the playhouse. His abrupt departure made her feel foolish. It could have been he was stressed out about his workload, but she got the feeling he was annoyed with her for joking around.

  At the end of the driveway, Rachel let the car’s engine run idle. If she turned right, the same way she came in, she’d head toward the highway. If she turned left, she’d travel directly past Colin’s property. Colin or Hadassah surely would be able to tell Rachel how to get to the hospital, assuming they were home and willing to talk to her. But if they give me the cold shoulder, I might end up blubbering again, and I need to stay as upbeat as I can before visiting Ivan. Without further hesitation, Rachel turned right. If her Amish family and Ivan’s coworker couldn’t be counted on to give her directions, she’d just have to stop at the nearest gas station, where she’d ask an Englisch stranger to help her find her way.

  * * *

  Arden waited until he was certain Rachel had driven away before coming out of the playhouse again. He felt like such a dummkopf in her presence. The rumors he’d heard were proving to be more accurate than not; Rachel was rather smug, giggling at the way he’d botched up that acronym. As for directions to the hospital, he saw the trip in his mind’s eye so clearly he could have led her there blindfolded, but telling her how to get there was another story. Arden might as well have tried to talk her through the Sahara Desert and back again.

  What really irked him, though, was the way she’d looked down her nose at his work on the playhouse. It was one thing for her to be amused by his verbal inadequacies, but Arden took great care to produce high-quality products. Even if it seemed impractical by Amish standards, the playhouse was meaningful to the customer, Mrs. McGregor, and Arden was committed to surpassing her expectations for craftsmanship and service. Not to mention, he was dedicated to doing whatever he could, in good conscience, for the business to prosper.

  And as Arden had just discovered, sometimes that meant completing customers’ orders sooner than originally promised. Mrs. McGregor had come to inquire if he could finish the project the following Friday, a week ahead of schedule. Since it was the end of April and several customers wanted their sheds ready before summer, Arden was juggling other projects simultaneously. But because painting the playhouse was virtually all he needed to do before the project was completed, Arden agreed. Mrs. McGregor subsequently produced two gallons of her daughter’s favorite shade of paint for Arden to use. Lovely Lavender, she’d called it. Or was it Lively Lilac? Either way, it looked purple to him.

  I’ll have to ask Rachel to schedule the earlier delivery, he reminded himself. Sometimes Arden kept so many details in his head he was surprised his skull didn’t tilt to the side, but recording information in his brain was far easier for him than jotting it down on paper.

  As he took a swig of water from his thermal cup, he heard another vehicle in the driveway—too loud to be Rachel’s—and went outside. Two men jumped down from the cab of a large flatbed truck and headed his way.

  The stockier one, who had the name Bob emblazoned on his shirt pocket, said, “The shake shingles will arrive from our Montville site on Tuesday, but as you can see, we’ve brought your two-by-sixes.”

  “That can’t all be mine,” Arden objected, surveying the load.

  The taller, wiry guy snorted. “Funny.”

  Arden wasn’t joking. “I didn’t order that much. Our customers have been choosing pine, so we only need half as much cedar as usual. That looks like twice the amount.”

  “Hang on a sec.” Bob retrieved a clipboard from the cab and brought it to Arden. Tapping it with his knuckle he said, “Yup. Someone named Allen put in the order. Signature’s right here.”

  “Arden,” Arden corrected the man. “That’s me, but that’s not the quantity I ordered.”

  For as much difficulty as he had with reading and writing, Arden didn’t have any problem with math. Knight’s was a new lumberyard; maybe they’d made a mistake. Arden and Ivan had only been contracted with them for a couple of months, so perhaps the employees were confusing theirs with an Englisch business.

  “Your paperwork shows you did. Check for yourself—it’s a photocopy of the order you placed. The note says you mailed it in.” Bob handed the clipboard to Arden.

  Arden distinctly recalled the afternoon he’d tried to phone in the order—the Ordnung allowed cell phones and solar chargers for business use—as he’d done with the previous lumberyard he and Ivan patronized. The clerk insisted he’d have to place the order online, by fax or in person, because they required a customer signature. Arden explained he didn’t have a computer or fax machine and the lumberyard was too far away for his horse to get there in one day, which caused the woman to crack up. When she realized Arden was indeed Amish, she’d apologized profusely.

  “You can make up an order sheet yourself. Just use the product codes from the catalog and indicate the amounts. You don’t even have to write the sizes down, because we can tell exactly what you want by the codes, but don’t forget to sign your name at the bottom.”

  Studying the sheet now, Arden’s mouth went dry. It looked right to him, but then again, he misread things more often than not.

 
After a minute, Bob took the clipboard back. He pointed to the left of the page, “See here? This is the product code for cedar two-by-sixes. This is the amount you ordered. Here’s the product code for the shake shingles, and again, you wrote the amount right beside it.”

  That explained it: Arden had been so concerned about accidentally transposing letters when he copied the product codes from the catalog that he’d proofread them three or four times. Unfortunately, he didn’t pay as careful attention to the quantities. He must have matched the quantity of two-by-sixes with the product code for the shake shingles and vice versa. Red-faced, he admitted his error to Bob.

  “We only need half as much cedar, and we’ll need double the amount of shake shingles.”

  “Doubling the shake shingles won’t be a problem since they haven’t shipped yet,” Bob said. “But if we return half of this load, you’re going to have to pay a handling fee plus the standard mileage rate for us to return it to the yard. Those are the terms of your contract.”

  Arden didn’t know what to do. He and Ivan had budgeted down to the penny for inventory. They couldn’t afford to pay for a surplus like this right now. But it would be a complete waste of money to pay for the drivers to return the wood to the lumberyard.

  “All right. We’ll keep it.”

  When they finished unloading and stacking as much of the lumber as they could on the racks that weren’t already filled with pine, they piled the rest of it on the floor.

  “Per your contract, there’s a 10 percent discount if you pay us now,” Bob told him.

  Arden wished he would have read the contract or that Bob had reminded him of the discount while they were unloading—it would have given him more time to write the check. Arden wrote especially slowly if he felt as if someone was breathing down his neck. His pen hovered over the payee line.

  “How do you spell Knight’s again?” he asked, and the taller guy snickered while Bob dictated the spelling.

  As they sauntered away, Arden heard the wiry man remark to Bob, “I guess someone who graduated from a one-room schoolhouse isn’t going to win any spelling bees, huh?”

  “Maybe not, but he sure does nice work,” Bob replied, gesturing toward the playhouse. “Wish I could afford something like that for my kid. It’s nicer than my own home.”

  Arden’s face was still hot when his sister walked through the door some ten minutes later. “What’s wrong, Grace? Is Mamm okay?”

  “Jah, she’s fine. Rebecca Miller is visiting her, so I came over with cheeseburger supp to put in Ivan’s freezer, along with kuche for his pantry. I know other women in the district will be bringing him meals when he’s discharged from the hospital, but I want him to have plenty to choose from while he’s recovering.”

  “Oh. I, um, don’t know if that’s a gut idea.”

  “Why not? Doesn’t he like cheeseburger supp?”

  “Neh, that’s not it.” Arden knew Ivan hadn’t wanted anyone to find out about Rachel coming, lest Colin interfered and stopped her. Now that Rachel had arrived, Arden figured it was only a matter of time until Colin and his family learned of her presence—and even when they did, there was little they could do about it. Still, he was reluctant to be the one to spill the beans. “His, uh, schweschder is visiting. She’s staying in his haus.”

  “His sister? The schmaert one who became an Englisch nurse?”

  Arden bristled at the mention of Rachel’s intelligence. “Ivan only has one sister. And jah, Rachel’s a nurse.”

  “She’s kumme to take care of him?”

  While Arden would have preferred it if other people believed Rachel had come specifically to take care of Ivan rather than to help Arden with business matters, that wouldn’t explain why she’d arrived when Ivan was still in the hospital. “Jah, and to, uh, help with some of the administrative tasks at the shop—since I’ll be too busy making sheds to do the paperwork.”

  “That’s wunderbaar. Since she’s a nurse, maybe she’ll take a look at the skin on Mamm’s fingers. Is Rachel at the haus now? I could go introduce—”

  “Neh!” It was going to be challenging enough to work with Rachel every day; Arden didn’t want her flaunting her smarts in his home, too. Nor did he want his mother trying to pair them up; she’d been nagging him for nearly two years to go to a matchmaker in a neighboring district in Unity. She claimed she couldn’t go home to heaven in good conscience until both of her children found spouses. Arden invariably replied if that was the case, he had a responsibility to remain single indefinitely. It had become a running joke between them, but Arden sensed his mother was more serious than she let on. Knowing her, it wouldn’t matter that Rachel was no longer Amish—she’d insist Rachel could be wooed back into the fold. Arden, however, was not in a wooing state of mind.

  “Rachel’s not home. If Mamm needs medical care, we’ll take her to the dokder. I don’t want you to ask Rachel for help. For all intents and purposes, she’s an Englischer. We can work with her, and of course we’ll be kind to her, but that doesn’t mean she’s invited to our haus to socialize. Besides, she probably prefers her privacy. In any case, Ivan asked me to keep the news of her arrival to myself, so I trust you’ll do the same.”

  His sister narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t argue. “Okay, but I’m going to go put the supp in Ivan’s fridge so Rachel can enjoy something gut to eat when she comes home, just like you do every evening, Arden. Except she’ll have to eat hers alone.”

  Her point made, Grace tugged the door shut behind her. The force caused the mail to slide from Ivan’s desk for the umpteenth time, as if to emphasize just how much Arden needed Rachel’s help.

  * * *

  Rachel spoke with a nurse before entering Ivan’s room, confirming what she already imagined; for a few days, Ivan’s health had been hanging in the balance. He’d had a severe case of bacterial pneumonia and then suffered a reaction to the antibiotics, rendering it difficult for the doctors to determine the most effective course of treatment. He was still on oxygen and needed to remain in the hospital for several more days, but yesterday there had been indications his condition was finally improving.

  After not seeing him for ten years, the sight of her brother would have moved Rachel deeply even if he hadn’t been lying in a hospital bed, but his pale, manly face and thin, limp body overwhelmed her, despite her professional training. She spent the better part of the afternoon sitting beside him, stroking his dark wispy hair or resting her hand on his arm, praying. Whenever a nurse entered, she’d inquire about Ivan’s medication and symptoms. Although plenty of patients in various stages of pneumonia visited the clinic, she’d never actively cared for them in an ongoing capacity, and she wanted to know what to watch for once Ivan returned home.

  Some time around five o’clock, she must have dozed off, because she was awoken by a slight fluttering beneath her hand. Ivan was reaching to remove his oxygen mask.

  “Neh,” she said, slipping into Deitsch. “Don’t try to talk, Ivan. Just let me look at you.”

  Now that he’d opened his big brown eyes, Rachel spotted a trace of the fourteen-year-old boy—her little brother—he’d been the last time she saw him, and she smiled as she bent forward to give him a hug. “I’m sorry you’ve been so sick. I came as soon as I heard.”

  She felt him nodding against her cheek, and she held him a moment longer before letting go. She pulled her chair closer and peered into his eyes. “I don’t want you to worry about anything at the shop. I’ll stay as long as you need. You just focus on resting and getting better.”

  He nodded and reached for the mask once more. Pulling it up, he asked in a whisper, “Have you seen...” That was all he could manage, so she had to guess what he meant.

  “The workshop? It looks great. So large and professional. You’ve clearly done well.”

  But he shook his head so she guessed again.

  “I’ve met Arden
, jah.” But Ivan closed his eyes to indicate that wasn’t his question, either. “Have I seen Colin and his family?”

  Ivan nodded, wincing. It occurred to Rachel he was worried. But was he worried for her or for Colin and his family? Probably both. Ivan had been put in a difficult position when she left Serenity Ridge; he was so fond of Rachel and yet he was still under Colin and Hadassah’s thumbs. By the time he was an adult and Colin and Hadassah had moved into their own house, Ivan had probably had enough of a challenge convincing his brothers he could start a business without creating more trouble by inviting Rachel home or traveling to visit her.

  “I haven’t seen them yet, neh. But don’t worry, I’ll do my best not to say anything to upset them. I won’t let anything they say upset me, either.” It’s not as if they can upset me more than they have by refusing to have any contact with me for the past ten years. “We all just want you to get better.”

  Ivan nodded, his eyelids drooping. Now that she’d seen him, Rachel was reluctant to let her brother out of her sight again, but he’d rest more soundly without her there. She gave him another hug. “I’m going to go, but I’ll visit again tomorrow afternoon. I’ll call the nursing station and check in on you in the morning, and they can call me any time you want them to, as well.”

  She thought he’d already fallen asleep, but as Rachel turned to leave, Ivan’s fingertips brushed her sleeve. She paused as he lifted his mask a third time. “Denki, Ray-Ray,” he said. It was what he’d called her when he was learning to talk, and the nickname made Rachel smile and tear up at the same time.

  I haven’t cried so much in one day since...since the day I left Serenity Ridge, she thought.

  On the way home, she stopped at a superstore to purchase a cell phone charger and some groceries. She was so weary she grabbed a couple of microwave entrees and didn’t realize her mistake until she was driving out of the parking lot, but she was too tired to turn around. Maybe she could pry the frozen food out of its plastic containers and heat it in the gas oven.