by Anna Schmidt
“Ja. Life can be that way.”
They were quiet for a moment. Sally closed her eyes, and Rachel thought perhaps she was asleep. But then she murmured, “Did you ever hear the saying that God doesn’t give people more than they can handle?”
“I have heard similar words.” Rachel wondered where the girl’s thoughts might be headed.
“He must think I’m like the strongest person ever,” she murmured and closed her eyes again.
Rachel caught the shadow of movement outside, and then she saw Ben silhouetted in the frosted glass panel of the door. Very quietly he turned the handle and stepped inside.
“I can’t speak for God,” Rachel continued, “but I do know that you are a very strong girl and that you have a good many equally strong people around you helping you find your way through this.” She used one of the sterile pads on the side table to wipe away the single tear that trickled from the corner of Sally’s closed eyes. “One of them is here now,” Rachel whispered. “So I’ll leave you to visit with your uncle.”
Sally opened her eyes and gave Ben a crooked smile. “ ’Bout time you showed up,” she said.
“I do have other patients, you know. People who are actually sick instead of malingering,” he bantered as he pulled the chair closer. He took Sally’s hand, and his voice cracked a little as he added, “And it’s way past time that you came back to us, kiddo.”
Rachel moved around the end of the bed. “I’ll stop by tomorrow if that’s okay.”
“Rachel?”
“Ja?”
“Danke,” Sally murmured.
“Get some rest,” Rachel replied. “Both of you.”
“Bossy, isn’t she?” Rachel heard Ben tell Sally, and then as she stepped into the hall and the door swung closed behind her she heard Sally giggle.
Chapter 20
After Rachel left, Ben sat with Sally until Sharon and Malcolm returned.
“You and Rachel would make a good pair,” Sally announced almost as soon as Rachel had said good-bye, promising to stop by again.
“She’s Mennonite,” he reminded her.
“And?”
“And I’m not.”
“Details,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“All right, let’s look at this another way. If Rachel and I were to get together you do realize that Justin would be your stepcousin, then?”
“Fine with me.”
“Rachel is my friend, honey. Like she’s your friend and—”
“She’s a better match for you than Darcy is.”
“Darcy and I are only friends as well.”
Sally let out a bark of a laugh. “Yeah?” She pointed to her eyes shielded by the tinted glasses. “These are rolling right now. As Dad says, ‘If you believe she’s just a friend, then there’s some real estate in the Everglades that I’d like to sell you.’ ”
“It’s true,” Ben protested.
“Maybe you think that’s the deal, but my money is on the fact that Darcy thinks it’s a whole lot more.”
“You’re a kid. What do you know about such things?”
“Apparently more than you do. Men,” she sighed dramatically as if he and the rest of the species were a lost cause.
That was the moment Malcolm and Sharon arrived. Ben made his excuses, wanting to give them time to enjoy Sally, whom he could see was tiring fast and would soon be asleep. Sharon followed him into the hallway.
“Thank you, Ben. I don’t know how you did it but …”
“I didn’t. It’s Rachel you have to thank. And apparently that goes double for me. It’s good to have both my sister and my niece back among the living.” He hugged her and then gave her a little shove back toward Sally’s room. “Go enjoy your daughter—and do not listen to anything she has to say about Rachel and me.”
His sister’s laughter followed him down the hall. He was glad to hear that she found the idea of a romantic attachment between Rachel and him as ludicrous as he did.
Or was it really so farfetched? The truth was that he was far more attracted—romantically speaking—to Rachel than he was to Darcy. And under other circumstances—if she weren’t Mennonite—he might have asked her out by now. Certainly between the times they had been together at work and then at his sister’s house, they had forged a relationship, a friendship.
He found her easy to be with, and once she’d gotten past her initial nerves at starting a new job in a new city where she basically knew no one, she’d seemed at ease with him as well. So, why not ask her out? Why not suggest that they meet for coffee?
He headed down to the spiritual care offices. Eileen was getting ready to leave for the day when he entered.
“Paul’s already left,” she said.
“Is Rachel in?”
Eileen nodded toward the cubicle next to hers at the same time that Rachel said, “Right here.” She stepped around the barrier. “Has something happened to Sally?” she asked.
“No. Thanks to you, Sally is doing a whole lot better—at least emotionally speaking. And so are her parents and uncle.”
Eileen was taking her time collecting her purse, lunch bag, and a dog-eared paperback novel. She cast furtive glances from Ben to Rachel as a small smile played over her lips, a smile that Ben saw her bite back as she turned finally and started for the door. “Well, if there’s nothing you need, I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
“Have a good evening,” Ben said, holding the door for her.
“Eileen,” Rachel said, “remember I won’t be in tomorrow. I have to be in Tallahassee for the day.”
“That’s right. Good luck with that.”
“What’s in Tallahassee?” Ben asked once Eileen was gone.
“I’m meeting with my supervisor from the certification board. Thank you for typing my paper. I’d like to repay you.”
“You already have.”
She lifted her eyebrows. “How?”
“Sally.”
“Oh, that is my job. Sometimes I think that I gain as much as the patients and families do when there is a breakthrough. Has Sharon come back already?”
Ben smiled. “Yeah. You did wonders getting her to leave for the little time that she did. She had changed clothes, showered. She looked better, and when she saw Sally sitting up …”
“Sally is a fighter. She needed some time to regroup. We all do.”
“Even you?”
“Of course I do.”
“I don’t know. You always seem so composed and calm whatever the situation.”
Her cheeks glowed with rising color. “I am not so calm all the time. Ask Justin.”
“I’d rather ask you. How about joining me for a cup of coffee before you head home?”
She glanced at the wall clock above Eileen’s desk. “Thank you, but I need to be at home. I sent Justin on ahead to start working on the gardens. I want everything to look especially nice when Sally comes home.”
“You do know that it won’t really matter to her—or any of them. Getting her home is the main thing.”
“Ja. But it will matter to me, and it’s a way that Justin and I can let them know we are thinking of them.”
“Then I’ll help.” He opened the door and waited. “Ready?”
She didn’t move. “I … the bus …”
“Now, why would anyone stand around on a hot day like this waiting for a bus when she could ride in a convertible?”
“We Mennonites are plain people, Ben. A car is simply a vehicle to get us from one place to another, same as a bus. I would not want others seeing me ride in a convertible car. Something so … showy is not our way.”
“And yet I seem to recall that you accepted a ride the other night,” he reminded her.
She blushed. “That was … it was late and Justin was home alone and …”
“Got it. Then let’s go wait for that bus.”
As he paid his fare, Ben realized that he could not remember the last time he’d ridden a city bus. He’d probably been
in college at the time. He’d forgotten a lot about the diversity of the riders—each with his or her unique story. In his college days he had enjoyed speculating about each person—who they were, where they were headed, what they were thinking as they stared straight ahead or out the window.
“You know, when I was in med school and used to take the bus between classes and the hospital,” he told Rachel as they sat next to each other midway back on the long bus, “I remember having such a deep respect for the people around me. In my mind they were the kind of unsung heroes we barely notice in this country.”
“What do you mean?”
“Hardworking folks trying to make it day-to-day. I imagined that in many cases they were coming or going from a job they found unfulfilling but that they worked because they needed the work. I always wondered about their dreams.”
“In what way?”
“What did they really want out of this life? What had they once dreamed of achieving?”
She was quiet for a long moment. “And what dreams did you have in those days, Ben? I mean, why did you wish to be a doctor?”
It had been so long since Ben had thought about those days, those years when his only intent had been to get away from his father’s house. The rest had simply fallen into place, and for the first time he realized that he had not chosen medicine at all. “Becoming a doctor was a way out.”
“Of what?”
He shrugged and grinned at her as the bus pulled to the curb to discharge and pick up more passengers. “How about you? How did you decide to become a nurse?”
She ducked her head shyly, but he saw that she was smiling. “I’m afraid I was a little rebellious as a girl,” she admitted.
“You? I find that impossible to believe.”
“It’s true. My parents despaired for me, and they could not have been more relieved when James started courting me. They saw him as this steadfast young man who would surely set me on the right path once we married. They didn’t even worry that he was older than I was. In their minds that gave him the maturity that I sorely lacked.”
“So you married James and then what? How did nursing school fit in?”
“I graduated before James and I married. He thought that having my degree was a good thing because I would be able to serve the community.”
Ben stood up as the bus neared their stop. He offered Rachel his hand and noticed that she hesitated a moment before taking it. Once they were off and walking toward his sister’s place, he continued the conversation. “So you and James got married and Justin came along….”
A cloud of sadness passed over her features so fleetingly that he thought he must have been seeing things. But she did not look at him as she changed the subject. “You have turned the tables here, Ben. We were talking about you and how you came to be a doctor.”
Was she changing the focus back on him because she was still grieving for her late husband so much that the mere mention of his name brought her such sadness? “There was no real plan. I mean, becoming a doctor was never something I consciously thought about. The pieces kind of fell into place and here I am.”
“There was a plan,” she said. “No one accidentally becomes a doctor.” She opened the filigreed wrought iron gate that led to the path next to the driveway then looked back at him. “You may struggle to accept this, but God always has a plan for us.”
“What I struggle with, Rachel, is why God’s plans seem to include making kids like Sally suffer.” He did not wait for her answer but trudged up the path ahead of her, calling out to Justin who was sweeping the flagstone sidewalk.
Rachel went first to the guesthouse to put on an apron and make a pitcher of lemonade. She carried the pitcher and a stack of three glasses out to the gardens and then set to work raking the debris that Ben and Justin had trimmed from some overgrown shrubs into a pile. All the while she was very aware of Ben’s nearness. The way he had rolled back his sleeves to expose forearms that were surprisingly tan and muscular for one who worked indoors. The graceful way he moved as he stretched to cut branches that Justin could not reach. The sound of his voice coaching Justin to shape the shrub as he trimmed it.
Not for the first time it struck her that he would be a very good parent, and she wondered again why he had never married. His devotion to Sally was obvious, as was his care and concern for all of his patients. But they were all someone else’s children. When a man loved children as much as Ben obviously did, why would he not be anxious to find a wife and raise a family of his own?
She gathered the clippings and deposited them in a rolling cart to be taken to the compost bin hidden behind the shed. She paused to wipe her brow. Justin and Ben were working side by side the way Justin and James had worked back in Ohio.
Ohio. All day she had worried about the meeting with Justin’s teacher, knowing that the issue would not even have come up if Justin had been attending the small Mennonite school near their farm. Once again she asked herself if she had made a mistake in coming here. In bringing Justin to this place and exposing him to a world he was unprepared for, had she done what was best for him, or for herself?
It had all seemed so right in the beginning—as if God were leading her to this place, this job, this life. But what if instead she had allowed her grief to rule her decisions, her need to escape the memories of the farm that she and James had shared with his parents? What if instead of facing the future God had set out for her, she had run away and now Justin was paying the price?
“Mom?”
She shielded her eyes from the setting sun. “Ja.”
“Are we gonna eat?”
Rachel smiled. Some things did not change, like the appetite of a twelve-year-old boy. “Ja. We will eat.”
“Ben too?”
“Ben too.”
Darcy was mystified. Ben’s car was still parked in its usual spot, and yet he was nowhere to be found in the hospital. She had lingered as long as she could, keeping an eye on the parking garage exit from her office window while she worked on reports for the upcoming board meeting.
The last she’d seen of Ben he’d been on his way to see Sally. She’d actually gone to the children’s wing on some excuse but with the sole purpose of running into Ben at the end of the workday, hoping he might suggest they grab a bite to eat together. But that had been well over an hour ago. She picked up the phone and punched in the number for the nurses’ station outside Sally’s room.
“Is Dr. Booker still with his niece?” she asked.
“He left a while ago. It’s just the parents in there now,” the voice on the other end assured her. “Do you want me to page him?”
“No, thanks.” She hung up and drummed her manicured nails on her desk as she stared out the window at the parking garage. Maybe she’d missed him after all.
With a heavy sigh, she packed her briefcase with the files and reports she still needed to review and hooked the bulging bag over one shoulder. She retrieved her handbag from the drawer of her desk and headed for the parking garage.
Ben’s car was still there, so she retraced her steps to the hospital lobby. “Have you seen Dr. Booker tonight?” she asked the security guard sitting at the information desk.
“Yes ma’am. He left a little while ago.”
“But his car …”
“He took the bus.”
The bus?
“He and the new chaplain lady.”
“I see.” But Darcy didn’t see at all. Why would Ben take a bus unless his car had a problem and even then, why not call for a mechanic? And why on earth would he get on a bus with that woman?
“I expect he’ll be back directly,” the guard continued, clearly wanting to be of help. “His car’s here, after all, and Doc Booker does take pride in that car of his.”
He grinned at Darcy, and she tried hard to find a smile to offer in return. “Thank you,” she murmured and headed outside.
“I’ll let him know you were looking for him,” the guard called after her.
&
nbsp; Darcy walked blindly past the valet parking booth where two employees were busy helping visitors. Without any true destination in mind she walked out to the street and waited for the light to change. She saw the OPEN sign flashing in the family-owned café where she and Ben had shared a few late-night meals of scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee. From the window she would be able to see him return to get his car. It would be the most natural thing in the world for her to call out to him. After all, how many times had he teased her about keeping doctor’s hours?
It was after seven, and the café was nearly deserted. She waved to Millie, the owner’s wife, who was wiping the counter. “Sit anywhere,” the woman said.
Darcy chose a booth near the door with a view of the entrance to the hospital. She took out her laptop and one of the folders. “Just coffee,” she said when Millie offered her a menu.
Only when she heard a bus slow to turn onto the circular drive did she glance up from her work. A few more customers came and went, but Darcy barely noticed them. She was on her third cup of coffee and well aware that she should probably switch to decaffeinated when someone entered the café, started toward a stool at the counter, and then came over to her booth.
“Working pretty late, aren’t you?”
The very last person Darcy had expected to see that night was Zeke Shepherd.
Chapter 21
Justin liked the doctor. He reminded him of his dad. Not in the way he looked of course. Except for both having dark hair, the two men didn’t look at all alike. His dad’s eyes had been so blue that his mom always said it was like looking at the sky on a clear summer day. Ben’s eyes were kind of a mix of green and gold. Eyes that looked at you like he was really interested in anything you might have to say. Dad used to look at Justin that way.
Justin missed the talks he and his dad used to have. Talks about how things were going, what Justin thought about stuff, things like that. But that evening working together in the gardens, Ben had seemed really interested in what Justin had to say about school and then about how he was feeling about living in Florida now that he’d been here a couple of months.