Saving Susannah

by Beverly Bird

  Kim looked at her quickly. “Of course not. Go upstairs. Take a nap.”

  “Well, I mean, I don’t want to leave you alone with her like this.”

  She was such a good kid. And on the heels of that came the other thought that never quite left her: Please, God, don’t let me lose her. “Baby, if you can shut out the noise, I can take care of the kid,” she assured her.

  Susannah nodded, still uncertain.

  “Scoot.”

  She went upstairs. Kim kept walking the baby. Through the living room. To the front door. To the back. Around the kitchen. She held Hannah on her shoulder. No good. She cradled her in her arms. No better. She rocked from side to side, heel to heel. Nothing.

  The house was a disaster. She felt like crying herself. She had undertaken a commitment here, and she was damned well going to live up to her end of the bargain. She wasn’t going to owe Joe Lapp anything. She closed her eyes and gave a little snort of pure despair. She already owed him everything. He was going to bring the whole settlement here next Sunday to have their blood drawn to try to save her daughter’s life.

  She set her jaw. She’d at least keep this house looking as good as Sarah’s sisters had kept it. As soon as Hannah calmed down, she would whip through the place with the vacuum and a dust cloth.

  What vacuum? Vacuums ran on electricity. “Oh, God,” she moaned.

  She veered back through the kitchen. The sink was full of dirty dishes. Soggy bacon still sat in the frying pan. That had been a bust. After an hour, it still hadn’t cooked enough to be edible. Joe and the kids had been in a hurry, and there had been no more time to defy Dinah’s advice and throw a few additional logs into the fire. Kim hadn’t even had a chance to make her own bed, and now Susannah was in it. Finally, at the end of her rope, she went to the foot of the stairs.

  “Suze?” she called softly. There was no answer. She went back to the kitchen and found paper and a pencil, juggling the squalling baby to her other arm to write.

  “Ran down to the pay phone a minute,” she scribbled. “Won’t be long.”

  She strapped the baby into the passenger seat, jury-rigging the seat belt. She went back to the phone booth at a crawl. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. Katya answered the phone at ChildSearch on the second ring.

  “Thank God, I found you.” Kim all but whimpered. “You have to help me.”

  “What’s wrong?” Katya asked, alarmed.

  “What kind of tricks do you have up your sleeve to stop a crying baby?”

  “Does she have diaper rash?” Katya asked.

  “No, no. I know all the motherhood secrets. She’s absolutely fine from head to toe. I need some of your Amish hocuspocus.”

  “Try chamomile tea.”

  “Tea? Won’t the caffeine just wire her up more?”

  “No. Anyway, it’s either that or chopped yellow dock, burdock, dandelion root, black snakeroot and sassafras steeped in wine. And something tells me you can’t handle that.” There was amusement in Katya’s voice.

  “I’ll try the tea,” Kim said quickly. “Where can I find some?”

  “The cupboard to the right of the woodstove.”

  “Joe’s already got some? Great,” she said, relieved.

  “Kim...”

  Something had changed in Katya’s voice. Kim felt her body succumb to an overall stiffening. “What?” she asked warily. What now?

  “Jake had some luck getting blood out of Grete Guenther. She still didn’t understand why she was giving it, but she gave it.”

  “And she doesn’t match, either,” Kim said hollowly.

  “Well, it’s too soon to tell with absolute certainty...” Katya let out her breath and trailed off. “No,” she said honestly. “She doesn’t seem to match. Jake had most of the sample sent to Children’s Hospital for Dr. Coyle’s people to test, but from this end, just on the blood typing, it doesn’t look good. I guess Dr. Coyle will be able to tell you conclusively, but I...I thought it kinder to warn you.”

  There was a moment of quiet. The long-distance phone line crackled. “What am I going to do?” Kim whispered finally, helplessly.

  “There’s still the web site. There’s still the Amish community. Have faith, Kim,” Katya urged.

  Faith. Kim murmured something noncommittal and hung up.

  The chamomile tea worked. Damned if it didn’t work, Kim thought, amazed all over again.

  At half past one, Hannah finally stopped crying. Kim started to set her down in the cradle again, then she thought better of it. Better not rock the boat, she decided. She’d keep holding her for a while, just to be safe.

  She settled down on the sofa and pried off each boot with her opposite toe. It was a struggle. She put her feet up on the coffee table and closed her eyes, giving a heartfelt breath of relief.

  Joe found them that way at three o’clock, both sound asleep.

  When he stepped through the front door, he was startled, then pained, at the sheer quietness of the house. Once, five short months ago, the house would have been alive with laughter and voices as they all burst in after church.

  He assumed the cradle would be upstairs, because it always was. But as he moved slowly and curiously past the living room, he caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye. He stopped cold. Then he forced himself to walk over to it, to peer down into it. His eyes didn’t swerve, didn’t move, remained glued to that small mahogany basket with the frothy white bedding inside. He stared at it as though all the demons of hell would burst from it once he got close enough.

  It was empty.

  He breathed again and looked around, and found them on the sofa. It was like a slap in the face, and it made him reel backward, one step, then two. He stared at them the way he had stared at the cradle, and he had the blasphemous thought that God was getting even with him for sitting through that service this morning, mouthing the prayers and singing the hymns, when all along a big part of his heart agreed with Kimberley: God already knows the mess we’re in.... Bugging Him about it isn’t going to change anything.

  He’d prayed and he’d tried to tell himself that God had already made up His mind to take Sarah. That his own will and desires had had nothing to do with it. Because he was a rational man, and on some level he knew that, although he was having a very hard time making his heart buy it. And if it was true, then he was having a very hard time forgiving God.

  Now, here on his living room sofa, was a woman he wanted in the same carnal way. Oh, not with the adoration and the pure, uncomplicated love he’d felt for Sarah. This was much different. But, he admitted, he craved the heat of this woman—emotionally, and oh, yes, physically. He wanted to feel it sliding over his body, closing over him. That need had grown tenfold in the short time since everyone had left, leaving them alone together in this house.

  His blood suddenly pounded at the idea that their bodies could meet purely for the sake of need. It was a sin, certainly, but he had lived a good life, had always been an honorable man, and look where it had gotten him. He made a strangled sound.

  Kim stirred. “Joe?” she said groggily, opening her eyes. Then she added, “Damn it.”

  “What?” He was startled by her reaction—as though she had read his mind and was disgusted, he thought.

  “I wanted to have everything cleaned up when you got home, but all hell broke loose and...” She trailed off, finally seeing the torment on his face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” he said roughly, turning away.

  “Where are the others?”

  He paused. “You were right about Dinah. She stayed for some singing the teenagers are gathering for at the Eitner farm.”

  “Singing,” Kim repeated.

  “Uh, they all get together around someone’s kitchen table and...sing.”

  “Sounds like a good time,” she said dryly.

  “They flirt.” His heart jerked a little, not so much at the thought of his daughter doing so, but more at the reminder of his own needs in that
department.

  “Gracie?” she asked deliberately, watching his face. “Matt?”

  “At Adam’s. A person would be hard-pressed to separate Matt and Bo for any length of time. Gracie stayed at the Byler’s farm after church.”

  “I see.” She got to her feet. Hannah awoke at the jostling and began crying again. Kim closed her eyes in defeat. “More tea,” she decided. “But first let’s make sure everything else is hunky-dory.” When she opened her eyes and looked again, Joe was gone. “Coward,” she muttered, going upstairs.

  She took Hannah to Dinah’s room because Susannah was still asleep in her own bed. She laid her on the one in there to change her. As soon as she unwrapped the little receiving blanket, she felt her fever.

  “Oh, no.” There was concern first. Then the kick of real fear. Susannah.

  It was, of course, the same bug that Susannah had had. Nothing else made sense. Hannah was so tiny, so vulnerable. Her little body had accepted the germs without fuss.

  Katya had left instructions for the pumpkin tea and that egg stuff. And where there was children’s ibuprofen, there was infant’s ibuprofen. What scared Kim, what made her heart thump and her head suddenly pound, was the fact that Susannah had held the baby in the car just this morning, smothering her little face in comforting kisses. And Susannah had no defenses left against germs at all.

  Suze was going to get sick again. And this time... No, I won’t think about that.

  There was no immediate hope on the horizon. Grete Guenther hadn’t panned out. No! They wouldn’t even do the community thing until next Sunday! And as of yesterday afternoon, the national donor lists hadn’t produced anything. Maybe this time a fever would prove too much. No, no, no!

  Susannah had already been sleeping far too long, she realized, glancing at her watch. This wasn’t her usual catnap. Kim changed Hannah’s diaper quickly. She picked her up again and rushed out into the hall. Joe was just coming up the stairs. “Here,” she said, shoving the baby at him blindly. “Don’t argue about it this time.”

  She knew his first instinct would be to step away and she only hoped to forestall it this once, perhaps even to startle him into holding Hannah without thinking. But his back hit the wall again. He stared at her as though she had somehow betrayed him.

  “Damn it, Joe!” she cried out, at the end of her rope. “Please!”

  “This is not your problem,” he growled. “I didn’t ask you to stay so you could fix it.”

  And just like that, her temper snapped. She felt it come up from the pit of her stomach, something red-hot and fiery. At the same time she felt something pop in her head, like a rubber band, some flimsy thing that had been holding her control together during this whole terrible day.

  “No,” she answered, her voice trembling. “You certainly didn’t, did you? You asked me to stay so you could keep hiding from her. Well, you’re right. That’s not my problem. I don’t give a damn—unless and until it threatens my daughter!”

  “This isn’t any of your—what are you talking about?” he asked, at least looking uncertain now.

  “She’s sick! Hannah’s sick.” She thumped him in the chest with her free hand. “I need to go check on Susannah. She was holding Hannah all morning. And I’m not taking this baby in there with me to expose Susannah all over again, if by some miracle she’s dodged the bullet so far!”

  “Just...put her in the cradle...”

  “She’s sick! She’s crying!” she shouted. “Damn it, Joe, have a heart!”

  His face went white.

  Oh, damn him! she thought. Why did she feel guilty? Why did she feel that she was putting him through absolute hell? This was his daughter! And she had to take care of her own!

  But her heart went out to him, though she wanted to stay furious. Underneath his fear, underneath his own hurt, he did have a heart. A big one. And she was battering it.

  Kim stepped around him unsteadily. She took Hannah downstairs to the cradle. Then she headed for her own room again, dragging an angry hand under her eyes, disgusted by the tears that were threatening.

  “Grete doesn’t match, either,” she whispered when she passed Joe a second time—a halfhearted explanation for falling apart. “I found out this morning that Grete Guenther doesn’t match. I can’t take much more...you know, the hope, then the defeat. It’s like being on a roller coaster. And I’m getting so tired of the ride.”

  He wasn’t paying attention to her, she realized. He was too caught up in his own nightmare, the one she had plunged him back into with her angry words. Any other man would probably have throttled her, she knew, and that shook her even more. Because Joe was just staring down the stairs, where Hannah was crying from the living room. Kim gave a hoarse sound that was supposed to be a laugh, but it came out more like a gasp.

  “What a pair we are,” she muttered, turning away. And maybe they were, but even contemplating that terrified her. “Let me check on Susannah,” she continued, “then I’ll go get Adam. He can take care of the baby while I run back to the drugstore. Hannah can’t take the same medicine we got for Suze. She’s too little.”

  Joe finally looked up. “Mariah can—”

  Kim shook her head. “No,” she interrupted. “Leave Mariah out of this. She doesn’t need to be exposed to this thing, either, not in her condition.”

  He blanched even more. “No, of course not.”

  Kim cracked open the bedroom door. And she could have sworn she smelled the fever in the room, like some kind of vile presence, laughing at her, mocking her, before she even stepped inside.

  “Kimberley,” Joe said.

  She looked back at him. And somehow, without meaning to, she fell right into his eyes. His depthless eyes, filled with too much sorrow and shame for her to bear. And yet, it was a warm place there, she realized headily, as if her head were swimming. Maybe they did make a crazy pair, but there was something strong and bolstering about having company in the middle of all this hell God had created.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

  She took a shaky breath, her mind clearing. “I’m not the one who needs to forgive you, Joe,” she said softly, then she went into the room.

  Chapter 13

  The day was interminable. Barely fifteen minutes after Kim had determined that Susannah was indeed ill again, just after she finished pouring ibuprofen down her throat, Gracie dragged herself listlessly home.

  Kim met her on the stairs. “Oh, no,” she groaned with one look at her face.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Gracie complained.

  “Okay. Okay,” Kim said, rallying. She looked at the bottle of ibuprofen she still held. “Go crawl into bed. Just let me grab a clean spoon, and I’ll be there in a sec.”

  She found Joe in the kitchen. He did not have the baby. She could still hear Hannah crying from the living room. He appeared panicked.

  “Did I just hear Gracie?” he asked.

  Kim nodded. “I’ve already sent her to bed. She’s sick, too.”

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder as she got a spoon from the drawer. “Calm down, Joe. It’s not the plague. It’s just some virus. Look how quickly Susannah bounced back.” The first time, she thought. How much more could Suze withstand?

  He stared at her. “How can you be so calm?”

  “Because of the thought of what might happen if I fall apart. You’re sure not going to win any awards in the common sense department right now.”

  She amazed him, he thought, stepping aside so she could pass through the door again. Half an hour ago, he’d thought she would crumble, and he wasn’t sure he could have blamed her. Guilt had been slamming through him ever since their altercation on the stairs.

  He started to go after Kim, when Dinah came wandering in the front door. And his first reaction—pure relief because she would take care of Hannah now—made him feel ashamed, too.

  “Why’s the baby screaming?” Dinah asked immediately.<
br />
  “She’s sick.”

  “Oh, no.” Then her face hardened. “So where’s Miss I’ll-Fix-Anything?”

  “Dinah,” Joe warned sharply.

  But she was already following the sound of Hannah’s cries into the living room. “She’s dirtied herself! Why didn’t Kim change her?”

  “It’s the same bug Susannah had,” Joe snapped. “And Susannah has it again. Right now Kimberley is taking care of Gracie.”

  “Oh. Oh.” Dinah’s face flushed a little.

  “She’s here to help us, Dinah.”

  “I’m sorry, all right?”

  “The least you could do is show her a little support, a little gratitude—”

  “I said I was sorry!” Dinah cried. And Hannah just kept howling.

  “Stop it!” Kim shouted from the door. “Both of you, just...stop it.”

  They snapped around to look at her.

  “Why did you come home?” Kim asked, diverted from whatever she had been about to say by the unexpected appearance of Dinah.

  Dinah looked sheepish. “I don’t feel so wonderful, either.” Kim sank into the nearest chair. “Well, that’s great. That’s just great.” Then she startled both of them by laughing. It was an edgy sound, but it was still a laugh. She raked the short part of her hair back from her forehead. “Okay,” she said. “We need a plan of attack here.”

  “What if we all come down with it at once?” Joe asked worriedly.

  “Then we’ll be a sorry bunch, indeed.” Kim sat forward and rested her elbows on her knees, still holding her head. “I won’t get it,” she said finally.

  “You don’t know that,” Joe argued.

  “As a matter of fact, I pretty much do. I never get what Suze brings home. At least, not after the first few weeks of it, you know, when she started getting sick all the time. I think my body’s just toughened up to the assault,” she added with a weak smile. “Either that, or that God you keep touting has a few streaks of kindness in Him.”

  Neither of them answered that.

  “Anyway, let’s look at what we’ve got here. Susannah and Gracie have both had ibuprofen and that antidiarrheal stuff. If that doesn’t work within the next half hour, we’ll move on to pumpkins and eggs. In fact, I’m going to start with that on Hannah.” She gave another giddy laugh at Joe’s surprised expression. “Why give a baby chemicals if you don’t have to? Besides, if one world’s methods are good, two are better,” she quipped.