Hidden Mercies

by Serena B. Miller

  Before his eyes, he saw Grace shake off her shock and turn into a professional. “What do you know so far, Claire?”

  “Full term. She’s never seen a doctor.”

  She managed to get Zillah to her feet. Grace got beneath the girl’s other arm, supporting her.

  “I brought the baby home for Maam and Daed. I want them to keep it.” Then Zillah staggered and went into another teeth-clenching contraction. When it was over, she gasped for breath before she said. “I don’t want it.”

  “BP?” Grace asked. Claire answered that it was 220 over 130.

  “Oh no!” Grace said under her breath.

  “Levi!” Grace shouted. “Come back in here and help us lift her. Tom, bring the car as close to the house as you can. Maddy, grab an armload of clean towels, a sheet, anything you can find. Hurry!”

  Tom rushed to bring the car right up to the house. He saw the women half carrying Zillah out to the porch. Then, at Grace’s direction, Levi swept Zillah up in his arms and carried her down the porch stairs.

  “I loved you,” Zillah said, her arms wrapped around Levi’s neck. “If you’d married me like I wanted, this wouldn’t be happening.”

  “You never loved anyone on earth but yourself,” Levi said with disgust, as he deposited her in the backseat.

  It all came together now. He remembered Levi telling him, while they were working on the tractor together, about the bishop’s daughter with the strange name who had tried to force him into marriage by pretending to be pregnant by him. The Swartzentruber church and her father had taken her word over Levi’s. It had ultimately caused him to leave the church altogether—which had precipitated Claire’s departure as well.

  Grace climbed in beside Zillah. Claire sat backward on the front seat, leaning over the back to help Grace.

  “Drive!” Grace commanded.

  He spun gravel getting out of there.

  “Try not to tense up, Zillah. Relax. Breathe.” Claire was right beside his ear, coaching the girl. “Like this.” Claire began to pant, demonstrating. “Short, shallow breaths. That’s it. You are doing so good.”

  He concentrated hard on the road, driving so much faster than was safe. Praying hard that there would be no Swartzentruber buggy somewhere up ahead, practically invisible in the dark due to their rigid rules against reflective triangles or battery-operated lights.

  Whether it was prayer, or the fact that no courting buggies were usually out on a Monday evening, he had nearly a clear shot all the way to Millersburg—having to swerve only once to avoid hitting a man riding horseback. The man had been wise enough to hang a couple of battery-operated blinking lights on his saddle. Claire nearly ended up in his lap, something he would welcome under other circumstances—but not tonight.

  He heard a newborn cry, but could not allow himself to take his eyes off the road.

  Guttural noises filled the car as Zillah strained.

  “There’s a second baby!” Grace cried. “Here, take the first one, Grace.”

  “I thought I heard two heartbeats, but I wasn’t sure,” Claire said.

  “You’re doing good, Zillah,” Claire encouraged. “We’re almost there.”

  “Here comes the next one,” Grace cried. “Oh, she has a little girl and a little boy!”

  A few seconds later, Claire turned around and sat facing the front with a naked, wet newborn baby in each arm.

  “One more big push, Zillah,” Grace said. “Then you’re done, sweetie.”

  “I’m not your sweetie.” Zillah then gave a loud grunt.

  He tried not to think of the mess that was no doubt in his backseat right now. His job was to get them there safely, not worry about hygiene.

  “Here are the towels Maddy put in.” Claire threw two faded, clean towels over the seat.

  With two babies squalling, Claire had to juggle to wrap each one in a towel. While the afterbirth was being expelled in the backseat of his new car, Tom just tried not to wreck it.

  The babies, expertly wrapped into tiny terry-cloth cocoons, settled down. He heard the blood pressure cuff being pumped up again in the backseat, and then heard it being ripped off.

  “What is it now?” Claire asked over her shoulder.

  “Two thirty over one forty.”

  Claire gasped. He didn’t blame her. Even with his limited training, he knew those were terrible numbers.

  “What are you two talking about?” Zillah cried. “What do those numbers mean?”

  “She’s going into a seizure,” Grace said. “Hurry, Tom.”

  They were approaching the middle of Millersburg now, only a few blocks from the hospital, but a red light blocked his way. He quickly glanced to either side and gunned the car through.

  Just as he entered the drive leading up to the Pomerene Hospital ER, he heard Grace say, “We’re losing her, Claire!”

  • • •

  Although Grace had saved her life the day she was shot, Claire remembered little of it. Her experience with Grace had always been in her own, small, domestic sphere, where Grace was nearly always at a disadvantage. This was the first time she had ever seen Grace fighting to save a life. It was obvious the moment they hit the portico of the ER that her daughter-in-law knew exactly what she was doing.

  In the time it took Claire to maneuver herself and the babies safely out of the car, Grace had commandeered a gurney and two orderlies to help her lift Zillah’s body upon it. Then, as Claire watched, her valiant, pregnant daughter-in-law climbed onto the gurney, straddled Zillah’s body, placed both hands in the middle of her chest, and began to apply CPR.

  “Come on, Zillah! Come on!” she heard Grace say. “Breathe!! You have two beautiful babies to raise. Breathe!”

  Without missing a beat, she continued rhythmically compressing the girl’s chest, fighting to save Zillah’s life, as two orderlies, one on each side of the gurney, exploded through the ER doors.

  Half in shock at everything that had transpired in the past few minutes, Claire stood there, a baby in each arm, knowing that for as long as she lived, she would never forget the image of Grace doing exactly what she had been trained to do—save lives.

  “Looks to me like you’ve got an armful.” She hadn’t realized that a male nurse was beside her. “How about I take one of these little ones and we’ll go up to the nursery and let the pediatrician on call take a look at them.”

  Gratefully, she handed the little boy baby over. The nurse leaned down and spoke through the open car door to Tom. “Sir, would you mind moving your car? We never know when someone else might need this spot in a hurry.”

  • • •

  Tom decided that he had had his fill of hospitals. If he never saw the inside of another hospital, it would be fine with him. Eventually, Claire came out of a back room. Her face was expressionless and her shoulders sagged. She sat down beside him.

  “How is she?” He was afraid he knew the answer.

  “If only these girls knew how important checkups are when they are pregnant,” Claire said. “All of this could have been prevented. We could have saved her so easily if this had been caught in time.”

  It was then that he knew Zillah, with her snake tattoo, bright top, and lime-green flip-flops . . . in spite of Grace’s heroic efforts . . . had not made it.

  “What about the babies?”

  “They’re fine.” Claire said.

  At that moment, Levi and two Amish people Tom had never seen before came through the emergency room doors. The man and his wife appeared to be in their late fifties or early sixties. From the width of the man’s hat, and the oversize black bonnet of the woman, he knew they were Swartzentruber.

  “Hello, Mary.” Claire rose and greeted them. “Bishop Weaver.”

  “Our daughter?” Bishop Weaver asked. “She is here?”

  “She is here,” Claire said.

  The bishop’s wife leaned forward, eager for information. “She is alive?”

  “The doctors and nurses tried very hard, but they we
re not able to save her.”

  There was a quick intake of breath as the bishop absorbed this blow. His wife’s face drained of color.

  “How is it that my daughter died?”

  Claire pressed her lips together for a moment, as though wishing she did not have to say the words, but the words did come.

  “Eclampsia brought on by childbirth,” she said.

  “Our daughter was pregnant?” The bishop frowned and glanced at his wife.

  Mary ignored him. She grasped Claire’s arm and gave it a little shake. “Does the child live?”

  Tom could only imagine the pain this careful, solemn man was feeling. He knew his people. The death of Bishop Weaver’s wayward daughter was only slightly worse in the bishop’s eyes than the fact that she was pregnant. Mary was another matter. According to what Levi had told him, Zillah had been an only child, born to parents old enough to have given up hope of ever having children. The fact that there might be a child was of utmost importance to Mary.

  “We were able to save the babies,” Grace said in a rush. “She had a little girl and a little boy. They are full-term and healthy.”

  The man and woman looked at each other as though they could not believe their ears.

  “Twins?” They both spoke at once.

  “She was trying to bring them home to you. She said that she wanted you to have them.”

  The bishop’s wife grabbed her husband’s hand.

  “And her husband?” Bishop Weaver asked. “What of him?”

  “We never learned who the . . . father is,” Claire said. “Zillah would not tell us that. All she said was that she was trying to bring her baby back to you and her mother.”

  Bishop Weaver squared his shoulders. “May we see our daughter now . . . and these . . . grandchildren?”

  “Of course,” Claire said. “I will take you to Zillah first. Grace is upstairs in the nursery with the babies.”

  After they left, Levi collapsed with a sigh into the seat next to him.

  “Something tells me there is a longer story than you told me behind all of this,” Tom said.

  Levi nodded. “Zillah was beautiful on the outside, but not so beautiful on the inside. I was never interested in her and she could not accept that from a man. She decided she was in love with me, but I knew I was simply a challenge. She plagued me for years. When she saw that her lies and the reality of the Meidung would not force me to marry her, she ran away and told her parents she was never coming back.

  “Zillah’s mind was not something I ever wanted to understand. I am guessing that she simply did not want the responsibility of caring for a child.”

  “Did all this happen before or after you met Grace?”

  “The Meidung came after Grace came to live with Elizabeth. She and I were already friends. I think her presence in my life may have precipitated Zillah’s lies.”

  “Grace knew all of this?”

  “Grace knew everything. She and Elizabeth believed me and accepted me when no one else did. Even my mother reluctantly obeyed the bishop at first.”

  “After what I’ve seen tonight, I can understand why you fell in love with that wife of yours.”

  “Oh?” Levi glanced at him.

  “I just watched her fight like a tiger to save the life of a woman who hated her and tried to destroy you. She was magnificent.”

  “Yes, that is my Grace.” Levi’s face softened. “She is something, that one is.”

  chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  After what had happened between Levi and Zillah, Claire had some major issues with Ezra Weaver, but never would she have wished something like this on the bishop and his wife.

  He stood as still as a statue, staring at his daughter’s body. There was a sheet draped over her chest and midsection, but the snake tattoo on her leg was exposed. Claire automatically reached to pull the sheet down to cover it.

  “Don’t,” he said.

  Mary started making a soft keening sound in the back of her throat. Zillah, as an only child, had been given more than most Swartzentruber children. Claire had never been able to decide if Zillah had become the person she was because they had spoiled her or if she was simply born with an ugliness inside her. Either way, it did not matter now. Nothing mattered now except the babies, and she was not sure the bishop would accept them.

  Mary got control of herself, and the keening stopped. “Please, Claire,” she said. “I want a basin of water and a cloth. Do they have something like that here?”

  “Mary.” The bishop’s voice held a warning. “I do not think you should . . .”

  Claire saw something she thought impossible.

  Mary whirled on him, her face a mask of despair and grief. “You will not forbid me to wash my own child!”

  Bishop Weaver backed down in the face of Mary’s anger. “Is that permitted, Claire?”

  She did not know. She looked for direction from the nurse who had been standing nearby.

  The nurse, a young redhead about Grace’s age with the name Karen on her badge, was struggling to hold her composure.

  “Of course it is permitted. I will get everything you need.”

  The sight of Mary gently washing the dirt from her daughter’s face was something Claire would never forget. Nor would she soon forget the sight of Bishop Weaver, standing ramrod stiff, expressionless, looking on as tears coursed down his cheeks.

  • • •

  “How is everything going back there?” Tom asked, as Claire sat down in a chair opposite him and Levi.

  “Grace has taken Ezra and Mary up to the nursery to see the grandchildren.”

  “Are the babies all right?” Levi asked.

  “They are healthy.”

  Tom could not remember Claire ever looking as wrung out as she was tonight, not even the night they brought Maddy back from the Tinker place.

  “Can I get you something, Claire? Something to eat, maybe? Or drink?”

  She shook her head. “I want nothing right now.”

  “How were the bishop and Mary?” Levi asked.

  “Do you remember how humbled he was when he realized he had made a mistake in believing his daughter instead of you?”

  “I will never forget that day.”

  “I believe he will walk with even greater humility before God and before his church after what I just witnessed.”

  “Zillah’s death or her pregnancy?” Levi asked.

  “Neither. Our former bishop and many of our people have sometimes judged non-Amish with yardsticks they should not.”

  “What do you mean?” Tom said, although he thought he knew where Claire was going with this.

  “Those two babies Zillah brought home for Ezra and Mary to raise?”

  “Yes.”

  “They are very beautiful, and by the grace of God, they are healthy, but I think the bishop will have to change his mind about some very important things.”

  “In what way?” Levi asked.

  “If they are to love these babies as they deserve to be loved,” Claire said, “the bishop and his wife will have to learn to love someone who does not share their own skin color.”

  “Oh.” Levi absorbed this. “Do you think they can do it?”

  “Mary will, and with no thought. Ezra?” Claire shrugged. “I do not know. It will be a tragedy if he cannot make himself bend.”

  “And if he cannot?” Tom said.

  “Then someone else in their church might take them in if the bishop allows it. If no one else wishes to do so . . . I will ask permission to raise them.”

  Tom was practically speechless. “With all that you have to do, and all the children you already support, you would ask for these two babies?”

  “Of course.”

  It was her unhesitant “of course” that broke down the last final floodgates of love he felt for this woman—and he knew exactly what he had to do about it.

  chapter TWENTY-NINE

  “Claire sent over some lentil soup.” Tom handed a quart jar to
Jeremiah, whom he’d found pitching hay down from the haymow. It was obvious from the overwhelming smell that his father had been mucking out manure earlier that morning. “She said you don’t have to worry about getting the jar back to her.”

  “Set it over there.” Jeremiah climbed down a ladder and began forking fresh, loose straw into a stable that had been shoveled out. “That girl always was the best cook. I’ll have Faye warm it up when she sets our dinner out.”

  “Faye?”

  He had not known that Faye was coming to visit.

  “Faye’s my only daughter,” Jeremiah said. “She and her husband are visiting for a couple of days. They moved south to Gallia County a few years back.” He threw another pitchfork full of hay into the stable. “The land’s a lot cheaper down there, they say. They wanted me to sell this place and go with them, but I didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Jeremiah folded both hands over the top of the pitchfork handle and rested his chin on them. “Because I figure Tobias might come back and need it someday.”

  This was the moment he had been waiting for. He knew in his bones that this was the right time to tell his father that Tobias had come home, and that it wasn’t necessary to try to keep the farm going for him anymore. It was going to be such a relief to have that off his chest and his conscience. His father might tell him to leave—but at least the truth would finally be out in the open. Then he would go in and see his baby sister and . . .

  “Who is this?” a man said. “You did not tell us you were expecting company, Jeremiah.” Tom saw a flicker of disdain in his father’s eyes.

  “This is Tom Miller, my neighbor.” Jeremiah picked up his pitchfork and began tossing hay. Tom could tell that his father had contempt for the man, just by the way he turned his back on him. “And this is Faye’s husband, Ephraim, my son-in-law.”

  • • •

  Claire was taking laundry off the line when he got back home and she didn’t see him at first. He watched her, enjoying the grace of the scene. If there was any prettier domestic task to find a woman involved in, he didn’t know what it was. Fortunately, it was something he got to enjoy often. Claire had a lot of laundry.