Between You and Me

by Susan Wiggs

  “Whoa, Nellie, that’s cold,” Jonah said.

  “Feels really good, eh?” said Samuel.

  They paddled around, all three of them grinning up at the sky. Summer days were made for doing chores, but when the chores were done, there was no sweeter reward than a dip in the silky waters of the creek’s deepest eddy. Jonah lay back and turned his face to the sun, keeping himself afloat with the paddle attachment on his arm. It wasn’t his usual robot arm, but a simple apparatus specially made for swimming. Jonah had mastered it quickly, and the other kids were used to seeing it by now.

  Three times a week without fail, Caleb hitched up the buggy and took Jonah to an outpatient clinic in New Hope for sessions with a physiatrist, a physical therapist, and a prosthetist. It was time consuming and caused Jonah to miss a lot of school, but worth the effort for the progress he made. Hannah supervised his makeup work in the evenings. To keep up with the bills, Caleb worked twelve-hour days at Grantham Farm and stayed up late with the bookkeeping work. In between, he looked after the farm. This afternoon was a rare break from the grueling schedule.

  “Can we put the rope swing up this year?” Jonah asked.

  “I reckon so,” Caleb said. “We need to find the right limb for it, though. The old one broke off last winter.” He gestured at the thick oak branch, which now formed a bridge across the creek. “Did you know it was your dat who first put that rope in place?”

  “I did not,” Jonah said.

  “Well, he hung it years ago. And he was famous for being able to do a full somersault before hitting the water. He’s the one who taught me.”

  “Can you teach us?” Samuel asked.

  “I can, and I will, once we get another rope up there.” Caleb paddled to the bank and got dressed, then climbed out along the rock ledges. He inspected the tree, picking out a likely branch or two. The boys played and splashed, spraying each other, their laughter chiming in the stillness of the afternoon. Later, they got out to explore the fallen limb across the creek above the swimming hole, chattering away like a couple of magpies.

  As Caleb lay on the grass letting the sun dry his hair he closed his eyes for a moment and took it all in. There were moments, he reflected, when the sweetness of life was like honey on the tongue, something to savor, even though the blissful flavor was temporary. Jonah was reclaiming himself, growing stronger and more confident every day. Not only was he making progress with the robotic arm, he was learning ways to dismiss the phantom nerve pain. At school, at home, and in the community, Jonah worked harder than anyone could possibly know to fit in and live his life. Caleb was so proud of the boy that sometimes it made his heart ache.

  At times, Caleb felt guilty for not staying in Philadelphia, where Jonah could get the maximum intensive therapy he needed. Coming home had been a compromise, but a necessary one. Caleb thought about the city a lot, deep in the night when, despite his exhaustion, he couldn’t sleep. Though he knew this was the way things had to be, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about Reese Powell and her fancy bed and Bluetooth speakers playing all the music in the world, and the sweetness of her taste and smell, the gentle sigh of her breath in his ear, and the way she reached for him whenever he was near.

  His thoughts were interrupted when Hannah came up the hill, walking with a purposeful stride, her long dress and apron flapping in the breeze. Even though the June day was sweltering hot, she had chosen not to go swimming. “It’s too hard for a girl anyway,” she’d told him earlier, “having to keep the dress and covering on.”

  When she was younger, she used to come up with clever ways to pin the dress so it wouldn’t billow up in the water, and to tie the bonnet so it wouldn’t float away. These days, she was acting more secretive than ever. The one visit to the city had turned her head, that was for sure. She’d gotten hold of a copy of the novel The Princess Bride and had practically memorized it. She’d even designed a quilt around the story.

  Last fall, Hannah had spent far too much time with Aaron Graber. Caleb wanted to forbid it, but he had no reason. She was a young lady now and had to be allowed to make her own decisions—and her own mistakes. In early spring, she and her gang went on rumspringa, and they’d hooked up with some English kids over in Pine Creek. Then, a couple of weeks ago, she’d stopped the rumspringa. She stopped everything but quilting, reading books, and staring dreamy-eyed out the window.

  It was the way of a girl, Alma Troyer assured him, when he’d confessed to her he was worried about Hannah.

  The way of a girl. No wonder he didn’t understand her.

  “Caleb Stoltz, didn’t you hear me calling from the house?” she said, her face red and sweaty from the heat.

  “You were calling?” He grinned. “Maybe you called the wrong number.”

  She didn’t crack a smile at the familiar quip. “You need to come.”

  “Vas is letz?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure what’s the matter,” she said, answering in dialect. “Something with Grandfather and the bishop. You need to come.” With a swish of her hem, she pivoted and went back down the hill.

  There was always something with Caleb’s father, some infraction or other that was going to lead them all into eternal damnation.

  Even so, he returned to the house feeling better. A dip in the clean, cold water on a hot day improved any outlook. Whistling a tune, he went through the back door into the kitchen.

  The sound on his lips died when he saw his father seated at the table along with the bishop and a stranger Caleb didn’t recognize—a woman in English clothes. She had a mobile phone and a clipboard, and her mouth was pressed into a seam of disapproval.

  Caleb greeted the bishop with a handshake and introduced himself to the woman.

  “Victoria Duncan,” she said, and handed him a business card. “I’m with Child Protective Services.”

  “What’s this about?” Caleb asked. His mind was racing. Jonah’s accident had been investigated months ago. There was no child here who needed protecting. Where were you when my father was beating the crap out of my brother and me?

  “It’s a guardianship issue,” said Victoria Duncan. She flipped open her clipboard to reveal a collection of papers. “According to the information we have, you’ve been acting as legal guardian of your minor nephew, Jonah Stoltz, and your minor niece, Hannah Stoltz.”

  Caleb said nothing. He could feel his heart like a cold stone in his chest.

  “The parents died intestate,” said the woman. “Upon their passing, the presumed guardian was not you, but your father, Asa Stoltz. Were you aware of that, Caleb?”

  He looked directly at her, though from the corner of his eye, he saw his father sit forward expectantly. “I was,” Caleb said.

  “Hello. I’m Dr. Powell.” The night before her first day of residency, Reese stared at her image in the mirror that hung above an old-fashioned washstand. The floorboards of the old farmhouse that would be her home for the next three years creaked beneath her nervous feet. Weighted down by her new, untried status, she felt like an imposter. She was utterly convinced that everything she’d learned over the past four years had vaporized into the ether.

  She had blown her parents’ minds when she’d chosen this residency program. The program here in New Hope, administered by the two deeply experienced preceptors she’d met last fall, was the last place her parents had expected her to choose. Yet the moment she’d walked into her interview with Dr. Lake and Dr. Shrock, she’d known what her decision would be.

  She had probably made a mistake, just like her mom and dad had said. But it was her life. Her mistake to make.

  Turning away from the mirror, she tried to forget about the disappointment in their faces.

  A breeze through the window, carrying the scent of phlox and roses from the garden, reminded her that maybe she wasn’t wrong after all. With her newly minted MD degree and a heart full of hope, she had moved to New Hope to become one of four residents in the program. Instead of the high-rise luxury condo
her parents had tried to give her, she now occupied a room on the second story of Mose Shrock’s house, situated high on a hill overlooking a broad valley. Housing was nearly impossible to find in the town. That was the reality of rural life. There was no place for a visitor to live. You had to board with a local family. The Shrocks had taken her in like a stray.

  Mose and his wife, Ida, were too old to get upstairs anymore, so they rented two of the four bedrooms up there to residents. The other boarder was a new doc named Ursula Mays, a second-year resident who would be one of Reese’s mentors. Ursula seemed to be as laid-back as Reese was keyed up.

  Reese’s room overlooked rippling fields, a meandering stream, and a bright patchwork of storybook farms, now gilded by the light of the setting sun. Despite the scenery, she felt a stab of uncertainty. This change was huge. Maybe it wasn’t what she wanted after all.

  Breathe, she told herself. She took in the panorama of streams and ponds with ducks gliding across the clear water, the new growth covering the hills. No traffic, no city noise intruded. On a distant slope, she spied a barefoot boy on an unsaddled horse, dragging a plow as the father, with a little girl on his shoulders, walked behind, directing it.

  She leaned out the window and let the breeze surround her. She absorbed the aroma of the plowed earth, and she felt reluctant to take the next breath for fear of disrupting the perfect moment. She pictured the noisy asphalt-and-metal city that had been her home forever and felt a welling of emotion. This was right. It had to be right.

  She turned away from the window and contemplated the days to come. Her schedule would be divided between work at the hospital and clinic days in the outlying areas surrounding New Hope.

  It just so happened that one of the towns served by the regional group was a place called Middle Grove.

  It just so happened, she told herself. It wasn’t not a coincidence.

  It was no surprise to Reese that Caleb had left after the night of the attack. The surprise was how much it hurt. How much she missed him, day after day. Yearned for him. Leroy said time would mellow the ache, but it hadn’t happened. If anything, the pain intensified.

  She had tried to convince him to stay, to compromise, to find a way to get Jonah the help he needed. But Caleb had been intractable. The incident with the thugs had shed a glaring light on the fact that he didn’t belong in the city. Though he hadn’t said so, she believed he felt guilty about his relationship with her. He was feeling pressure from the Amish community to return Jonah to his people.

  And who was she to argue or object? Jonah was not her patient. Caleb was not her boyfriend.

  After they’d left, she had searched for her own next step. Finally, she’d forced herself to pay attention to the insistent inner voice that kept telling her that maybe, just maybe, she didn’t want to be the kind of doctor she thought she would be. Maybe, just maybe, she needed to separate herself from her parents’ expectations. She imagined Caleb would be amused to know he’d triggered all this deep self-reflection.

  She imagined Caleb a lot. More than she should.

  Agitated, Reese laid out her clothes for her first day as a doctor—a simple dress and comfortable shoes. At the hospital, her locker was ready with scrubs and a lab coat embroidered with her name: Reese Powell, MD.

  Dr. Powell. Yet she didn’t feel any more like a doctor than she had the day before her degree was conferred.

  She forced herself to stop pacing and sit down in a wicker armchair with quilted cushions. She tried reading a novel, a high-flown fantasy replete with sex and violence and political intrigue. Fail. Concentration was impossible.

  Time ticked past, measured by an antique clock on the shelf. The sounds of the settling house drifted in—Mose calling his dog in for the night, Ursula gabbing away on her phone. Reese climbed into bed, settling back on a comfy bank of pillows, but she couldn’t sleep. After an hour, she got up, checked her email and message boards, littered with squealy posts from fellow grads. She put on her headphones and danced to Carly Rae Jepsen but stopped when she caught herself blurting out “Call me maybe . . .” and then worried that she might wake the household.

  After far too long, she drifted off in fits and starts. Then multiple alarms stabbed into her consciousness. She sat straight up in bed, on fire with a familiar state of panic. She wondered why she’d bothered to try sleeping at all. She staggered to the shower and blasted herself with a stream of well water that took its time warming up.

  Coffee. Her primary food group. Her residency survival guide advised her to avoid caffeine and alcohol in favor of herbal tea. Fuck that.

  Downstairs in the kitchen, she seemed to be the first one up, so she tried not to make noise as she filled the kettle and French press. The dog came scampering in, a friendly ball of taffy-colored fluff, and submitted to belly rubs before running outside. Reese forced herself to eat a bowl of cereal sprinkled with wild strawberries. Yesterday morning, she’d stopped at a sweet little homemade fruit stand and picked up a couple of pints. Ursula had told her to pack a lunch, so she slapped together a peanut butter sandwich and put it in a bag with a banana.

  She decided to head to the hospital early to get into her scrubs, study her drug formulary, and try to remember everything she’d learned in her rotations—surgery, neurology, psychiatry, internal medicine, obstetrics, pediatrics, radiology, emergency medicine—in preparation for her thirty-hour shift. While she waited for the morning conference, she peeled the banana from her lunch and sutured it back together.

  Warren, a fellow intern, came into the locker room. “Is that banana I smell?” he asked. “Or is it the stench of fear?”

  She smiled and showed him her handiwork. “Hungry?”

  “Are you kidding?” said another intern, Yvonne, as she rummaged in her locker. “I’ve already thrown up twice.”

  When the fourth intern arrived—Riku, from Japan—they went to a small conference room for their first briefing of current patients, and then it was showtime. The newbies dispersed with their assigned mentors, second- and third-year residents charged with showing them the ropes. Her resident, a guy with the unfortunate name Cain and an annoying habit of quoting Shakespeare, eyed her like meat on the hoof. “Get thee hence, fragment,” he said, and instructed her to go write chart notes on their first patient.

  It took a special talent to get lost in such a tiny hospital. But somehow she managed to do that.

  Eventually she located her first patient—Mr. Drexler, with a troublesome gallbladder. Tubes pulsing with fluids were connected to him, and a sour expression pinched his face. “I’m Dr. Powell,” she said. “I’ll be taking care of you today.”

  “This is yesterday’s paper,” he said. “I need today’s paper.”

  Oh. A paper. She scurried away to the lobby. There were no complimentary papers, so she fished some money out of her pocket and bought one from a box, then delivered it with a smile. Four years of medical school had brought her to this. Paper delivery. Somehow, she managed to make notes about the case, feeling like a fraud the whole time.

  “Paging Dr. Powell,” came a voice over the PA system. “Paging Dr. Powell to the respiratory clinic.”

  Startled to hear her name, Reese looped her stethoscope around her neck and hurried to see her next patient, getting lost only briefly this time. A little girl was holding a nebulizer. Reese greeted her and made notes on the girl’s asthma. “We just moved here,” the mother said. “We thought the country air would be good for her, but her breathing is worse than ever.”

  The girl had a helpless, glassy look in her eyes. Reese felt helpless too. “I’m sorry you’re feeling bad. The treatments we prescribed should expand your airways and make you more comfortable.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Powell,” said the girl in a raspy voice as she left with her mother.

  Reese turned to the respiratory therapist. “What a sweet kid. I don’t know what she’s thanking me for. She seemed miserable.”

  “Some kids are sensitive to livestock
and crops,” said the respiratory tech. He put away some equipment. “Funny thing, I never see Amish kids in here. It’s like farm life protects them.”

  She made a note on her phone to check for asthma studies. But that didn’t count as an accomplishment. She’d accomplished next to nothing on her first morning at work.

  There was another meeting later about cases. A name jumped out at her—Rebecca Zook. Hannah had said Caleb was supposed to be courting her. Reese tried to stay detached as she studied the notes—neurological symptoms of headache, behavioral changes, unusual eye movements. The poor woman. Dr. Shrock noted that the patient was reluctant to follow through with suggested scans and tests. “It’s frustrating,” he said, “but a patient has that right and we have to respect it.”

  “What about a blue sheet?” asked a third-year at the table. “Is that an option?”

  Reese wasn’t the only one at the table who quickly looked up what a blue sheet was—a legal means to admit a patient involuntarily.

  Mose took off his spectacles and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We won’t go there. Not now, anyway.”

  Reese retreated to the call room and sat in the darkness. From the deepest part of her, she felt a welling of uncertainty. Who was she to think she could help people, heal people? Why couldn’t she be content to settle down like her friend Trini, make babies and bake berry pies?

  Then, as fatigue overtook her, she felt a pure, clear sense of determination. She was here for a reason. She was here because she was going to love the job. She was going to be the job.

  16

  With a stout rope in hand, Caleb climbed up the big tree over the swimming hole while Jonah and Samuel watched him from the ground. He’d picked out the perfect limb for the new rope swing. It was high enough for a good ride, and it stuck out far enough to be safe.

  The warm bark beneath his hands and the sound of the breeze through the leaves evoked memories of long ago. He and John used to race up the hill to swim after chores each day. He knew John let him win, but the race was an essential part of the fun. It was an escape from the heat—and from their father.