Kitabı oku: «Between You and Me», sayfa 4

And why should she care what he thought?

5

When Reese got to her apartment that night, she stepped inside, locked the door, turned, and realized she wasn’t alone. Something strange and intrusive hung in the air—an unfamiliar energy, a sense of things out of place.

Muttering under her breath, she made her way to the kitchen. The man she was expecting to see sat at the scarred maple table, drinking a glass of wine and reading the latest issue of Vanity Fair, the Young Turks of Hollywood edition she’d stolen from a hospital exam room. It was the closest thing she’d had to an actual date in six months.

Her intruder was a slender, handsome man several years older than her, with soft eyes and a cheeky grin.

“Hey,” she said. “You know, I gave you that key to use in case of emergency.”

“It is an emergency,” said her across-the-hall neighbor, Leroy Hershberger, who had been steadily nudging his way toward a true friendship with her since he’d moved in the previous year. “I ran out of wine.”

She grabbed the bottle and poured herself a glass. “Very funny.” She clinked her glass against his and took a sip.

“I was pretty sure you wouldn’t mind,” Leroy said. “I signed for this package that came for you.” He indicated a thick clasp envelope from Johns Hopkins in those large gentle hands that made him a gifted physical therapist. “Another residency program for you to go into a cold sweat over.”

“Thanks,” she said and drank more wine, eyeing him over the rim of her glass. He had a fresh haircut from the expensive salon he frequented, and he was dressed in Abercrombie & Fitch, indulgences he claimed kept him sane by reminding him that he had a life beyond scrubs. “You look nice. Plans for the evening?”

“I got stood up. Hence the drinking.”

“No way. Who was the culprit? And how dare she stand you up?”

“Some girls have all the nerve.” He stretched his legs out, looking nonchalant, though Reese knew he was struggling with disappointment. Leroy was single and lonely. Though the two of them were not a match romantically, they often commiserated over their uneventful love lives.

“Spending a quiet evening at home is underrated.” She glanced around the room. This apartment had potential, but it didn’t feel like home. Her place had a transitory atmosphere, as if someone were just packing to leave. She’d never gotten around to hanging a picture or two on the wall, or properly shelving her collection of textbooks and favorite novels.

A few touches of her personality lingered here and there, glimmers of a need for more depth and permanence. There was a quilt made for her by a former patient, draped over a painted wooden chair, and a cuckoo clock that had once belonged to her grandmother. Her kitchen tools included an embossed rolling pin and a pie fluter, which she’d never had a chance to use. She had a working fish tank with nothing but water and plastic plants in it.

She kept meaning to make the place feel more lived in, but work and studying kept getting in the way. If she followed her parents’ plan for her, she’d eventually be able to afford a fabulous house on the river, or a highrise condo, or maybe a colonial tract mansion in the suburbs. The trouble was, she didn’t seem to fit into the picture of her own life.

Like Caleb Stoltz didn’t fit, she thought, remembering the image of him standing hat in hand in his nephew’s hospital room.

She took another quick sip of wine. How much would the Amish man tolerate of the therapy Jonah was going to need?

Leroy stood up and walked around behind her, using his gentle, talented hands to massage her neck and shoulders. A skilled physical therapist, he had a way of digging into the source of tension. “I think rigor mortis has set in,” he said. “You’re stiff as a … stiff.”

“Very funny.”

“Rough day?”

“You could say that. Strange day.”

“I thought you were having dinner with your parents tonight,” he said.

She glanced at the calendar stuck to the refrigerator. “Nosy.” Every single day, it seemed, had something written in it. Interview with Jacobson. Study group, 6:00 P.M. Board review, 6:30 A.M.

“Jesus,” Leroy said. “Look at the way you schedule yourself. It’s not normal. I bet you schedule your bowel movements.”

She finished her wine. “Who has time for that?”

“There’s one thing missing on that calendar,” he said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“A social life. A life of any kind at all. In case you haven’t noticed, it’s something most people aspire to.”

“I’ll get a life once I get through the Match.”

“Sure you will. Except once you get yourself placed in the first residency, you have to make it into the next one, and once you find that, you have to apply for another, and after that you need to concentrate on your specialty, and then your subspecialty, and then—”

“All right, all right. You made your point.” She went over to the refrigerator, picked one of the few dates that wasn’t taken, and scrawled Get a life in the empty space. “At least I wasn’t stood up by—who was it this time, Roberta the caterer, right?”

“Roberta, yes. And yes, she’s a caterer. The rest of my day was fine. Two stroke patients, some back therapy, an accident victim with a major chip on his shoulder. He was no picnic, but I made him channel his rage into getting around in a wheelchair.”

She sat back down, poured more wine into her glass. “Have you ever worked with an amputee?”

“Sure. I have a certification in prosthetics.”

“There was an amputation in trauma today,” she said. “A little boy lost his arm.”

“That sucks. Poor kid. What happened?”

“It was a farming accident. He stuck his hand in a grinder or shredder of some sort. Amish kid,” she added. “I’d never treated an Amish kid before today. I’ve never even met anyone Amish.”

A funny look came over Leroy’s face. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

She didn’t get it at first. And then, all of a sudden, she did. “Holy crap, Leroy. Do you mean to tell me you’re Amish?”

“I was. Not anymore, obviously.”

In an odd way, Reese felt betrayed. “How can you be Amish and never have told me? You’re my closest neighbor. I’m supposed to know everything about you.”

“I knew you for six months before you told me you were a test-tube baby,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t think it was important,” she said with a distracted wave of her hand.

“Oh, right. Being the result of your parents’ medical specialty has defined you, princess. The petri dish princess.”

“And being Amish has obviously defined you. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” She stared at him as if regarding a stranger. Leroy? Amish? How could Leroy be Amish?

There was nothing remotely Amish about this man. Yet now that he’d said something, a few facts became clear. Since she’d known him she’d never met anyone in his family. When she’d asked about it, he’d said his family shunned him because he’d refused to marry a girl he was promised to and had moved to the city.

“You weren’t kidding,” she said, “about the shunning you once told me about. Your family really did shun you. In the Amish way.”

A bitter laugh escaped him. “Nothing like a good old-fashioned Amish shunning. They’re better at it than a group of seventh-grade teenyboppers.”

“Does that mean you never see or speak to your Amish friends and family?”

“That’s the general idea. It’s complicated. Those who’ve been baptized aren’t allowed to speak to me or share meals. Folks who haven’t been baptized yet have a little more latitude. But for all intents and purposes, I’m persona non grata in the community where I grew up.”

“I can’t believe you were Amish,” she said thoughtfully, still studying him. Clean-shaven, with soulful eyes and manicured hands, he looked every inch the modern male. “I keep trying to picture you Amish, but the picture just won’t form.”

“Oh, I did it all.” That edge of bitterness still sharpened his voice. “The bowl haircut and flat-brimmed hat, the drop-front trousers and suspenders, not a zipper within a five-mile radius. I have nine brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews I’ve never met. I haven’t been in contact with my family in years.”

“That must be so heartbreaking for you,” Reese said. “And for your family.”

“They got over it. There’s not a doubt in my mind that they got over it. It’s the Amish way.”

“Did you?”

He emptied the bottle of wine into his glass. “So tell me about this kid today.” His change of subject was deliberate and unbreachable. “He was probably filling silo, wasn’t he?”

“How would you know that?”

“It’s that time of year. The Amish year is determined by the seasons and the farm chores that go along with them. The corn and other grains are ripe and need to be harvested. On an Amish farm, the whole community gets involved.”

“I’m hearing a decided lack of affection and nostalgia in your voice,” Reese said.

“Let’s just say my experience with the Amish would not fit in the pages of National Geographic.” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

“Was your family cruel to you? Did they neglect you? What?”

“I’m through talking about it, princess. Where did you say the kid was from?”

She forced herself to drop the subject of Leroy’s upbringing. “A place called Middle Grove. Do you know it?”

“Actually, I do. It’s up on Highway Fifty-Seven, same area as my hometown of Jamesville. Beautiful part of the state, near the Poconos. The Amish of Middle Grove are super restrictive. I remember they wouldn’t fellowship with our community because we were a bit more liberal.”

“I hope they’re not restrictive when it comes to Jonah—the amputee. But he might be in for rough times if they prohibit a prosthetic arm. Do you think they’d do that?”

“Hard to say. The Amish take care of their own. I guess it depends on the support he’ll get.”

Reese thought of Caleb Stoltz and the way she’d felt, watching his face as he stood over his injured nephew. “I don’t know about the whole family,” she said. “He’s got a loving uncle who’s raising him. An incredibly loving uncle,” she added. “He came in on life flight with the boy. The flight nurse said it was a near thing, with some of the locals at the scene claiming it was against their religion to fly.”

“But not against their religion to let a boy bleed to death. I’m glad the uncle was reasonable.”

“He was,” Reese said, propping her chin in the palm of her hand. “He is definitely reasonable. The boy’s parents are dead, and Caleb—that’s the uncle—is raising Jonah and … he mentioned that there’s a sister.” She pictured the big man and the life he’d described, somewhere out in the country, and the image brought a sigh to her lips.

“Oh my God,” Leroy said. “Can this be? You’re smitten.”

She pushed away from the table. “Bullshit. The guy’s kid is suffering a major trauma.”

He laughed at her indignation. “The hunky Amish farmer and the urban-American princess. It’s too precious.”

She scowled at him. “How do you know he’s a hunk?”

“I know your type. You like ridiculously good-looking guys.”

“Don’t you have somewhere you need to be?”

“Nope, I’ve been stood up, remember? You’re supposed to help me hobble through the evening. But for once, your life is more interesting than mine.”

“You just accused me of not having a life.”

“That was before I found out about the Amish guy.”

“There’s nothing about the Amish guy,” she said defensively. “Quit with the Amish guy.”

“Tell you what,” Leroy said expansively. “I’ll drop in and visit with the kid and his uncle tomorrow. Is he in the SICU?”

Nodding, she picked up their empty wineglasses and carried them to the sink. “That would be good.”

“See? I’m nice.”

Caleb awakened to the quiet sucking rhythm of hospital machinery. A bitter smell hung in the air, mingling with the coppery scent of blood. Although he came fully awake, he didn’t move, not right away. Instead, he sat very still in the hard, too-small chair made of molded plastic and crammed into the corner of the small cubicle where Jonah slept. A chaplain had offered to find him a bed for the night, but Caleb had declined, preferring to sit close to Jonah. The ever-present nurse stood in the dim glow of a computer monitor, gazing steadily at the screen. By looking out the display window past the nurses’ station, he could see the gray glimmer of a new day.

His hat sat on the floor beneath the chair. He hadn’t found anywhere else to put it. The glass, linoleum, and steel cage allowed no extra room for personal items.

“Good morning,” said the nurse at the computer.

“How’s he doing?” Caleb asked.

“He’s stable. He had a quiet night.” The Asian woman peered at him, her hands constantly busy on the keyboard. “Can I get you something?”

“Thank you, no.”

Caleb stood and went over to the bed. Jonah didn’t appear to have moved in the night. Throughout the dark, endless hours, nurses, health aides, medical students, and at least one doctor had come in to check Jonah or, more accurately, to check the equipment hooked up to his poor, broken body. Through it all, the kid hadn’t stirred, hadn’t even blinked an eye as far as Caleb could tell.

He rested the palm of his hand on the cold steel bars of the bed’s guardrail. Something had happened to Jonah in the night. The lost hours had diminished him, sucked the spirit out of him. The boy was smaller, paler than he had been only a short time ago. There was simply … less of him.

Maybe that was what a place like this did to a person. Drew things out of him, turned him into a ghost. Of course, Caleb told himself, Jonah would be dead if they hadn’t brought him to this hospital.

Looking down at the smooth, gray-white face, Caleb felt a painful surge of terror and love pushing at his chest. They had shaved Jonah’s head on one side and repaired the gashes with what appeared to be string and glue. His face was mottled by bruises and flecked with tiny cuts. A bit of blood had pooled and dried in the hollow of one ear. Caleb resisted the urge to clean it out.

Did I do this? he wondered. Did I let a terrible thing happen to an innocent little boy? He felt eaten alive by guilt.

In the wake of his brother’s death, Caleb hadn’t been sure he’d be able to raise Jonah and Hannah properly. And maybe he wasn’t doing such a good job, but right away he had learned how to love a child. It was the easiest thing he’d ever done. He loved Jonah with all his heart, and every second of the boy’s suffering belonged to Caleb, too.

Under such extraordinary circumstances, a man of faith would surely pray. He’d pray for this beautiful child to heal; he’d thank the Lord for sparing Jonah’s life. But Caleb Stoltz wasn’t a man of faith, not anymore. Maybe he’d never been one.

He found himself thinking about John, his older brother, Jonah’s father. John’s faith had been as deep as a well, as endless as the sky. He would have known how to pray for his son.

“I’m sorry, John. I’m real, real sorry about your boy,” he quietly murmured. “I’m going to do the best I can, the best I know how. I hope it’s enough.” But even as he spoke, Caleb feared it wouldn’t be.

His stomach rumbled, the noise loud and profane in the unnatural hissing quiet of the hospital room. He felt slightly embarrassed by the urges of his body. When something this terrible happened, it just didn’t seem right that Caleb would feel hungry, that his whiskers would grow, that he’d have to take a piss. And yet, that was the case.

He went to the men’s room down the hall, relieved himself, and washed up with thin, watery soap from an old wall dispenser, drying off with flimsy brown paper towels. He was startled by his own reflection in the mirror above the row of sinks. There were no mirrors in an Amish household, of course. Mirrors implied pride and vanity, which had no place in an Amishman’s character. He rinsed the taste of sleep from his mouth, snapped his suspenders into place.

But there were no suspenders. He was still wearing the green shirt and loose trousers Reese Powell had given him.

He hurried back to Jonah’s room. Another hospital worker stood by the bed, marking things on a glass tablet device. A dark-skinned fellow. He smiled politely when Caleb came into the room. “Your son’s been stable all night,” he said. “That’s a good sign.”

“When will he wake up?” Caleb asked.

“That’s up to him, mainly,” said the man. “The doctors can tell you more during rounds. But you can go ahead and talk to him. He’ll be groggy at first, but if everything goes well, he’ll be awake and chattering away in no time.”

When the health aide left, Caleb returned to his vigil beside the bed. “Jonah.” He spoke the boy’s name a few times, just Jonah, and nothing more. Then, since the nurse seemed absorbed in her monitoring, he spoke some more. “Jonah, it’s me, your uncle Caleb. I’m here waiting for you to wake up, because we’ve got lots to talk about. Can you hear me, Jonah? Can you?”

The boy lay as still as a rock. He resembled a graven image carved into a gray headstone like one of those stone angels the English favored in their cemeteries.

“Jonah, can you hear me?” Caleb tried again. “It’s me, Uncle Caleb. Can you feel my hand on your leg? It’s right here on your knee. I’m sure worried about you, Jonah. I sure do wish you’d wake up so we could have a talk.”

He kept standing there, gazing down, his big thumb absently circling Jonah’s knee. Then he saw it. The tiniest flash of movement. The flicker of a shadow on the boy’s cheek.

“Jonah?” Caleb leaned a little closer. “Come on, little man. You can do it.”

The boy blinked again, then opened his eyes. He stared up, then squeezed his eyes shut as if to hide from the glare of the ceiling lights. Caleb kept saying his name, gently touching his knee and right shoulder, taking care not to focus on the thickly bandaged truncated arm. Jonah opened his eyes again—a squint of confusion. This time, he didn’t look at the lights, but at Caleb. He moved his lips, his bluish cracked lips, but no sound came out.

“You can give him a little water,” the nurse said. “He can have sips of water and ice chips if he wants, until the doctor says it’s okay to eat and drink again.”

Caleb grabbed a paper cup from the tray by the bed. “Here you go,” he said, angling the straw to Jonah’s lips. He shifted to their German dialect. “Easy there. Take it easy.”

Jonah drew weakly on the straw. Most of the water trickled out the sides of his mouth and down into the hospital pillow under his head.

“You can raise the bed with this.” The nurse handed him a remote control on a cord.

Caleb fiddled with the automatic controls until he figured out the button that caused the head of the bed to slowly raise up. Jonah looked almost comically startled by the motion, but when he saw what was happening, he relaxed. Caleb raised the bed only a few inches, just enough so the boy could swallow rather than spill. Jonah took one more sip then and finally whispered, “Uncle … Caleb.”

“That’s me,” Caleb said too loudly and too cheerfully. “I’ve been sitting around wondering when you’d wake up.”

“How long have I been asleep?”

“All night long, and then some.” Caleb looked right down into Jonah’s bewildered eyes. “Do you know where you are?”

The boy’s gaze darted to and fro. His poor face looked as though it had been slashed by vicious claws. “No.”

“We’re at the hospital,” Caleb said. “You got hurt bad, Jonah. Real bad. You had to have an operation. Do you remember getting hurt?”

“Um, not so much. I’m having trouble remembering,” Jonah said.

A nurse had warned Caleb about this. Victims of trauma often lost all recollection of the accident. Sometimes they never regained their memory of the specific event. It was a protective reaction. The mind didn’t want to remember a pain so deep and harsh.

“Do you remember going over to the Haubers’ to work?”

“Sure I do.”

Caleb was ashamed to realize that he’d been wishing Jonah would forget the entire morning. “Then you probably remember how I yelled at you,” he said. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you, Jonah. I should know better than yelling.”

“Your yelling doesn’t bother me, Uncle Caleb.”

“It bothers me that I yelled.” Caleb took a deep breath. “Do you remember the shredder?”

“The shredder?” Jonah frowned slightly. “I know how to work it. I know how to work all the equipment. You taught me yourself.”

The trusting expression on his face pierced Caleb’s heart. “Something got fouled up in the blades.”

“It happens,” Jonah said. “And I know how to fix it, too. I grab a longer stalk and push it real hard—” He stopped abruptly. His frown deepened and then softened. He shut his eyes. His lower lip trembled. “Uncle Caleb?”

Caleb would have given his own life to avoid speaking the next words. “A terrible thing happened, Jonah. You got hurt bad, liebling. Real bad.”

The boy’s eyes opened very slowly, as if he knew somehow what he was about to face. With an even slower motion, he lifted his right hand from beneath the blue blanket. Blood had dried in the seams of the short, stubby fingernails. He opened and closed his hand.

Caleb took hold of it, cradled it between both of his big hands, and carried it to his lips. “I’m so sorry, Jonah. I’m so, so awfully sorry.” He felt resistance as the boy tried to free his hand from Caleb’s grip. And with shattering clarity, Caleb knew why.

He felt an urgent need to intervene before Jonah discovered the unthinkable all on his own. “Jonah, son, look at me.”

The serious blue eyes settled on Caleb’s face. There was bewilderment in those eyes, and a sense of betrayal. Jonah was a child; he’d given a child’s trust to those charged with looking after him, and he’d been betrayed.

“Your other arm’s gone, son,” Caleb said quietly. “It got cut off.”

They both fell silent. Caleb imagined the realization sinking like poison into the boy’s mind. Jonah didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He didn’t speak a word for several agonized moments while he looked at his bandaged stump, wrapped in layer after layer of cream-colored gauze. There was a cap or spigot of some sort protruding from the bandage.

“Gone?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“It got all mangled in the shredder. There was so much damage that it couldn’t be fixed. They had to cut it off in order to save your life.”

“Gone?” Jonah said again. “It’s my arm. How can it be gone?”

“It’s a lot to take in, I know,” Caleb said. “I’m still … I can hardly believe it myself, except that I was there. The emergency workers saved your life. They came out right away, did what they could to stop the bleeding, and then they called a rescue helicopter. Life flight.” It had all happened just twenty-four hours ago, yet it seemed as though a lifetime had passed. “They brought us here to the hospital in the helicopter,” Caleb added. “You and me both.”

“We flew.”

“Yeah, we flew. Right up into the sky, like a bird or a dragonfly.”

“Isn’t that against Ordnung?”

Caleb pushed up one side of his mouth, an attempt at a smile. “Just like your daddy, you are,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I was more worried about you bleeding to death than I was about church rules.”

Jonah flinched and pulled his gaze away from the terrible, bandaged limb. His face was a picture of dull, uncomprehending shock. He had that look you might see on the face of a mother who’d just lost a child. Miriam Hauber had worn that look long after she’d lost a baby just hours after its birth. That same dazed, hollow nothingness, as if the world had suddenly become a place he didn’t recognize.

“Then what happened?” asked Jonah.

“Everything went real fast,” Caleb said. “I’m not even sure I remember everything right myself. They took you off the chopper while the blades were still going around, and they rushed you down to the emergency ward. Then it was like flies at a picnic, and you were the main dish. I had no idea such a crowd of folks could swarm all over a little old tadpole like you. They hung blood, and put in lines, and yelled stuff at each other, stuff I couldn’t begin to understand. Everyone worked real hard to save your life, Jonah. What happened was, the folks in the trauma center, the doctors and nurses and interns and so forth, they got you stabilized. What that means is they made sure your heart was okay and your blood pressure, and your breathing, so they could take you up to surgery.” It felt strange, speaking of such unfamiliar things, but Caleb saw no point in hiding anything from Jonah.

Jonah looked at the ceiling. “Where is surgery?”

“It’s … it’s a place where they took you to do an operation to save your life.”

“Is it where they cut off my arm?”

Caleb pinched the bridge of his nose, surprised to feel the throb of a headache. He didn’t often get headaches. “Yes, son. Yes.”

Jonah turned his attention back to the bandaged arm. “Were you there?” he asked. “I mean, when they were cutting off my arm, were you with me?”

“What? No.”

“I wonder if they used a saw, like Eli Kemp when he’s doing the butchering.”

Good Lord almighty. “I was in a waiting room, thinking about you the whole time. When the operation was done, they put you here in this place called the surgical intensive care unit. Hospital folks have been checking on you all night long. I reckon the doctors will be real pleased to see that you’re awake and talking.”

Caleb left a gap of silence for Jonah. Sometimes silence was needed, not more talking. Caleb had learned this when, in a single terrible moment, he became responsible for Jonah and Hannah.

Yesterday, though, when they’d rushed the boy off to surgery, he had been grateful for talk. He remembered pacing the waiting area of the emergency room, wondering what was going to happen next and not knowing whom to ask. That was when Reese Powell had approached him. Caleb could not remember what had been going through his head when she’d arrived. But he remembered turning to her, and feeling a small but noticeable measure of relief when she offered a change of clothes and then helped him navigate his way through the labyrinthine hallways of the hospital.

He wasn’t sure why she had taken an interest in him. Everyone else in the emergency room seemed to race from crisis to crisis, darting and feinting through an obstacle course of equipment, coworkers, frightened patients, and families.

Reese had looked very young to Caleb, though she projected an air of confidence. She was different from anyone he’d ever met, man or woman, in a way that tempted him to stare, like he’d stared at Niagara Falls or a shooting star. Her short hair was as black and shiny as the wing of a raven, framing a face he could look at all the livelong day. Of course, he had no call to be noticing the beauty of a woman, especially at a time like this, but noticing her like that wouldn’t change what had happened, no matter who was bleeding on the operating table.

When she’d started talking to him he had realized the source of that beauty was something simple yet powerful—compassion, combined with a fierce and earnest intelligence. She had this way of looking at him as if she knew how scared he was for Jonah and how much he needed to understand what was happening to his nephew. As she’d explained the terrible injury, Caleb had sensed the smallest glimmer of hope. He knew a medical student was only at the beginning of the practice of doctoring, like an apprentice carpenter learning from a master craftsman. Yet there were things that she knew, things he couldn’t even imagine. Things about the human body and the way it worked or failed to work. Through yesterday’s endless hours, Reese Powell had seemed absolutely determined to stick with him, answering not only the questions he asked but also those he didn’t even know how to.

All this seemed to be a lot to notice about a woman he’d only just met. But Caleb was like that sometimes. He’d meet someone and see exactly what that person was like based on a few minutes’ conversation.

It hardly mattered now. He probably wouldn’t see her again. She was one of the many strangers passing through. Yet for some reason, his thoughts kept drifting back to Reese Powell. In addition to her fierce, intimidating intelligence, he also sensed something sterile and lonely about her. When they’d gone to the cafeteria, she hadn’t talked to anyone along the way. It was probably out of character for her to take the time to help him through his first night in the city.

Jonah gazed at him in silence, and Caleb felt guilty for dwelling on his encounter with a woman. Jonah’s face took on a soft, sleepy look, his eyes half-lidded. “Where’s Hannah?” he asked softly.

Caleb pictured Jonah’s sister, crumpled in a tragic heap as the helicopter bore her brother away. “Back home in Middle Grove. I left word with Alma at the phone box that you were going to be all right. And you are, little man, I swear.”

“How can I be all right if my arm’s gone?” Jonah’s voice was the tiniest whisper.

“Because you’re Jonah. My best good boy. And I swear by all that I am that we’ll get through this.”

His throat felt thick with the lie. There was no getting through a loss like this.

“Hannah knows about my arm? Did you tell Alma to tell her?”

“I told Alma you’re going to be all right,” said Caleb. “She’ll let Hannah know.” He had not said anything about the arm, only that Jonah was going to get better. Given what Hannah and her brother had already lost, he owed her the full story, but not until he could see her, hold her hand, and reassure her.

“You’re wearing funny clothes,” Jonah said.

Caleb looked down at the borrowed shirt and trousers. “A lady named Reese loaned these to me.” He didn’t want to explain that his other clothes were covered in Jonah’s blood. “They’re called scrubs, which is curious, since they don’t seem to be used for scrubbing anything.”