Love Still Stands (45 page)

Nothing. Only howling wind and his own ragged, painful breathing. He struggled to
see some landmark that would tell him where he was, trying to figure out how far he’d
come. The snow obscured the surface, but he was sure he was still on the highway.
He should be at the turn that would take him into town by now. He could no longer
feel his feet, the heat of the warming stone long gone.

If Ida and Bethel were out here, they were freezing to death. He couldn’t let that
happen. He had to help his sister-in-law and the woman he loved.

After a second he remembered to shut his mouth, wet with frozen flakes that burned
his lips and tongue with cold. He replayed the thought in his head. The woman he loved.
He did love Bethel. He didn’t care about her legs or whether she could bear children.
He loved her.

He had to find her. He had to tell her. “Giddy-up, giddy-up, girl, let’s go. We have
to find them!”

He doubted even Daisy could hear his voice, but the horse would feel the pressure
of the bit in her mouth and the halter on her long head and the reins on her back.
They were connected by touch and feel. Could the horse feel his desperation? They
picked up speed. Maybe she could.

Where was the flashing yellow light that signaled the last turn before town? He couldn’t
see it. He couldn’t see anything. The day had turned to night. He snapped the reins
and urged Daisy forward.
There
. The yellow light flashed, encouraging him on, telling him he hadn’t strayed from
the path. He was getting close. He had no idea if there were oncoming cars turning
onto the highway at the intersection. He couldn’t see beyond Daisy’s nose.

With a breathed prayer for their safety, he made the turn. The wind buffeted the buggy.
The wheels slid. The buggy rocked. Elijah tugged on the reins, fighting to regain
control.

They skidded to the right, then the left. By then he had no idea where the right lane
was. He could be in the center of the road. He prayed there were no oncoming cars.

Daisy reared her head and whinnied. They were moving too fast. Elijah pulled harder
on the reins. The buggy bucked and whipped back and forth, back and forth. The horse
screamed.

The buggy slid down and down. They were going down.

The buggy tipped and rolled. Rolled and rolled.

Elijah dropped the reins and grabbed for the arm railing, but it was gone. He sailed
free for a few seconds as he breathed a prayer.
Lord, don’t let this happen to Ida and Bethel. Please Lord, protect them and keep
them safe
.

Something hard smacked him in the forehead. The pain radiated swift and fierce. And
then gone in a blessed nothingness.

He couldn’t feel his hands or his feet. Maybe that was a good thing. Compared to the
agonizing sledgehammer pounding in his head, numbness could be counted as a blessing.

Elijah tried to open his eyes. They seemed to be crusted shut. If his fingers would
cooperate, he would wipe at them. He raised arms that weighed a hundred pounds each.

His fingers swiped at his face and missed. He tried again. Connected. Snow.

He brushed the best he could. Flakes flew. His fingers touched his forehead.

Bad. Bad move.

He wanted to curl up with the pain of it, but he couldn’t move. A wheel held his legs
to the ground. Where was the horse? He peered between the spokes. He couldn’t see
through the blowing snow. He couldn’t hear anything above the howling wind.

“Ach. Ach. Ach
.” The syllables rang weak and hoarse in his ears. He had to do better. “Get yourself
up and get moving. Now. If you have to walk, walk.”

His voice reverberated in his ears. It sounded hollow. He managed to raise his head
and look up. The bed of the buggy loomed over him. The aching cold beneath him, threatening
to suck all the warmth from his body, would be a bed of snow. A bed where he could
close his eyes and sleep.

The thought came naturally. Drowsiness assailed him. To close his eyes and sleep would
be a blessing. No more pain. No more thought.

His body started, muscles tight in spasms. Nee. He couldn’t stay here. He had to get
up. He had to find Bethel.

“Bethel.” His voice gained strength. “I’m coming.”

He strained to lift himself. Something warm trickled down his forehead. He raised
his hand again. His glove came away stained red. The pain bloomed so fierce his stomach
clenched with nausea. Ignoring it, he shoved hard on the wheel. The buggy shimmied
and then lurched to one side.
Breathe. Breathe
. He rolled and scrambled to his knees. More jagged, fierce pain, this time in the
leg that had been pinned under the wheel. He couldn’t stand on it.
“Ach.”

He sank back to the snowy bed, welcoming its softness under his bruised body. He breathed
in and out, in and out. He’d rest another minute or two, then try again. The cold
didn’t seem so cold anymore. Maybe the storm had ended. Maybe now it would start to
warm up.

Don’t sleep. Don’t sleep. Bethel. Don’t sleep
.

The minutes ticked by, banging inside his head. The pain waned, dissipating in a blessed
numbness that could only mean he would soon freeze to death
. Gott, if this is the way I’m to go, so be it. Please keep Bethel and Ida safe. Watch
over them. Please watch over them
.

He mumbled the prayer again and again, making every word count as if it might be his
last.

“Elijah Christner? Mr. Christner!”

The gruff tone of a man used to being answered when he called pierced the thick wooliness
that had wrapped itself around Elijah’s brain, thicker with each passing second. “Mr.
Christner!”

He raised his head. “Here. Here!”

The sheriff tromped through the snow in boots up to his knees, the beam of a flashlight
crowding Elijah. He tried to move, but found his legs no longer responded to his commands.
“Sheriff.”

“You look frozen to death.” Sheriff McCormack knelt beside him. “Let’s get you up
and out of here.”

“We have to find Bethel. Bethel and Ida. They’re out here.”

The sheriff stuck his hands under Elijah’s arms and dragged him to his feet. Elijah
tried to cooperate. Pain swirled around him in a nauseating pulse. “Bethel.”

“Yeah, we’ll get to Bethel, but you first.”

“Bethel. She’s out here.”

“You’re delirious. No one’s out here. I’ve spent the last hour combing these roads.
You’re it.”

“Bethel!”

“Okay. Okay, buddy. We’ll find Bethel.”

Hearing those words, Elijah sank into a welcome oblivion.

Chapter 41

B
ethel breathed on the glass in the clinic’s front door and rubbed a circle with her
fingers. The glass felt icy to the touch. The whiteness outside the rehab clinic might
as well have been darkness. She couldn’t see a thing. Inside the clinic, it was almost
as dark. Georgia had disappeared into the interior, where it was warmer, leaving Bethel
in charge of the front door. Still, she knew full well no one would be arriving in
this blizzard. She tugged the blanket that Jasmine had laid across her shoulders tighter.
Even with her coat, shawl, and the blanket, she still felt a chill as the heat continued
to seep from the airy rooms with high ceilings and dozens of windows. Unlike the hospital,
the building had no backup generator. Jasmine said hospital administrators hadn’t
deemed it necessary because it wasn’t a twenty-four hour facility with critical care
patients.

“Maybe we could try to get to the hospital. It would be warm there and there’s a cafeteria,
hot coffee, and beds to sleep in.”

Bethel turned from the window to find Shawn wheeling down the hallway, a battery-operated
lantern dangling from his bent fingers. He set it on the coffee table in the reception
area.

“I told Jasmine I’d lead the way. She tried to call them to see if they could send
an ambulance or something to get us, but the phone is down here and her cell phone
has no bars. What good is a cell phone if you can’t use it in an emergency?”

“It’s at least six blocks from here. We’d have to walk and I’m afraid we’d get lost.
I’m not sure it’s smart to go anywhere.” Bethel didn’t know anything about bars on
a phone, but she assumed no bars was a bad thing from Shawn’s frustrated tone. She
hobbled toward the table, the light from the lantern drawing her as if she might gather
warmth from it. “Anyway, a storm like this can’t last long, can it?”

Shawn shrugged. “I’ve never seen anything like this and I’ve lived here all my life.”

“We had some bad storms in Kansas, but I don’t remember anything this bad.” She cast
her memories back to the days when her mudder used to send the boys for piles of wood
for the kitchen stove and the fireplace. They’d gather round and make popcorn and
cocoa in big pots on the stove. Good memories. Not like the ones they were making
in a cold, drafty building. “I always liked winter nights when we were all together
by the fire. Daed read his Bible and Mudder sewed and we played games.”

“Yeah, you were used to not having electricity. You geared up for it.” Shawn contemplated
the lantern. “The bedrooms must’ve been mighty cold.”

“That’s why we stayed downstairs, together, by the fire.” She placed the good memories
back in that special place she kept them, in front of the more difficult ones from
the years of Mudder’s sickness and Daed’s silent withdrawal into his work of keeping
food on the table and a roof over their heads. “We didn’t go upstairs until the last
minute and then we took hot water bottles for our feet and burrowed under tons of
blankets and quilts. Once we got warm, it was quite toasty.”

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“Three brothers. Two sisters. All older.”

“Wow.” His expression turned wistful. “I’m an only child.”

Which explained some things. “That’s hard for me to imagine.”

“It has its good points and bad.”

“Like what?”

“Like you never have to share your candy and you get all the presents at Christmas,
but it also means they put all their hopes and dreams on your shoulders and expect
you to do whatever it is they wanted to do and didn’t accomplish.”

She considered. Plain families with one child were unusual, but it did happen. It
didn’t matter. They all wished the same for their children, that they be baptized
into the Amish faith and live their lives with their families and community. Simple
expectations. But there were some who couldn’t meet them, drawn as they were into
a world different from their own. “Your daed loves you.”

Shawn gave her a lopsided grin. “I know.”

“Not everyone gets to have that. I have good friends whose parents both died in a
buggy accident, leaving them to raise their little brothers and sisters.”

“That stinks.”

“Their parents are with God.”

“Does that make them feel better?”

“Yes, it does. They still miss them, but they take comfort in God’s plan for them.”

Shawn stared up at her. “What’s God’s plan for you?”

“There’s no way for me to know that. I only know He has one.”

“And it doesn’t include me.”

Bethel searched her heart. She examined her feelings, all jumbled up for so long.
They milled around in her head, and then righted themselves into straight, even lines.

“It’s okay. That long pause says it all.” He tugged on the chair’s wheels and turned
away.

“You’ll always be my friend.”

He stopped, his back to her. After a few seconds he wheeled around. His smile, if
forlorn, still qualified as a smile. “As much as an Amish girl can have a guy like
me for a friend, right? I’ll take it. I’d be a fool not to want your friendship.”

They stared at each other. “Doctor Jasmine’s raiding the snack horde Doctor Karen
keeps in her office and apparently there’s protein bars and nasty healthy stuff in
the storeroom.” His tone sounded determinedly cheerful. “I knew I should’ve eaten
breakfast this morning. I was in such a hurry to get here to see…”

His voice trailed away.

“How are the others doing?” Determined to move the conversation away from dangerous
grounds, she smiled at him. “Do we have enough blankets?”