Their Forbidden Amish Match
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Lucy Bayer
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18.5K
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21
Chapter One
“Does Gramps know about this?”
Todd Barrett glanced out his side mirror, checking for traffic on the winding two-lane road. His brother Henry’s voice was a little tinny through the Tesla’s speakers, but his skepticism came through loud and clear.
“It’s only six weeks,” Todd said. “Not that long.”
Up ahead, farms unfolded on either side of the road, idyllic with red barns and clotheslines hung with colorful dresses and black pants, cattle dotting the green fields.
Also up ahead was some kind of farm equipment spread across the entire road. Todd lifted his foot off the accelerator, relying on his tech-savvy car to do the rest and slow down behind the obstruction.
“Six weeks is a long time to take a detour from Gramps’s plan for your life.”
Todd frowned, but not because of Henry’s words. The farm equipment looked like some kind of tractor attachment, with sharp wheels that would dig furrows in a field. A teenage boy in homespun clothes and a black hat led the pair of horses pulling it.
Todd couldn’t see a way around. The tractor part blocked both lanes. A glance at the clock on the touchscreen at the dash showed he was right on time for his meeting with the local midwife. If he’d been home in Columbus, he’d have planned extra time in his commute to account for traffic. But this was sleepy Hickory Hollow. There wasn’t supposed to be traffic here. If this kid didn’t move off the road, Todd was going to be late.
He must’ve been mumbling to himself because Henry asked, “What was that?”
Todd grunted. “I’ll be back in Columbus before Gramps even knows I’m gone.” He crawled along behind the farm implement. A glance in his rearview mirror showed the road was empty. How far back had that last turnoff been? At least a mile. And there was no guarantee that it wouldn’t lead to a ten-minute detour, not with the winding roads in this county.
“Was your new boss okay with you moving your start date?”
What was his brother’s deal? Henry was pushing all his buttons today.
“He said he was.” In so many words. Doctor Elliott, Todd’s new boss, hadn’t been happy about the delay, but he’d agreed to it. The emergency room job had been Todd’s future since eighth grade, when he’d decided to go into medicine, like his grandfather and great-grandfather. He’d been invited to take the job after completing his residency at a smaller hospital across the state. The same one where his grandfather had completed his residency.
“I’m having supper with David and Ruby tonight.” Todd changed the subject. “You should drive down this weekend and hang out with us.”
Henry made a sound that might’ve been a grunt or a grumble. “I’ll be in the middle of the Patterson job. Don’t know if I can get away.”
Todd didn’t argue. The reason he’d pushed his start date back was a big one: last fall, he’d discovered he had a long-lost brother. David Weiss was Todd’s biological brother and had been switched at birth without anyone being the wiser. Neil, the baby that Todd’s parents had brought home from the hospital, had died when he was only a few months old. Todd had come here because he wanted the chance to get to know his brother and sister-in-law and their two young daughters. And Ruby was at the end of her second trimester.
When the local general practitioner, Doctor Bradshaw, had experienced a stroke and needed to retire immediately, David and Ruby and their entire community had been left without local medical care. Todd had agreed to step in temporarily. He’d met with the now-retired doctor this morning and discussed the caseload. Todd would be opening the clinic tomorrow.
And he was supposed to be meeting with the Amish midwife right now.
“I gotta go,” he told his brother. “Come up on Saturday.” I miss you.
Henry rang off without committing.
Scowling, Todd rolled down his window and waved his arm, trying to get the attention of the teen with the horses. It didn’t work.
He didn’t want to shout at someone on his first day in town. But he really needed to go. Every minute he wasted here was another minute he was late. Punctuality and efficiency were both key to running an efficient ER.
It seemed an interminable amount of time passed before the kid turned off into a field. Todd didn’t wait for him to clear both lanes. He sped around the rear of the implement in the left lane with a squeal of tires.
Doctor Bradshaw had sung the midwife’s praises, saying that at least half the Amish families in town preferred to come to her instead of driving more than an hour to the nearest hospital. Todd had expected an office, but the Tesla’s navigation brought him to a single-level farmhouse with a wraparound porch. Two empty rockers sat to the left of the front door. A small flower garden with sunny yellow blooms lined the foundation and extended around the corner. A black Amish buggy with a brown horse hitched to it was tied to a tree off the side of the house. A patient? Or the midwife herself?
Todd needed to work with this woman for the next six weeks. Doctor Bradshaw had said at least ten women in the community were thirty-five to thirty-nine weeks pregnant. Todd needed to make a good impression and gain her trust so they could have a good working relationship.
Starting out ten minutes late wasn’t ideal.
He parked his car beneath a tree. As he strode hurriedly across the gravel in front of the house, his Oxford shoe squished into something. He glanced down and groaned. Strike two. The bottom of his shoe was now covered in horse dung. He glared at the tethered horse but it just swished its tail, unconcerned.
He detoured to the grassy area beside the house and tried to wipe off the nasty substance from his shoe. He could still smell it when he climbed the porch steps and slipped out of his shoes, not wanting to track it inside the birthing center.
He wondered how often such instances happened. What were the midwife’s cleaning practices? There could be tons of nasty germs in a drop of horse poo. If her patients or their spouses were stepping in it and tracking it inside...? He didn’t even want to think about it.
He raised his hand to knock when the door opened.
“Hello. You must be Doctor Barrett.”
He stood in stunned silence, gazing down on the pretty young woman in a dark green dress and white apron. Her hair was burnished gold; he could tell even though it was tucked under one of those white caps Amish women wore. She had a faint spray of freckles across her nose and a warm smile that made his breath catch inside him.
He blinked, coming back to himself to realize he was staring at her.
“Are you Doctor Barrett?” she asked after he’d hesitated so long.
He cleared his throat. “Yes. I’m here to see the midwife. Lena.”
There was something he couldn’t read in her eyes. “I’m Lena. I’m the midwife.”
Lena Hochstetler saw the warmth fade out of Doctor Barrett’s eyes. Before she’d identified herself, there’d been the beginnings of a smile dawning on his face. She glimpsed the hint of disdain before his face went blank of all expression.
“You’re Lena?”
“Ja.” She managed the word along with a smile, but only barely.
It was only because he wasn’t a part of their community. Everyone in Hickory Hollow knew her. She had been working alongside her aendi in the birthing center for ten years before her beloved aendi Carol had passed away. Three years had passed since and the grief was still fresh. Lena had her aendi’s legacy to continue. Doctor Barrett wasn’t going to be in Hickory Hollow long, so what did it matter if he was surprised by or frowned upon the fact that she was who she was?
It didn’t.
Doctor Barrett hesitated in the doorway before he stepped over the threshold in his sock feet.
She might’ve been intimidated by him. He wore a crisply pressed fancy dress shirt, slacks with a crease pressed into them, and a stethoscope around his neck. He had a strong jaw and piercing blue eyes. He held his phone in one hand, and a fancy car was parked at the edge of her drive. He was very much an Englisher.
He was so different from Doctor Bradshaw that she would’ve been intimidated, if not for those socks.
He seemed embarrassed, giving a chagrined grimace. “I wasn’t watching where I stepped.”
Ah. “It happens.”
And she appreciated that he wasn’t tracking manure across the hardwood floors that she had mopped only this morning. Every morning, in fact.
“I don’t have any new mothers in residence today. But I saw Jane Glick yesterday. She is thirty-eight weeks with her fifth child and was already showing signs of early labor. I will be surprised if she doesn’t come in tomorrow or the next day.” She forced herself to stop the flow of words, as quick as a babbling brook. She’d told herself all morning that she was going to be professional when she met the new doctor. And here she was, as nervous as a first-time father.
“If you’d like to meet one of my patients, she and her husband are here for a checkup.” She extended her arm toward the back of the building.
“How old are you?” he asked. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know it’s an impertinent question.” But he didn’t retract it.
Her smile stiffened as she led him across the homey living area, where fathers-to-be sometimes waited for their babies to be born. Beyond was a short hallway that led to the bedrooms she also used as exam rooms.
“I am twenty-eight.” She’d surprised him with that statement. “I’ve been a part of the birthing center since I was fifteen.”
She didn’t owe him any explanations. But if they were going to work together, he needed to be able to trust her as well as trust the methods she and her aendi had developed over the years of practicing midwifery.
It was only the first day, the first few moments together. It wouldn’t be so awkward again, not once they got to know each other. Doctor Bradshaw had been practicing medicine for so long in Hickory Hollow that he’d been the one to deliver her. He’d been a fixture, someone she’d known all her life. This couldn’t compare.
Doctor Barrett was glancing around, and as they entered the hallway, his gaze caught on the framed drawings given to her or Aendi Carol by the babies who had been born at the birthing center and grown into children or even teenagers.
His eyes locked on the telephone hung on the wall in the hallway. He breathed a sigh of relief. “You have a telephone.”
“It’s how I call Doctor Bradshaw to let him know when he’s needed. I suppose I’ll be calling you now.” She tipped her head a little to one side. “It doesn’t happen often, but in some rare cases, I will have to call for a car service to take one of my patients to the hospital.”
He was a few steps behind her as she put her hand on the knob of the first door.
“I think all babies should be born at hospitals.”
She had already tapped twice on the door and was in the process of pushing it open when he spoke the words.
For a moment, she pretended she hadn’t heard him.
“Ellen, Titus, this is Doctor Barrett. Do you mind if he sits in while we finish the checkup?”
Ellen Beiler sat on the edge of the double bed in the center of the room, reclining against a pillow propped against the wooden headboard. One of her hands rested on her rounded belly. Her lips were twitching as she shook her head. “It’s okay with me.”
Her husband stood to shake the doctor’s hand before he sat back down in the straight-backed chair close to the window. The curtains were thrown wide to let in bright afternoon sunlight.
“Aren’t you a bit young?” Ellen asked. There was no malice in her words, only curiosity. She must’ve heard him as he and Lena had come in the room. She had to be at least five years younger than the doctor.
Which was why Lena hid her smile as she turned her head to pick up the handwritten chart from the bureau against the opposite wall.
Todd cleared his throat and said, “I just finished a four-year residency. Emergency medicine.”
“Have you delivered many babies?” her husband asked.
“A handful.”
“Lena delivered both of our children,” Titus said pointedly.
Doctor Barrett glanced at her, a flicker of surprise visible before his gaze went back to her patient. “I’m sure she’s capable.” His cool words said he was anything but. “But emergencies happen.” To Lena he said, “You don’t have the equipment or staff to handle a true emergency, do you?”
She’d checked the notes on her chart and placed it back on the bureau, taking a flexible measuring tape from her apron pocket. “In the case of an emergency, Doctor Bradshaw and I have always sent patients by ambulance to the nearest hospital.”
“And if the ambulance takes too long? It’s rural here.”
Her memory bank provided an image of Dorothy, the young mother Lena had lost over a year ago. She blinked herself into the present and forced a smile. “Perhaps we can discuss logistics after I’ve finished my exam.”
He should know better than to frighten a patient for no reason. Ellen had birthed two healthy babies and she was young and healthy and strong. She’d seen Lena for regular checkups and there was nothing in her chart to indicate she was at risk for complications.
“Would you lie back? Let’s measure how this little one is growing.”
Ellen complied, lying on the bed so that Lena could stretch the measuring tape across her belly.
Doctor Barrett stood at the foot of the bed. Lena couldn’t help the developing awareness of his watchful gaze. Was he judging her methods? He must be.
Titus was one of the quietest men Lena knew, and she was surprised when he spoke. “Before the birthing center, most of the mothers in Hickory Hollow had their babies at home.”
“I was born at home,” Ellen piped up.
Lena patted her hand as she folded the tape. It was kind of the young couple to defend her and the birthing center.
“I’m sure Doctor Barrett will come around as he begins to understand our ways.”
If he didn’t, well...he wasn’t planning to be here long, was he?
His sharp eyes seemed to read what she hadn’t said, and his lips curled slightly. In amusement? She couldn’t tell.
She didn’t need his approval. But she might need his help over the next few weeks, and she certainly didn’t want him going around frightening every young mother in the community.
“We’ll learn to work with each other soon enough, won’t we?”
His answering smile held a distinct tinge of we’ll see.
