Wild Horses (Sadie's Montana #1)(41)
Why? Why had they gone down over that embankment?
Nurses came and went, but they continued talking about that night. Leah told her part of the story, her eyes still wide with the horror of it.
The doctor arrived and asked the family to step outside. He removed the bandage on her head, and Sadie lay back as he redressed the cut. Then she asked how severely she had been wounded.
“You have a very deep cut with 22 stitches. I suppose the cold saved your life, and the fact that your blood clotted easily.”
“My hair?” she asked.
“Lets just say a significant amount was removed,” the doctor said smiling.
Sadie wrinkled her nose.
“Bald?”
“Just on one side. Don’t worry. It’ll grow back.”
Sadie touched the new bandage tentatively, then turned her head and closed her eyes. She wondered how long this all-consuming weariness would stay in her bones. She heard Mam’s favorite expression ring in her ears. After a day of back-breaking labor, she would say, “I feel as if a dump truck rolled over me.” It was a gross exaggeration, but fitting.
If anyone feels like she was flattened, it’s me, she mused. That accident must have been severe.
The doctor finished jotting on a chart, spoke tersely to the nurses, then probed Sadie’s stomach to check for more internal injuries. He asked questions, patted her abdomen, spoke to the nurses again, and was gone before Sadie thought to ask how long she would need to stay.
Her family streamed in to say good-bye and that they’d all be back that evening. Reuben gave her a bag of M&M’s, a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and a small package of salted peanuts.
“You can eat these while you watch TV,” he announced importantly.
Sadie laughed, then gasped, grabbing her stomach as pain rolled across it.
“Oh, I just hurt everywhere,” she breathed.
Anna patted her arm.
“You’ll be okay, Sadie. Hey, you know why Reuben got you all those snacks? Because he loves putting quarters in vending machines and pushing the buttons. He has a whole stash of candy, and not one of us has any quarters left in our wallets.”
Reuben punched her arm, Mam herded them out, and Dat winked at her as the door closed softly behind them.
Sighing, she snuggled against the pillows and closed her eyes.
Ezra. Dear, dear Ezra.
She was suddenly very, very glad she had consented to go with him to the hymn-singing. It was a consolation—a sort of closure—pathetic as it seemed. Dat was right. Ezra had been a fine young man—a devout Christian, baptized, trying to do what was right, listening to his conscience.
Sadie fell asleep, peaceful.
Chapter 12
THE BUGGIES STREAMED TO the Jacob Miller home. There were brown horses, black ones, beautiful sorrels, and saddlebreds hitched to the surreys and smaller buggies. Some of them plodded up the curving drive beside the group of trees, others trotted fast, their shining coats dark with sweat, turning into lather where the harness bounced and chafed on their bodies.
The buggies were filled with smiling occupants, friendly members of the Montana Old Order Amish coming to visit the Miller family to see how Sadie was doing. They brought casseroles, pies, home-baked raisin bread, cupcakes, and heavy stoneware pots of baked beans wrapped in clean towels to keep the warmth inside.
They grasped Sadie’s hand and asked questions. Kindly faces smiled shakily, eyes filled with tears of compassion. Rotund grandmothers clucked and shook their heads, saying surely the end of the world was near; God was calling loudly, wasn’t he?
Shy children peeped from behind their mothers’ skirts, their eyes round with wonder. This was that Sadie—Jacob Miller’s Sadie—who almost died on that snowy hill. They had heard it all—around oil-clothed kitchen tables and as they played in the snow and dirt outside the phone shanties, listening while their mams were busy talking.
Most of them had been taken to the viewing of Ezra Troyer at his parents’ home. Viewing the deceased was part of life, death, birth, a heaven, and a hell. The children were not kept from life’s tragedies and sometimes brutal truths; it was all instilled in them at a young age.
Parents explained gently about death and what happens after someone dies. There was very little mystery. They made it all simple, uncomplicated, a concept any child could grasp. It was enough to soothe them, comfort them when they questioned with serious eyes while mulling things over in their childish minds. Then they ran out to play, forgetting, as children do.
Jacob watched his wife as her face became troubled, her countenance high with anxiety. He was afraid this whole incident would prove to be too much for her, although he didn’t speak of it to anyone. Sometimes, he believed, if you hid your feelings and fears and worries, they all disappeared and no one ever knew. This left your pride and sense of well-being intact.
But still he watched her.
He was drawn into conversation when it turned to gossip at the local feed store in town. Simon Gregory, the feed-truck driver saw it on the news, but everyone knew that Simon stretched “news” to the limit. There was real news and “Simon news” at the feed mill, and everyone grinned and raised their eyebrows when Simon related another new item.
This time it was “them wild horses roamin’ them ridges and pastures. They’s there. I seen ’em. They said on th’ news, they’s stealin’ horses all over th’ place. No one’s safe. You Amish better padlock yer barns. They don’t care if you wear suspenders and a straw hat, or a Stetson and a belt, all’s they want is yer horse.”