Between You and Me

“I, um, found something.” She handed him the flattened souvenir coin. “I thought it might belong to Jonah.”

Caleb Stoltz took the coin in his big workman’s hand. “His lucky charm. Guess it didn’t bring him any luck today.” His hand hovered between the side bars of the hospital bed. He seemed unsure of what to do; then he let his fingers rest on Jonah’s knee.

The gesture made her heart ache. There was something so piercing about the two of them, strangers ripped away from their quiet existence and thrust into this frightening, sterile world. Her throat felt tight with compassion. “Mr. Stoltz, has anyone spoken to you about accommodations while you’re in the city?”

“No.” He kept his eyes on Jonah. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

A now familiar twinge of annoyance flared up in Reese. “I’ll see if I can find someone to help you out with that.” She took a step toward the door, and something else occurred to her. “I’ll bet you haven’t eaten a thing all day.”

“Hadn’t thought about that, either.”

“Let me show you where the cafeteria is.”

His long, sun-browned fingers curled around the boy’s knee. “I’d best stay here.”

“He’s going to be asleep for a while, I estimate. You won’t do him much good sitting here.” He shot her a look, and she added, “The cafeteria is close. We won’t be gone long.”

He stood up, his long body unfolding from the small stool. “All right,” he said simply.

In the elevator, Reese couldn’t help herself. She glanced at her watch.

“You late for something?” he asked.

Her cheeks heated a little. “No, it’s fine,” she lied.

The cafeteria of Mercy Heights was a linoleum and Formica emporium of instant gratification. Rows of salads, floating in a sea of chipped ice, led to long steamer tables of casseroles and overcooked meats in salty sauces. The desserts ranged from thick banana pudding surrounded by bland vanilla wafers to pies crowned with six inches of meringue.

Seeing his hesitation, Reese guessed that he didn’t have much practice eating at a cafeteria. She took the lead by selecting a brown plastic tray and gliding it along in front of the salad bar. Though she had no intention of eating, she selected a random salad, an entrée, and a dinner roll and helped herself to a tall, syrupy Coke from the beverage dispenser. Following her lead, he chose exactly what she did. Except on his tray, for a man of his size who hadn’t eaten all day, the food looked woefully meager.

“You need to eat more than that,” she said. “Otherwise you’ll be back here hungry again in just a couple of hours.”

With quiet compliance, he loaded up his tray with main dishes, a macaroni salad, and banana pudding, then followed her to the checkout line. Reese paid with her staff debit card. Briefly she considered picking up his tab but decided against it. She knew next to nothing about Caleb Stoltz, but she already sensed that he had his pride.

He took out a worn billfold and counted out the amount in cash. She led him to a table and sat down, resisting the urge to check her watch once again. Having dinner with a patient’s family member wasn’t exactly a breach of policy, but neither was it standard procedure. Certainly Reese had never done anything like this before.

But then again, she’d never met anyone like Caleb Stoltz before.

Just to have something to do with her hands, she took a napkin from the napkin holder and spread it over her lap. “So I guess—” She broke off, noticing that he had fallen silent and still, his head bowed as he perused his dinner tray.

A moment later, he looked up. “What’s that?”

“I guess it’s been a rough day for you. Please, go ahead and eat.” She toyed with her salad, swirling her fork in the wilted leaves.

He dived in, eating mechanically but probably not tasting the meat and potatoes, the green beans, the dinner roll shiny with butter. Reese kept trying to figure out what it was about him. An otherness. He seemed to be surrounded by some sort of invisible bubble or cocoon. Though he sat across the table from her, he inhabited a world she couldn’t touch.

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about the Amish community, Mr. Stoltz,” she said, feeling somewhat abashed by her own ignorance. She’d taken a seminar in the cultural competency of physicians, meant to help a doctor understand the patient’s perspective. In the class, they’d covered far-flung cultures like Samburu tribes and Tibetan nomads, yet they hadn’t touched on a group right next door. “My impressions are based on things I’ve seen in National Geographic and on PBS.”

“That’s pretty much all most folks know.” He took a few more bites of food. “If you don’t mind, I go by my given name, Caleb.”

She vaguely remembered hearing that it was an Amish custom to use people’s first names rather than titles. Simplicity ruled their way of life, that much she knew. I wish I knew what you were thinking, she silently told him. He seemed so placid and calm, yet she sensed something more going on.

“So … Middle Grove?” She took a small bite of her salad and chewed thoughtfully, picturing rolling hills, painted houses and barns, quilts pegged on clotheslines. “I’ve lived in the city all my life,” she said. “Not right here in Philly, but in Gladwyne, about twenty minutes away.” She turned her wrist to check her watch again and then caught herself.

She was surprised to look down at her plate to discover that she’d eaten most of the salad. With a shrug, she started in on the dinner roll. It had been a long shift today, and she hadn’t bothered with lunch. “Is it true you don’t use electricity or phones?”

“Each community has its standards,” he said patiently. “On our farm, we don’t use electricity or have a phone. If there’s an emergency, like there was for Jonah, there’s a phone in a shed we share with the neighbors.”

“Is everyone in your community Amish, then?”

“Most folks are, yah. We do get plenty of tourists coming through,” said Caleb. “More than our share, though it’s not as busy as it is down in Lancaster.”

She flashed on the news vans camped out in front of the hospital. “Do the tourists bother you?”

“Not me personally. I reckon it bothers some to have outsiders watching us going about our business, harvesting corn, or plowing a field, or our kids walking to school.”

She took a sip of her Coke. “It would bother me.”

They finished eating, and the silence between them was oddly companionable. She hadn’t meant to eat at all, but she’d just sort of done it without thinking. He had the oddest effect on her, this big, quiet Amish man. Time seemed to slow, moments slipped by, unnoticed.

A nasal sound came from her purse. He started, the first sudden movement she’d seen him make. “Sorry,” she said, fumbling in her handbag. “It’s my phone.” She took it out and checked the screen.

Her mother, of course.

“Shit.”

“How’s that?” he asked.

Shit. She’d completely lost track of the time. That wasn’t like her at all. “Would you excuse me for a moment?” she said to Caleb. Without waiting for his assent, she left the table and stepped over to the side of the cafeteria near the garbage cans. “Mom, I’m really sorry, but I’m not going to be able to make it tonight. I’m tied up here at the hospital.”

“Your shift was over forty-five minutes ago,” Joanna Powell pointed out.

How many other adults had a mother who memorized their work schedule?

“I know, but there’s a sort of … interesting case I’m involved in.” She cast a glance at Caleb Stoltz, who had managed to put away a dinner that would have satisfied three regular-size men. “I’m so sorry. I was really looking forward to getting together with you and Daddy tonight.”

“I guess there’s nothing else to be done,” her mother said. “We’ll just have to reschedule. In the meantime, I’ll email you some things about the residency interviews.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Reese said. “You’re the best.”

She got off the phone quickly and hurried back to the table. Caleb finished his large cup of Coke.

“Would you like something else to drink?” she asked. “There’s lemonade, iced tea, or—”

“I’m okay. Just not used to the taste of a Coca-Cola. Been a long time.”

Reese wasn’t quite sure why she’d stood up her parents in order to linger at the hospital with this man, a stranger whose nephew had passed through the emergency room. Ordinarily patients came and went like leaves floating down a smooth-flowing river. Often, that river flowed with blood, but it continued on as regularly as the janitorial staff that cleaned each exam room and curtain area after each successive patient.

Something about this man and his injured little boy took hold of Reese’s heart. She simply wasn’t ready to sign off on him yet. It happened that way with patients sometimes. The residents and attendings she worked with talked about the fact that a certain case or patient or family member caused a peculiar resonance in the doctor, for a variety of reasons.