David’s eyebrows shot up.
“—or just observing other doctors. I wanted to find apartnerwho can spell me, not brand-new graduates who need constant supervising.”
Fair enough. “So maybe at first you might need to do some hand-holding. But I would think it won’t be long before you have confidence in them. Start small. Give them duties you know they can handle. Like...”
Her eyes squinted, like she was starting to buy in. “Like ... filling out insurance forms.”
David smiled. “Well, um, I guess that’s a place to start. And you can go from there. Give them actual patient experience.” It was past time for the Bent N’ Dent to open, and the graybeards would be arriving for coffee soon, so he gave her a pat on the arm and started to go.
“David, hold on. I need a place for them to live.”
He turned, then tilted his head. “Why do I get the feeling that you’re asking me to solve that problem?”
“Because you know so many people. And because they arrive tomorrow. Maybe you can find a place for just a short period, until they look for their own living arrangements.”
“How long is a short period?”
Ruth let out a puff of air. “I don’t know ... a few weeks? Just until I can figure out how this is all going to work.”
Still, David hesitated.
“You must know of someone with a spare room or two.Someone who’d be willing to offer room. See if they’ll include board for a reasonable fee. They’ll be paid, of course. The program lady said so. Not really sure how much, but I’ll find out.”
Ruth made it sound easy, but David knew how busy farming families were, especially during the summer. Providing room and board to an Englisch stranger was not a small ask. Decades ago, it would’ve been unthinkable. But offering hospitality to non-Amish was a more acceptable practice in the last ten years or so.
“I’d have them stay with us, but Matt just demoed our spare bathroom. He needed a project after baby Gabe was ... well, you know.” Her voice drizzled to a stop.
David filled in the rest. After baby Gabe’s birth father gained full custody of him. It had been a painful yet poignant chapter in Ruth and Matt’s life as foster care parents. For the first time, his sister had talked about slowing down and working less. About having more time for church work, hobbies, interests. More time for Matt too. All good intentions, but in reality, Ruth seemed to be working harder than ever.
“Can you think of anyone? Please, David? I’m really in a bind. What about the Inn at Eagle Hill?”
“I just bumped into Rose last evening, when I was picking up our mail. She said the inn is booked solid through July.”
Ruth let out a tired sigh.
David felt himself caving in, like he always did when his only sister needed his help. “Well, maybe Fern Lapp. Luke and Izzy Schrock had to return to Kentucky to help his cousin for a few more months.”
Ruth’s eyes went wide. “Would you mind asking Fern for me? And did I mention that they arrive tomorrow?” She started backing up, as if the conversation had concluded.
He knew that particular trick. “Ruth...”
She started walking faster, still backward. “You know how that saying goes, David. You can’t say no to a bishop.” She gavehim a five-finger wave and turned around, marching toward her office in that Dok-like way she’d always had, even as a young girl, striding fast like she was being chased.
David blew out a puff of air. Her problem had just become his problem.
This might be the miracle Annie Fisher had been waiting for. She had just finished preparing an exam room for the next patient when she overheard a sort of one-sided whisper-yell conversation drift in through the open crack of Dok’s office door. Annie stopped in the hallway, just for a moment, as she heard Dok say something about two new doctors joining the practice tomorrow.
Tomorrow?
Annie wasn’t one to eavesdrop. Not like her mother Sally, who had been working at Dok’s on Saturdays and reported back everything she overheard in the waiting room, often mixing up names and details. Rumors started. When Sally had been “overcome” with a vague illness in mid-May and had to stop working to recover her health, Dok didn’t ask if she planned to return.
Annie wasnothinglike her mother. Complete opposites.
Anyway, so Annie wasn’t one to eavesdrop, but Dok’s voice had risen quite a few decibels, in that staccato way she had that meant she was not happy. It didn’t take long to figure out that Dok was talking to her husband Matt and that he was responsible for the arrival of the nurse and doctors.
If so, Annie wanted to give Matt Lehman a big pat on the back. She knew firsthand how tirelessly Dok worked. The practice had been inundated with patients ever since that TV news story ran. Every single day, Annie had to respond to phone calls of people who begged, literally begged, to see Dok. She had to tell them that Dok couldn’t take on any new patients right now,then apologize profusely, and finally offer to add their names to a long waiting list.
That list felt like a lie. There’d only been one new patient accepted and that was because old Simon Miller had died. Annie felt bad turning prospective patients away, but she had no choice. There was only one Dok to go around.
