The Keeper (28 page)

Amos smelled something delicious waft up the stairs and into his room. Fern’s rich coffee, fried eggs, home fries seasoned only as she could do. Amos savored the savory smells. They were downright intoxicating. When had he last felt like he had an appetite? He couldn’t remember.

Was that bacon? Better still, could it be scrapple? Menno must have asked her to cook for him. Fern indulged him. Just the thought of a bite of fried scrapple, slathered in ketchup, filled him with a spurt of energy to go downstairs. He slipped his feet onto the floor and pulled himself to a standing position. There. Step one.

Slowly, he tiptoed to the top of the stairs and waited until he heard Fern go out the kitchen door to hang a load of laundry. He was glad he hadn’t gotten around to oiling that rusty hinge, after all. He went down the stairs, into the kitchen, and looked for the crispiest piece of scrapple there was, cooling on a paper towel. He slathered it with ketchup and was just about to take a bite when he saw Fern heading in from the yard. He scurried to the stairs and tried to get to his room as fast as he could, which wasn’t too swift.

Back in his room, he sat on the bed trying to catch his breath and suddenly felt an enormous pressure on his chest, like it did when he and Menno used to wrestle and Menno would sit on him. He was faintly aware that the muscles in his left arm were beginning to constrict. His hand couldn’t hold on to the scrapple and it fell to the floor, ketchup side down. Blast! He had worked hard for that scrapple.

Amos bent down to pick it up. That’s when the room started to spin.

Julia laid the table with silverware. Fern was frying scrapple and two eggs apiece for all of them, like it was Christmas morning.

Uncle Hank burst into the kitchen and sat down at the table. “I came for your coffee, Fern!”

Fern raised an eyebrow and brought him a cup.

He took a long sip and smacked his lips. “That coffee is so rich and sturdy it could float a nail!”

Julia sized up Uncle Hank. His hair and beard were trimmed and his clothes looked clean. He was transformed! Menno stood by the kitchen stove with a mug of tea in his hand, giving Fern suggestions about how to make bread toasted just the way he liked it—nearly burnt but not quite. That was the longest speech that Julia ever heard come out of her brother’s mouth. What was happening to him? To Uncle Hank? Even M.K. was chirpier than usual this morning. They all seemed changed, overnight. It was Fern’s doings.

Fern sent M.K. upstairs to tell her father to stop ringing that bell incessantly because breakfast was on its way. M.K. was no sooner there than she was back again. She shot into the kitchen like a pack of hounds was on her tail. Her mouth was stretched in a wordless scream, and she was gray-faced.

She grabbed the edge of the table, then fetched up a breath and howled out, “Come quick! It’s Dad! He’s dead!”

On the way to the hospital in the ambulance, Amos heard the medic declare, in a voice that sounded distant, that he could not find a pulse. Why was he saying that? Amos wondered.

In the emergency room he heard a nurse say, “No pulse, no pressure.” Twice, she said it. He also remembered being told, by a calm, soothing, yet authoritative voice, that it wasn’t time yet for him to die.

Later, when he woke up in the intensive care room, Amos was told what had happened. He had collapsed, right on the bedroom floor, a bell in one hand, a piece of scrapple in the other. Caught red-handed!

All that Amos remembered was feeling pressure in his chest, a squeezing, as though his heart were a balloon about to burst. The E.R. doctor was able to revive him, but just barely, he was sternly told. “Next time, you won’t be so lucky,” the doctor warned. “Your heart is at war with itself. Your final defense is a transplant . . . or it is a war you will lose, Amos Lapp.”

The doctor looked like a boy himself.

Amos asked the doctor if he had been the one who told him in the emergency room that he was not going to die. The doctor looked baffled. He replied that he hadn’t, nor did he recall anyone else in the room saying such a thing.

Then the doctor gave a broad grin. “Aren’t you Amish the God-fearing type? Maybe it was an angel with a message from God.” He leaned in close to Amos. “Maybe God is trying to tell you: AMOS LAPP! Get. Your. Name. On. The. Transplant. List.”

Amos scowled. He knew the doctor was being facetious—but, he decided, strangely enough, he might be on to something. It wasn’t a human-sounding voice. It was too deep, too melodious, too beautiful. Suddenly, Amos had no reservations or doubts about its claim. He believed that voice was from God. Maybe an angel, a messenger, but definitely sent from God.

Julia had told Rome once that he had a smile for every occasion, and he reluctantly realized . . . she was right. He was giving the nurse at the Intensive Care Unit his “Aw, shucks. You-don’t-mind-doing-a-little-favor-for-me, do-you?” treatment.

“Ordinarily, only family members are allowed in,” the nurse said. She batted her eyes at him with such alarming speed that Rome was afraid she’d blind herself. “But seeing as how all of you Amish folk seem to be related to each other, I’ll just say you’re a cousin if anyone asks.” She gave him a wink.

“Well, thank you, Miss . . . ,” Rome cast a quick glance at her nameplate, “Miss Chelsea.”

The nurse led him to Amos’s room. “Just fifteen minutes, though. Okay, honey?”

He smiled again and the nurse smiled back at him, touching the curls on the back of her neck. The smile slipped off his face as the nurse disappeared around the corner, her white rubber shoes making a squeaky sound as she walked down the hall. He felt a twinge of remorse—the first time he could ever remember such a feeling. Julia had him pegged. He was a flirt. A shameless flirt.

Rome pushed the door to Amos’s room and gasped when he saw him, lying in the hospital bed with tubes attached to his nose, one to his arm, blinking machines that let out beeps every few seconds. He saw Amos’s beloved Bible grasped in his hands and forced a smile. “Have time for a visit?”

Amos looked over at him. “Well, well, the Bee Man. I can’t think of anybody I’d rather see right now.” His voice was weak and raspy, but he managed a thin smile.

Rome sat down on a chair across from Amos and stretched out his long legs. “Amos, I only have fifteen minutes and there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Shoot.”

“I spoke to the heart transplant coordinator over at Hershey Medical about what needs to happen to get a person on the list.”

Amos stilled and looked away.

“Not that I would interfere in any way—”

“What would you call it then?” Amos asked gruffly.

Rome put up a hand. He wished he weren’t sitting below Amos on the chair, like a child. “Hear me out. Julia has told me why you won’t consider a transplant.”

Amos’s gaze shifted to the window.

Rome drew in a long breath. “You’ve always been willing to give someone a chance. Would you at least listen to what I have to say on the subject?”

Amos turned back to Rome. “Speak your piece.”

“Julia said you didn’t feel you could accept the heart of another person, knowing he had sacrificed his life for you. But Amos, I think you’ve got it all wrong. There are parallels between the gift of a donor and that of Christ’s gift of eternal life. Your new heart will be given unconditionally, with no strings attached, and without compensation. Free, but it comes at a high price. It requires a great loss be inflicted on the donor. Like Christ’s sacrifice for us.”

Rome reached over and took Amos’s Bible out of his hands. He turned it to Ezekiel 36:26 and read aloud: “‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.’ That verse is for you, Amos. God is in the business of giving out new hearts. New life.” He paused to see how Amos was responding, but Amos had closed his eyes. He waited a moment and then, discouraged, decided Amos had fallen asleep. He left the Bible open to Ezekiel and placed it next to Amos on the bed.

Amos opened his eyes. “Rome, you can tell that boy doctor to put me on the list.” Then he closed his eyes again.

Rome heard a sniffling sound and looked up. At the door was Julia. He walked over to her, and for an instant they were looking straight at each other, everything between them falling away. He reached up and touched one large hand lightly against her cheek. She pressed it with her own hand, tears in her eyes.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Amos was discharged by the end of that week, sent home with a beeper that had to be with him at all times. “When a compatible heart is harvested, the transplant coordinator will beep you. You get to Hershey Medical immediately!” the doctor had told him. “Whatever you need to do—taxi, racehorse, or call 911. You just get yourself in there, Amos Lapp.”

Harvested. The very word made Amos shudder. It wasn’t a crop; it was a human being. A heart.

Still, he felt a confidence that proceeding forward to have a heart transplant was the right thing to do, a conviction that God was guiding him in this direction.

For now, though, he would have to wait. For someone to die so that he could live.