Jodie Picoult - Plain Truth

“Oh, it won’t be for long.” I took my bags from the backseat and hurried up the porch steps behind Leda.

“Well, we’re glad to have you, for two nights or two dozen.” She cocked her head. “Phone’s ringing,” she said, pushing open the door and rushing in to pick up the receiver. “Hello?”

I set down my suitcases and stretched to work out the kinks in my back. Leda’s kitchen was neat as a pin, just like always, and looked exactly the way I had remembered: the stitched sampler on the wall, the cookie jar in the shape of a pig, the black and white squares of linoleum. Closing my eyes, it was easy to pretend I’d never left here, to believe that the most difficult choice I’d have to make that day was whether to curl up in an Adirondack chair out back or on the creaky swing on the screened porch. Across the kitchen, Leda was clearly surprised to hear the voice of whoever it was that had called. “Sarah, Sarah, sssh,” she soothed. “Was ist letz?” I could only make out small snippets of unfamiliar words: an Kind . . . er hat an Kind gfuna . . . es Kind va dodt. Sinking down on a counter stool, I waited for Leda to finish the call.

When she hung up, her hand remained on the receiver for a long moment. Then she turned to me, pale and shaken. “Ellie, I am so sorry, but I have to go somewhere.”

“Do you need me-”

“You stay here,” Leda insisted. “You’re here to rest.”

I watched her pull away in her car. Whatever the problem was, Leda would fix it. She always did. Putting my feet up on a second stool, I smiled. I’d been in Paradise for fifteen minutes, and I felt better already.

“Neh!” Katie screamed, kicking out at the paramedic who was trying to load her into the ambulance. “Ich will net gay!”

Lizzie watched the girl fight. The bottom of her dress, a rich green, was by now stained black with blood. In a tight, shocked semicircle stood the Fishers, Samuel, and Levi. The big blond man stepped forward, his jaw set. “Let her down,” he said in clear English.

The paramedic turned. “Buddy, I’m only trying to help her.” He managed to haul Katie into the rear of the ambulance. “Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, you’re welcome to ride along.”

Sarah Fisher sobbed, clutching at her husband’s shirt and pleading with him in a language Lizzie could not understand. He shook his head, then turned and walked away, calling for the men to join him. Sarah gingerly climbed into the ambulance and held her daughter’s hand, whispering until Katie calmed. The paramedics closed the double doors; the ambulance began to rumble down the long driveway, kicking up pebbles and clouds of dust.

Lizzie knew she had to get to the hospital and speak to the doctors who would examine Katie, but she didn’t move just yet. Instead she watched Samuel-who had not followed Aaron Fisher, but remained rooted to the spot, watching the ambulance disappear from his sight.

The world was rushing by. Overhead, the line of fluorescent lights looked like the dashes in the middle of a paved road, running quick as they did when seen from the back of a buggy. The stretcher she was on came to an abrupt stop and a voice at her head called, “On my count-one, two, three!” Then Katie was being spirited through the air, floating down to a cold, shining table.

The paramedic was telling everyone her name and, for goodness sake, that she’d been bleeding down there. A woman’s face loomed over hers, assessing. “Katie? Do you speak English?”

“Ja,” she murmured.

“Katie, are you pregnant?”

“No!”

“Can you tell us when your last period was?”

Katie’s cheeks went scarlet, and she turned away in silence.

She could not help but notice the lights and the noises of this strange hospital. Bright screens were filled with undulating waves; beeps and whirrs framed her on all sides; scattered voices called out in an odd synchronicity that reminded her of church hymns sung in the round. “BP is eighty over forty,” a nurse said.

“Heart rate one-thirty.”

“Respiratory rate?”

“It’s twenty-eight.”

The doctor turned to Katie’s mother. “Mrs. Fisher? Was your daughter pregnant?” Stunned by the commotion, Sarah stared mutely at the man. “Christ,” the doctor muttered. “Just get the skirt off her.”

Katie felt their hands tugging at her clothes, pulling at her privacy. “It’s part of a dress, and I can’t find the buttons,” a nurse complained.

“There are none. It’s pinned. What the-”

“Cut it off, if you have to. I want a BSU, a urine hCG, a CBC, and send a type and screen to the blood bank, all stat.” The doctor’s face floated before Katie again. “Katie, I’m going to examine your uterus now. Do you understand? Just relax, I’m going to be touching you between your legs-”

At the first gentle probe, Katie lashed out with her foot. “Hold her,” the doctor commanded, and two nurses secured her ankles in the stirrups. “Just relax, now. I won’t hurt you.” Tears began to roll down Katie’s cheeks as the doctor dictated to a nurse with a clipboard. “In addition to what might be lochia rubia, we’ve got a boggy, uncontracted uterus, about twenty-four weeks’ size. Looks like an open cervical os. Let’s get an ultrasound now to see what we’re dealing with. How’s the bleeding?”

“Still a steady flow.”

“Get an OB/GYN down here now.”

A nurse wrapped a wad of ice in cotton and placed it between Katie’s legs. “This’ll make it feel better, honey,” she whispered.

Katie tried to focus on the nurse’s face, but by now her vision was shaking as badly as her jellied arms and legs. The nurse, noticing, draped her with another blanket. Katie wished she had the words to thank her, wished she had the words to tell her that what she really needed was someone to hold her together before she broke apart right there on the table, but her thoughts were coming in the language with which she’d grown up.

“You’re gonna be okay,” the nurse soothed.

After one sidelong glance at her mother, Katie closed her eyes and blacked out, believing that this might be so.

On the train platform, her mother pressed five twenty-dollar bills into her hand. “You remember what station you change at?” Katie nodded. “And if he isn’t there to meet you, you call him.” Her mother touched Katie’s cheek. “This time, it’s okay to use the telephone if you have to.”

It went without saying that using a telephone would be the least of her sins. For the first time since her brother Jacob had moved out, Katie-only twelve years old-was going to visit him. All the way in State College, where he was going to university.

Her mother looked nervously around at the other passengers waiting to board, hoping to keep out of the sight of other Plain people, who might report back to Aaron that his wife and his daughter had lied to him.

The long, sleek Amtrak ribboned into the station, and Katie hugged her mother tightly. “You could come with me,” she whispered fiercely.

“You don’t need me. You’re a big girl.”

It wasn’t what Katie meant, and they both knew it. If Sarah went with her daughter to State College, she’d be disobeying her husband, and that wasn’t done. As it was, sending Katie as an envoy of her love was walking the very fine tightrope of insubordination. Plus, Katie hadn’t been baptized yet in the church. By the rules of the Ordnung, Sarah would not be able to ride in a car with her excommunicated son; would not be allowed to eat at the same table. “You go,” she said, smiling hard at her daughter. “You come back and tell me all about him.”

On the train Katie sat by herself, closing her eyes against the curious looks and the people who pointed at her clothing and head covering. She folded her hands in her lap and thought of the last time she had seen Jacob, the sun bright as a halo on his copper hair, when he walked out of their house for good.