How the Light Gets In

by what_alchemy

Summary:

After crashing his car in a blizzard, Robby wakes up in the care of Dennis Whitaker, the closet thing to a doctor in Amish country.

Notes:

I wish I could have posted this during Hanukkah, but it was not to be. It will have to be my contribution to having a merry shitscram instead.

The title, of course, comes from Anthem by Leonard Cohen.

With great love and thanks to my very own Nice Jewish Boi From Long Island™️, who checked this over for the medical stuff, Jewish cultural sensitivity, and general SPAG. And thanks, too, to my dear friend whose father is ex-Amish and who is an endless source of both information and delight. It's only taken me approximately 15 years to finally write an Amish AU. Please clap.

Robby had lost cell signal.

“Jesus fuck,” he muttered, tossing his phone into the passenger’s seat when all it could do was tell him it was rerouting for minutes on end. He took a deep breath and tightened his hands on the steering wheel. He hunched over it and squinted into the darkness. There weren’t streetlights for miles, and the snow was coming down quick and piling high enough to reflect his own headlights back at him. He was doubly blind here—by the snow, by the night. He didn’t even know where he was.

He had been in Philly for his niece’s bat mitzvah. He was supposed to stay for a few more days, celebrate the first night of Hanukkah with both his sisters and all their kids, when the weather turned dire. All the reports said it would really be coming down later that night and moving west in the following days, so despite the chorus of naysayers, he made the executive decision to try to get ahead of it.

“Dumbass,” he said, just as he hit black ice.

 

Robby dipped in and out of awareness. It was dark and he was cold. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. He heard low, indistinct chatter whose meaning he couldn’t parse. The door opened and cold air billowed over him. Hands on him. Pulling hands, pushing hands. There were…lanterns? With flames, not bulbs?

He tried to ask what was happening, but his mouth wasn’t cooperating. He was trying so hard to force his eyes open, to stay awake, to swim ashore, but he just kept sinking. He was so tired. All he needed was a little sleep, and then he would be ready.

 

Robby woke warm in bed. Not his bed, and not the guest bed in Naomi’s house he’d just spent three nights in. When Robby braced himself and cracked an eye open, he was met not with an onslaught of light but a dim room lit only by a fire. From an actual fireplace. Robby sat up, only let out a bellow when pain split his head and exploded from his side.

“Ah fuck,” he said, breathing hard. He pressed a hand to his ribs and sagged into the pillows. When he caught his breath, he cracked an eye open again and lifted his t-shirt up. His ribs were swollen and bruised; he could only hope they weren’t broken. He ventured a touch to his head only to find it had been wrapped in gauze. He frowned and looked around.

He wasn’t in a hospital. This was a bedroom in a home he’d never been in before—the bed frame, side table, and wardrobe were plain but somehow expensive-looking. Cherry wood or something. He was buried in quilts. The walls were white and boasted no art or pictures. There weren’t any lamps. Or, there was one on the bedside table, but it was a strange old antique with an oil reservoir. Matches lay in a box next to it.

Robby blinked and blinked.

With a groan he couldn’t quite keep to himself, he struck a match and lit the oil lamp. Gingerly he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He was still in his pants and socks, which he was grateful for when his feet made contact with the cold floor. He took a deep breath and stood. His bladder was becoming insistent, so he opened the door and ventured into the hallway. When all he found was darkness and silence, he stepped back in to get the oil lamp.

“Hello?” he said in a stage whisper. He didn’t want to wake anyone; likewise he didn’t want to wander into the wrong room looking for a toilet. He crept along, slowly in deference to his own pain, until he found a bathroom several doors down. There wasn’t a light in there either, so Robby set the lamp on the sink, yanked his pants down, and sat to pee. As he was washing his hands, he caught sight of himself in the tiny mirror mounted above the sink. He looked pale and haggard, a spot of blood seeping through the gauze on his head. “Fuck,” he said, and left before he could see more.

His stomach was also growling, but he didn’t dare go scavenging for food in a stranger’s house. He just needed his phone. He’d call AAA and thank these people, maybe give them some money, and get this show on the road, but when he patted himself down, there was no phone on him. He swore and hurried back to the room he’d woken in to see if it was among his things. Surely his things were there—he’d had a coat, boots, a nicer hoodie, a long-sleeve shirt, his wallet. But he couldn’t find any of them. His Magen David was tucked under the collar of his t-shirt, and he clutched at it as though someone had attempted to steal it from him.

There came a timid knock at his door, and he whirled around only to regret it immediately. He pressed a hand to his ribs and said to come in, voice tight.

A young man holding a candle appeared when the door opened. He was fairly short but sported shoulders that looked incongruously broad. The flames threw light and shadow across his face in a way that made it hard to get a good look at him, but Robby’s first impression was of a man from another time, face taken up by wide eyes over wider eye bags that made him seem impossibly young and unfathomably old all at once. His haircut was severe and helmet-like. He wore shapeless black pants, suspenders, and a plain white shirt that fastened down the middle like any button down, except there were no buttons to speak of.

Holy shit, Robby was in an Amish house. How did he end up in Lancaster?

“Hello,” the young man said with a wincing sort of smile, as if saving Robby from freezing to death in a blizzard was something he should apologize for. “I heard you were up and wanted to check on you.”

Robby put on his best smile and held out his hand. The young man shook it; his hands were big and calloused, his grip firm.

“Hey, thank you,” he said. “Really, I can’t thank you enough. I’m sorry to impose like this, but I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I can.”

“Oh you’re not imposing,” the young man said, eyes going even wider somehow. “I thank God the Yoder boys found you when they did. How are you feeling? Are you lightheaded? I’ll get you some water.”

“I think I’m okay, though I probably need to be checked for broken ribs and a concussion. I don’t suppose there’s someone who can take me to the nearest hospital tonight?”

Something troubled the young man’s expression. He opened his mouth only to be interrupted by the loud rumbling of Robby’s stomach. Before Robby could excuse himself, the young man seemed to make up his mind about something and stood up straight.

“Come,” he said. “Maam’s been wanting to feed you since you got here.”

He rummaged in the closet and handed Robby a shirt similar to his own, then turned his back so Robby could fasten the hooks and eyes closed with unpracticed fingers. The sleeves were too short while the shoulders sagged, but at least the thing fell comfortably over his stomach.

The house was large and drafty, their way lit by candles and lanterns. Downstairs was spotless, and decorations seemed confined to intricately carved wooden items, quilts in extravagant designs, and doilies someone’s grandmother probably handmade. Though Christmas was coming, there was no tree, but there was a garland of red and green stamped cards hanging in the doorway between the living and dining rooms, made by someone with small, unsteady hands.

The young man installed Robby at the dining room table and poured him a glass of water.

“I’ll be just a moment,” he said. He dipped his head and scurried away, footsteps quick up the stairs. Robby chugged the water and got up to pour himself another even though it ponged faintly of iron.

It was interesting. He’d never been in an Amish home before. They had running water and indoor plumbing, but no refrigerator. Their stove and oven looked like something out of an old cartoon—a big black wood-burning contraption that was already puffing away, no doubt with something for him. Robby would bet good money that there wasn’t a lick of electricity anywhere in this place, maybe this whole community. Trepidation thrummed up from his gut and gripped him by the lungs.

He’d be fine. When morning came he’d set out for his car, grab his stuff, and pay someone for a ride into town where he could charge his phone and call for help. He was at least reasonably sure he wasn’t concussed, and even if his ribs were broken, there was nothing to be done about it. Still, if there was any chance a broken bone could nick his lung and cause a pneumothorax, he needed to be a lot closer to a hospital than he was right now. Or hope one of these farmhands had a steady hand, an iron stomach, and good listening ears for when he instructed them on exactly how to perform a little minor surgery on him.

More footsteps, and Robby straightened, plastered on a smile. A short, plump woman in a white bonnet and navy dress appeared, beaming. A bearded older man, not too tall but thin and gnarled as a whittled bone, trailed behind her, while the young man followed alongside another young man with a similar build but darker hair and a beard. The first young man weaved around his parents.

“This is my fater, Jacob Whitaker,” he said, and Robby shook the man’s hand.

“I’m Michael Robinavitch,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough for opening your home to me.”

Jacob only grunted, eyes darting away.

“This is my mater, Esther Whitaker,” the young man said.

“Thank you, ma’am. I’m very grateful to you.”

She patted his hand.

“We’re only grateful the Lord saw fit to put two thoughts big enough to rub together between those big Yoder ears tonight.”

“Mater!” the new young man cried, and Mrs. Whitaker let go of Robby’s hand, eyebrows raised in the picture of innocence.

“And this is my brother, Eli Whitaker.”

Robby endured his hand being pumped with too much enthusiasm.

“What Maam means is that Gotte is gut. Very pleased to meet you, sir, and may I say you’re not looking like a corpse at all!”

“Yes, thank you, Eli,” the first young man said hastily. He clapped his brother on the back. “Why don’t we give Maam some space to work, hm?”

“I didn’t catch your name,” Robby said. He had a great deal of practice keeping a straight face; it was the least he could do as the young man tried not to cringe himself into oblivion.

“Oh! It’s Dennis. Dennis Whitaker.” More enthusiastic handshaking. “Mr…what was it, again? Forgive me.”

“Michael Robinavitch,” Robby said. “You can just call me Robby, though.”

“He’ll do no such thing,” Jacob grunted from the other room. Dennis looked embarrassed.

“It would be overfamiliar,” Dennis said. “Rude.”

“That’s okay,” Robby said. “Whatever you want.”

“Now, Mr. Robinavitch,” Esther said, only stumbling over it a little. “Is there anything you can’t eat?”

“Please, ma’am, Michael is fine.”

She and Jacob couldn’t be that much older than him, if they were even older at all, but Robby felt like a fumbling child in their house, on the back foot with their grown children beside him and evidence of grandchildren everywhere. Robby might be a grown man, but he wasn’t this grown.

“All right, schatzi,” Esther said, cementing his place in this hierarchy. Her husband called out her name as if in warning, but she only rolled her eyes and smiled at Robby. “Food restrictions?”

“Ah, no,” he said. “I’ll eat anything you put in front of me, but I do hope you won’t go to any trouble. Leftovers are fine, really.”

“Leftovers!” Esther tutted. “Eli, Dennis, please take our guest into the sitting room.”

With that, he was banished from the kitchen without even the chance to offer to help. It felt intolerably rude, and somewhere in New Jersey his bubbe was turning in her grave, but…when in Rome. Who knew how many times he’d already stepped in it with these people?

Robby joined the men by the fire. Jacob had glasses on and was reading the bible by candlelight. Eli had taken out a knife and some balsa wood and was going to town on it. Dennis kept darting glances at Robby only to look away.

“So, Mr. Michael,” Eli said without looking up. “Where are you from?”

“Pittsburgh,” Robby said. “I was driving back from my sister’s place in Philadelphia. I guess I took a wrong turn somewhere.”

“That’s some bad luck, night like tonight,” Eli said.

“It sure is,” Robby said. “Visibility was low.”

Silence descended over them. There was only the crackle of the fire, the scratching of Eli’s knife, the susurration of the pages of the bible turning, and Robby’s own breath, the rushing of his blood in his ears. At one point his eyes met Dennis’s. Dennis offered a tremulous little smile.

“Do you have many brothers and sisters, Mr. Robinavitch?” Dennis asked. He didn’t stumble over the name even a little.

“Just two sisters, Naomi and Zoya.”

“Oh, that’s nice. There are four of us, only boys.”

“Our older bruders, Samuel and Ephraim, only have boys so far too,” Eli said, and then puffed up his chest. “But I have a daughter. The first of many in this family, I hope.” He gave a Dennis a pointed look.

“Hey, congratulations,” Robby said with a grin. “How old is she?”

“Five and two thirds.”

“Don’t be proud, Eli,” Jacob said.

Eli found a way to subside into his chair while maintaining his ramrod posture.

“Daughters, pah!” Esther called from the kitchen. “I was glad Gotte blessed me with boys! Do you know why?”

Eli closed his eyes briefly.

“Yes, we know, Maam.” He turned to Robby. “Girls leave and break their mother’s hearts.”

“Oh. They leave the church?”

Eli frowned, tilting his head. Jacob was side-eyeing him.

“Women must follow their husbands,” Dennis said. “Why, Eli’s own wife Sadie is from Indiana, isn’t she?” Eli nodded. “And Samuel’s is from New York, and Ephraim’s is from Ontario. It’s important, for exogamy.”

Robby sat up straight and took Dennis in. He was clean-shaven, unlike his father and brother, and his eyes seemed huge and forever imploring, though by now Robby realized that was just his face, not a desperate attempt at psychic communication.

“Exogamy,” Robby said.

“Um, yes, the practice of diversifying bloodlines.”

“We see how well that worked,” Jacob grunted without looking up.

Eli put his whittling down and set both his feet flat on the floor. Dennis’s hand flew to his brother’s shoulder as if to keep him in place.

“Peace, bruder,” Dennis said, almost too soft to hear.

“Peace!” Eli sneered, not bothering to hide his disdain. Jacob turned a page and Eli shook his brother’s hand off his shoulder. “Maybe we’ll have some peace when this old—”

“Eli!”

“You’re not too old to go pick out a switch for me,” Jacob said mildly.

“Excuse me,” Dennis said to Robby with another apologetic wince, and dragged his brother back upstairs.

“Boys, girls,” Jacob said, his voice a rumble of irritation. “If you ask me, any child can find a way to break your heart. You have children, Mr. Robinavic?”

Jake still wasn’t talking to him. And, as he had taken pains to remind Robby over and over, he wasn’t Jake’s father anyway.

“No, sir,” Robby said.

“Hmph. Married?”

“I’m afraid it just never happened for me.”

“Children are a blessing even when they break your heart,” Jacob said. “My boy thinks I have no heart at all. I’m only trying to look after his. You learn this, as a father. You can do all you can to protect them, but in the end, even that they carry anger for.”

Robby didn’t know what to say. He drank the last drops of water from his glass. He tried not to bounce his knee.

“What do you do, Mr. Robinavic?”

“I’m a physician,” he said.

At last, Jacob looked at him, one brow cocked.

“Dr. Robinavic, then. Won’t Dennis be excited.”

“Is he interested in medicine?”

Jacob’s attention turned back to the book in his hands.

“Why do you think the Yoder boys brought you to our house in the dead of night?”

It was barely 11pm, but that seemed beside the point.

“How old is Dennis?”

Eighteen, nineteen tops, Robby figured.

“He’ll be twenty-seven day after Christmas,” Jacob said. “He apprenticed to Leroy Burkholder since he was a boy, but since the Lord took old Leroy home last winter, it’s just been Dennis going farm to farm, tending the livestock. Read enough books in the library that he’s started thinking he can tend to people, too. Maybe you’ll put that boy straight, hm?”

Dennis returned, switching out Robby’s empty glass for a full one. Robby murmured his thanks, and Dennis sat down on the other end of sofa. As far from his father as he could get.

Robby cleared his throat.

“I hate to keep you up, Mr. Whitaker,” he said. “Please, don’t feel you have to keep me company. And Mrs. Whitaker too, I promise I’d be happy with a slice of toast or something.”

“You’re a guest in our home, Dr. Robinavic.”

At that, Dennis’s head rose.

“You’re a doctor?”

“Don’t go pestering the poor man, boy,” Jacob said.

“Yeah, I work in emergency medicine.”

“That must be terribly exciting.”

Robby huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh in some previous life.

“It’s…rewarding, I guess,” he said. “It’s necessary, and it’s a way I can be useful.” He stopped himself there; this kid whose dreams were outpacing his circumstances didn’t need Robby’s verbal diarrhea on everything wrong with him and PTMC administration and the federal government’s massive funding failures and medical education and the state of American healthcare.

“Oh. Do you know anything about genetic diseases?”

“Dennis,” Jacob said. “Don’t you have an early morning with the Millers?”

“I can—”

“Go on, now.”

Dennis pitched his voice low, and when he spoke, it wasn’t in English. Jacob answered back in decisive tones, and Dennis subsided, mouth pinched shut. After a moment passed, he stood and bade Robby a good night. Robby sat in excruciating silence with Jacob for fuck only knew how long before Esther called him into the kitchen and served up a plate of chicken pot pie, green beans, and mashed potatoes with gravy.

“Oh, my G—goodness, this is so generous,” Robby said. He couldn’t deny that it looked good, but he was in actual dismay at how much it was and how much work she’d put obviously in. “Thanks so much, Mrs. Whitaker.”

“Eat, eat,” Esther said. “The cock crows early even in the wintertime, Dr. Robinavitch.”

 

Robby went back to his room without being allowed even the dignity of helping Esther clean up. He crept up quietly, having learned that Eli had two children and his family took up three bedrooms upstairs. What he didn’t consider, though, was how many bedrooms that left for everyone else.

When he lit his oil lamp, something beyond the bed shuffled, and Robby startled badly enough to spill oil over his hand.

“Fuck!” he hissed.

Dennis’s head popped up from the floor.

“What’s happening?”

“Jeez, Dennis, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “What are you doing over there? Go back to sleep, and take the bed for God’s sake.”

“Are you hurt?”

Dennis rounded the bed and took his hand. He tilted it toward the light, leaning down to look close.

“It’s fine,” he said.

“Come,” Dennis said, pulling him down the hallway.

“Dennis I’m fine,” Robby whispered.

“Just a little cold water and a salve, jah?”

“I can do it myself. Seriously, take the bed. I can sleep on the sofa.”

“Imagine what trouble I would be in if my parents found you on the sofa in the morning.”

In the bathroom, Dennis held Robby’s hand under the cold tap. He was close enough to smell—unadulterated human, musk and sweat, farm work. The cold winter air. The mirror showed Robby he was still wearing the blood-stained gauze on his head. He peeled it off, suddenly mortified that he’d spent the entire evening with gauze on his head while everyone treated him with a strange deference. He leaned in to inspect the wound, but the light was too low and the mirror too clouded to see anything.

Dennis dabbed Robby’s hand dry, rummaged in the medicine cabinet, and pulled him back to his room. He swiped an unlabeled, likely homemade balm on the redness. It was instantly cooling.

“What is that?” Robby asked.

“It numbs and protects,” Dennis said. “Just some simple ingredients.”

Dennis smiled up at him from under his lashes. Robby’s heart stuttered. He was imagining things. He pulled his hand out of Dennis’s and cleared his throat.

“You think this bed is big enough for two?” he asked, and holy shit that wasn’t what he meant to say at all.

“I used to share this bed with Eli growing up. It’s a great way to wake up with a foot up your nose.”

“Ha! I can try to keep my toes to myself.”

“You should rest without a bother in your bed,” Dennis said, slipping away into the nest he made on the floor.

“Dennis.”

“Please, Dr. Robinavitch. I couldn’t live with myself if I disturbed your rest.”

Robby sighed. Everyone here was determined to kill him and then themselves with kindness.

“You can call me Michael, you know,” he said.

“Oh.”

“I mean. You don’t have to, but.” He shrugged, though Dennis couldn’t see him. “I’m just saying, there’s no reason to be so formal with me.”

Clumsily he began to unfasten the shirt he’d been lent. He hung it in the wardrobe and shucked his pants. He usually slept in the nude, but there was no way he was getting naked in this house at all, much less with Dennis in the same room. Making eyes at him.

He climbed into bed and settled under the mountain of quilts. He blew the flame out. He lay there listening to Dennis’s breathing. He was full and tired and was probably going to get heartburn from lying down so soon after his meal, but something buzzed at him, kept him awake.

“Michael?” Dennis whispered an interminable amount of time later. Hearing his first name—rarely used outside his family and even that in another language—was a minor thrill after a night of being called by his full title.

“Hm?”

“Maybe you could come with me to see the Millers tomorrow.”

Robby had about a million things to do tomorrow, including getting the fuck out of here and hoping they’d take some payment for taking care of him, but the way Dennis asked, a thread of hope in that wincing tone, made him pause.

“What’s going on at the Millers’?” he asked.

“I have to see about one of their cows, she might have a little foot rot,” Dennis said. “But their boy has a real bad cough and maybe, if you have time…”

“Sure,” Robby said. “Yeah, of course.”

If they wouldn’t take cash, surely they’d take his expertise. That was a thing he could offer.

“I need to get my phone from my car though,” he said. “The earlier the better. Do you know where I can charge it?”

Dennis made a flat, mournful little sound.

“What is it?” Robby said.

“Apparently a signal’s hard to get here in the best of times,” Dennis said. “With the storm, I don’t know. You can probably charge it up on the hill at the Schwartzes’ house, they have a couple of kinder who need that special lamp, but I cannot guarantee you’ll be able to make a call.”

“Special lamp?”

“That blue light lamp?” Dennis said. “They have Crigler-Najjar syndrome.” He pronounced the names wrong but Robby got the gist.

“Fu…dge,” he said, and hated himself.

He could hear Dennis’s smile.

“You can swear. I’m Amish, not a child.”

“Crigler-Najjar is hard,” Robby said. “I’m happy they’re treating it with modern medicine.”

“We have many difficult conditions here,” Dennis said. “This is what happens, without exogamy.”

“Maybe I can check in on them tomorrow, too.”

“Would you? Oh, Michael, we’d be so grateful if you did.”

“Yes. Of course, yes.”

Robby wanted to kick himself, but not as much as he wanted to see about the children with Crigler-Najjar. He supposed this was the crux of it: he was a doctor even when everything about being a doctor threatened to unravel him. He could not stop being a doctor. He was even a doctor in his sleep.

“I know this must be difficult for you, but the roads will be impassable for some time,” Dennis said. “Even if you manage to call someone, I’m afraid you’re stuck with us for a few days.”

Robby suppressed a sigh. He’d suspected as much, but by the sinking of his heart he realized he’d gotten his hopes up.

“Okay, well. You’re gonna have to shove a straw between my ribs if my lung collapses, think you can handle that?”

“I can’t tell if you’re joking.”

“I am. But also I’m not.”

“I don’t…I’ve never…”

“Relax, kid. Let’s just treat my ribs as gently as possible and keep our fingers crossed that they’re not broken.”

“Should I have done something? Wrapped them?”

“You did great, Dennis.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

A minute or so passed in silence.

“No beard means you’re not married, right?” Jesus, Robby! came a voice that sounded a lot like Jack Abbot.

“Yes,” Dennis said, the word trailing up like a question.

“And you’re looking outside your community here?”

“I’m not…I don’t know.”

“If there’s a girl in town, there are genetic tests you can take. I can help you navigate that, if you need it.”

“No, just…maybe I’m not meant to be married. Maybe I’m just going to take care of the livestock, and treat people’s little illnesses however I can, and help take care of my brothers’ kinder and my parents as they age. Maybe that’s the path God has laid out for me, and who am I to gainsay Him?”

“Yeah,” was all Robby could say.

“You’re unmarried,” Dennis said after a while. “You’re childless.”

“Yes.”

“Does that sadden you?”

Robby almost wanted to laugh at the phrasing.

“I think drawing a direct causal line between my solitude and my sadness would be a laughable oversimplification,” he said. It might even be the wrong way around. “I think more important than social pressure is choosing the right person to be with. You’re right to wait, Dennis. Marrying the wrong person is so much worse than being alone.”

“Even if I’m waiting forever?”

“Even if.” And then Robby, tired, in pain without even an ibuprofen to temper it, blurted out exactly what he shouldn’t have: “But don’t let that stop you from seeing what sex is all about.”

Dennis let out a nervous laugh and Robby slapped a hand to his face. Stars burst behind his eyelids as pain bloomed through his head. He hoped he hadn’t opened the laceration.

“Welp!” he said, a little too loudly. “I’m gonna turn in. Goodnight, Dennis.”

He turned on his side, facing away from Dennis.

“Gut nocht, Michael.”

 

The Whitakers woke early, but so did ER doctors, so Robby went downstairs with Dennis when the cocks, indeed, crowed. Esther was already hard at work making breakfast, and there was another woman in there with her. Sadie, Eli’s wife, gave him a smile and nod when they were introduced, and then he was shooed out of the kitchen just like last night. In the absence of anything better to do, Robby bundled up and followed Dennis into the barn.

Jacob was milking the cows. Eli was brushing out the horses. Dennis was shoveling shit in a different enclosure. Robby squinted at him.

“Are those pygmy goats?”

“We thought they would be nice for Ruthie,” Dennis said with a toothy grin. One of the tiny goats bleated and kicked Dennis hard enough to send him stumbling into a bale of hay. Robby almost choked trying not to laugh, but he went over there and stuck out his hand. Dennis grabbed it and Robby levered him up. Wearily he swiped at his face. “And somehow, even though she’s not my dochder, Eli!, I’m the one who takes care of them.”

In the daylight, Robby could see that his hair was a wavy burnished gold and his eyes were blue and his shoulders were even wider than he’d already thought. Robby swallowed and forced himself to look at the swarm of little goats.

“Well, put me to work,” he said

“These goats don’t give one whit about your ribs, Dr. Robinavitch.”

“You can just supervise!” called Jacob.

“I’ll go nuts if I don’t do something useful,” Robby said.

“He’s tall, Fater!” Eli piped up.

Jacob only grunted. Robby looked around but couldn’t catch Dennis or Eli’s eyes.

“Has someone got a job for Sasquatch?” he asked.

“What is Sasquatch?” Dennis asked.

“Put me in, coach,” Robby said.

“Wait, are we playing a game?” Eli shouted.

“Never mind!” Robby said. “Never mind. I just want to know how I can be helpful to you!”

“Maam has some things to hang on the walls if you want to go ask her!”

“His ribs, Eli!” Dennis shouted.

“Dr. Robinavic,” Jacob bellowed, silencing his sons, “will be seeing some sick children today as he waits for the snow to melt. He does not need to get further injured doing work the two of you have shirked. Dr. Robinavic, if you must, you may give the animals vegetables, but stay out of kicking range.”

“Thank you, Mr. Whitaker,” Robby said, and got to work.

 

Esther called them for breakfast and Robby was greeted with a feast: eggs and potatoes and bacon and sausage and biscuits and gravy and oatmeal and fruit and vegetables and an array of juices. Two children were already at the expansive table. One was a toddler about three years old, and sitting next to him was his big sister, whom he had already outpaced in growth. With a glance, Robby could see that she had achondroplasia and related kyphosis. Her mother stroked her hair and seemed braced against Robby’s reaction, but Robby only smiled and sat across from her.

“Hi there,” he said. “I’m Michael, what’s your name?”

She smiled at him and didn’t say anything. Sadie nudged her arm and murmured to her in Pennsylvania Dutch.

“I’m Ruthie,” she said. “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Michael.”

“How about you, my friend?” Robby asked the little boy.

“Gideon!” he said.

“Well now I know I’m in good company,” Robby said.

Dennis sat next to Robby, with Eli between Dennis and Sadie. Everyone joined hands for a prayer, and Robby even echoed their ‘amen’ when the time came. Conversation ebbed and flowed, and no one seemed inclined to include the children in adult talk nor rebuke them when they had things to say. They had far better table manners than Robby had ever seen in other children their age. Ruthie told Robby all about her favorite goat and Gideon showed him the wooden train his father had carved for him. While Esther and Sadie were cleaning up, Ruthie brought Robby a book and asked him to read it to her.

It was a bible story written for children. In German.

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry, I don’t know how to read this one.”

“Ruthie, liebling, leave Dr. Robinavitch alone now,” Sadie called out. “He’s going with Oncle Dennis to see the Millers.”

“Maybe later, if you find a book in English,” Robby said with a wink.

As they were heading out, Eli pulled Robby aside. He spoke in low tones, as though afraid of being overheard.

“I wonder if you would be so kind as to give Ruthie an exam, when you’re done with the Millers and the Schwartzes.”

“Sure, of course,” Robby said. “Is there anything you’re concerned about?”

“Her back hurts. We’re supposed to watch for spinal, spinal something?”

“Spinal stenosis. And hydrocephalus, fluid on the brain.”

Eli nodded, mouth pinched into a grim arc.

“She’s just a little girl, Dr. Robinavitch.”

He could feel Dennis’s eyes on him. Robby patted Eli’s shoulder.

“I’ll take a look this afternoon,” he said. “But I’ve already got good news, my friend: you’ve got a bright, beautiful child who is a credit to her parents.”

Eli clasped Robby’s hand.

“Thank you,” his said, his voice rough.

 

The snow was tall and still falling, but someone, probably many someones, had already shoveled paths between the houses. Everywhere they went, Dennis had a wave and a ‘gut daag’ for whoever they passed. Sometimes he got waylaid with chatter and was obliged to introduce Robby, which was how Robby spent a solid hour before they ever got to the Millers looking at strange things on skin or someone’s scoliosis or a thrice-broken finger that wouldn’t bend anymore. There was a little good luck, at least: when they got to the Yoders, one of them had already been by the wreck of Robby’s car and salvaged his phone and wallet.

Eventually they hit a long stretch of land with no houses on it. Robby fell into step beside Dennis. He was glad to have been given a wool hat to cover his ears, but the only hat Dennis wore was one of those wide-brimmed ones it seemed all Amish men wore outdoors. The silence was companionable.

“My parents look down on the Schwartzes for using the special blue lights,” Dennis said suddenly. Robby glanced at him. His cheeks were a livid pink in the cold, and his eyes were trained on the path ahead. “They don’t even use the public grid—they have their own electricity, from solar panels, so they’re not dependent on the government. But it’s against Gelassenheit, they say. In choosing to keep their children alive this way, the Schwartzes are not submitting to God’s will.”

“I see,” Robby said. Dennis glanced up at him, looking tragic.

“Do you?”

“Dennis, I’m a doctor. I’m never going to agree with that line of thinking, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen it, heard it, and argued with it before. Same song, different artist.”

“I think…” Dennis shook his head and clammed up.

“What do you think, man?” Robby asked.

Dennis took a deep breath.

“I think some people get so lost in the mandate to obey God’s word that they forget what God’s word is for.”

Robby could only nod. Unabashedly he drank Dennis in: smart, kind, skilled, and trapped. Robby’s heart gave a pang at the thought of the doctor Dennis could have been, in a different life.

“God gives us trials, yes, but I don’t think we’re meant to play Job, manfully enduring preventable losses in order to prove our fealty. Other people’s lives, kinder’s lives, are not vehicles through which we earn our own salvation. We are meant to cherish each other. It is in love and loving one another that God moves through us, don’t you think, Michael?”

They trudged on, snow crunching underfoot. Soon another farmhouse loomed. Robby slowed his steps, and Dennis paused to look back at him, a question in the quirk of his brow.

“Are your parents preventing Ruthie from getting the care she needs?” Robby asked.

Dennis’s mouth trembled into an angry little arc. He squared his shoulders.

“We have a plan, in case it gets bad.”

“What’s that, horse and buggy ambulance when your parents are asleep? How far is the closest hospital, Dennis? How fast can you get there while her head swells further and further?”

Dennis ground his teeth together.

“You’re shouting at me as if I have control over any of this.”

“You’re an adult, Dennis. So is Eli, and so is Sadie. This is in your control whether you want to admit it or not.”

Dennis stalked toward the Millers’ farmhouse. Swearing under his breath, Robby followed.

The Millers were dour and standoffish to Robby’s eye, but Dennis seemed perfectly content with the interaction. While he went off to see the cattle, a heavily pregnant Mrs. Miller led Robby upstairs to see their boy, Joshua. He was about ten, thin and wan, and occasionally he exhausted himself with a coughing jag that left him red and teary, gasping for breath. His mother went back downstairs; there were other children, other chores, other matters that needed attention.

Robby rubbed his back through the latest coughing fit and when he was finished, Joshua slumped against him, breath labored.

“Is anyone else sick, Joshua?” Robby asked. “Your brothers and sisters? Your parents and grandparents?”

He shook his head listlessly.

“Just me,” he said. “But when I started coughing, Maam put me in here by myself.”

“She sounds like a smart lady,” Robby said. “How long have you had this cough?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fever?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Okay, that’s great.”

He wished he had his stethoscope, his first aid kit, a fucking pharmacy, anything.

“Do you mind if I put my ear against your back?” he asked, and Joshua shook his head.

Robby listened to the crackle and labor in Joshua’s lungs until the coughing started again. It sounded like pertussis, but that was highly contagious and no one else had it.

“Do you have a rash? Itchy or burning skin anywhere?”

“No, sir.”

“Did you feel bad before the cough started?”

“Maybe.”

“How’s your sense of taste?”

The boy shrugged. Robby suppressed a sigh.

“All right,” he said. “I’m gonna go talk to your mom, okay?”

“Thank you, Dr. Michaels.”

Robby smiled and patted his shoulder before leaving the room.

After a less-than-encouraging conversation with Mrs. Miller, Robby found Dennis in the barn with Mr. Miller. They were arguing, and only some of it was coming out in English. As far as Robby could tell, Dennis was getting yelled at for delivering a diagnosis Mr. Miller didn’t like. He was going to lose a great deal of money, and didn’t seem to understand that Dennis was telling him he stood to lose a lot more if he didn’t follow Dennis’s advice, whatever that was. Poor Dennis looked like a wet mouse.

“I’m not the one doing this to your cattle, Jonah!” Dennis said at last. “Don’t blame me when your whole herd dies!”

With that, he stomped out of the barn and Robby was left scrambling to catch up to him.

“That man!” Dennis exclaimed, flinging out a hand. They were headed uphill again, and Robby was feeling the cold in his lungs and his knees.

“Their kid needs to be seen by a doctor who can run tests and prescribe the appropriate medication, but Mrs. Miller wouldn’t listen. Match made in Heaven, I guess.”

Dennis scoffed and hunched in on himself when the wind blasted them head-on.

“You know they’re my cousins?” Dennis said. “Jonah a second and third cousin, and Lavinia a first twice removed and second once removed. That’s what it’s like here. And did you know they already lost one child? Hemophilia.”

“I’m sorry, Dennis.”

“Sometimes I just—I feel like I’m losing my mind, Michael.”

A heaviness settled in Robby’s chest.

“You want to help them, but they won’t take it.”

“I wish things were different,” Dennis said. “I wish everything could be different.”

They walked the rest of the way to the Schwartz farm in silence.

 

The Schwartzes were only too happy to let Robby charge his phone in their house. He checked out the blue light bed setup while Dennis did a cursory visit to the Schwartz horses. The affected children, a pair of twins named Anna and Sarah, were about four years old, and Robby played dolls with them while performing their exams. He declared them bilirubin-free and heaped praise on the family’s use of the blue light beds and solar power. Mrs. Schwartz fed him a great heap of stew and some kind of corn potato concoction and then made him eat a slice of buttermilk pie while he was somehow still able to fit food into his body.

The phone would take an hour or so to get all the way charged, but Mrs. Schwartz herded the twins into a different part of the house so he could make some calls. When the phone came back to life, Robby had about a million voicemails and texts. Most were from Naomi, and then a flood came in from Jack and Dana. Jesus, they’d called the cops. Robby pulled up his sister’s number and braced himself for the shitstorm he was about to wade into.

Calming everyone down took a good chunk of time, but the upshot was that Jack was going to pick him and the wreckage of his Mazda up in three days when the roads were meant to be clear and he had a run of days off. By the time Robby was done talking to everyone, Dennis was back from the stables and also full of pie.

“You bring that English doctor back anytime you like, Dennis Whitaker,” Mrs. Schwatrz said as she saw them out.

“Oh, I’m not English,” Robby said.

Mrs. Schwartz only smiled and patted his shoulder. When the door closed behind them, Dennis said, “Everyone but us is English.”

“Really?” Robby asked. “What about like, Chinese people?”

“English.”

“Mexican.”

“Some Amish live in Mexico. Otherwise, English.”

“People from Papua New Guinea.”

Dennis laughed.

“English, English, and English,” he said.

“Irish? They hate when you call them English.”

“Bad news for them.”

“What if someone doesn’t speak English?”

“Still English.”

“I guess that’s one way to categorize everyone.”

“Us versus them,” Dennis said lightly, but there was bitterness behind it.

“Can I ask you something?” Robby asked after they’d been walking awhile.

“Of course,” Dennis said.

“Why do some Amish believe in modern medicine and some don’t?”

Dennis’s breath billowed out of him in a great stream. He took a moment to reply.

“Every family’s adherence to Gelassenheit and Ordnung is different. Having these unspoken rules…it leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. Other times…” He shrugged. “I often wonder if there are those who would use Gelassenheit and Ordnung as shields for their own wrongdoing. I fear we’re not always good, the Amish people. The elders say our ways protect us from sin and worldliness, but I think we’re too insular. Sometimes, this closed loop is how sin flourishes, not how it is avoided. We need something like…spiritual exogamy.”

Robby chuckled.

“I like the sound of that.”

“It is only for God to judge, but I admit I struggle. May I share something with you?”

“Please.”

“A few years ago, I saw a man, a friend of mine, doing something he should not have been doing. I took my horse and buggy into town and I went to the police station and I told them everything I saw. Do you know what happened?”

Dennis stopped and faced him. His eyes were huge and furious, but beneath it all was a fathomless sadness. Robby suddenly had the feeling that he knew Dennis, low and deep, as though he always had and always would. As though Dennis were just a part of himself he’d lost and finally found again at long last. The same stardust wound through their DNA.

“What’s that?” Robby asked.

“Nothing,” Dennis said. “Not a blessed thing. I knew then.”

“Knew what?”

“That church leadership would protect itself at the expense of innocent people.”

“Dennis. Have you ever thought about leaving?”

He got a real laugh for that.

“Where would I go, Dr. Robinavitch? With a medically fragile niece and none of the paperwork the English world wants, where would I go?”

Robby knew he was done for when he thought Pittsburgh.

 

Robby performed his exam on Ruthie while Sadie wrung her hands in the corner. He asked Ruthie about what kind of pain she had and where. She didn’t mention her legs, which would have pointed to spinal stenosis. Robby felt down each knob of her spine. Her kyphosis was pronounced enough to be the cause of her back pain, but it wasn’t the worst case he’d ever seen. She should have been in a back brace early on though, and Robby knew she’d had no such treatment.

When he was done, he spoke to Sadie by herself.

“Has she been to a doctor for this? Any specialists?”

“We took her into town to see a doctor when she was born, but no, no specialists,” Sadie said.

“Sadie, Ruthie needs specialized medical care. I don’t see evidence of spinal stenosis or hydrocephalus yet, but those could happen at any time. Children with her condition can also get recurrent ear infections severe enough to cause hearing loss. If she’s under the regular care of a physician familiar with her condition, we can better treat her when things like this happen, or prevent them altogether.”

Sadie was nodding, but Robby had seen that look before. Distracted eyes attempting to look focused. She had no intention of following through.

“Sadie, listen to me. You’re her mother. You can take her into town. You can get her care. You don’t need Jacob’s permission. You and Eli can do this. Dennis would help.”

“With what money?” Sadie snapped, flushing. “There’s plenty to be had, but Jacob’s got an iron grip on all of it.”

“Sadie—”

“It’s so simple for you to come into our home and pass judgement on us, isn’t it Dr. Robinavitch? But it’s not you who stands to lose everything, everything.”

“You’re right. I don’t have the proper appreciation for your position. But I do know this, Mrs. Whitaker: your daughter can lead a long and healthy life, but she needs you to stand up for her now. She needs for you to be as strong as she is.”

Sadie’s eyes brimmed, and she turned away from him to watch the snow float down in the fading light of the evening.

 

Dinner was a lavish affair that made breakfast seem like starvation rations in comparison. Robby’s attempts at asking after accomplishments turned into a lecture about pride from Jacob, but he at least learned that everyone had hobbies. Dennis’s was reading library books, especially of the medical and veterinary variety, Eli’s was whittling, Esther’s were quilting and baking pies, and Sadie’s were embroidery and making the faceless little dolls the children played with. Whatever Jacob did in his free time, he kept to himself.

There was quiet time after dinner, which Robby spent telling the children stories, half remembered fables that he filled in as best he could. They went to bed early, and afterward Robby tried to read a library book while everyone else indulged their silent hobbies, but the low firelight was hard on his eyes and he was missing his reading glasses anyway.

In a low voice, he told Dennis he was going to take a shower and turn in early.

“Oh, let me boil some water for you,” Dennis said, standing.

“Wait, what?” Robby followed him into the kitchen.

“The water’s cold. You’ll have to add some of this to the bathtub.”

“Oh.”

Robby had a sudden crisis where he blanked on how to bathe without a shower despite his time in New Orleans in the immediate wake of Katrina. Dennis seemed to pick up on his anxiety and said, “Don’t worry, there’s a bucket.”

“Oh, great. Thank you.”

Dennis also insisted on carrying the kettle up to the bathroom for him. The fixtures were almost certainly antique and the plumbing clanked and groaned before water sputtered out, smelling of iron. When the flow evened out, Dennis plugged up the tub and poured the entire kettle of boiling water in. He showed Robby where the towels were and gave him some pajamas and a fresh bar of soap. There was no separate shampoo.

Dennis paused, frowning.

“May I ask you something?” he asked.

“Sure,” Robby said.

“I saw your necklace when I was tending to you. Are you Jewish?”

Robby touched his Magen David where it was tucked into his borrowed shirt. Nerves made his heart stumble, but Dennis was looking up at him with an open expression, no malice to be found. Robby straightened.

“Yes,” he said. “Is that a problem?”

Dennis’s expression split into one of surprise.

“Oh, no, not at all. Well, not for me. Um. But I was just asking because this is Amish soap.”

“…okay?”

“It has pastured lard in it.”

“Oh.”

Dennis looked distinctly unhappy.

“I could go round to the neighbors—”

“No, Dennis, it’s okay. I’ve already eaten a bunch of pork today anyway.”

“I thought you were being polite.”

Robby smiled.

“I’m not an observant Jew,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, seriously.”

“I think it’s the first night of Hanukkah soon,” Dennis said. “We have many candles. We could have them in our room and not tell the others what they were for. I would pray with you, Michael. I’d like to.”

Robby’s heart swelled. This kid. He clapped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“Thank you, Dennis. That’s really kind of you, and I appreciate it more than you know. Tomorrow night, we can light a candle, just you and me.”

Dennis looked genuinely excited. He left Robby to his bucket bath, and as he waded in, Robby carefully thought of nothing at all.

 

Dennis was on the floor reading by lamplight when Robby came back to his room. Robby dithered before slipping under the covers. He hated to see Dennis languishing on the floor. It was probably cold. The bed would be a tight fit, but they could swing it. Robby sighed.

“Dennis?” he said.

“Do you want me to snuff the lamp?”

“No, it’s fine, I was just wondering if you wanted off the floor. I don’t mind sharing.”

Dennis shifted enough to peer at him.

“Are you sure?”

“Aren’t you freezing, man? Come on.” Robby scooted over and patted the space next to him. “What was it, head to toe? We can do that.”

Dennis hesitated, but in the end he transferred his nest over and climbed into bed, his head at Robby’s feet, and did his best to give Robby plenty of space. He did snuff out the lamp, and then they both lay there, curled away from each other, not sleeping.

“Michael?” Dennis whispered.

“Hm.”

“Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“How did you know you wanted to be a doctor?”

Robby turned over so he was facing Dennis, though it was only the shape of his knees under the covers. What could he say? That he had once thought he could save the world one patient at a time and make good money doing it? That he had been young and idealistic, and from this vantage point that looked like the same thing as naïveté? That there was the heart-warming story he trotted out whenever he was asked, and that there was another, smaller, meaner, truer reason he’d never spoken aloud but suddenly wanted to blurt all over this kid he’d never see again? He had to find some middle ground, though he felt frayed at the edges.

“I come from an immigrant family,” he said. “We didn’t have much growing up, but I always did well in school. My grandmother had had a hard life back in Russia and she pushed me to do well, to be respectable, to have the kind of career where anywhere you go, you’ll be in demand. She wanted better for me than she’d had, and she saw medicine as my path toward a kind of security she’d never dreamed of. She didn’t live to see me graduate from med school.”

“I’m sorry,” Dennis said. He turned over and sat up. Robby sat up too, back against the headboard. Even in the dark, he could see Dennis’s eyes shining.

“I usually tell people I became a doctor because of her,” Robby said. “I talk about her support, and her encouragement, and her believing in me. And all that’s true, but man, she was an old Russian battle-axe. She was the kind of woman who’d stuff you full of food and then ask you why you were so fat. It wasn’t a touchy-feely household, you know what I mean?”

Robby almost laughed—of course Dennis knew. He might not even know there were other ways a family could be.

“I think so.”

“The truth is—” Robby cut himself off and passed a hand over his face. “Never mind. Sorry.”

“I would like to know,” Dennis said.

Robby sat up. Dennis mirrored him. Robby tried to make out his face in the dark, but there was only his silhouette. Still, he could feel Dennis’s eyes on him. Fuck it, he thought.

“I wanted to command respect,” he said. “Sure, I wanted to help people, I really did, but there was a part of me that wanted to be the kind of man no one would treat poorly. I wanted to make a lot of money and snatch people from the brink of death, like, like—”

“Like God,” Dennis murmured.

Robby’s breath shuddered out of him.

“Yeah,” he said. He scoffed at himself. “I gotta say, almost thirty years later, all of that feels so far away it’s like it was another person. A foolish person who thought he was wise.”

“Do you not like it?”

Robby huffed out a rueful laugh.

“That’s a complicated question,” he said. “I like the medicine. I like helping people with my skills. I even like the challenge. But with the good comes the bad. Insurance hurdles, lack of staffing, bureaucracy getting in the way of treatment, assault, misinformation campaigns, any number of systemic failures that prevent patients from getting the care they need. I’m just not sure it balances out anymore. I can’t help feeling like all the bullshit is getting worse every day, and it’s harder and harder to not drag it around with you day in and day out. You start wondering if you’re doing any good at all. At this point, it’s not about liking anything. It’s how I can be of use.”

“That sounds nearly Amish,” Dennis said.

Robby could hear the smile in his voice. He snorted.

“Am I too old for rumspringa?” he asked.

Dennis let out a surprised laugh, a real one that shook the bed. It was shocking in the quiet of the room, and shocking for Robby to realize he’d heard no laughter other than that of the children since arriving here.

“The English make much of rumspringa,” Dennis said. His pronunciation was very different from Robby’s. “They think it’s a different thing than it is.”

“So it’s not a nonstop party? That’s a shame.”

“It’s the journey from youth to man. More responsibility, but also more freedom. Before choosing to become baptized.”

“And that’s what you did.”

A shrug in the dark.

“That’s how things are done,” he said. He plucked at his blanket. “Besides, I’d already been disappointing enough.”

“Disappointing? How’s that?

Dennis shrugged.

“Most use that time to go courting,” he said. “I took my courting buggy into town and shadowed a veterinarian who took pity on me. It was more than a year before anyone realized there was no girl involved.”

“That sounds really interesting, actually,” Robby said. “Did you like it?”

Robby could hear Dennis’s smile.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, everyone there was very kind to me, and I learned a great deal.”

“But.”

Dennis turned away from him and lay down on his side.

“Gelassenheit, Michael,” he said. “This is God’s will, and we must be content with it. Sleep well.”

“Oh. Goodnight, Dennis.”

Outside, the snow picked up enough to obscure the window. Robby stared at it, watching it gather in dusty rivulets along the glass until he fell asleep.

 

In the morning, Robby was handed a shovel and conscripted into snow removal between houses.

“Many hands make light work,” Jacob said gruffly.

“Fater, his ribs,” Dennis said.

“I’m fine,” Robby said. Dennis slated a look at him. Robby made a face at him like don’t ruin this for me, but he wasn’t sure Dennis got the memo.

“Next door is snowed in and no one’s seen even the flutter of a curtain in there,” Jacob said. “Someone will need to check on Bruder Walter and it might as well be Dr. Robinavic, ribs or no ribs.”

With that, they were dismissed.

“So, does your uncle have any medical conditions you know about?” Robby asked as they bundled up.

“What’s that?”

“Your Uncle Walter,” Robby said.

“Oh! Mr. Stoltzfus isn’t my uncle,” Dennis said. “A cousin of my grandfather’s, actually, but ‘bruder,’ ‘schwester,’ this is often what we call each other.”

“Ah. Well. It’s nice everyone watches out for each other.”

“Our elders like to tell us that in the city, people will step over the body of another in need and go about their business without a care in the world.”

Robby snorted and shook his head. They headed out into the cold.

“Do you believe that?” he asked.

“I used to,” Dennis said. “Until I went to the city.”

Many men were out shoveling, carving pathways between farmhouses as far as Robby’s eyes could see. When they got to the Stoltzfus house, four remarkably identical young men were digging closer and closer to the door. They all planted their shovels and straightened when he and Dennis arrived.

“Michael, these are the Yoder boys,” Dennis said. Robby stuck his hand out and shook each one as Dennis introduced them. “This is Steven, Otis, Amos, and Henry. Yoders, this is Michael Robinavitch.”

“Thanks so much for your help out there,” Robby said. “You probably saved my life taking me to Dennis here.”

“’s’nothing,” one of them muttered, eyes trained somewhere around Robby’s feet.

“Gotte is gut,” said another. “We thank the Lord that He sent us to you that day.”

“Well, I’m grateful to you for being His earthly hands then, how bout that?”

“Ought to get to the door,” said another, and that was them back to work.

Robby did what he could, but his ribs and his back were eager to remind him that he wasn’t twenty-five anymore. He was desperate to ask the Yoders if they were identical quadruplets, or at least two pairs of identical twins, and racked his brain for a way to bring it up that wasn’t a total social stink bomb. He came up empty. When they got to the door, one of them started knocking while the others struck snow from the windows and attempted to peer inside.

“Mr. Stoltzfus?” a Yoder called out. “Mr. Stoltzfus, are you in there?”

One of his brothers bodied him out of the way and knocked harder, shouted louder. And then the third, and then the fourth. When it was Dennis’s turn, he didn’t bother knocking

“Mr. Stoltzfus, we’re coming in!”

And the door opened with no issue.

“Mr. Stoltzfus?” Dennis called.

There was no answer. The Yoder brothers fanned out, two upstairs and two splitting up downstairs. Robby followed Dennis into the kitchen. They knocked on bathroom doors and peered out the back, but only met the sight of more snow.

“Here!” one of the Yoders called from upstairs.

In the bedroom, Robby was greeted by the smell of stale feces. Mr. Stoltzfus was in bed, not much but a series of lumps under the covers, white hair a great shock on the pillow. He was stiller than a photograph. One of the Yoders wrung his hat in his hands.

Dennis touched Mr. Stoltzfus’s carotid, then turned to Robby with a grave expression and shook his head.

“He’s cold,” he said. “It must have happened overnight.”

“Everyone told him,” said a Yoder from the doorjamb. “Everyone said this old house was too much for one man. Come live with us, Bruder Walter, everyone said. You heard them.”

“Peace, Amos,” one of the others murmured.

“He was stubborn,” Dennis said. “He raised and lost children in this house. He married and buried his wife here.”

Another Yoder approached the bedside. He pulled the quilt down enough to expose Mr. Stoltzfus’s face.

“We must write to Schwester Clara out there in Ohio,” he said. He laid a hand briefly on Mr. Stoltzfus’s cheek.

“She told him, too,” Amos said. “She begged him to come live with her family in Millersburg. Begged.”

“He’d lived his whole life here,” said the Yoder on the other side of the bed. “What was he going to do in Millersburg?”

“See his grandchildren more than once a year?” Amos said.

“All right, Amos,” one of the others said. “What’s done is done. Gelassenheit.”

Robby heard Amos stomp down the stairs and slam the front door.

“Please forgive my bruder, Dr. Robinavitch,” said the Yoder at the bedside. “He and Mr. Stoltzfus were very close; in the absence of sons and grandsons, he was teaching Amos leatherworks.”

“I hope you’ll convey my condolences to him,” Robby said. “It’s a big loss.”

Dennis leaned over the body to pull the quilt over his head. He said a prayer Robby couldn’t make out and the remaining Yoder boys echoed him. With that, the brothers filed out. The air was heavy.

“What happens now?” Robby asked.

“The Yoders will contact the funeral home,” Dennis said. “We’ll have to wait for the ground to thaw for a burial. And Clara will want to be there, so it’ll be some time until the funeral anyway.”

They left Mr. Stoltzfus upstairs. Back in the cold, they got to shoveling. No one spoke.

 

Word had gotten around that a doctor was at the Whitaker farm, and by mid-morning Robby was running a makeshift clinic out of a large room on the ground floor. They had church services here when it was their turn to host, Dennis told him. Esther seemed to enjoy escorting her neighbors in and introducing them to Robby before closing the door for privacy, the formality of it like something out of an old movie. In the sitting room, an impromptu waiting room and daycare had likewise popped up, and Sadie oversaw a rotating gaggle of children.

Dennis, for his part, took a seat in the corner and appeared to write everything Robby said down in a notebook, no matter how unimportant. Robby reminded him he was not to share that with anyone, to which he said of course he never would, not that anyone wanted to see his scribblings anyway.

With the news of Mr. Stoltzfus’s passing, Robby saw a parade of seniors with out of control cysts and failing eyesight and nebulous “nervous trouble,” which Robby took to mean irregularities in their heart rhythms. He listened to their backs and their lungs, ear to cotton. He laid the lightest of fingertips on their skin when he had to. Sometimes, he made them promise to see a doctor in town when the snow cleared up, but for the most part all they needed was for someone to listen to them list their ailments and grievances. Of course, some of them came and sat before him and said not a word. Robby looked them over, asked them questions, and sent them on their way if there was nothing to diagnose but old age.

One elderly woman, a Mrs. Troyer, would not speak but her eyes kept darting between Robby and Dennis, alternately imploring and fearful.

“Dennis?” Robby said.

Dennis’s head popped up.

“Yes, doctor?”

Robby would accuse him of enjoying this too much, but he didn’t think Dennis was anything but genuinely excited about the entire development.

“I wonder if you could step out for a moment?”

“Oh! Yes, of course. I’ll check on, um, the goats.”

He nodded at Mrs. Troyer and was out the door. Unfortunately, Mrs. Troyer did not take this as her cue to speak. Robby ducked his head down to get her to meet his eyes, and when she did he smiled.

“What brings you here today, Mrs. Troyer?” he asked. “Remember it’s just you and me here, no one else has to know anything. That’s the law.”

She wrung her hands. Her lips trembled.

“My husband would not want me to tell you,” she whispered.

Robby nodded.

“Is that because it’s in a private part of your body, or because it’s something he’s doing to you?”

Her expression split into one of shock.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she said, though she didn’t get up.

“Mrs. Troyer,” Robby said, scooting closer to her. “I promise you all I want is to make sure you’re safe and feeling as well as you can at your age. I see many women just like you every day. Please let me help you like I help them.”

The wringing grew more frantic and her breath faster. Robby poured her a glass of water from a pitcher Esther left. She gulped down one glass, and then another.

“It’s my woman parts,” she said eventually. Robby nodded. She met his gaze only to drop it again. “I have to relieve myself all the time. Sometimes…sometimes it feels like there’s pressure. From the inside.”

Robby nodded and leaned in closer to her.

“Are you unusually thirsty lately?”

“I think I’m just nervous,” she said. Robby inhaled; her breath wasn’t sweet.

“Would you say you’re drinking more water than usual?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right. When you have to relieve yourself, does it feel like something is pressing on your bladder?”

“Yes! Yes that’s it exactly.”

“Right. How many children do you have, Mrs. Troyer?”

“Seven living,” she said.

“Ah. And how many pregnancies?”

The word itself seemed too much for her; she turned pink and stared at the ground.

“Eleven,” she whispered.

“How big were your babies, Mrs. Troyer?”

“My first few were small, but they got bigger. Thomas, my second to last, was ten pounds.”

Normally he would perform a pelvic exam, but Robby was certain if he suggested he take a look at her vagina, she might actually throw a STEMI right there in front of him. He would prefer to know if it was her uterus experiencing prolapse (likely) or her vagina itself (less likely but still possible) before suggesting a treatment, but he would have to make do with what she was capable of reporting.

“Can you tell me if you feel anything coming out when you clean yourself?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Maybe? No, no, I—but sometimes, there’s a fullness? And I feel like something’s going to fall out. I don’t know how else to describe it.”

“That’s okay. Is there a way for you to get into town, Mrs. Troyer?”

“Just the buggy,” she said.

“Can you go yourself?” he asked. “Or is there a daughter, a granddaughter, someone you trust?”

“I don’t—if it’s something that requires money, that would have to be accounted for.”

“Would Mr. Troyer take you if you really needed it?”

She shrugged. Robby suppressed a sigh.

“You may have a serious condition called uterine prolapse,” Robby said. “I can’t make a diagnosis without an examination of the affected area using the right equipment. If you go into town, you can find a female gynecologist who can help you with a support device or even a full hysterectomy, if that’s what you want.”

“What will be will be, Dr. Robinavitch. Thank you for your time.”

Robby almost crossed his arms but stopped himself. He forced Mrs. Troyer to meet his eyes again.

“Mrs. Troyer, regardless of the diagnosis, these symptoms are serious and could worsen, and then you’d have to go to the hospital anyway. If you let this go on, it could become a real emergency that could result in permanent loss of function or even death.”

“I don’t know how to get Peter to agree,” Mrs. Troyer said.

“If you want, I could speak to him.”

“Oh no, no, he can’t know I spoke to you about this, Dr. Robinavitch, please don’t tell him.”

“I promise I won’t,” Robby said. “Everything you say here, that’s just between you and me, okay? I promise, Mrs. Troyer.”

She stood with a groan. Robby’s heart sank.

“I better get going,” she said. “Thank you for your time, doctor.”

“Mrs. Troyer—” Fuck, he was really doing this. He grabbed Dennis’s notebook and tore a page out. He wrote down his number and pressed it into her hand. “I’ll pay,” he said. “Go to a gynecologist. Have them call me for payment.”

“I couldn’t possibly take that,” she said, pushing his hand away.

“I just want you to get the proper care, Mrs. Troyer.”

“Are you going to offer such a thing to everyone in this district, Dr. Robinavitch?”

“I—”

“You’re a kind man,” she said. “We Amish appreciate such kindness, we really do. But you’re just one kind man, and there are many sorrows here. Thank you, doctor, and I hope you have a peaceful Christmas.”

She left, and Esther popped her head in.

“Ready for the next one, doctor?” she asked.

Robby forced a smile and said, “Send ’em in.”

 

Robby whiled the morning hours away with patients who reminded him strongly of his rural away rotation in med school.

There was the man with right upper quadrant pain that was probably gallstones. When told he may have to have surgery and follow a low fat diet, he accused Robby of wanting him to starve and stormed out.

There was the new mother, not even twenty years old, who had a colicky breastfed infant and was already pregnant again. He showed her how to make sure the baby passed gas and how to rock him in big swinging motions most babies found soothing and most parents considered a cardio workout. He told her the baby may be intolerant to something in her diet, like eggs or cow’s milk. He gave her an exhaustive rundown of how to conduct an elimination diet. He also recommended she take the child to see a pediatrician in town, and sent Dennis on a meaningless errand so he could tell her about her future birth control options.

There was the gaggle of teenage girls who came in together and seemed to have no specific complaint but giggled when he spoke. They gave him a platter of danishes they had made just for him. He didn’t dare look at Dennis, but he could feel the way he was holding in laughter.

There was the man who’d been kicked by a horse—five years ago. “Yep,” Robby said after inspecting a misshapen knot of poorly-healed bone on his hip. “That sure did heal up on its own.”

There was the woman in her late forties struggling with nausea and overheating, whose children were all grown and starting to have children themselves. She came to him for advice on managing the life change, as she called it, only for Robby to tell her she might actually be pregnant again. She took the news with baffling aplomb. All that famed Gelassenheit, he supposed. He encouraged her to get formal medical care because having a baby at her age was risky business. She thanked him, asked him his “Christian name,” and promised to name the baby after him whether it was a girl or boy.

Robby wondered how many of the people he saw today would actually get follow-up care. He wondered how many would die some painful, preventable death.

The last person through the door was a kid around thirteen, panting as though he’d run the whole way there.

“Paul?” Dennis said.

“Bruder Dennis,” the kid said. “One of the cows has been laboring too long.” He planted his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. There was a wheeze at the tail end of each one.

“Paul, was it?” Robby asked while Dennis shot to his feet and stuck his head out the door. Paul squinted up at him. “A wheeze like that might be asthma.”

“No one’s left to see you, Dr. Robinavitch,” Dennis said. “Would you like to accompany me to the Garber farm?”

“That your farm, kid?” Robby forced some eye contact on Paul, who only nodded. “All right, but no running.”

Dennis jogged ahead, but Robby spent the freezing walk to the Garber farm contemplating non-medical asthma treatment with a hand in Paul’s coat collar to prevent him from running. When he convinced Mrs. Garber to get Paul an inhaler, he let the kid take him to the barn to check on Dennis and the calving cow.

He stopped short at the sight of Dennis with his coat off and his sleeves rolled up past his elbows, face red from the effort of palpating the pregnant cow’s belly. His grunts and bellows echoed through the barn alongside her distressed lowing as he pushed against her with all his might. Despite the temperature, sweat darkened his hairline, slicked his skin, even gathered in a droplet that slipped off the end of his nose. Robby’s breath caught.

Robby needed to get a grip. His brain was getting addled. He hadn’t even dusted off his dormant bisexuality in years, and now he was coming undone at the sight of a young man’s forearms and accidental show of strength? This was some kind of Amish snow madness. This was not real life.

Two other men were doing their damnedest to steady the cow; Garbers, Robby assumed. He nudged Paul with an elbow.

“What’s going on there?” he asked. “What’s Dennis doing?”

The kid had a restless, twitchy energy, but he was hanging back as if wary of getting in the way.

“Calf’s bound up breech,” he said. “Bruder Dennis is trying to get it to flip inside, but it might not be possible this late. She’s been laboring a whole day and night. We should have called for him sooner. No one listens to me.”

“I didn’t even know cows calved in winter.”

“It’s a dairy farm,” Paul said.

“Oh. Oh, right.” Robby rubbed his forehead, feeling stupid.

The cow made an urgent, agonized sound that seemed to combine a scream and a moo, and her front legs buckled, then she was thrashing out her back legs. Dennis braced himself against it in time, but one of the Garbers was pitched to the ground and then the other took the cow’s swinging head to his stomach with a muffled grunt.

“Oh, shit,” Robby said, darting forward.

“Don’t!” Dennis shouted. “Don’t come in here, don’t go near her legs! Paul, get the calf pullers!”

Paul dashed off and Robby approached but didn’t enter the pen. The elder Garbers, who looked like a pair of older teenagers rather than anyone’s father, had hopped up and were now arguing with each other and Dennis until Dennis yelled, “Do you want at least one animal after this or not, Levi?”

The Garbers grumbled but got into position on either side of the cow’s shoulders. The cow was making a constant low groaning sound. Dennis petted her head and murmured to her, encouraging her to stand back up. He was still panting, and Robby could see the pink flush that suffused his face spreading under his collar. Robby crossed his arms tight and forced himself to look at the Garbers instead. Had they been injured? Were either of them favoring one leg or arm over the other? Did he need to worry about internal injuries? Robby knew enough about farmers to realize he wasn’t getting a moment with either of them until after this saga was over.

Paul returned with the calf puller, which was a metal contraption that looked like a broomstick with a pair of bicycle handles mounted to one end. A thin chain connected the handles and created a closed loop. Dennis pressed a hand into the cow and stretched her firmly on all sides. When he took his hand out, Robby could see hooves. They were pointing upward.

The Garbers braced themselves at the cow’s shoulders as Dennis inserted the calf puller. To Robby’s eye, the process looked slow, methodical, and above all gentle, which surprised him. The tool was coldly mechanical, and Dennis’s muscles were quivering and straining, both with exertion and restraint. The incongruity between how much force seemed to be involved versus how light Dennis’s touch appeared felt like a loose tooth Robby couldn’t help but harass.

Forceps writ large, he supposed. Had he ever looked thus, strong and sure as he balanced the safety of the mother against the safety of the child? He’d never had to put his whole body into it. He’d never done it to something that outweighed him by many hundreds of pounds. The first time he’d had to use forceps on a baby’s head, he’d been a resident right around Dennis’s age, and his efforts had carved scars into the baby’s temples.

The calf came out hind legs first and then got stuck at the shoulders. A meaty, earthy smell filled the barn. There was a great deal of moaning and groaning, cow and human, as the Garbers steadied the cow and Dennis eased out first one shoulder and then the next.

The calf plopped onto the ground, steaming in the cold air, covered in the detritus of birth. Limp. Still. The men moved in a wordless choreography—Dennis stepping backward, the Garbers leading the exhausted cow a few paces away out of kicking range, Paul running up and covering the calf with a blanket before vigorously rubbing at its chest. The calf puller discarded, Dennis bent over panting, hands on his knees, and when he turned his head to look at Robby, he grinned.

Robby needed a drink of water. Robby needed a drink.

“It’s alive!” Paul cried.

Robby let out a cheer and started clapping. Dennis glanced at him, startled, but knelt before the calf to inspect it. Robby swallowed and crossed his arms. He could not account for his racing heart.

 

While Dennis cleaned himself up, the Garber boys insisted they didn’t need medical attention, and Robby endured Mrs. Garber handing him a plate piled as high as it was wide even though he insisted he didn’t do anything but get in the way.

“Look at you, starving,” she said. “You’re about to blow away.”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking. He ate obediently. She had another plate ready for Dennis when he came down, clean and a lot less smelly in borrowed clothes.

“Thank you, Mrs. Garber,” he said. He said a prayer over his food and tucked in.

Mrs. Garber asked after Dennis’s parents and sundry nephews Robby hadn’t met. Neither of Eli’s children came up. Dennis asked after Mrs. Garber’s parents and aunts, who lived in a neighboring district. She listed a series of births and deaths in her extended family, which Dennis nodded through without looking bored. If there was a Mr. Garber, he wasn’t mentioned.

They remained trapped under this conversation and Mrs. Garber’s heavy serving hand for so long Robby’s knee threatened to start bouncing. He was saved by Paul, once again bursting in from outside.

“Mighty commotion down at the Beilers’,” he said though wheezes.

“Hey man, what did I tell you about running in the cold?” Robby said.

“What kind of commotion?” Mrs. Garber asked.

“Someone—screaming—bloody—murder.”

While Dennis fetched both their coats, Robby guided Paul through sitting with his head between his knees, sucking air in through pursed lips. Halfway out the door, he thanked Mrs. Garber for lunch and tacked on a reminder about the inhaler.

“Rescue inhalers are available at any pharmacy,” he said. “Epinephrine or racepinephrine. It’ll do til you can get him some prescription albuterol.”

“I will, doctor, thank you,” she said.

Outside, Dennis briskly led the way toward the Beiler farm. Occasionally, a great bellow erupted from that direction.

“Do you think she’ll get her kid the inhaler?” Robby asked.

“I think so,” Dennis said. “She’s always been very attentive, even when Mr. Garber went to the Lord.”

“Ah. I’m sorry to hear he’s passed.”

“It was a long time ago, now. His buggy was hit by a car in the dark. Mrs. Garber makes a variety of butters to sell in town.”

A piercing shriek rang out. Dennis picked up the pace and Robby found himself jogging. His own lungs didn’t much like the cold, either.

“What do you think we’re walking into here?” Robby asked, breathless.

“Mrs. Beiler’s fater Mr. Chupp lives with the Beilers,” Dennis said.

“…Okay. And?”

“Mr. Chupp builds furniture,” Dennis said.

“So, saws, hammers, nails, paint fumes, things like that?”

“Mr. Chupp has been building furniture all his eighty-nine years.”

“Oh. Oh, God.”

“He’s down to three fingers on the left hand and four on the right.”

“Maybe it’s time to take the keys to the workshop away.”

“He simply cannot be stopped.”

Dennis didn’t bother knocking when they arrived at the Beiler house. There was a little crowd at the kitchen table and everyone seemed to be speaking at once. At the center was a very old, very ornery old man, hand wrapped in a tea towel rapidly soaking up his blood.

“Oh, Dennis!” cried a large woman with white hair flying out from under her bonnet. “Thank the Lord you’re quick, boy! And is this the doctor everyone’s tongue’s been wagging about?”

She opened her arms and beckoned them over.

“We were at the Garbers’ when we heard, Mrs. Beiler,” Dennis said. “And yes, this is Dr. Michael Robinavitch. Hello, Beilers, could you make way for Dr. Robinavitch?”

Dennis opened his arms in as gesture that invited Robby in while simultaneously leading the peanut gallery out. Robby had no idea how he did it, but Dennis had a way about him that managed to be both assertive and deferential. In some other life, Robby would have loved to watch him become a doctor.

“Dennis, you’ll be pleased to hear we saved the finger this time,” Mrs. Beiler said. “Sally, go on and fetch it, would you?”

A girl of about twelve nodded and dashed off.

Mr. Chupp was sweating and scowling, breathing too hard. He clutched at his right forearm. His eyes were rheumy but tracked Robby as sure as a hunter.

“All right, Mr. Chupp, I’m Dr. Robinavitch. Can you show me your hand?”

Mr. Chupp hissed as he unwound the tea towel. His middle finger terminated at the second knuckle. Blood pumped out, sluggish but steady. His smallest finger was also gone, nothing but a knot of twisted scar tissue from long ago.

Various Beilers had once again gathered around him. They were jostling Robby’s shoulders and nudging his legs. Robby glanced at Dennis and jerked his head minutely. Dennis got with the picture quickly and started assigning them jobs by name—so-and-so boil a pot of water, so-and-so find clean towels, so-and-so fetch a sewing kit—and the crowd dispersed again. Mrs. Beiler remained, but hovered near her father’s head fussing and muttering at him.

“Are you able to walk, Mr. Chupp?” Robby asked. “I need the light from that window.” He nodded toward the living room, where the afternoon sun had cast everything warm and gold.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Mr. Chupp said, moaning.

“Where is that fool girl with his finger?” Mrs. Beiler said. She marched out of the kitchen.

“Dennis, can you—”

“Yes,” Dennis said, and together they lifted Mr. Chupp, walked five paces, and deposited him in a chair Dennis immediately angled into the sunshine. Robby breathed through the circuit of pain between his ribs and his lower back, but Dennis was there, sliding a chair up behind him before he even had to ask.

“Thank you, Dennis,” he said. “Mrs. Beiler, could you get your father an ottoman? Something to elevate his feet?” She bustled away and Robby turned back to Dennis. “I suppose it’s too much to hope someone has surgical masks and medical gloves around here?”

Dennis’s mouth twisted unhappily.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Robby only smiled at him and shook his head. He held Mr. Chupp’s arm up to the light.

“Should we fit a tourniquet?” Dennis asked.

“Not right now,” Robby said. “The bleeding’s slowed and we don’t want to restrict blood flow unnecessarily.”

“I need to get back to my pie safe,” Mr. Chupp said.

“Oh, you’re not going anywhere for a little bit, Mr. Chupp.”

“It’s not done yet.”

“It’ll keep, Mr. Chupp,” Dennis said. “Dr. Robinavitch trying to save your finger.”

“He ordered it for his wife for Christmas,” Mr. Chupp said.

Robby glanced at Dennis. Dennis shrugged.

“I’m sure they’ll both understand, Mr. Chupp.”

The swarm of Beilers was back, hemming them in. Robby caught Dennis’s eye and jerked his head toward the hallway. Dennis hopped to his feet, and Robby pulled him into a room that turned out to be the bathroom. He shut the door behind them.

“Is there any chance there’s bottled water somewhere in this district?” he asked. When Dennis winced, Robby let out a sigh and hung his head. He rolled his neck. “Okay, what I want is for people to be boiling water in several small pots that have matching lids, is that something you’ll have?”

“Yes, sir,” Dennis said.

“What you’re going to do is boil all this water and then sanitize each lid with some boiling water before covering each pot and sticking it out in the snow to cool down quickly. I’ll need this to be ongoing, lots of pots, the whole time I’m working. And does anyone have something with, um—” Robby snapped his fingers, searching for the words. “—something that sucks and then pushes out, like a syringe or baby mucous sucker or a turkey baster?”

“I—I can ask.”

“Okay, so find something like that, silicone not plastic, do you know the difference?” Dennis nodded. “You’re gonna find something like that and you’re gonna boil it too. You’re also gonna boil any needles and razors and tweezers you can find, any small metal tool like that that might be helpful, you’ll boil it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m also gonna need something to magnify what I’m looking at. Reading glasses, actual magnifying lenses, anything anyone has like that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay now I’m gonna ask for a miracle: is there any chance anyone nearby goes fishing? If so, you need to send someone you can trust to follow directions to them and see if they have an unopened spool of fishing wire. If you can’t find that, we’ll need regular thread, preferably something that hasn’t been opened or handled.”

“I can go ask the Schwartzes,” Dennis said, but Robby shook his head. He clasped Dennis’s shoulder and shook him a little.

“No, no, send someone else, I need you with me,” he said. “I need someone who can assist properly and keep the family from crowding me.” Dennis’s cheeks flushed, lips parting. Robby dropped his eyes and his hand. “I assume there are fireplace pokers in this house?”

“Of course,” Dennis said.

“Anything like that but smaller? Cast iron, narrow, maybe about the size of a pencil?”

“You’re thinking about cauterizing?” Dennis asked. “But I thought, with the finger being salvaged this time…”

Robby shook his head.

“Just because I can reattach it in these conditions doesn’t mean it’ll function again. Best case scenario, he avoids infection and the finger doesn’t rot off, but because I’m not a board certified plastic surgeon with the right tools, even after it heals it’ll basically just dangle there unless he goes and gets a revision in town as soon as possible, which we both know the likelihood of. I’m gonna let him choose, but I know what my strong recommendation will be.”

“Oh.”

“All right, I’ve got one last request and I need you not to hold out on me.”

“What is it?”

“Alcohol,” Robby said.

“I thought the boiling would take care of sanitization?”

Robby shook his head.

“I’m talking about the drinkable stuff,” Robby said. “I mean the hard stuff, moonshine from someone’s bathtub, something that could fuel a jet engine. There’s gotta be someone here who has it, and I need you to find a way to get me some.”

“I…” Dennis didn’t so much shrug as he rippled nervously. His face flamed up all delicate and pink, and Robby couldn’t keep looking at him, but he couldn’t look away either. A muscle in Dennis’s jaw ticked. “Jah, I know who’s got some.”

“Is there anyone here you can send to get it? Discreetly, if that’s how it’s gotta be.”

“I don’t—he’s not going to give it up easy. Maybe to a Chupp but not to a Beiler.”

“And to a Whitaker?”

“I think I could make a compelling argument.”

Robby swore and planted his fists on his hips. He tipped his head back to think and stretch his neck.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay okay okay okay okay. How long do you think it’ll take you to get there, convince him to give you some, and get back?”

“I can take one of the Beiler horses,” Dennis said.

In a fit of excitement, Robby gripped his shoulders and shook him.

“Can you? Holy sh—yes, yes, that’s great, use a horse. How long with a horse in play?”

“Thirty minutes? An hour if he decides to be obstinate.”

“Great, perfect, you go, I’ll clean out the wound while we wait.” He paused at Dennis’s expression. “What’s wrong, what’s with the face?”

“It’s nothing,” Dennis said. “I’ll go let Mrs. Beiler know about all your instructions and get going.”

“Dennis.”

“I wanted to see the whole procedure,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m just flushing it and picking debris out,” Robby said. “It’s only marginally more exciting than cleaning up a scraped knee because of the—”

A series of sharp raps against the door interrupted them.

“Dr. Robinson? We have the finger.”

They opened the door only to be greeted with the sight of a gnarled finger in a bed of red snow.

“Oh my,” Robby said. “Thank you. Um. Do you have an iron?”

“Of course!” Mrs. Beiler had the temerity to look scandalized at the question while cradling a snowball full of severed finger in her hands.

“I need you to wash your hands very, very thoroughly, like for two minutes straight, okay? Then get that iron flaming hot and iron out a few clean towels for me. I’m gonna need a small table next to where I’ll be working on your father. Please lay the ironed towels on the table, sanitize a little plate with boiling water, and let it cool completely before setting the finger on it and set that somewhere cool until we’re ready for it, maybe a windowsill. Absolutely no snow. Dennis?”

“Doctor.”

God, but the way Dennis looked at him. Like he’d go to war if Robby said the word, Amish or not.

“Please get everyone working on what we talked about and then get a move on. We don’t have time to waste.”

“Yes, sir,” Dennis said, and ducked away.

Robby gave Mrs. Beiler a polite smile. She’d have to do in the interim, but he already knew she was a poor substitute.

 

Dennis returned to a Beiler house blessedly emptied of most Beilers. Robby had convinced Mrs. Beiler that he needed absolute silence to work on getting wood and dust and debris out of Mr. Chupp’s wounds, and she delivered that. Mostly. She also sat directly next to Robby and watched him so closely he considered the professional and ethical ramifications of squirting some of her father’s blood into her eyes. He did suggest she may be in need of some glasses.

Dennis also returned with two jugs of moonshine. Robby managed to restrain himself from kissing him on the face and settled for a good shake and telling him to wash up.

“Okay, Mr. Chupp, we’re ready now,” Robby said. “Have you thought about whether you want me to close it up as is or reattach the finger?”

“You’ll be reattaching the finger, surely, doctor?” Mrs. Beiler said.

“Reattachment comes with many, many more risks in these circumstances, and he’ll have to get to an orthopedic hand surgeon literally as soon as the roads are passable. Tomorrow or the next day at the latest.”

“Look at him! He can’t afford to lose another finger.”

“Mr. Chupp, this is your decision,” Robby said. “I’m following your directives here.”

“I have to finish the pie safe.”

Robby took a deep breath and held it until he felt less like he was going to explode.

“The pie safe is gonna have to wait,” he said. “Listen. If I cauterize and sew up your finger without reattachment, your healing time will be quicker and there is less likelihood of infection and gangrene. If I reattach the finger, there will be a lot more care involved to make sure it doesn’t rot and poison your blood, and that’s in addition to going to a surgeon for a revision as soon as the roads clear and doing all the follow up care with them so it actually functions. And even if we do everything right here, you could still lose the finger. Mr. Chupp, I need you to understand that an infection from this can kill you, and that’s far, far likelier if I do the reattachment.”

“We’ll take him into town bright and early in the morning, doctor,” Mrs. Beiler said. Robby ignored her.

“Mr. Chupp, I need to hear it from you, sir.”

“The recovery time is quicker without putting the finger back on?” Mr. Chupp asked.

Robby nodded.

“Yep, yes, absolutely. There will be less pain in general.”

“So I can get to my pie safe.”

“I think you might need to consider leaving the woodworking to your apprentices after this, Mr. Chupp.”

“Fater,” Mrs. Beiler said. “Daadi. Your hands are more important than the pie safe.” She turned to Robby. “He’ll have the finger reattached.”

“Mrs. Beiler, it needs to be his decision. Mr. Chupp? We can get started any time, you just tell me which procedure you want.”

Mr. Chupp looked at his daughter with all the pleading trust of a child. Heaviness settled over Robby as the two of them whispered in Pennsylvania Dutch. Robby looked at Dennis, who was hovering awkwardly past the surgical setup Robby had cobbled together. Dennis shook his head.

“I would like the finger reattached, please,” Mr. Chupp said.

Robby dipped his head in a nod, or in defeat, same thing.

“Mrs. Beiler, please give me some space,” he said. “You can sit over there and hold his hand. Dennis? The anesthesia.”

“Dennis Whitaker, you did not bring George Yoder’s filthy swill into this house!” Mrs. Beiler cried. Dennis froze, caught between Robby and the matron of the house.

“Ma’am, I asked him to,” Robby said. “Your father is in a lot of pain. I cannot do this without giving him something for it. I will not do this without giving him something for it. Dennis, please pour the man his medicine.”

Dennis rushed to obey. He spilled some on the floor. The fumes threatened to burn Robby’s eyebrows off. Robby blinked and blinked and just barely contained an expletive.

“Just a little bit now Mr. Chupp, that’s it,” Dennis said.

Mr. Chupp swallowed and grimaced and shook himself all over. Mrs. Beiler bristled not-so-silently. Dennis stood by with the cup of moonshine, one eye on Robby, the other on Mr. Chupp. Every time Robby nodded, he brought the cup to Mr. Chupp’s mouth. They did this until Mr. Chupp’s body loosened, gave up its tensions. Until his eyes drooped and he sagged against the back of the chair and started snoring.

Mrs. Beiler began to pray. Robby straightened and adjusted the reading glasses he’d picked from the selection he’d been offered. He picked up the finger and a pre-threaded needle and started explaining everything he was doing.

“The most important thing is to line up the blood vessels,” he said.

Dennis’s attention never wavered.

 

Robby declined Mrs. Beiler’s invitation to stay for dinner and got out of that house as soon as he could. He sucked in huge gulps of frigid air and gave himself a full-body shiver. Parasympathetic nervous system reset, like a dog.

“That was…intense,” Dennis said. His hat was tied tightly under his chin, but the wind was blowing it around enough that he had to hold it to his head. Robby shoved his own hands in his pockets and hunched in on himself.

“It really was,” Robby said. “I’ve never done anything like it outside a hospital.”

“You were amazing,” Dennis blurted. “I mean—it was amazing. The procedure. How you knew exactly what to do even though everything was—” He shook his head. “It was like God parted the clouds to shine His light on you, and I got to see it.”

He was red and wouldn’t look in Robby’s direction.

“Thank you, Dennis,” Robby said. “It’s just years of training. It’s just long experience.”

“No, it isn’t,” Dennis said.

“Well, I had an excellent assistant.”

Dennis took a deep breath and seemed to shore himself up.

“I hope you’ll forgive Mrs. Beiler’s behavior. She doesn’t know how to—I couldn’t think of a kind way to get her to leave you in peace.”

Robby glanced over at Dennis, who wore the world’s most hangdog expression, and tucked a smile into his coat.

“She didn’t act like that because she’s Amish, kid,” he said. “I’m afraid that’s some pure, grade A, homegrown mother henning, and people the world over are like that about their kids, their parents, their spouses, you name it.”

“Oh.”

“Maybe she’ll actually bulldoze him into taking care of the damn thing.”

“Do you think it’ll survive?”

Robby let out a long sigh that streamed out of him like dragon smoke.

“Only if she’s serious about getting him to a hand surgeon in the morning,” he said. “And then only if they follow the surgeon’s recommendations to a T. But he’s really old, Dennis, and his circulation already isn’t the best. There was a reason I was pushing for the other option. I could have done it clean and simple and in a lot less time.” He shook his head and shrugged.

“So he’s going to lose it.”

“That’s not a guarantee,” Robby said. “My biggest concern is that he’s not in the hospital right now.”

“I will pray for him.”

“I’m sure he’d be grateful for that.”

They waved to neighbors as they passed and once again Robby found himself dodging offers of meals and treats. He was dead tired and his back and ribs ached. He could use a bucket bath and a nap, though he supposed that wasn’t in the cards for him. It would be sunset in an hour or so.

Dennis shifted a jug of moonshine from one hand to the other. They’d left one with Mr. Chupp, but this one remained unopened. Robby found himself grinning. Dennis caught sight of him and went nervous.

“What is it?” he said.

Robby nodded at the jug.

“Are you gonna keep that for yourself, have a little fun?”

“Oh, no!” Dennis cried, and Robby pressed his lips together to keep from laughing. “I’m going to deliver this back to Mr. Yoder!”

Robby nudged him with a shoulder.

“I’m just teasing you, Dennis,” he said. “But it wouldn’t hurt anyone if you let loose once in a while.”

“It smells like paint stripper,” Dennis said, and at that, Robby did laugh.

 

When they got back to the Whitaker farm, a passel of children were sledding on the massive snowdrift that had developed between the hayloft and the ground. Dennis started pointing them out: a handful of them were his older brothers’ sons, but some were neighbors, and all were cousins one way or another. Dennis recounted the intricacies of his family tree with each one, but the information dribbled from Robby’s brain as soon as it entered.

“That looks like so much fun,” Robby said.

Dennis looked at him slantwise.

“Do you want to?” he asked.

“God, yes. But no. But maybe yes.”

“Your ribs are in no state to go sledding.”

“My ribs, my hips, my entire brittle, elderly skeleton.”

“What are you, forty-five? You’re barely older than Samuel.”

“Ha! Oh man, I’m telling everyone at work you think I’m only forty-five.”

Ruthie, so bundled up she resembled nothing so much as a tiny sphere, toddled up to them and bonked into Dennis’s knee.

“Gut daag, liebling,” Dennis said, and lifted her into his arms.

“Oncle Dennis, I want to go sledding.”

“You’re too little, schatz, you might get hurt.”

“I’m not too little!”

“Those kids are a lot bigger than you and they’re going real fast and playing rough. I’m sorry, Ruthie, but no.”

“I can’t be too little for everything! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!”

Robby could hear the hitch in her breath and see the head of steam she was building. He braced himself for the moment she threw her head back and started to shriek.

“I’m a big girl! I’m a big girl!”

Dennis tried his best to soothe her, bouncing her and rubbing her back, but she wasn’t having it. She was now trying to pitch herself bodily from Dennis’s arms.

“Dennis,” Robby said. “Man, just take her sledding.”

“What are you talking about?” Dennis hissed, cringing from the way she screamed in his ear.

“It isn’t fair,” Robby said. “You can’t wrap her up in cotton wool for the rest of her life. Just take your sled to a tiny hill, hold onto her, and go.”

The indignant look Dennis was giving him faded, and something else had sparked to life. It made Robby’s heart flip like a bird batting its wings against the bars of its cage.

Jacob stalked out of the barn and came right up to Dennie and Ruthie, covered in cow shit.

“What’s all this?” he demanded.

“I! Want! To go! SLEDDING!” Ruthie shrieked.

“Hush, hush now, schatzi,” Dennis said. “All right, we’ll go sledding, jah? Just you and Oncle Dennis, what do you say?”

Now she was shrieking for joy.

“Stop that noise this instant!” Jacob said, his voice like the lash of a whip. Dennis cringed while Ruthie went silent and buried her face in Dennis’s shoulder. Jacob sneered. “You’re too soft on these kinder, boy. How do you ever expect to maintain discipline and authority in your own household this way? The girls around this village see you, you know. They see you and they talk, Dennis, is that what you want?”

“All right, Fater.”

Dennis turned and carried his niece beyond the barn, beyond all the mirth of the other children. Jacob yelled at his back in Pennsylvania Dutch. Robby slipped around him to follow Dennis.

Watching Dennis take Ruthie down the smallest possible bump in the land while she giggled and waved her arms had Robby itching to take a picture. His time here was coming to a close, and he was never going to see Dennis again. What were the two of them going to do, write letters? Robby was already exhausted at the thought of it. No, no, he needed a keepsake. Would it be so terrible, to to hoard Dennis the only way he could?

Christ, they’d met yesterday. Robby was delusional.

“Hey Dennis?”

Dennis turned toward him, eyes bright, smile wide.

“Jah?”

“I know it’s not allowed, but I wonder if you’d let me take your picture? You and Ruthie, sledding? Please.”

The moment went taut, stretched like taffy. Robby was suddenly acutely aware of the cold stinging his cheeks, his nose. Meanwhile, the weight of Dennis’s eyes on him seared.

“Yes,” Dennis said in a whisper. “Yes, but don’t show me.”

“Yeah, okay. Thank you, Dennis.”

Dennis’s smile went small and shy, and he hustled back up the little hill, a child in one arm and a homemade sled in the other.

 

Robby was in bed squinting at a library book as the evening light faded when there came a knock at the door. He sat up and called out for whoever it was to come in. It was Dennis, and he had an armful of candles in various sizes and states of meltitude.

“Um, I couldn’t remember if it was eight, or eight and then another one, or if they’re meant to be a certain size, so…”

He lined up no fewer than thirteen candles on the windowsill.

“This is great, Dennis, thank you.”

Robby didn’t know why he was surprised—if Dennis said he was going to do something, he meant it. He was as earnest and sincere a person as Robby had ever met. There was no guile to him, no impulse toward sarcasm. Truthfully, Robby had forgotten about Dennis’s promise of a private Hanukkah, and now, though he hadn’t celebrated Hanukkah in years, he found himself moved enough by the gesture to grow a lump in his throat.

Dennis’s smile shone up at him. He sat in the corner chair and clasped his hands.

“What do we do now?” he asked.

Robby set the book aside and put a pillow on the floor under the window. He grabbed the matches from the bedside table and invited Dennis to kneel with him.

“Since I’ll only be here tonight, we only have to light one candle,” Robby said. The candles were all thick and freestanding, and none were the same height. One by one, he took the candles off the windowsill until only one remained on his right. He chose another to be the shamash. “Would you light a match for me?”

Dennis struck a match. Robby cleared his throat.

“Let me see if I remember the prayers,” he said, his voice hoarse. He closed his eyes and began to sing. “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tsivanu l’hadlik ner shel Hanukkah.” He angled the worn wick of the shamash into the match. When it caught, Dennis snuffed the match. “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, she-asah nisim laavoteinu v’imoteinu bayamim hahaeim baz’man hazeh.” It was strange, to be the only one singing. His voice felt fluttery and broken, his tongue out of practice with the Hebrew, and no one to blend his song with. But Dennis was looking at him like his singing was beautiful, like this prayer meant something to him. Robby swallowed and tried to steady his voice for the last one, the prayer for the first night of Hanukkah. “Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, shehecheyanu v'kiy'manu v'higiyanu laz'man hazeh.”

With the shamash, he lit the candle on the windowsill. He set the shamash aside without snuffing it.

“We celebrate Hanukkah to thank God for the miracle of our oil lasting eight nights when there was only enough for one. With this miracle, our lives were spared. It is only with light that we can drive out the darkness.”

Dennis’s hand hovered for a moment before landing between Robby’s shoulder blades.

“Amen,” he said. “God is good.”

Robby’s eyes heated. He didn’t know why. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and turned his face away from Dennis.

“Now we let it burn until the sky is fully dark,” Robby said.

“Perhaps…perhaps I can keep lighting the candles, after you’re gone.”

Robby smiled, but couldn’t look at him. He stood with a groan and sat on the edge of the bed. He patted the space next to him. Dennis hesitated, but finally sat when Robby patted it again. He was close enough that their sides pressed together. Robby didn’t pull away.

“Thank you for this, Dennis,” he said. “You didn’t have to do this, and I appreciate it. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. I don’t know how I’m going to repay you.”

“Repay—Michael, you’ve been here for two days and seen to half the district’s medical needs. Mr. Chupp’s going to keep all seven fingers because of you.”

Robby snorted out a laugh and swiped at his eyes, which wanted to leak all the time now, apparently.

“If he’s lucky,” he said.

“Michael. Your being here—it has been my, our honor. And so was listening to your Hanukkah prayer. I’ve never heard anything like it. It was—” He took a sharp breath and jostled him with a shrug. “Sometimes it’s difficult to feel close to God. And sometimes it’s easier. It feels easy tonight.”

Dennis offered his hand, the same as he had when they sat down to meals. Robby took it, let the touch settle something restless and howling in his gut. Neither of them let go.

As the sun set, the candle’s flame took its place as the light of the room.

 

Esther was only too happy to have all her children and grandchildren at her table, and so dinner was an even more sumptuous affair than it had been the night before. The atmosphere, however, had taken a sour turn: the older brothers needling the younger brothers, Jacob in a mood to sneer, Ruthie fractious and Sadie cowed. Samuel, Dennis’s oldest brother, was playing some kind of ‘humbler-than-thou’ mind game with Eli, while Ephraim seemed intent on embarrassing Dennis to death by regaling Robby with tales of youthful mistakes and ‘prideful thoughts beyond his station’—his dream of being a doctor. And then he started in on Dennis’s love life.

“You know, I heard Rebecca Beiler’s been asking about you,” he said.

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Dennis said.

“You should take her out in your buggy after singeon on Sunday,” Ephraim said.

“I don’t know if I like her that way, Ephraim. And anyway she’s our second cousin. On both sides.”

“What’s not to like? All you have to do is pick a girl from a good family, Denny, it’s not that hard. A girl is a girl is a girl.”

Robby looked at Ephraim’s wife, a heavy-set girl with big dark eyes who was pregnant again. She stared down at her plate.

“I’d like to get to know someone properly before going courting,” Dennis said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“How do you think you get to know a girl, Den? It’s not by running away to the barn every time one talks to you.”

“Don’t forget about exogamy.”

“Ach du lieber, you and the exogamy, Den.” To Robby, a theatrical aside: “This is all Bruder Dennis thinks about: exogamy.”

“It’s important!” Dennis said.

“We know that well enough,” Ephraim said, nodding at Ruthie. Dennis’s hand landed on Eli’s shoulder. “But you know as well as I that if God wills it, it will be so, no matter what your plans are. You’re not getting any younger, Den. Why haven’t you gone to visit some of the other communities if exogamy is all you can think about?”

“I went to Florida.”

“What, ten years ago?”

“Let me worry about my future marriage, Ephraim.”

“People talk, bruder.”

“So let them talk.”

“They say you’re strange. They say you prefer the company of livestock.”

“Ephraim,” Robby said, too loud. “I heard you do business in town. What was that again?”

Ephraim shifted in his seat and turned his attention away from Dennis.

“My tables and chairs are rather popular at a few of the tourist shops,” he said. “I apprenticed to our grandfater until he passed.”

“Ah. That must be why this house has such fine furniture.”

“Yes, you were in old Chupp’s house today, weren’t you? So you can see the difference in quality. My grandfater—”

“My fater was a master craftsman and a modest man,” Jacob said. “Perhaps someday my son will learn the only real lessons his grandfater had for him.”

Ephraim clenched his teeth and bowed his head over his plate.

“You must see a lot of violence in the big city, Dr. Robinavitch,” Samuel said into the lull.

Robby knew exactly where this was going and tried to head it off at the pass.

“Actually most of what I see are the same kinds of things you have right here in Lancaster,” he said. “Elderly people, work injuries, traffic collisions, illness.”

“There are guns in the city,” Samuel said, looking entirely too smug for an Amish man.

Robby forced out a smile.

“Oh, don’t go thinking I didn’t see guns in all the barns I’ve been to here, Samuel.”

Samuel flicked his wrist as if batting away a gnat.

“For livestock. Not for gang violence. Not for killing another human being over drugs or petty grievances.”

“There’s violence everywhere.” In this community. In this house. Robby felt something low and ugly start to boil inside him.

“Those people bring violence wherever they go and if you were honest with yourself—”

Robby’s utensils clattered against his plate.

“Hey, who do you think did the Pitt Fest shooting, huh? What kind of person committed the worst mass shooting in the history of the commonwealth? Who’s always the one behind the trigger when something like that happens again, Samuel?”

Dennis’s hand clasped his shoulder. Robby inhaled sharply, his scalp tingling.

“Forgive my son, Dr. Robinavic,” Jacob said. “He forgets himself.”

Samuel said nothing, but kept his glinting eyes trained on Robby.

“What kind of name is Robinavic, anyway?” Ephraim asked.

“English,” Samuel scoffed.

“Russian,” Robby said.

“Oh, they have those eggs at Easter, don’t they?” one of Samuel’s teenage sons asked. “With the wax and the patterns and the colors.”

Robby smiled again and hoped it came out better this time. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Some of the hot fury that threatened to bubble over ebbed away.

“Pysansky eggs, yes,” he said. “It’s a beautiful art form found all over Eastern Europe but especially Ukraine.”

“Do you know how to do it?” he asked.

“I’ve seen videos, but no, I’m afraid it’s all too intricate for me. Plus I don’t have an artistic bone in my body.”

“But cutting up another person, that’s fine,” Samuel said.

“Samuel,” Esther murmured.

“Your mater never showed you how?” Samuel’s son asked.

Robby had a disease where he knew discretion was the better part of valor, but he needed to blow things up anyway. Jack called it self-sabotage; Robby called it a cleansing. Fuck it.

“Actually I’m Jewish, so we never did the Easter egg thing.”

Instant unease. Palpable shock and dismay. If Samuel could get away with it, he’d be smirking. The older children were gaping at him. Dennis stared down at his plate. Robby cleared his throat and picked up his utensils. He cut his asparagus in half and ate the spears at a leisurely pace. It was Esther who broke the silence.

“Dr. Robinavitch, I wouldn’t have served you so much sausage and hamloaf if I’d known. Please forgive me.”

He did smile then, a good big one.

“Oh, don’t worry about all that, Mrs. Whitaker,” he said. “I haven’t kept kosher for a very long time, and besides, your cooking is hard to resist.”

“You don’t follow your own Ordnung?” Samuel’s kid asked.

“I’m not very religious,” Robby said.

“All that doctor pay must be good, jah?” Ephraim said.

“How do you hide the horns while treating patients?” Samuel asked.

Dennis slammed his fists down on the table and stood so fast he knocked his chair over. Robby startled.

“I will not have this, do you hear me?” Dennis snapped. “Dr. Robinavitch is a guest in our home, a man God set before us so that we may help him as Christians are called to do, and he in turn saw to all our neighbors’ aches and pains these last days. He reattached Bertram Chupp’s finger! Samuel and Ephraim Whitaker, you will apologize to him right now.”

“Or what, little bruder?”

“That’s enough,” Jacob said. “Not another word out of any son of mine. Sadie, the pie.”

Sadie hustled to get dessert on the table. The rest of the meal was tense and subdued, and most of the conversation was driven by children who were inordinately sad that he didn’t celebrate Christmas and wanted to know what he celebrated instead. He told them the big Jewish holidays were in the fall, not the winter, and described the hope and renewal of Rosh Hashanah, which marked both the creation of the world and the day of judgement. This seemed to satisfy them. Afterward, Robby beat a coward’s retreat up to Dennis’s room, where he lit the lamp and looked at his phone even though it would drain the battery. He had no signal, but the books app had some old books and articles still loaded onto it, and he tried to ignore the raised voices and bustle of getting two families out the door.

Some time later, the flame of a lantern outside caught his eye. He stood and parted the curtains to find Dennis run into the barn in a coat and hat, a parcel under his arm. Robby saw the lantern light the space of the hayloft. He let the curtains fall and got dressed in a hurry.

 

“Dennis?” Robby called when he got into the barn. The lowing of the cows and the bleating of the goats were nothing in comparison to the smell they were creating. And a barn full of livestock was nothing in comparison to the smell of the emergency department on a bad day.

“Michael?” Dennis’s head popped up in the hayloft. Robby swung his lamp around and there he was, cast in shadow. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you come in here. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m sorry for my brothers,” Dennis said. “And my fater too, I’m so sorry, Michael. And on the first night of Hanukkah.”

“It’s not your fault, kid.”

Robby went to climb the ladder up to the loft. Dennis reached down to relieve him of his lamp and he clambered up easily, though his ribs twinged. In the hayloft, Dennis had once again built himself a little nest of blanket and pillows.

“Were you gonna sleep here? Dennis, it’s like 25 degrees out here.”

“I have my lamp,” he said. “I didn’t want to disturb you. I can’t imagine you’d want to be near any of us right now.”

“Hey, you conducted yourself really well tonight. I’m not mad at you, okay? You’re not responsible for the things they said.”

Dennis looked up at him with those big liquid eyes. All Robby could see in them was the reflection of the flame, the impression of his own silhouette, and the beseeching look that never seemed to leave them.

He also saw that Dennis’s mouth was swollen, red and abraded, the bottom lip split down the middle. Robby raised the lamp to shine better light on it, and then his hand was cupping Dennis’s chin, tilting his face into the light. Dennis’s breath hitched.

“What happened?” Robby said. “Did Samuel do this?”

“He was just grappling a bit, teasing,” he said. He shied away from Robby’s hand and Robby let him.

“Dennis…”

“Fater stopped him,” he said. “He tried to switch all four of us, but Samuel and Ephraim left before he could.”

“Jesus. What about you and Eli?”

“Fater believes in the practice of making us go find our own switches, and we did not.”

“So he likes his warfare psychological.” Surprise, surprise. “Is he aware you’re grown men?”

“We will always be his kinder. Are not all fathers this way?”

And Robby was trying to put space between them, he really was, but Dennis turned those big eyes on him and leaned forward intently, as though he needed to memorize everything Robby might say. Robby’s own breath caught and his heart sped up.

“I was born in Moscow to young parents who were already beaten down by life in the USSR,” he said. “In the mid-’70s, it became easier to enter the US, which everyone said was the land of milk and honey. People really thought you could just show up in America and you’d get rich quick, everything would be easy and all your problems would be solved. Poverty, anti-Semitism, that one nosy neighbor—you wouldn’t have any of that in America. Of course, it cost a lot of money to emigrate. So they saved and saved and decided my mother, my grandmother, and I would go ahead of my father, and he would come later. You can imagine how that went.”

“He didn’t come?”

Robby’s smile felt sad on his face, but Dennis was rapt.

“He didn’t come. He stopped sending money. He stopped sending letters. We don’t know if he died or found someone else or what happened. I’m actually not sure I remember him or if what I’m remembering are just stories my mother told me about him.”

“I’m so sorry, Michael.”

“My mother remarried. My step-father wasn’t a bad guy, he and I just felt like roommates. Strangers in the same house. My mom ended up dying in her 40s, cancer, and David remarried quickly. I only see him once in a while these days, when I visit my sisters.”

“Oh.”

Robby dipped his head but smiled. Dennis’s lips were parted, and he was breathing too fast for someone sitting idle in a hayloft.

“Fathers are complicated,” Robby said. “Yours, mine, everyone’s, probably. I think all anyone can really do is try not to make the same mistakes theirs did.”

“I don’t think…”

Robby tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. Dennis’s cheeks flushed, and it wasn’t the cold.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be a father,” he said, and inhaled sharply as though the words surprised him.

Robby nodded. Slowly, he raised his hands. He looked Dennis in the eye, and Dennis swallowed, gaze never wavering. Robby cradled his face and passed his thumb gently across Dennis’s injured mouth. Dennis shuddered and leaned into the touch, his breath coming quick and uneven.

“It didn’t happen for me, either,” Robby said softly.

“Because you…because you’re like me? This unspeakable thing?”

Dennis was holding Robby’s wrists, keeping him in place. His forehead came to rest against Robby’s, and Robby felt the flutter of his lashes when he closed his eyes.

“We’re not unspeakable, Dennis.”

“I know what the church says about people like us. I know what everyone says about people like us. As if it’s the worst possible thing, worse than being dead.”

Robby wrapped his arms around him and pulled Dennis into his chest. He was shaking.

“Lancaster isn’t the world,” he said into Dennis’s hair. “The Amish aren’t everyone. You could have a different life, Dennis, a beautiful life.”

“I don’t know how. I don’t know how. Please, Michael. Please, please.”

Robby didn’t know what he was asking for. He wasn’t even sure if Dennis knew what he was asking for. But Dennis’s nose was nudging his, and his swollen lip caught against Robby’s mouth. The hayloft was drafty even with two lanterns, and Robby should have been cold, but his skin was suddenly electrified. Hungry.

Dennis pushed his lips against Robby’s clumsily. The taste of iron filled his mouth, and Dennis winced away. Robby buried a hand in his hair and pressed a kiss instead into the bow of his lip, the uninjured corner of his mouth, his jaw, his cheeks, his ear. Dennis whimpered. He was clutching at Robby’s shoulders, knees splayed to drag him close. Robby could feel his erection, hot and needy through the wool of his trousers. Dennis keened when Robby closed his hand over it.

“Tell me what you want,” Robby panted into Dennis’s throat. “Tell me what you’ve been thinking of.”

“I don’t—I don’t know, I just—your body. Your arms. Your eyes, Gotte ein Himmel, Michael!”

Robby pushed Dennis’s shirt up. His belly was soft and mostly smooth, but bronze hair thickened beneath his navel and Robby buried his nose in it, huffing deep. He trailed his mouth up Dennis’s chest, then let him feel the barest bite of his teeth on his skin. Dennis arched upward with a strangled groan. With a flick of Robby’s wrist, Dennis’s pants opened. He was tenting his undergarments, and Robby could already see a wet spot forming.

“Oh please, oh please, oh please,” Dennis was babbling.

“Dennis, I’m gonna suck you unless you tell me not to.”

“Oh—I, really?”

“Put your hands in my hair but don’t push my head down.”

He nodded frantically. His fingers slid into Robby’s hair. Robby shuddered and nosed around the hot column of Dennis’s cock. He sucked the head through the fabric, and only Robby’s hands on his hips kept him from choking Robby to death when he jolted and screamed.

“You have to be quiet, Dennis, can you be quiet for me?”

“Jah, yes, sorry, sorry.”

Robby eased the band of the underpants down and Dennis’s cock sprang free, slapping him on the belly. It was uncut, perfectly average in length and decently thick, rising from a thicket of untamed curls. He pumped it a few times, watching the livid glans appear and disappear under the foreskin, gathering its own slick with each squeeze. When he flicked his eyes up, Dennis was staring down at him avidly, his lips tucked behind his teeth to keep from screaming. Robby smirked a bit and then sucked Dennis down to the root, nose brushing his pubic mound, cock battering at his throat. Dennis’s hands spasmed in Robby’s hair and he made a desperate, muffled sound as Robby closed his eyes and let himself fall into the rhythm of bobbing and sucking. The smell of Dennis’s sweat and musk, the steel-and-velvet slickness of his cock filling Robby’s mouth, earthy and heady. He encircled his own cock in hand and started pumping.

He wanted so many things he couldn’t have. To be buried in Dennis balls-deep, to empty his load inside him while Dennis came all over himself. To be the one who was filled, watching the wonder in Dennis’s eyes as he sank all the way into Robby’s body. To be doing this on a bed, his bed at home, king-sized and luxurious, with the good lube and plenty of lighting so he could see Dennis, so he could show Dennis there was no shame here. To be kissing as they poured into one another. For the specter of Dennis’s bleak future not to be hanging over them, nor Robby’s imminent departure.

Yes, Robby wanted impossible things. He always had. It was, perhaps, his essential flaw.

His jaw was getting tired—he hadn’t blown anyone in at least ten years—but Dennis was holding on for dear life, as though he couldn’t bear for it to end too early. Robby was at least mildly impressed that he had lasted any length of time at all, but for the sake of his own mandibles, it was time for the big guns. He shifted to get his free hand under his own chin. He slurped and slobbered and slicked up Dennis’s crack before laying the pad of his thumb on Dennis’s asshole.

Above him, Dennis gasped and let out a high, broken wail he abruptly smothered with one hand. Robby rolled the back of his tongue rhythmically against his slit as he sucked the head and rubbed his hole. When it gave enough to let him push the tip of his thumb inside, Dennis seized up, gripped Robby’s hair, and thrust into the back of his throat as come flooded out of him.

Robby eased off so he wouldn’t choke, but he swallowed and kept sucking, slowly, gently, until Dennis flopped boneless and panting into his nest of blankets, his face and chest red.

Robby rubbed his face in Dennis’s pubes and against his damp, twitching cock. He opened his mouth to taste the honest sweat of him, to breathe him deep. He gripped his cock tight and set a punishing rhythm.

“Let me, Michael, let me touch you, please.”

Robby blinked up at him through a haze of arousal, but Dennis was pulling him up, licking his mouth, sucking on his tongue. Pushing him onto his back and opening his shirt, his pants. Running his hands all over Robby’s aging, imperfect body as if it were a treasure he’d unearthed. Righting his Magen David where it had become twisted and askew. Combing through his body hair, skirting his injured ribs. Touching Robby’s cock with wonder. Robby was so worked up he could feel his blood pounding in Dennis’s hand.

He bent over Robby’s dick and promptly choked himself on it. He caught his teeth on the head as he coughed and Robby hissed.

“Sorry, sorry,” Dennis said.

“You don’t have to do that if you don’t want to.”

“But I really want to.”

Those fuck-off huge eyes. Robby’s breath went ragged.

“Go easy,” he said. “Soft and slow to start. Pay attention to the head and the bit right under the slit.”

Robby guided him through the blowjob, petting his hair all the while. He was so lovely like this—strawberries and cream desperately worshiping Robby’s dick. A glimpse at his crotch revealed he was hard again, and soon enough he was squirming and clutching his cock.

“Michael?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you…that is, would you please? I want it.”

“Dennis, I can’t do it if you can’t say it.”

He huffed out an impatient breath.

“Would you please have carnal relations with me,” he said.

Robby pressed his lips together so he wouldn’t laugh. He stroked through Dennis’s hair and cupped his cheek.

“You deserve better than a literal roll in the hay, Dennis. We don’t have the right supplies, it’s cold, we’d be hurried, there’s a herd of goats right below us. There are other things we can do.”

“Show me?”

Robby groaned and gathered him up. He kissed him, careful and soft so it wouldn’t hurt, and bore him down into the blanket nest. He mapped Dennis out with hands and lips, committing each freckle and gasp to memory. When Dennis was once again a leaking, babbling mess, Robby turned him on his side and spooned up behind him, palmed the spare little ass, parted one cheek from the other. He was hot and humid in his crack, and the tight little furl of his asshole clenched greedily at each glance of Robby’s finger.

Robby slid his dick into the space beneath Dennis’s balls. Dennis squeaked.

“Hold your legs together,” Robby murmured, and Dennis clamped down on him.

Robby growled his pleasure into Dennis’s ear and Dennis arched back as if Robby were really fucking him, as if he really couldn’t get enough of Robby all over him. Robby slung a leg over Dennis’s and his arm over his stomach. Dennis slotted his fingers into Robby’s and held on as Robby’s strokes grew faster, harder. Sometimes, he’d catch the head of his cock against Dennis’s hole, and Dennis would cry out. Robby shifted enough to get his other arm under Dennis’s shoulder and shoved two fingers into his mouth. Dennis moaned and sucked around his mouthful, creating a feedback loop of electric pleasure that had Robby’s hips stuttering and his breath seizing.

“Fuck, Dennis,” he said, “you feel so fucking good, do you know that? You’re a fucking dream, I wish I could keep you, make you mine, make you—”

Dennis squealed and sucked hard on his fingers. Robby swore. He snapped his hips back and took hold of his cock.

“Hold yourself open for me,” he growled, and Dennis scrambled to obey. The sight of his hole in the flickering firelight cracked something open in Robby’s chest even as his urgency tightened. Robby snubbed the head of his cock against it and jerked furiously. “Fuck, Dennis. God, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

His orgasm broke over him and he soared into oblivion. He seemed to come for a long time, weird explosions one after another like a line of firecrackers until his balls were drained. He slumped against Dennis’s back, slick with sweat and panting.

The sight of Dennis’s asshole painted with his own come should have filled him with shame, but instead he felt triumphant. Satisfied.

Dennis was still hard.

Robby swept up his perineum with two fingers and gathered up his come.

“You still want it, Dennis?” he asked, gravel in his voice.

“Jah, yes, everything,” Dennis said.

Robby pushed his come into Dennis’s ass first with one finger, and then two. He shoved his clean fingers back in Dennis’s mouth to keep him quiet as he fucked him quick and steady with two fingers, hooking them against his prostate with every pass. Dennis was writhing and bucking and nearly sobbing as Robby worked him. It didn’t take long before Dennis was coming again, clenching around Robby’s fingers so hard even Robby’s spent dick gave a twitch.

Dennis curled into Robby’s chest when he was done. Robby closed his arms around him and laid his cheek in his hair. As much as he wanted to bask, to let Dennis bask, he needed to clean up, and it was way too cold to sleep in the barn. Plus his ribs were twinging.

“Come on, Dennis,” he said. “Let’s get to bed. We can share, okay?”

“I want to stay here. I don’t want to move.”

Robby kissed his head. Outside, snow was falling.

“I know,” he said, and let Dennis have another few minutes without the world intruding.

 

Dennis bathed first. When Robby came back from his own lamp-lit, unbearably cold bucket shower, Dennis was already under the covers in flannel pajamas. He was looking up at him as if afraid he was about to be kicked out of bed. Robby slid in beside him, wracked with violent shivering.

“Warm me up,” he said, and Dennis was only too happy to fit himself into Robby’s chest again.

Robby was exhausted down to his bones, but he was keyed up and couldn’t sleep. If he were sitting up, he’d be bouncing his knee fast enough to vibrate himself into the stratosphere. Luckily for him, Dennis’s breathing hadn’t evened out and deepened yet.

“Dennis?” he whispered.

“Hm.”

“You know I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Dennis turned onto his back, which left Robby’s side cold.

“I’ll pray for your safe travel,” he said.

“Listen. I didn’t do this right, okay, so I need you to remember some things for the future.”

Dennis let out a gusty sigh.

“What is it?” he said.

“Okay. Okay. Number one: condoms. Don’t do anal without them. You can get sexually transmitted infections through semen and blood, and the risk is higher with anal sex because the tissues are so fragile. I definitely should not have done what I did tonight, and I’m sorry, but also I’m free of diseases and so it’s safe, but you can’t just believe everyone who says that to you, so: condoms. ”

Dennis covered his eyes with both hands and groaned.

“Number two,” Robby said, undeterred. “PrEP. It’s a prophylactic medication you can get on that will prevent HIV infection if something happens like a condom breaking. You take it all the time, not just when you have sex. I can prescribe this for you, I’m sure you have ways to hide it from your parents. Number three—”

“Michael, who do you imagine I’ll be having all these carnal relations with?”

Robby blinked.

“I don’t know, man, you must have had crushes. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise you, you’re not the only guy with these proclivities here.”

A sweep of his lashes as he looked down. He petted idly through Robby’s chest hair.

“It was an Englischer, actually.”

“Oh. In town?”

“It was many years ago now,” Dennis said. “We have cousins in Florida, my mother’s sister’s kinder, and their fater had been kicked by a horse and was unable to work. I had been sent to help for a few months while he recovered. I took the train, and I had to change in Philadelphia, but everything was so confusing and loud and there were so many people and it was like everyone knew what to do but me. I missed my train. I couldn’t seem to find anyone who worked for the station rather than a shop. But then this man came up to me and introduced himself. Rashid. And I remember my heart—” He clutched at his chest, shaking his head. “First my heart stopped, and then it was going so fast. He was so handsome, and so kind. He showed me where I was supposed to be, and explained which direction which platforms would take me, things like that. He gave me his phone number and told me to call if I was lost.” He sighed. “Even before I knew what it meant for me to feel that way about a man, I knew it wasn’t something I could tell anyone about. Remembering him became my secret, something I was ashamed of, but also something that thrilled me whenever I thought of it.”

“You ever think of calling that number?”

Dennis scoffed.

“And say what? Come save me from my own kin?”

“For starters.”

“I’m not so brave as your mother, Michael. I can’t leave everything I know behind. I can’t just start again.”

Robby kissed his knuckles.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

They lay there looking at each other. Soon, Dennis was asleep, and Robby’s mind wandered. If Dennis already had his GED, then he could get started at community college basically immediately. Then, two or three years later, maybe he could transfer to a four-year to finish. His senior year, he could take the MCAT and start sending out applications. He’d enter medical school at thirty-four and finish at thirty-eight, and maybe it wasn’t ideal but he’d still be beating McKay’s timeline. The road was long and difficult, but it wasn’t impossible. Dennis didn’t know how close he could be if he would just reach for it.

Robby fell asleep, already half dreaming of offering to pay for it all.

 

They woke to a clamor in the middle of the night. There was pounding on the door. The kids were crying. Dennis scrambled off the bed in case one of his parents burst in, but Robby yanked him to his feet and they rushed out of the room. Eli met them at the bottom of the stairs and shoved them back up.

“Go get dressed right now,” he said.

“What’s going on?” Dennis said.

“It’s one of the Miller kinder,” Eli said. “His brother Joshua’s taken a turn. They need Dr. Robinavitch.”

“What they need is a hospital!” Robby said. “Does anyone here have a car?”

“We’ll have to take a buggy,” Dennis said.

“It’s fucking freezing, Dennis!”

“What do you want me to do, Michael!” Dennis threw his hands out. “This is my life, do you understand that?”

“Ach du lieber, you two! Get a move on!” Eli said and stomped back down the stairs.

They dressed in record time, but instead of heading up the hill, Dennis jogged toward the barn and Robby had no choice but to follow.

“Where are we going? What’s happening?”

“Can you ride a horse?”

“What? No, are you kidding me?”

“Fine, fine, we’ll ride one together. The big boy, Chauncey. Lord, your legs.”

“What about my legs? Dennis, you can’t be serious right now!”

“Michael! For God’s sake, the Miller house is two miles up a hill! I’ll handle the horse, you just get on!”

Dennis did something with a saddle and the stirrups and then gestured at him to get on as if Robby had any idea how to get on something alive and this much bigger than him. He had the distinct impression that Dennis would be swearing if he weren’t Amish, but he held out his hands, linked together, and said, “Step up and get on, just like a bicycle.”

“Dennis I outweigh you by—”

“Michael just do it! Gotte ein Himmel!”

“Fuck fuck, Jesus, fine.”

Robby stepped into Dennis’s waiting hands and found him propelled upward with a lot more force and ease than he might have credited Dennis for, and then Dennis was shoving him backward in the saddle in order to seat himself in front, between Robby’s legs.

“Hold on,” Dennis said, and Robby felt ridiculous but he clung to Dennis, big Amish hat and all, while Dennis did something and the horse took off running out of the barn.

It was wild, running into the cold night, wind whipping his face. It was wild and exhilarating and scary and so, so hard on his ribs. His thighs were clamped tight and he was worried he might actually be squeezing Dennis to death, but suddenly he was laughing. Hard and free, he was laughing.

“What’s funny?” Dennis shouted over the wind.

“Nothing! I think I need to find a way to ride horses in Pittsburgh though!”

Dennis had nothing to say to that. He made the horse go faster even though it was dark, even though there must be ice along the paths. The horse never put a foot wrong, and they made it to the Miller house in under ten minutes.

He was going to be sore for days, and it would be worth it.

 

Mrs. Miller was crying as Mr. Miller laid their racked and rattling son in their buggy. As soon as Dennis helped him off the horse, Robby climbed into the buggy. Joshua was all bundled up in a handmade quilt, and there was a hot water bottle in there with him.

“Here,” Dennis said, and shoved a little pot at him.

“What’s this?” he asked, but Dennis sat in front, outside the buggy proper, while Mr. Miller climbed in the back with Robby and gathered the boy up in his arms. Mr. Miller was stone faced, but his eyes betrayed him, overbright and panicky.

There was a lurch, Dennis’s voice speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, and then the buggy was moving. Robby unscrewed the pot and smelled the same balm Dennis had told him to rub on his ribs a lifetime, or two days, ago.

“Yes,” he murmured, loosening the blanket enough to expose Joshua’s chest. He rubbed it all over like Vick’s, and the boy settled a little, the rattle in his chest less violent. “Yes, yes. God what I wouldn’t give for some real light in here.”

Mr. Miller leaned over and produced a Maglite.

“Will this do?” he asked.

Robby gaped at him.

“You’re allowed to have that? Yes, just…hold it up here, I need to look at his eyes. How long will it take to get to the hospital in this thing?”

“It will take maybe an hour, less if Bruder Dennis pushes the horses,” Mr. Miller said. “And yes, we’re legally required to have lights and reflective gear on our buggies.”

Robby bit back the sarcastic hallelujah that wanted to trip off his tongue. Joshua was clammy and feverish but shaking from cold both real and fever-induced. He was not entirely conscious. Robby lifted up each eyelid, looked up his nose and down his throat.

God, he felt so stupid.

“Is anyone in this community vaccinated against COVID?” he asked.

“He got vaccinations when he was a baby,” Mr. Miller said. “No one here got COVID, so no need for vaccines, surely.”

Robby bit back what he wanted to say. He took a steadying breath.

“It’s good you got him his childhood vaccines,” he said. “Do other people do that or just your family?”

“Most. We do not want measles, or scarlet fever, or polio. Our memories in Lancaster County are long.”

“Okay, well. Please, please, if you do one thing for your community, get yearly flu and COVID vaccines. I can set something up to have a travel clinic come and do them for free.”

“We Amish can pay our own way, Dr. Robinavitch.”

“Most people get these vaccines for free, Mr. Miller. You wouldn’t be singled out.”

Joshua started coughing. He started coughing and he couldn’t stop. He wept as he heaved for breath he couldn’t catch, and all Robby could do was hope Dennis was pushing the horses.

 

It was late morning by the time Robby and Dennis headed back. They’d left Mr. Miller to stay with Joshua, who was now on a ventilator. Robby was unsure if he would recover, but things were better than they had been four years ago. He’d been obliged to bully some ER doctors into prescribing antivirals for the entire Miller family and Dennis as well. He personally bought a metric shit-ton of masks and tests to distribute, and he made Dennis and Mr. Miller promise to spread the word that no one was to take the antivirals unless they tested positive. He set up that travel clinic to come next week, too.

So he was exhausted and wrung out and subdued when he slid into the front seat beside Dennis for the ride home.

“You sure?” Dennis asked. “It’s cold up here.”

“I’d rather be cold with you than warm and alone back there.”

Robby’s hands were in his pockets, and then, quietly, so was one of Dennis’s. They linked their pinkies together and squeezed. Robby wondered if he was thinking about making this same trip for Ruthie someday. He didn’t dare ask.

The horses were tired, so their pace was more leisurely. Eventually, as the bustle of the town gave way to great swaths of farmland, Dennis spoke.

“I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too, Dennis,” Robby said, instead of the come with me that was trapped and screaming in his gullet.

“Do you…”

“Do I what,” Robby said.

Dennis hunched over the reins, avoiding Robby’s eyes.

“It mattered to me,” Dennis said. “The carnal relations. That will be all for me, I think. Knowing you that way, it felt... I’m going to think about you a lot, Michael.”

Robby squeezed his hand. Dennis glanced at him and Robby gave him a smile.

“I don’t go around picking up beautiful young men a lot, no,” Robby said. Dennis flushed, and his abraded mouth quirked upward even as he curled in on himself in self-deprecation. “This was really special for me, Dennis. I think—Jesus, I’m running on empty. I’m gonna say something stupid, never mind.”

“Say it, please,” Dennis said. “It’s just you, me, and the snow, Michael, so speak true.”

A lump grew in Robby’s throat at the thread of desperation in Dennis’s voice. He forced himself to swallow it down.

“Meeting you felt like opening a window in a room I didn’t know I was suffocating in. Like—like I’ve been in exile, and when I look at you, I’ve come home.”

“Oh.”

“There’s a word for it, in Yiddish. Bashert.”

Your destiny. Your soul’s match. Robby couldn’t bring himself to tell Dennis what it meant—fanciful pap, superstition and magical thinking—but neither could he hide from the way that meaning chased him around his own mind.

Dennis was staring at him. Robby felt the blush blaze up his face and sear the tips of his ears. He ducked his head away and looked off into the swells in farm and snow before him.

“What’s Pittsburgh like?” Dennis asked eventually.

Robby huffed out a laugh.

“Ah, the Steel City,” he said. “A lot of bygone industry. A lot of history and then a collapse that left us a relic, like the world moved on without us. But there are pockets of life now. Art, theatre, culture. Like little gardens popping up between the smoke stacks.”

“Would that I could tend your garden, Michael.”

Robby’s eyes stung.

“I hate that I’m leaving you here, Dennis.”

“Maybe…maybe we can write letters.”

“That’ll only prolong how much this sucks, man.”

“The idea that I’ll never see you again…I can’t, Michael. I can’t bear it.”

Robby looked all around. They were alone on a country road. Far in the distance, barely breaking the horizon, another buggy crested over a hill. Robby plucked the hat off Dennis’s head and used it to shield them when he pressed a kiss into the corner of Dennis’s mouth. Dennis squeaked and jolted, but he was the one who opened to Robby. He was the one who deepened the kiss, swept his tongue inside, did his best to devour Robby right then and there. His breath was ragged and his eyes dazed when they parted.

“Listen to me, Dennis, bashert, listen,” Robby said in an urgent whisper. “I wish you peace, and joy, and an open heart. You are going to love, Dennis, and you are going to be so, so loved, do you hear me? There is so much out there for you, and you are going to grab it with both hands.”

He seized another kiss, and iron burst across his tongue. Dennis whimpered into his mouth but gave chase when Robby tried to pull away.

Blood to blood, Robby and Dennis surrendered. Was it to God, was it to fate? Or was it just to themselves, to each other, to the beating thing between them that rendered them, for one brief, shining moment, two men who were allowed to be happy?

 

Robby saw him, of course, in the strong line of a broad pair of shoulders, or when he met someone with big eyes that tilted toward tragedy, or when he caught the scent of farmland. He saw him disappearing around corners, or in the flickering half-light of a malfunctioning train car, or behind closing elevator doors. Always out of reach, always a mirage, but he saw him. Robby couldn’t tell if it was better or worse for his mental health to hold on like this, but he did know he didn’t have it in him to let go.

On hard nights, he took out his pictures of Dennis and Ruthie sledding. Dennis’s mouth split wide enough to accommodate his laughter. His body moving faster than his hat. The funny cowlick in his hair. Robby pinballed between wanting to get a series of them framed and mounted in pride of place and wanting to squirrel them away so he didn’t have to look at what he’d lost every day.

He cajoled Jack into joining him for English horsemanship classes just outside the city. Despite the hard work, it was more relaxing than either of them had anticipated, got them both out of their heads and into the wider world. Jack had bought them matching cowboy hats.

Jack was the only one who knew about Dennis, because Robby may have had a tiny breakdown on the drive home. For whatever reason, hearing that Robby had made a fool of himself with an Amish man half his age made Jack turn his most wolfish grin on him instead of invoking a 302 to commit him to the psych ward.

“Nah, man, you were due for it,” he’d said. “I’ve been wondering when it would happen for you.”

“What, a mid-life crisis?”

Jack pinned him with a stare even though he eyes should have been on the road.

“Come on, Jack.”

Jack turned back to the road and adjusted his grip on the steering wheel. After too long waiting, he finally said, “For something to bring you back to life, brother.”

In the year that had passed since he left Lancaster, Robby had thrown his back out once, seen both of his sisters once but separately, taken post-exposure prophylaxis for one month after an angry patient stuck him with a used needle on purpose, fallen off a horse three times, dislocated his shoulder once, declined two dates with perfectly nice women, gotten Norovirus, read an entire novel all the way through, almost puked due to a patient’s smell for the first time in twenty years, fended off one intern with a crush, taken one vacation for the high holidays, painted the walls in his house sage green, tried out four different therapists before settling on one that asked him if he regretted specializing in emergency medicine, and genuinely considered buying a horse. He was better, he supposed, than he’d been a year ago, but it didn’t feel like this mythical new life Jack insisted he had entered. It felt like waiting.

So he could be forgiven if he came home with pizza and wings in hand after his shift on the first night of Hanukkah, saw Dennis on his doorstep, and thought nothing of it. But when he got closer, and the figure on his stoop looked up, the mirage never wavered. That was his smile. Those were his shoulders. Robby’s innards threatened to find a way to throw up his heart.

“Dennis?” he asked.

The figure stood. He was in normal clothes. English clothes. A puffy green parka and dark-wash jeans. A knit cap that covered his ears instead of a wide-brimmed hat. It was jarring and incongruous. It was the best thing Robby had ever seen.

“Hello, Michael.”

“What are you doing here? What are you wearing?”

“It was hard and took a lot of planning, but we left. Me and Eli, Sadie and the kids. So.”

Robby was dimly aware that he was gaping at him.

“So you came to Pittsburgh.”

“You said it was a place for new beginnings.”

Robby gave a short laugh that visibly curled around Dennis’s face in the cold.

“God, kid, you know I would have helped you? I left you my address and number for a reason.”

“We had to do it on our own. We had to see if we were up for it.”

“How’s Ruthie?”

“Gut. I mean, well. She has a specialist now, a pediatric orthopedist at UPMC.”

“I’m so happy to hear that, Dennis. You have no idea—” Robby’s eyes heated, and he lost the rest of his words in a sudden gasp.

Dennis shifted his weight from foot to foot, tongue darting out to wet his lips. Robby knew he should invite him in, get a mug of cocoa in his hands, listen to what was probably a profoundly compelling story for the ages, but all he could do was drink him in.

He produced a box with Hebrew on it and shoved it at him.

“I got the right candles this time,” he blurted.

“Oh. Thank you.”

Robby held out the pizza box and Dennis set it on top.

“And I looked up that Yiddish word,” he said. “I was wondering if you meant it.”

Robby set his takeout aside and took one step up, and then another, until he was eye to eye with what he’d been waiting for.

“I never meant anything more in my life,” he said. “Bashert.”

Dennis threw his arms around Robby’s neck. He was ready for it when Dennis kissed him. He was ready to come home.

 

End