Between You and Me. Susan Wiggs

Caleb didn’t answer right away, Jonah angled his gaze at the molded plastic chair in the corner. Caleb’s hat still lay beneath it. “I bet he was right there all night,” the boy said.

      “You were, weren’t you?” she asked Caleb.

      He didn’t want to get anyone in trouble, so he merely shrugged and said, “I wanted to be here in case Jonah woke up.”

      She bit her lip. She had very white, straight teeth and soft-looking lips he had no business noticing. “You’re not going to be good for anything if you don’t eat and sleep properly,” she said, her female bossiness reaching across any and all cultural lines between English and Amish. There was much to admire about this woman—her thoughtful gestures, taking the time to help him through his first evening in the city. And she had a clear, honest way of explaining things to Jonah.

      He wondered what her world was like outside the hospital. Did she spend time with her family and friends? Did she live nearby? What did she do when she wasn’t working?

      He pictured her in English clothes, driving a car, getting her fingernails polished by someone in a salon—a concept so foreign to the Amish it was almost inconceivable. Did she go out to bars with friends? Surf the Internet? Study her phone as if it held the secrets of the universe?

      One of her pockets emitted a buzzing sound. She took out a flat mobile phone with a shiny screen. “I have to go,” she said.

      “I wish you could stay,” Jonah said.

      “That’s nice to hear. But I work in the ER, not surgery. I just came up here to see how you’re doing.”

      “Oh,” said Jonah, clearly not understanding the difference between emergency and surgery.

      She backed toward the door, still talking. “Tell you what. At the end of my shift, I’ll come back to see you again. If they move you to the ward, I’ll find you. And you know what else? We’ll figure out a place for your uncle to stay. Maybe get him a more comfortable chair.”

      That drew a flicker of a smile from Jonah. “Yeah, that would be good, Reese.”

      She gave him a look that even a wounded boy couldn’t resist. “You’re going to be okay, Jonah Stoltz,” she said. “That’s a promise. And you know what?”

      “What?”

      “Keeping promises is my superpower.”