Adam
I woke up on the couch with a strange man leaning over me pressing a stethoscope to my chest and nodding to himself.
"Mr. Wallace," he said as he raised one of my eyelids and shined a very bright light into my eye. "Mr. Wallace, can you hear me?"
"Yes, get that light out of my eyes, will you?" I grunted as I swiped at his hand. He backed away and stood just out of reach. "Jesus, I just got lightheaded, there's no reason to call out the cavalry."
"I'm not the cavalry, Mr. Wallace, just Doc Johnson," he said as he held out a hand. A generous assessment of his bald head, round glasses, and old-fashioned medical case made me guess that the man was in his mid-seventies. "I think the knock you took to your head yesterday caused a concussion. That's what caused you to pass out this morning."
"Gee, thanks Doc," I said sarcastically as I pushed myself up to a seated position. "Not like I couldn't have figured that out myself."
"No need for sarcasm, young man," the doctor said cheerfully. "What you need is some rest so that you can recover. Do you remember what happened that caused the concussion?"
"Of course I do! I was..." I trailed off as I tried to remember how I'd ended up on this couch. There was something flickering around the edges of my memory, but the more I tried to catch it, the further away it seemed. I looked up at the doctor as I tried to come up with an explanation. Finally, I remembered, "I was in an accident and the family who lives in this house took care of me last night and then fed me breakfast this morning."
"That's okay, don't push yourself," he said patting my shoulder. "It's not uncommon to have some temporary memory loss in the hours or even days following an accident. You probably pushed yourself too hard this morning and the combination of heat and humidity caused you to pass out."
"I had a meeting," I said as I continued to try and pull the memory from the recesses of my brain. It felt like something I'd once known but had forgotten, and that was frustrating. I could remember sliding off the road into the ditch.
"You are right, you were in a car accident, Mr. Wallace," Doc Johnson said. "You crashed your car, a lovely Mustang by the way, into the ditch across the road. The Miller children brought you in and kept you overnight."
"Ah yes, Danny and Honor and...the other two," I finished up trying to remember the other girls' names.
"Grace and Verity are in the kitchen preparing lunch," he said. "I'd advise you to eat something and I’m going to have the girls wake you up every few hours to check your cognitive skills. How is your head right now? Any pain or buzzing sounds?"
"Not now, but there was some earlier, I think," I said trying to put the pieces together. "Yes, there was! Earlier at the breakfast table. I heard a buzzing sound like a plane flying overhead! Then I stood up from the table and..."
"You passed out and you've got quite the goose egg on the side of your head!" Doc Johnson said with a smile.
"Yeah, I've got a headache," I said raising a hand to the spot where it hurt the most and winced when my fingers probed the lump.
"You're going to be okay, but I'd advise you to rest as much as you can for the next couple of days. I'll call in a prescription for pain medication, but I think you might be fine without it," the doctor said as he packed his equipment into his bag. "You don't seem to have broken any bones nor have you cracked your skull open, so I don't think you need to go to the hospital, but I'm going to tell the girls to keep an eye on you for the next week or so."
"Week? I need to get home!" I protested as I pushed myself up off the couch. My head throbbed, so I lay back down.
"Oh, Mr. Wallace, I think you're going to be here in Corner Grove for a spell," Doc Johnson laughed. "Your car was almost totaled and they're going to have one heck of a time getting the parts they'll need to get it back in running condition."
The doctor picked up his bag and walked into the kitchen, waving to me as he disappeared through the doorway. I tried to get up from the couch, but the pain knocked me back down.
After a while, Grace came into the room with a cool towel and placed it on my forehead. The feeling of her cool hand on my skin stirred something in me and as I looked up at her, I noticed that she had a small scar over one eyebrow. I wondered how she'd gotten it, but before I could ask she said, "We'll bring you some lunch in here, Mr. Wallace. Doc said you shouldn't be up and about much right now. Maybe in a few days we can take you into town to check on your car; meanwhile, we'll do our best to care for you."
"Thank you, Grace," I said as I looked up into her eyes and tried to smile. She nodded and then
quickly turned and went back to the kitchen, leaving me on the couch wondering how I was going to sell the project if I was stuck here in this house.
Chapter Seventeen
Grace
"Did Doc Johnson come over?" Honor asked as she walked through the back door and set a basket of eggs down on the floor near the door before tossing a handful of papers on the table.
"Honor, where have you been?" I asked. "You've been gone forever!"
"I've been doing what you asked!" she shot back crossly. Her face was red and sweaty, and her kapp was askew, but that was par for the course when it came to Honor. "Plus, I had to take care of the animals, or did you forget that we live on a farm?"
Honor was a tomboy at heart and loved nothing more than to run barefoot through the backfields helping Dat plough or accompanying Mamm as she worked in the garden. Her stubbornness made it almost impossible to tell her what to do, but it also meant that she refused to give up on things where others would throw up their hands and walk away. She was tough, but she also had a good heart and meant well.
"No, I did not forget," I said crossly. I picked up the papers and began to stack them neatly. "Yes, Doc came by and checked Adam out. He said Adam needs a few days to recover, so we should probably get him back to the Yoder place."