Sarah's Sin

A shooting victim, an assault victim, a botched suicide, a bleeding ulcer, a dozen cases of the latest Asian flu strain, and a motorcyclist who hadn't had the foresight to put a helmet on before hurling himself into the side of a garbage truck. Just another day on the job.

Matt slumped onto the orange vinyl couch in the doctors' lounge, dropping his head down on the squeaky tufted arm. He was tired, but his fatigue didn't have anything to do with the hours he'd been working. This was a weariness that went deeper than his muscles and sank into the essence of his being. He'd been back in Minneapolis a week and on the job for four days. The chief of staff had protested his early return, but not with much sincerity. His life as Matt Thorne, head honcho of County General ER, had fallen quickly back into the routine he remembered.

Only he didn't remember it being so emotionally empty. He had never before met the flirtatious teasing of the female members of the staff with a complete lack of enthusiasm. He didn't remember ever dreading going home to his apartment at night. He vaguely remembered charging at his job headfirst, but the man in those memories was a stranger to him. These days he operated on a kind of automatic pilot system—efficient and more than competent, but detached.

The city he had always loved and partaken of had lost some of its shine for him, as well. He found himself missing the rustle of cornstalks and the quiet of the country night. More than anything, he missed Sarah. Every time he thought of her riding on a bus full of strangers to Ohio his heart ached.

He had let her go and returned to “his world” only to find it wasn't the world he wanted to live in anymore. He had returned to his job because he was dedicated to helping and healing people, but this was no longer the way he wanted to go about it.

“Are you just resting or should I call the morgue?”

Julia flopped down into a chair of the same eye-burning orange vinyl as the couch and propped her big feet on a batde-scarred coffee table cluttered with old magazines and abandoned coffee cups. She wore the most relaxed version of “nursing whites” she could get away with—a lab jacket over an oversize T-shirt and baggy white sweatpants. Her wild red mane was more or less contained in a single long braid that hung over her shoulder like a length of rope.

“The juiy's still out,” Matt said. He pushed himself upright and mussed his hands through his hair, leaving it standing on end in tufts. “You want the truth, McCarver?”

“Always.”

“I don't want to be here anymore.”

“I know,” she admitted quietly, picking at the end of her braid.

“It's not that I don't care,” he went on. “It's just … I've done my tour of duty, that's all.”

“I know.”

He arched an eyebrow. “What? No fiery lecture on how needed I am?”

“No. This isn't the only place on earth that needs good doctors. You want the truth, Dr. T?”

“Usually.”

Julia sat up and leaned forward, dangling her long hands between her knees. “I think I bugged you about coming back more because I missed my buddy than anything else, and now I feel like a guilty slug because you're miserable. I think maybe you'd better go back to that cornfield. You know in Field of Dreams it turned out to be heaven.”

Matt made a face. “It wasn't heaven, it was Iowa.”

“Oh, big deal.” She scowled at him. “Don't screw up my lines here, Thorne. I'm trying to tell you what you should do with your life.”

“Pardon me.”

“Go back, get married, be happy.” She beat out the time of the sentence with one hand like a choir teacher

“That sounds like a plan,” Matt said with a sad smile. It was a plan he dreamed about during the long nights since his return to the Cities. He would hang out his shingle in Jesse, drum Coswell the Quack into retirement, marry Sarah, give her a dozen babies, and live happily ever after. Only Sarah wasn't there, and he didn't know if she ever would be there for him.

“It's not that easy,” he whispered, looking down at his sneakers, his voice smoky with emotion.

Julia gave him a long look of empathy and said, “Nothing worth having ever is.”

Sarah sat on her bed, staring at her suitcase. Her trip to Ohio had been postponed because of Jacobs illness, but her brother was back to his sweet, mischievous self now and she was to board the noon bus.

She wasn't going to go through with it. Day and night she had struggled with the conflicting emotions inside her. She had never felt so torn. She hated the thought of losing her family, especially of losing contact with Jacob. But Jacob was not her son and she couldn't live her life only halfway because she wanted to cling to him. It wouldn't be healthy for either of them. She loved her family, but remaining in the Amish faith out of duty alone was hypocritical and her other reason for staying—cowardice—was even worse.

All her life she had wanted something different. All her life she had known deep inside that she wasn't Amish, she was just pretending. All that time she had dreamed of other things and not reached out for them because she was afraid to leave the safe haven of her small close-knit community. That was what Ingrid had been asking her when she had wondered aloud if Sarah would really trust her life to Matt. Did she trust him enough to leave her people and give her life to him?

The answer to that was yes. The next question she had no answer for. Did Matt love her enough to teach her about his world and protect her from the worst of it? Did he love her enough to accept what she wanted to give him? Not knowing made her stomach tie up like a pretzel. He had left her. He had gone back to the city. He may have forgotten her already but she hoped and prayed not, and she was going to find out for a fact.

The bedroom door opened, and Anna stepped in. She had a beautiful quilt of purple and black folded over her arms like a giant muff. “You are ready to leave then?”

Sarah looked up at her with eyes that begged understanding. “I'm not going to Ohio, Mom.”

“I know,” Anna murmured with a sad smile, tears sparkling like stars in her eyes. “I've always known you wouldn't stay with us, Sarah. You belong to another world in your head and in your heart you belong with your English doctor.”

“Please don't hate me for it,” Sarah said. “It can't be wrong. I love him too much.”

“I couldn't hate you, bussli. You were all along meant to leave us. Es waar Cotters With.”

“Oh, Mom,” Sarah whispered through her tears. She rose from the bed and hugged her mother, quilt and all.

“I brought this for you,” Anna said, sniffling, trying bravely to smile as she held the quilt out when Sarah stepped back from her.

Sarah ran her hand over the fine patchwork of broadcloth. It was an Amish tradition for a mother to give her daughter a quilt when the daughter left home to marry. Sarah still had the one her mother had given her when she had married Samuel. It was a labor of love and duty, as was much of Amish life. It was a good life, a simple life, but it wasn't the life meant for her.

“It's beautiful, Mom,” she whispered, wishing this parting didn't have to be so painful or so permanent.

“For your new life,” Anna said. “Be happy, Sarah, and know that in my heart you will always be my daughter.”

Matt slowed his Jag as Jesse came into sight, and he rolled up behind an Amish buggy being pulled by a fractious-looking black horse. The car behind him honked impatiently, and Matt stuck his arm out the window to give the driver the one-finger salute. The moron. Didn't he know this was a part of the country where no one had any business being in a hurry?

The buggy turned off at the welding shop, but a tour bus had stalled in the middle of the street and there was no way around it. Matt sat listening to a Righteous Brothers tape, replaying his plan in his head. He would go to Ingrid first. There was a good chance her grapevine would know the name of the relatives Sarah had been sent to. Then he would beat a path south and do whatever he had to do to convince Sarah she belonged with him in his world more than she belonged in theirs.

His gaze wandered over the herd of tourists that had spilled out of the bus and were heading across the street toward the small depot and gift shop. Another small knot of people stood in the sunshine at the side of the little putty-colored clapboard building, apparently waiting to board a bus bound for some distant place—two elderly women, a bean pole youth with a buzz-cut and army fatigues, and a young Amish woman.

Matt's hands tightened on the steering wheel and he stared hard out his window. His heart pounded like thunder in his chest. Sarah. But how could it be? She was in Ohio. He stared until his eyes hurt, but he just couldn't tell. She was too far away and too well disguised by her black bonnet and heavy cape. He couldn't quite see her face, but something inside him told him it was Sarah, the missing part of his heart and soul.

There was no hope of turning across the street; the traffic was too heavy coming from the other direction. So he simply left his precious gold XJ6 sitting behind the stalled bus.

“Sarah!” he called, glancing from her to the traffic and back. “Sarah, wait! Don't go!”

Sarah felt as if a bolt of lightning had just shot through her. Matt. As the bus for Minneapolis wheeled into place to take her to him, he stood across the street. He had come back. He had come back for her!

“Matt!” She yanked her heavy bonnet off and waved it wildly, laughing with pure joy.

He darted across the street, just managing to escape a brush with the fender of a pickup. He didn't even hear the blast of the horn. He was too intent on Sarah to care about anything else. She hadn't left yet. There was still time. He wasn't sure he could talk her into marrying him in the few minutes before her bus pulled out, but he dredged up a little of his doctor's arrogance and told himself he probably could. He'd gotten her to fall in love with him almost that fast, hadn't he? And if he didn't succeed before the bus left, he would get on the blasted thing and hound her all the way to Ohio. She would end up marrying him if for no other reason than to get a moment's peace.

“Matt, you donkey, you could have been hit by that truck!” she scolded as he rushed up to her. He was breathing hard, and the wind tossed his dark hair in that way she had read of as rakish. He looked more handsome to her than ever, strong and vital and male, his dark eyes glowing, the wind painting color across his high cheekbones. He stopped before her and planted his hands at the waist of his jeans.

“No problem,” he said, grinning. Tm a physician. I can heal myself.”

Sarah's mouth curved into her Mona Lisa smile. “You would think so.”

He sobered as he drank in the sight of her face. “I did think so until I found out there wasn't a damn thing I could do to fix my broken heart. I came down here to look for a specialist I know, someone who helped me heal once before. But I thought I was going to have to go all the way to Ohio to- find her.”

“Oh, Matt,' she whispered, tingling all over with love. “You really did come back for me?”

“I had to. I found out I couldn't live without you. I didn't want to.” He glanced away, taking a deep breath and gathering courage, then his eyes found hers again. “I know what it would cost you to marry me, Sarah. I don't feel like I have the right to ask you, but I'm going to. I know what your family means to you, but I'll give you a family. Ill give you all the family you want. And I'll give you the chance to learn and to be anything you ever dreamed of being. I love you so much, Sarah Troyer,” he said, his dark eyes filling. “I thought I loved you enough to let you go, but I love you more than that. I love you so much I want to see you grow and flourish.”

Sarah tried to swallow down the knot of emotion in her throat and smile. “I guess I could grow some,” she said, teasing. “Seeing as how I'll be needing new clothes anyway.”

Matt didn't laugh. There was still too much hanging in the balance for joking. He wanted to believe she was saying she wanted him, but he needed to hear the actual words. “Do you mean it, Sarah? Are you willing to give up everything you have to be with me?”

She reached up and brushed her fingertips against the scar on his chin, her eyes soft and shining with love. “I have nothing without you.”

“Then why were you leaving?” Matt asked, his voice straining against the pain of the question.

“I wasn't leaving. I was coming to you. I love you, Matt Thorne. I don't know much about your world except that I want to be in it if youTl have me.”

The hydraulics of the big bus beside them hissed, and the doors snapped open like the mouth of some giant beast. Matt glanced up at the destination sign above the windshield. Minneapolis. All the tension drained out of him in a rush, leaving him feeling weak and dizzy. He threw his head back and let out a whoop of joy that turned heads all up and down Jesse's Main Street. The life force that seemed to have been missing from him for the last week surged inside him once again.

He grabbed Sarah against him and twirled her around, delighting in her squeals of surprise and embarrassment. As he set her down, he drove his fingers into her hair, sending hairpins shooting, setting free the thick mass of brown silk that fell in waves to her hips. He bent his head to kiss her, drinking in the taste of her as if she were the finest, sweetest wine, and she wound her arms around his neck and melted against him.

“Hey!” the bus driver called out the door. “Are you getting on or not?”

“No,” Matt said. He waved the bus on, never taking his eyes off the small, pretty woman who would bask in the glow of his love for the rest of his life, who would give him joy and children and make Ins world bright and new.

“Go on without us,” he said. “We're already home.”