The Postcard Read Online Free PDF Page A

frantically, “Aaron! Annie! Mamma’s here. Aaron . . . Annie! Can you hear me?”
    Unable to find her children, she wrung her hands, running here and there, nearly insane with dread.
    Continuing her search, she winced at the sight of her husband lying on the highway, surrounded by dozens of damaged toys and mangled wood and metal from the shattered market wagon. She knelt on the road, its blacktop blistering her knees as she lifted her husband’s battered face to hers. Lovingly, she cradled him as if he were a small child. “Oh, Jacob . . .”
    He moaned pitifully as she held him, though she dared not rock or move him the slightest, so badly hurt he was. “Lord, please let my husband live,” she prayed with trembling lips, all the while looking about her for signs of her little ones.
    Jacob was breathing; she could feel the slow and labored movement of his chest. Still, she was frightened, alarmed by the gashes in his head, the torn shirt and suspenders. She hesitated for a moment, then touched the wound in his left shoulder, allowing her hand to linger there as if her touch might bring comfort. That shoulder had supported her weary head on countless nights as they had lain talking into the wee hours, whispering in the darkness of their Ohio dream as they planned their lives together with God’s help. Jacob’s shoulder had soothed her when, at nineteen, she’d experienced the first unfamiliar pangs of childbirth.
    Now . . . she heard voices as if there were people near, though she couldn’t tell for sure, so murky and muddled things seemed, like a dream that she was actually living, unable to sort out the real from the illusory. She thought she might be dying, too, so dizzy and sick she was.
    A distant siren sang out, moving toward her with a peculiar throbbing motion. The rhythm of its lament seemed to pulse up through the highway, into her body as she held Jacob close.
    Compassionate hands were touching her husband, lifting his eyelids, putting pressure on his wrist. Then he was being carried away from her on a long stretcher. She felt faint just then and lay down on the road. “Where are my children?” she managed to say. “I must find my little ones.”
    “Several paramedics are with them.” This, the voice of a man she did not know. “What are your children’s names?”
    “Aaron and Annie Yoder,” she said softly, the life withering within her.
    “And your husband?”
    She attempted to speak his name, but pain—deep and wrenching—tore at her, taking her breath away. Then everything went black.
    When she came to, she felt a cool hand on her wrist, followed by a sharp, brief prick in her arm. Though she had no sense of time, she knew she was being lifted onto something smooth and flat, the sun blinding her momentarily. The movement caused her great pain, and when she heard pitiful moaning, she realized that it was she herself.
    “You’re suffering from shock” came a voice in her ear. “We’re going to take good care of you . . . and your unborn child.”
    The overwhelming emotion was that of helplessness as she was transported through the air, though she had no idea where she was being taken or who was taking her.
    “Mamma!” a child cried out.
    In her disoriented state she could not identify the source of the utterance, though something inside her wrestled to know. “Aaron?” she mumbled, beginning to shake uncontrollably. “Oh, Lord Jesus . . . help us, please.”
    A warm covering embraced her body, and for a fleeting moment, she thought her husband’s strong arms were consoling her. Then came stark flashes of bewildering images. Two roads meeting, a horse lurching, children screaming . . .
    “No . . . no,” she said, fighting off the visions. Yet they persisted against her ability to stop them.
    The sound of rushing feet startled her back to the here and now. Where was she? Struggling to raise her head even the slightest, Rachel tried to take in her surroundings, feeling horribly and