guided the buggy down the drive and paused where it met the road. A car drove past, its headlights illuminating the interior of the buggy. “So you’re having some—what, some sort of premonition about Rosie? What is it, a twin thing?”
She’d talked of such things with Rachel Ann but never shared it with Daniel. Now she could see that was probably wise. He was looking at her skeptically as he waited to pull on to the road to her house.
Katie shrugged. “I can’t explain it. Sometimes we just know if something’s wrong with each other. Some people call them twin flashes.”
She rubbed at her temple. The throbbing in her eye was easing a little, and the tearing had stopped.
A short time later he pulled up in the driveway. The buggy had barely come to a stop, and she was leaping up and running up the steps to the house. The minute she unlocked the front door she was calling out Rosie’s name.
“Katie?” Daniel followed her into the house.
She stopped abruptly and waved her hand at him. “Ssh, I hear something.”
There it was again, a faint mewling noise that sounded like a kitten. Katie rushed toward it, into the kitchen. It was empty. “Rosie?”
Then she saw her, sprawled at the bottom of the steps leading up to the second floor.
“Rosie! Mein Gott! Rosie!”
Chapter 3
3
Katie knelt on the floor and touched Rosie’s throat with trembling fingers, searching for a pulse. It was there, faint but steady. A thin trickle of blood dripped from a cut high on her forehead.
“Daniel, call—”
He had his cell phone in his hand. “Already calling them.” Turning away from her, he spoke into the phone. “Hello? Yes, we need an ambulance.” Turning away, he told the dispatcher the address.
“I’m here now, Rosie. It’s Katie. Everything’s going to be okay.” She dug in her pocket, found a handkerchief, and pressed it to
the cut.
Rosie’s lashes fluttered. Her eyes opened. “Katie?” She blinked. “Why are there two of you? Is that you and me?”
“Oh no, Daniel!”
He came to kneel on the floor next to her. He took her hand.
“Why is she seeing double?” she asked him, turning to look at him, the bloodstained handkerchief in her hand. Tears ran down her cheeks.
“She hit her head. I’ve heard that someone can see double after they hit their head. Calm down, the paramedics will be here in any minute.”
Just as he said, the paramedics arrived a few minutes later. Katie stood out of the way while they did a brief exam on Rosie, carefully scooped her up and put her on a gurney, and wheeled her out to the ambulance.
Hours later, Katie sat in a cubicle in the emergency room holding Rosie’s hand as they waited for results of her tests. Funny, thought Katie. Her own headache had vanished the moment she discovered Rosie lying there at the bottom of the stairs, a basket of laundry spilled at her feet. Fortunately, Rosie had stayed conscious and told them that she’d tripped going upstairs and hit her head, not fallen down the flight of stairs. She hadn’t had to have x-rays to check for broken bones.
“This is silly,” Rosie complained. “I want to go home.”
“You might have a concussion.”
“I just have a bump on the head. I want to go home,” she repeated. “Please?”
“Just as soon as the doctor says it’s allrecht. Promise.”
Sitting here, worrying over how pale Rosie looked, she felt very much older than her schweschder at that moment. She’d had some bad moments waiting. At first, every time Rosie closed her eyes Katie had talked to her, urging her to stay awake until a nurse happened to be in the room and told her that it wasn’t true that you had to keep people with a head injury awake. They’d been together since the very beginning, had slept together in the womb and spent most of every day working together and being a unit.
Katie had never thought about what it would be like without Rosie in her life, but as time ticked on and she sat waiting with her, she thought about the possibility and she shivered.
“Cold?” asked the nurse?
“Yes,” she and Rosie said at the same time.
The nurse smiled, left them, and returned with two blankets that had been warmed. Bliss, thought Katie as she thanked the woman. She wrapped one around her shoulders while the nurse tucked the other around Rosie.
The minutes ticked on and fear edged into her mind again. God is here with us, Katie reminded herself and began praying.
The doctor walked in a few minutes later and introduced himself. “Rosie, you have a mild concussion. I’m going to let you go home with your sister here if you promise you’ll take it easy and no going up and down stairs for a few days until you feel steady.”
“Promise.”
“Doctor, what about her seeing double?”
“If she continues to have problems bring her back. Otherwise, the double vision should fade pretty quickly. Make sure she sees your regular doctor in the next day or so.” He grinned. “Right now I’m the one seeing double. But I guess you hear that sort of thing all the time.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Yes, we do.”
He chuckled and handed her a list of instructions, then left them.
“See? Bump on the head. Told you. Now, hand me my clothes. Please.”
“Here I was hoping for a quiet night at the house while they kept you.”
“No, you weren’t,” Rosie said confidently. “You know you wouldn’t have gone home.”
Katie handed her the clothes she’d worn to the hospital and held her arm when she got off the gurney and swayed a little. Once Rosie was dressed, Katie called their driver and got them a ride home.
She found Rosie in the garden the very next day.
“The doctor said you were to rest,” Katie told her sternly. She’d looked for her sister all over the house, calling and calling her until she’d thought to check the garden.
“This is restful.” Rosie lifted her face to the sun, enjoying the warmth after being stuck inside most of the morning.
“The doctor meant inside the house, and you know it.”
“I feel fine.”
Katie wanted to stamp her foot. “You’re behaving like a kind.”
“You’re nagging,” Rosie said mildly. “I’ll be fine. I just wanted to come out here for an hour or two.”
