“I’ll get with the bean counters on that and see what they can do.” She swivels in her chair. “What can I do for you?”

“I understand Jeramy Kline was brought in last night.”

“Right. The Amish guy. We checked him in a few hours ago. Doctor Megason is looking at him now.”

“Any idea what happened?”

“Let’s see.…” She goes back to her keyboard and taps a few keys. “The patient wasn’t conscious upon arrival, but it looks like the paramedics got some preliminary info from his wife.” She squints at the monitor. “Seizures. Vomiting. Respiratory distress.”

“Any history of epilepsy?”

“No.”

“Head injury?”

“Wife says no.”

“You guys check for the presence of alcohol or drugs?”

“It’s routine in cases like this for the doc to draw blood, take urine, and send both out for a tox screen.” She wrinkles her nose at me. “He’s Amish, Chief.”

“I’m not sure that matters, unfortunately.” I sigh. “The wife around?”

“She’s in the ER waiting area.”

I make a stop at the vending machine for two cups of coffee and then head toward the ER waiting room. I find Abigail Kline sitting on an orange Naugahyde bench paging through a Good Housekeeping magazine.

She startles upon spotting me and rises abruptly. “Chief Burkholder. Is it Jeramy? Is he all right?”

Her face reveals stress piled upon a sleepless night. Her eyes are bloodshot, and the circles beneath them are the color of a bruise. I hand her one of the coffees. “I stopped by to check on Jeramy and see how you’re doing.”

“Oh.” She looks down at the coffee and takes it. “Thank you. I’m fine. It’s Jeramy I’m worried about.”

“What happened?”

“He just … got sick last night. It happened so quickly. I’ve had four children who spent their fair share of time with fevers and whatnot. But this … I didn’t know what to do or how to help him. I’ve never been so scared.”

I nod. “Can you take me through what happened to him?”

“It was a normal evening,” she tells me. “We had dinner and then we walked down to the creek. Afterward, we sat on the porch with some pie. We went to bed around nine thirty or so.” She closes her eyes briefly. “He woke me around midnight. He was in the bathroom, throwing up and … you know. I went in to check on him, and he was terribly sick and shaking. I thought maybe it was the stomach bug that’s been going around, so I fixed him some mint tea. It didn’t help. Nothing would help. He got worse and worse. And then he just … fell to the floor and started convulsing. I thought he was going to die.”

“What did you do?”