Free A Bee in Her Bonnet by Jennifer Beckstrand

happened, little sister? Are you all right?”
    â€œHer knee has a big gash in it,” Luke said. He wasn’t about to let Poppy talk her aendi out of the emergency room.
    Bitsy folded her arms across her chest and eyed Luke with suspicion. “Every time you come around, Luke Bontrager, my Priscilla gets hurt. This is becoming a very bad habit. What did you do this time?”
    He swallowed past the big lump in his throat. “We had a race.”
    Poppy nudged Luke aside. “It was my fault. I was going so fast I fell at the finish line.”
    â€œDid you win?” Bitsy asked.
    Poppy bloomed into that smile Luke found sort of interesting. “ Jah . I’m faster.”
    â€œThen it was probably worth it,” Bitsy said, eyeing Luke as if Poppy had put him in his place but good.
    He clenched his teeth. Poppy hadn’t proven anything except that she had better shoes to run in.
    Bitsy pulled a chair from the table and pointed to it. “Sit, Poppy, and let’s have a look.”
    Poppy obeyed her aendi without arguing or rolling her eyes. Why was it always such a battle between him and Poppy?
    Bitsy pulled the hem of Poppy’s dress past her knee. New blood mixed with the old.
    â€œYou’re going to need a tetanus shot,” Luke said.
    â€œIt wonders me if you’ve been to medical school, Luke Bontrager.” Bitsy didn’t seem to care that lockjaw was a horrible way to die. “You think you know so much.”
    He wasn’t about to back down just because Bitsy questioned his intelligence. “She could die without a tetanus shot. And she’ll need stitches yet.”
    Bitsy simply twitched her lips and knelt down to get a closer look at Poppy’s knee. She pressed her thumb lightly around the gaping wound and pulled the skin this way and that to ascertain how deep the cut went. “How bad does it hurt?”
    â€œNot bad,” Poppy said, hissing at her aunt’s touch.
    Why did she have to be so brave? Most girls would have made a terrible fuss. It wasn’t bad to make a fuss. It was what girls did.
    â€œLet’s clean it up,” Bitsy said. “And though I don’t want his head to get any bigger, Doctor Luke is right. It’s very deep.”
    Poppy glanced at Luke. “It looks worse than it is. I just need a Band-Aid and a little bit of antiseptic spray. I’ll have a nice scar in a few weeks.”
    â€œYou won’t even be able to bend your knee,” Luke said.
    â€œEver again?” Bitsy asked, with mock innocence.
    Luke could be just as bullheaded as the Christners. “She needs stitches.”
    â€œYou don’t have to talk about me like I’m not in the room,” Poppy said.
    â€œWhy should I talk to you? You won’t listen.”
    Poppy narrowed her eyes. “The last time I listened to you, we spent hundreds of dollars at the emergency room, and my hand wasn’t even broken.”
    â€œI’m not the only one who thought it was broken,” Luke said, his blood almost to the boiling point. He just wanted to build a chicken coop. Was that too much to ask? He looked at Bitsy and made one more attempt. “Will you see to it that she goes to the doctor?”
    Bitsy studied him as if she were looking at a horse to buy. “I think you two can work that out between yourselves.”
    You two? Did she mean him and Poppy? Poppy would argue with him about which way was up if she had a mind to. They couldn’t work out anything between themselves.
    Bitsy went to the other side of the butcher-block island and pulled a metal bowl from the cupboard. She ran some water in the bowl, grabbed a washrag and towel from a drawer, and took the hand soap from the counter. She put her supplies on the floor next to Poppy’s chair and knelt beside her. Starting at the bottom, she scrubbed the blood from Poppy’s leg while Luke tried to decide where to fix his gaze. He wanted to make