Believing the Dream

by Lauraine Snelling

  Elizabeth studied the situation, remembering a similar situation from a time back home. “Dr. Gaskin and I had one like this before. If we get her up on her hands and knees, that will take the pressure off the baby, and then I can turn it more easily.”

  “Well, I never. Of course.” Dr. Morganstein motioned to the nurse and turned to Elizabeth. “Go see if there is anyone out there to help us.”

  Elizabeth darted back out the door, the woman’s scream lending speed to her feet. “Patrick, come quick.”

  The old man who kept the floors spotless pointed a finger to his chest in the classic you-mean-me? pose.

  She grabbed his arm. “Help us now.”

  “B-but . . .” He let her drag him into the room, all the while keeping his eyes averted from the panting woman on the table.

  “All right, Mrs. O’Brien, we are all going to help you onto your hands and knees now. I know, I know. . . .”

  The woman’s wail echoed off the walls, and as they rolled her to her side, she screamed and clawed at their hands. “No, no, no, no . . .” They finally managed to get her to her hands and knees, her hiccups bouncing her hanging belly on the table, she was so huge.

  “Thank you, Patrick. You can go now.”

  The man scuttled out the door, his face as red as a newborn’s.

  “Now listen to me, Mrs. O’Brien, you’re a good strong woman, and we need to get this baby of yours turned so it can greet the world properly. Elizabeth is going to do the turning as soon as you’ve had another contraction, all right?”

  The dripping woman moaned but nodded at the same time, then her shriek rose again with the next contraction. When she inhaled in relief, Elizabeth, her hands still wet from the basin of soapy water, went to work.

  “Come on, baby, turn for me. Lord, please turn this child.” She looked to the doctor. “Palpate her abdomen and push to the left. Perhaps that will help.” She felt something—the shoulder, a round dome—the head. “I’ve got it.”

  “Good, okay. Mrs. O’Brien, we’re going to set you back up again so you can push. Quick, help her.” The young nurse scrambled back up against the wall, and between the doctor and Elizabeth, they turned the woman just as another contraction rolled over her body.

  “It’s com-i-n-g.” The woman panted and pushed, clenching her round face and grabbing the nurse’s legs.

  “One more push. Now that’s a good girl.” The baby slid into the doctor’s hands and let out an offended wail that made them all laugh.

  “I have a baby?”

  “You most certainly do. A healthy big girl who’s not going to take any sass from anyone. Listen to her—lungs like an opera singer.” While she talked, the doctor massaged the woman’s lower belly to get the uterus to contract and stop bleeding. With the afterbirth in a basin, the baby and mother studying each other chest to chest, and the bleeding already lessening, Dr. Morganstein turned to Elizabeth, who was mopping away tears. “Good girl. Can’t see this miracle without tearing up myself, no matter how many babies I’ve brought into this world. You taught me something new, and for that I thank you. Not sure why it never occurred to me before, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll write it up in my journal so we can use it whenever needed.”

  “She was wide hipped enough and fully dilated, or it wouldn’t work.” Elizabeth moved up beside the bed and touched the baby’s head. She looked to the mother, who smiled back. “She’s perfect.”

  Young Mrs. O’Brien nodded. “I thank you now, but there for a bit . . .” Together they chuckled.

  Elizabeth took the scissors the doctor offered and cut the cord just beyond the tie. Then Elizabeth gently washed the baby, who let them know what she thought of their moving her around, while the doctor cleaned up the mother. After diapering and swaddling the infant tightly in a clean sheet, they tucked her in the curve of her mother’s arm.

  “Doctor, emergency.” The call came from the doorway.

  “How bad?”

  “Knife wound.”

  “Come with me, Elizabeth. The nurses can take over here.”

  They raced down the hallway—at least Elizabeth raced. Keeping up with the doctor’s long strides kept her trotting. They hurried down the stairs and into the surgery, where they shucked their bloody aprons for new ones and started scrubbing at the sink.

  “Tell me what we have.”

  The admitting nurse described the wound. “She says her boyfriend was fighting with someone, and she got in the way. It is her right arm. Slashed clear to the bone. Someone tied a tourniquet above her elbow to stop the bleeding.”

  “Can she move her fingers?”

  “No. They are turning blue.”

  “Okay, loosen the tourniquet so we get some blood back to her extremities. We’ll be there in a moment. We’ll need sutures, clamps, the smallest sizes of everything. Make sure the lights are plenty bright. Have you given her any laudanum yet?”

  “Yes, enough to dull the worst of it.”

  An hour later the woman was stitched, bandaged, and sleeping off the effects of the chloroform.

  Elizabeth and the doctor drank two glasses of water each, then laid cold cloths on their foreheads and the backs of their necks. “Is it always like this in the summer?”

  “Wait until August if you think this is bad.”

  When Elizabeth fell into bed for the second time that night, she threw back the sheet and laid a wet towel on her chest. Too tired to care, she fell into a chasm, dark and quiet.

  Over the next two weeks, she ushered four babies into the world, only being forced to call the doctor to help stop the bleeding on one, set more broken bones than she could remember, and practiced her stitching on enough wounds to think there was a war going on. She diagnosed dyspepsia, a heart murmur, internal bleeding, and pregnancies. She ordered tonics for poor blood and oatmeal baths for suppurating sores. When she found a moment, she read the textbooks lining the walls in the doctor’s study and looked up recipes for unguents and powders in the pharmaceutical books.

  One night the doctor found her crying in the supply closet. “I know. Losing that woman and her baby was hard, but there was nothing more you could do. Nor I. Had she come to us sooner, we might have saved them, but when it’s twins and one dies in utero early like that, it can poison the other and the mother too. Really, there was nothing more you could have done.”

  Elizabeth mopped her tears, but they continued to fall. “Sh-she fought so hard to live.”

  “I know.” Dr. Morganstein leaned against the shelves of linens, absently taking down a towel to wipe her own face and extending one to her young assistant. “Nurse Korsheski will be back next week, and then perhaps you can take a day off. I didn’t mean to work you to death here, but then I didn’t know her mother was going to need her either. Illness never consults us for permission.”

  Elizabeth wiped her eyes again and then her neck. “It’s just that we lost a woman like this at home last Christmas—the wife of our pastor. But she died as much from exhaustion as from blood loss. Poisoning, like this one . . . that smell. I shall never forget that horrific odor.”

  “The stench of decay and infection. That’s one thing you learn. Different illnesses have different odors. Oftentimes your nose can help you make the correct diagnosis. Consumption has a slightly sweet odor, infection putrid, and throat infections not only show white on the tongue but smell like ripe and rotting fruit.”

  “Mostly what I smell around here is unwashed bodies. Urine on small children and feces if they haven’t learned to wipe well.”

  “Many of them have no paper to wipe with. And barely enough water to drink, let alone bathe.”

  Elizabeth closed her eyes. There, she’d done it again, shown her ignorance in the face of all the poverty. Things she’d taken for granted, like clean water without restrictions, clean beds, and inside toilets. “I-I’m sorry. I . . .” She rubbed her forehead and blew her nose again. Lord, give me strength.

  The next day Elizabeth entered one of the examini
ng rooms.

  “You have a letter. It is on my desk.” Dr. Morganstein looked up from wrapping a splint around a boy’s arm.

  “You need help?”

  “No, you go get something to drink. Put your feet up for a bit and read your letter. I’m about done here, and this young man can’t wait to get outside again.” She gave him a stern look. “But no more racing down stairs like that. Next time it might be your neck you break.”

  Elizabeth winked at the little boy, smiled at the mother who sat in the chair fanning her face with a paper, and headed for the quiet of the doctor’s study. Guilt crept in and slid long fingers around her neck, trying to squeeze the enjoyment out of the stolen moment. No, not stolen, taken with permission. She brushed at her neck and, in the process of scaring off the guilt, realized she had tendrils of hair curling damply on her collar line. She smoothed them back into the bun and secured them with pins that had been derelict in their duty. Picking up her letter, she smiled at the return address. Thornton, bless his heart, had found time to write to her. The only writing she’d done had been a quick note to her parents to tell them she had arrived safely.

  Barring emergencies, Doctor had promised her Sunday off, and she planned to catch up on her letter writing then. She sat back on the settee and swung her legs up as instructed. Just leaning her head back felt wonderful. Eyes closed, she could feel the weariness seep out the soles of her feet. If only she had a glass of iced tea and some of Cook’s lemon cookies. Feeling herself sinking deeper into the upholstery, she forced her eyes open, slit the envelope, and pulled out two pages of closely spaced writing.

  Dear Elizabeth,

  I know better than to ask how you are, for I’ve heard horror stories of some of the hospitals situated in places like the one you are in. Sometimes I wish you had not been so graphic in your descriptions of the hospital there after your first visit, but it keeps me on my knees praying for your safety and trusting that you are getting all the experiences you so desired.

  She rolled her eyes. If he only knew. No, better that he doesn’t, or he’d worry even more. She’d been in Chicago for nearly three weeks and had not stepped one foot outside the hospital since she walked in. She returned to her letter.

  I have heard from my missionary friend, and he is encouraging me to come as soon as I am able, but since I have not the sanction of the missionary board, I can put that on hold for now. I have agreed to apply, though, in case that is the route that God would have me take.

  Minneapolis has grown since I lived here a few years ago with my parents. I am convinced I would not make a good accountant but appreciate the summer’s work and rejoice on the weekends when I can go bicycling, a sport that I have truly come to enjoy. Of course a bicycle is the chief form of transportation for missionaries in Africa, either that or walk, so I’d best enjoy it. When you return home I shall take an extra day and come down on the train.

  He continued on, but Elizabeth could scarcely keep her eyes open to read. The third time she found herself nodding off, she folded the letter, put it in the envelope, and tipped her head back. Only for a moment would she close her eyes, but any minute helped. The doctor’s office was the coolest place in the building, other than down in the basement.

  She dreamed she was home in Northfield, lying on the chaise lounge under the widespread oak tree, her mother also sitting in the dappled shade working on her needlepoint. A butterfly landed on the rosebush by the veranda. Thorliff came whistling through the house. She jerked awake. Thorliff, what are you doing in my dream?

  “Sorry to disturb you, miss, but Doctor is needing you.” Patrick stepped back at her look of confusion. “I didn’t want to wake you. You were sleeping so peaceful-like, but . . .” He shrugged, his skinny shoulders lifting the fabric of his sweat-stained shirt.

  “No, no. That’s fine. I was just dreaming of home, and I guess I didn’t make the transition back here quickly enough.” She swung her feet back to the floor and, with a hasty refastening of her head cover, followed the man down the hall, smoothing and retying her apron as she went.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” said Dr. Morganstein, “but I thought you might want to do the stitching on this wound.”

  “What happened?”

  “Another fight. These Irish are a hotheaded lot, especially when the men have been without work. They stop by the pub and get liquored up enough to go home and take their frustrations out on their wives and children.”

  “He . . . he don’t mean nothin’ by it. Jist the way he is.” The woman with deep auburn hair and fair skin that went with her red hair gazed out at them through green eyes swiftly turning black. Her lip needed stitches, as did the cut under one eye. When Elizabeth tipped the woman’s head up to see better, she winced.

  Dr. Morganstein left the room while Elizabeth continued the examination.

  “Are there other injuries?” Elizabeth kept her voice gentle, but this wasn’t the first time she’d seen this woman in for treatment. The last stitches had been taken out two days earlier. She pushed the rioting hair back to check the hairline where she’d stitched before. The pink welt looked healthy.

  The nurse handed her the basin to cleanse the wounds, which had pretty much stopped bleeding and, when that was done, handed her the curved needle with fine black silk thread.

  “Do you want a bit of chloroform to deaden the pain?”

  The woman shook her head, wincing again and blinking her eyes. Her indrawn gasp for breath made Elizabeth look to the nurse, who shrugged. She carefully stitched the wounds closed, applied bandages, and after washing her hands, probed the woman’s neck.

  “Did you hit your head or neck on anything?”

  “The wall. It stopped me from fallin’ down the stairs.”

  “I see.” Keeping her face bland and her voice even took a discipline Elizabeth didn’t realize she had.

  “I . . . I lost me bairn from the last one. If he hadn’t kicked me, I . . .” She sighed.

  “Do you have somewhere else you can go? Get away from him until he cools down?”

  A slow shake of the head was her only answer. “He’s a good man, my Ian, until he drinks too much, you know?” As if that were all that mattered, as if that was just the way things were.

  Elizabeth helped her off the examining table. “Would you like to lie down for a bit until you feel stronger?”

  “No, I have to feed the young’uns. He’ll be all right for a while now, you know? If only he had a job again. Nothing like this happened before all the trouble with the railroads.”

  Later, when they had finished supper, Elizabeth turned to the doctor. “There must be something we can do.”

  “Which something are you referring to?” Dr. Morganstein looked up from the paper she was studying. “Here, I think you should read this.” She slid the paper toward her charge, pushed her glasses back up on her nose, and concentrated on Elizabeth, a trait Elizabeth found both intimidating and encouraging, depending on what had been the action or conversation just before.

  “Thank you, I will. I’m referring to the number of women coming into the hospital suffering injuries at the hands of their husbands.”

  “Yes, it’s the worst I’ve seen.”

  Elizabeth waited, certain her mentor would have, if not a solution, at least some suggestions. Finally the silence had stretched so long, Elizabeth had to say something or ask to be excused. “So?”

  “So what do you suggest? Throw them in jail? Kidnap their wives and children? Implore the railroad or the mills to put these men back to work? Go to Eugene Debs and ask him to make the union men behave? Sic the government on them? The church?”

  Elizabeth could feel her jaw drop and thud on her chest. “Ah.” She sighed. “I’m being idealistic, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, and I wish I could help you stay that way, but short of bludgeoning these husbands and fathers who are most likely cursing themselves for not providing for their families, so they go drinking . . .” The good doctor clasped her hands on
the table. “If only life were simple.”

  “I think it is more so in Northfield.”

  “Does this burden of suffering women and children make you want to run for home where, I’m sure, there are green trees, flowers and grass, clean cold water, and no black underbelly of despair?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No. I want to make things better. I want to do more than patch people up. I want to keep mothers and babies from dying before they live. I want to understand what causes tuberculosis and typhoid and what can be done to stop them before they begin.”

  “Don’t you believe all these are either the scourge of the devil himself or retribution for our many sins?” The words lay gently upon the table, but the doctor’s eyes grew obsidian sharp.

  Elizabeth thought only a moment. “I believe that God could take all this suffering away in the blink of an eye if He so chose. But when Adam and Eve sinned, sin invaded the world and brought with it all diseases of body, mind, and spirit. And we’re stuck with them until Christ comes again. But in the meantime, God gave us brains to use and wills to fight for life. There have been changes in medicine, and there will be more. I want to be part of that, God willing.”

  “Well said, my dear. I pray that the battle doesn’t change your mind.” She reached across the lace-covered table and took Elizabeth’s hand in hers. “I understand that God gave you the gift of music with these hands, but I have seen them bring comfort and healing, a far greater mission.”

  Elizabeth cleared her throat, tried to speak, and blinked hard. She tried again. “Thank you. I must go check on the little girl brought in late this afternoon. I wish I knew her name.”

  “I fear she is one of the street waifs. If we can give her enough nourishment to fight, we will have helped. I fear she is too weak to—”

  “Annie is with her, spooning chicken broth and bathing her to bring down the fever. Might help with the vermin too. I washed maggots out of the ulcer on her leg.”