“I know, dear.” But had Elizabeth been looking in a mirror, she would have recognized that the stubborn tilt of her mother’s chin nearly matched her own.
The stroll down to the newspaper office took her past yards with honeysuckle-sweetened air, two pinafored girls laughing and playing fetch with a dog, and a gnome of a man calling hello from a rocking chair on his front porch. Having lived in Northfield all her life and having walked this route almost daily, she knew and greeted them all.
The bell tinkled over the door when she pushed it open and stepped into her world of newsprint. A thudding printing press released the bite of ink into the air, and her father was uttering some rather uncomplimentary words to the aging equipment. He needed one of the new printing presses she’d seen advertised in a catalogue, but since she did his accounts, she knew he could not afford one. She took her place at the front desk, opened the account book, and began filling out invoices.
She didn’t realize the presses had stopped until her father laid a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m going home for supper. You want to walk with me?”
“No, thanks.” She smiled up at him. “You better wash first.”
“Ink on my face?”
“Umm.” Her glance perused his shirt. “Didn’t you wear your apron?”
“Of course.” He looked down at the inkblot on his linen shirt. “I need one that covers me head to foot.” His sigh told her they both knew what he would hear when he walked in the door at home. “So are you ashamed to be seen walking your old man home?”
Elizabeth rolled her eyes. “Of course not. I need the time to get your accounts in order so you can buy that new press you need so badly.” She motioned to the books in front of her. “If you kept these in the same good shape that you do that monster back there . . .”
“That monster is what keeps us in business. Most people get around to paying me sooner or later.”
“Usually when they want to place another ad.” She sent a look ripe with rebuke. “Some haven’t paid since the last time I billed them. Like Flanagan’s Market.”
“Ol’ Mike’s going through a hard spell since his wife died. He’ll get around to paying me when he can.”
“What about the creamery?”
Her father shrugged.
“And Asplund’s Smithy?”
“Are they behind too?” He peered over her shoulder, shaking his head. “I didn’t mind carrying old Oscar, but that young whippersnapper . . . Send ’em a bill and add on a hefty charge for being late again.” Her father stomped across the room to the hat rack by the front door. “I’ll remind Mother to keep your supper warm.” He huffed once more before the bell announced his departure.
It was quiet but for the cleaning noises coming from the pressroom, and Elizabeth settled back into her job. The stack of invoices grew with the passing minutes, accompanied by sighs as she found some accounts seriously in arrears. After she finally closed the book, she took a stack of envelopes and began addressing them, folding the papers to insert in the envelopes before sealing. With each one she thought to the recipient, alternately praying for them or uttering imprecations upon their heads. How could so many take advantage of her father’s good heart?
“Are you leaving, then?” She looked up to see Hans leaning his elbows on the counter and staring at her, hound-dog eyes sorrowful as ever.
“No. I’m waiting for you.”
“Why would you do that? I told you—”
He raised his hands as if to fend off blows. “I know, but your father told me to wait and walk you home. He don’t want nothing happening to you.”
As if you would be any help in an attack of any kind. She snorted and jerked her head briefly in disdain.
“Now don’t go gettin’ all het up. I do what your Pa says, or I lose my job.”
“Like when you—”
“You said you would forget all about that,” Hans broke in.
“I know.” Elizabeth felt her high horse stumble. He was right. She wasn’t being fair. Her father was the one she should be after, not poor Hans. Muttering more to herself than to him, she shut the books and straightened the desk. All the while she could feel his gaze following her every motion. She fumbled and dropped the big ledger, sending papers flying every which direction. “Now look what you did!”
“Now, Miss Elizabeth, I didn’t even go near to you . . .”
She clamped her lower lip between her teeth and counted to ten. “I know that.” Why am I being so hard on him? What’s the matter with me? She picked up the book, shoved it in place between three others and slammed a hunk of granite as a paperweight on the stack of haphazard papers. She’d straighten it all tomorrow when she didn’t have an audience.
“Here.” She thrust the stack of envelopes into his hand and crossed to turn off the gaslight. Glancing around the room in the glow from the streetlight, she pushed a chair back in place and let him hold the door for her.
“Ain’t you going to lock it?”
Elizabeth gave him a questioning look. “Since when?”
“Since that money was gone the other day.”
“What money was gone?”
“Five dollars from the cashbox.” The look in his bony face clearly stated his wish that he’d never brought this up.
“And who does my father think might have taken it?”
“Don’t know. He just said to lock the door from here on out.”
Why in heaven’s name didn’t he tell us? Or tell me at least? But she knew the answer. Her father couldn’t bear to face the censure from her mother, who frequently admonished him to stop being so trusting. Like some of the accounts that she’d read were paid in full. She knew of one debt for sure that he’d forgiven because of a tragedy of some kind. He’d so often said, just like the doc, that a bill hanging over someone’s head was like the French guillotine about to fall at any second. A man could hardly hold his head up under the weight of it. If the debt was forgiven, her father believed that the man could build his business better, and the next time he would pay promptly or not run an ad.
They’d reached the post office by this time, and she waited while Hans leaped the steps three at a time and shoved open the heavy brasstrimmed door to slide the letters into the mail slot. She sniffed the breeze, catching remnants of a fried chicken dinner, the night-blooming nicotiana, and freshly turned rich garden dirt. Her ears hurt from half listening to Hans’s rambling tale by the time they reached her gate.
“Thank you for walking me home.” She pushed the gate open and slipped inside. “I will tell Father that you did your duty nobly.”
“Good night, miss.” Hans touched the brim of his porkpie hat and, shoving his hands into his pockets, headed off, whistling a tune just enough off-key to set her teeth on edge.
Elizabeth greeted her parents, then headed straight for the piano. For the next hour the notes spread like a balm over her spirit, soothing the ache in her heart that she didn’t understand.
The young man who accompanied his relatives to the Rogerses’ house the next night made her teeth itch again. Sitting across from him, Elizabeth felt like kicking him under the table, if her foot could only reach that far. If he smiled once more at her in that condescending way, she’d slump down in her chair far enough to ensure that her foot connected with his shin, no matter what her mother would have to say later.
“Surely you’ve been to see the art exhibit at the World’s Columbian Exposition.”
That did it. Elizabeth dropped her napkin onto the table and pushed back her chair. “Excuse me, please, I have a headache.” And an ache in my back. Just let me out of here.
“Oh, I am so sorry to hear that.”
My right foot, you are. You don’t know what sorry even means. Refusing to look at her mother, Elizabeth turned and sailed out of the dining room and up the stairs to her bedroom. When she thought about it, she really did have a headache—one compounded by the look on her mother’s face when she introduced her only da
ughter to the insufferable, pompous donkey down there. If that was what wealth brought, she wanted none of it.
Once in bed, guilt stole in on the breeze and hung in the air, taunting her. You could have been polite a few more hours. You know your mother considers him a fine catch.
A rumbling purr told her Jehoshaphat had nudged open her door. He leaped up on her bed to knead his head under her hand.
Elizabeth flipped over on her side, the better to pet her cat. She grabbed a picture of the bones of the hand from the table by her bed and, starting at the fingertips, began naming them. Distal phalanges, middle phalanges, proximal phalanges, and metacarpals Soon the rhythm of Jehoshaphat’s purring lulled her to sleep.
A pounding on the front door below her window woke her some time later.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Help me. Please help me!” The pounding on the front door sounded as urgent as the cries for help.
Elizabeth leaned out her window into the moonlit night. “What do you need?”
“My baby, he . . . he ain’t . . . he ain’t . . .”
“You need to get the doctor.”
“He must be out on a call. He don’t answer the door.”
And Dr. Johanson is clear across town. Elizabeth considered the options. “Where do you live?”
“Out beyond the college. Can you come? You helped deliver my boy.”
“What is it?” Elizabeth’s father asked from right behind her.
“The man’s son . . .” She leaned back out the window and made out the man’s face in the moonlight. “I remember where your place is. You go on and see if Dr. Johanson can come. You know where he lives?”
“Yes. But you’ll come right now?”
“I’ll take you out there.” Phillip Rogers spoke over his shoulder as he headed for the door.
Elizabeth called out the window again. “You go on. We’ll be at your place as soon as we can get there.” She pulled her head back in and dashed for her armoire, pulling her nightdress over her head as she went. Dressed in seconds, she bundled her hair into a snood when she reached the bottom of the stairs. Her black bag, a gift from Dr. Gaskin, sat by the door. Taking her instructions from the doc, she kept the bag packed with emergency bandages, salves, sutures, and supplies necessary for birthing. As she climbed into her father’s buggy, she remembered she hadn’t learned what happened to the little boy.
Dear God, please let him be alive. She had heard the terror in the father’s voice. “My boy ain’t . . .” Breathing was the word she inserted in the blank. But surely he would have brought the child with him if that were the case.
Her father needed no encouragement to set his pacer at full speed. The thud of hooves on the hard-packed road ticked away the seconds, seconds that could mean life or death.
Lord, please, no tracheotomy. Elizabeth had assisted the doctor in one, but the thought of cutting into a child’s throat sent terror clamping her own. Where was Dr. Gaskin? If he was home, why had he not answered the door? So many questions and no answers.
“Turn here.” She pointed to the right. Thank God for moonlight. She’d never have known where to turn if it were pouring rain. But then, a pouring rain would be welcome relief from the drought. Living in town, she hadn’t felt the full brunt like the farmers had, but no one talked of much else.
“I think it is the third farm on this road.”
“All right.” Her father’s gentle voice helped calm her racing heart. “That house with all the lamps in the windows must be the place.”
He slowed the horse, whose breath whistled through extended nostrils from its fast pace. When they turned into the lane, a dog leaped from the ditch, barking at the buggy wheels. The pacer ignored the dog and picked up speed again, the rougher road rocking the buggy.
Elizabeth hung on to the seat with both hands. Getting her or the bag tossed out of the buggy wouldn’t help anyone.
“Thanks.” She leaped to the ground the instant the buggy shuddered to a stop. The door flew open, and the weeping mother grabbed her arm. “In here. Where’s the doctor?”
“I don’t know. I sent your husband for the new doctor, but I’ll help if I can.”
“Baby’s got the croup. Even quit breathing for a time. God help us.” Her sobs shattered the words into quivering fragments.
Elizabeth heard the wheezing before she entered the room. While the sound sent chills to her very shoe soles, at least he was still alive.
“Get a kettle of water steaming.” She set her bag on the bed and turned to the baby.
The baby coughed and choked, his little back arching clear off the bed.
“How can I help?” Phillip Rogers stood in the doorway.
“We need to tent a sheet or towel or something over the kettle. I’ll hold his face in the steam to see if that helps him breathe.”
She picked up the child and set him against her shoulder, gently rubbing his back, trying to calm him. She paced to the kitchen, crooning comfort all the while.
As soon as the steam began to rise, she showed her father and the baby’s mother how to make the tent and then ducked under it to hold the baby in the hot, moist air. Within minutes she could feel the baby relax as the air penetrated his swollen airways. By the time the doctor and father arrived, the child lay sleeping on his mother’s shoulder as they sat in a rocking chair under the steam tent.
Dr. Johanson nodded to Elizabeth, his smile of congratulations warming her heart. “You did exactly what needed doing.” He listened to the baby’s lungs and nodded again, then turned to the parents. “Now you know what to do if this happens again. The sooner you get him into the steam, the better he will be.”
“He’d been coughing throughout the day and had finally gone to sleep, so I thought he was better.” The mother patted her baby’s back. Not quite a year old, the little boy now slept soundly, a faint whistling reminding them of the emergency.
“Miss Rogers, we can’t thank you enough.” The boy’s father reached for Elizabeth’s hand. “If it weren’t for you . . .” His voice choked.
“I’m just grateful that he responded so quickly.” She didn’t mention a tracheotomy, but the look she exchanged with the young doctor communicated the words she didn’t say. A slight shudder let her know he didn’t want to do one any more than she did.
She listened as he gave the parents instructions on caring for their baby, then followed him out the door. Once in the buggy heading back to town, she leaned against the seat back, feeling as if someone had pulled a plug and all her energy had drained out. Knowing how close the little boy had come to dying made her hands shake. Surely there must be something that could help children like that. Eyes closed, she reviewed her book of herbs and plants used for medicinal purposes. Nothing came to mind. But at that moment getting anything to stay in her mind was beyond her ability.
Her father shook her awake when he stopped the horse at the front door. The sky had faded from deep azure to gray.
She fell into bed and missed the sunrise. Only when her mother brought in a tea tray at midmorning did she stir.
“You should have wakened me.” Elizabeth threw back the sheet.
“You needed the sleep.” Annabelle Rogers set the tray on the end of the bed. “Dr. Gaskin said that when you wake he would appreciate your help in his office. Your father said that if you have extra time, he needs help in his office too.”
Elizabeth pushed back her hair and cocked an eyebrow. “And you’d like some help in your office?”
Annabelle laughed and shook her head. “I can handle my office just fine.” She poured a cup of tea and laid cinnamon toast points on the saucer. “Here.”
“Thank you.” Elizabeth inhaled the aroma. “Sure better than the last steam.” She sipped her tea, ate her toast, and told her mother what had happened.
“So many things we have learned in the medical field, so many wonderful advances, yet a baby can die of croup.”
“It sounds to me that you did what had to be done. Acco
rding to your father, you’re a heroine.”
Elizabeth humphed and shook her head, her hair falling in a veil as she stared into her teacup. “Someday, Mother, I want to find ways to save babies and mothers having babies.”
“You think to learn those things in medical school?”
Elizabeth tucked her hair behind an ear and gazed at her mother. “I hope so. I certainly hope so.”
A robin singing in the tree outside her window was the only sound as the quiet second stretched into minutes. Elizabeth let her mind explore the images of babies and mothers that peopled her head. Laughing, crying, living, dying—some she’d known and others existed only in her dreams. Who were they, and how could she help?
She heaved a sigh and leaned forward to set her cup and saucer on the tray. The pink rosebud in the crystal bud vase caught her attention. She reached a gentle finger and caressed the furled petals.
“Thank you, Mother. You bring such beauty into my life.” She looked up to catch a gleam of tears in her mother’s eyes. I don’t say thank-you enough. None of us do.
“You’re most welcome.” Annabelle set down her cup and reached to hug her daughter. “Moments like these I will treasure all my life.”
A song sparrow added his aria to the robin’s. Honeysuckle wafted in on the breeze that teased the sheer curtains at the window.
Elizabeth stretched and set her feet on the floor. “I better go see what Dr. Gaskin needs. Fortunately I found a housekeeper to start tomorrow for him. Her name is Hope Haugen.”
Her mother arched an eyebrow.
“He needs a nurse too.”
“I know. He thinks he has that in me.”
“But we will be leaving for Chicago next week. Then what will he do?”
“That’s another one of my jobs—to find a nurse to fill in while I am gone. I’ve already arranged for some to come in for interviews today. Here’s hoping whoever we hire will like being there so much she will stay on.”
On her way out of the house, Elizabeth thought longingly to the gazebo in the backyard. Set to catch any errant breeze and perfumed by the wisteria and roses that grew over and around it, the gazebo beckoned. She loved curling up in the hammock to read and dream away a hot summer afternoon, that is, when these two offices weren’t calling for her.
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