Dr. Morganstein motioned for her to continue. “Can you tell us about your vision for the future?”
Astrid wet her lips and continued. “We have presented to the people of Blessing a plan for a building designed specifically for a hospital. The plan includes an operating theatre, birthing rooms, examination rooms, a laboratory, a kitchen, and offices for other services. We are hoping that we can find a dentist who will move to Blessing too. I was not at the presentation meeting because I was already here, but Dr. Elizabeth . . . er Bjorklund, said it went well. There’s something you need to understand about Blessing. The people started years ago by creating a cooperative bank, and through that have built a co-op grain elevator, a flour mill, and a building that houses the bank, post office, barbershop, and telephone switchboard. Now we are asking them to invest in a hospital.”
She watched the others nod and look to each other, whisper and shake their heads. Was Blessing so unique in its way of doing business?
“Who is on the board that makes the decisions?” Mr. Abramson asked.
“Everyone who has an account at the bank.”
“There is no board of directors?”
Astrid shook her head. “Everyone is invited to vote. There are some people who always show up and others who don’t bother.”
“So who runs the daily operations of the bank?”
“Mr. Anner Valders. He is paid to run the bank.” Astrid leaned forward. “You have to realize that Blessing is a small town, but it is growing like many of the towns in North Dakota.”
Astrid had no time to even sip her tea while the two men threw more questions at her, usually with a look of unbelief at her answers.
“All right, gentlemen, please give this young woman a chance to breathe. Would anyone like more tea?” Dr. Morganstein smiled at Astrid. “Especially you, my dear. You’ve not even had a chance to finish your first cup.”
“Thank you.” While the others chatted, Astrid ate the dainty sandwiches, two tarts, and a cookie and nodded her appreciation when Dr. Morganstein refilled her teacup. Had she given the right answers? The best answers? What else would they throw at her? She looked up to see Mrs. Josephson smiling and nodding at her.
“You did well, Doctor. I should have warned you that my nephew turns into a barracuda when he gets excited about something.”
Astrid knew that was a fierce fish, so she nodded back. After wiping her mouth with her napkin, she blew out a breath.
“I think we have all the information we need for today,” Mr. Josephson declared after another long look at the other man. “I believe we need to make a trip to this town of Blessing and speak with the folks there. I’d like to do this before Christmas, if possible.” He glanced at Astrid. “I understand you would not be able to attend due to your training here, but if we decide to proceed . . .” He slapped his hands on his knees. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Bjorklund. We’ll be talking again.”
Astrid said her good-byes and made her way to the door. Once in the hall she blinked and shook her head. Why did she feel as though she’d just been run over by a fire wagon pulled by six horses?
“Dr. Bjorklund, you are wanted in the scrub room. We have an accident victim in need of surgery.” A nurse beckoned her to hurry.
Two hours later they moved the woman to a single room rather than the ward so she could receive extra care and observation for the following twenty-four hours.
“We need to keep her sedated,” Dr. Franck said to the head nurse. “I want Dr. Bjorklund checking on her every two hours. Call her if she is needed.”
Both Astrid and the nurse nodded their understanding.
Astrid skipped her usual time in the laboratory and went to bed instead, leaving instructions for someone to call her at eleven. She checked on the woman at eleven that evening and then returned at one and three the following morning. This time she loosed the bands holding the woman in bed since she seemed to be sleeping peacefully and stepped out the door to answer a question the nurse was asking. At the sound of something falling, she leaped back into the room. The woman lay on the floor, unconscious, blood flowing from a new gash on the side of her face.
“Why did you untie her?” the nurse questioned, horror on her face.
“Because . . . because she was sleeping so deeply, and I—” Astrid fought to figure out why she had done that.
“Doctor said she had to remain sedated. Did you not give her the dose of morphine?”
Astrid shook her head. I thought you did that. But she kept the thought to herself. Had she just not been thinking clearly?
Dr. Franck glared at her when he arrived. “Did you not understand the orders I gave? She was restrained for a reason. To prevent something like this from happening. If you can’t follow orders, how do you expect others to?”
26
Something is bothering you.”
Astrid looked up to see Red Hawk studying her instead of their cadaver. “What do you mean?” What she really wanted to ask was “How do you know?”
“Well, you are frowning. Usually you delight in this, and you’ve been sighing. You are not usually sighing, so I figure something is bothering you.”
His eyes looked black in the gaslights. Lately they’d been talking more. She’d gotten him talking about his people on the reservation and how he had worked to be able to come here. He’d said his people needed more teachers for both the adults and the children.
To tell him or not to tell him.
“And you have dark circles under your eyes, which means you are not getting enough sleep.”
“Do any of us get enough sleep?”
His gaze never wavered.
She huffed a sigh and saw his eyebrow arch. “I have a decision to make, and I don’t know which way to turn.”
“How soon do you need to make it?”
“Before the end of training.”
“Does it have anything to do with the letters from Africa?”
She nodded. She’d shared bits of one of Reverend Schuman’s letters. She thought he would appreciate the need for doctors in Africa and might tell her if things were that bad on the reservation. “They need medical missionaries.”
“The whole world does, including the west of America.”
“I think God is calling me to go there.” She stared at her hands, then looked up at him. “And I don’t want to.” There. She’d laid it out for someone else’s consideration.
“Like I didn’t want to come here, and yet I knew it was what I needed to do?”
“Possibly. Probably. What made you decide to come?”
“My people are dying of starvation and the diseases that come from that. My uncle is the medicine man, and he decided I would be the next one. He said the white man’s medicine is stronger than his.”
She’d never heard him talk so much at one time. The last few weeks he’d talked more, but this time he was letting her see a bit of his life. “I didn’t know things were so bad on the reservations.” Maybe they were becoming friends after all. Maybe her patience was paying off.
“My people need to be free, but that life can no longer be. We do not believe a man can own the land.”
“Like my people do?”
He nodded and returned to his dissecting. So she did the same, making sure she was no longer sighing.
Wasn’t there a difference between going clear around the world to a country that didn’t want the missionaries anyway and coming here? And then getting to go home, which is what she had planned in the first place.
Maybe she would hear from Pastor Solberg one of these days, and he would have the answers for her.
* * *
THE HEAD NURSE stopped her the next morning when she was on rounds with Dr. Whitaker. “We have not been able to locate any family for Benny, so whether we want to or not, we will be forced to send him to the orphanage.” The look in her eyes said she was no happier with this news than Astrid.
“Can’t we keep him here long enough for him to try som
e prosthetics?” Astrid kept her voice low but inside she wanted to scream. There were two schools of thought among the staff. Should they provide wooden legs for Benny and crutches and see if he could manage them? Or should someone make him a flat wooden scooter with wheels that he would propel with his hands? A chair with wheels was another option.
“This won’t be happening that soon. I just wanted to prepare you.”
“Thank you.” Mor, you have to find someone in Blessing to take him.
Later she asked Dr. Whitaker, “How long until Benny’s stumps are healed well enough for him to try wooden legs?”
“I have ordered them, and we’ll try next week. You do know I don’t hold out a lot of hope for this?”
She nodded. “But he has to be given a chance.”
“The best thing we can do right now is help him build strength in his arms and chest. Crutches, a cart, any mode of mobility for him is going to require the use of his arms.”
“I see. Do you know that he is crawling on his hands and stumps? One of the nurses was kind enough to sew some thick pads into his trousers so he could crawl that way without hurting himself.”
“I saw that. He is one determined boy. It’s why I hold out hope that we can help him somehow.”
“What if we were to find a home for him somewhere else?”
“I don’t see what harm that would be. You have something in mind?”
“Actually, I wrote to my mother in Blessing, North Dakota, and asked her to find someone there who would adopt him.”
“It would be better than being a beggar on the streets of Chicago.”
“There he would get an education and plenty of love. He’s a bright little boy.”
“With an abundance of street smarts. More than he should have at his age. You need to make that clear to those who might agree to help.”
* * *
THE NIGHT INSTEAD of going up to the lab, Astrid found a quiet place in the dining room and took out her writing kit. After thinking about what Red Hawk had said, she started a letter to the women of Blessing Lutheran Church in care of Mrs. Solberg.
I am writing this to all of you because I need your help. Well, not really me, but there are people in terrible need on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. I know you’ve been sending quilts and clothing and food to the Indians northwest of Blessing, and I hope you don’t quit doing that, but could you please find it in your hearts to do more? This winter will be terribly hard on people who are already weakened by lack of food, housing, and medical care. Please gather up what you can and have it shipped down there. I know God will bless you for being His hands to these people. As Jesus said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
One of the daughters of Blessing,
Dr. Astrid Bjorklund
Without giving herself any time to think about it, she addressed the envelope so it was ready to send.
Next she wrote to the head of the missions school that Reverend Schuman had told her about, asking them if she were to come there, if she could do a two-year mission term to Africa rather than the customary four years. With that letter ready to send, she started one to Joshua.
Why was it harder to write to him than to anyone else? Not that she had written to many others, but she felt she had to pick and choose what to tell him. Perhaps if his letters to her were not so brief and stilted, she would feel freer to write about life at the hospital.
What it comes down to, she thought, is that I just don’t know him very well at all, and while I’ve heard of people getting to know each other through letters, this doesn’t seem to be working. She rubbed her eyes and tipped her head back and to the sides, trying to pull the tightness from her neck and shoulders. A day with no surgery had been unusual. She thought back to her time with Benny. She’d found him in the wagon being pulled by one of the other children.
“How did you get out of your bed?” she’d asked.
“I slid out.”
“Didn’t it hurt when your legs hit the floor?”
“Some. But I checked, and they don’t bleed no more.”
“What if we make wooden legs for you and teach you how to use crutches?”
He shrugged.
“It won’t be easy, but you could get around.” Please, Lord, let it be so.
“I ain’t goin’ to the orphanage.” He clamped his arms across his chest.
“I’m working on something,” she whispered, leaning closer to his ear.
His face brightened. “I could come live with you.”
“You’re going to have to go to school.”
Now he frowned.
“You don’t want to grow up ignorant, do you?”
“Ig-igrant. What’s that?”
“You learn things like the meaning of words in school. You learn to read. You know how much you like it when someone reads to you.” At his halfhearted shrug, she continued, “And you learn to do arithmetic. Along with so many other things I can’t begin to tell you all of it.”
“No orphanage.”
“Then you better use the pull-up bar that the janitor is making for your bed. He said he’d have it here tomorrow.”
He looked at her out of the side of his eye, a trick of his when he wasn’t sure what she was asking.
* * *
THE NEXT AFTERNOON Benny’s bed was at the center of a group of giggling children. “My turn” was squealed more than any other word as Benny demonstrated how to pull himself up with his arms.
Astrid watched while Benny scooted to the end of the bed and another child took his place lying prone. Some could pull up, but most couldn’t. Perhaps they should have pull-up bars for all the beds and run contests with prizes for the winners. When she suggested it to Mr. Korchensky, he shook his head. But his grin said he would think on it.
Astrid brought herself back to the letters at hand, putting the pencil and paper back in the compartments so designated. She dropped her letters off at the front desk so they could be mailed in the morning. Perhaps since there’d been no surgeries, she’d not be called to assist with anything in the middle of the night.
* * *
SHE WAS NEARLY finished with rounds the next morning when a surgical nurse came for her. “We have a cesarean to perform immediately.”
Astrid excused herself and followed the nurse to the scrub room. “Who am I assisting?” she asked, since there was no doctor present.
“You’re it for now. Dr. Whitaker is tied up in the other operating theatre, and Dr. Franck will be observing with some of the newer students.”
Astrid blinked and started scrubbing. Yes, she’d assisted before, and yes, she’d been assisted by one of the other doctors. “Who will be assisting?”
The nurse named one of the other surgical students.
Taking a deep breath, Astrid continued. “All right, then, tell me the story.”
“The woman has been in labor for somewhere around twenty-four hours, and when nothing was happening, the family brought her here. While she is dilated, the baby has not crowned, and—”
“Why did they wait so long? Is the fetus viable?” She could keep from thinking live baby if she used the technical words.
“We have a faint heartbeat.”
“How fast?” She glanced at the nurse, who was shaking her head. “Let’s see what we can do.” Please, God, this has to be in your hands. She pushed through the door and stepped to the table. The woman was already anesthetized, and the nurse was holding the ether cone.
Astrid picked up the scalpel, nodded to the young man assisting her, and made the first incision. Even with the quickest work she could manage, the baby never responded. Blinking back tears, she concentrated on the mother. If she could at least keep one of them alive, she knew she would have done her best. She let the student doctor close and complimented him on a job well done. Now all she had to do was go tell the family the sad news.
“Why did they wait so long?” She foug
ht the tears of both sorrow and anger, dumping her operating apron in the laundry.
“She’s not one of ours,” the nurse said, meaning one of the mothers who came to the hospital for prenatal care and training. “And the midwife thought she could handle it.”
“With hips that narrow, she should have known better.”
“True. That’s the kind of training we are trying to offer, midwives included. They are necessary because we can’t convince all the women to come here. They don’t have the money, and you know that birthing units are rare in hospitals. We lead the field in our care for mothers and babies. But we cannot handle them all.”
Astrid listened and nodded as she washed and changed into a clean apron and shirt. “And how many other places do cesareans?”
“Not many.” The nurse patted her on the shoulder. “You did very well in there.”
“Thank you. You want to go out and tell the family that?”
Dr. Franck met her in the hallway outside the door. “You did well.”
Astrid bit back a sarcastic comment and let herself appreciate his comment. “Thank you. If we’d saved the baby, it would have been worth it.”
“You did save the mother, however. Keep that in mind.” He strode off down the hall, leaving her to go to the waiting room, where a man with two children looked up at her entrance.
“Your wife came through the surgery all right.”
“And the baby?”
“I’m sorry. It was too late.”
“A boy or a girl?”
“A boy.”
He nodded. “Thank you. When can I see her?”
“She should be awake in an hour or so. Someone will come for you.” She nodded and left the room, hearing the little girl asking where her mother was.
Lord, was there anything I could have done differently? Hurried faster? Skipped scrubbing? But then the mother might have died too, of an infection. Of course she still might. That thought made her swallow. Please, Father, help her to live.
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