Coming Home for Christmas

by Carla Kelly

  She blushed then and turned her attention to Nora Powell, who seemed to wilt before their eyes. “Nora, let us go to bed.” She put her arm around the smaller woman. “Tell me you won’t mind if I put my cold feet on your legs?”

  I’d rather you put them on mine, Will thought, as he turned away, so the women could climb the ladder to the upper berth without his observation. A quick glance—he told himself it was a professional one—reassured him when Nora managed a smile at Frannie’s gentle teasing. Such a glance also allowed him a glimpse of Frannie’s trim ankles, his real object, he admitted to himself.

  He took off his shoes and lay down in the lower berth, yawning, but keeping the curtains open so he could at least try to read another few pages in the medical journal. For the first time in his long medical life, the subject matter defeated him. He closed the journal again and lay on his back, his heart touched as he heard Frannie humming to Nora. He listened closer; it was “Silent Night,” which reminded him belatedly that Christmas was almost upon them.

  His eyes closed. He wondered if he should visit the immigrant car one more time, but decided it could wait. Besides, all he wanted to do was think about Frannie.

  Chapter Six

  Will must have slept then, because someone shook him awake. As his eyes became accustomed to the night-time gloom of the rail car, he saw the conductor.

  “The boy?” Will asked, already reaching for his shoes.

  “No. It’s worse. Hurry.”

  Will tied his shoes and tucked in his shirt. He pulled on his uniform jacket, but didn’t bother to button it. As he stood up in the aisle and ran his hand through his hair, the curtains in the upper berth parted and Frannie leaned out.

  “Do you need me?”

  “I’m not sure,” he whispered back. “If I do, I’ll send the conductor for you. Is Nora asleep?”

  “Yes.”

  She reached out and touched his shoulder, which made him smile in the gloom.

  Stepping quietly through the next car, he followed the conductor into the immigrant car and stopped, his eyes wide at the sight of the pregnant woman struggling in labor as everyone watched and did nothing.

  I should have checked her earlier, he thought, kneeling beside her. He pulled out his stethoscope and listened for her heartbeat. It was faint and he knew exactly what the outcome would be, even before he touched her distended abdomen.

  He looked around for the conductor, who stared at the woman. “Help me get her to the floor.”

  The man did as he asked, then motioned everyone to move back and turn around, for privacy’s sake. “I’ll see if I can find out who she is,” he said.

  Will nodded, his eyes on his patient. Moving his hand over the woman’s tight abdomen, he felt how far down the baby was, and rested his hand until he felt returning movement. The woman tried to raise her hand to his, but she hadn’t the strength. Gently, he touched her face, then opened one barely shuttered eye, which was already starting to settle in her head.

  “No one knows who she is,” the conductor whispered when he returned and knelt beside Will. “Damned foreigners! They think she’s Greek, but no one knows when she got on the car. She was alone.”

  “Doesn’t matter now,” Will said. “She’s unresponsive and hasn’t long.” He took hold of the conductor’s sleeve. “Get me some blankets, sheets and towels, and whatever you can find that’s absorbent.”

  The conductor started to rise. Will tugged him down again. “Wake up Miss Coughlin in the berth over mine and tell her I need her immediately. Go now.”

  Railcar, battlefield or hospital, Will did what he always did, as the conductor hurried into the next car. He folded his hands in front of him, closed his eyes and prayed. It was the quick, all-purpose prayer he reserved for extreme emergency, and amounted to no more than “Help me, Almighty God.” He figured that, in some form or other, healers from Hippocrates down to this captain kneeling on the floor in an immigrant car had asked as much and more throughout history, whether from one god, three or ten.

  When he opened his eyes, his brain was clear. Quickly, he took out his small capital-knife kit and spread it beside him on the floor, while the woman grunted and moaned, trying to expel a baby that couldn’t be dislodged without assistance.

  He felt a rush of cold air as the door opened. Frannie knelt beside him, still in her nightgown. Unbidden, she put her hands on the woman’s face, stroking it, then wiping the sweat with the sleeve of her nightgown. She looked at Will, her eyes wide.

  Will put his lips next to her ear. “Her heart is about to give out. Frannie, she’s dying.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she whispered back, no hesitation in her voice and no fear. Will was so relieved he could have kissed her.

  “It’s going to be ugly,” he whispered back. “When she breathes her last, I’m going for the baby. I’ll have to work fast. It’ll look like butchery, because it is.”

  Frannie gulped and nodded. Even in the dim light, Will saw how pale her face was and how every wonderful freckle stood out. “Just explain what you want. I’ll do…do my best.”

  “I knew you would,” he told her, looking around at another gust of cold air. His arms full of blankets, sheets and towels, the conductor came back into the immigrant car. Will directed him to tear a sheet in half and tie one half around Frannie’s neck. “Tie the other one around my neck.” He looked at the conductor. “What’s your name?”

  “Joseph Pyle,” the man said.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Will said. “Just keep everyone back. Hold up a blanket and face out. You don’t want to see this.”

  Pyle gave him no argument. He turned around and held out the blanket, while Will explained to Frannie what would happen. “There’s no time to apply retractors. I need your hands.”

  Frannie drew a deep breath, then made a small sign of the cross on the dying woman’s forehead. She raised up and kissed his cheek. “Not quite the Christmas journey you envisioned, eh?” she asked.

  He couldn’t answer, because the laboring woman breathed her last. For the next minute he saw nothing but the task on the floor in front of him. Frannie did exactly as he ordered, not faltering when everything turned red. Above the sound of the train, he could hear her reciting the Rosary, something he was familiar with. He mouthed the words along with her as he cut, searched and pulled out a living child.

  He was aware of another gust of cold air and saw Nora Powell out of the corner of his eye. She held out her hands for the baby. Gratefully, he deposited the child in her arms and quickly suctioned out the unresponsive infant’s mouth. One second. Two seconds, then three, and the newborn cried.

  Will sighed and breathed in and out until he was calm again. He removed Frannie’s hands from her grip on the woman’s ruined abdomen, placed them in her lap and wiped them. It was his turn to kiss her cheek and whisper, “Magnificent,” in her ear.

  With Nora’s silent help, he cut the connection between the dead woman and her daughter, who was crying lustily now, a small and welcome sound in the quiet railcar. He didn’t need to tell Nora what to do then, as she wiped off the baby and wrapped her expertly, papoose-style, in a strip of clean sheet. She wrapped the baby next in a towel and sat back, holding the infant close.

  Frannie remained calm, arranging the dead mother’s hair as he stitched her together, then wound her tight in a shroud of sheet. Together they rolled her onto a blanket. He had begun wrapping it around her, too, when Frannie stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “One moment,” she said. “Let us look at her.”

  Will did as she asked, putting his arm around Frannie’s shoulder as Paddy Coughlin’s capable daughter prayed again. He knew the prayer and prayed with her. None of Trey Wharton’s Episcopal leanings had made much of an impact on him, on Scottish boy Wilkie Nicholls, who had gone to Mass with dear Grandma Laura Ortiz Wilkie in Dumfries’s tiny Catholic church.

  “I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Frannie said, when she finished and he
continued his work of wrapping the blanket around the Greek woman.

  “It was a condition of my grandmother’s priest in Alta California, when she married my grandfather,” he explained, happy and relieved to have a normal conversation after the horror of his surgery. “Sometimes I need reminding.”

  “Maybe not so much after tonight?”

  “Maybe not so much.”

  Under Will’s instructions, the conductor and the helpful Russian translator carried the body to the ice-cold baggage car. “We’ll be in Omaha in mid-morning,” Pyle said, looking at his watch. “The Union Pacific will assume responsibility for the body and she’ll be buried somewhere.” He shook his head. “We’ll try to find her relatives, but no one seems to know her name, or even when she came aboard.”

  Will watched Frannie, who was holding the baby now, crooning to it, breathing deep of that peculiar newborn fragrance. The conductor touched the baby’s head, with its still-damp, dark curls, and Frannie stepped back, as though to ward him off.

  “We’ll take the baby, too, and find an orphanage,” the conductor said. “Don’t you get too attached, or anything!” he told Frannie.

  Will could tell he was trying to make light of a devastating situation, but all Frannie did was frown at him and turn away. She started toward the sleeping compartment again, Nora walking beside her. Will watched them, gratified when Nora’s arm went around Frannie’s waist, sisters in a ritual that man had no part of. He wasn’t unhappy with either of them.

  “We’ll see,” he told the conductor.

  “Your missus is taking a shine to that little one,” the man said. “Better watch out.”

  My missus. Will thought about that later, as he sat in the dining car. The conductor had found a convenient bottle of single malt scotch. “No one will miss this,” Pyle said as he poured them both a stiff one. He also set down a can of condensed milk and a bottle of warm sterilized water. “We’re missing a key ingredient,” he said, as he downed his scotch and filled the glass again. “A nipple.”

  “I have an eyedropper in my bag that will do until we find something better in Omaha,” Will said. He sipped his scotch slowly, trying to get the iron taste and smell of blood from his system. This was no different from many another surgery, some under even less sanitary conditions, but there was something so wrenching about that poor woman dying anonymously, never to know her beautiful daughter.

  Another swallow and he was done; better to stop while he was still rational. He thanked the conductor and took the canned milk and water back to his own berth, where, to his surprise but not his disappointment, Frannie had curled up around the baby. They were asleep and he admired them both. Despite her rough arrival on a cold December, yanked from her dead mother, the infant seemed none the worse for wear.

  “I’m going to name you Olympia,” he said softly, touching her black hair. “Surely the gods were smiling on you tonight.”

  He stood up and opened the curtain to the upper berth. Nora Powell slept soundly, her hand opened and relaxed, which relieved him, somehow. He sat on his berth again and gave Frannie a nudge. She opened her eyes, but offered no objection when he pulled his blanket over her and the baby.

  With a sigh, Will took off his shoes. He debated a long moment, then shook his head and removed his trousers and uniform jacket, draping them across the end of the bed. Frannie could call him a cad if she wanted, but he was too tired to care. My missus. He lay down, hoping the scotch had mellowed his brain enough to allow sleep.

  He was almost asleep when Frannie touched his face. He kissed her fingers impulsively, waited for a slap that never came, then slept.

  Chapter Seven

  Olympia woke up a few hours later, making little mewing sounds practically in his ear, until he realized that, at some point in their slumber, he had wrapped his arm around Frannie and she was close to his chest, the baby nestled against his neck and hers.

  Will lay there with Frannie and Olympia in his arms, enjoying her newborn fragrance. Medicine could often be a smelly proposition the deeper one delved, but newborns always compensated, with that unique fragrance.

  “Frannie, Olympia is hungry,” he whispered finally.

  Frannie stretched and snuggled closer, her eyes still closed. She opened them wide a second later, when she realized where she was. “I should apologize,” she began, then stopped. “No. This seemed like a good idea a few hours ago and it still does. Call me common.”

  “You’re not,” he replied. “I could have gone back to the dining room and finished that bottle of Scotch—oh, believe me, I could have. But I didn’t want to.”

  Frannie sat up in the berth with Olympia in her arms, which had the effect of pulling the blankets off his body. Will grabbed for them, shrugged and reached for his trousers instead. “Don’t mind me,” he murmured, as he buttoned up.

  “You called her Olympia,” Frannie said. “Goodness, when did you name her?”

  “A few hours ago, when the two of you were sleeping,” he said as he pulled on his uniform jacket. “The gods were smiling.”

  Frannie grinned at him. “And you were a little tiddly.” She kissed the baby. “It’s a good name for a Greek goddess, which she is. I like it.” And then she was all business. “What are we going to do about the menu?”

  He had done this before. In a minute he had mixed some of the condensed milk with the boiled water. While Frannie changed Olympia’s diaper—a napkin from the dining car—he found the kitchen, corralled a yawning cook and soon had the milk lukewarm in a pan of water.

  The two of them sat cross-legged and knee to knee in his berth—Olympia squalling now—and he used the eye dropper. “Put your little finger in her mouth while I drip in the milk,” Will said. “I want her to learn about her sucking reflex. This will work until we find a baby bottle.” Maybe we’ll find an orphanage, too, he thought, then dismissed the idea at once. He didn’t find it appealing. He could think about it later.

  Frannie’s doubts about the procedure amused Will, who knew by experience not to underestimate a hungry baby, even one as new as the little morsel in her arms. She relaxed as Olympia quickly adapted to the situation, then nudged Will with her bare foot.

  “I think you’re pretty good, Captain,” she whispered.

  He noticed Olympia’s squirms and picked her up from Frannie’s arms, putting her face near his shoulder as he patted her back. The reward was a substantial burp, which startled Olympia and made Frannie chuckle.

  “You know, Frannie, under the circumstances, perhaps you could call me Will,” he suggested.

  The car was getting lighter. He could see her face plainly as she gave him a measuring appraisal. “Under the circumstances? Will, it is,” she told him. “And do you know something? I prefer Francie. My brothers call me that.”

  “Francie, it is,” he told her as he handed back Olympia and filled the eye dropper again. They continued feeding the baby, Francie’s head close to his. When Olympia began to squirm this time, she put the baby to her shoulder and rubbed her back until the burp came.

  Worn out with her efforts and by her full stomach, the infant slept, nestling her dark head into the hollow of Francie’s shoulder. Francie kissed the baby and heaved a small sigh that sounded to Will like perfect satisfaction.

  “Too much of that and you’ll find yourself unable to let her go,” Will said.

  “And you think I haven’t already succumbed?” Francie asked, her voice suddenly as serious as his own. “Will, you’re not as bright as I thought.”

  “That probably isn’t hard to imagine,” he replied. “I could sit here and think about all the ways I could have changed the outcome of that hambone surgery. I could have taken a closer look at her when I went through the immigrant car earlier. I could have…”

  He stopped, because Francie had put her finger to his lips and then leaned forward and kissed them. He couldn’t think of a single objection and kissed her back. Since Olympia was balanced between them, he steadied himself with
a hand on Francie’s knee. When they finished kissing, he left his hand where it was.

  “My da says you have a bad habit of doing that,” she murmured, her lips still close to his.

  “Francie, I’ve never kissed your father.”

  She laughed softly and flicked his cheek with her fingernail. “You know what I mean! Da says you berate yourself every time someone dies, and pace around your office and mutter to yourself and second-guess.” She lightly touched her forehead to his.

  “All surgeons do that,” he said in his defense. His hand was still on her knee. He felt his whole body growing warmer, which was welcoming, because he felt as though he had been cold for years.

  “I doubt Captain Hunsaker second-guesses himself,” she retorted.

  “Maybe not all.”

  He didn’t try to stop himself. He moved his hand under her nightgown, until he touched the soft hair between her legs.

  “Just a minute.”

  Embarrassed, Will started to leave the berth, but she stopped him. “Just a minute, I said,” she repeated, as she handed him the sleeping baby. She opened her valise on the floor and folded in a tablecloth he had borrowed from the dining car, making it a sheet. She took Olympia from him and set the sleeping infant in the open valise, tucking it partly under the lower berth, where it was firmly anchored.

  After closing the curtains around them, she sat on the lower berth and pulled her nightgown over her head. Without a word, Will pulled back the blanket again and removed his trousers. The uniform jacket was already off and getting wrinkled—where, he didn’t much care.

  “Are you sure about this, Francie?” he whispered.

  She nodded. “Remember last night when Nora told you about her husband covering her with a blanket at the dance? You’ve now done that twice to me.”

  “Francie, that was…”