Stephanie Mittman

by A Heart Full of Miracles

  Still, life was passing her by. “Mind if I sit here?” Frank Walker asked. She looked up at him and tried to smile, gathering her skirt closer so that he could fill the seat beside her.

  “Would you mind moving down there, Frank?” a familiar voice asked.

  No, life wasn’t passing her by—it was whirling around her, out of control, as Frank eased his way beyond her knees and sat to her left and Seth took the seat to her right.

  “You didn’t show up to have your bandage changed today,” he said. Not Hello. Not How are you, Abby? No, strictly doctor/patient.

  “It looks clean to me,” she said, holding out the hand her mother had rebandaged.

  “I was going to take the stitches out today,” he said. “But you never came by.”

  “I’ll stop by tomorrow morning,” Abby said. “If that’s all right.”

  “Of course it’s all right,” Seth said. “I can write another letter for you, if you like.” He looked past her at Frank.

  “Once you take the stitches out, I should be able to write myself, don’t you think?”

  He sat back in his seat, stretching his arms over his head and then leaving one on the back of her chair. Then Frank asked if she was cold, and adjusted her shawl, trying to pull it out from beneath Seth’s arm. When Seth finally lifted his, Frank quickly replaced it with his own.

  “I’d like to call this meeting to order,” Horace Parks, the mayor of Eden’s Grove, said. He’d been strangely silent on the question of whether the money should be spent on a church or a hospital, and Abby figured that he was probably waiting to see which way the wind was blowing before taking a position firmly on the fence.

  “I figure that the fairest way to do this is to let Reverend Merganser speak first, then Dr. Hendon, and then let anyone speak their piece who’s got a mind to.”

  “People without minds should remain silent,” Seth whispered to her. She smiled politely, but refused to laugh. He could be her doctor or he could be her intended, but she wasn’t going to settle for anything in between.

  “As to the question of the ladies voting—” the mayor said, stopping to blink several times at the clamor. “I can’t for the life of me figure out how to take a vote on that. Do the ladies vote on the ladies voting?” he asked Mr. Youtt, who was seated in one of the chairs at the front that faced the audience. Her father was seated in another. The fourth was empty and she ordered her toes to uncurl. So Seth Hendon was sitting next to her instead of up at the front. He probably just didn’t want to be such a clear target for tomatoes.

  “Women have always voted in Eden’s Grove,” Mr. Youtt said. “There were times when the town was so small that they were needed for a quorum. Women in this town have fought fires beside their men. There probably isn’t a barn in Eden’s Grove, or all of Iowa, for that matter, that’d be standing but for some woman’s help. Miss Rachel Kearney has taught a good half of us how to read. Miss Abidance Merganser writes a fine column in our paper. Mrs. Walter Waitte mans our only phone. Or should I say ladies it?” he asked to a good deal of laughter.

  “To now turn and say, ‘Thanks for everything, but we’ll take it from here on out,’ seems ungrateful and unwise. I know that I want to hear anything these ladies have to say. I know that my wife’s opinion differs from my own and is no less valid than mine.”

  “Well,” the mayor said, “anyone brave enough after that to oppose the ladies voting?”

  Abidance watched her father squirm in his chair.

  “Reverend Merganser?” the mayor asked.

  “Me? I got nothing to say,” her father replied. “And I’m only gonna say it once. Eleven months a year the ladies in this town are busy with their husbands and families and making sure that they all come to church to say their prayers. And the other two months they’re busier than ever what with Easter and Christmas. So since it’s not any of those, and even if it was, I don’t see why they can’t vote if they don’t want to not do that.”

  Abby covered her mouth with her hand. Snickering at the reverend, especially when the reverend was her father, was just not acceptable.

  “Then that’s settled, isn’t it?” the mayor asked Mr. Youtt.

  “I suppose,” Mr. Youtt said, shaking his head at Abby’s father. “He did say they ought to vote, didn’t he?”

  Several women in the audience yelled that indeed that was what her father said, or at least what he meant.

  “Anyone object to the ladies voting?” the mayor began, but then before anyone had a chance to, he added, “‘Cause you’re in the minority here and I wouldn’t expect a decent meal till kingdom come if you do!”

  Seth shifted in his seat, claiming he was having difficulty seeing, and pressed up against Abby’s side.

  “You hear anything from that friend of yours you had me write to in St. Louis?” he whispered, an eyebrow raised as if he thought she’d just dreamed him up out of thin air.

  “I will,” she said confidently. And if Ansel had told Seth that Armand was not really her beau, she was going to chop him in little pieces and feed his heart to Disciple, the cat.

  “Why bother with St. Louis?” he whispered, raising his eyes to Frank.

  With a less than gentle shove she pushed him away from her, then pretended that her boot needed tying. When Seth, too, lowered his head, she said, with a sweet smile that never wavered though her insides were mush with his breath on her cheek, “I’m not looking for a husband. I’m looking for love.”

  And then she directed her attention to her father, who had just been given the floor after the mayor had thanked each and every person nearly by name for coming, for bringing pies, for seeing to the coffee and tea, and so on and so forth.

  “Well, I always like to wait until I see the final vote before I anticipate what this town is likely to do, but the days ahead lie ahead of us just as they always have and they always will, and so it seems to me that we need to say God bless the Lord and show Him that we mean it each and every day that is still ahead of us.

  “That’s really all I have to say, except that I also want to say that while the Lord does work in mysterious ways, that’s what He was doing when He sent me by Ridder’s Pond the first time Joseph Panner drowned, so that God could tell him that He cared, and even though the second time was different, God still cared about Joseph Panner and we should care about God.

  “And show we care with the biggest cathedral that Iowa ever saw. And then people would come to Eden’s Grove and they could live here and worship the way they pleased at our church.”

  The worst part of her father’s speech was that there wasn’t a person in Eden’s Grove who didn’t know just what her father meant, and that it came from his heart and not his head. She looked over at Seth, figuring it was now his turn to speak.

  Sitting beside Abby, Seth allowed himself to take a deep breath before rising. “Wish me luck,” he whispered as he came to his feet. With the loony Reverend Merganser done giving the town the last piece of his mind, it was his turn to speak.

  “I have nothing against churches,” he said, figuring that he didn’t want people thinking they were voting against God if they wanted a clinic in Eden’s Grove. “I thank God every morning when I get up that He’s seen me through another night. I pray for His help a hundred times a day, when I see a sick child, when I stitch together an open wound. And when—like the other day when a new little Hartley came slipping into my hands—He lets me share His miracles, I thank Him again.

  “But I thank Him wherever I am. I pray to Him wherever I am. It doesn’t take a church and a congregation for the Lord to do His work, but it takes a great deal of equipment for me to do mine.”

  He went on to explain to them all about asepsis and germs and the importance of a sterile operating facility. By the time he got to the types of operations that required optimum conditions and the statistics of survival with and without, he knew he had lost them.

  “Let’s take the vote,” someone shouted. “Alice left a pie cooling o
n the sill that’s calling me all the way from home.”

  “I’d like to say something,” Mrs. Youtt, the lawyer’s wife, said, coming to a stand in the front row and turning toward the crowd. “I feel like I’m being ungrateful to Dr. Hendon, saying what I’ve got to say after he saved our boy, but the truth is, while some of us may get sick and a few of us might need that surgery that he keeps talking about, we’re all of us gonna die sometime. And not to have a church service when we go … It’s not like I think we won’t be allowed in the heavenly kingdom or anything, it’s just … well, it’s fitting. A proper end to a decent life.”

  “Just like I said,” the reverend said when she was finished, and all Seth could do was shake his head. He knew that in a way Mrs. Youtt was right—with luck and care there’d only be a handful of patients who would benefit from the clinic at any time, but the whole town would enjoy the church. There would be weddings and baptisms and communions. And there would be funerals.

  Mr. Youtt spoke next, in favor of the clinic. It was nice for Seth to think that someone who wasn’t in love with him agreed with him. Not that Abby was really in love with him, he thought.

  He looked out at the crowd to where she sat beside Frank Walker and reluctantly admitted to himself that they made a rather handsome couple. Not that old one-tooth Frank was a good-looking man, but Abby more than made up for whatever he lacked. Seth doubted Frank was a day over twenty-three, and already he was managing the mercantile that belonged to his father.

  Leeks. The man had brought her leeks and she hadn’t thought it self-serving in the least. As if Frank wasn’t planning on not only getting to taste Abby’s soup but no doubt make an evening of it—he’d start with the soup and he’d move on to tasting Abidance Merganser’s sweet, sweet lips.

  “Dr. Hendon?” Horace Parks asked him, nudging his arm. “Did you want to say anything else?”

  “I do,” Abby said, rising to her feet while the words she spoke resounded in his mind. Oh, she’d say them in a church one day, but to someone who suited her better, someone who didn’t suck the wind from her sails. And as she proceeded up the aisle between the chairs of the hall which also served as their church, he held his breath, imagining. Tamping down thoughts. Wishing. Tamping down hopes.

  “I feel traitorous. And if I didn’t right from the beginning, I certainly have in the last two weeks. I was brought up in the Eden’s Grove Methodist Church. I love the church and I love its reverend.” She smiled at her father. “But the Eden’s Grove Methodist Church is not a building. It’s not a place. It’s a community.

  “It didn’t burn down in the fire. That was just wood and mortar. But the people who die leave this community and some of them might not have to go so soon if they get the proper medical attention. Maybe there will be only one person saved by Seth’s clinic. But maybe that one person is the one you cherish most in the world. Maybe she’s the one who would have given birth to our next mayor, or our next reverend, or the next president of the United States. Maybe he’s the one who would have been there to pull you from the river, or catch you when you fell.

  “Is one of us less valuable than all of us?”

  There was silence in the grange hall, and Seth thought that his chest might burst with pride. Abidance Merganser was not a child, not some flippant little slip of a girl who didn’t understand the seriousness of his work. As she had told him when his sister was dying and she insisted on buying Sarrie a fancy dress the girl would never wear, there was a difference between frivolity and happiness.

  And he had been a fool not to see it before.

  “No, Mr. Parks,” he said softly in the quiet. “I have nothing else to say.”

  The voting took place by secret ballot. With very little talk people lined up in an orderly fashion and stood waiting for their turn to write either “hospital” or “church” on the small slips of paper waiting on the back table.

  “You know a lot of them probably couldn’t spell ‘hospital,’ “Abby said as she walked beside Seth back toward his office.

  “Maybe we should have told them to just make a cross or an H,” he said. “Or draw someone in pain. Or a tombstone.”

  “An awful lot of people did vote for the clinic,” Abby said. “If they all donated a bit, maybe you could at least—”

  “Don’t you have to go home?” he asked, looking at her as if she was the enemy.

  “It wasn’t my fault that they voted for the church, Seth. Don’t take it out on me.”

  “I’m not taking it out on you,” he said sharply. “I know you tried. You made a great case for the clinic. You were grand. Better surely than I was. I thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for all the good it did us. What more do you want from me, a jig?”

  “I want you to pick up the pieces, Seth. I want you to figure out a way to get a clinic built without Joseph Panner’s money. I want you to think that while we didn’t win the vote, there were still a lot of people who understood the need for a clinic, instead of that while there were a lot of people who understood the need, we still didn’t win the vote.”

  “I can’t do it, Abby. I’d like to, but I just can’t put a good face on it. Not even for you. You’re so very lucky, walking around in those rose-colored glasses of yours, turning things around in a way I can’t. I have to see things the way they really are.”

  “I see things the way they really are too. I see that while the Denton baby is failing, the Evans baby girl is hearty and hale. But you don’t. You see that while the Evans baby is thriving, the Denton baby isn’t. I see that while Joseph Panner may have died, your skill beat the frostbite. You see that even though you beat the frostbite, Joseph Panner died. I see that while you couldn’t save Sarrie’s life, you’ve saved the lives of countless others.

  “And all you can see is that no matter how many lives you save, it doesn’t matter because you lost Sarrie.”

  “You know me too well,” he said, the hint of a laugh in his words. “How is it that when you know me as well as that you still always expect me to be happy in the face of disaster? Why haven’t you learned yet who I am and why I will never be who you want me to be? Why do you keep expecting and wanting—”

  “I don’t expect anything of you,” she said, stopping in her tracks. “I don’t want anything of you. You’re right. I should know better. I just keep remembering the man who wrote those silly affidavits for Sarrie and me, swearing that we would be friends forever, and then convincing Mr. Youtt to notarize them. I remember how you let me cry in your arms like a baby when Sarrie took a turn for the worse. I remember your teaching me to dance before the Springtime Ball that year when I was old enough to go.

  “I remember your framing my first editorial and hanging it on the wall in your waiting room. I—”

  “You were Sarrie’s friend,” he said, as if he didn’t realize that she was much more than that to him. But she knew, she knew how he wished that things could be different as he fought his own feelings for her.

  “I was your friend too, Seth. I still am, but you’re shutting me out. This is not about the clinic, Seth. This is about us.”

  “Now who’s turning things around? This is not just about us—and I’ve told you and told you that there is no ‘us’—it’s about the clinic. It’s about my losing that vote and—”

  “Do you really think that you are the only one who lost back at the grange hall? Do you really think that the world revolves around you and that everyone else is too stupid to understand? That the pain is yours alone?”

  “People will die because I couldn’t make them understand—”

  “People will die, Seth, if you stand on your head and spit wooden nickels. Unless you sprout wings and figure out a way to convince God otherwise, people will keep dying. That’s what life is all about.”

  “For some, but for others I’m their last hope, Abby,” he said sadly.

  “Well, maybe those people don’t deserve a last hope. Maybe they just deserve nice funerals. And maybe you should
just be happy that some of them—”

  She touched the back of her hand to her head, hoping that the coolness would bring some relief to the unrelenting headache.

  “I am so tired of your ownership of all the pain in Eden’s Grove. I wanted that clinic. I can’t do what you do, but I wanted to be a part of saving lives.”

  “I’m still the only one that will lose them,” he said, having a pity party for himself while the night grew cold around them.

  “I have to head on home, to where my family hates me and will have a fine time gloating over their wonderful victory. I only hope they don’t come to regret it.”

  “Well, it’ll be a fine funeral when they do, in a grand church, won’t it?”

  Her head was splitting apart. It hurt so much that it made her dinner rise up her throat and threaten to spill into her mouth.

  “I’ve got to go,” she said, turning to look down the street and finding it hard to see into the darkness. She fished for her glasses and then decided she could find her way home blind. After all, it seemed as if she’d been leaving Seth and going home alone forever.

  FRANK WALKER WAS HERE EARLIER, ANSEL told Abby when she finally showed up at the Herald two days later. So she’d indulged herself in a little pity fest. Didn’t broken hearts need as much tending as broken arms? “He was pretty concerned when I told him that you weren’t feeling too well. You doing any better?”

  She nodded. She really did feel better. She’d be darned if she’d let Dr. Seth Hendon rule her life. She’d be darned if she’d let him kiss her feet!

  “You see the doctor?”

  Oh, that would be a big help, she thought. “I don’t need a doctor,” she snapped at him. “I wasn’t that kind of sick.”

  “Pru says—”