“So, when you’re all better, I thought we might take a little trip. I know you like St. Louis, so maybe there. Or maybe to the Pacific Ocean?” he asked, gave a moment for her response, and then continued. “I do think you would like the ocean. Or maybe you’d prefer to go back East. I could take you shopping in New York City and you could model the highest fashions for me. What would you think of that?”
He talked until he was hoarse, paced until his legs could carry him no more, and then he sat in the chair beside the operating table on which Abby still lay, and fought his heavy eyelids.
“Maybe I’ll just rest for a moment,” he conceded. “As long as you’re sleeping, anyway.”
He must have nodded off for a moment or two, because when he heard the knock at the church doors, it made him start and he nearly fell out of the chair.
“Abby?” he asked, checking her again, making sure that she was still alive, wishing she would open her eyes and know him just one more time.
Who was he kidding? He wanted the rest of his life with her. He wanted them to have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He wanted to rock on a porch with her and watch the sunset and die holding her against his body in a bed that had all but given out beneath a million nights of loving.
The knock came again and he came to the door and spoke through it. “What?” he called through the door.
“It’s Jed,” Abby’s brother called. “Jedidiah Merganser. Abidance’s brother.”
“She’s still sleeping, Jed,” he said. He looked at his watch. It was nearly five-thirty in the morning. “Go back to bed.”
“I haven’t been to bed. I’ve been working. For the sunrise service. You know.”
“Yes, Jed, I know,” he said, having completely forgotten that this would be Sunday, Easter Sunday.
“Can I talk to Abby?”
“She’s still sleeping, Jed,” he repeated. Poor Jed. So many parts of his mind had never matured, but his heart was fully formed.
“Can you give her a message for me?”
“What is it?” Seth asked, anxious now to change Abby’s bandages again and look for any reason to hope.
“Tell her to look out the window.”
“Out the window? For what, Jed?” he asked.
“For the miracle,” Jed answered. “I gotta go.”
“It’ll be a miracle if she can look out the window,” Seth muttered to himself and he made his way slowly back down the church’s aisle toward Abby. The longer it took him, the longer he could believe that when he got there she would open those dazzling hazel eyes and smile that gut-flipping smile of hers.
“So it’s time to check your bandages again,” he said as he approached her. “Don’t want any infections impeding your progress after the wonderful job I did.”
He tilted her head slowly away from him to get at the edge of the bandage, wondering how with no hair, with her life on the line, she could still be so incredibly beautiful.
“Oh …” It was a tiny voice, sad, soft.
And clear as a bell! He ran around the table, afraid to move her head, afraid to speak, afraid to hope.
Her eyes were open and she appeared to be looking out the window.
“Abby! Oh, God, Abby!”
“Am I dead?” she asked softly, looking past him to continue staring out the huge church windows. Was she seeing anything?
“Well, if you are, so am I,” he said, not caring that he was crying freely. “Can you see me? Can you see anything, darling?”
“Darling? Now I know I’m dead. Jed’s flying and you’re calling me darling.”
He turned to look over his shoulder and sure enough, there was Jed, in his ridiculous machine, floating just outside the church windows, throwing white crosses that sounded like rain as they hit the window-panes.
He turned back to her just as her eyes were closing, a wrinkle furrowing her brow.
“Does something hurt you?” he asked, putting the back of his hand against her forehead to make sure there was still no sign of fever. “Are you in pain?”
“There’s no pain in heaven, silly,” she said. “But I am hungry. I didn’t think there’d be hunger in heaven, did you? Why are you here, anyway? You didn’t kill yourself when I died, did you?”
“Abby, honey, you’re not dead. You are very much alive.” He ran over to the window and opened it in time to hear the most beautiful church bells he had ever heard. Somehow they had managed to uncrate the bells and set them up temporarily in the street, just far enough off the ground to ring them.
“She’s hungry!” he shouted out the window to anyone who could hear. “She says she’s hungry!”
He heard the crash and Jed’s shout of pain, and figured that Ephraim Bartlett could set Jed’s bones.
“Tell me how you feel,” he said, coming back to her. “Does anything hurt? Are you able to move your fingers and toes and—”
“Mostly I’m tired, Seth,” she said dreamily. “Would it be okay if I just rested a little?”
He touched the underside of her foot and watched as her leg reacted, jumping just as it should. There would be time enough for planning and dreaming, all the years to come. “You go ahead and rest, Mrs. Hen-don. We have the rest of our lives to catch up.”
SETH HELPED HIS WIFE OFF THE TRAIN, NOT BECAUSE she needed any help but because it was the proper thing to do. Not that their marriage so far had been close to proper. Oh, no, not with Abidance Merganser Hendon and that strong head of hers—insisting on signing the register at the hotel in Boston herself instead of letting him see to such matters.
And demanding that he perform his husbandly duties nearly every night for three months!
Well, he thought—and the thought brought a smile to his lips—that was the price one paid for marrying a woman so much younger than himself.
“And just what does that Chesire-cat grin mean, Dr. Hendon?” his wife demanded, her body sliding down his as he lifted her off the last step and set her down on the ground.
Before he could answer her, his new family surrounded them, cooing over how well Abby looked, Patience obviously trying to see if there was any hair under Abby’s hat, Clarice touching her daughter’s forehead with the back of her hand as if checking for temperature, Ezra beaming, and several children wrapping themselves around her legs.
“Let’s not knock your aunt Abby over,” Seth warned them, and Abby shooed him, not them, away.
“Don’t coddle me, Dr. Hendon,” she warned him, as if she had ever let him do that, as if she ever would. Cuddle, yes, she had told him as they lay in bed at the hotel in Boston, coddle, never.
Well, he’d see about that once he had her ensconced in Joseph Panner’s old—no, make that their new home. And if she intended to help him as a nurse of sorts, she darn well better learn to listen to his instructions.
“At least sit down,” he begged, rather than ordered, her.
She pinned him with those big eyes of hers and he shrugged and left her to her family after receiving his own handshakes from Jed and Ezra, and pecks on the cheeks from Patience and Clarice.
On the outskirts of the circle stood Ephraim Bartlett and Ansel, both of them watching the exchange between Seth and Abby with obvious amusement.
“I see you have her well in hand,” Ansel teased. “She seems to be very much our old Abidance.”
“That she is,” Seth said, and allowed himself a satisfied sigh.
“And Carter at Mass. General?” Bartlett asked, taking Seth’s hand and shaking it with both of his. “He said she was in the clear?”
“He did,” Seth said. “And he sent his regards and his respect for a job well done.”
“I did nothing,” Bartlett said. “You—”
“I was simply your hands,” Seth said. “She’d be dead now,” he started to add, but the rest of the sentence got stuck in his throat with a thousand unshed tears he’d had to hold back. He’d have lost her if not for Ephraim, and he’d be forever grateful.
; “Been holding on to this for you,” Ephraim said, handing him the Dickens book that Abby had given to Seth years before. “Thought you’d want it in the new place.”
“Thanks,” Seth said, and thought about someday reading it aloud to his children, his and Abby’s children. Talk about miracles! The doctors in Boston had said that they saw no reason why Abby wouldn’t be able to have all the children she wanted, though they did say something about why in the world she’d married Seth and why she would ever want to bear his kids. And then they’d all had a good laugh—all but Seth, who had to wonder why indeed his Abby loved him.
He wasn’t good enough, kind enough, even smart enough for her. But he would love her enough, or try to, for the rest of their lives.
Abby managed to extricate herself from her nieces and nephew and make her way to Seth’s side, where she belonged. She took a hug from Ansel that was gentle and careful, as if he couldn’t quite believe she was truly all right, and a bear hug from Ephraim, who apparently was sure she was.
“Where’s Emily?” she asked. “And Pru?”
“Emily’s tending to your very newest niece,” Ansel said proudly. “Ephyra Abidance Merganser, named for the man who helped save you and, well …”
“Don’t you give Seth any credit?” she asked, delighted to see the blush in Dr. Bartlett’s cheeks at having a child named for him.
“He got you,” Dr. Bartlett said. “What more could he need?”
“He’ll need a child named after him,” she said simply. “And I’m—”
Seth blanched, grabbing her arm and holding her as if she were suddenly made of glass. She didn’t know why he was so surprised. After all, he was a doctor. Surely he knew where babies came from.
“… Working on it,” she finished. “Don’t go to pieces yet, Seth.”
“Then you’re not? …” he asked, a bit of color returning to his cheeks, but the smile gone from his lips.
She shrugged. “Maybe,” she answered, not being coy but honest.
“Maybe you should—” Seth began, but Ansel and Dr. Bartlett were laughing so loudly at him he didn’t have the nerve to finish.
“Can you imagine when she knows for sure?” Ansel asked Dr. Bartlett, poking him in the ribs. Apparently the two had become fast friends while she and Seth were back East. That was nice, since they were to be neighbors now that Ephraim would stay in Seth’s old place and she and Seth would move into Joseph Panner’s mansion, converting it into the hospital Seth wanted so much.
And from her father’s letters, it was clear the town wanted both the hospital and Seth to run it.
The whole group began to drift down the street, past the church, where they paused to hear the music drifting out the open door. Someone was singing, and Abby climbed the steps of the beautiful new church to see Prudence pounding at a magnificent new organ and singing an alleluia at the top of her lungs.
“Boone sent it,” her mother said, speaking right up against her ear so that Abby could hear her over the music. “He struck a mother lode! And he’s coming home.”
Abby didn’t think she could be happier. And then Seth came up behind her, his arms encircling her, and when the music finally stopped, he whispered softly into her ear.
“We’re home, Mrs. Hendon. Welcome home.”
And she was happier still.
WHEN WRITING HISTORICAL NOVELS, ACCURACY IS AS IMPORTANT as characterization and plot. It is in many ways, characters and plot. After all, we are the products of our time, limited by the progress of the day, shaped by the world in which we live.
In addition, an author has the trust of her reader, which is never, at least by this author, taken lightly. I know that it may have been hard to read A Heart Full of Miracles without thinking that I must have stretched the truth, played with the dates, made the facts suit my story. I know that, because as I read and researched, I’d gasp, shake my head, read passages from dusty old texts over and over aloud asking if this could really be so. It was. With the help of John Mangiardi, M.D., FACS, neurosurgeon, who pointed me in the right direction to find the documentation I needed; Jennifer Po, R.N., who brought all the sources to me, answered E-mails and cheered me on; and Bruce Wilde, O.D., who suggested a brain tumor in the first place and told me to look up Fedor Krause, I now know more about brain surgery in the late 1800s than I ever thought I would.
Brain surgery like the kind I described was carried out at Massachusetts General Hospital in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The success rate was poor, but just as I said in the novel, there were those who did survive and go on to live normal lives. In 1891, Philip Coombs Knapp, A.M., M.D. (Harvard), a clinical instructor in diseases of the nervous system at Harvard Medical School, as well as physician for diseases of the nervous system to outpatients, Boston City Hospital, member of the American Neurological Association and fellow of the Massachusetts Medical Society, etc., authored a Fiske Fund Prize dissertation entitled The Pathology, Diagnosis and Treatment of Intra-Cranial Growths. In his dissertation he not only described the operations in minute (and often stomach-turning) detail but he also recited case studies of patients upon whom he operated—those who died and those who survived. Yes, survived! A twenty-eight-year-old male suffering from headaches, vomiting and vertigo. A thirty-six-year-old female suffering from headache, psychological disturbances, anesthesia of the left arm and face, dullness, beginning coma. A twenty-year-old male with headaches, spasms of the left arm and face, optic atrophy. Certainly there were deaths, lots of them, but there were successes. Why not allow Abby to be one of them?
The hospital situation presented a problem, since many deaths at the turn of the century and before were due to septicemia. That’s why I went to great lengths to have them sterilize the church and use the autoclave. I had Seth carefully follow the instructions I found in two medical texts, one written in 1894 by Fedor Krause, and a second from ten years later by Drs. Bergmann and Bruns. Vital also was The International Medical Annual for the year 1891 (E. B. Treat, Medical Publisher, 5 Cooper Union, NY, 1891), which contained not only the following quote but some lovely wildflowers that had been pressed between the pages!
Brain surgery is now in a somewhat similar condition to that of abdominal surgery some years ago. Surgeons are afraid of the brain, or too much in the habit of letting the favourable moment for operation go by, on account of their fear of the consequences of interfering with the skull and its contents.
In addition to the references cited above, I also became familiar with the practices at Massachusetts General Hospital from two other sources: an article titled “The Massachusetts General Hospital—Early History and Neurosurgery to 1939” by Fred G. Barker II, M.D., and “The History of the Massachusetts General Hospital from June 1872 to December 1900,” by Grace Whiting Myers, librarian emeritus, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts.
For more information on the history of brain surgery, you might like to check out the following Web site: http://www.brain-surgery.com/history.html, which traces the origins of brain surgery back to the neolithic Stone Age. (My guess is that while they may have performed the surgery then, they didn’t have much of a survival rate!)
Those of you in the medical profession may note some practices that Seth used that seemed improper. Please remember that medicine has come a long way in the past hundred years. We know things now that Seth Hendon was unaware of. All of the medical books of the time insisted that to fight frostbite the skin was to be rubbed gently to return circulation. Today’s physicians would be horrified at the thought. But Seth lived then, so I had him rub Joseph Panner’s feet. (This is one of those do-not-try-this-at-home things!) No doubt I included other treatments that might raise an eyebrow by today’s standards. Most of Seth’s treatments (aside from Abby’s brain surgery) are found in Dr. Chase’s Last and Complete Receipt Book and Household Physician (1884, 1887, 1904), The People’s Common Sense Medical Advisor by R. V. Pierce, M.D. (1909), or the Century Book of Health by J. H. McCormick,
M.D. (1906).
While medical details give me the willies, I loved every minute of writing Seth and Abby’s story. Of course, they went on to have a couple of kids, Abby learned to assist him in his medical practice, and their daughter became a surgeon. And everyone, everywhere, lived happily ever after!
With A Heart Full of Miracles Stephanie Mittman returns to her favorite place—the midwest of the late 1800s. There’s something about the sense of community in that time and place, of people pulling together to fight the fates, that appeals to her strongly. So strongly, in fact, that it’s always hard for her to say good-bye to her characters and leave behind the town they live in. So, in an effort to recreate her reality, she and her husband have moved to a small town on Long Island and she is happy to report that the people in the post office, the library, and the drug store all know her by name. Now, if she could just tear herself away from her computer for a while, maybe she could even meet the neighbors!
She loves to stop writing to answer letters and E-mails, so if you’d like to contact her, she can be reached online at www.stephaniemittman.com or by snail mail c/o MLG, 190 Willis Avenue, Mineola, NY 11501.
Published by
Dell Publishing
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New York, New York 10036
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2000 by Stephanie Mittman
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address:
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