They laughed together and Breona squeezed Tabitha’s hand, two friends who were once adversaries. Tabitha’s bitterness and animosity had antagonized Breona—had alienated everyone at Palmer House—when they first met. But the hardships through which they had fought, side by side, had changed all of that. Had changed them.
Banks, with a tip of his hat, hauled Tabitha’s trunk downstairs to the waiting motorcar. When Tabitha descended after it, Carpenter met her at the bottom of the stairs.
“Only the one trunk, Tabs?”
“Mr. Carpenter, it is not appropriate for you to call me by my Christian name, let alone a diminutive of it,” Tabitha admonished him.
Although I rather like it, she added to herself.
She was surprised when Carpenter’s expression turned serious. Her eyes widened when he leaned toward her and whispered, “I would that it were appropriate for me to speak to you so, Miss Hale. And I would that it were my place to shower you with so many things that you required five trunks to travel and not the one.”
Tabitha’s mouth dropped open and she fumbled to speak. “You-you do not know what you’re saying.”
“Oh, I do. I assure you, I do.” He sighed and stepped back into his more formal role. “I realize, however, that nursing is your calling—your God-given calling—and I would never knowingly interfere with what God has called you to do. I am willing to wait for you to complete your training and find your way to your nursing vocation. Indeed,” he added as he took her arm and tucked it into his, “I am willing to wait as long as is needed.”
Tabitha licked her lips nervously and could think of nothing to say. Rose stepped from the great room at that moment and saved her from needing to say anything. She held out her arms and Tabitha welcomed the excuse to detangle herself from Mason Carpenter’s gentle hold.
“My dear girl, we will pray for you often,” Rose murmured into Tabitha’s hair. “And you must come home for every holiday and break between terms. Palmer House will always be your home.”
Tabitha gripped Rose. “Thank you. Thank you for . . . so many things.”
“No,” Rose answered. “You have enriched us in every way. We thank God for you.”
Tabitha thought the drive to Union Station with Carpenter might be awkward given their exchange at the bottom of the staircase. However, from the time Banks closed the motorcar door until they arrived at the station, Carpenter did nothing but enthuse over his newest hobby.
“I have been taking rides in an aeroplane, Miss Hale,” he announced. “Flying! I am absolutely smitten with flying. Have you ever flown?”
“No!” Tabitha’s response was emphatic. “If God wanted us to fly, he would have given us wings.”
Carpenter merely grinned and swiped at the curl of hair that slipped down upon his forehead.
A bit miffed—and a little troubled at hearing about Carpenter’s reckless activity—Tabitha rejoined, “Mr. Carpenter, do you not have a business to attend to? Or are you merely one of Denver’s idle rich, never engaging in a productive use of your time?”
He stared at her, suddenly serious. “I can assure you, Miss Hale, that I am never idle.” He held her look. “Idleness is a sinful waste. I never take up an activity that will not yield a benefit or fill a need.”
“Even a transient fad, such as flying?” she pressed.
He shrugged. “Perhaps flying is a fad at present. However, I see it figuring heavily upon the future.”
Then he grinned, all seriousness gone. “And you cannot imagine the thrill!”
“I really cannot see the attraction.”
“Ah, but you have not experienced it. My pilot is a great fellow. Canadian. He has a two-seater biplane, a trainer. And the sensation? The sensation is freeing; the views are breathtaking.”
He sighed in anticipation. “When you come home next, I will ask you to come flying with me. By then I should have my own pilot’s license, perhaps my own aeroplane! I am learning a fair bit of mechanics, too, which is most necessary when learning to fly.”
Tabitha stared across the seat at the enigma that was Mason Carpenter. “Well, you do beat all,” she muttered.
~~**~~
Part 2:
Hope in the Middle
These trials will show
that your faith is genuine.
It is being tested
as fire tests and purifies gold
—though your faith is far more
precious than mere gold.
(1 Peter 1:7, NLT)
Chapter 9
Fall 1911
The work and pressure of nursing school were difficult and Tabitha had a lot to readjust to. Her fellow students were far ahead of her, and she had a great deal of catching up to do—and do well—if she expected to complete the three-year program and graduate with her class in the spring of 1913.
Tabitha had been away from the school since the spring holiday of the past April. She had been home between terms when Rose had been shot and wounded. When baby Edmund had been abducted.
In the chaos that ensued, Tabitha had chosen not to return to school as scheduled. She had, instead, remained at Palmer House to nurse Rose back to health and to help provide stability to Palmer House as the police and the Pinkerton Agency sought to find and restore Edmund to his parents, Grant and Joy Michaels.
At the time, Dr. Wellan, dean of the medical school, had agreed with her choice; Emily Van der Pol, Grace Minton, and the other Christian women who supported Palmer House and provided Tabitha’s nursing scholarship concurred.
Then Joy’s beloved husband Grant, already suffering from congestive heart failure, had worsened. Tabitha gave herself to nursing Grant, too, and had to inform Dean Wellan that her short furlough would be longer than she had expected.
After Grant passed away weeks later, Joy became Tabitha’s primary concern. Bereft of husband and child, Joy needed a different kind of care.
In light of Tabitha’s extended absence, the dean had questioned whether Tabitha’s commitment to the difficult nursing program was as strong as was necessary to complete it. When Tabitha wrote to explain all the extenuating circumstances that kept her from her studies, Dean Wellan had ruled that she could not return to school until the fall term, “When Miss Hale may be able to give herself wholly to her studies,” his letter had read.
Hanging over Tabitha’s head as she struggled to regain her footing at school, was the knowledge that if she failed to come up to completion standards, Dr. Wellan would keep her back an entire year.
Tabitha had not once regretted her decision or its consequences. She had told Rose, “My family needs me. This is where I should be as long as they need me.”
However, during the months back at Palmer House, Tabitha had forgotten how inflexible the discipline of the school was and how difficult she had found it the previous fall term.
The rules for nursing students and staff were strict, with heavy emphasis placed upon personal virtue and an impeccable reputation: Every aspect of a nursing student’s life was considered a reflection upon the integrity of the school and hospital.
Tabitha found comfort in knowing that Dr. Murphy, Rose Thoresen, and Pastor Isaac Carmichael had provided glowing letters of recommendation for her enrollment and acceptance into the school—and she was grateful that no one at school had an inkling about her past life.
Still, Tabitha found it difficult to submit to the school’s discipline after months away from it. Being older at age thirty than most of the students in her class, she was considered by some of the staff to be too set in her ways to adapt to the rigors of nursing. The fact that she was behind in her studies and practicums placed even more pressure upon her.
The staff, for their part, extended her no slack, and the younger students, sensing that Tabitha was different from them in many ways, seemed to shy away from her.
Consequently, Tabitha’s fall term got off to a difficult and painful start: During the first two weeks, she received two tongue lashings from instru
ctors in front of her class and a mark on her record for poor performance.
You must buckle down, Tabs, she scolded herself, even as she blinked back angry and mortified tears. You have given yourself to The Lord and his work; he will not allow you to fail. Every chastisement crucifies your old, ugly temper and purifies your character. So set your mind to the tasks at hand—and do not forget: The Lord is your Helper!
She returned to class the next morning with a dogged resolve in her eyes. It was far later in the day—a day that had gone much better than the previous one had—when she realized she had called herself “Tabs.”
“Oh, bother,” she groused. Try as she might to block it, she often heard Carpenter’s voice in her head.
The students’ mornings were filled with lectures. Their afternoons were taken up with nursing practicums—small student groups performing specific nursing duties under the severe guidance of an instructor or an experienced nurse. When not in class or practicums, the students were studying.
For Tabitha, the walk across campus from her dormitory to classes or the hospital was generally a blur. She used the time to memorize study notes—and rarely paid attention to her surroundings.
One afternoon as she raced toward the hospital’s imposing structure, Tabitha experienced the eerie sense of being watched. She slowed her pace and stopped, turning in a complete circle, not understanding what had distracted her, had caught her attention.
The grassy and tree-lined campus was still. Only a few other students and a pair of caretakers were in view, and they were preoccupied with their own activities.
Tabitha took a deep breath—and was surprised to see that the trees were beginning to turn color.
Fall is nearly upon us, she realized with a start, and I had not even noticed! She wasted precious minutes breathing in the brisk autumn air. Then she shook herself, glanced around again, and hurried on her way.
Silly me, she laughed to herself. Imagining things.
On Sundays, nursing students received the morning off to attend church and were allowed to collect any mail that had accumulated for them during the week. Soon Tabitha was receiving weekly letters from Palmer House.
Rose sent all of the latest news and included little notes from Breona, Joy, and others in the house. Rose’s letters were filled with updates on Billy and Marit’s new baby, Charley.
“Charles, named for Billy’s father,” Rose wrote.
Then she received a letter from Mason Carpenter.
My dear Miss Hale,
In the bustle leading up to your departure, I neglected to ask permission to write to you. I had intended to ask you after the dinner the week before you left, but little Charley so artfully timed his entrance that I did not see you again that evening before I took my leave. Even on our drive to Union Station a week later, we were so engrossed in our conversation around flying, that the request slipped my mind.
“Our conversation?” Tabitha had a different recollection of the ride to the train station. She clearly recalled Carpenter, eyes shining with enthusiasm, spending the majority of the short drive to the station describing the sensation of—and his complete infatuation with—flying.
“If memory serves,” she chuckled, “you did most of the talking!”
She laughed again and finished the letter, quite enjoying the monologue of his life in Denver. She was impressed with the level of detail included in his observations of people and places. Rather than merely focus on what he did and saw, Carpenter wrote as though he saw into the hearts of those he encountered—and prayed for them accordingly.
Tabitha read his letter twice. Both times she was struck with the compassionate heart his written observations revealed.
The letter closed with,
I beg you not to hold my lapse against me! I do hope you will write soon and permit me to write to you on a regular basis. Denver is quite dull without you.
Truly yours,
Mason Carpenter
Should I write back? Tabitha was torn. On the one hand, she longed to receive his attentions; on the other hand . . .
She shrugged. What would be the purpose? We are not meant for each other—he could not possibly wish to go beyond a friendship given what he knows of my background.
“And what he does not know,” she added. “Besides, even when I graduate, my work will keep me busy twelve hours a day, whereas he is independently wealthy and would wish his wife to go into society with him.”
It was the first time she had spoken the word “wife” aloud in connection with Carpenter, and it stung. I can never be a wife, she admitted to herself. Not to him or anyone. Not with my past. She looked down at the letter in her hands and shook her head. Particularly since I can never have children.
She placed the letter in its envelope with a shaking hand and buried it in the bottom of her trunk.
She did not write back.
Tabitha had been at school three weeks when she picked up a letter with a Texas postmark. She stared at her name and address printed in crude letters on the front of the envelope, and her fingers trembled.
She recognized the hand: It is Mama’s writing! She returned to the dormitory and found a quiet corner to open the letter. The missive was short, scrawled on a piece of brown butcher paper, but Tabitha devoured the words painstakingly printed on it:
Deer Tabitha,
We culd hardly beleve it when we got yor letter. Yor pa and I give up a long time back thinking weed ever no what becum of you. Pa is poorly. His chest is bad and he coffs a lot, but I ain’t seen him so happy in years as when he red your letter. Was like a tonic to him, and he lays it by his chair to reed agin and agin.
I keep up the place best I can. Your pa does wat he can, too. We get by.
We forgive you, dotter, and we are so prowd you are aworkin to be a nurse. Tis a comfert to us to no you are well.
Pleese rite agin. Wish we culd see yor face.
Muther
After reading the letter so many times that she had memorized it, Tabitha went for a long walk, almost missing the dinner curfew. I had forgotten how plain they were, she thought, how uneducated.
Color crept into her face and neck as she realized how much Opal’s strict standards of deportment had changed her, had reshaped her manner of speaking and behavior.
If I had stayed home, if I had stayed with my folks, I would still be as rough and simple as they are.
That night she wept into her pillow. Oh, Lord! Who will take care of my father and mother in their ill health and old age?
She copied her mother’s letter word for word into a note to Rose. What should I do, Miss Rose? Should I leave school to go take care of them?
Even as she wrote her concerns, Tabitha felt no release to leave Boulder. Rather, the pull toward nursing grew stronger with each passing day.
Rose’s response confirmed what she already knew:
Dearest Tabitha,
I am so grateful that your parents have replied to your letter and that they have forgiven you. This is the first step, I pray, in restoring your relationship with them.
As regards your question, I counsel you to pray and do as the Holy Spirit directs you. Let his peace be your guide. I know you will continue to write to your parents, sharing bit by bit what Jesus has done for and in you.
However, unless the Lord directs you to leave school, you must trust him to care for your parents, too.
All my love,
Rose Thoresen
Six weeks into the term, after many late nights of study and many long hours on her feet, Tabitha at last hit her stride with the rest of her class. A full night’s sleep was something she had not enjoyed in quite a while. It would still take her more weeks of late nights to cover the ground she had missed, but she pressed into the work and received no further chastisements or marks on her record.
Lord, you are my strength, she often prayed. I am learning to lean upon you.
The last thing she prayed as she slipped into sleep was, Lord, why do
I feel like someone is always watching me?
September and October passed, and November came upon Boulder with frosty mornings and chilly winds. At the midpoint of the term, the nursing students were assigned to cohorts under the supervision of school instructors and began to work regular shifts in the hospital.
Cohort instructors were to assign their students to eight-hour shifts, six days a week, for the remainder of their schooling. The nursing shifts were in addition to classes and ran in conjunction with the practicums. The grueling program of practicums and work would ensure that the students, when graduated, had adequate hands-on experience in general nursing and three nursing specialties: obstetrics, pediatrics, and surgery.
The demanding pace served to weed out those women whose commitment to nursing was anything less than absolute—and students who made mistakes or who rebelled at the strict discipline were assigned punishment duties in addition to their assigned shifts.
Tabitha and five of her classmates were assigned to a cohort under the supervision of a staff nurse named Caroline Rasmussen. Nurse Rasmussen was practically an institution at the school, known widely for her inflexible disposition.
Tabitha and her fellow nurses heard the rumor that Nurse Rasmussen’s uncle had left a sizable fortune to the medical school—cutting out his niece and nephew in lieu of leaving a lasting legacy to his name. The uncle, however, had not forgotten his duty toward Nurse Rasmussen and her brother.
According to the rumors, the uncle’s will had stipulated that the school install Nurse Rasmussen (who was, at the time of his death and the reading of the will, already a nurse in good standing at the hospital) as a tenured instructor in the school. The will had also stipulated that the institution employ her younger brother in a laborer position suited to his abilities. The school trustees were all too willing to accommodate the stipulations in return for the promised perpetual endowment—an ongoing source of funding for the school.
As Tabitha and her classmates assembled in a line before the stern nurse, Tabitha had a sudden, disconcerting premonition.
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