A Dream to Follow (18 page)

Dear God, please let him be alive
. She had heard the terror in the father’s voice.
“My boy ain’t . . .” Breathing
was the word she inserted in the blank. But surely he would have brought the child with him if that were the case.

Her father needed no encouragement to set his pacer at full speed. The thud of hooves on the hard-packed road ticked away the seconds, seconds that could mean life or death.

Lord, please, no tracheotomy
. Elizabeth had assisted the doctor in one, but the thought of cutting into a child’s throat sent terror clamping her own. Where was Dr. Gaskin? If he was home, why had he not answered the door? So many questions and no answers.

“Turn here.” She pointed to the right. Thank God for moonlight. She’d never have known where to turn if it were pouring rain. But then, a pouring rain would be welcome relief from the drought. Living in town, she hadn’t felt the full brunt like the farmers had, but no one talked of much else.

“I think it is the third farm on this road.”

“All right.” Her father’s gentle voice helped calm her racing heart. “That house with all the lamps in the windows must be the place.”

He slowed the horse, whose breath whistled through extended nostrils from its fast pace. When they turned into the lane, a dog leaped from the ditch, barking at the buggy wheels. The pacer ignored the dog and picked up speed again, the rougher road rocking the buggy.

Elizabeth hung on to the seat with both hands. Getting her or the bag tossed out of the buggy wouldn’t help anyone.

“Thanks.” She leaped to the ground the instant the buggy shuddered to a stop. The door flew open, and the weeping mother grabbed her arm. “In here. Where’s the doctor?”

“I don’t know. I sent your husband for the new doctor, but I’ll help if I can.”

“Baby’s got the croup. Even quit breathing for a time. God help us.” Her sobs shattered the words into quivering fragments.

Elizabeth heard the wheezing before she entered the room. While the sound sent chills to her very shoe soles, at least he was still alive.

“Get a kettle of water steaming.” She set her bag on the bed and turned to the baby.

The baby coughed and choked, his little back arching clear off the bed.

“How can I help?” Phillip Rogers stood in the doorway.

“We need to tent a sheet or towel or something over the kettle. I’ll hold his face in the steam to see if that helps him breathe.”

She picked up the child and set him against her shoulder, gently rubbing his back, trying to calm him. She paced to the kitchen, crooning comfort all the while.

As soon as the steam began to rise, she showed her father and the baby’s mother how to make the tent and then ducked under it to hold the baby in the hot, moist air. Within minutes she could feel the baby relax as the air penetrated his swollen airways. By the time the doctor and father arrived, the child lay sleeping on his mother’s shoulder as they sat in a rocking chair under the steam tent.

Dr. Johanson nodded to Elizabeth, his smile of congratulations warming her heart. “You did exactly what needed doing.” He listened to the baby’s lungs and nodded again, then turned to the parents. “Now you know what to do if this happens again. The sooner you get him into the steam, the better he will be.”

“He’d been coughing throughout the day and had finally gone to sleep, so I thought he was better.” The mother patted her baby’s back. Not quite a year old, the little boy now slept soundly, a faint whistling reminding them of the emergency.

“Miss Rogers, we can’t thank you enough.” The boy’s father reached for Elizabeth’s hand. “If it weren’t for you . . .” His voice choked.

“I’m just grateful that he responded so quickly.” She didn’t mention a tracheotomy, but the look she exchanged with the young doctor communicated the words she didn’t say. A slight shudder let her know he didn’t want to do one any more than she did.

She listened as he gave the parents instructions on caring for their baby, then followed him out the door. Once in the buggy heading back to town, she leaned against the seat back, feeling as if someone had pulled a plug and all her energy had drained out. Knowing how close the little boy had come to dying made her hands shake. Surely there must be something that could help children like that. Eyes closed, she reviewed her book of herbs and plants used for medicinal purposes. Nothing came to mind. But at that moment getting anything to stay in her mind was beyond her ability.

Her father shook her awake when he stopped the horse at the front door. The sky had faded from deep azure to gray.

She fell into bed and missed the sunrise. Only when her mother brought in a tea tray at midmorning did she stir.

“You should have wakened me.” Elizabeth threw back the sheet.

“You needed the sleep.” Annabelle Rogers set the tray on the end of the bed. “Dr. Gaskin said that when you wake he would appreciate your help in his office. Your father said that if you have extra time, he needs help in his office too.”

Elizabeth pushed back her hair and cocked an eyebrow. “And you’d like some help in your office?”

Annabelle laughed and shook her head. “I can handle my office just fine.” She poured a cup of tea and laid cinnamon toast points on the saucer. “Here.”

“Thank you.” Elizabeth inhaled the aroma. “Sure better than the last steam.” She sipped her tea, ate her toast, and told her mother what had happened.

“So many things we have learned in the medical field, so many wonderful advances, yet a baby can die of croup.”

“It sounds to me that you did what had to be done. According to your father, you’re a heroine.”

Elizabeth humphed and shook her head, her hair falling in a veil as she stared into her teacup. “Someday, Mother, I want to find ways to save babies and mothers having babies.”

“You think to learn those things in medical school?”

Elizabeth tucked her hair behind an ear and gazed at her mother. “I hope so. I certainly hope so.”

A robin singing in the tree outside her window was the only sound as the quiet second stretched into minutes. Elizabeth let her mind explore the images of babies and mothers that peopled her head. Laughing, crying, living, dying—some she’d known and others existed only in her dreams. Who were they, and how could she help?

She heaved a sigh and leaned forward to set her cup and saucer on the tray. The pink rosebud in the crystal bud vase caught her attention. She reached a gentle finger and caressed the furled petals.

“Thank you, Mother. You bring such beauty into my life.” She looked up to catch a gleam of tears in her mother’s eyes.
I don’t say thank-you enough. None of us do
.

“You’re most welcome.” Annabelle set down her cup and reached to hug her daughter. “Moments like these I will treasure all my life.”

A song sparrow added his aria to the robin’s. Honeysuckle wafted in on the breeze that teased the sheer curtains at the window.

Elizabeth stretched and set her feet on the floor. “I better go see what Dr. Gaskin needs. Fortunately I found a housekeeper to start tomorrow for him. Her name is Hope Haugen.”

Her mother arched an eyebrow.

“He needs a nurse too.”

“I know. He thinks he has that in me.”

“But we will be leaving for Chicago next week. Then what will he do?”

“That’s another one of my jobs—to find a nurse to fill in while I am gone. I’ve already arranged for some to come in for interviews today. Here’s hoping whoever we hire will like being there so much she will stay on.”

On her way out of the house, Elizabeth thought longingly to the gazebo in the backyard. Set to catch any errant breeze and perfumed by the wisteria and roses that grew over and around it, the gazebo beckoned. She loved curling up in the hammock to read and dream away a hot summer afternoon, that is, when these two offices weren’t calling for her.

Wearing a lightweight yellow daisy-sprigged cotton dress as a concession to the temperature, she slipped into the side door of the doctor’s house so she wouldn’t have to go through the waiting room.

“Elizabeth, is that you?” The doctor’s voice came from one of the examining rooms.

“Yes.” She debated checking those patients waiting or answering the querulous tone that told her Dr. Gaskin was already fed up to the eyebrows with seeing patients when the day was not yet half over.

“I never realized all that his wife did for him,” she muttered under her breath. He’d always seemed such an even-tempered man before.

But he’d never lost his wife before, remember?
The voice in her head made perfect sense. She took in a deep breath and headed for the nearest closed door of the two examining rooms. She tapped and entered on command.

“Hold this arm for me, will you?” the doctor instructed.

The tears on the boy’s face told of his pain.

“What happened, Johnny?” Elizabeth took in the situation at a glance. The boy’s mother held a handkerchief to her eyes instead of comforting her son. Usually she was the one in that family who came running to the doctor with every headache or feared disease.

“I . . . I fell out of the apple tree.”

“I told him not to climb trees, that he was going to fall and break something, and now, see, he has done just that. Oh, this is giving me such a headache.” The woman sank down in the chair, her face pale and beaded with perspiration.

“It is awfully warm in here,” Elizabeth said. “What if I open the window and see if we can find a breeze?”

“Hold his shoulder there first.” Doc indicated with a nod. “It’s just a simple break. I want to make sure the bones are in alignment.”

“Easy, son, this will be over in a minute.”

With Elizabeth’s hands on the shoulder, the doctor pulled gently on the hand and wrist. A soft snap, a muffled shriek from the patient, and a sigh of satisfaction from the doctor. “There now. I’ll splint it, and you can wear it in a sling for a few weeks. But don’t you go climbing any more trees.”

“Hear that? You have to do what the doctor says.” A large sniff accompanied the pronouncement.

Elizabeth and the doctor exchanged glances, then turned their attention back to the boy on the examining table.

“Someday I’m going to be a doctor.” Johnny’s gaze followed every movement Dr. Gaskin made.

“Really? Me too.”

Johnny looked at her, disgust evident in his hazel eyes. “You can’t be a doctor. You’re a lady.”

That’s what you think
. But Elizabeth only raised one eyebrow.

“You better hope she gets to be a doctor.” Dr. Gaskin continued to wrap gauze around the splinted arm. “She’s going to take over for me.”

“Why?”

“I’m getting too old. That’s why.” He knotted the tails of the bandage. “Now you be real careful with this. You don’t want to end up with a crooked arm. You’ll never make a doctor if you have a crooked arm.”

Elizabeth took a square of white cloth from a drawer and folded it into a triangle. Slipping it under his arm, she tied the tails in a knot behind his neck and then pinned the other corner around his elbow.

“Now promise me you will keep this sling on all the time.”

“Even when I’m sleeping?”

“No, you can take it off then. Come back in three weeks and let the doctor see it again.”

“But . . . but I can’t play baseball like this.”

“That’s the point.”

“And I can’t go swimming.”

“I know.”

“This is going to be a terrible, awful summer.”

“At least you won’t be climbing any more trees.” The mother rose and headed for the door. “Come, Johnny. Thank you, Doctor. You may send the bill to my husband’s office.”

Even Elizabeth could tell that wasn’t a question. And since she was the one doing the accounts, she knew the woman’s husband didn’t pay his bills regularly. This time she would include a more forceful reminder whether the doctor wanted her to or not. This family was different from many. They had the money to pay their bills, or at least it seemed that way.

She waved Johnny off with a reminder to keep the sling on, then straightened up the room. More patients awaited attention.

Later, when a lull finally occurred, she pointed the doctor to an easy chair in his office. “I’ll get you a glass of lemonade.”

“There isn’t any. I drank it all.”

Elizabeth thought of the large pitcher she’d made the day before. Did he take a bath in it? “I’ll make more,” she said and headed for the kitchen. Thank goodness the new housekeeper would be there in the morning. When she returned some time later, Dr. Gaskin lay back in his leather chair sound asleep. Dark shadows circled his eyes, and new lines channeled from nose to chin. His cheeks appeared sunken, as if he’d not eaten for weeks.

A soft snore fluttered lips that used to smile more than frown. Somewhere along the way, they’d forgotten how.

She set the glass down on the blotter of his desk and gently closed the door behind her.

He must have been out on a call most of the night.

But he wasn’t. When he told her later that he hadn’t heard the man pounding on his door, she started to say something and stopped. How could he not have heard?

“Were you sick?”