A Dream to Follow (27 page)

Elizabeth looked up to see such compassion on the face of the older woman that she caught her breath. “Why . . . why are you doing this for me?”

“Because I feel God has given me a second chance in you.”

The confusion on her face must have been evident, for Mrs. Josephson patted her hand. “Someday I will tell you a long story, but for now let us go visit with my friend. She is looking forward to meeting you.”

“And I her. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am for this opportunity.”

“Who knows what God has in mind.”

The carriage stopped in front of a brick building with the door and frame painted white. Red geraniums filled the window boxes as well as two urns on either side of the door. The building glowed like a rosebush in the middle of a thorn field. The tenement buildings lining both sides of the street burgeoned with despair, their broken windows leaking the miasma of hopelessness. Flies rose in a blue cloud from the body of a cat lying in the gutter. Tin cans and other garbage were piled by a broken tree trunk, where once a bit of green had lived. A baby squalled, shut off by the sound of a slap and a curse.

Hand in hand two little girls watched the open carriage with round eyes.

Elizabeth wanted to take them back to the hotel for a bath and a good meal, buy them each a dress and a doll, and never bring them back to such filth.

“Come.” Mrs. Josephson took her arm, and they mounted the steps to enter a room filled with women and children like the two outside. Crying babies, children too tired to cry, and mothers with eyes as vacant as the derelict windows on the street outside were everywhere. Elizabeth stopped to take it all in.

“Come,” Mrs. Josephson said again and led her down the hall. Walls painted white, floor waxed to a shine, gas fixtures lighting the way, windows in the rooms off the hall with glass that sparkled in the sun—this oasis of cleanliness and order resided in a desert of degradation.

They stopped in front of a polished oak door and knocked.

“Come in.”

“We have come.” Mrs. Josephson opened the door and motioned Elizabeth to go before her. “I have brought her to you, as I promised. Dr. Morganstein, may I present Miss Elizabeth Rogers of Northfield, Minnesota, which is not far from Minneapolis.”

“Thank you, dear Issy.” Hand extended, a six-foot-tall woman with pince-nez on the end of an extraordinary nose came around the desk to grasp Elizabeth’s hand. Her gray hair in a haphazard bun with a pencil stuck in it and her stethoscope looped in the pocket of her allencompassing white apron, Dr. Morganstein would have intimidated a big man, let alone a young college student—until Elizabeth looked into her eyes. If God lived on earth, His eyes would be like the doctor’s, Elizabeth decided. Or rather this woman had eyes like Jesus surely had. Dark, fringed with long lashes, brows thick but quick to arch, and a gaze so full of love that Elizabeth felt her throat tighten.
Oh, God, please let me work with this woman
. The prayer went heavenward even as her hand met the doctor’s.

Dr. Morganstein covered Elizabeth’s hand with her other and, nodding, looked deep into her eyes. “Yes, yes.”

The slight sibilance on the
s
made Elizabeth think English was not this woman’s native tongue.

“Sit down, my dears, please sit. I have half an hour before I must be in surgery, and I want to know all about you.”

“Know about me?” Elizabeth’s voice squeaked on the last word.

“Yes, and then I shall have my head nurse, Mrs. Korsheski, show you around. I was hoping for more time together, but this case that came in is close to an emergency.”

At the end of the half hour Elizabeth felt as if she’d been interrogated rather than interviewed, but in a pleasing way.

“She’ll do.” Dr. Morganstein tapped her knuckles on a stack of papers on her chart-buried desk and rose to leave the room. “Thank you, dear Issy, for finding her for us.”

“Th-thank you for the time.” Elizabeth stood and shook the doctor’s hand again. How she would love to turn that desk into the same kind of order she had done for Dr. Gaskin and for her father. Perhaps she could work here next summer. The thought darted through like a swallow on a bug hunt.

The tour, led by a tiny human dynamo, led her upstairs and down, through wards and nurseries, surgeries and storage. By the time she returned to Mrs. Josephson, who had remained in the doctor’s office bringing some order to the chaotic desk, Elizabeth felt as though she’d been racing. She thanked her guide, who rushed off when someone called her, and turned to Mrs. Josephson, shaking her head. “I cannot believe this place.”

“It is amazing, is it not, and what you don’t realize is how much is accomplished here with minimal funds. Althea is a wonder. That is for sure. Come now, we will have tea at the hotel. If your mother would like to join us . . .”

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “Thank you beyond words. I will ask her if she would like to.”

Looking back a few days later as the train chugged westward, Elizabeth thought the visit to the hospital to be far beyond her wildest hopes. It was more like a turning point in her life, if that were possible. While she’d gone to Chicago hoping to meet the doctor, she was returning home with two new friends, and from what she could gather, friends in high places.

Would getting into medical school really be as easy as Mrs. Josephson had said?

CHAPTER TWENTY-Three

Blessing, North Dakota
August 1893

“Manda, I’ll be leaving in the mornin’,” said Zeb MacCallister, leaning against the fence.

“I want to come along.” Manda kept her gaze on the horse she had trotting around the corral on the end of a long light rope. She clucked and flicked the rope to signal an increase in speed.

“No. I’m sorry, but Montana is no place for a young woman.”

“You say your ranch is so beautiful. Who keeps your ranch house for you, cooks and cleans while you do the chores?”

“No one. My ranch house, as you call it, is nothing more than a log shack. I have a half-breed Sioux who helps me with the horses. Besides, we’re not at the homestead much. We travel with the herd to find grazin’.”

Manda tugged on the rope, and the horse turned willingly toward her. “The ones you brought weren’t even broken, least not all of them. I could do that for you there, well as here.” She kept her concentration on the horse, her body loose but for chewing on her lower lip.

Zeb leaned his chin on his arms crossed on the top rail of the corral. “I know you could. But what about Deborah? She’d be heartbroken if you left. She’s had too many people leave her already.”

“She’d understand. She has Thomas and Johnny now. She likes being the big sister.” She looked to the man she’d learned to call Pa. “I don’t belong here. She does.”

“What do you mean? You . . .” He stopped when she gestured to her pants and boots. “Skirts, pants, has nothin’ to do with who you are.”

Manda leveled him a look that clearly said she believed otherwise. “I live a rough life.”

“And our dugout wasn’t?”

“Manda, Zeb, breakfast.” Mary Martha waved to them from the long front porch of the house. While others in the valley had built two-story houses, this one hugged the ground, growing out sideways as they needed more room. The porch that used to front the entire house was now bracketed by rooms at either end like arms wide open in welcome.

“Be right there.” Manda took the rope under the horse’s chin and rubbed his ears. “Good horse.” She untied the knot and let the gelding go, then coiled her rope and left it hanging on a corral post before she and Zeb strode on up to the house.

As soon as they washed up and sat down at the table, Deborah filled her father’s cup with coffee. “You want some?” she asked Manda, then tongue between her compressed lips, she carefully poured that one too.

“Thank you very kindly,” Zeb said with a smile. “You’re growin’ up faster than pokeweed.”

“What’s pokeweed?” Deborah took the chair beside him.

“Down south where I come from, pokeweed is one of the first spring greens. Grows so fast that if you blink, it’s taller’n you.” He looked up to see Manda studying his face. “We called it poke, is all.”

“I’m growing fast as pokeweed too.” Johnny pointed at his bare chest, earning a smile from his uncle.

“Pa-a-a.” But Deborah looked at him out of the corner of her eye, as if not sure if he was teasing.

Manda snorted. “Pigweed grows just as fast.”
I’m going to Montana with you or trailing behind you, but I’m going
.

Mary Martha set a platter of pancakes in the center of the table. “Let’s have grace. Manda, would you please?”

Manda swallowed a huff. “Dear Lord, bless this food and us. Amen.”

“My, that was short and sweet.” Mary Martha set a platter of sliced ham on Zeb’s right. “Please start the passin’.” When she returned with another platter of fried eggs all sunny-side up, she took her seat with a sigh. “I thought that cloud cover from last night might cool us off, but don’t reckon it will.”

“How long since it rained?” Zeb dished up an egg for Thomas sitting on a box on a chair to his left.

“First of May. Drought was real bad for two years before last. How was it in Montana?”

“Dry, but we had some rain.”

Manda filled her plate and refilled her mouth as fast as she could chew and swallow. The conversation swirled around her, but all she could think was that he’d turned her down. Her pa didn’t want her along. All this time she’d been planning and dreaming of moving to Montana. Even thought about just heading west to see if she could find him. Some father. If he hadn’t wanted them, why’d he go and adopt them both?

But she knew the answer as well as she knew her horses. Everything had changed when Katy died. She raised her eyes to glare at the man across from her who laughed with Deborah like he had all of a lifetime to spend with them. Instead, he was leaving.

As if feeling Manda’s anger, he looked up, puzzlement wrinkling his forehead.

She stared down at her now empty plate. “May I be excused, please?”

“Of course.” Mary Martha looked from Manda to Zeb and back again, her mouth pursing as her head nodded slightly.

“Ma?” Thomas held up his empty plate. “More?”

In the break of attention, Manda slipped from the table and out the door more quietly than any wild thing. Once outside, she dogtrotted to the small pasture where her horse, Cheyenne, grazed. She whistled, a three-tone whistle she used only for Cheyenne. The filly trotted over to the fence and blew in Manda’s face, a soft whuffle that combined both nicker and snort. Manda slipped her latigo around the bright sorrel neck and flipped a loop over the animal’s nose. Leading her out of the gate, Manda pulled the bars back in place and swung aboard without even grasping the mane. She kept the high-stepping horse to a jog until they were far enough from the house that they couldn’t be heard, then she leaned forward and tightened her legs. The filly leveled out in a mane-whipping gallop, her hooves staccato against the hard dirt road.

Manda rode south to bypass the Bjorklund farms, then north along the river. Baptiste had said he would be fishing today since Metiz wanted to dry fish for the winter. Knowing where most of his favorite fishing holes were, she only slowed to make sure he wasn’t sitting on the bank with a pole or setting his trotlines. When she saw him, she dismounted and tied the filly to a willow branch.

“You’re in a hurry.” He turned to watch her approach, reading her face as only he knew how. “What’s wrong?”

Manda plunked down beside him. “Zeb is leaving in the morning.”

“Alone?”

She nodded. “I tried to talk him into taking me along, but he said no.”

Baptiste watched a leaf drift by on a slow swirl. “You think Montana is better than here?”

“I think in Montana we could be together.” There, she’d said it—the words that had been drumming at her waking and sleeping. She knew he’d never be more than her friend if they stayed here. But Montana . . .

Baptiste nodded.

Manda pulled a stem of grass and nibbled on the tender end. At least here along the riverbank grass still grew.