Of Flesh and Blood (31 page)

“I see.” Evan swallowed hard. He did not understand why he was so shocked. Women were supposed to become pregnant once married. But the idea of Olivia carrying another man’s child ripped open a wound that had never really healed. There was something heartbreakingly final about her pregnancy. It made Evan feel utterly alone in the world.

“We don’t need no audience here.” A gruff voice from nearby pulled Evan from his despair.

Ire rising even before he located the source, Evan swiveled his head to see the squat, beady-eyed foreman, Patrick Flynn, marching nearer and shaking a finger at them. The man wore dirty overalls with numerous tools dangling from his belt, and the wooden shaft of his hammer swung back and forth across his hip with each bounding step closer.

“What did you just say?” Evan snapped.

“You heard me,” Flynn croaked. “Me and the boys know how to put up a brick shithouse like this one. We could do it in our sleep. We don’t need no soft-handed doctor watching over us with his own nigger in tow.”

Moses didn’t show a trace of reaction, but Evan straightened upright. His lip curled into a sneer, but he was too angry to speak.

“We don’t need you here,” Flynn went on. “And we don’t want you watching over us no more. So why don’t you take that nigger pet of yours—”

Evan’s recent losses all melded into a fury he had never known. He swung his arm wildly and hit the foreman full force in the mouth with a cocked fist.

Flynn shrieked in surprise and pain. Before he could even raise his hands up to his defense, Evan dove forward and knocked the man to the ground. He struck and punched wildly, but the foreman had quick reflexes. Most of Evan’s blows smashed futilely into the dirt. The agile little bulldog soon squirmed free of Evan’s grip and managed to land a few punches to the side
of the doctor’s head. Then Flynn flipped him over onto his back, pinning his surprisingly heavy frame into Evan’s chest.

“You lily-livered pansy,” Flynn hissed. Bloody spittle flew as the foreman’s sour breath filled the air between them. “I’m going to teach you a lesson you didn’t get in school,” he said as he elbowed Evan in the jaw.

The pain only fueled Evan’s rage. He heaved up with all his might and managed to roll Flynn over. The momentum sent them going side-over-side for three or four turns, stopping only when they reached the edge of the pit.

Evan heard the shouts of the workers, who were dropping their tools and hurrying over to watch the fight, but he ignored them. Capitalizing on his size advantage, he was able to pin Flynn’s arms back by the wrists and squeeze hard.

His anger subsided as he held the squirming little man in place. “Apologize to Mr. Brown, and I will free you.”

“All right, all right,” Flynn panted. “Just ease up on my wrists before you snap them. I need ’em for building.”

Evan relaxed his grip slightly. Flynn looked over to Moses as if to speak. Suddenly he spun his head back and spat a moist bloody gob straight into Evan’s eye. As Evan recoiled in surprise and disgust, Flynn launched his bent knee into Evan’s crotch.

The agony winded the doctor. Before he could catch a breath, Flynn had slipped out of the hold and scrambled to his knees. With a flurry of punches and kicks, the foreman wound up kneeling over Evan. Flynn drew his hammer from his tool belt as though he were a gunfighter. He held it cocked above his head, ready to swing. His small eyes were ablaze with hatred. “You have this coming, McGrath.”

Evan’s arms flew up to protect his head. Shielding his eyes, he endured a moment of blind anticipation. Nothing happened. He lowered a hand and saw that the hammer was suspended over the foreman’s head. It took Evan a moment to realize that Moses was holding back the head of the hammer with one hand while his other arm wrapped tightly around Flynn’s neck.

“I don’t think you want to do that, Mr. Flynn,” Moses said calmly, as he wrenched the hammer free from Flynn’s hand.

Eyes bulging with fear, Flynn choked, “No.”

“I think all your differences have been settled now,” Moses said in a tone that was almost soothing. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Flynn?”

Flynn nodded as best he could while trapped in the headlock.

“Dr. McGrath and I will be on our way now,” Moses said, as he released Flynn from the headlock.

Flynn sputtered and gasped. He hopped to his feet and quickly backpedaled away from Moses and the pit. Evan was in too much pain to move. Moses reached down and with one hand pulled him to his feet.

The shouts and catcalls from the other laborers had grown louder as many of them collected around the two interlopers. The men now formed a semicircle bordered by the edge of the pit. Several glared menacingly. Evan realized that if they were to turn on them, Moses and he might wind up as a permanent part of the clinic’s foundation.

Moses acted as though he were oblivious to the angry mob encircling them. He carefully dusted off his jacket sleeves and pant legs. He tossed Flynn’s hammer at the feet of the still-coughing foreman. Then, grabbing hold of Evan’s elbow, he leisurely led the doctor away from the pit. They still had to pass through the line of laborers who now stood shoulder-to-shoulder. But Brown’s unflappable poise had an almost hypnotic effect, and the men parted for them. Even Flynn said nothing as they trudged away from the site.

The next day, Moses Brown returned to Seattle to resume his job at the Catholic hospital, while Evan remained in Oakdale. He soon received a terse letter from Marshall Alfredson, requesting that he “refrain from launching unprovoked assaults on the builders, as it might lead to unnecessary construction delays.” Though Evan continued to return to the building site daily, he had no further run-ins with the workers; not even Flynn. They largely ignored him, treating Evan as though he were an immovable landscape feature that they had to work around.

Evan recognized he served no real purpose in Oakdale, but he could not bring himself to return to Seattle. The memory of Virginia’s death was still too vivid. And he was unwilling to risk the emotional trauma from a chance encounter with the pregnant Olivia, hoping that maintaining a safe distance from her might ease his heartache. But it didn’t.

Evan even found work for himself in Oakdale. The only other doctor in town, an ancient Southerner named Dr. Miles Green, was effectively crippled by severe angina and welcomed the younger doctor’s help.

One day, as they stood in their dusty office in the late afternoon, Green offered Evan a sip of whisky from his hip flask. Evan felt obliged to have a
drink, but the firewater went down like razor blades and he had to fight back a gag.

“Country doctoring isn’t quite the same as the big city. Would you not agree, Dr. McGrath?” Green mused in his Southern twang.

“I would,” Evan croaked.

“No nurses. No hospital. Hell, we are our own apothecary.” Green assembled an imaginary ball with his weathered hands. “Patch ’em up as best we can. That’s all we can offer these folks. And that’s all they expect of us, too.”

Evan liked the old doctor, but he could not hold his tongue. “With respect, Dr. Green, I think your attitude is outdated. I believe all doctors are obliged to offer a high level of care based on current knowledge and the most sound practice.”

Green took another sip from his flask. When he pulled it from his lips, his watery eyes had lit with amusement. “Young doctors!” He laughed. “I remember what it was like to be one, myself. All that solemn passion and blind faith. How I wish it lasted.”

Green held out the whisky, but Evan waved it away. The old man toasted him with the flask. “I do hope I live to behold this revolutionary clinic of yours, Dr. McGrath. I surely do.”

Nine days after their conversation Green dropped dead of a heart attack. Evan assumed medical care of all residents of Oakdale. He enjoyed his role of small-town doctor, and it still allowed him time to concentrate on shaping the direction of the Alfredson Clinic.

Evan wrote letters to every distinguished physician, surgeon, and medical researcher of whom he knew, inviting them to Oakdale to participate in the new venture. Predictably, he received reams of polite refusals, but he was not dissuaded or discouraged. Within a month of his campaign, he was elated to receive his first letter of acceptance from a noted intestinal specialist practicing in Portland, Oregon, who was seeking a “new challenge.” As the word leaked out, other positive responses began to trickle in from doctors as far away as Chicago. By the end of the summer, Evan had commitments from fourteen doctors—though he had yet to work out with Marshall how they would be paid—with specialty interests as diverse as ophthalmology, urology, pulmonology, and pathology.

Evan had been unable to sell his home in Seattle, whose real estate
market still stagnated in the wake of the depression that followed the global financial panic of 1893. He could only afford to rent a room in a quaint Queen Anne–style house on the outskirts of Oakdale. It was owned by a pleasant, though nosy, spinster in her early fifties named Stella Hathaway.

An excellent cook, Stella prepared all his meals. Within a few weeks of moving in, Evan noticed that his clothes no longer hung off him as though he were a drying rack.

One day in early July, the short rotund woman excitedly announced that her niece, Grace, would be joining them for dinner. “She is a working woman,” Stella whispered with a deference that verged on awe. “A schoolteacher.”

Returning to the house that evening, Evan was surprised by how much effort his landlady had put into her niece’s visit. She had lit decorative red candles in all the rooms. A white tablecloth covered the worn pine table, while crystal and silver flatware replaced the usual plain cups and cutlery.

Stella was atwitter with excitement and nerves as she led her niece into the living room to introduce her to Evan. Grace Hathaway wore a simple blue dress with a bow tied behind her waist. Plump, but not fat, the twenty-two-year-old had a round face grooved with faint acne scars. Her pleasant gray eyes complemented her kind smile, but the feature that struck Evan most was her flaming red hair.

Though reserved at first, Grace soon relaxed in his presence. She had an endearing tendency of hanging on every word spoken. And Evan found her easy soft laugh infectious.

After a feast of fried chicken, garden vegetables, homemade bread, and mashed potatoes, Stella plated generous portions of freshly baked apple pie. Between mouthfuls, Evan asked, “Miss Hathaway, where do you teach?”

She smiled. “In a small schoolhouse near Everett.”

Evan knew of the town sixty miles north of Seattle, but he had never visited. “What sort of school is it?”

“Not much of one, I am afraid, Dr. McGrath.” Grace uttered one of her infectious laughs. “A simple one-room school, two miles outside of town. The children all live on nearby farms. I teach first through seventh grade.”

Evan swallowed a mouthful of pie. “That must be a challenge,” he said.

“Indeed. The older children can be real rascals.” Grace chuckled again.
“I fear turning to face the chalkboard. I never know what sort of projectiles will be launched at my back.”

Evan laughed heartily. “I am afraid I was exactly that sort of a troublemaker during my school days. And I have the permanently scarred knuckles to prove it.”

“I find that hard to believe, Dr. McGrath.” She glanced at his hands as though checking for herself.

Evan lowered his fork. “May I ask what drew you to teaching, Miss Hathaway?”

Grace blushed. “I love children,” she said with a slight shrug. “And I love to see them learn. To grow. It is the most rewarding experience to watch a child become a reader, Dr. McGrath.”

Evan nodded. “Yes, I imagine it would be.”

“And medicine, Dr. McGrath?” she said expectantly.

“I am no good at anything else,” he said flatly.

Stella, who had silently beamed in her seat as she drank in the playfulness between the other two, spoke up. “Dr. McGrath is building a special new hospital outside of Oakdale.”

“How wonderful,” Grace said. “What will it be like?”

“It will not be that special.” Evan shrugged modestly, but he went on to describe it to her in excited detail.

“It sounds more than special, Dr. McGrath. I have such admiration for medical practitioners.” Her fair skin flushed deeper. “I have read every book by and about Miss Florence Nightingale. She is so brave and wonderful. I would never have the nerve to do anything like that.” She giggled.

Evan stared at Grace, transfixed by her red hair. “What you do is noble, too, Olivia—excuse me—I mean . . .” He stuttered and reddened. “Miss Hathaway.”

By the time the plates were cleared, Evan realized that he would marry Grace Hathaway.

Tyler gazed out the east-facing window at Le Bistro and drank in the panoramic mountain view. The Cascades broke through the low-lying clouds and seemed to hover over the town of Oakdale, as though suspended in the sky like Mount Olympus. Across the table, his grandmother, Liesbeth Vanderhof, was too preoccupied with her meal to notice the scenery. The frail woman struggled to cut another bite of her salmon.

Two years earlier, Liesbeth had been forced to move into an assisted-living elder care home because her rheumatoid arthritis had gnarled her hands and fingers so badly that she could no longer cook, clean, or launder for herself. The widow seemed perfectly happy with her new home, where the meals and cleaning were provided for her. However, despite her busy social life there, Liesbeth refused to entertain anyone from “the outside” at the residence. “It’s too pitiful,” she once told Tyler in her laughing voice. “I would never drag my family to some nursing home to see me. I don’t want them to remember me like that.”

Her modern building could have easily been mistaken for an ordinary apartment complex, but Liesbeth was nothing if not proud. Despite her arthritic knees she insisted on walking the three blocks, regardless of the weather, to catch a bus to meet Tyler for lunch. One of the few luxuries she did allow herself was fine food. Le Bistro was her favorite. Over the past year, Tyler and she had fallen into a standing monthly lunch date. Initially she had tried to pay for every meal but, when he threatened to walk, she compromised on alternating turns at picking up the tab.