Ginny Aiken (21 page)

“Perhaps, then, they don’t belong in that flock.”

She got another shrug. A fat blond curl slipped from the cascade at the back of Daisy’s head and danced against the painted cheek. Letty ached at the vulnerability she saw. “How have you been?”

“Fine.”

Letty bit her lip as Daisy inspected the kitchen. The girl showed no inclination to leave anytime soon, which suited her just fine, but she didn’t want the visit wasted on one-syllable words.

Daisy continued her perusal, finally pausing by the typewriter. A graceful finger touched one metal key. “What is this?”

“A typewriting machine.”

“A . . . writing machine?”

“Mm-hmm.” Letty poured boiling water over tea leaves in the blue teapot. “Mr. Wagner’s been most generous. He let me borrow the thingamabob. I don’t need it, but it’s quite intriguing. Want to see?”

Daisy shrugged, donning a veneer of indifference. “Sure.”

I’ve found common ground,
Letty thought. She offered, “If I show you how, will you try it?”

“Maybe.”

Determined to turn that lukewarm word into burning interest, Letty showed Daisy the intricacies of the typewriter. Fascinated by keys slapping paper rolled over a metal cylinder, the girl soon fired round after round of astute questions. When she paused, Letty stood and pointed to the chair she’d just vacated. “Your turn, dear.”

Alarm flickered in Daisy’s eyes. Afraid the girl might leave, Letty placed her hands on her young friend’s slender shoulders and guided her into the chair. Then she said, “You place your hands like so.”

Daisy proved bright and capable. Her interest gave Letty an idea. Maybe this would offer the girl a way out of the world where she currently lived. Well before teacher or student called the lesson’s end, however, someone cried for Letty.

Outside she found a panting, sawdust-covered youth. “Dr. Morgan, hurry, please. One of our men on Main Street—he hurts mighty bad.”

Letty flung her cape over her shoulders. She grabbed her bag and returned to the kitchen. The back door closed. Daisy had fled.

Lord Jesus, please don’t let this be the last time she comes.

Back with the young man, Letty said, “Let’s go.”

At the far end of Main Street, she found a crowd where men worked on a half-done structure. She bustled up to the onlookers. “Please move aside.”

A path cleared. She set her black leather satchel on the ground near a man who twisted and turned in testimony to his pain. Holding her skirt out of the way, she knelt at his side and placed a hand on the man’s sweat-beaded brow. “Where does it hurt, sir?”

“Gut,” he grunted. Another paroxysm convulsed him.

Letty tried to form a picture of the man’s symptoms. “The pain comes in spasms, right?”

He nodded.

She turned to her bag and opened the top. Withdrawing a vial with a dropping tube in its top, she asked, “Does it feel as if someone’s wringing your insides?”

He gave another jerky assent.

“Has it happened before?”

“Not this bad.”

“What did you eat last night?”

Her patient described a meal that counted bacon, eggs, biscuits with butter, and a cream-pudding pie—very rich fare. “Colocynthis, for digestive distress with cramping, is the best remedy for you,” she murmured. “Help me, please. I need you to hold your head still while I place the remedy under your tongue. You should feel better after your body absorbs it.”

Despite his pain, the man fought to hold still. When he opened his mouth and moved his tongue aside, Letty counted out the medicated drops and prayed for swift relief.

She looked around for a familiar face but found none. “Can someone take him home? In a buggy?”

“Yes, ma’am,” answered the youth who’d fetched her. “I brought Pa’s cart today for supplies. I’ll take Harry.”

“Thank you. Although Colocynthis works fast on troubled gallbladders, he’ll be exhausted from the pain. He needs rest.” She turned to Harry. “Only simple, soft foods now. Nothing heavy or highly seasoned, either, and you’ll have to take to bed for the remainder of the day.”

The workman nodded. Then another cramp hit, and he gritted his teeth. When it passed, he conceded, “That one weren’t so bad. Thank you, ma’am.”

Letty stood and shook bits of dirt from her skirt. She turned to the youth who’d fetched her. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll give you more pellets for him to take later on. I’m sure he’ll feel
better by the time you get back here, and then you can take him home.”

With the young man at her side, Letty walked home. A chorus of admiring comments followed, and a satisfied smile curved her lips.

Still puzzling over the Swartleys’ possible backers, Eric strode down Main Street toward the livery. Surely not someone local, was it? If so, who stood to gain? Hart had all he could manage with his mine, yet Eric knew the Swartleys had ordered mining gear—costly indeed.

They’d made their intentions clear, as clear as the cost of the proposition. Then there was the money they paid busted claim holders. True, each sum was negligible, but when he studied the entire picture, he saw a pattern of greed and wealth. Greed the Swartleys had; wealth, they lacked. So who had it?

“Eric! Eric Wagner. You wait right there, young man.”

Setting aside his concerns over the Swartleys, Eric turned toward the summons. Despite a generous girth, Dr. Mortimer Henry Medford stomped toward him, his cow-handled cane rapping furiously.

Each time Eric saw the walking stick, he had to fight a chuckle. The successful surgeon spent his time away from medicine seeking new ways to pamper himself. The cane, absurd though it was, had cost a small fortune, for the cow head was of African ivory and the stick of Oriental teak.

Dr. Medford nearly bowled Eric over. “You simply
must
do something, Eric Wagner. It’s all your fault.”

The fury in the doctor’s puffy red features took him aback. Calling on his interviewing experience, he corralled his irritation. “Since I have no idea what you say I’ve done, I need you to tell me what you’ve taken exception to.”

Dr. Medford wagged the stick at Eric. “Why, that woman, of course. Who does she think she is?”

“If you would name her,” he said, even though his knotted innards told him who’d angered the surgeon, “then perhaps I could tell you who she thinks she is.”

“That accursed Dr. Morgan is who. And you’re the one who set her loose on Hartville. Why, now she’s stealing my patients.”

What had Letty done? Dreading the answer, Eric spoke again. “If you’d start at the beginning, perhaps I’d understand.”

Another shake of the cane threatened Eric’s hat. He backed away.

“She’s taken to treating men,” the fleshy gent said. “It was bad enough you brought a woman doctor to town, and an archaic homeopath at that, but you insisted she’d treat women and children. Mostly, she’d deliver babies, you said. Now, the creature is dosing workmen. For free!”

Dr. Medford raised his arms as if to emphasize his outrage at Letty’s dastardly behavior. Eric fought the urge to laugh.

The beefy sawbones went on. “We will
not
tolerate such a thing. You caused it, you handle it, young man. Or you’ll force the men of Hartville to take action.”

The surgeon stormed away.

How was Eric going to handle this development? He had yet to get Letty to look out for herself, and each time he’d tried to take care of her, to protect her, she’d invoked her adulthood. Well, he was an adult, too, and she was facing disaster. Somehow he had to stop her before she did herself permanent harm.

Across the country, physicians who opposed the simple methods and modest cost of homeopathic care had banded together and formed the American Medical Association. The rivalry was fierce, and Eric knew of cases in which homeopaths had been run out of town. With her staunch convictions, Letty had already incurred Dr. Medford’s wrath.

“Evening, Mr. Wagner.” The schoolmarm’s pruned-up face boded ill.

Eric answered warily. “Evening, Miss Whitehall.”

“I must say, sir, that’s a fine sort of doctor you brought us. Why, she’s mighty cozy with those . . . those floozies from Bessie Brown’s horrid place. Twice, sir, twice, I’ve seen painted women leave her house. To think I wasted time to welcome one of her sort to town.”

Eric clenched his jaw. A vicious gossip, Emmaline wouldn’t stop until she’d made Letty miserable, especially with the fuel she had.

He retorted, “A medical emergency, I’m sure.”

Emmaline’s nose rose higher in the air, her stiff lace collar tight around her skinny neck. “Humph! If that is so, then the tart deserved it. The wages of sin, you know.”

Her self-righteousness was as repulsive as the women she’d condemned. Eric’s annoyance with Emmaline grew. “Anyone who needs doctoring ought to seek a physician.”

Emmaline pursed her lips. “The physician needn’t treat just anyone,” she argued. “Our upstanding surgeon doesn’t treat strumpets. Why should our lady doctor do so?”

Precisely my contention,
he almost said, but he caught himself before betraying Letty. “Perhaps an overly developed sense of duty is at the root of what you saw.”

The schoolmarm clutched her black handbag tighter and tapped her umbrella on the sidewalk. “Maybe, maybe not. Still, it hardly suits.”

Eric couldn’t stand to hear more. “Good day, Miss Whitehall.” He then changed direction and set off after the indomitable Dr. Morgan.

The thought of Letty losing her patients, bearing the anger of the menfolk, or becoming the subject of Medford’s greed was more than Eric could stomach. Fear filled him, manifesting itself as rage.

Letty answered his knock immediately. Without waiting for an invitation, he marched past her. “Tell me, won’t you, what you’re trying to do,” he demanded. “I’ve warned you and warned you, and you’ve ignored me each time. Well, as I expected, the situation has worsened. I can’t even walk to the livery for my mares without folks running to me with complaints about the confounded woman doctor.

“I told you to avoid the prostitutes. No one in their right mind wants their womenfolk treated by the same physician who treats strumpets. Who knows what you might pick up from them and pass on to your other patients.”

Anger flashed silver in Letty’s eyes, but he was determined to have his say. If she persisted, it would be in total defiance of his directive. “Vice destroys innocent people. You will not treat those women again. You can’t afford to do so. The rest of the town’s women and children need you. Have I made myself clear?”

Eyes flashing, lips tight, cheeks red with wrath, Letty glared back. “How dare you tell me what I can and can’t do, Eric Wagner! You have no right to interfere with my work.”

A blade of pain sliced through him. Her words reminded him how much he wished he had the right to make his opinion count for her.

“I’m an adult,” she added, slamming both fists on her hips.

“True, but are you a wise one?”

She tipped up her chin. “Depends on whose wisdom you prefer.”

“What do you mean?

She paused and closed her eyes. “I mean,” she said, “I prefer God’s wisdom to that of men.”

Eric shook his head. “You can’t count on God. I did, and see what He left me? Two graves. Yes, He’s out there somewhere in heaven, but He doesn’t listen to regular folks like you and me.”

The tear that slid down her cheek bewildered him.

“Oh, Eric,” she murmured, a look of compassion on her face. “I’m so sorry you feel that way. God listens—always—but only answers in His way and in His time, not necessarily ours. I’ll pray for Him to show you that He has reasons for acting as well as for not doing a thing. We may never fully understand it, but His remains the wisdom that passes all understanding.”

“His wisdom has certainly passed my understanding. I’ll never understand why He didn’t keep me from failing Martina and our son.”

11

Although the sun shone through Letty’s window the next morning, she saw only the clouds cast by Eric’s rejection of God.

After he’d left, she’d closed her front door and fed the chickens. Unable to muster an appetite, she’d gone to her room and cried herself to sleep. Her damp pillow now bore testimony to a night of heartache.

What should she do? As she looked around the pink and white room, she knew discouragement for the first time in a long time.

She sat up, gathered her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around her legs. She felt more alone than she had the night of Mrs. Forrest’s wake, but she could no more betray her convictions than she could stop loving Eric.

The Father had called her to serve, and serve she would.

Why did Eric so oppose her efforts to help Daisy and Mim? She’d made herself clear, and even though her interest in the Pattersons irritated him, Eric hadn’t erupted like last night’s volcano when she’d helped them.

How could she love a man who wouldn’t understand her? One who discounted God and His calling on her life? How could she yearn for someone who wanted to cage her with his expectations?
She loved Eric, but she couldn’t capitulate to his demands. To do so, she’d have to turn her back on the Lord. Letty simply couldn’t—wouldn’t—do that.