No Distance Too Far (32 page)

“I should say the same to you.”
Brilliant.
What happened to her easy way of dealing with patients?

Eyes dueled with eyes, their faces swapping excitement.

“Would you like a soda?”

She nodded. Where had her words disappeared to?

“Rebecca apologized that the strawberries aren’t ripe yet.”

“Oh.”

“I have chocolate, strawberry, or raspberry syrup canned last year, or butterscotch.” Rebecca’s eyes danced, and her grin told Astrid she knew what was going on.

Astrid looked back to Joshua, as if her gaze was drawn to him beyond her strength.

“You have to make a choice.” Rebecca’s voice, overlaid with a giggle, drew her back.

Good grief, what was the matter with her?

“I’m having strawberry,” he told her.

How could such simple words sound like an aria? “Me too.”

Joshua spoke to Rebecca without taking his eyes from Astrid.

“That’ll be two strawberry sodas.”

“Thank you. I figured that out.” Rebecca kept a knowing grin from taking over her face—barely.

Benny stopped his cart beside Astrid. “I’ll have one too.”

“Oh, you will, will you?” His mother leaned over the counter to smile down at him. “I thought you were going over to play with Grant.”

“I am. But I would like to have a soda with My Doc.” He grinned up at Astrid. “You want me to have one too, right?”

“Of course. Why don’t you and I go outside and let Mr. Lands-verk bring them out?” She caught a very brief pained look that hid behind his smile. He hadn’t expected a chaperone. Neither had she. But Benny was special.

“Benny, you may join them for five minutes, and then I want you to take some cookies over to Sophie’s house.”

“All right.”

Astrid felt a tug on her heartstrings. Caught between two male admirers. What a quandary. “Come on then, let’s hurry so we can visit.”

Sitting down at the table on the porch, she clasped her hands in her lap and leaned forward, closer to his eye level. “So, my friend, how is school going for you?”

He grinned his irrepressible grin that she still carried in her heart from the hospital in Chicago. “I am learning to read—from a book, not just the blackboard. Do you know that two plus three is five?” His eyes danced. “Pastor Solberg says I am catching up fast.”

She started to say something, but he jumped in. “Do you know that people here in Blessing can talk with their hands? Sometimes teacher says, ‘No talking and no fingers.’ ” He signed his name for her. “Do you know what that means?”

“Your signs mean
Benjamin Valders
.”

“I know. That’s my new name. I got a mother and a papa and a new name. You fixed it for me.” He dropped his voice. “I don’t never want to go back to Chicago.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Rebecca and Gerald adopted you for all of your life.” She laid her hands along his jawbones. “Blessing is your home, Benny, for always.”

He tilted his head toward her right hand. “Thank you, My Doc. You the best friend ever.”

“That she is,” said Joshua, setting two sodas on the table and handing Benny the third.

“How do you know?” she wanted to ask but took a swallow of the sweet fizzy drink instead. “The perfect drink for a hot afternoon. What a treat. Thank you, Mr. Landsverk.”

Benny added his thanks. “I never had a soda before coming to my new home. Do they make sodas in Chicago?”

“Oh, I’m sure they do. How long until school is out?”

“Tomorrow’s the last day. I’m sad that I can’t go to school this summer.”

Joshua chuckled. “You need to tell that to Pastor Solberg. I’m sure he doesn’t hear such a thing very often.”

“There are lots of things to do here in the summer, but you can keep on reading and learning sign language and your arithmetic.”

“And if I’m home, maybe we can go fishing,” Joshua said, smiling down at the little boy. “I know some other boys who really like that.”

“A fishing party?”

“I guess you could call it that. Someone told me that you really like to sing too.” The boy nodded. “Next time we have guitar practice, you can come sing with us.”

“Benny,” called Rebecca.

“I’m going.” He slurped the last of his soda and handed Astrid the glass. “You can come if you like.”

“I think I’ll stay here, thank you. Have fun.” She watched him send his scooter down the incline someone had added to the porch and head up the smoothed path that ran up the street and down to Sophie’s house.

“Looks like someone’s been out on path duty,” Joshua said. “Those weren’t there last summer.”

“I know.” She turned her attention back to the man across the table. “I remember when Tante Kaaren learned sign language so she could help Grace. The rest of the town joined in and learned too.

That’s just the way the folks in Blessing do things, take care of one another.”

“Well, they sure took this wanderer into the family. Did you hear about the party being planned for Saturday night? We’ll have dancing at the school instead of at someone’s barn. At least that’s what I thought I heard.”

“No, I hadn’t. I’ve been so busy at the surgery that I’ve not been out to visit with anyone, not even my far. How do you know all this when you just got back today?”

“Think. Where do I live?”

Astrid grinned from behind her soda. “So Sophie still fills all her guests in on the news around town?”

“Well, maybe not all, but this one.” He paused, his eyes holding her attention. “I’m glad you are back in Blessing.”

“Me too. I’m not sure for how long, but I was grateful that they let me leave when Thorliff telephoned to say that I was needed here.”

“Oh.” He looked down, then at her again. “I was hoping you’d changed your mind about Africa.”

Astrid felt herself stiffen, so she took another sip of her drink. “It’s not my decision. It’s God’s. If that is where He wants me, I will go.”
Please leave it at that. I’ve heard so much against.

He leaned back in his chair. “Can I ask you a question?”

“I . . . I guess so, but I don’t promise to answer.” From the serious look on his face, it must have been important.

“How do you know that God is calling you to Africa?”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s been part of the problem. On one hand I feel He is asking me to go there, but on the other hand, I wonder if it is just me. And if it
is
just me, why would I dream up something like that? I have no need or desire to leave Blessing. I love it here. This is my home. I love my family, and all of Blessing feels like family to me.” She clasped her hands on the wrought-iron table. “I have struggled and struggled with this. I want to live my life walking in God’s plan for me, not my own plan.” She paused and searched his face, seeking some kind of indication he understood what she was saying. He looked as puzzled as she felt.

“I knew that going to Chicago was in His plan. I felt certain . . . well, most of the time, and there was a measure of peace about the idea. When I got there, after I got over being homesick, I knew that was where I belonged. But the pull to Africa won’t leave me alone.” She heaved another sigh and stopped. “I wish I had a better answer.”

“How do you feel when you are here?”

“Like I’ve come home. Home to Blessing.” She studied a ragged cuticle on one finger. “But years ago Pastor Solberg said something that stuck with me. He said we can’t always depend on our feelings. We need knowledge, and like one of my teachers at missionary school said, we can find answers to every question by searching the Scriptures.”

“And what have you found?”

“Lots of verses about going to care for the lost, feeding His sheep, the harvest is ripe and the laborers are few. There are a lot more.” An insatiable urge to chew the hangnail off clamped in her mind. “But nothing concrete about Africa. Perhaps I am searching wrong.”

“And you cannot do those things right here?”

“I can and I am.” The thought of Red Hawk’s comment caught her attention.
“What if you thought of the reservation as your Africa?”
She looked into Joshua’s face. “One thing I do know. My patients, the people who need me, always come first.”

A silence fell between them, then stretched. She glanced up to see Mr. Landsverk watching her, his gaze warm on her face. What could she say?

“I think about you a lot,” he whispered.

She nodded. She stared at her soda, the pink fizz at the bottom of the glass.

“I have a question for you.”

She looked up again. He was leaning forward, his arms on the table, one hand not far from her own. Would it be proper to put her hand in his? The thought brought heat up to her ears. Of course it wouldn’t. What was she thinking?

“I want to ask your father for permission to court you.”

Her eyes widened. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
Court me? Really?

“Astrid!” Rebecca’s shout brought her back with a jerk. “You’re needed. It’s Elizabeth.”

“I’ll walk you over.” Joshua pushed back his chair. “Unless you want to run. We can do that too.”

Astrid had already leaped down the two steps and began sprinting for the surgery.

25

A
strid burst through the door, panting to catch her breath.

“Upstairs.” Thelma pointed toward the stairway.

Pulling herself up faster with a hand on the banister, Astrid could hear sobbing from Elizabeth’s bedroom. She found Thorliff holding his weeping wife, tears dripping off his chin as well.

Astrid began to choke also, then taking a deep breath to control her mind and emotions, she ordered herself into doctor protocol. “What has happened?”

Thorliff looked up at her. “We cannot hear the baby’s heart beating any longer.”

“Let me try.” She reached for the stethoscope and tapped the bell with a fingernail to make sure it was functioning before applying the end to Elizabeth’s heaving belly. “Easy now. See if you can stop crying so I can listen better.”

“He’s dead. I know he is.” Elizabeth fought for some modicum of control.

Astrid lifted the lawn nightgown and applied the scope directly to Elizabeth’s skin, moving it slowly from place to place, angle to angle. She could hear stomach sounds, Elizabeth’s heart, her lungs, but no small heartbeat. She covered the entire area again, her own heart growing heavier by the moment.
Little one, could you not have
fought harder?
She blew her nose and wiped her eyes.

“I’m sorry, oh, Elizabeth, Thorliff, I am so sorry.” She could hardly speak as her own tears lodged in her throat.
God, why? Why do you
take these little ones? Why let them come here and then jerk them home
again? This one didn’t even get to take a breath.
The three held each other, crying until the tears dried up—at least for the moment.

Elizabeth was the first to speak. “I just don’t understand.”

A tap at the door and Ingeborg entered the room, her comforting arms enveloping them all. “No one ever understands the loss of a baby or a child.”

“But I never even got to hold him.”

“You will when he is born. That will help.” Her silence brought a measure of peace, or was it the prayers she was offering on this altar of sorrow?

How will we get her body to think it is time for the baby to be born?
Astrid wondered. Surely there were drugs or medications that could cause such an event, but she had no idea what they were. The few women she had helped with births at the hospital were well into labor. Common sense said the sooner the better. Unless Elizabeth knew the answer, but she wouldn’t ask that question right now. Perhaps Mor would know what to do.

Why was it that the more she knew, the more she knew she didn’t know?

What brought labor on? The water breaking sent the body into hard labor. She knew how to rupture those membranes. A sense of calm washed over her. Of course.

When Elizabeth fell asleep in Thorliff’s arms, Astrid drew her mother out into the hall. “Have you had something like this happen in your years of caring for women?”

Ingeborg nodded. “Some have carried to full term and the baby has died either in the birthing or right after. Others lost babies earlier, and yes, I think one or two babies died about this long into the pregnancy.”

“Did the women go into labor without assistance?”

“Yes. Usually the body knows far more than we do.”

“How long do we wait?” At the hospital everything had swirled around her, and she just went where she was needed. Now she realized these were decisions she would need to make, especially in Africa.

“Twenty-four hours or so. And we pray. It will be easier on Elizabeth if her body takes care of this on its own.”

“We could break her water.” She remembered one late emergency delivery.

“Ja, but that will bring on hard labor without any preparation.”

Astrid felt like a little girl wanting to curl up in her mother’s lap and loving arms. “She tried so hard to have this baby.”

“I know. And now we must assure her that it was nothing she did wrong that caused this. Somehow we have to trust that God knows best. And did what was best for everyone, especially that little baby. You know how often I’ve said that there was something wrong with a baby who died too soon.”