Stephanie Mittman (11 page)

“Not me,” Abby said. “I will vote—”

“You won’t vote at all, young lady. This is a matter for the town council—”

“All men,” Abby cried. “Oh, no. This is going to affect every single citizen in this town. And therefore it should be voted on by every citizen.” Now she had two editorials to write. And a headache that throbbed with every deep breath she took, not to mention all the shouting.

“We’ve always voted before,” her mother said. “At least,
I
have, and now that the girls are young women, I think that they are entitled to vote, too.”

Her father looked as if her mother had plunged a dagger into his heart.

“I’m going to bed,” Abby said softly so that she wouldn’t hurt her head any more than it already hurt. She supposed that her pain was nothing compared to her father’s.

And she couldn’t help but wonder, as she crawled
under the covers, what Seth was thinking alone in his room above his office. Was he thinking about how she had stood up for him at the meeting, said that a doctor’s hands were as good as tied if he couldn’t operate safely? Said that there could come a time when each and every one of them would regret not building for Seth exactly what he needed?

Or was he thinking of earlier in the evening, when he’d kissed her? Smiling in the darkness she thought of the feel of his lips pressed against hers. He’d closed his eyes while he’d kissed her—a kiss that was the stuff of dreams.

Seth still had Miss Ella Welsh on his mind the next day when he scrawled a hasty note on his blackboard and headed for
The Weekly Herald’s
office. The woman had come to him complaining of chest pains, and was quick to show him a chest that certainly explained Joseph Panner’s interest in her. She was vague about her pains, but clear as a bell about her intentions. She wanted him to know that Joseph had left her his house. And she was lonely in it.

He suspected she wouldn’t be lonely for long, but didn’t volunteer to make any house calls anytime soon. She’d looked pretty disappointed, but, like all the women he’d ever met, she made it clear that while he might be saying no, she wasn’t hearing it.

He pushed open the door to the newspaper office and stepped in out of the cold to hear Ansel asking Abby, “Well, that’s not so bad. So now he won’t even recite the Gospel to you?”

‘Ssh!” he heard Abby say as she pulled the glasses from her nose and smiled at him.

“For heaven’s sake, put them back on,” Seth told her, “before you have people boycotting that sweet Mrs. Winston’s millinery because of the new, larger bats that can be found filling her front room!”

“I never wrote that!” she cried indignantly before casting a glance at Ansel. “Did I?”

Ansel merely shrugged, apparently not in the mood for light talk. “Can I help you, Dr. Hendon?” he asked, and rather formally, it seemed to Seth.

“I brought over the article on frostbite,” Seth said, taking it from his inside coat pocket. “According to the almanac, we’re in for one last cold snap that could be pretty severe.”

Ansel made no response.

“It’s already pretty cold in here,” Seth said. “Have I done something …” He let the words trail off. Had Abby told Ansel that he’d kissed her?

“It’s not you,” Ansel said, staring at Abby and shaking his head.

“I spoke my mind. I thought you would applaud me for that,” she said.

“I do applaud you. And I applaud Doc, here, too. And I’d probably applaud a trained monkey, but that doesn’t help anything, does it?”

“What exactly needs helping?” Seth asked, an uneasy feeling creeping up his spine.

“My father is angry that I have a thought in my head that doesn’t come straight from him. He doesn’t feel I should have an opinion if it differs from his. I suppose I’m fortunate that they don’t ordain women in the
Methodist Church or I’d have to be a reverend just because he is … which reminds me, Ansel, that you went up against him yourself and now you’re telling me—”

“Abby, much as you hate to recognize this, you are a woman. I could just move out of the house, take a wife, make a life for myself. You—”

“I could move out of that house tomorrow,” Abby said, taking off the printer’s apron she wore. “And I don’t need a husband to do my thinking for me. I don’t have to be at that man’s mercy, or any man’s mercy, and—”

“Don’t be an idiot, Abidance,” Ansel said. “Where would you go? I don’t think you’ve saved ten dollars that I’ve paid you—”

“For now, I could move in with you and Emily,” she said, but the look on Ansel’s face seemed to say that wasn’t even a remote possibility.

“Then I could move into Seth’s spare room,” she said.

Now she had Ansel looking at him accusingly, as if he’d ever offered such a thing, as if he’d ever allow it. He didn’t even consider Sarrie’s room a
spare
and putting everything else aside, which he certainly wasn’t, he couldn’t possibly bear the thought of Abby in Sarrie’s bed. “You aren’t moving anywhere,” he told Abidance, and the words rang familiarly to him from some dark corner of his mind. Ah, yes. All those years ago when he’d found Sarrie and Abby at the train station, tickets in hand, the two of them vowing to move to St. Louis.

“You aren’t moving anywhere,” he had said then, and he repeated it now. Why was it that every time he
began to think of Abby as a grown woman, a very kissable grown woman, something had to remind him that she was the same little girl who had stolen all of his bandages to wrap his sister in when they were playing nurse.

“They won’t talk to her,” Ansel said. “At least
he
won’t, and they won’t cross him, so if he’s around, they won’t talk to her either.”

“Your family?” Seth asked incredulously. “Your father? He’s that angry about my wanting to build a hospital?”

Abby shrugged, and Ansel said, “He feels she betrayed him, speaking out against the church last night. He’s declared you the enemy and he’s forbidden her to see you or—”

“Ansel!” she shouted at him. Clearly this was something he had been asked not to reveal. She looked at Seth with her chin raised proudly. “He can’t tell me what to do.”

All Seth wanted was a place to do some simple procedures safely. He didn’t want Massachusetts General Hospital, for heaven’s sake. It wasn’t even as if he planned to stay in Eden’s Grove. But a first-rate clinic with modern equipment would make finding a replacement so much easier. Still, he didn’t think the clinic was worth Abby’s having a falling-out with her family. When he moved away, they would be all she had left.

But he didn’t say any of that. Instead he put the article on the desk that separated him from Abby and Ansel and rebuttoned his top coat.

“I have no intention of listening to a word he says,” Abby said.

“Especially if he isn’t talking to you,” Ansel added on.

“Maybe not,” Seth said, picking up her glasses and placing them on her nose, tucking the wires over her ears as if she were a china doll. “But
I
do.”

“You’re giving in? You want to vote to use the money for a new church, when the grange hall accommodates everyone for Sunday services?”

“No, I’m adamant about the clinic,” he said as he turned to leave. “But if your father doesn’t want you talking to me, I guess I have to respect his wishes. A father does have—”

“—Rocks in his head if he thinks he can tell me what to think, how to vote, or who to talk to,” she said with a huff, banging her hand down on the table and then yelping in pain.

She grabbed the hand she’d hit with her good one and clutched it to her body. She took a deep uneven breath with her mouth wide open.

“Jeez, did you break it?” Ansel asked, laying down the tray of type he was holding.

Seth saw the blood oozing out between her fingers. He saw the short spike on the countertop and for the first time in his medical career, he felt weak in the stomach.

“Damn it!” he shouted, pulling out his handkerchief and grabbing her hand to have a look at it. “You’re going to need stitches. Two. Maybe three.”

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to take her hand back as if she could just will herself well. He’d been standing right there. If only he hadn’t made her mad, if only
he’d noticed the spike, if only he’d done something,
anything
, to stop this from happening.

“You are not fine,” he heard himself saying more loudly than necessary. “You are bleeding profusely. Do you feel faint?”

“No,” she said as if she were afraid that he’d yell at her if she was.

“Damn,” he said again. “This is deep. Do you think you can walk to my office?”

“Yes,” she said stoically, not
Of course I can
. Not
Certainly
. He didn’t know if she was afraid of him or the blood or what, but when she came around the counter he didn’t like the color of her face. Scooping her up in his arms, he told Ansel to get the door, and he carried her—with no objection from her, which scared him more—to his office, where Ansel once again opened the door and got out of Seth’s way.

Gently he laid her down on the examining room table and lit the lamp beside it so that he could see the damage clearly. He showed Ansel how to apply pressure to Abby’s hand and then with a squeeze to her shoulder he assured her he just needed to get a few things and that he would be right back.

His brain refused to work. The office he’d worked in for eleven years appeared rearranged, so that now, when he needed them, he could find neither his needle nor his boiled silk thread. Someone had hidden his bottle of carbolic acid.

“Does it hurt much?” he heard Ansel ask Abby, and he grabbed the things he needed, which by some miracle now seemed to appear in the exact places he’d already looked for them.

He came back to her side, apologizing for how long he’d taken, apologizing for how much it would hurt. At least, he thought he was apologizing until Ansel insisted that he stop yelling at her, and Seth realized he’d raised his voice again, even while he was trying to tell her how sorry he was that he would have to cause her pain.

“What’s the matter with you?” Ansel asked. “Do you treat all your patients like this?”

Only the ones I love
, he thought.
Because I couldn’t stop the accident from happening, because I can’t make it just go away, and that makes me angry
. He closed his eyes for a moment and shut out the thoughts. He had work to do.

“Ansel, go around to the other side and hold her other hand. Abby, you keep your eyes on Ansel.” He glanced quickly at her face, willing her to look at her brother, and then bent to the task.

“Don’t you think the weather’s getting warmer,” she asked suddenly, breaking the silence in the room. “I think spring is just around the corner.”

“I think your father’s probably around the corner and not likely to be pleased that you’re here in my care,” Seth said, reminding himself that there were a million reasons why he couldn’t love Abidance Merganser.

“I don’t care what my father—” Her words stopped abruptly as the needle pierced her skin. Seth felt the pain as surely as if he had stuck the needle into himself.

“Squeeze Ansel’s hand,” he told her. “As hard as you can. Ansel, talk to her!”

“So Emily wants to pick the name for the new baby,” Ansel said, obviously fishing for a topic that would engage his sister. “Whether I like it or not.”

“When you carry a child in your stomach for nine months, Ansel, then you can—”

Within Seth’s grasp, Abby’s hand was twitching wildly. He tied the final knot and told her it was over.

“Just two little stitches,” he told her. “Nice and clean, and see that you keep it that way. I’ll bandage it up, but you aren’t to get the bandages wet or dirty. And I want to see you tomorrow—”

“I want to see you, too,” she said, turning those big brights on him.

“I meant your hand,” he said, feeling himself color under Ansel’s scrutiny.

“You want my hand?” She was teasing him, right out in the open in front of her brother.

“Yes. Just send it over with Ansel tomorrow,” he joked back. It fell flat. Ansel was studying his face and Seth felt as if everything he felt for Abby was suddenly written there—the love, the doubts, the regrets. “I heard from a doctor at Massachusetts General,” he told them both. Best to get it all out on the table.

Abby tried to sit up, and he assisted her, the same as he would assist any patient, a hand behind her back, the other helping her with her legs as she swung about on the table.

“You should just sit here for a few minutes and rest,” he said. “I wouldn’t plan on doing anything with that hand for a while.”

“What about the doctor from Massachusetts?” Abby asked him. “What did he say?”

“He wanted to know about the town, the usual ailments, the facilities….” He had a hard time looking at her.

“He’d be interested in taking over your practice?” Ansel asked.

“Possibly. Not likely. It seems he’s a pretty important doctor at Mass. General. A senior resident. Maybe he just had a bad day and was looking for a way out. I’m sure the feeling will pass….”

“Will it?” Abby asked him, and it was clear that once again she’d turned things around on him. Having feelings for Abidance Merganser was like being in the eye of a cyclone—one felt perfectly calm, but everything just kept whirling around and winding up somewhere else.

“Maybe I’ll write your editorial for you,” Ansel said to Abby. “I could put in something about attracting a better quality of physician here with better facilities.”

“I could just dictate it and Jedediah could take it down for me,” Abby said softly.

“Yeah, and he could fly it over,” Ansel said sarcastically. “I don’t think it would be a good idea to get him involved in this, Abby. Pa’s already feeling ganged up on.”

“Doc? You in?” someone yelled from the outer office. Seth poked his head out the examining room door. “It’s Callie Jean. Her time’s come.”

“I’ll be right out there, William,” he said. “Tell her not to have it without me!”

“She wouldn’t want to Doc,” William said, his cheeks red, “but these babies of hers sure do have a way of hurrying into the world!”

“He’ll have to be pretty damn fast to beat me,” Seth said. With a quick nod at Abby and Ansel he grabbed up his bag and was on his way.