A Harvest of Hope (21 page)

“And you want to go back to that?”

“My family is there. I have to finish my training at the hospital.”

“But that doesn't mean you have to spend the rest of your life there. Your family either.”

Patches ran up, yipping and dancing, so she leaned over to pet him. The bay horse named Joker nickered from the field.

“Oh, how good to see you.” Ingeborg met her at the door. “Thank you, Trygve, for delivering her here.”

“I'll be back at noon. I'm going to go over to the deaf school.”

“Will you please give this basket to your mor?” She motioned him not to leave and handed him a full basket. “Tell her that's the quilting squares we are working on.”

“Anything else?”

“Not right now.”

He left, whistling.

Miriam watched him go. “Does he always whistle?”

“Only when he is happy.” Ingeborg took her arm. “Come with me and I'll show you the latest thing. You know who Emmy is?”

“Yes, the little Indian girl who lives with you, the girl you bought the fabric for.”

“Ja, and for the last two years her uncle has come in the spring and taken her back to the tribe for the summer. This year he said he would not be back for her. I made her some new clothes, and she was sad one night because her cousins don't have nice clothes like that. One of her cousins came here last year but not this year. So anyway, some of us decided we would make jumpers and waists in various sizes to send up to her tribe. We searched through all we had and found some things that we can cut down. And I bought some more fabric from Penny—oh, and Penny donated some too. Now we need to cut them out and sew them. Do you want to help?”

“I most certainly do. Is Mrs. Jeffers in on this too?”

“Ja. We do quilts to give away also, and that uses up all the smaller pieces.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Cut out.”

By the time Freda called them to dinner, they had a stack of jumpers ready to sew, each one rolled with all its pieces.

Miriam smiled at the beautiful pile of love. “I could sew at a machine on my next day off, and I could also do handwork when it's slow at the hospital.”

Trygve came through the back door. “Something sure smells good.” He set a basket back on the counter. “Mor sent this to you. Guess I am just the errand boy.”

Freda shook her head and pointed at the set table with her wooden spoon. “Just set yourself before we find another basket.”

Miriam tried to smother a grin, but it crept out anyway. When he winked at her, she laughed and sat down where Ingeborg indicated.

Freda set the last bowl on the table and sat down.

“Trygve, please say grace.”

“Do you want English or Norwegian?”

“I'd like to hear the Norwegian.” As all three of them spoke together, Miriam bowed her head. She had grown up speaking and hearing grace in English. But still, this reminded her of the home she grew up in. A warm place swelled around her heart.

A warm place, in this foreign country so unlike the home she knew. What was changing inside her?

A
strid signed the last chart from evening rounds and stood up to stretch. It was getting dark already, the days growing shorter and shorter. Now to go home and relax for at least a little while. She was so weary.

Boom!

The whole hospital building shook, even the floor beneath her feet! Her reference books tumbled off their shelves. Someone screamed. Astrid headed for the door, since her office had no windows. What happened?
Lord God?

Out in the hall, she saw Corabell, white-faced, running for Mrs. Bach's room. Were the patients safer left inside, or should they be evacuated immediately? She looked to the left. The window at the far end lay in shards on the floor. Thick smoke was rolling in.

Mrs. Geddick charged out of the kitchen. “What to do? What to do?”

Lord, what do we
do? What happened?

Mr. Bach came running out of his wife's room. “I help?”

Dear God, please guide
us!
“Everyone! Gather in the long ward. Bring all the patients there—it's the farthest end from the
smoke. Keep everyone together so we don't miss anyone. I'm going outside to see if we are burning.”

A thunderous explosion, building rocking, glass shattering, screaming, shouting.

Miriam picked herself up off the floor. She'd been sitting in the chair in front of her desk, writing a letter. Good thing it had been in pencil, or ink would be all over the place. More screaming. She scrambled to her feet, mentally checking herself for any injuries. None.

Smoke! Was the boardinghouse on fire? What had blown up? Out in the hall someone was banging on doors. She crossed the room, now strewn with pictures from the walls, anything not nailed down. Instead of the hall door, she headed through the bathroom to Vera and Corabell's room. She didn't bother to knock. She barged right in.

“Vera! It's me.”

“I'm getting dressed.”

The window had shattered in this room, and smoke was pouring in the window. “Are you all right?”

“Just shaken. It threw me out of bed.” Vera grabbed a handful of hair and stuffed it into a snood. “Let's go see if anyone needs help.”

“We are supposed to head directly to the hospital.”

“I know.” They ran out into the hallway. The far door slammed open, and a man came staggering through it. Blood was pouring down his face, covering it so that they couldn't recognize him.

Vera screamed.

The man lurched against the wall and slid gracelessly to the floor.

Miriam could not tell who he was.

Vera could. She wailed, “Dr. Deming!”

Astrid ran out the front door. To her left, a crackling fire raged, a column of flames and smoke that was engulfing the whole grain elevator! The heat seared her face. She stepped out far enough to see the hospital roof. No, they were not on fire yet, but the elevator was a fountain of flaming brands, and the burning fragments littered the ground, so they must be raining down on the roof too.

She ran back inside. All the hospital windows on the elevator side had imploded. Glass littered the floor halfway down the hall.

“I get buckets!” Mrs. Geddick ran off.

“Corabell! Stay with the patients. Gray Cloud, Mr. Bach, come with me.” She ran up the stairs and through the door onto the roof. Burning brands littered the shingles.

“We need buckets of water!” If only she could throw the burning pieces off the building before the roof caught fire. She could kick the ones close to the edge off onto the ground, but all these others . . .

The clanging school bell told her the call for help had gone out. How long until someone would show up here?

Gray Cloud was here with a broom. Clever girl! She swatted burning brands to the ground, but she could not sweep away the ones near the roof peak. Mr. Bach and Mrs. Geddick formed a line to pass up buckets of water someone was filling from the sink at the end of the ward. Astrid doused a burning brand, splashed the next. The next.

“Astrid!” Daniel's voice.

“Up on the roof!”

Daniel and Thorliff came running up the stairs, bringing more buckets as they came. “You go work the line and let us do this.”

“No!” She splashed another burning scrap.

“Yes! We need a longer line.”

Several more men came up the stairs and the line lengthened, so they worked their way down the roof. One spot was burning into the shingles and spreading, so Astrid splashed water
on it, more and more. She emptied her bucket and Daniel gave her another. Hand over hand, bucket by bucket. More people arrived. Someone brought a shovel and scooped burning pieces off the roof, flinging them out into the nothingness.

Beside them, the grain elevator howled and crackled, the flames hidden by black smoke one moment, illuminated brightly in the night the next. Below, men were throwing water on the hospital's siding, which was scorching and blackening. If the side nearest the elevator became hot enough to burst into flames, the hospital would be lost.

People crowded out into the hallway in front of Miriam's room. They were all shouting at the same time, “What happened?” Vera and Miriam had dropped down onto their knees beside Dr. Deming. He was barefoot and in shirtsleeves. A huge, burly fellow clad in long underwear staggered out of another door on the same side.

Smoke was pouring in through the shattered hall window now.

Miriam felt frantic, but she knew she couldn't show it. She stood up. “Listen to me!” She shouted it louder. “Listen to me!”

Suddenly the man in long underwear bellowed “Quiet!” with a voice that could shake trees.

The panicky voices paused.

Miriam shouted, “Listen! Get out until we know this building is not on fire. Take anyone who is injured over to the hospital. The doctors and nurses will be there. We are trained to help you.”

She caught the burly man's eye. “Thank you, sir. Now, can you go room to room and make certain everyone is getting out safely? We nurses were told to report to the hospital, so we will take Dr. Deming with us.”

He grunted “Yup” in a voice so deep it rumbled.

Babbling people were rushing for the exit doors. The big man began pounding on doors and opening them with a shout.

The Great Chicago Fire was thirty years ago? Thirty-four. So many stories the old-timers had told of that terrible fire and of all the lives lost. As Vera and Miriam struggled to get Dr. Deming up on his feet and over to the stairs, Miriam tried to remember the life-saving tips she'd heard, of ways to escape, of ways not to escape. The stories had been etched so deeply into her memory.

Now she could not think of a single one.

Up on the hospital roof, Astrid was coughing. Everyone was coughing.
What is
happening downstairs? Do we get the patients out? Am I
still needed up here?

She paused to look west toward the main part of town and could see other fires now, easy to spot in the night darkness. Buildings were burning; embers had fallen. Smoke and flame here, a column of thick smoke and a ruddy glow there. What about her house? Other houses? Roiling black smoke, illuminated on its underside by red flame, was spreading across the other side of the tracks. The tent city was burning, the fire spreading out from several scattered places. They were going to lose all of it!

Where had Gray Cloud gone? Here she came with a great armload of blankets. The men spread blankets and quilts out across the roof, throwing water on them, protecting the roof with a fragile skin of wetness.

“You told Elizabeth to stay put?” she asked her brother.

“I did. Thelma is off helping somewhere. Inga was asleep.”

“You go. We can handle this now.” Daniel, his face sweaty and soot-blackened, nodded Astrid toward the stairs. “We'll let you know if you need to evacuate.”

Astrid headed for the stairs and down past the line of bucket passers. “Thank you. Good job. Thank you,” she kept saying as she passed. She closed the door behind her, trying to keep the smoke away.

In the far ward she nodded and smiled. Terrified patients and a frightened Corabell all watched her enter. “Please just stay where you are. We are safe here for the moment.”

Corabell was trembling. “Miriam and Vera are here. They brought two injured people into the examining rooms.”

Astrid nodded and hurried out. The front door opened and a mother in a babushka rushed in with a child in her arms. “Burned. Burned.”

She held the ward door open for her and stepped aside. “Please come into the ward. Corabell, get some ice and do what you can for her.”

She entered the first examination room, surprised to see Dr. Deming.

“Window blew in. It's just superficial cuts, I believe, but they look terrible. Bled a lot.” The dentist sat on the examining table while Miriam removed the towels they had applied to stanch the bleeding.

Dr. Deming's head jerked. “Ow!”

“Glass shard. Get the tweezers, Miriam.” Astrid looked over his injuries carefully. “I agree with your diagnosis. Some will need sutures. Miriam? Can you handle that?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Press against each cut before you close it and dress it. He'll tell you, I'm sure, if there's still a glass splinter in it. I hate to say this, but the quicker the better, but not so hasty that you make a mistake, of course. Where is Vera?”

“Next door with another patient. A heavy bleeder. It might be an artery.”

Astrid left that room and stepped into the next. Vera looked up from the man's arm that she had pressed firmly against the table. “The facial ones look worse than they are. This is the bad one.”

“Then let's go in and fix it right now.”
O Lord, how I wish Elizabeth were here
.
But
we will deal with each case as it comes. If
you would send Mor, it would sure be a help
.

“Vera, bring dressings, sutures, and carbolic acid. Sir, I'm sorry,” she told him, “we don't have time to prep properly or give an anesthetic time to take hold.”