Coming Home for Christmas (17 page)

W
ill thought about Frannie as he stared at the medical journal in his hands. For several months, he had looked forward to this opportunity to read his back issues and think about nothing more strenuous than necrotic tissue and third-stage syphilis. When Paddy Coughlin had asked him to keep an eye on Frannie, he'd known she would be no trouble. He'd known he would still have time to read his journals.

Then Nora Powell had been thrown into the mix. Now he felt the full weight of her distress descending on him; he knew he had to do better. He closed the journal, not even bothering to mark his place. Duty called, but it was more than that.

He cleared his throat, wondering if he was about to blunder, but driven to ask by something his mother had told him once about the need for people in grief to talk, something her first husband's family had never allowed. “Nora, tell me about your children and your husband.”

He thought he had made the mistake of the century
when Nora's eyes filled with tears. He held his breath as she dabbed at her eyes with her fingers, then looked at him. “You are the first Blue Coat to call him my husband,” she said.

“He is, isn't he?” Will asked, startled. “Did he seek you out and throw the robe over you at a dance?” He had seen courting dances before, when he visited a Cheyenne tribe troubled with influenza. He thought them charming and certainly more fun than filling out a dance card. Plains Indians were worlds more practical than gentlemen making stupid small talk at a cotillion and hoping for a waltz.

He must have unleashed a flood. Nora leaned forward, her tears forgotten. She nodded and he suddenly saw the pretty woman under all the cares, hunger and devastation. “I had been watching him, too,” she said, her voice shy.

“A handsome man is always worth a look,” Frannie put in. “Is he handsome?”

Nora was silent a long moment. “He was.”

“Oh,” Will said, feeling stupid. He saw his mother's face in his mind, then, and remembered how gently she could counsel. “Where did he die, Nora? How did it happen?”

“We call it the Greasy Grass. I think you Blue Coats called it the Little Big Horn. Crazy Horse told me later that my husband was counting coup on a soldier when it happened.” She raised her head proudly. “Thank you for mentioning him. He was a warrior.”

“Then it is good to remember him,” Will said, on sure ground now, because his mother was right. “Tell us about your children.”

“Little Frog is eight summers. He is tall for his age.
My daughter does not have a name. She was born after the Greasy Grass and I was too sad to name her.”

“Will…will someone else name her?” he asked, touched to see tears in Frannie's eyes. He swallowed a boulder in his throat.

“I do not know,” Nora replied, after another long silence. “I do not even know who is watching after them. My husband is dead. His parents are dead. There was only me.”

She said no more, turning her face to look out at the darkness. Will put away his medical journal, no longer interested in science when a greater tragedy loomed in front of him.
Heavens, what have we done?
he asked himself, unable to sit any longer. Not looking back at the women, he walked through two cars to reach the last platform. The first was a car like the one he had left, the other an immigrant car, with wall-to-wall people, babies crying, children milling about and food cooking. He breathed in the odors of cabbage, strange spices and unwashed bodies.

It was too cold for company on the platform. His mood lifted and he smiled to see a small clothesline, diapers flapping in the frigid air, turning into boards. As the train curved slightly north, he looked west, wondering where in that vast distance Nora's children were. He thought about Maddy, who had never known a hard thing in her life, and then Frannie, with her frugal plans to avoid the dining car. And here was Nora, wrenched from her children and heading toward who knew what.

And here I am, rich, educated and coming up short,
he thought, not so much disgusted as sorry that the world wasn't fairer. Frannie should have a kind hus
band and a comfortable life, and Nora should have her children.

Cold, he leaned on the railing, driven by some idiocy to punish himself because he was blessed and they were not. He had no answers, so he went inside again, walking slowly through the immigrant car, observing out of habit.

He smiled at the children who gazed back, solemn.
New beginnings,
he thought, remembering Mama's immigrants at the community house, which his stepfather's money had created in Philadelphia for people in need. As he walked, Will noticed a solitary female, barely more than a child herself, who appeared far gone in pregnancy. He never did understand people's instincts, because she gave him that patient look he had seen many times, when people thought he was a doctor and capable, in their minds, of making the lame walk and the dead rise.
I wish,
he thought.
I wish. Sometimes I can barely help myself.

He nodded to her and continued through the car. He was nearly to the next car when he stopped, listening to labored breathing from a small boy leaning against his mother. All business then, Will crouched beside them, putting two fingers on the child's throat to find a thready pulse.

The woman eyed him with suspicion. He smiled at her and said, “I'm a physician.” She only gathered her child closer.

Will looked around. “Does anyone speak English?” he asked, resisting the urge to raise his voice and speak more slowly, on the off chance that it would make a difference. He tried the same statement in poor French,
passable Spanish, then slightly better German. Nothing. He stood up and left the car in a hurry.

Back in his own car, he rummaged under the seat for his medical bag.

“What's wrong?” Frannie asked.

“There's a child with lung congestion in the immigrant car,” he told her, looking inside the bag, even though he knew everything was in its place. “Maybe I can help.”

“Do you need me?”

The oddest thing happened then, as though the earth's axis had suddenly tilted. Maybe it was the way she asked—sincere and earnest and ready to help. Or maybe he had been taking her for granted all year, coming to rely on her because she was utterly sensible, perfectly kind and so lovely.

Do I need you?
he asked himself.
Goodness, I believe I do.

Will took a deep breath; the impulse simply had to pass. Maybe the bad air in the immigrant car had affected his brain. He was on his way to Philadelphia to marry a beautiful woman he had known since he was twelve. All the plans had been made. He shook his head to clear it.

“Are…are you all right, Captain?” she asked.

“I'm fine,” he lied. “This shouldn't take more than a few minutes. You keep Nora company.” He snapped his bag shut and hurried from the car.

His unsuspecting patient was still leaning against his mother. The wary look on her face vanished when Will took out his stethoscope. She offered no objection when he raised her son's shirt and listened to his chest.

Will concentrated on the sounds within, grateful not
to hear the crackling noise of pneumonia, but still not happy about the congestion. “I wish you could understand me,” he said to the mother, who was looking at him intently now, as if trying to understand English.

“I can help.”

Will looked around to see another worn traveler, dressed no better than the others and certainly smelling no better. “You speak English,” he said with relief.

“Not much.”

Will touched the sick boy, who had closed his eyes. “What language do they speak?”

“Russian.” The man gestured more grandly. “Russians. Serbs. Some Greeks. A Pole or two. Latvians. Italians.” He turned a kind eye on Will. “What can I do?”

Will looked at the pot-board stove, where a woman in a scarf and quilted jacket was boiling cabbage. The steam rose off the odoriferous pot, fogging the window. “Can you tell her to take her son close to the steam? He needs to breathe moist air.” Will pantomimed breathing deep and motioned toward the boiling cabbage. “She needs to keep him warmer.”

The man nodded, then spoke to the woman, who stood up immediately and took her son closer to the stove. Will moved her even closer, while his translator spoke to the others. In another moment, there was a second blanket around the child.

“Just keep him there. I will come back later to check on him,” Will said.

When the Russian finished translating, Will stood there a moment longer, wishing he had a croup tent and the ingredients for a poultice. He walked through the car again, looking more closely at the immigrants. It
suddenly seemed strange to him that they would be traveling east. Surely they had not come from the Pacific Ocean.

Curious, he found the conductor in the next car, talking to a salesman. When the conductor had finished his conversation, he looked at Will. “Everything all right in there, sir?” he asked.

“Well enough. There's a sick child, but I will check him again later. I was wondering, why are they heading east? I thought all immigrants went the other way.”

“They overshot their destination,” the conductor said. “It happens now and then with immigrant cars.” He sighed the great sigh of the put-upon. “A few immigrants will miss their stops, or find no one waiting for them. We take them to Omaha, where hopefully they are straightened out.” He shrugged. “Foreigners.”

Will returned to his own car to see the porters at work converting the seats into upper and lower sleeping berths, with discreet privacy curtains. Frannie and Nora stood in the aisle, waiting for the porter to finish. Will handed him some coins when the porter had plumped up the final pillow.

“Nora and I will take the top berth,” Frannie said. “You should be more accessible, in case the little boy needs you.” She smiled at him. “It never ends, does it? My father mentioned to me that you had been planning to do lots of reading on this trip. Are we a great deal of trouble?”

“You have never been trouble,” he assured her. “Did I ever thank you for all those hours you spent in the hospital, reading to my motley collection of malingerers, malcontents and misfits, better known as the U.S. Army?”

She laughed, reminding him all over again how much he enjoyed a hearty laugh from a woman. “Captain, if you had wanted an easier life, you would have stayed in Philadelphia.”

“That's what my fiancée wants me to do,” he said impulsively. He regretted his words the moment they left his mouth, because they sounded disloyal to Maddy and branded him as a complainer.

Frannie looked him in the eye; she was a tall woman and it wasn't hard. “Your malingerers will miss you, if you resign your commission. So will my father.” She hesitated. “I will, too.”

She blushed then and turned her attention to Nora Powell, who seemed to wilt before their eyes. “Nora, let us go to bed.” She put her arm around the smaller woman. “Tell me you won't mind if I put my cold feet on your legs?”

I'd rather you put them on mine,
Will thought, as he turned away, so the women could climb the ladder to the upper berth without his observation. A quick glance—he told himself it was a professional one—reassured him when Nora managed a smile at Frannie's gentle teasing. Such a glance also allowed him a glimpse of Frannie's trim ankles, his real object, he admitted to himself.

He took off his shoes and lay down in the lower berth, yawning, but keeping the curtains open so he could at least try to read another few pages in the medical journal. For the first time in his long medical life, the subject matter defeated him. He closed the journal again and lay on his back, his heart touched as he heard Frannie humming to Nora. He listened closer; it was “Silent
Night,” which reminded him belatedly that Christmas was almost upon them.

His eyes closed. He wondered if he should visit the immigrant car one more time, but decided it could wait. Besides, all he wanted to do was think about Frannie.

W
ill must have slept then, because someone shook him awake. As his eyes became accustomed to the night-time gloom of the rail car, he saw the conductor.

“The boy?” Will asked, already reaching for his shoes.

“No. It's worse. Hurry.”

Will tied his shoes and tucked in his shirt. He pulled on his uniform jacket, but didn't bother to button it. As he stood up in the aisle and ran his hand through his hair, the curtains in the upper berth parted and Frannie leaned out.

“Do you need me?”

“I'm not sure,” he whispered back. “If I do, I'll send the conductor for you. Is Nora asleep?”

“Yes.”

She reached out and touched his shoulder, which made him smile in the gloom.

Stepping quietly through the next car, he followed the conductor into the immigrant car and stopped, his
eyes wide at the sight of the pregnant woman struggling in labor as everyone watched and did nothing.

I should have checked her earlier,
he thought, kneeling beside her. He pulled out his stethoscope and listened for her heartbeat. It was faint and he knew exactly what the outcome would be, even before he touched her distended abdomen.

He looked around for the conductor, who stared at the woman. “Help me get her to the floor.”

The man did as he asked, then motioned everyone to move back and turn around, for privacy's sake. “I'll see if I can find out who she is,” he said.

Will nodded, his eyes on his patient. Moving his hand over the woman's tight abdomen, he felt how far down the baby was, and rested his hand until he felt returning movement. The woman tried to raise her hand to his, but she hadn't the strength. Gently, he touched her face, then opened one barely shuttered eye, which was already starting to settle in her head.

“No one knows who she is,” the conductor whispered when he returned and knelt beside Will. “Damned foreigners! They think she's Greek, but no one knows when she got on the car. She was alone.”

“Doesn't matter now,” Will said. “She's unresponsive and hasn't long.” He took hold of the conductor's sleeve. “Get me some blankets, sheets and towels, and whatever you can find that's absorbent.”

The conductor started to rise. Will tugged him down again. “Wake up Miss Coughlin in the berth over mine and tell her I need her immediately. Go now.”

Railcar, battlefield or hospital, Will did what he always did, as the conductor hurried into the next car. He folded his hands in front of him, closed his eyes and
prayed. It was the quick, all-purpose prayer he reserved for extreme emergency, and amounted to no more than “Help me, Almighty God.” He figured that, in some form or other, healers from Hippocrates down to this captain kneeling on the floor in an immigrant car had asked as much and more throughout history, whether from one god, three or ten.

When he opened his eyes, his brain was clear. Quickly, he took out his small capital-knife kit and spread it beside him on the floor, while the woman grunted and moaned, trying to expel a baby that couldn't be dislodged without assistance.

He felt a rush of cold air as the door opened. Frannie knelt beside him, still in her nightgown. Unbidden, she put her hands on the woman's face, stroking it, then wiping the sweat with the sleeve of her nightgown. She looked at Will, her eyes wide.

Will put his lips next to her ear. “Her heart is about to give out. Frannie, she's dying.”

“What do you want me to do?” she whispered back, no hesitation in her voice and no fear. Will was so relieved he could have kissed her.

“It's going to be ugly,” he whispered back. “When she breathes her last, I'm going for the baby. I'll have to work fast. It'll look like butchery, because it is.”

Frannie gulped and nodded. Even in the dim light, Will saw how pale her face was and how every wonderful freckle stood out. “Just explain what you want. I'll do…do my best.”

“I knew you would,” he told her, looking around at another gust of cold air. His arms full of blankets, sheets and towels, the conductor came back into the immigrant car. Will directed him to tear a sheet in half and tie one
half around Frannie's neck. “Tie the other one around my neck.” He looked at the conductor. “What's your name?”

“Joseph Pyle,” the man said.

“Pleased to meet you,” Will said. “Just keep everyone back. Hold up a blanket and face out. You don't want to see this.”

Pyle gave him no argument. He turned around and held out the blanket, while Will explained to Frannie what would happen. “There's no time to apply retractors. I need your hands.”

Frannie drew a deep breath, then made a small sign of the cross on the dying woman's forehead. She raised up and kissed his cheek. “Not quite the Christmas journey you envisioned, eh?” she asked.

He couldn't answer, because the laboring woman breathed her last. For the next minute he saw nothing but the task on the floor in front of him. Frannie did exactly as he ordered, not faltering when everything turned red. Above the sound of the train, he could hear her reciting the Rosary, something he was familiar with. He mouthed the words along with her as he cut, searched and pulled out a living child.

He was aware of another gust of cold air and saw Nora Powell out of the corner of his eye. She held out her hands for the baby. Gratefully, he deposited the child in her arms and quickly suctioned out the unresponsive infant's mouth. One second. Two seconds, then three, and the newborn cried.

Will sighed and breathed in and out until he was calm again. He removed Frannie's hands from her grip on the woman's ruined abdomen, placed them in her lap
and wiped them. It was his turn to kiss her cheek and whisper, “Magnificent,” in her ear.

With Nora's silent help, he cut the connection between the dead woman and her daughter, who was crying lustily now, a small and welcome sound in the quiet railcar. He didn't need to tell Nora what to do then, as she wiped off the baby and wrapped her expertly, papoose-style, in a strip of clean sheet. She wrapped the baby next in a towel and sat back, holding the infant close.

Frannie remained calm, arranging the dead mother's hair as he stitched her together, then wound her tight in a shroud of sheet. Together they rolled her onto a blanket. He had begun wrapping it around her, too, when Frannie stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“One moment,” she said. “Let us look at her.”

Will did as she asked, putting his arm around Frannie's shoulder as Paddy Coughlin's capable daughter prayed again. He knew the prayer and prayed with her. None of Trey Wharton's Episcopal leanings had made much of an impact on him, on Scottish boy Wilkie Nicholls, who had gone to Mass with dear Grandma Laura Ortiz Wilkie in Dumfries's tiny Catholic church.

“I didn't know you were Catholic,” Frannie said, when she finished and he continued his work of wrapping the blanket around the Greek woman.

“It was a condition of my grandmother's priest in Alta California, when she married my grandfather,” he explained, happy and relieved to have a normal conversation after the horror of his surgery. “Sometimes I need reminding.”

“Maybe not so much after tonight?”

“Maybe not so much.”

 

Under Will's instructions, the conductor and the helpful Russian translator carried the body to the ice-cold baggage car. “We'll be in Omaha in mid-morning,” Pyle said, looking at his watch. “The Union Pacific will assume responsibility for the body and she'll be buried somewhere.” He shook his head. “We'll try to find her relatives, but no one seems to know her name, or even when she came aboard.”

Will watched Frannie, who was holding the baby now, crooning to it, breathing deep of that peculiar newborn fragrance. The conductor touched the baby's head, with its still-damp, dark curls, and Frannie stepped back, as though to ward him off.

“We'll take the baby, too, and find an orphanage,” the conductor said. “Don't you get too attached, or anything!” he told Frannie.

Will could tell he was trying to make light of a devastating situation, but all Frannie did was frown at him and turn away. She started toward the sleeping compartment again, Nora walking beside her. Will watched them, gratified when Nora's arm went around Frannie's waist, sisters in a ritual that man had no part of. He wasn't unhappy with either of them.

“We'll see,” he told the conductor.

“Your missus is taking a shine to that little one,” the man said. “Better watch out.”

 

My missus.
Will thought about that later, as he sat in the dining car. The conductor had found a convenient bottle of single malt scotch. “No one will miss this,” Pyle said as he poured them both a stiff one. He also set down a can of condensed milk and a bottle of warm
sterilized water. “We're missing a key ingredient,” he said, as he downed his scotch and filled the glass again. “A nipple.”

“I have an eyedropper in my bag that will do until we find something better in Omaha,” Will said. He sipped his scotch slowly, trying to get the iron taste and smell of blood from his system. This was no different from many another surgery, some under even less sanitary conditions, but there was something so wrenching about that poor woman dying anonymously, never to know her beautiful daughter.

Another swallow and he was done; better to stop while he was still rational. He thanked the conductor and took the canned milk and water back to his own berth, where, to his surprise but not his disappointment, Frannie had curled up around the baby. They were asleep and he admired them both. Despite her rough arrival on a cold December, yanked from her dead mother, the infant seemed none the worse for wear.

“I'm going to name you Olympia,” he said softly, touching her black hair. “Surely the gods were smiling on you tonight.”

He stood up and opened the curtain to the upper berth. Nora Powell slept soundly, her hand opened and relaxed, which relieved him, somehow. He sat on his berth again and gave Frannie a nudge. She opened her eyes, but offered no objection when he pulled his blanket over her and the baby.

With a sigh, Will took off his shoes. He debated a long moment, then shook his head and removed his trousers and uniform jacket, draping them across the end of the bed. Frannie could call him a cad if she wanted, but he was too tired to care.
My missus.
He
lay down, hoping the scotch had mellowed his brain enough to allow sleep.

He was almost asleep when Frannie touched his face. He kissed her fingers impulsively, waited for a slap that never came, then slept.