Their lives were excruciatingly normal. Josiah worked on completing the transfer of the thirty-three acres of land and to begin building the state school for the deaf, mute, and now blind students too. A small work building went up and Josiah was ready with his hammer, his mechanical tape measure, and his enthusiasm at the site. It was one of those carousel-up days until Jennie answered the door.
“Reverend Parrish, he has fallen, Missus. It’s real bad.” The workman rubbed his cap in his hands, didn’t want to look at her as he stood in the hallway of their home.
“What happened? Is he at the doctor’s?”
“He is, Missus. Closest was Dr. Sawtelle, that woman one.”
“Excellent. I’ll get the carriage and be there.”
The workman’s shoulders sagged in relief. He must have worried over a woman doctor being asked to treat a man. Jennie thought that by 1875 such attitudes would be adjusted. “You come with me, Missus. It be faster.”
She grabbed her hat and reticule. “Lizzie, I’m going with the workman.” She breathed a prayer, “Help, help.”
“Yes, missus, I’ll help ye.” He reached for her hand so she could sit beside him.
The horse clip-clopped at a fast pace. What had Josiah been doing on that ladder? He’d turn seventy in January, though his hair had less gray than Charles’s, and except for his white beard, one wouldn’t think he’d met fifty. He was a vibrant man, active, his mind always working on some problem to solve. She supposed she had no right to try to keep him from ladders.
They sped past Willamette, where she looked to see if Douglas was outside playing rounders or maybe sitting beneath an oak, reading. The horse trotted to Dr. Sawtelle’s office, where a few men meandered around outside, some leaning on the wagon that must have brought Josiah, as blankets marked the bed.
“Mrs. Parrish, we’re so sorry.” This from a man wearing a top hat he removed. “I tried to suggest that he let me or others make the climb, but he insisted. I’ve sent for a real doctor. A surgeon. She”—he nodded toward Mary’s office—“was the closest. Mr. Parrish said he knew of her.”
So he was conscious. Thank you. “Thank you. Let me through, please.”
She rushed into the examining room. Sunshine poured through the transom over the door, casting colored prism light from the glass jars that lined Dr. Sawtelle’s shelves.
“Broken ribs. And you can see the leg wound. Can you assist? My nurse is ill.”
Jennie spied the white of a femur bone when Mary cut off Josiah’s pant leg. Blood. Her stomach lurched. She’d never had a problem witnessing blood, but there was something different about knowing it belonged to someone she dearly loved.
“I’m all right, Jennie.” His voice was raspy. Lung damage from the broken ribs? “Just a little nick.” He took a breath, winced.
“Minimizing does no good, Josiah.” She held his hand. “This looks serious to me.”
He squeezed back with good strength.
Good. She pressed her fingers to his wrist. His heart raced but it was steady and strong.
“He apparently fell off a ladder. Looks like two broken ribs, leg fracture, and then something metal jabbed into his thigh. See here.” Mary moved him, gentle as a baby. “Missed the artery. Ha! I’ll need to set the bone. Infection is our worst problem.”
The top-hat man had followed her in. “The surgeon will be here soon. Don’t start anything until he’s here.”
“Dr. Sawtelle will do fine.” She leaned over Josiah. “Does that meet with your approval?”
“Whatever you think best, Dr. Parrish.” He winced.
Mary shooed Top Hat from the room, motioned Jennie toward the steaming water and soap, then advised her on how to deliver the chloroform to make certain she didn’t put herself to sleep while taking Josiah under. Josiah drifted off as the called-for surgeon burst through the door.
The doctor from the night of Ariyah’s birth.
“I can take it from here, ladies.”
“I don’t want you near my husband.” Jennie’s surge of courage made her voice boom in the room. “He has an attending physician. Leave. Now.”
“But has she set bones? Managed compound fractures? Delivering a baby is one thing, but this is serious surgery.”
“While I feel no need to defend myself to you,” Mary said, “I will say, for Mrs. Parrish’s sake, that I have trained in New York and seen and assisted with my share of wounds and broken bones. It is Mrs. Parrish’s wish that I continue. Now you, please leave. Or stay in silence if you care to assist. A decent doctor never turns down the wisdom of another. I shall proceed.”
“Mrs. . . . Parrish?” He looked at her, recognized her, Jennie thought perhaps remembering his liquored late arrival at Ariyah’s birth. And death.
“Two assistants will be better than one,” he said.
Jennie managed the chloroform; he washed his hands and Mary did her work. She was meticulous with the cleaning of the wound, said that dirt carried bacteria that could harm. The surgeon grunted, but they were a team.
Mary set the bone and bound it but noted that the puncture wound on his thigh would “heal better with open air to it. But we’ll have to watch for infection, change the dressings twice a day at least, and put honey on the bandage and a little oil. I’ve packed this cotton into it with zinc. Ferrum phosphoricum powder will address the fever that will surely come. I’ll let Mr. Parrish recuperate here, Jennie, if you approve. At least for a few days. Then you can take him home and nurse him there.”
The nearest hospital was miles away in Portland, and many saw it as a place to die rather than heal.
“Such nonsense, those tinctures and powders.” The surgeon spoke, but Jennie thought she detected a begrudging admiration in his voice.
The healing proved long and arduous, with many consultations with Mary. Jennie had a cane made for Josiah with a gold fox head. He’d need it when he began to walk again.
“We’re moving to Portland after the first of the year,” Mary told her one morning when Jennie stopped by to pick up more powders. “Cheston has finished his degree and I can do much more in Portland than here. I like treating women, but it’s surgeries and a wider range of medical problems that most intrigue me.”
“But women here need you.”
“Truth is, we can’t make a living here, Jennie. We need a wider population, women physicians do. It’s something I have to think about with a child. You’re fortunate that money isn’t a part of your struggle.”
“It was once. That’s why having treatment for women is so important.”
“Then you go to medical school. You become their doctor.”
“Have you been conspiring with Josiah?”
She looked puzzled. “I remember what you told me a long time ago. And when I saw you assist with Josiah’s injuries, I knew you’d do well as a physician, though it’s too bad that you aren’t hungry enough to pursue it.”
“A different kind of hunger drives people toward their passions and can keep them from them. I have a family now, children. Money has nothing to do with it.” Jennie sighed. “And the real barrier? Reading and writing. I have to memorize and work so hard to decipher texts.”
“You’d never know that, Jennie. You’ve compensated well. Don’t let that stop you. As you know, neither Cheston nor I are religious sorts of people, but we do believe that we’re created with a spirit that drives one forward for the good of others. You listen to yours.”
They were interrupted then by a woman with a small child.
“Callie Charlton, meet Jennie Parrish.” She used their Christian names. “Jennie here has an interest in medicine and I know you do as well.” She turned to Jennie, holding out the powders Jennie had come for. “Callie’s studying in Portland with a well-known physician to prepare herself for entrance to Willamette in the next few years. How is that progressing?”
“Well. I teach at Hollady Addition during the day and study with Dr. Rafferty one evening a week. Lorena here gets th
e rest of my time.” She stroked the child’s blonde hair. “Widows make do.”
Callie stood tall like Mary, with a wide face, high forehead, and serious hazel eyes behind round glasses. She wore a silver collar pin polished to a shine. Side by side, the women were formidable. Jennie wondered if women interested in medicine had to be larger than life to be taken seriously or even noticed. Her small frame would be one more disadvantage.
“Perhaps the three of us could gather for tea,” Jennie offered. She longed for female companions who put healing as their cause and missed Mary already.
“I’d like that,” Callie said.
“Ha. We can plot how to get you into Willamette and be able to take dissection.”
“Every one of us has cut up a deer or two, so it isn’t like we haven’t seen blood and guts.” Callie’s frankness sealed her charm for Jennie. She’d like having her as her physician. Callie said, “When Lorena is four or five, I’ll attend Willamette. If they’ll have me.”
“They’ll have you or my name isn’t Dr. Mary Sawtelle.”
“Perhaps with two of us wanting to enroll, they’d have a more difficult time saying no.” Did I really say that?
“That’s the spirit,” Mary said. She waved her stethoscope like a wand in the air. “I’ll see you both one day in the Medical Society!”
Josiah came down the steps, the thump-thump of the cane announcing his arrival. It was Advent, the season of waiting. “I’ve wrapped the girls’ presents. Should we put them under the tree?”
His family tradition meant exchanging gifts on the Eve of Christmas, with Christmas morning a time of worship, followed by a huge meal and children playing with their treasures. Neighbors often joined them, and Ariyah and Alex would on Christmas Day. Douglas would be home that afternoon for the Christmas recess.
Jennie pondered what Chen had told her about Douglas a few days before. She knew it had taken great courage for him to come forward, saying, “Mister Douglas, he at Chinatown, play cards and smoke.”
“Douglas? My Douglas? Oh, Chen, surely not. He’s a child. It must have been his father. They do bear a striking resemblance.”
“Just tell what see, Missus.”
“I appreciate that.” But he had to be wrong.
“Jennie? About the presents? Under the tree or hidden away?”
“Oh, sorry, my mind took a detour.” She didn’t share the news with Josiah. No need to worry him over a mistaken identity. He was already despondent over the slow pace of his recovery. It bothered Jennie too.
“Under the tree. We’ll have to watch Josie. She’ll want to pull the paper off right now! But it’s fun to anticipate the possibilities, don’t you think?”
“Maybe the mantel. They can see them and anticipate, as you suggest, but not reach them.”
“Except for Douglas. We’ll have to make sure he doesn’t conspire with Gracie to get them down for her.”
Josiah nodded. How she longed to hear his deep-throated laugh, the one she thought she might not hear again after his terrible fall. Infection had strained them. At least now he was up and using the cane to move around. He suffered from a chronic leg pain Mary thought was nerve related, but he rarely complained. Jennie witnessed his wincing and he occasionally asked for laudanum when it became too much to bear. She ached for him and for not being able to relieve his suffering. Still, he was upright and loving his daughters and his wife.
She finished baking her famous apple pie, forcing Chen out of the kitchen for her Christmas cooking. He’d spend the day in Chinatown off Liberty Street. Van huddled at her feet, hoping for a crumb or two to drop. His black ears swept the floor as he scampered for a piece of apple she put in his dish. Josiah came in and eased into a rocker, Josie tugging at his beard as she sat in his lap.
“You have a surgeon’s hands, Jennie.”
“My baking makes you think of surgery?”
“I’m recalling how many times those hands have brought relief to me and others.”
“And I didn’t even need to go to school to offer such curative ways.” She hadn’t healed him though, nor her son’s deep troubles. She blew hair from her forehead, tightened the bow at her waist where her pinafore tied. Water bubbled in the pot and she offered Josiah a cup of tea. He declined.
“You change the subject,” he said. “But one day—”
“We’ll see one day.”
Douglas bounded into the kitchen then, and Gracie raced to hug his legs. Josie sat on Josiah’s lap, the shy one, seeking quiet sunshine; Gracie faced the wind. At twelve, Douglas was nearly six feet tall and sometimes Jennie caught her breath when she saw him and the resemblance to his father. He towered over her and came to the table, holding Gracie in his arms. He leaned over and grabbed a bunch of dough Jennie had filled with cinnamon, sugar, and butter and popped it into his mouth.
“Don’t you want to wait until it’s baked?” Jennie moved to peck his cheek but he turned.
“Huh-uh. Takes too long.” He bent to put Gracie down.
Jennie grabbed his hand then and kissed it. He let her and smiled. “I’ll take seconds when the dough is browned. You always make the best.”
They’d turned the corner, Chen’s message set aside; his teacher’s too. They were a Currier and Ives lithograph. Just perfect, as Ariyah would say. That’s the holiday picture she hung in her mind.
32
“In All Things, Be Content”
For Christmas that year, Josiah gave Jennie a gift she could not have imagined. Nothing sparkling or fashionable but the perfect gift, as Ariyah described it when she showed her friend.
“He’s an amazing man,” she said.
“Yes, he is that.” She fingered the envelope that he’d had wrapped inside a basket he said came from a Clatsop woman’s weaving of cedar bark and grasses. It contained a deed to thirty-three acres of land in Salem and the payments from a contract with a man named Pittock who had built a mansion on property once owned by Josiah. “So you will have land of your own should something happen to me,” he’d said. “You can sell it or keep it or give it away, whatever you wish. It’s yours. In your name.”
“Thank you” was all she could muster. They both assumed that she’d outlive him. Having land was the best kind of investment in this Oregon country. It was a safety net for her and the children. Along with her trust in Providence, she needed nothing more.
Douglas spent that next summer with them rather than staying at the boarding school. A big celebration for the one hundredth anniversary of the nation’s independence meant speeches by Josiah as he felt up to it; parades and parties. Douglas seemed to enjoy himself. He worked with Josiah and the husbandman they’d had to hire, tending the Cashmere goats and the sheep. Josiah had added hogs and there were the chickens, of course. Douglas took special interest in the chickens. It all seemed to be going so well. Even Josiah’s spirits had raised with Douglas’s presence.
“Stacys are interested in having their daughter get one of the goat kids to raise, maybe show at the fair next year. Would you like to come with us and help her pick one out?” Josiah put his fork down and looked at Douglas.
Douglas shoveled one of Chen’s noodle dishes with beef and vegetables into his mouth. The child could consume a garden by himself, as Jennie’s father would say. But he was a tall boy and still growing. “Sure. I like the goats. Any one of them would be good.”
Josiah nodded, finished drinking his coffee. He picked up his cane. “They’ll be here around 3:00 p.m. Bring them over when they come, if you will, Douglas. I need to see if we’ve cured the rat problem.”
“Did you need nux vomica?” Jennie asked.
“I think I have plenty of strychnine at the barn.”
Josiah headed out in his now-familiar hesitating step with his cane. Douglas tossed a stick for Van to chase while they waited for the Stacy family. “We’ll serve tea when they arrive.” She checked in the nursery, where JoJo sat on Lizzie’s lap, a book before her. “We’ll have visitors at 3:00 p
.m. Bring the girls down then, would you?” She was back downstairs mending a tear in Josiah’s wool pants when Douglas came in panting.
“What is it?”
“Let me catch my breath.”
“Is Josiah all right?”
“Of course.” He bent over, hands on thighs, breathing hard. “I ran all the way back. Whew!” He stood up, brushed his brown curls, shiny with sweat, away from his eyes. “He wants your strychnine. He ran out.”
“The key’s . . . in the bottom desk drawer, in an envelope near the back. Be sure to bring back whatever he doesn’t use.”
She had a slight twinge telling him of the key, knowing the nux vomica bottle was right next to the laudanum. But he had matured, was no longer a little boy challenging everything or seeking notice in troubling ways. He was a young man. She could trust him.
The Stacys arrived and Chen served tea while Jennie cradled JoJo on her hip. She sent Lizzie to the barn to tell Josiah and Douglas their guests had arrived.
The couple were the spitting image of the Mother Goose rhyme about Jack Sprat who could eat no fat and his wife who “could eat no lean.” Their daughter Nora, the same age as Douglas, was a blend between the two. She fidgeted on the chair, her eyes darting to the mantel, then the vases on the table, stopping at the paintings before smiling at Jennie, then Gracie, then looking away. She reminded Jennie of Douglas in younger years with always-busy hands and eyes. Josiah had walked back and the men discussed goats and breeding while Nora’s short legs rocked her back and forth on her chair.
“Douglas, why don’t you take Nora to the barns? We can follow, but I’m sure you’ve already penned the goats you have in mind for her to choose from.”
“Good idea, Mother.” The two headed off and the adults lingered, talking. The Stacys soon brought their wagon around the house to stop before the barn while Josiah and Jennie watched the girls scamper before them. The day was decidedly spring, with birds flitting and the fragrance of irises and yellow daffodils marking their way. By the time they arrived, helped Mrs. Stacy from her wagon seat, and entered the barn, Nora sat beside a kid in fresh straw, petting it, stroking it methodically. Douglas had put a halter on the animal and placed the others back in with their mothers, as it was the two children and the goat in the pen. The kid bleated and flicked its tail. Nora looked up.
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