The Love Note

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  “He’s asleep, but miserable. I’m afraid we’ll have to take further action come morning.”

  “And Mother?” His voice held a raw edge.

  I chose the merciful path of truth. Better to know while there was time than to be surprised. “Resting, but she has a new weakness—a deeper one.” No medical equipment could reach this ailment.

  He gave a grim nod. How many years had he lived with the knowledge of his mother’s impending death?

  “I’m afraid the specialist did nothing but steal her cushion of hope.”

  “I’m glad she has you, Willa.” I trembled at the raw depth of his masculine voice. “You’ve given her more than any specialist, and I don’t want you to leave. I couldn’t bear it.”

  “Where would I go?” I gave a wan smile. “Besides, I now find myself with two patients. I cannot very well abandon them, can I?”

  A hint of smile flickered in return, gratifying me in this night so heavy with dread. I gave a nod and turned, but something made me look back. Perhaps it was the budding doctor in me needing to know he was all right, or perhaps it was the tender moments we’d spent together knitting my heart to his, aching when he ached.

  I regretted that last look the minute I glimpsed the brokenness streaked across the face of the man who had always been so strong. His broad shoulders sagged. I simply reached out and squeezed his arm, for I couldn’t bear to ruin the moment with words.

  Then he did something so very un-Gabe-like—he moved closer as if compelled by need, by force, and wrapped those massive arms around me to pull me close. His chest jerked in and out against the side of my face and his heart fluttered near my ear. He clung as if I was holding him up, and he shared, without words, his deepest hurts.

  I made small circles on his back with my fingertips, as I so often did for hurting patients, assuring him of my presence without intruding.

  With one shuddering exhale, he pulled back and lingered in the doorway, the night sky highlighting his haggard face. “We do seem to find the adventures, don’t we?”

  “Or they find us if we’re too long about it.” I offered a warm smile. “It’ll be all right, Gabe. You’ll be all right. Maybe not this moment . . .”

  “I know. And Willa—thank you.”

  I squeezed his hand, the same one that had pulled me up out of the depths when my own mother had died. “It’s what friends do.”

  Frogs and birds chorused behind him, creating a lovely symphony of night noises. His jaw twitched against the force of bottled-up thoughts. “Willa, what you said about . . . about me speaking up.” His features tensed, as though he were wrestling with some mighty unseen thing. “I need to tell you something.” His voice was husky.

  I put a hand on his arm to stop him as my stomach knotted. “Let’s not take this night any deeper. Perhaps another time.”

  He relaxed, his mouth returning to its natural pleasant curves.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  Yet there was a great deal of night to be lived through first, and death hovered over Crestwicke. I sensed that before another night passed, it would descend. That familiar panicky helplessness tightened around me—strangling, suffocating.

  I can’t do it, God. I can’t save them. I need you.

  twenty-three

  Love is not limited to romance, nor is happiness reserved for marriage.

  ~A scientist’s observations on love

  I stared down the wretched surgeon the next morning with his top hat covering fiery red hair and dared him to push past me. We’d survived the night without death, and he seemed terribly uninterested in helping to preserve that delicate state. “He’s a patient like any other, sir, and you must treat him. I’ve paid you what I could.”

  The boy’s thrashing had awakened me in the predawn hours, and he’d emptied his stomach onto the floor. He’d then looked up at me with terror as a groan was wrenched from somewhere inside.

  I’d shushed him as panic rose. The damage was internal, and he required an operation if he was to see the next dawn. I’d snuck him down to the unused back parlor where the furniture lay covered in dust sheets, and sent Gabe tearing into Brighton for a surgeon when Dr. Tillman was nowhere to be found.

  Now that very surgeon was here, checking his pocket watch more thoroughly than his patient. He’d taken one look at the boy, assessed the worth of his life, and acted accordingly. “I must be off. I’ve a train to catch, and it’s the last one this morning.”

  “You’ve a more important patient expecting you?”

  He stiffened. “I’ll be on holiday, actually, and my family has already gone ahead.”

  “A holiday?”

  “That’s right.” He snapped his bag shut. “It’ll be my first in years, and I’ll not be made to feel guilty over it. An unsettled stomach is nothing to worry over. Happens all the time to boys who can’t stay out of trouble.”

  “Surely you can see it’s more than that.” The boy shifted and looked at me, his eyes dull with pain. After all he’d endured, would this be the last thing the poor lad remembered about this life—horrible agony? His body quaked, and I shuddered with him. “Please, help him.”

  “Stable boys are kicked every day. With a little rest and good care, he’ll be perfectly fine.”

  I spun around, but Gabe, who’d been standing in the doorway, was gone. Planting myself before the surgeon, arms crossed, I met Dr. Axel’s gaze with boldness. Solid conviction. I wouldn’t be bullied. “I’m telling you, he’s not fine, and he needs your help.”

  He wore that passive smile of tolerance only bestowed on nurses, then the man was fitting his top hat onto his head and slipping his arms into his traveling jacket. “It’s good of you to worry, but he’ll come ’round. I’ll check him when I return.”

  I grabbed his arm. “Please. I know it’s inconvenient, but you must operate on this boy or he’ll die.”

  “I’m leaving a tonic for the pain. That should help considerably.” The man turned his back on me. “Good day.” The doctor tipped his hat and moved quickly out of the room, taking all hope for the lad’s survival with him.

  Panic bloomed. There I stood, stranded without tools or experience to operate, asking for a miracle. I closed my eyes, touching his small chest and willing the blood leaking through his body to stop. Please, Father. Give this boy a chance.

  Boot clomps startled me, and the door burst open. The surgeon’s anger exploded into the room. “Where’s my horse?”

  I blinked. “Your horse, sir?”

  “My horse. My horse is gone from the stables. Where in heaven’s name is he?”

  Then I caught sight of Gabe, dear Gabe, who had somehow reappeared in the doorway. We all looked at him as the barest trace of smile dented his cheeks. “On holiday, sir.”

  Our eyes met for a brief moment, a look of utter kinship passing in a flicker. We were alike, he and I.

  In a fluster of anger, the surgeon marched up to Gabe, his nose stopping at Gabe’s chest. “Tell me where you’ve put my horse or I’ll have you thrown in prison for theft.”

  Gabe shrugged. “Do what you like, but you won’t be leaving here until you do your job.”

  The surgeon’s look held enough venom to kill an elephant. He dropped his bag and threw off his jacket. “Boil the instruments.”

  “Of course, Doctor.” I kept my voice level despite the waves of relief that swept over me, loosening the knots inside and leaving a fresh peace.

  And that was how the lofty surgeon came to operate on an orphan boy at Crestwicke in the early morning hours. It was a tedious and nerve-wracking procedure that seemed tentatively successful—but left us with a surprising revelation. A true shock, really. When I slipped out of the room to tell Gabe, the household had begun to stir. The discreet footfall of servants sounded on tile and wood, and quiet voices carried through the halls.

  Gabe lifted his head. “How is the boy? Did you manage to save him?”

  A sharp cry j
arred the moment. Celeste stood in the shadows behind Gabe, pale as rice powder.

  “What? What is it, Celeste? Please, tell—oh.” I looked down at my hands, stained with blood that the brief toweling had not cleaned away.

  She stumbled through words. “What—what—Oh!”

  “Oh no, please don’t panic. There’s been no murder. Quite the opposite, actually.”

  Her horrified gaze shot from me to the back parlor doors.

  “There was an accident—a stranger—and we had to perform an emergency surgery.”

  “Surgery?” She trembled. “You would turn our home into your operating theatre, Miss Duvall? How could you—”

  “I must ask you to keep your voice down. We cannot afford to alarm your mother.”

  She glanced at Gabe with disbelief, then back at me, pushing past us to make her way into the little parlor.

  “Please, don’t go in there. Celeste!” I hurried in after her.

  Yet she simply stood there, back erect, staring down at our sodden little patient still groggy from chloroform. The surgeon was cleaning his tools with linen strips, his entire bearing sobered by the effort we’d just undertaken. The intensity of the close call, the shocking revelation, had replaced the urgency to begin his holiday.

  Celeste ignored his presence. “What sort of beggar have you allowed into our home, Miss Duvall? I shall blame you if we are robbed.”

  I looked down at the pale face that just now showed signs of stirring. I exhaled in relief as my patient’s eyes blinked open.

  “You can’t possibly plan to keep this boy here, can you?”

  Gabe entered with a frown. “Will he be all right?”

  “No.” I met Gabe’s gaze and lowered my voice. “That is, it’s not a boy.”

  This shocked the room into silence.

  Within an hour, we’d cleaned up the worst of our mess. The morning had drained me, and I wondered why on earth I continued to put myself through this.

  Then I glanced at my patient’s long eyelashes feathered over grimy cheeks, the gentle stirring of gangly limbs that would have been dumped in a pauper’s grave by now if I hadn’t forced the operation, and I remembered why. Yes, I breathed. I needed to insert myself in the medical world. People were dying in stuffy, dirty hospitals who might have lived, and I could help them. Every time I thought of it, of Father’s research and the clinic so badly needed, my brain spiraled with thoughts of what could be.

  When the patient was actively stirring, I peeked in on Golda and found her still sleeping off the effects of travel, her breathing even and steady. It seemed we had escaped death after all.

  Exhaling the morning’s tension, I returned to my newer patient and found Celeste hovering about the sagging cot, attacking the child’s grime with a rag and bucket and much gusto. “You certainly don’t look like a girl, layered in all this filth. How could you allow yourself to become this way?”

  The child grimaced at the scrubbing. I hesitated, wondering if I should intrude.

  “Are you a heathen?”

  “Not that I know, miss.” Her voice had begun to gain a little strength.

  “Then who on earth has forced you to pretend you were a boy?”

  “No one, miss. I done it meself after me mum up and died.”

  The rag slowed. “You mean you want to dress as a boy?”

  “No, I had to. Girls have the deck stacked against ’em the minute they’re born, especially if they’re alone.” Her chin jutted. “Can’t do nothing in this world. Can’t even protect their own selves, if someone bigger than ’em sees something he wants.”

  A muscle jerked in Celeste’s neck as she absorbed the large statement from so small a person. “Then the world sorely needs to change. And you know who will change it? Women. Because God gave us our own type of strength. We must never let it go to waste by wishing we were something different. What’s your name?”

  “Frankie.”

  “That’s your true Christian name?”

  The child grimaced. “Phoebe.”

  “You’ll stay here for a while, Phoebe, until we see what can be done about you. In the meantime, I will show you what it means to be a woman.”

  “Right, then.” The girl glared. “I suppose you and your pretty ideas will pay my way, then, and buy the headstones for the entire family, fill me belly every day, protect me from every man who—” She looked down, dirty hair falling over her face.

  Celeste slowed her work to consider the girl, her shoulders stiff beneath her cotton day gown as she wrung out the rag. She lifted the girl’s other arm and smoothed the rag over it. “Why yes, I believe I will. I have need of an assistant. Are you clever?”

  “Compared to some.” Phoebe shifted awkwardly.

  “When you’re well, you can come with me to commission the headstones. We may have to do simple limestone. Have you many to bury?”

  Phoebe stared at her, looking even more pitiful as cleanliness streaked through the grime on her face. “Six of us, if I make it. Seven if I don’t.”

  “Six, then.” Celeste helped the girl sit and reached for a towel. “Here, dry off. We’ll have to soak some of this filth off, but this will do for now. At least a body can tell you’re human.”

  Phoebe eyed the woman now unexpectedly mothering her, and I couldn’t be sure if she enjoyed it or wanted to dash off in utter panic. When Celeste began to comb Phoebe’s hair down her slender back, smoothing her hand over the wet strands, the girl’s eyes fluttered closed.

  “We’ll have to keep this quiet until I figure out how on earth to break the news to the lady of the house. I’ll have the maids put a cot in one of the spare servant’s rooms until I decide what’s to be done. Will that suit?”

  “I don’t know what I can do around a place like this. I’m not sure what good—”

  “You leave that to me.”

  The girl turned and frowned at Celeste, scrunching up her brow as if her calculations weren’t adding up. “I don’t have dresses anymore.”

  “That can be remedied.”

  “I can’t pay for dresses, for headstones, for food without work, and I ain’t fit for much yet, and I’m so . . . so tired . . .” Her sagging shoulders trembled, the lavender circles under her eyes making her appear so much older.

  “Phoebe.” Celeste put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “You cannot possibly earn enough to pay for all that. So stop trying and accept it.”

  Phoebe stared for long moments, then wilted onto Celeste’s lap in sheer exhaustion and began to weep.

  Stiff with shock, Celeste shifted and gave a few awkward pats to the girl’s back, as if uncertain exactly where to touch her—or if she wanted to. Yet the longer the girl clung, tucking her face into the inexperienced woman’s skirts, Celeste’s body softened and she laid her hand on the girl’s head like a solemn benediction. A promise.

  My heart is fertile soil ready for someone’s love to be cast onto it . . .

  The passing moments melted Celeste’s pinched features into something akin to affection. With a sigh, that modern, independent woman leaned down and smoothed her fingers over the girl’s hair. “There, now.” Then she began to rock her, saying something in a low, quiet voice. It was an instinct I’d seen in mothers across all walks of life as they chatted or worked, even when their arms cradled nothing more than a basket of bread. I’d never expected it from Celeste.

  As the moment crystalized into sacredness, I slipped out with a tired smile and pulled off my stained apron, balling it up.

  Celeste exited soon after and froze at the sight of me. “Miss Duvall.”

  I smiled. “A very fine heart beats in that chest, Celeste. You’re changing her life and demonstrating what truly sets women apart.”

  She straightened. “Every girl deserves a little looking after.” With a nod, she moved past me down the hall.

  Breakfast sat on the sideboard yet, and already I’d witnessed two miracles and completed what felt like a full day of work. Thank you, Father. My sof
t heart gushed with praise. Thank you for bringing me to a helpless state so I might witness what you wanted to do.

  I jumped when I felt a tap on my arm.

  “You get more mail here than I do.” Gabe stood just behind, towering over me with a squarish envelope in one hand.

  Looking up into his dear face, squeezing the hand that held my letter, I silently expressed my gratitude that was too great for words for what he’d done that day. He gave an answering nod with the barest trace of a smile. With a tender touch to my cheek, he moved into the room.

  I leaned against a pillar and opened the letter, surprised to see Longfellow’s name at the bottom. It was a pleasure, he said, to serve Golda Gresham and to hear a fresh poet as yet unspoiled by fame. He made several remarks about our conversation, then spoke of romance. Allow yourself to be caught by a man, Miss Duvall. The right one is worth the risk.

  I read those words several times, but my spirit was freshly alive with the victory of rescuing a life, my mind awakened to my vital role in the medical world.

  Don’t concern yourself so much with the great search for passion and sparks—those can be cultivated as well as found, often with greater reward. We are both like flags, you and I—erratic and passionate, colors on display, blowing wherever the wind takes us. Do not be afraid to marry a man who’s firmly planted to earth, for he is the flagpole to your flag—not restricting, but anchoring, so that you may be free to fly. In return, you shall decorate the dull gray metal of his life forevermore.

  I lifted my gaze to the triangle of Gabe’s back. He worked quietly, piling used rags and sheets onto the drape cloth and bundling them all for the burn pile, then placing my medical instruments back in their bag with all the precision I used when working with them. The sight of his dear profile stirred a smile that came from deep within.

  Every time I was near Gabe, I felt something solid and quiet in my chest, and I delighted in it. Why ever would I change the precious thing we had? At times, there were friends who were better than suitors, finer even than husbands. I crossed the room and laid my small hand on his back, and he turned with that heartfelt smile that always calmed my soul.