“Christal, dear, please sit.” Her mother’s voice was surprisingly nervous.
She slipped into her usual seat, but she couldn’t slouch down into it as she often did. Something was going on.
“Today when I said the grace, I mentioned the joyous excitement of life ahead,” her father said. “Do you remember that?”
She nodded, although the truth was that she had been so excited about the dinner she’d only listened to the prayer with half her mind.
Papa reached out and took her mother’s hand. “We have an announcement to make.” Her father paused. “This is something we’ve prayed about. We are planning to embark on an adventure. We’re going to be missionaries!”
“We are?” Missionaries! She tried to take it all in. Her mother’s face was creased with concern, and Christal stood to go to her side and give her a hug—although who she was reassuring, her mother or herself, she could not say.
“No, we are. You aren’t.” Her father’s voice was subdued.
She stopped. “I’m not? I’m not going with you?”
“Christal, you can’t go with us. We are considering a seven-year commitment.” Mother reached out for her, but Christal stepped away.
“I could go.”
“You can’t.”
“If you wanted me to go, I could go. You don’t want me to come with you!” The pain was so intense that the tears refused to fall. Her head felt like it would burst.
“It’s not that, honey.” Her mother shot a despairing look at her father. “We’re going to a place that is so distant, so undeveloped, that you’d be miserable. There aren’t libraries, no schools. The buildings are minimal, and we’d be building the only church. Plus, your health—”
“I want to go.” A volcano of anger rose within her. “I am no longer sick. Will you never see that?”
She had never spoken to her parents like that, but they had never proposed anything quite as life shattering as this.
“Christal, no.” Her father’s words were quiet but firm.
Aunt Ruth stirred in her chair, and Christal spun around to look at her.
“What about Aunt Ruth? You’re leaving her, too? Oh!” She sat down as she realized what the plan would be. “I see. Aunt Ruth and I will stay here.” She smiled at her aunt.
Her parents shook their heads. “No,” they said in unison.
“What about her then?” she cried. “Is she going with you?”
“I’m also going to be traveling,” Aunt Ruth said, “but not with them.”
“You’re going by yourself?” This made no sense to her.
“No.” Aunt Ruth touched her upswept hair self-consciously and sat a bit straighter.
“Then what?”
“I,” Aunt Ruth said with a faint smile, “am going to be traveling with Alfred. We are getting married in April, and he and I will head off to Miami, where we’ll get on a ship and head to Borneo and Egypt and Argentina, living the vagabond life.”
“You and Dr. Bering? You’re getting married? So, are you in love?” she blurted out.
Her aunt blushed, a charmingly youthful reaction. “Don’t be impertinent, Christal Maria Everett.”
“So, Mother and Papa, if you go to Bora-Bora or wherever, and Aunt Ruth goes to Cairo, where do I go?” She buried her face in her hands.
“Your father and I won’t go until next fall at the very earliest,” Mother said, getting out of her chair and coming to kneel at Christal’s chair. She ran her hand over her daughter’s hair. “We won’t leave until you’re settled.”
“I will,” said Aunt Ruth, bluntly. “No matter what, I’ve got a date to become Mrs. Alfred Bering on April 27, 1886, and then I’m on a train to Miami and then on a ship, destination: Borneo!”
Merry Christmas to me, Christal thought. Merry Christmas, indeed!
❧
“I think the Bonds family liked their gifts,” Isaac said to his uncle as they retired to the chairs near the fireplace after their Christmas dinner. They had delivered the baskets of presents to the expectant couple before sitting down to their own meal.
“The idea of the book for Mr. Bonds was truly inspired. Around the World in Eighty Days by Mr. Jules Verne was an excellent choice.”
“That’s the book you gave me, you might remember.” Isaac smiled. “I took it only because you’re my uncle and I have the greatest respect for you, but I knew I wouldn’t enjoy it. I was incredibly wrong.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“I did. I’ve been reading every evening, mainly shorter works, but earlier this week I went to the library and borrowed Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea by him, too. I thought I’d start it today as a Christmas gift to myself.”
“I like that idea. A good book on Christmas Day—excellent. I’m sure Mr. Bonds is sitting with the book open now. Didn’t you think that Mrs. Bonds seemed to genuinely like the necklace Ruth selected for her?”
“She did. She put it right on. Did you notice that Ruth included scarves, hats, and mittens for both of them? She knitted them herself, along with a blanket and little socks for the baby.” Isaac grinned. “If she’d had more time, she probably would have knitted them all jackets, too.”
“True!”
“Well, they seemed to enjoy the day, even if the baby didn’t make a Christmas appearance.”
Uncle Alfred looked at the anniversary clock on the mantel. “It’s not even seven o’clock yet. There are still five good hours left in the day.”
“I am so stuffed,” Isaac commented as he leaned back and sighed contentedly, “that I’m afraid she’d have to have that baby here. I don’t think I could walk to our front door, let alone to her house. Do you think she could let herself in? And we could just tell her from our chairs what to do?”
His uncle chuckled and slid down into the chair, putting his feet up on the ottoman and undoing his collar button. “I don’t think so. I’d never tell a woman in labor what to do. I let her tell me what to do. The body knows.”
“I wonder if Christal and her family will come over tonight,” Isaac said.
There was a pause before his uncle answered. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s Christmas.”
“No.” Isaac considered sitting up but decided that sprawling was easier. “I mean why the hesitation? What did you mean by that?”
“What did I mean when I didn’t say something?”
“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know.” The fire was warm and the food was settling so nicely that he wanted to just drift off to sleep.
“I suspect they’re trying to calm Christal down. She’s probably really upset.” His uncle’s voice was very soft, so soft that at first Isaac wasn’t sure he’d heard it correctly—or at all.
“Upset?” Isaac struggled upright. “Why would Christal be upset?”
Uncle Alfred pulled himself to a sitting position. “Matthew and Sarah are leaving next fall to be missionaries, and in the spring Ruth and I are getting married and traveling the world.”
This was not the kind of announcement one should try to assimilate when one had eaten entirely too much Christmas dinner, Isaac thought. One should be awake and alert and smart, not sleepy and lethargic and dull.
Missionaries? Married? Traveling the world?
The meaning began to sink in.
“Christal, too?” Christal was leaving? Moving away?
Another angle of the situation struck him, and the stupor began to wear off rapidly. “If you go, that means—”
His uncle nodded. “It does. You have to be ready to take over.”
“How soon?”
“April 27th, eleven o’clock. That’s the time that Ruth walks down that aisle and I officially retire from doctoring and start living my life with the woman I love.”
“That’s only four months away.”
“Four months, one day, and sixteen hours, if my math still holds.”
“I thought you said you’d be here
for two years.” Isaac swallowed, trying to force down the lump of fear that seemed to have grown in his throat.
“I will be, off and on. But for the most part, you’ll be the doctor.”
“I won’t be ready! I can’t—”
“You can, and you will. You have the knowledge and the book training. Now all you need is to fine-tune it with some understanding of how people get ill, and as importantly, how they recover.”
He shook his head vehemently. “I can’t—”
“I’ll be coming back regularly—in between trips to far-off climes with my love, where we’ll wear tropical flowers around our necks and play drums in the sand and get sunburned in January. And besides, I’m not leaving tomorrow.”
Could he do it? Could he learn all he needed to know in that short amount of time?
And what about Christal? What would she do? Would she stay in St. Paul?
What would he do if she didn’t? What would he do?
He was a doctor—or almost one. He knew that the human heart was an organ, the same as a liver or a lung. It beat, in a generally regular pattern, from before birth and quit only when life on earth was done. Its job was to pump blood through the body’s circulatory system.
That was all it did. It couldn’t break. It couldn’t feel emotions. Hearts weren’t sorry or sad or devastated. Their owners were.
Like him.
Yet his heart was aching already. He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t. Somehow he’d find a way to keep her here. He had to!
“She’s not going with them,” Uncle Alfred said from the depths of his chair. Isaac realized that his uncle had been studying him.
“She isn’t?” His question came out in a high-pitched squeak, and he cleared his throat.
“No. Matthew and Sarah are going by themselves.”
“So,” he said, slowly, trying not to sound as excited as he felt, “Christal will be staying here?”
“That I couldn’t tell you. I suppose that’s Christal’s decision.”
“What would she do here? Would she have to find employment? Where would she live? Next door?”
His uncle shrugged. “I know the house belongs to the church, so I’d say that she couldn’t live there unless she stayed on as a maid or a cook.”
A maid or a cook? Christal?
“I suppose she could find work at the library here. She’d be a marvelous employee,” Uncle Alfred mused. “She knows the books inside and out.”
“Where would she live? In a boardinghouse?”
“That, or as a roomer somewhere.”
He’d known her only two months, but he knew that she wouldn’t be happy in either situation.
“They’ll figure it out,” Uncle Alfred said. “After all, Matthew and Sarah won’t be leaving until early autumn. There’s plenty of time. Plenty of time. Not to worry.”
His uncle’s voice trailed off as he drifted to sleep.
But Isaac was wide-awake. Not to worry? How could he not worry? He was worried about Christal, but he was also very concerned about himself. Was he ready to take over as a full-fledged doctor within a few months?
He put his hands together, palm to palm, and bent his head over so that his fingertips touched his brow.
When things seemed insurmountable, there was only one path. He took it. He began to pray.
It wasn’t one of the beautiful prayers that came from his uncle’s lips or the clear ones that he heard from Rev. Everett’s pulpit each Sunday. It was a wordless mishmash of concerns, of cares, of wants, of needs, all laid at the table of Heaven. Soon it began to sift through, until he was left with one unavoidable fact.
He was in love with Christal, and he couldn’t live without her. They belonged together. Perhaps, perhaps—he couldn’t go further with the unspoken thought this early on, but it took up residence in his soul and settled in for a long stay.
His heart, that insensate organ he’d been mulling about earlier, did an odd little leap. It felt like joy.
❧
Christal retired to her room as soon as she could. She wanted to take her aching head away from her parents and aunt, who were trying very hard to make her feel better—and failing miserably.
They all had plans. They all had something exciting and different to look forward to, but she didn’t. She had nothing but a big open abyss.
They all assured her that they were not abandoning her. Her mother repeated that she wouldn’t leave until Christal had a home and a source of income, but neither she nor Christal’s father had any suggestions about that. She wasn’t trained to teach. She’d make a miserable cook or maid. Perhaps she could find a job at the library. She could ask tomorrow.
They didn’t understand that her distress wasn’t just about not living in this house where she’d spent her entire life, or having to find employment in a world that didn’t offer much to women. From now on she would be alone. For the next seven years, unless she opted to spend Christmas with her parents in their missionary home, they’d be apart for the holidays.
This would be the last time they celebrated Jesus’ birth together.
Or at least the last time for a long time, she added as a hasty amendment to her stream of thought. She’d have a family, but they’d be gone.
Even Dr. Bering. It struck her like a bolt of lightning. Even Dr. Bering!
And if Dr. Bering left, would Isaac stay?
If he left, too—she couldn’t bear it. She just couldn’t.
A man shouted outside, and she raced to her window. Isaac stepped out of Dr. Bering’s carriage.
The door of the house opened, and two men emerged—Dr. Bering and a man she didn’t recognize but who looked terrified. His hat was askew, and his jacket flapped open in the night chill.
Isaac looked up at her window and waved at her, but his face was solemn.
Something was going on.
She hadn’t changed into her nightclothes yet, so she ran down the stairs, threw her jacket on—ignoring her aunt’s pleas to button it—and sped to the carriage.
“Is everyone all right?” she asked breathlessly.
“My wife’s having a baby!” the man she didn’t recognize said.
“This is Mr. Bonds. Mr. Bonds, Christal Everett.” Dr. Bering put his hand on the fellow’s back. “My good man, let’s get in the carriage and see about putting that baby into your arms as soon as possible.”
Isaac was behind them, and she could see the anxiety on his face. “You’ll be all right,” she whispered, patting his arm.
“It’s my first baby,” he answered with a tight smile as he began to climb into the carriage. “I’ve never delivered a baby before. And this one is a Christmas baby. They say doctors never forget their first delivery.”
“It’ll be fine. Just fine. Go on now. I’ll be praying.”
He stopped midstep and smiled. “Thank you.”
“Come on, Isaac! Babies wait for no one!” his uncle called from inside the carriage, and Isaac got behind the horses, pulling his doctor’s bag inside with him, and picked up the reins.
The carriage clattered away, and Christal watched it, her heart riding with it.
❧
The woman twisted in the bed, the blankets tangled around her arms and legs. Her face was dotted with sweat, and her husband stood at her side, wringing his hands together fiercely.
Isaac knew that labor was painful, but it was one thing to read about it on paper and another to see it in its vivid reality.
“Can’t you help her?” Mr. Bonds asked, his voice hoarse with fear. “I know you wanted us to go to the hospital, but it was Christmas, you know, and we thought we’d spend this time alone, and the pains came faster and faster. . .”
“That’s all right,” Uncle Alfred said soothingly. “Women have been having babies in homes for hundreds and thousands of years. This baby will be just fine being born here.”
The room was small and dark and lit only faintly with a single lamp. They hadn’t covered this in medical school�
��delivering a baby in a room that was the size of a closet.
Nor had they told him what to do when he had to work with only the instruments in his doctor’s bag. He hoped that if all went well, the only item he’d need would be the scissors to cut the cord.
The hospital would have been better. Now that those in medicine realized how much safer a hospital birth was, more women were using maternity hospitals. There was a new one in St. Paul, and his uncle was enthusiastic about it. But this baby was going to be born at home, not in the controlled surroundings of the hospital.
His uncle sat beside the woman on the bed. “Hello, Mrs. Bonds. It’s almost time for you to see your child!”
She moaned in response, the sheets clutched in her white-knuckled grip.
“Can’t you stop the pain?” her husband asked. “Make it stop? I can’t bear to watch her like this.”
His voice was tense with unshed tears, and Uncle Alfred patted the worried man’s hands. “The only thing that will make this stop will be the appearance of Baby Bonds. Are you ready to become a father tonight?”
“Yes.” The man looked again at his wife and wiped the sweat from her forehead.
“Good. Now, Mr. Bonds—”
“Jeremy. Please call me Jeremy.”
“Very well. Jeremy, you could be a great help if you’d gather some things for me. Some boiling water, and some chilled water. Some ammonia. A bar of soap, too, would help. And some cloths, please, preferably ones we can discard at the end of this.”
“Why would we want to—” the husband began, and then he stopped. “Oh. Oh!”
He turned and slipped out of the room, his fingers still working wildly together.
“Why do we need ammonia?” Isaac asked.
“We don’t. We needed him out of the room.”
His uncle turned his attention to the woman on the bed. “Mrs. Bonds, I hope you don’t mind my bringing in my nephew. Is it all right if he stays?”
She nodded. “This. Hurts. So. Much.”
“I have heard that,” Uncle Alfred said soothingly. “But the reward at the end is great.”
“I have never had pain this bad in my entire life,” Mrs. Bonds said, reaching out and gripping Isaac’s hand so tightly that his knuckles cracked in protest. “This is—” She screamed as a contraction seized her.
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