“Yes,” she groused, angered again. “I am certain sure they did!”
She shook her head at her outburst. “Lord, I do not wish to be held captive by someone else’s hateful behavior. Please help me to forgive Nurse Rasmussen and the girls of my class. O Lord, I give this hurtful situation to you. Please send your Spirit of Peace to guard my heart and mind.”
As her classes continued, Tabitha still felt as though something, something unseen, were working against her—and yet she could not decide what it was. She shrugged.
I can only do my best. I trust you, Lord, to guide me through this ordeal to your perfect will for my life.
The academic year resumed and marched on, and so did the classes, study sessions, exams, practicums, and work shifts. Tabitha caught up on her studies and did well on her exams. She would have been proud and content with her progress—if her energy had allowed her to stop and reflect. But she was now assigned to the night shift six days a week!
Her only sleep was what she could snatch in the evenings between dinner and her shift start and the occasional nap between classes, practicums, and “punishment duties.” She often forewent lunch to steal an hour of sleep.
I do not know how long I can keep this up, she worried, rubbing bleary eyes. But when doubt came upon her, when she feared she would crumble, she would recite the words from Rose’s Christmas gift, words she knew by heart:
Our God shall uphold you with his strong right hand, and we are confident that by his power you will do great things for him.
“You uphold me with your strong right hand, Lord! Without your strength, I would fail,” she prayed, “but because I know you are upholding me, I can persevere.”
A slow, beautiful spring rolled onto the hospital and school campus. Tabitha tried to capture and enjoy a moment of it as she raced down the paths between dormitory and classroom, cafeteria and hospital. But it was all she could do to acknowledge the changing of the seasons as she sped across the campus.
Two months in advance, Tabitha applied for a furlough for the spring term break. I have not been home since fall term began, she rationalized. Surely they will approve it!
And it was important for Tabitha to go home: Breona had at last consented to marry Pastor Carmichael.
Tabitha was hopeful of this request and began to plan her brief visit to Denver. “I must see my friend as a bride!” she laughed, grinning in anticipation.
Then the answer arrived. She stared in disbelief at the short response from the dean’s office: “Your request for a furlough has been denied.”
Why? Why, Lord? Tabitha could not understand, but she knew that questioning the Dean’s decision would be fruitless.
Three more times that spring she felt someone watching her, but each time she stopped and stared around, her heart pounding, she spied no one near her except other students or staff and campus workers.
Twice, after dark as Tabitha walked to her night shift at the hospital, she heard footsteps behind her. She called out, asking who was there, but no one answered. As she walked on, she no longer heard the soft pad of steps following, but she could not shake her sense of unease.
Another instance, in the full light of day, she glared with suspicion at a gardener, a shriveled man of indeterminate age, but he was busy trimming a shrub. Tabitha shrugged and, with an eye on the tall campus clock tower, ran for her next class.
~~**~~
Chapter 12
January 1913
Another year has passed, Tabitha thought. When I believed I could endure no more, you, Lord, sustained me. You are faithful, O God. So faithful.
Tabitha had now worked an entire year of night shifts with no respite, no holidays, and no furloughs. She had worked night after night in addition to her classes, practicums, and exams; she maintained her grades in addition to hours spent cleaning the bloody aftermath of surgeries or scrubbing beakers and other medical instruments, wrapping them in brown paper, and sterilizing them in the autoclave.
The same unrelenting duties were not assigned to the other nursing students. Yes, all the students rotated through night shifts, but Tabitha was never taken off the night roster. And only when a classmate made a significant error or broke a rule were they given work in addition to their daily duties.
Tabitha knew that she had Nurse Rasmussen to thank for the “punishment duties” she never escaped. I just do not know why, Lord, she fretted.
“Lord,” Tabitha whispered, “I give my life to you to do as you wish. Let me be like the Apostle Paul!” and she quoted a passage from 2 Corinthians aloud as she stood long hours in the wards each night.
Always bearing about in the body
the dying of the Lord Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus
might be made manifest in our body.
For we which live are always
delivered unto death for Jesus' sake,
that the life also of Jesus
might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.
She no longer requested furloughs. After having her requests rejected five times, she had given up asking for leave.
While most of the students vacated the campus between terms, Tabitha and a handful of other students remained in residence in the dormitory, working extended hours to maintain staffing levels at the hospital.
Though the hours were long, term breaks also had their bit of silver lining: With no classes in session, Tabitha could sleep all day, sleep until her exhausted body received its full complement of sleep.
Besides, the end of her ordeal was in sight. Within a few weeks the spring term would commence—and at its end, she would graduate!
Then I will go home.
Home! She counted the months that had passed.
I have not been home in fifteen months.
An entire spring had passed. An entire summer had drifted by. Another fall and another Christmas had come and gone.
Carpenter had visited again at Christmas, and Tabitha cradled those precious memories close to her heart. She had even begun to entertain hope that she and Mason could have a future together.
If it is your will, Lord, she prayed, but I know you have called me to nursing. Help me to follow hard after you, giving you my all, so I might satisfy your purposes in my life.
Carpenter, too, seemed to have new purpose. “I earned my pilot’s license, Tabs, and Cliff is teaching me how to instruct. He has a small pilot’s school, and I shall be his partner.”
“But what shall you do with this flying, Mr. Carpenter? What is its objective?”
He cocked his head, thinking before he framed an answer. “I am not certain, but I cannot escape the sense that we are preparing for something important, something momentous.”
As am I, Tabitha admitted to herself. Something important, only I do not know what it will be.
Still, she longed for her schooling to be finished so that she could return to Denver—but she also harbored some anxiety.
When I return to Palmer House, so much will have changed. I will meet girls who live there but who do not even know me. And neither Mei-Xing nor Breona reside at Palmer house any longer.
Tabitha made herself stop thinking along those lines. “Keep your eyes upon your goal, Tabitha. Fix them upon graduation. Think of nothing but receiving your nurse’s cap and pin—focus on what life will be when June arrives, after which you will leave this place forever.”
So she toiled on.
~~~
January passed into February and then early March. The winter term ended, and Tabitha welcomed the break between classes, and not only because of the welcome extra sleep, but because she also anticipated a visit from Mason Carpenter.
It seemed that Carpenter managed to schedule some business appointment in Boulder every time the school term ended. And somehow he also managed to appear with a two-hour pass from the Dean to take Tabitha to dinner and to deliver notes and gifts to her from her friends at Palmer House.
“How is it that you can wran
gle a pass from him when I cannot?” Tabitha inquired as they sped from the campus toward a local restaurant.
“Oh, well. Perhaps the school is grateful for the generous donations I make,” he drawled.
She slapped his arm in mock alarm. “No! Is this true? Do you bribe Dean Wellan for these furloughs?”
He chuckled. “My dear, how can the dean refuse to grant me a two-hour pass with you when I am dangling a check under his ample chin?”
“You are incorrigible,” Tabitha pronounced.
“Money has its good uses as well as evil, Tabs,” was all he replied.
They dined with hearty appetite, and yet Tabitha was hungrier for news than for food. She devoured every word Carpenter shared from home, every description of her friends he could provide.
“And Joy? Is there no word on her little Edmund?”
“None.” Carpenter grimaced, suddenly out of humor. “For all the devoted efforts of Mr. O’Dell and having spared no expense to track Morgan, the trail has run cold.”
“Having spared no expense? Mr. Carpenter,” Tabitha asked, parsing her question with care, “are you providing the funds in the search for Edmund?”
He turned his head and avoided her question. “Mrs. Michaels is a great testimony to me. Her godly character and faith inspire me and those who know her.”
He then turned the conversation back to Palmer House and provided many more tidbits of news, to Tabitha’s delight.
“You make the separation from all of them bearable,” she admitted. “Thank you.”
He smiled. “You are most welcome.”
Tabitha sighed, happy for the reprieve from her duties, filled with good food, and comfortable in Carpenter’s company. She spoke before she realized how forward her questions would be.
“Mr. Carpenter, how is it you have never married? Settled down?” She reddened and slapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh! I do apologize. That was inappropriate. Inexcusable.”
But he had only cocked his head again and studied her, as though deciding how to reply. Then he touched his napkin to his mouth.
“I have often wanted to tell you, Miss Hale, about my . . . wife.”
Tabitha’s lips parted. She could not speak.
“Do not worry, Miss Hale, I am not married.” Carpenter’s smile was crooked. Sad. “I married young and impetuously. I loved Christ, but I did not listen to the Holy Spirit when I fell in love with Maudie. I was not wise and did not concern myself overmuch with her spiritual desires or aspirations—I was too enamored with the blissful life I envisioned that we would share.
“Her picture of our married life, as it turned out, was vastly different than mine. She desired the whirlwind life of a socialite, while I despised the vapid, pointless machinations of high society. We were not happy together, but we were also not long together. She developed acute appendicitis. The doctors performed surgery, of course, but afterwards Maudie developed an infection. Following a week of fever and horrible suffering, she slipped away. We were married less than two years.”
Carpenter stared at Tabitha, his jaw working. “It was a mistake to marry Maudie with no thought to her spiritual condition. As it is, I fault myself that she passed into eternity with no relationship with Christ.”
Tabitha dropped her eyes, afraid of the view Carpenter had opened into his soul, afraid of the raw pain she had glimpsed.
“I promised my Lord that I would not make such a mistake again, Miss Hale,” he murmured. “I will remarry only when and if I and the woman I choose are spiritually compatible and God approves of our union. I want God’s best. Until then, I am content to wait.”
~~~
The break ended, and Tabitha’s last term began.
She was crossing the lawn from her dormitory to the classrooms, keeping to the cobbled walkway, when she passed one of the school’s caretakers. He was pushing an edge trimmer along the walkway. She had not paid much attention to the several caretakers in the past. However, as she drew abreast of the man, he raised his head and they made eye contact.
His stare was appraising.
Tabitha nearly stumbled and her face flamed.
I know this man!
Tabitha forced herself to keep walking and not look back. She ran up the stairs to her classroom as if pursued and slid into her seat. When the lecture began she had trouble concentrating. She was distracted and upset.
With a start, she realized the physician teaching the class had spoken to her. “I asked you a question, Miss Hale.”
“I beg your pardon, doctor. I am afraid my attention was elsewhere. I apologize; it will not happen again,” Tabitha answered.
“See that is does not,” he snapped.
Tabitha nodded and opened her book, but she could not get the image of the caretaker from her mind. He was short, middle-aged, and grizzled.
Not much had changed from when she had seen him last.
Nearly four years ago.
In her room at the Silver Spurs.
Lord, does he remember me from there?
She played back the chance encounter, the fleeting exchange. Had she seen a blink of recognition on his part? Had he turned as she passed by? Had his eyes continued to watch her?
Tabitha gnawed on her unanswered questions during the class and remembered nothing of the lecture when the bell rang. As she gathered her things and exited the building, she peered anxiously about her, looking for the muted green of the caretaker’s uniform.
I must avoid another encounter with this man at any cost, she told herself.
~~~
April arrived with rain and sleet and departed on a warm breeze. And then it was May. Final exams would begin in two weeks. Graduation was scheduled for mid-June.
Tabitha’s days and nights passed by in a haze of study and work, but she knew the end was near and that she was prepared.
I will more than pass my exams, she exulted. I am in good standing and, because of God’s sustaining grace, I will acquit myself well.
Tabitha returned to her dormitory after classes hoping to snatch an hour of sleep before group practicums. One of her fellow students handed her a note.
“This came for you,” she said.
“Thank you.” Tabitha slid the note into her pocket. She was bone tired. What I would give for a whole night of sleep, she fantasized.
An hour later she scrambled from her bed and made it to her group practicum with only minutes to spare. Halfway through the afternoon, she remembered the note in her pocket.
After she read the note, she stared around, hunting for a clock, and was horrified to see that it read 3:15. She shoved the note back into her pocket, explained her departure to the charge nurse, and raced for her dormitory, the words of the note burning in her head.
Miss Hale,
You will report to the office of the Dean of Medicine at 3:30 to address a deficit in your training. Please do not be tardy.
Emilia Gunderson, Dean of Nursing
A sense of dread descended upon Tabitha, and she took the steps up to the dormitory hall two at a time. Ignoring the startled looks of the housekeeping girls, she stripped her soiled apron from her uniform, tied on a clean one, and felt her hair to ensure that it was tightly bound behind her cap with its blue band marking her as a student nurse. Then she ran down the stairs and across the campus toward the dean’s office.
Tabitha managed to arrive at exactly 3:30 and was ushered into a conference room. Dean Wellan and Dean Gunderson were seated at the end of the table; the four members of the board of regents lined the sides of the table.
“Please be seated at the end of the table, Miss Hale,” Dean Wellan instructed. He was perusing a stack of papers on the table in front of him.
Tabitha seated herself. She was still out of breath from running straight across campus. Her pulse pounded in her throat. The members of the board, their expressions guarded, looked her over. Dean Gunderson, who had always been gracious to Tabitha, said nothing, but Tabitha thought she appeared stiff. Nerv
ous.
Then Dean Wellan glanced up and, squinting a little, regarded Tabitha with a frown. “May I ask, Miss Hale, if you have been ill?”
Tabitha was surprised. “No, sir. I have not.”
His frown deepened. “I ask because you look quite fatigued. Not at all as I remember you last we met.”
Tabitha squirmed inside. “Dean Wellan, sir, if I appear fatigued, it is only due to the rigors of classes and work. I can assure you that I am well—and up to the challenge.”
He said nothing for a moment, merely studied her. Then he turned his attention to the papers before him and cleared his throat. “Miss Hale, your academic record is acceptable—quite fine, in fact. Dean Gunderson and I had our doubts as to whether you could make up the work you missed your first year, but you have done so successfully. You are in high standing in many of your classes.”
He frowned again. “You can, perhaps, understand my confusion when we, upon determining your eligibility for final examinations and graduation, discovered a marked deficit in several practicums.”
The dean looked at the papers. “Every student nurse is required to log one hundred sixty hours of nursing care in each nursing specialty. Your record, however, indicates incomplete hours in three areas: obstetrics, surgical, and pediatric nursing. You are lacking a combined three hundred sixty hours of nursing experience in these areas.”
He removed his spectacles and turned his attention to her. “Dean Gunderson and I are both at a loss as to why you have not served your complete rotations in these areas.”
Tabitha was so shocked that she blinked stupidly and could think of nothing immediate to say. After a moment, though, her mind sorted the jumbled pieces and—at last—thought she understood.
This is Nurse Rasmussen’s doing! Oh, how could I have been so blind?
“Dean Wellan, Dean Gunderson, we students work the shifts we are assigned—we do not have any say or control over our work assignments. I was assigned to work nights, sir, ma’am, primarily in the general wards.”
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