Chapter 21
BLESSING, NORTH DAKOTA
What are we going to do for housing for our nurses? They arrive Sunday!” Astrid paced the floor of her living room. “They need to be near the hospital.”
“And there definitely is no room at the boardinghouse?” Daniel asked.
“No. Sophie says not. She’s sorry, but the new addition isn’t open yet, and that is where we planned for them to stay.”
“We tried, Astrid, we really did. Give us two more weeks.” Thorliff shrugged and shook his head. “If the materials had all been delivered like promised, we’d have made it. We’ll get those three rooms or that one big one ready by then. They are putting up the interior walls now. Then it is plaster and paint, and then Sophie can move the furniture in. Might be sooner than two weeks, if all goes well.”
“Thank you. They can’t stay at Mor’s. It’s too far to walk in for the night shift. We could house them in the one ward at the hospital temporarily, but if something happens and we need those beds . . .”
Mrs. Jeffers chimed in. “Cannot two of them, at least, stay here?”
“I thought of that,” Astrid said, “but that would be a lot of extra work for you.”
Mrs. Jeffers shook her head. “It won’t be forever, you know.”
“The other could stay at our house,” Thorliff added. “It’s a shame the deaf school is also too far out of town for people who work the night shift. I take it they will take turns on the shifts.”
“Yes. That’s part of their training.” Astrid went to stand at the window, looking out but seeing nothing. Why did everything have to be a problem? She’d much rather be concerned with sick people than housing for the nurses and all the others coming to town.
“What about the two Indian women Red Hawk is sending up?”
“We have more than a month until they get here, and Kaaren said they could stay out there.”
Astrid spun around. “That’s it for now, then. By the way, you better ask Thelma and Elizabeth if a student boarder is a good idea. I’ll be at the hospital if you need me.” She kissed Daniel on the cheek, picked up her black bag, and headed out the door. By the time she reached the hospital, sweat was already trickling down her back, and she had to mop her face and neck. Good haying and garden growing weather, good for the wheat too, but fans were needed for humans.
Today Elizabeth had their office open, but it sure would be good when they could move that out here. Plans for the next wing were already dreamed and drawn. As she walked by the larger of the two wards, her mind switched gears. What if they were to put movable walls in that long room so that, until it was needed for more patients, they could use the space for examining rooms and an office? The same could apply for housing for the students. They would be cubicles more than rooms, but they ate in the dining room and there was a bathroom. She smiled to herself. Indoor plumbing was a boon beyond measure. She’d have to talk with Thorliff and Daniel. How difficult would that be?
Pausing in the hallway outside Manny’s room, she heard her mother’s voice.
“You’re doing well.”
“Ain’t neither. I hate these sticks.”
“Would you rather stay in bed?”
“No. I’d rather walk.” Manny came clumping to the door and saw Astrid. “How long?” He nodded to his crutches. Astrid walked beside him as he swung out and maneuvered clumsily down the hall.
“You had a terrible bad break. The surgical wound is healing well, but when bones are separated like that, they take longer to heal. And if you rush it, you might make it worse and be flat back in traction.”
“Might?” They turned at the outside door and made their way back.
“Look, Manny, you are lucky or, as my mother would say, blessed to have a right leg at all. Most doctors would have taken the leg off and been done with it.” She could feel him staring at her.
“Why din’t you?” His voice lost the belligerent tone.
“Because even though that leg will be shorter than the other, if we have no complications, you should be able to walk again. And ride a horse. I believe a good boot maker could help that by putting an inch- or two-inch thick sole on the right boot.”
“I—I din’t know.” His voice cracked.
“Or you could have died from gangrene. That is why we are being so careful to avoid infection.” Might as well lay it all out. “The traction helped keep the bones straight. When you are in bed, we will put a mild traction on it again, just to be safe.”
Manny entered his room and turned, his back to the bed. He hoisted himself backward onto the bed, using only his arms. Good. He pretty much had his upper body strength back. He would need it.
Astrid smiled at her mother, who sat knitting away.
“It will sure be good when those trees outside grow tall enough to give some shade.” Ingeborg nodded to the window. She had been the one who’d insisted they plant the trees last fall, and as usual she had been right. The cottonwood trees outstripped any other tree in rapid growth, but the maples would be useful too in a few years.
“That it will. Manny is walking better all the time. We’ll put some fleece on the handgrips and the underarm part. Padding should help. But for now and tomorrow, back in traction. I sure wish we had one of those new x-ray machines that can make the bones visible. Another one of those ‘someday’ things.”
Ingeborg nodded. “Manny, your room is ready at my house as soon as you are released. The big problem is going to be the four steps up to the porches. As you get stronger, you’ll make it fine, but for now I suspect we’ll need to get you some help.”
They all three looked up as a voice came from the window, “Grandma, we came to see you.”
“You and who else? And what are you standing on?”
“Benny’s wheels. He’s here too. Can Manny come to the window? We want to meet him.”
“Who is she?” Manny asked Astrid.
“My niece Inga. I told her she can’t come in here to see you and bring germs.”
“Uff da!” The little girl’s head disappeared.
“You can walk over there.” She handed him his crutches and helped him off the bed.
“Do I have to?”
“It would be polite.”
The head appeared again. “Sorry. I slipped.”
“Don’t go pushing.” A boy’s voice came from below.
“I won’t. Are you coming to see us, Manny?”
“I guess.” He did better getting balanced this time and sticked over to the window.
“Hi. I’m Inga and this is my friend Benny. He lives at the soda shop. I live at the doctor’s house.” She pointed over her shoulder. The cart shifted and she grabbed the windowsill. “Whew, that was close.”
“You got crutches, Manny. You are so lucky.” Benny grinned up.
“What happened to your legs?” Manny’s eyes grew round.
“My Doc had to cut them off ’cause a big dray wagon ran over me and mashed ’em up.”
Astrid watched from over Manny’s shoulder. Benny’s grin had to be the most contagious anywhere.
“Who you talkin’ about?”
“My Doc? Why, she is standing right there. Hi, Doc.” He gave her a whole-arm wave. Benny lived in superlatives.
“So when do you get to go to Grandma’s? She makes the best cookies anywhere. I help her make gingerbread men, with raisins.” Inga cocked her head. “How come you talk so funny?”
Manny’s eyebrows flattened. “I don’t talk funny, but you sure do.”
Uh-oh, Astrid thought. Here we go.
Inga’s eyes narrowed, but when she went to plant her hands on her hips, she fell backward off the cart and sat down with an oomph. “Now see what you did!”
Benny grinned at his friend. “You want me to help you up?”
She batted away his hand and stood, then dusted off the back of her skirt. “Now Ma will be after me again. She says I get dirty on purpose. But this was an accident. Right, Tante Astrid?”
Manny turned to look at Astrid. “Tante?”
“That means aunt. She is using some Norwegian words.” At his confused look, Astrid added, “Many people here in Blessing, Mrs. Bjorklund included”—she nodded over her shoulder to Ingeborg, who was carefully knitting her stitches off the needles—“came from Norway and spoke Norwegian before they learned English. Some of us grew up here and learned to talk in Norwegian also.” Should I tell him about the deaf school or will that add more confusion to the conversation?
Inga sat down on Benny’s cart with him. “We will come to see you when you get to Grandma’s. Do you know how to play checkers?”
Manny nodded. “I used to play with Papaw.”
“Papaw?”
“My ma’s father.”
“Oh, good. Benny taught some of us to play checkers. We play rock, scissor, paper too. And we read books from the school library.”
Astrid interrupted their conversation. “I think Manny needs to get back to bed so I can put the traction back on before I leave.”
“Okay.” Inga and Benny waved. “Maybe tomorrow Grandma will bring you a gingerbread man.”
“And maybe not,” Ingeborg said softly. “I have beans to can.”
“You should have brought them and had Manny help snap them.”
Manny shot her a disgusted look, and he sticked back to bed. This time when he lay down, he exhaled a sigh of relief.
“Hurting?”
“Some.”
Astrid unwrapped the traction cord. “Manny, you have to be honest with me—no trying to be a man and tough it out. I can help you best when you tell me the truth. Now, is the pain okay or is it getting worse?” She waited, watching the emotions chase across his face.
“Bad and getting worse. Started out only a bit, like when the dog scratches you. Now it’s like the dog bit you.”
Astrid smiled at his description. “Thank you. That helps me. I’ll have the nurse bring something, along with water. You need to drink a lot.”
“But then I’ll have to—”
“I know, but you’ve been doing fine.” She looked to her mother, who held up the stocking cap. “I like that blue stripe. Try the hat on Manny. See how it fits.”
Manny looked rather doubtful but pulled the hat down over his ears. His eyes widened. “That’s warm.” He took it off and handed it back to Ingeborg. “That really is for me?”
“Ja, and it looks good on you. I’ll keep it safe until winter.”
“What if I’m not here for winter?”
Ingeborg put the hat away and brought the lotion out of her bag. She spread it on her hands and started gently working on his bad leg. “Why, I’ll send it with you. It’s yours. Just you don’t go running off in the middle of the night or some such.” She stopped her stroking and stared at him. “Promise me?”
“Well, uh . . . you would let me go?”
“If you can walk and you know where you are going, yes. We would send a pack with you with food and your things in it. You are not a prisoner here, Manny, but we do hope you will be so happy here you want to stay.” She paused. “Oh, and Haakan said to tell you that your horse is waiting for you out in our pasture.”
“Why you are doin’ all this makes no more sense’n a dog chasin’ his tail. Dumb dog never catches it.”
“Sense or not, that’s just the way it is here. And besides, that dumb dog is having a good time, and that’s important too.”
The next afternoon Trygve arrived with a wagon, a pallet of quilts in back, and Ingeborg perched beside him on the seat. He helped her down and together they went inside the hospital.
When they stepped into Manny’s room, he was sitting on the bed, all dressed in the shirt and pants Kaaren had dug out of the box of clothing she kept at the deaf school. The right leg of the pants had been slit open up past the knee, so they were easy to put on. His boots were in a pack on the chair, and he was wearing moccasins that Metiz had made years earlier. Ingeborg had always known that someone was going to need them sometime.
“Well, look at you.” Ingeborg smiled. “Why, Manny, you clean up real good.”
He fingered his shirt. “I never had no clothes fine as these.” He looked up at her. “Why?” His head wagged from side to side, as if of its own accord. “Makes no sense. And someone done patched my shirt and pants so I got two of each.” More doubtful wags.
“Why not, Manny? You needed help and here you will receive it.”
“I know. ‘That’s the way you do things here.’” He parodied her, not unkindly. “But it don’t make no sense.”
“One of these days you and I will have a real talk about why we do these things. For now, I want you to meet another nephew of mine: Trygve Knutson. He has come to help you out to the wagon and will help you up the stairs into my house.”
Manny nodded and mumbled, “Pleasedtameetcha.”
“Glad to be able to help,” Trygve said. “Are you ready?”
“He is,” Dr. Elizabeth said from the doorway. “I have some medicine and dressings to send with you.” She held out a packet. “Thanks, Trygve, for taking time off the haying.”
“Feels kind of good, actually. No hayseed down the back here. Besides, we’re about done. You ever done any haying, Manny?” When the boy shook his head, he half shrugged. “We get the grass mowed and dried and haul the hay to the barns and haystacks close by to feed our cattle during the winter.”
Manny looked from Ingeborg to Trygve and back to Ingeborg. “Winter’s that bad?”
“Oh yes. We can have snowdrifts clear to the roofs of the barns. You wait and see. Winter here is different from where you grew up. Sometime I hope you’ll tell us more about Kentucky. None of us have ever been there.”
Shutters snapped shut over Manny’s face, and he stared down at his hands. When Ingeborg handed him his crutches, he swung his legs over the edge of the bed and, once his good foot was on the floor, put the now-padded sticks, as he called them, under his arms and rose to his feet.
“Thankee,” he said to Dr. Elizabeth and Nurse MacCallister.
“You are welcome.”
“I will pay you somehow, someday.”
“No rush. But thank you for offering. I’ll see you one day soon.”
With Ingeborg and Trygve pacing beside him, he made it to the door without stopping. When Trygve held open the door, he went through and paused, inhaling the fragrances of the summer day. “Aah.” He shut his eyes and breathed deep again.
Trygve put his bag in the back and waited for him beside the wagon.
Ingeborg watched the boy, rejoicing in his appreciation of the beauty around them. He had been so sorry and withdrawn. Perhaps he was at last emerging from that shell.
The sun drew the smell of green grass, dry dirt road, flowers, and trees out from the source so that the breeze could waft around them, to be appreciated by those who took time to savor the summer day. The dog sitting in the wagon bed was one of the appreciators. With one ear flopped and the other cocked, he thumped his tail and, standing at the downed tailgate, wagged some more. His tail beat a tattoo against the sideboard.
Manny’s gaze zeroed in on the scraggly gray dog, and a smile widened his face. He turned to Ingeborg. “Your dog?”
“Well, yes. One of our farm dogs. A stray, he just showed up one day. He herds the cattle, announces company, and whatever else he is needed to do. You had a dog?”
Manny nodded as he sticked to the dog and held out a hand, which Patches gave a cursory sniff, three licks, and a wagging whine. “Good boy.” He sat down and twisted enough so that Trygve could help him swing his legs up. Patches immediately settled in next to Manny.
“Do you want to lie down?”
“Can’t I sit here?”
“Sure. Here, I’ll pad the wagon side and you can lean against that.” Trygve folded up a blanket and did the fixing, then slammed the tailgate shut. After helping Ingeborg up, he climbed up into the box, and within moments they were driving down the street toward the boardinghouse.
Ingeborg identified all the buildings as they passed them. The boardinghouse on the left, businesses up ahead, the houses they passed after they turned onto the street that became the road to the Bjorklund and Knutson farms. “That’s Dr. Elizabeth’s house on the right, along with the newspaper office. Dr. Astrid’s is across that field. We have a lot of building going on here in Blessing.”
When they turned into the Bjorklund lane, Patches leaped up and out over the tailgate to run yipping beside the wagon.
“You can see the hay wagons out in the field and the haystacks they are building beside the barn. That means the haymow is full,” Trygve explained. “Soon, you’ll know this land like the back of your hand. That’s the Red River ahead of us to the east. It flows near the hospital too. You probably smelled it at times.” He turned in the seat. “You know how to milk a cow?”
Manny nodded.
“You like fishing?”
“We used to fish a lot.”
When the wagon stopped by the house, Manny stared. Once out of the wagon, he sticked his way to the porch steps.
Ingeborg smiled at the awe on his face. “My husband Haakan is waiting for you on the porch. You can see him there. He has been ill or he would be out in the fields with the others.”
“You ready?” Trygve asked.
Manny nodded. Trygve scooped an arm around his waist and hoisted him up the steps.
Ingeborg readily recognized the white band around the boy’s mouth and the sweat on his forehead. They should have given him the pain medicine before they left the hospital. Right now he looked about to faint.
“Let’s get him down on the settee so he can lie down if he needs to.”
Trygve picked Manny up again, this time not setting him down until they reached the settee. “Can you manage the rest?”
“Umm.” The boy’s jaw was clenched to fight off the pain. He turned and Trygve lowered him to the seat. Manny collapsed against the cushions on the back with a groan. He tried to lift his legs, but Trygve helped him swing them up on the seat, then helped him scoot to a cushioned arm.
“Pain’s bad?” he whispered.
Manny nodded, his eyes already closed. His shallow breathing and now white face told Ingeborg more than if he’d said words.
She brought morphine with a glass of water. When he’d downed them both, she laid a wet cloth on his forehead and another behind his neck. His pulse was strong and his breathing had returned to normal. “You sleep as long as you need, and when you wake up, I’ll get you something more to drink and to eat. You are home, Manny.” She stroked the hair back from his forehead. “You are home.”
Please, dear God, bring healing to this boy’s leg but even more to his soul and spirit. Please help him to learn what love is, and why we do what we do.