31
Their lives moved like horses on a carousel, ups and downs, circling a center. Yes, they had daily troubles with spilled milk or bumps and bruises, but they knew the moments of down would soon be replaced by a rise above. Jennie had found wisdom in the lower places, discovering that even there she was not alone. A divine spirit walked beside her and she learned to trust that those dark places would not last. A fox would trot into her life when she most needed a reminder about healing grace.
Gracie’s focus turned to music. JoJo scribbled pictures and had a flair for colors and relished it when her antics brought on adult laughter. They both loved books and Josiah read to them with animation, making sounds of animals and creating suspense with his voice. Jennie loved seeing her husband enjoy his girls.
Jennie hated to admit it, but Douglas being in the boarding school helped enormously. He came home on weekends, and they all walked on pebbled trails then, ignoring little discomforts. He was respectful to adults, appeared to enjoy being with the little girls, who adored his attention. The time when he was at school gave them respite to prepare for the uncertainties of when he was with them. She felt justified in not telling him that his father had come calling.
Then came the dreaded school conference. That unpleasant man had left—and his physics teacher said, “Douglas neither works nor spins. His charm will get him through though.”
“What did he mean by Douglas not spinning?” Jennie asked as Josiah helped her into the carriage. “Was he talking about him not doing even light work, like spinning yarn?”
“He’s a physics teacher, so I took it to mean he lacks a kind of momentum, what’s needed to keep a top upright so it keeps spinning.”
Both characterizations worried her for his future: indolent and purposeless. But there were no reports of minor thefts of laudanum and the school rules prohibited smoking or drinking. If he was going to learn to work and spin, he was in the best place to make that happen.
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 the 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—”
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.