The Wishing Star

Read Chapters 1 & 2
of The Wishing Star

Chapter 1

Harmony Creek, Midnight, Mid-October, 1870 |

“Sadie! Sadie! Wake up.”

The voice whispering in her ear pulled Sadie Bergstrom up out of a deep sleep. She pried her eyes open and saw her father bending over her, holding a candle in one hand. The flickering flame cast weird shadows behind him on the wall and ceiling, and made his long, thin face and unruly graying blond hair look like a ghost’s.

“What’s the matter—?” she began, but he pressed a finger against his lips and gestured for her to meet him in the hall outside the bedroom.

Sadie got out of bed as quietly as she could so as not to wake her little sister Jenny, who was huddled under the covers on the other half of the bed. She slipped her feet into her scuffed house shoes and wrapped a wool shawl around her nightgown, then tiptoed out to the hall, closing the bedroom door quietly behind her. She avoided the creakiest steps as she followed her father down the dark stairs to the kitchen.

The fire in the cast iron stove had been banked last night before the family went to bed, and the room was cold. She shivered and pulled the shawl tighter around herself, then glanced out the window and saw a bright river of stars curving across the black sky. It must still be the middle of the night. No wonder she felt so tired. She stifled a yawn and made herself focus on what her father was saying to her in an urgent half-whisper.

“I’ve been called out to the Borstads. Their hired boy just got here and he says they’re all down hard with the grippe. Lucas is out getting the buggy ready, but I need you to check my medical bag and fix some food for us to take with us. I don’t want to wake your mother. She’s been up with the baby half the night and they just went to sleep.”

Sadie nodded. Every winter, people in Harmony Creek came down with the grippe, also known as influenza. Every year, she and her mother nursed some of her younger siblings through it. She had read everything she could find on it in her father’s medical books. Now her mind flew to what she knew about the symptoms and treatments for the grippe and the lung complaints that came with it.

It was frustrating that nothing she’d come across was of much use. No one knew how to cure the grippe, or why people got it more in the winter than the summer, or why it made some people deathly sick, while others shook it off as easily as the sniffles. She only knew she was one of the lucky few who never seemed to get ill even when everyone else around her was sick. She knew she didn’t look strong. She was small and thin and light boned. But what she lacked in brute strength, she made up for with a tough constitution.

“Father,” she said, trying not to sound too eager, “Could I come with you? If they’re all sick, you might need help.”

His eyebrows snapped together into a scowl. “For the love of God, Sadie, stop pestering me. How many times do I have to tell you that your mother needs you to help her here at home? Just do as I say and get my bag ready.”

“Yes, Father.” Sadie sighed to herself. She knew the whole lecture by heart: God intended girls to become wives and mothers, not doctors. When she was married and properly settled, she would be far too busy with husband, home and family to waste her time wanting to do something as unfeminine as dealing with strangers and their illnesses. Soon the day would come when she would look back on this childish ambition of hers and laugh.

But Sadie didn’t think she’d ever find it funny. Whatever her father said, she knew she wouldn’t grow out of her yearning to be a doctor. Along with a burning interest in the unfolding mystery of medical science, she longed to be of real help to other people, especially those suffering through a crisis. Yes, dinner had to be cooked and the dishes washed, but wrapping up a sprained wrist was much more interesting and satisfying. She sighed.

Lighting the lantern her mother kept on the kitchen table, she carried it to her father’s surgery off the parlor. She needed to make sure his medical bag was stocked with everything he would need to take on a house call, especially laudanum for pain, and ipecac and mustard plasters to encourage coughing, useful if the grippe had settled in the lungs.

She couldn’t recall exactly how many Borstads there were, since the family lived far from town and only came to church a couple of times a year, but she knew there were quite a few of them, so she filled the bag until she had to struggle to snap the clasp closed, then lugged it back to the kitchen in both hands.

Her father’s helper Lucas O’Brien had lit the fire in the stove and was hunkered down in front of the fire box, feeding kindling into the flames. He came to his feet when he saw Sadie and gave her a nod which she returned with a bare minimum of politeness.

She felt a burning jealousy every time Lucas hitched up the buggy to drive out with her father on his far-flung rounds. It just wasn’t fair that Lucas got to go visit patients while she had to stay home. How she wished she could go out on a case with Father, just once! She wanted to be the one to hand him the instruments while he performed a surgery, or the one to drive back to town to fetch the right medicine while he sat with a desperately ill patient. But going out with him was impossible, when her mother needed her at home to help with the housework and the babies who just kept coming.

She knew it was wrong for her to focus her frustrations on Lucas. It wasn’t his fault he had the job she wanted so desperately but couldn’t have. He didn’t even seem all that excited about being her father’s helper. There were probably lots of other things he’d rather do than fetch and carry for a frontier doctor, but she’d never asked him what they were.

She tried to keep him at a distance so he wouldn’t realize how jealous she was of his closeness with her father. Usually that wasn’t too difficult. He had always maintained a certain reserve with the family, even though he had been living with them and working for her father when he was just a young boy. He wasn’t the talkative sort.

The fatigue on his face tonight made her feel sorry for him in spite of herself. No doubt it was exhausting to wake up in the middle of the night and drive for miles through the cold and dark to visit a sick family. His blue eyes were shadowed, looking almost black in the dim kitchen. She’d always thought they were unusually beautiful eyes for a man. They were large and deep blue, rimmed with long dark lashes. “God sure put in those blue eyes with a sooty finger,” she’d heard one of the ladies at church say about him. Now she couldn’t help noticing the dark circles under them and the growth of stubble on his square jaw.

His black hair was usually neatly combed, but tonight it stood up in spikes, as if he had raked his fingers through it to try to wake himself up. His clothes weren’t any better. He wore a red flannel shirt over a pair of crumpled trousers that both looked as if he had put them on after picking them up off a dusty floor. His disheveled state made him look unusually vulnerable. She was surprised by a sudden urge to reach out and smooth his hair down so her father wouldn’t scold him. Now, where had that thought come from? Embarrassed, she turned away and shifted her grip on the heavy medical bag.

He held out his hand. “Here, Miss Sadie, let me take that.”

Sadie passed him the bag. She felt a jealous twinge when she saw how easily he hefted the weight she had struggled to carry. Really, being a short girl had so many disadvantages!

It was a relief when he left the kitchen to take the bag out to the buggy and she had the room to herself. She filled the coffee pot with water and set it on the stove top to boil, then ground coffee beans and dumped them into the pot along with some crushed eggshells to make the brew less bitter. While the coffee was heating, she opened the pie safe and took out the squash pie and one of the loaves of bread she and Mother had baked yesterday. She cut thick slices of the bread and buttered them lavishly, then put them and large wedges of pie on tin plates, wrapped the plates in cloth napkins, and put the food in the willow basket her father carried with him in the buggy. When the coffee boiled, she poured it out into two enamel mugs, one for her father and one for Lucas. Her father drank his coffee black, but Lucas had a sweet tooth, so she added milk and maple syrup to his cup.

Then she waited in the chilly kitchen, clutching the shawl tightly around herself and breathing in the perfume of hot coffee while steam curled up from the waiting mugs. Peace descended on the house again until her father stumped down the stairs in the black frock coat he always wore to make house calls. Lucas came clattering in from hitching up the horse.

The two men gulped down their coffee, put on their hats, and went out. A moment later, Sadie heard the horse’s hooves thudding and the buggy rolling out of the drive behind their house and down Harmony Creek’s main street.

They were gone.

She fetched a deep sigh. In the dark she felt all alone, worlds away from her father and her mother and brothers and sisters, who were all still sleeping upstairs. She was eighteen, old enough that her parents had started hinting that it was time for her to start thinking of getting married, but she wasn’t sure she would ever want to marry anyone. Being a doctor was what she wanted, really the only thing she had ever wanted.

Why had God made her like this—wishing for something with all her heart that everyone around her thought was foolish and unwomanly, even immoral? However many times she grappled with that problem, she had never found a good answer. Why, oh why, hadn’t she been born a boy? But no amount of wishing was going to make her anything but a girl.

She looked out the window, over the roofs of the buildings on the other side of Main Street, and saw that the river of twinkling stars had disappeared. The eastern sky was suffused with a pale pink, fading to a deep blue at the highest point she could see, with one bright star shining steadily just above the horizon. It was the morning star, announcing that a new day was almost here. The words of her mother’s favorite psalm came to her:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.”

A huge yawn overtook her and made her realize that she was standing in the cold in just her flannel nightgown and house slippers. Should she go back up to bed and try to get a little more sleep? Sadie worried her lower lip between her teeth, considering. It wouldn’t be long before Mother was up. She’d be worn out after being awake in the night with the baby, and today was Monday, wash day, always a day of extra-hard labor for her and Sadie. It would be a pleasant surprise for Mother to get up and find breakfast already made.

She set more water to boil on the stove and started mixing up batter for pancakes.

***

Lucas O’Brien held the reins loosely between his fingers while the horse jogged out of the little town of Harmony Creek and along the track out to the Borstads’ homestead. A light wind rustled the grass along the track and the buggy’s kerosene lanterns shed a weak glow over the dim prairie as it unrolled slowly in front of them. He listened with only half an ear to Doc Bergstrom giving his opinion of people who waited until the middle of the night to decide they were at death’s door and needed a doctor right away. Doc was always grouchy when he had to get up for night calls, but Lucas knew he would never refuse to go. He was too good a medical man for that.

He only started paying real attention to Doc’s grumbling when he heard Sadie’s name.

“Sadie asked me again tonight if she could come along.” Doc shook his head. “That’s all we need, for her to catch the grippe and bring it back home with her. When is that girl going to stop plaguing me with her crazy notions? I think it’s about time for her to get married. She’ll settle down once she has a couple of babies to keep her busy. But her mother isn’t so sure that’s a good idea quite yet. She has a point there. If Sadie goes, who would pitch in with all the work at home? Jenny’s only seven, not that much help yet.”

A knot twisted tight around Lucas’ heart. No wonder Sadie had looked so discouraged when he saw her in the kitchen. He thought the world of Doc and Mrs. Bergstrom, but it burned him that the only thing they seemed to value about their eldest daughter was the cooking and cleaning she did around the house.

Lucas saw so much more in her. He saw how she quietly collected Doc’s leftover medical supplies and used them to treat her family’s minor hurts and illnesses when Doc was away on patient calls. Often he saw her with a feather duster in her hand, hovering in the parlor just outside the surgery door to listen in while Doc talked to a patient. One day, when he was taking the trash out to burn in the ash pile behind the house, he found an envelope with a diagram of the bones of the hands sketched on the back. Each bone was labeled in Sadie’s neat handwriting.

He admired the dogged way she kept trying to learn about medicine, even though her father plainly didn’t like it. He wished he could ask her why it meant so much to her, but held back. He and Sadie weren’t really friends. In fact, she hardly seemed to notice his existence. She was polite enough to him, but never more than that.

That was no surprise. As the oldest child in the Bergstrom family, with four younger brothers and two younger sisters, she was busy from dawn till dark. She probably just saw him as yet another person she had to cook and clean for. So he kept his distance from her, too. It was best that way. He wasn’t a friend, and he wasn’t really one of the family. He was just the hired hand.

Two years ago, though, something had happened that made it much harder to keep her out of his thoughts. He’d been chopping logs in the back yard one day when a chunk of wood flew up and hit him hard in the forehead. Doc had been away, so it was Sadie who saw the accident from the kitchen window and hurried out of the house to stanch the bleeding and bandage his head.

He lay on his back on the ground with his eyes closed and a dizzy, whirling feeling in his head, while her hands gently felt the lump on his forehead and pressed something soft against the wound. She talked to him calmly while she worked, but her words washed over him without making any sense to him. He only heard the sound of her voice, a light, musical voice that fell on his ears like balm to his lonely spirit.

When the whirling eased a little, he opened his eyes and saw her bending over him, looking down at him with a concerned expression. Her face was so close that every feature looked blurry and larger than normal. He took in the golden eyebrows slightly knit in concern, the dusting of freckles across her nose and cheeks, the slightly parted lips, and most of all the eyes, which gazed down at him searchingly, their clear blue irises rimmed in darker blue. He felt utterly transfixed by her gaze.

“Can you see me?” she asked.

He nodded, still dazed. When had she grown up from a little girl into a young lady? Why hadn’t he noticed before that her lips were heart shaped? Or that there were little shadowed indentations at the corners of her mouth that made her seem to be hiding a secret smile? He almost forgot the blow to his head and started feeling dizzy in an entirely different manner.

“Does your head ache?”

“Some.” It was hard to separate the throbbing in his forehead from the pulse pounding in his ears. “Not too bad,” he added, wanting not to worry her.

“The bleeding’s stopped.” Gently but firmly, she helped him to sit up. “I don’t think it’s too serious, but you have quite a lump there. You’d better lie down on your bed for a while.”

She stood up and turned away to issue instructions to her siblings. “Hugo, can you help him up and take him to his room? And Jenny, bring him a drink of water.” She glanced back down at Lucas, whose eyes were following her. “I have to help Mother get supper on. I’m sure Father will come look in on you when he gets home later.” She turned away and went back to the kitchen.

Hugo, the oldest Bergstrom boy, was suddenly there, holding out a hand to help Lucas get up. Slowly Lucas reached up to grasp Hugo’s hand and let himself be hauled to his feet.

He found that all the younger Bergstrom children had crowded around the interesting sight of their hired hand lying stretched out full length on the ground. Once he was up and standing again, though, the excitement was over. The boys drifted off towards the barn, and Jenny followed Sadie back to the house.

“I’ll bring your water right out,” she called over her shoulder.

Lucas still felt dazed that the moment of connection with Sadie was over so quickly. He could have spent all day looking up into her beautiful eyes. He knew then that he would do anything for her.

In the two years since then, it had gotten harder and harder for him to keep silent while he watched Sadie struggle and heard her father talking about marrying her off. But he had to keep his feelings to himself.

He wasn’t near good enough for her. He was a nobody, an orphan Doc had taken pity on years ago and kept around only because he was useful. With no schooling past the fourth grade and no future prospects, he didn’t stand a chance of winning either her heart or her parents’ approval. But that didn’t stop him from wishing. Sadie was the most wonderful girl in the world, and it made him ache to see her unhappy.

He sighed and flexed his fingers on the reins. There were still miles to go to the Borstads’. It was going to be a long night.

***

Later that day, Sadie and her mother were out in the yard next to their house, doing the family laundry in two big metal tubs filled with steaming soapy water. From that spot they could see people and wagons coming and going along Harmony Creek’s Main Street.

Mrs. Bergstrom stirred dirty trousers with a tall wooden paddle in one tub, while Sadie scrubbed shirts on a corrugated washboard in the other tub. The gray work dress she wore was splotched with white spots where the lye soap they used had bleached the color from the fabric.

She wrung out the shirt she’d been scrubbing and laid it in the basket of clean shirts waiting to be rinsed. Then she sat back on her heels, flexed her hands, and eased her stiff back for a moment. It was a beautiful, crisp October day. The sky was a lovely blue, and the cool air gave just a hint of colder days to come.

She took a few deep breaths of the fresh air. It had been a milder autumn than expected so far, with only a few snow flurries and frosts.

She picked up another shirt and was about to plunge it into the soapy water when she heard her father’s buggy rattling into the yard. She and her mother both watched in surprise as Lucas reined in the horse and climbed down to the ground. He was alone.

Anxious creases appeared on Mrs. Bergstrom’s forehead. “Where’s Doc? Still at the Borstads?”

“I had to take him straight on to a gunshot case in Conroy, ma’am.” Lucas took off his flat-brimmed hat and held it in front of him with both hands, as if he were asking a stranger for a favor. He had lived with the family for eight years, since he was twelve, but had never relaxed his shy formality in front of Mrs. Bergstrom. “Doc wants me to take Sadie out to the Borstads to help take care of them tonight.”

Mrs. Bergstrom stared at him in dismay. “But—if they’re all sick, that means the air out there must be very unhealthy. I’m not so sure Sadie should go.”

Sadie clasped her hands together in front of her heart. “Please, Mother? You know I never get sick.”

Lucas looked down at his feet. “I won’t pretend they ain’t in bad shape out there. The grippe has settled in hard on Mrs. Borstad’s lungs. She’s been too weak to get up and cook or tend the little ones. Mr. Borstad is lying in bed too, and the hired boy don’t look too good.”

“Oh, dear.” Mrs. Bergstrom abandoned her paddle and wiped her hands on her apron, then stood indecisive, looking off into space with pursed lips.

Sadie stood silently, soapy water dripping from her hands, waiting for her mother to make up her mind. Lucas stood by the horse’s head and stroked his nose.

Finally her mother gave a reluctant nod. “I guess you’d better go, Sadie. And you might as well take the chicken soup and the last of yesterday’s bread with you. I’ll put some potatoes on for our supper instead.” She started toward the kitchen door, then stopped and threw up her hands. “But how am I going to finish all this washing?”

Sadie looked at the mounds of half-finished and still-dirty laundry. A wave of guilt came over her. The washing was an endless job for Mother and her. Dirty clothes never stopped piling up, with nine people in the family, including a three-month-old baby in diapers, four active boys, a grown woman, and two girls old enough to wear all the many layers of undergarments without which no woman could call herself a lady. Add Lucas, whose clothes were always filthy from the heavy stable work, and all the soiled linens and bandages from Father’s medical practice. It was a never-ending labor.

“Maybe Hugo could help you?” she suggested. “Or Andreas?” At fifteen and fourteen, Hugo and Andreas were the oldest of Sadie’s four younger brothers. When she was their age, she’d been helping her mother cook and clean for years.

Her mother snorted. “It will be easier to do it myself than to try to teach those two what to do. Even Jenny would be more help.”

That was true. The Bergstrom boys had never done laundry. Washing clothes was women’s work. Sadie’s seven-year-old sister Jenny was the next-oldest girl in the family, old enough to be of some help, but too young to really ease her mother’s burdens. Sadie wished she had another sister who was of an age to take on more of the housework.

Mrs. Bergstrom sighed and pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes with the back of one hand. “It’s just our luck that all our neighbors only have boys, or we could hire on a girl to help now and again.”

A fitful wail came from inside the house and she sighed again. “Oh dear, the baby’s awake! I was hoping she’d take a longer nap, but I think her front teeth are coming in.” She chewed her lip for a moment. The baby’s thready wail and the slow bubbling of the wash kettle were the only sounds to be heard. “Alright, I’ll fetch the baby and try to get the boys to help finish this. You’d better go get ready, Sadie. I’m sure I don’t know how the laundry will turn out, but I know your father wouldn’t ask you to go if it wasn’t a real emergency.”

“Yes, Mother.” Sadie bit her own lip and looked at the ground to hide a sudden nervous shiver. Going out on a medical call! It was the very thing she’d begged for a few hours ago, but now it felt scary because she knew Father wouldn’t be there. Who would tell her what to do? Lucas hardly counted. He never had anything to say for himself.

Well, she’d just do her best and try to remember everything she’d read over the years or picked up by listening to her father talk about cases at the supper table. She wiped her hands on her apron and followed her mother into the house.

Less than an hour later the buggy set off on its rescue mission. Sadie felt distinctly crowded inside. Lucas was a head taller and more heavily built than any of the Bergstroms. Even though he tried to leave room for her, he couldn’t help taking up more than half of the seat. She had to share the remaining space with a bundle of firewood under her feet, a couple of loaves of bread, a pot of chicken soup, and a pile of clean linens. It promised to be an uncomfortable ride, but she was so excited and scared, she hardly noticed.

Chapter 2

Mother had insisted that Sadie wear her sunbonnet so she wouldn’t get even more of the freckles that marred her otherwise clear complexion. Sadie loathed the way the bonnet blocked her view to the sides and behind her—just like a blinkered horse, she thought—but she wore it obediently while Lucas drove down Harmony Creek’s muddy main street, past the newspaper office, the new church, the bank, the livery stable, the general store, and the half-finished boarding house. The buggy trundled out beyond the end of town where the road turned north and ran for miles through open prairie and low, wooded hills.

As soon as they left the town behind, Sadie untied the bonnet’s strings and let it fall down her back. The sky rose in a blue arc overhead, intensifying in color the higher she looked.

She filled her lungs with the fresh autumn air and a surge of well-being spread through her. “What a beautiful blue sky! I feel dreadful leaving Mother to finish all the chores with just the boys and Jenny to help, but it’s so good to get out of the house. I haven’t been anywhere except church for the longest time, since—why, since before Baby Alice came.”

She realized she was chattering nervously and fell silent.

Lucas didn’t say anything. That was no surprise. But he looked over at her and the corners of his mouth lifted into a smile. It was a quiet smile, a little shy, but still, it transformed his face into something completely different from its usual stolid mask. She noticed again how blue his eyes were, the same deep blue as the pre-dawn sky where she’d seen the morning star. His dark eyelashes were so long and thick, too, and even curled at the ends, so much more attractive than her own. Blond eyelashes and eyebrows like hers were so—so insipid.

She gave herself a mental shake. What was she doing, thinking about something as silly as Lucas O’Brien’s eyelashes when she was on her way to her first-ever house call?

“So, how many are sick at the Borstads?” she said, changing her friendly tone to something much brisker and more businesslike.

He frowned in concentration and took one hand off the reins to count on his fingers. “Seven, I think. They’ve all got it pretty bad except Mr. Borstad. He seems about fair to middling but makes more fuss than any of them. You know the type. The hired boy seems to be catching it now too, poor lad.”

“What did Father do to treat them?”

“Weren’t time to do much. The fellow who came and found us said his brother with the gunshot wound was bleeding bad and wouldn’t last the day if Doc didn’t go right off, so he had to leave pretty quick. He left you a bag of supplies, though.”

Sadie clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I wish he was going to be there with us. What if something goes wrong?”

“Don’t worry, Miss Sadie. You’ll do just fine.”

But when Sadie looked over at him, she saw that his mouth was firmly closed and there was a slight frown between his eyebrows. Did that frown mean he disapproved of her doing this, just like everybody else?

She decided it had been a mistake to let him see that she was nervous. “Don’t listen to me,” she said as lightly as she could. “It’s only that this is the first time I’ve done this. I suppose it’s old hat for you.”

He lifted one shoulder. “I just do what Doc tells me to do.”

The matter-of-fact way he said it made Sadie feel a sharp pinch of annoyance. That was another reason why she had always kept Lucas at arm’s length. He lacked gumption. Going around with her father, he had the golden opportunity to see all kinds of patients and learn from how Father treated them, but it all seemed to be wasted on him. She’d heard her father praise him as “his good right hand,” but it was plain to Sadie that Lucas had no real love of doctoring. For him, this was just one of his chores.

What a waste, she thought, not for the first time. She fell silent and they didn’t speak again until they reached the narrow track that led to the Borstads’ homestead.

The Borstads lived in a small, one-story log cabin, scarcely more than a shed, surrounded by a scattering of rickety outbuildings. A few chickens pecked at the ground around the cabin, and a scrawny hound chained to one corner bayed at them as they climbed out of the buggy. Sadie wondered how seven people could live in such a tiny building. She’d thought her own house was crowded, but this was much, much smaller. A sad look of poverty and neglect hung over the place.

As she followed Lucas up the muddy path to the cabin door Sadie noticed that there was no smoke rising from the chimney. The fire must have gone out. No wonder Lucas had brought all that firewood. The load of split logs he held in his arms was so tall that it almost hid his face.

He announced their presence by kicking the door with one booted foot, then groped for the latch string, pulled it, and pushed open the door without waiting for anyone to answer. Sadie came close behind him, holding the pot of soup in both hands.

The fusty smell that rushed out through the cabin’s open door made her take an involuntary step backward.

“Shut that door!” a man shouted. “Don’t you know you’re letting in the bad air?”

“Goodness,” Sadie said faintly. How could the outside air be any worse than what they were breathing inside the cabin? She set her jaw firmly and followed Lucas inside, leaving the door very slightly ajar. Hopefully the cranky man wouldn’t notice, but she had to breathe if she were going to be any help.