CHAPTER 1 #2
Ruth found Sam, now grown to a lanky eleven years old, sitting rather sheepishly on the porch steps with his arm cradled carefully against his chest, Callie hovering nearby with the particular controlled anxiety of a mother uncertain whether her son's injury required more expertise than the household presently possessed.
“It's likely just a sprain,” Ruth said, after a careful examination that drew on her years of assisting Doc Hansen through countless similar injuries, “though I'd keep it properly splinted and rested a few days to be certain.
If the swelling doesn't improve, or if he develops any fever, you'll want proper medical attention beyond what I can offer.”
“I don't know what this whole district will do, Ruth, once your own considerable practical skills are no longer the only medical recourse most families can readily access,” Callie observed, watching Ruth work with evident gratitude.
“I'd wager half this town owes you a debt of gratitude nearly as considerable as what they owe Doc Hansen himself, all these years.”
“I've simply done what circumstances required, Callie, same as any of us would.
Though I'll own I'm rather looking forward to Goldpine finally securing its own proper physician, that I might return to my ministry duties without quite so much medical responsibility resting on my own admittedly limited practical training.”
This exchange, offered without any particular premonition of how thoroughly that eventual physician's arrival would reshape her own life, nonetheless lingered in Ruth's thoughts through the return journey to town, reinforcing her growing conviction that Goldpine's need for proper medical care had grown considerably more urgent than her brother's careful correspondence campaign had thus far managed to properly address.
She stopped, on her way back through town, at the small cemetery behind the church, pausing as she often did at her parents' shared headstone to offer a quiet moment of remembrance.
“I don't know if I'm managing things properly, Mother,” she said quietly, in the particular manner she sometimes permitted herself when the cemetery stood empty of other visitors.
“Josiah seems to think I've built my whole life around a comfortable hiding place rather than a genuine calling.
I don't rightly know whether he's correct, but I confess the question's troubled my sleep rather more than I'd like to admit these past several nights.”
The cemetery offered no reply beyond the ordinary rustle of the autumn wind through the surrounding pines, and Ruth found herself, walking the remaining distance home, no closer to a settled answer than she had been setting out that morning, though the question itself had, at least, been properly voiced aloud rather than merely turned over in private, restless thought.
That evening, she found herself reviewing the ministry's considerable correspondence file, the accumulated letters of eleven successful matches spanning four years of careful, deliberate work, and felt a genuine pride in the tangible good that work had accomplished, whatever private uncertainty continued to nag at her regarding her own unexamined heart.
She thought of Amelia's difficult beginning with Jed, and Callie's desperate flight to Nathaniel's ranch, and the whole considerable catalog of hardship each of these women had weathered before arriving at their eventual happiness, and found some comfort in the reminder that genuine happiness rarely arrived without its own measure of prior difficulty and uncertainty.
She retired that night with her mind still turning over the whole considerable question of her own contentment, and found herself, drifting toward sleep, recalling a particular piece of counsel her own mother had once offered, years before her death, regarding the proper balance between service to others and attention to one's own genuine needs.
“A well that's never replenished eventually runs dry, Ruthie,” her mother had said, watching a much younger Ruth exhaust herself in service to some charitable cause.
“You cannot pour out to others indefinitely without attending, in turn, to your own proper filling.” She had not properly understood the wisdom of that counsel at the time, being scarcely more than a girl, but she found it returning to her now with fresh and considerable relevance, and fell asleep finally wondering whether her own well had grown rather more depleted than her careful public composure generally revealed.
The following morning brought a letter from Callie Cross, describing the ranch's autumn preparations and Sam and Lily's continued flourishing under Callie's now well-established care, and Ruth found herself reading it with the particular fondness she reserved for these regular updates from women whose happiness she had helped secure.
She composed her own reply that same afternoon, sharing news of the town's ordinary business and, almost as an afterthought, mentioning Josiah's continued efforts to secure a proper physician for the district.
I do hope, she wrote, that whatever candidate eventually answers our considerable need proves worthy of the position, and finds here, as you and Amelia both have, precisely the fresh start his circumstances require.
I confess I've grown rather invested in the prospect, having watched this territory work its particular magic on so many hearts already.
She sealed this letter and set it aside for the morning post, then spent the remainder of that quiet afternoon attending to the small, ordinary business of the ministry's continued correspondence, answering a handful of practical inquiries from families requesting Josiah's pastoral attention and reviewing the accounts for the coming quarter's expenses.
It was work she had performed so many times over these four years that her hands moved through it almost without conscious thought, leaving her mind free to continue circling, however unwillingly, the same unsettled questions her brother's gentle probing had first raised, and she found herself, by the day's end, no closer to any proper resolution, only more thoroughly convinced that some resolution would eventually prove necessary.
She closed her ledger that evening with the particular careful finality she generally reserved for concluding a day's considerable labor, and found herself, extinguishing her bedside candle, offering one final quiet prayer regarding whatever physician might eventually answer Josiah's revised notice, understanding that this small, ordinary act of intercession represented, in its own modest way, the same genuine hope she extended toward every stranger whose life this remarkable territory might yet prove capable of transforming.