Chapter 23
August 18th, 1898, Billings, Montana
“I’ve left your mail on your desk,” Matron said as she bustled past Matthew in the corridor. “You’re lucky it reached you before you leave us.”
“Thank you, and yes, it is fortuitous,” Matthew agreed.
“Are you all ready?”
“Yes, I think so. I don’t have much to pack, so it never takes me long.”
“Well, I know that we are all grateful here that you were able to help out at such short notice. Would we be able to call upon your services in the future, if we have need?”
“You could certainly contact Dr. Hartshorn to see if he can arrange someone suitable. It is unlikely that I will be moving this far north again.”
“The winters are too cold for you?” Matron asked, grinning at him.
“Something like that, and they last so long,” Matthew said tactfully.
He went into the tiny office that had been allotted to him and sat down at the desk. A small box, filled with his few belongings sat upon the mahogany surface. Two letters lay on the leather inlay. The first was from Andrew, he would recognize his friend’s indistinct scrawl anywhere, and the other was in a script he did not recognize, but seemed to have also come from Eagle Creek.
He opened Andrew’s first.
Dear Boy,
I do hope that you are well and that this reaches you before you leave. Otherwise, knowing your plan to move to New Orleans for your next assignment, I fear I may be too late to ever change your mind. You’ll never come back this way once you’ve been there!
I know that things did not end well for you here. I will not pry and ask why, but it was clear in your final days that you were most unhappy and could not wait to get away. However, I am hoping that with the healing balm of time, and a little distance, perhaps things may not seem so dark any longer?
I hate to speak ill of any man, but Dr. Macarthur is not suited to running a hospital. Frankly, he’s not suitable for small town medicine at all. I am sure that he will do wondrously well in a big city hospital, where they care more about fees and fancy procedures than they do their patients, but he has no compassion. Not one bit.
Rachel warned me after her first day working with him, but I hoped it was just nerves. It was not. When I returned to work myself a few weeks ago, patients complained directly to me, and I saw for myself the way he was so dismissive of their concerns. I let him go immediately.
And so, I am a doctor short once more. And so, again, I am asking you to reconsider. Please come back and work with me again. Help me to build the hospital this town needs. We need your youth and energy, your knowledge and skills, and we need you. I need you. I cannot do it without you. I fear I will have to hand over every aspect of the project to Dr. Hartshorn if you do not come back, and let him do as he will, even if that means the end of the kind of doctoring I have prided myself on providing for my friends here in Eagle Creek for decades.
And whatever happened between you and Rachel, I know how much you care for her. She is miserable here without you. She would never say it, but I know she loves you. I know you love her. Whatever it is that has come between you cannot be so terrible as to condemn you to this purgatory you have put yourselves in.
Forgive her. Come back to us. Be happy here, where you are wanted and loved.
Yours, most hopefully
Andrew Walker
If only it were so easy, Matthew thought to himself. That argument in the woods played over and over in his head. Learning that Rachel, of all people, had lied to him, had been lying to him for months had cut him to the quick. He didn’t care why she had done it. It didn’t matter to him. All he could see was the lie. He had trusted Caitlin with every single detail of his life. She knew him as nobody else ever had. And she had deserted him and left him balancing on a raft of lies alone, again. He felt as vulnerable and betrayed as he had as a ten year old boy, learning that everyone lied if it made their own life easier.
He put Andrew’s letter to one side. It did not matter how much a part of him wanted to go back. He couldn’t, and not just because of all that had happened between himself and Rachel. He did not want Andrew to ever know the kind of man he really was. The idea of losing the older man’s respect and love filled him with fear. Because anyone learning who he truly was would turn away.
With a heavy sigh he sliced open the other letter. A banker’s draft slipped out of it, made out in his name for fifty dollars. Perplexed, he unfolded the letter and began to read.
Dear Matthew,
I hope that you will not be offended by my writing to you, but I felt I must, to explain some things and to thank you.
My gratitude is easy to express, for had Tom lost the bet, I fear that my family would have become destitute. However, we have talked and both of us feel that we cannot accept this money, for though you say you did fall in love, you did not marry within twelve months. That time is not yet up, and so it is up to you to either call the bet off, or to wait and find out what might happen by Christmas!
While we were talking of this, I made Tom realize that he cannot just stay quiet when he is troubled. He has a terrible tendency to do so, and it always causes more harm than good. Of course I knew of the troubles that faced him, but he would not confide in me or anyone else, nor ask for their help. I think that I have convinced him that we both need to do so more often.
You see, I learned that even a stranger will put themselves out for you, if they know how much you need their help. Rachel took my worries about your bet, when she barely knew me, and tried to ease them. We may have come up with a solution that ended up causing all of us pain, but that was never anyone’s intention. And she loves you and it has broken her heart to know that you left hating her, for trying to help me, as she does everyone but herself.
Please, do not leave in anger, for I am sure that you have feelings for her, too. We all saw it at the May Day dance, it was as plain on the nose on both your faces how you felt about each other. The only people there who didn’t see it were David, because he did not want to, and the two of you – because you were both so caught up thinking that the other most certainly did not love you back.
Well, you do. So come back and fix it, and lose the bet properly. We will take our chances that you might win.
Yours faithfully
Elise Greening
Matthew shook his head. It seemed that everyone in Eagle Creek was ganging up on him. But it made no difference. Even if he could forgive Rachel. Even if Andrew wanted him back. Even if he longed with all his heart to go back, he couldn’t. Because eventually the truth would come out. And the truth would ruin him. He no longer had the military to hide behind. He would not drag Andrew’s good name through the mud on his behalf, and he would not saddle Rachel with a life following him around the country, trying to outrun the truth, for the rest of her days. And there was only one thing he could do to change that, and though it might not work, though it might ruin his life completely, at least he would be able to stop looking over his shoulder.
September 20th, 1898, Eagle Creek, Montana
Even with Dr. Macarthur gone, Rachel was struggling to force herself to go to work. She’d never felt this way before. Her work had always been her passion. But without Matthew, everything seemed a little duller, less interesting, and much less enjoyable. She had not realized until he was gone just how easy their routines together had been. He had rarely had to ask her to fetch him anything, or do anything, she had just known. She had never had to explain just how concerned she was about a patient, if she had sought him out and needed his opinion, he gladly offered his time and visited with the patient.
But she was still needed, and so she swallowed back her tears and chided herself when she made him a cup of coffee when she made her own, or laid out the instruments the way he liked them. Every inch of the tiny clinic, almost every house in town held a memory of him for her and it was torment. She would be glad when the hospital was built and she could work there, where there would be no memories of him. Everything would be spick and span and new to her.
But his absence did not just leave a hole in her heart and her life. It left a gaping chasm at the clinic, where his expertise and the extra pair of hands was now much missed. Poor Andrew had barely been back at work for a week before he had seen all that Rachel and Maud had been telling him and had let Dr. Macarthur go. But that meant he was the only doctor again, and he wasn’t yet fully fit for the workload that required. Maud and Rachel were doing all they could to help, but there were some things that required a physician’s care, not that of a nurse.
“He’s never going to write back, is he?” Andrew said a little sadly.
“Perhaps he simply didn’t get your letter? Maybe it got there too late?” Maud said pragmatically. “He had told you that his next assignment was in New Orleans. It’s a long journey there, after all. Even if the hospital forwarded his mail, he might not have even received it yet.”
“You’re right, of course,” Andrew said with a sigh. “I just hoped he would get it before he left and would change his mind. We need him. I’m reluctant to start interviewing anyone else, in case he wants to come back.”
“He won’t come back,” Rachel said softly. “Don’t ask me how I know, but he’ll never come back here.”
“You have to remain hopeful,” Maud said.
“No, I don’t. It is better to accept Matthew as he is, rather than try to change him – or believe he might change of his own accord,” Rachel said sadly. “He’s not coming back. We all have to move on and forget.”
Maud put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “This has been so hard on you. I know how much he meant to you, how much you cared for him – for each other.”
“He’s gone so soon because of me. Because I let him down. But he would have gone anyway,” Rachel said, pushing her arm away and standing up. “That’s who he is, it’s what he does.”
Maud nodded. “You’re probably right,” she admitted. “But I still want to believe that he cares about all of us enough to change his mind.”
“Then you do that,” Rachel said. “I intend to try and accept his absence. And that is going to be much easier without Dr. Macarthur around. I don’t know how we all missed that he was the absolute opposite of what we needed.”
“Because we all hoped we wouldn’t need him,” Andrew said. “His credentials were impeccable.”
“You can’t ever trust pieces of paper,” Maud said wisely.
“No, it would appear not,” Andrew said sadly.
“So, will you place an advertisement now? We cannot go on like this,” Maud said pragmatically.
“I shall. And I promise that I shall be more discerning this time,” Andrew assured them both.
“We will help you, won’t we Rachel,” Maud said. “No disrespect meant, but I’m not trusting the future of our clinic to just one man, Andrew. Not after two of you got it so wrong last time.”
Andrew accepted her remark with grace. He even chuckled. “Quite right, Maud. Quite right. Your opinions will be most welcome.”
“But, even if we find a suitable doctor for the clinic, what do we do about the hospital?” Rachel said. “Matthew found the plot and the land was purchased, but I don’t think anything more has been done since he left. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“We’ll need to have plans drawn up, and find builders. I’m sure Edwin can help with that. He’d be an excellent choice to run the build, if he’s not too busy,” Maud said.
“And we’ll need to start thinking about the staff we’ll need,” Andrew said.
“Dr. Hartshorn can help us with that, surely? He’s created enough hospitals in his time,” Rachel pointed out. “He may have to take a much more involved role than he was planning to for some time, but it was his idea.”
“I shall write to him at once and invite him to stay,” Andrew agreed.
“So, all that is left is just missing him, then,” Rachel said. She felt tears pricking at her eyes and unable to hold them in any longer, she let them fall. Maud held her tightly.
“You cry, my darling girl,” she crooned, rocking Rachel gently from side to side as if she were a baby in need of soothing. “It wasn’t meant to be. But you’ll get over him in time. Time truly is a great healer.”
“Oh, I do hope so,” Rachel gasped through her tears. “For I don’t think I can bear this pain for the rest of my days.”
Maud was gracious enough not to point out that she had lost so much more, her beloved husband of so many years, and that she had survived and built a life without him. Instead, she just let Rachel cry. Andrew disappeared. Rachel assumed that he did not feel comfortable dealing with women’s emotions, but he returned with a cup of hot, sweet tea and some cake and handed it to her. “Marsha always says there isn’t much that cake can’t solve,” he said gently.
“Marsha is right,” Maud agreed. “Now, you sit yourself down and eat that. I will finish the files and then I’ll walk you back to Mrs. Garfield, who will no doubt be delighted to furnish you with lots of delicious treats.”
“But I am on the roster tonight,” Rachel protested.
“Not anymore you aren’t,” Maud insisted. “Go home, put your feet up and wallow in the sadness. It’s better out than in. Come back tomorrow when you feel better.”
Rachel hugged them both. She had been so blessed when Dr. Hartshorn had sent her here. Her family may be many days train ride away, but she had found a new one who loved her almost as much here in Eagle Creek.