Called to Care (eBook)
474 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-0068-2 (ISBN)
How do you find the courage to take the next step-when you're thinking you can't look at this shattered body?when you realize that your choice may have cost a human life?when you watch the person you love drift away?"e;Called to Care"e; follows four nurses whose lives are connected by a simple, unassuming pendant as they confront the timeless pull to be of service. The stigma of illness, both physical and mental, and the centuries-old issues of substance use and addiction are woven throughout their stories. At the start of America's bloody Civil War, Sarah Dunlap is pressed, unprepared, to help injured and dying men in eastern Tennessee's Battle of Shiloh. She is determined to become a "e;real nurse"e; at a time when nursing schools are in their infancy. Charlotte Kolb, orphaned at nine, seeks to care for tuberculars like her mother and finds herself in the newly emerging sanitarium movement in the 1880s Western frontier. Baby boomers and psychiatric nurses Will Swain and Ella Swensen yearn to use their skills and relationship to help fellow nurses face down the career-ending effects of substance use. One hundred fifty years after this tale begins, the practice of nursing-founded on compassion, commitment to healing, and the continued pursuit of knowledge and skill-stands proudly today as a noble and trusted profession. "e;Called to Care"e; tells this story.
Change of Heart
October 10, 1861
Greeneville, Tennessee
Swooshing blood sounds filled her ears; her heart pounded as if her body consisted of only that organ. “Why? Why now, Evan?” she demanded, springing up from the loveseat. Tears threatened to fail her will. Her lips quivered. She hated for him to see her cry, she looked so unappealing. Some women could cry beautifully, but she was not among them. “We had our wedding planned out and ready to announce. What happened? Don’t you love me?”
“Sarah, I do love you, more than I can say, and that is why we should not marry … at least not now. With war closer every day. I cannot in good conscience—”
She interrupted. “That makes no sense at all to me, Evan! If you loved me more than you can say, why would you be leaving me? Especially now! In good conscience?”
“Sarah, I cannot stand by and do nothing. You know that, you know me. It will be over soon, everyone says so, so I need to join now, now when it can make a difference. I truly believe I will survive, but what if I am wrong and leave you a widow, or worse, a widow with a child? Maybe I would return with an injury that you would have to take care of for the rest of our lives. That is no life for you.”
Her cheeks flamed hot.
“It is my life to decide for myself, Evan, not yours!” she shouted. “And yes, have you considered this? If you survive, but are wounded for life, what kind of life is that for either of us, married or not? Why put yourself at such a risk? Is love, our love, not more important than your whim to fight?”
Now it was his turn to be stunned. Evan had never heard Sarah speak to him like this. His voice rose to match her power. “Whim, Sarah, you call this a whim? We are fighting for our values, and if we are not willing to stand behind them, what are our lives really worth? Would you truly wish to be married to a man who is a coward?”
“Coward? You think choosing a life with me over joining a regiment of men anxious to go out and fight—evidence of cowardice? I call it love.” Sarah took one breath, then sighed out another. “Evan, I am not opposed to your joining the Union fight. I believe in it, I really do. But join them after we marry, not before, so that I may know that you truly love me ….” Her words began to falter as she heard her argument weaken. She took another breath and pressed on.
“Evan, there are other ways to stand for the Union and against slavery. It doesn’t have to be you on a battlefield. You could help with the efforts to move slaves to freedom. You could pass on information. You could collect money. And you write so passionately!”
He raised his right eyebrow. “Sarah, those are efforts that others would look on in disgust. Why am I not fighting, they would wonder. My writing is read only by those who agree with me—no hearts have been moved by it. Only bullets will work now. I must do something! I am strong and healthy. Besides, I thought you said you were for me joining the fight.” He stared hard at her, his gaze as intense as his words. He waited as he ran his long fingers through his hair, slowing his breath.
She was silent. Could he see through her that easily? Had her anger at his resistance carelessly revealed her deepest motivation—that once married, he would change his mind and not leave her? Did he know that he had become her whole life?
“So you are letting your worries about others’ opinions carry more weight than my desires?”
Her words hung in the air, unanswered. He moved closer to her and tried to wrap her in an embrace. She pulled away in stony silence, her jaw hard, her face averted. Neither spoke until he broke the quiet.
“Sarah, let’s not leave the conversation like this. Let’s stop now. I will return tomorrow afternoon, after both of us have had a chance to consider my decision.”
“Your decision? Your decision for our life? Your decision for my life? Come back later if you wish, or not. We shall see then what I have decided!”
Her words echoed in the silence as Evan strode out of her parents’ parlor, closing the door quietly behind him.
Five long minutes later, she left the house to clear her head. She could not face her parents. At the corner, she met George, youngest of her four siblings, walking home from his day at the family’s dry goods store. “Hello, there, Sister, is it not a beautiful fall afternoon? I love it when the leaves begin to reveal their changing colors, don’t you?”
Always affable, what a fool, Sarah thought, he has not a care in the world while mine crumbles around me. “George, I am not feeling well at all. I thought a little walk would do me good, but I see I was mistaken. I’ll walk back with you. If I do not come down for supper, please tell Mother and Father that I am feeling poorly and need to sleep. I may be having one of those awful headaches of Aunt Louisa’s.” A headache is most certainly true.
She woke late the next morning, dull and listless. She knew she needed to move, but had no heart for it. Her mother’s gentle knock interrupted her thoughts. “Sarah, are you all right, my dear? May I come in?”
“Yes, Mother, come in,” she sighed, as she put on her dressing gown and went to the door. “I’m some better.”
“You don’t look better, my dear.” Jane Anne held her daughter at arm’s length and studied her closely. “Do you have a fever? George said it might have been one of Louisa’s headaches. Shall I fetch a doctor for you?”
“Um … no, Mother,” she said slowly, rubbing her face. She regarded her mother’s clear gray eyes, full of concern. “The problem is one of my heart, not my body. Evan … Evan wants to go with the Union Army almost immediately. That is not what we were planning.” She felt the tears gathering. Sarah sat down, resignedly, on the corner of the bed. Jane Anne joined her, arm around Sarah’s shoulders.
“Sarah, what were you planning? A wedding?”
She nodded. “Evan was getting ready to talk with Father yesterday when he came to see me. We had discussed it before and I was so full of joy, Mother. Then he stole it all with just a few words.” She told her mother about their argument. A long silence filled the room, broken only by the chatter of busy squirrels in the oaks outside.
Sarah started to speak, but Jane Anne held up her palm. “Wait my dear. Let us think about this.” Is Mother against me, too?
Sarah’s sudden sullen expression made Jane Anne hesitate. She cleared her throat, reached for her daughter’s unlined hand, looked thoughtfully at it, and then at Sarah’s face as she continued. “Hear me out, my dear, please. Is it possible that Evan is right, that his truest concern is for you and the life that you will have, hopefully with him, happily, for many years? It is no way to begin a marriage with just a few days together, and then send your husband off to the battlefield, no matter how short the war. Why the haste, Sarah? I know you feel like you are an old spinster, as you say, but you are merely twenty-two.”
Sarah looked at her hand in her mother’s. “I suppose I hoped, deep in my heart, that once we were married, once we were truly man and wife,” her cheeks flushing, “that he would have cause to change his mind and not join the army.”
Her mother nodded her head slowly, the situation clearer now. “Oh my dear girl, I have known other women who wished similar things in their marriages, but sadly, almost no one has found that a husband’s deepest yearnings can be overturned by his wife’s affection, no matter how new and passionate.”
Sarah had no words against her mother’s wisdom. Jane Anne got up to leave, and at the door she added, “So many forms of love exist, Sarah. The love between a man and a woman early in marriage is a sweet and wonderful blooming, but it is a prelude to something much more solid and stable. You will see.”
Jane Anne Morrison Dunlap, born at the turn of the century, didn’t know what to make of her daughter’s struggles. She saw a spark in Sarah that needed kindling, but she wasn’t sure how it should catch flame. Her younger daughter had a restless spirit. For a time she had wanted to become a teacher. Then she wanted to study art and poetry. Then languages. Jane Anne saw these as temporary, trivial pursuits that Sarah would follow until she married. None of her suitors had proposed marriage, and Sarah worried that there must be something wrong with her. No one seemed to want her.
Her older daughter Caroline, whom everyone called Cara, was happily settled as a minister’s wife in western Tennessee. Jane Anne and Wilson had three sons, Philip, James, and George, who gave them little cause to worry. A sixth child, Leah, died when she was two years old.
Jane Anne, a quiet and thoughtful woman, was committed to equality for all. She joined Wilson in his abolitionist crusading, as well as standing for women’s rights and suffrage. She was happy that Cara seemed fulfilled as a minister’s wife and mother to Bethanne and Eddie. But she was skeptical that marriage alone would satisfy her younger daughter’s intelligence and curiosity. However, Sarah was young and time would tell.
As the day wore on, Sarah tried to occupy herself with the usual...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 1.8.2023 |
|---|---|
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen |
| ISBN-13 | 979-8-3509-0068-2 / 9798350900682 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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