<< Go Back

When the Meadow Blooms

By Ann H. Gabhart

Order Now!

February 27, 1925

Chapter 1

“You will never be completely well. Tuberculosis leaves its mark on your lungs.”
“I know, Doctor.” Rose Meadows looked at Dr. Bess Halvechs across the desk from her. “But I am so much better. I’ve been walking about the grounds and manage the stairs to the dining room instead of eating in my room.”
“Yes.” Dr. Bess’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. The doctor was devoted to her patients at Rest Haven Sanitarium and worked tirelessly to help them keep breathing. “You have made progress, Rose. Excellent progress, but as you know
from your time here, relapses do occur. Even if that doesn’t happen, you will continually struggle with some aspects of the disease.”
Rose didn’t argue with the truth of the doctor’s words, but she didn’t have to be cured. She merely had to be well enough to leave the sanitarium and go get her daughters. “I have accepted that, but with care, I can manage.”
“With care.” The doctor fingered the stethoscope that hung around her neck as though she might get up and come around the desk to check Rose’s lungs right then. Dr. Bess was older than Rose, one of the first women to be accepted
into a medical school. “Those are the words we must consider. With care. Do you have someone willing to give you that care?”
Rose met the doctor’s eyes. “My oldest daughter will be fifteen next month. Old enough to help.” Her care wasn’t something she wanted to thrust on Calla, but the need to be with her two girls again burned a hole in her heart. She
hadn’t seen them for almost two years.
“But how will you survive, dear Rose? Do you plan to hire your daughter out to bring in money?”
“Hire her out?” Rose shrank from the thought. She couldn’t imagine sending Calla off to a factory job or to be a maid. “No, no. She can help me fashion hats. And there’s my husband’s army pension.”
“A paltry amount, I fear. Not enough for rent and food, and while you can still practice your milliner skills, you won’t have the strength to work steadily as you did in the past. Do you have family who might help you?”
“No.” Rose’s heart sank. “As I told you, my husband died during the influenza epidemic. My parents passed on years ago.”
“No sisters or brothers?”
“None living. A sister and brother died at a young age.”
“So many troubles in this day.” Dr. Bess clucked her tongue. “But, Rose, I cannot in good conscience release you unless you can give me some assurance that you will have a proper place to stay. You can’t live on the street or in some
hovel where you would be exposed to the damp and not have the proper clean air and sunshine.”
“I’m well enough that my girls wouldn’t be at risk if I am with them. Isn’t that right?”
“Your sputum is negative, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t prone to a relapse.” She paused and studied Rose before she went on. “Stay with us a bit longer. Get stronger for those girls of yours.”
“But I think they need me now. I got a letter from Sienna. Something about it didn’t sound right.”
The letter was only a few lines. I am fine. My teacher is nice. I get enough to eat. I am learning to listen. It read like a school assignment, with sentences dictated by the teacher. The only part that seemed truly like Sienna was the tiny sketch of a bird for the dot above the i in her name and a
drawing of a long-tailed mouse on the bottom of the page.
Sienna had been entranced by anything in nature since her first baby giggle at the sight of a butterfly. But it didn’t have to be something pretty to catch her eye. She liked spiders and once picked up a garter snake. When it bit her, she hadn’t cried. Instead, she gently put down the snake and apologized for scaring it.
“Sienna is the younger one, right? How old is she?” Dr. Bess asked.
“Nine,” Rose said.
Dr. Bess looked sympathetic. “At that age, she surely lacks letter-writing skills, don’t you think?” She waited for Rose’s nod and then went on. “Has your older daughter written to you about any problems?”
“No, but she might not if she thought it would upset me.”
Calla’s last letter had only been a couple of paragraphs, the words stiff somehow, as though she had nothing good to write.
“I just have the feeling something is wrong. Mothers have an innate sense about her children.”
“Of course they do. You do.” Dr. Bess stood up and came around the desk to touch Rose’s shoulder. “But your children need you well. Not sick. And worry will only make you worse. Your girls are being cared for at the orphanage. They
will surely be fine for another month or so.”
“It’s been so long already.” The doctor being right didn’t make it any easier to accept.
“I know, but it’s best not to rush things. Let’s see how you’re doing in a few weeks.” Dr. Bess patted her shoulder. “Now run along and find a chair outside on the sun porch. Fresh air and sunshine are the best medicine we have.”
Rose did as she was told, even though every inch of her screamed to go pack her few belongings to leave. But reality kept poking her, bursting her balloon of hope. She had no car, no house, no way.
When she’d left the girls at the Home for Girls, she’d thought it would be for a few weeks, no more than a couple of months, but the months had piled one on top of another. She hadn’t gotten well. She’d gotten worse in spite of the bed rest and hours in the sun. The doctor warned her it would take time, but Rose hadn’t expected it to be a slow slog through mud. That was how it had felt. As if each movement was an effort she could barely make.
For a while, she thought she wouldn’t fight through it, that the mud of tuberculosis in her lungs would swallow her. At one time, she was so worried she’d never see Calla and Sienna again that she wrote them each a final letter about how very much she loved them. The letters were still in the envelopes in her suitcase, ready if the need arose.
But now she was finally better. Still weak. Still with a cough but no streaks of blood in her sputum. Her hands trembled so that piecing together the hats she’d made for some of her fellow patients was a struggle, but she had finished
the work.
She lengthened her stride as she went down the corridor toward the door that led out onto the porch. Her breath stayed even, surely a sign she was in remission.
She was so pleased she wasn’t getting short of breath that she forgot to look away before she caught sight of herself in the mirror at the end of the hall. Why they left it there to mock the patients, or guests as they preferred to call them, she had no idea.
She hated that mirror. In her room a quick peek in the small wall mirror on the washstand was all that was needed to be sure her hair was combed. But this mirror blasted her whole reflection back at her. The first time she’d passed the
mirror, she had looked behind her to see whose reflection it might be. As if some strange woman was beside her and her own image wasn’t there.
Since then, she always quickly turned away from the mirror, but today she stopped and stared at the frail woman staring back at her. Her cheeks were hollow and dark smudges circled her eyes. Gray streaked her honey-brown hair.
Could she really persuade Dr. Bess that she was ready to leave, ready to care for her daughters?
She sent up a prayer. Could she persuade herself that she was?

Order Now!

<< Go Back