Earth Angels Read online

  “How did Joseph become a doctor, then?” She shot a reproving look at Oscar, who was studying her bosom.

  He turned fiery red and looked appropriately shamefaced. “Joseph? He sold the farm to old man Perkolik and lit out right after the sale. Got hisself into some fancy school back East, Harvest or somethin’ like that.”

  “Harvard.” Joseph was beyond smart, to qualify for a spot at Harvard. She hurried to the front of the store, welcoming smile in place, her mind still on the doctor.

  Truth was, he annoyed her mightily. He was the only single man in town of marriageable status who never seemed to notice her figure.

  Miss Emma Walsh was definitely a flirtatious young woman, Joseph concluded as he hurried down the icy street toward home. He replied absently to greetings from the few townspeople out on this cold January morning as he mused that Emma certainly had Oscar Macky twined around her little finger, and no wonder, batting those long eyelashes the way she did. And there was that sultry husky voice of hers.

  His mind conjured up the intriguing curves under her blouse as he made polite responses to passersby. She really was much too forward, was Miss Emma Walsh.

  Her scent lingered in his nostrils, lavender. It always made him want to lean in closer to her. Undoubtedly it had the same effect on other men, which really could prove to be dangerous. Was she at all aware of men’s baser instincts?

  “G’day, Doc. Filthy weather, ain’t it?” The town drunk, Lazarus Weatherby, was undoubtedly on his way to the tavern to get started on his daily drinking ritual. Joseph despaired for Lazarus’s liver, but there was nothing to be done. He’d already tried everything short of locking the man up. Drunkenness was a malady for which he could devise no cure, and it saddened him.

  Was flirting just as irreversible?

  “Morning, Doctor. It’s icy, watch your step.” Henry Goodman, the town barber, was out with his shovel, ineffectually clearing the patch of wooden sidewalk in front of his shop. Henry had asthma, but Joseph had it under control. He’d concocted a remedy of elecampane, angelica and comfrey steeped in honey, and Henry hadn’t had an attack in months.

  Outside the barber shop, on a bench, sat the four old codgers Joseph privately called the barbershop quartet. Lewis, Martin, Olaph and Quincey were the self styled eyes, ears and conscience of the town. They judged, criticized, watched and castigated everyone and everything that happened in Demersville. They’d sat in front of the General Store for years, taking the seats around the stove when the weather was cold. But when the previous owner died and Miss Walsh took over and made changes, they moved to Henry’s barbershop. They criticized and condemned every change Emma had made, grumbling loudly about women who thought they were men, upstarts, highfalutin notions, predictions of bankruptcy and ruin. But Emma had proven them all wrong. Flirtatious or not, she was a clever businesswoman.

  “Mornin’, Doc,” they each mumbled, one after the other.

  “Gentlemen,” Joseph murmured, although he believed them to be anything but.

  “Oh, Doctor, how fortunate, I was just on my way to your surgery.” The peevish, breathless female voice sounded from behind him and Joseph’s heart sank. “I’ll just walk the rest of the way with you, shall I?”

  Mrs. Lepage was a bossy, idle woman, and she tried Joseph’s patience. She dreamed up one symptom after the next, never seeming to quite recover but never becoming seriously ill either. And she seemed to blame him for both conditions. In his opinion, a large part of her problem was her weight. He’d diplomatically—and not so diplomatically—suggested she reduce, to no avail.

  “You’ll have to slow down, Doctor, I can’t walk quickly,” she whined. “It’s my veins, my legs are acting up again. And my back, I have such pain in my lower back—“

  They progressed at a snail’s pace, along the main street. Joseph was nearly ready to throttle her by the time they turned into the front yard of his white clapboard house.

  The surgery door was always unlocked. A Gothic-scripted sign read, “Dr. Joseph Gillespie, Family Physician.”

  Underneath, another sign said, “The Doctor is OUT.”

  Joseph turned it over so the opposite message was displayed.

  “Go in and make yourself comfortable, Mrs. Lepage. I’ll just take my purchases to the kitchen, I’ll be with you in a moment.”

  In a thoroughly bad mood, he stalked through the waiting room and headed to the kitchen in the rear of the house. He upended the canvas sack on the kitchen table and remembered, too late, about the flannel sheets and the seamstresses. Now he’d have to go out again to see the Misses Templeton. He’d been sure there wouldn’t be many patients on a day like this, so he’d planned to spend a quiet day reading the latest medical journals.

  With a beleaguered sigh, he went through the connecting door and into his office where Mrs. Lepage waited, eager to regale him with a list of her latest symptoms.

  He was wrong, however, about the number of patients who ended up in his office that day. After Mrs. Lepage, a steady stream of people appeared with assorted ailments peculiar to the season, sore throats, ague, catarrh, severe chapping, chilblains. As always, he devoted himself fully and eagerly to his work, doing his best to alleviate his patient’s pain and discomfort.

  At last, the waiting room was empty. He glanced out the window, amazed to find that darkness had fallen while he was busy. His growling stomach reminded him he’d forgotten lunch. Although the fire in the small round stove in his office blazed, his kitchen cook stove was out. Patients were very cooperative about stoking the stove in the office. They’d learned he forgot, more often than not.

  In the kitchen, he used shavings to light the stove, trying to figure out what was in his larder for a quick supper. Bacon, and there were always eggs because many of his patients paid him with eggs, or milk, or home baked bread.

  He was placing slices of bacon in the skillet when a child’s frantic screaming startled him. He hurried down the hallway, and the office door burst open. Emil Schroeder, a farmer Joseph knew well, raced in holding his small son in his arms. The boy was shrieking in agony. The gray woolen blanket around him had fallen away and his right arm lay across his chest, bent at a grotesque angle. Blood had seeped into his blue flannel shirt and stained the blanket.

  “Zeke fell out of the loft. He was pitchin’ hay down to the cattle,” Emil hollered above his son’s agonized cries. “Bust his arm real bad.” Emil’s usually ruddy complexion was bleached and waxy, his eyes glassy with shock and terror.

  “Bring him into the surgery.” Joseph led the way, pointed to the examining table. “Lay him down here.”

  Joseph quickly assessed the break, trying to calm and reassure the little boy. “I know it hurts bad, Zeke, but we’ll get it fixed up in a jiffy, I promise.”

  The break was compound, the bone protruding from the flesh just above the elbow. The boy’s screams continued unabated.

  It was a serious injury, the kind that all too often resulted in loss of the limb or even death, not from the break but from sepsis. Shock, too, was dangerous.

  “Emil,” Joseph said, “I’m better dealing with this alone. You go out to the kitchen and fix a pot of coffee. Stove needs wood, there’s a stack out back. Heat a big pot of water in case I need it.” Giving Emil something to do would help distract him, but Joseph needed privacy for another reason.

  As soon as Emil left the room, Joseph closed the door and said in a quiet, urgent tone, “Nathaniel, I need your help. Please.”

  As always the moment the words were spoken, Joseph felt a presence infiltrate the room, warm, infinitely loving. He knew from experience that Zeke, whose cries had now dulled to a nerve rending, agonized moaning, would be unable to see the being who’d materialized at the head of the table.

  Joseph had learned long ago that Nathaniel was visible only to him, a phenomenon that never ceased to amaze him, because Nathaniel seemed so very solid and robust whenever he appeared.

  His hair was silver blonde, and his e
yes, too, were silver, like shimmering, brilliant moonlight reflected on water. But the rest of him was rather ordinary, his nose a trifle big for the rest of his face, his shoulders narrow, his middle a little paunchy. It was the feeling of peace and quiet confidence he exuded that made him seem otherworldly.

  Without a word, Nathaniel laid a large, work worn hand gently on Zeke’s tousled curls.

  Between one shriek and the next, the boy relaxed and fell into a deep sleep.

  Joseph immediately set to work, snipping lengths of sutures from a spool, dipping them into a carbolic bath. “Is there nerve damage?” he asked Nathaniel. “It was undoubtedly jolted in the trip here.” He’d worked with Nathaniel often and relied on his ability to diagnose conditions that were beyond modern medicine’s scope.

  “None.” Nathaniel’s voice was deep and resonant. It always had a calming effect on Joseph, no matter how dire the emergency. “He’s weakening, however. We’ll just control the bleeding—“

  Nathaniel extended his hand and held it, palm down, over the seeping wound. In a moment, the blood coagulated and Joseph was able to see the vessels that needed tied off.

  For the next hour, Joseph sat on a high stool, meticulously cleansing the wound, scarifying the edges and suturing. Nathaniel made quiet suggestions and helped set the bones. When the arm was at last encased in bandages and wooden splints, Nathaniel aimed a blue violet light from the palm of his hand toward the injured limb.

  Joseph, familiar with this powerful healing technique, nevertheless felt chills run up and down his spine. He watched in awed silence until the powerful, otherworldly light faded and then slowly disappeared.

  “Zeke will heal quickly now,” Nathaniel said with a gentle smile. “Healing energy works best with children because they have no barriers. They still remember the other world, and the light. He’ll sleep long and deeply, and when he awakens, the worst of the pain will be over.”

  Joseph drew a soft blanket over the sleeping child and tucked it in. Heaving a deep sigh, he flexed his aching shoulders and looked deep into his friend’s silver eyes. The joyful peace, love and reassurance there wiped away his own weariness and exhaustion.

  “Thank you, Nathaniel,” he said with heartfelt gratitude. “As always, I could never have done it without you.”

  Nathaniel smiled, punching Joseph lightly on the shoulder. “Of course you could have. We have to work on your self-confidence. What I do, you can do as well. All you need is faith in yourself.”

  For some obscure reason, Emma Walsh’s beautiful, animated face appeared in Joseph’s mind, vivid and smiling.

  Nathaniel laughed quietly. “In that part of your life as well, Joseph. All you need is confidence.”

  Joseph flushed, always forgetting that Nathaniel could somehow see his very thoughts.

  Nathaniel added, “Your life is incomplete without that type of love.”

  Joseph scowled and swallowed hard. He might rely on Nathaniel and be grateful to him, but he didn’t always have to agree with him. “I hardly think there’s anything lacking in my---“

  He stopped because he was aware that he was now alone in the room. “—my life,” he finished in a whisper. Nathaniel had the most annoying habit of disappearing before Joseph could disagree with him.

  “Is—is my Zeke gonna be okay?”

  Joseph hadn’t heard the connecting door open. Emil stood there, wringing his huge, gnarled farmer’s hands, his weathered face lined with fatigue and anxiety. “I got a washtub of water boiling, and I chopped a pile of wood out back. There’s a pot of coffee brewin’.”

  Joseph removed his glasses, cleaned them on the corner of his shirt, and smiled at the man. “Zeke’s gonna be just fine. He needs to be real quiet for a while, until that arm has a chance to heal some, but there won’t be any complications. I’m going to keep him here tonight, and you can come for him about noon tomorrow.”

  “Thank the good Lord. And thank you, Doc.” Emil’s voice was thick with emotion. “Mary and me, we can’t thank you enough. Zeke’s our youngest, he’s Mary’s baby, and we was so scared….” His eyes filled with tears and he ducked his head and swiped at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt.

  “Let’s go have a cup of coffee, and I’ll fry us up some bacon and eggs. Bet you missed out on supper just like I did, Emil.”

  At times like this, Joseph felt humble, embarrassed by the gratitude his patients heaped upon him. It was Nathaniel who deserved their thanks far more than he did, but how could one explain that an angel had assisted with their healing?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Emil had hitched his horse to his buggy and headed home long ago. Joseph sat by the fire, enjoying the taffy he’d bought and holding a mug of the truly horrible coffee Emil had brewed. He was pondering for the millionth time the presence of Nathaniel in his life.

  He knew if he tried to explain about Nathaniel, the kind and simple folks of Demersville would shake their heads and whisper that poor Doc Gillespie was more than a mite touched in the head. And that would be the end of his medical practice. They wouldn’t trust him anymore.

  But knowing how they’d react didn’t stop him from feeling guilty for taking credit for something he didn’t deserve. He’d discussed the problem with Nathaniel, and his angelic friend had bust into peals of laughter.

  “Stop worrying about my ego, Joseph. I haven’t got one. You’re here on earth to learn lessons, and one of your big ones is about self worth. My task is to help you, nothing more, nothing less. I’m here for you whenever you call. I’m not going to get insulted and disappear because I feel I’m not getting my share of glory. I would leave only if you asked me to go.” He grinned in a decidedly mischievous way. “I get more than my share of Glory, Joseph. It’s unimaginably glorious where I come from.”

  “Then why do you choose to come here?”

  “It’s my job. I’m one of the earth angels, particularly assigned to work with healers.”

  Joseph remembered now in vivid detail the first time he’d been aware of Nathaniel’s presence in his life. He was nearing the end of his difficult third year at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Exhausted by the prestigious medical school’s academic demands, drained by a lingering bout of influenza, and doubting his own abilities, he tried one night to study and couldn’t. His weary brain refused to absorb the complicated information that would be on tomorrow’s exam, and at last he gave up, despairing of ever passing his courses. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to become a doctor, but now that dream was shattered along with other, earlier dreams, and he lost all hope.

  And then, for the first time, he’d felt Nathaniel’s presence. A loving, quiet voice in his mind assured him that everything would work out in spite of the difficulties, that he needed rest. The voice was so comforting Joseph wasn’t at all frightened.

  He simply did as he was told, went to bed and slept soundly for several hours, and when he awoke again to study, the material seemed logical and crystal clear to him. He wrote the exam, feeling confident and calm, and attained a higher mark than ever before.

  But later, facing final examinations, he once again fell into utter despair. Alone in his room, late at night, he tried to study for his most difficult course, pharmacology.

  Hours passed, and the chemical symbols made less and less sense. Giving up at last, he threw his textbook to the floor. He’d never pass the examination, never attain his dream of becoming a doctor, and furthermore, he no longer cared. Having already written difficult examinations in anatomy, botany and chemistry, he was now certain he’d failed all of them.

  Despondent, he began tossing his clothing into his trunk. There was no point in staying; he’d catch the early train home. But, he realized, Demersville was no longer home. He’d sold his parent’s farm to finance his education, so there was no home to return to. The girl he’d loved was dead. There wasn’t a living soul who cared if he lived or died. So maybe death was the answer. He began seriously contemplating ways and means.


  At that moment, when he felt there was nothing left to live for, he felt someone reach over his shoulder and pluck the key to his trunk out of his hand.

  He whirled, startled and shocked and not a little frightened, because the door to his room was bolted. There was a figure, standing a few feet away. Joseph could hardly breathe. The situation was terrifying.

  “Who—who are you? How did you get in here?”

  The man—at least he looked like a man—smiled at him, and Joseph was struck by his eyes, silver, but exuding such love and compassion as he’d never before encountered. Before he spoke a single word, Joseph felt an all-encompassing peace flow through him, a sense of absolute well being, the same feeling he’d experienced before.

  “My name is Nathanial.” The man’s voice reverberated in every nerve in Joseph’s body. “I’ve come to help you. I’m your friend, Joseph, your soul’s companion. I’ve been with you always, I will be with you always.”

  “What—what do you mean? Where did you come from? How did you get in here?”

  “I came from Home. It’s where you came from, too. Usually you’re not aware of me, but your need is great just now, and I couldn’t reach you any other way.” He smiled again, a joyous, light-hearted smile. “You’re a hard-headed fellow, Joseph.” He leaned over and retrieved a paper Joseph had balled up and tossed in the wastebasket, then picked up the textbook from the floor.

  “Let’s see what we can do with this list of symbols, shall we? You have a great future ahead of you as a healer, so let me help you with this last small obstacle.”

  For some reason, Joseph acquiesced. He was too exhausted, too depleted to even argue or question. And somehow, with Nathaniel’s help, he easily mastered the material. Before Nathaniel disappeared that first night, however, Joseph needed answers to the things that were now bothering him.

  “You’re not really a man, are you?”

  “No, Joseph. I only appear to you as a man, because that is the way you can most easily accept my presence.”