Read Online Stephanie Mittman by A Heart Full of Miracles - Free Book Online Page A

without for a while, but a baby has fewer reserves….”
    She closed her eyes tightly and sat as still as the prairie before a storm.
    “His appetite might pick up,” Seth said, though from all he’d read it didn’t seem likely.
    “I just don’t understand,” the woman said, fighting against tears now and barely winning. “He doesn’t have so much as a sniffle. He’s not warm to the touch, his tongue ain’t dry. He just don’t seem sick, and yet he’s dying.”
    “He’s
failing
” Seth corrected. “He’s not flourishing as he should be—”
    “Doc!” He heard the call at the same time he heard the buckboard come rattling up to the house. “Doc! You there?”
    Seth squeezed Caroline Denton’s shoulder as he stood up. “That was mighty good tea, Caroline,” he said softly before going to the door and opening it enough to see that it was Jedediah Merganser shouting for him.
    Panic seized his throat so that all he could do was nod, take his bag, and grab for his coat, which Caroline held out to him.
    “Follow me,” Jed said, bringing around the buck-board while Seth climbed up into his own buggy, released the brake, and gave the horses their head. Seth called after him, his voice lost to the clatter of thebuckboard, the thump of horses’ hooves, and the wind itself.
    The boy drove the horses fast, urging them to go faster still, and Seth, without a choice, followed behind, choking on dust and praying that he wouldn’t be too late.
    But too late for what? he wondered. He’d left Abby with a headache, which she’d assured him was nothing. Had she fainted? Had she tripped and fallen somewhere? He told himself that it didn’t have to be Abby he was racing to see, but that didn’t ease the fear that it was.
    And then they were racing down Ridder’s Lane and unless Abby had gone walking down by the pond, it wasn’t likely that it was she that they were rushing toward. The rush of relief he felt was followed hard upon by profound shame. Wasn’t everyone in Eden’s Grove his responsibility? Someone needed him desperately—and all he could do was be glad that it wasn’t Abby.
    They turned off Ridder’s Lane at Joseph Panner’s place and Seth couldn’t help shaking his head. He was an idiot racing down here after Jed Merganser, who wouldn’t know a medical emergency if he cut his own head off with one of his infernal inventions. Joe Panner’s toes had looked to be healing just fine only a couple of days ago, but the man wanted daily assurances that he would be able to get back out to Ridder’s Pond for that damn fish before the ice melted.
    Serve the man right if he fell in again.
    See? See?
he thought to himself. It was time to give up medicine. A doctor wishing his own patients ill.When he got back to his office he was going to write to Massachusetts General Hospital. It was a long shot, hoping someone from such a prestigious institution would consider coming to a little pit-of-the-peach town like Eden’s Grove, but long shots were better than no shots, and he’d heard nothing yet from Philadelphia or Chicago.
    “We’re here,” Jed yelled to Panner, as he came back to Seth’s rig and took the reins from him. “Went right through the ice again,” Jed told him. “But this time Pa wasn’t wandering by to save him.”
    Seth felt himself grimace. Damn, but with all the real threats to a person’s health, the germs and bugs and sicknesses, the accidents that couldn’t be prevented, the injuries that couldn’t be helped, it was really hard to work up any sympathy for a man who felt the need to tempt fate by going ice fishing on a frozen pond. Twice.
    It was eerily quiet, and Ella Welsh, who could best be described in polite terms as Panner’s lady friend, opened the door as they approached it. Tears tracked her face as she squinted out at them.
    “He just kept saying to get the reverend,” she said, “so I ran there, but no reverend.”
    “Prudence was supposed to find Pa while I