Healing Hearts (Easton Series #2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

didn’t. Those without recovered faster. I sent my results to
Hammond. Same thing with antimony.”
       “Antimony makes them retch to
choke a horse,” Hannah noted.
       “Yes, but the purging did more
harm than good. When Hammond removed the drugs from the Union medical corps
supply list he was fired.”
       “I heard about it.” She wagged her
head in disbelief.
       “Yes, well. The regulars would
have none of it, and Hammond was caught between the regulars and sectarians and
the drug company interests. By that time there were over 300 companies making
drugs and war profiteering. You could say I’m a regular who now demands
evidence to prove any potion works. During the war my positions often put me at
odds with my colleagues. After the war I worked for a brief time with a doctor
in the Minnesota territory, and he also believed in using what was practical
and proven.”
       Hannah clapped her hands together
and her expression was suddenly animated. “Good! When I learned you were an
army surgeon I knew you had to be a regular, because all the Union docs were
regulars who believed in the established, orthodox ways. I worried you might not
accept my new thinking which bases treatment on observation and scientific
methods.”
       His eyes danced with approval. “The
war changed everything. We learned so much!” He looked back down at Elijah and
punched the needle in to sew another stitch. “You’re still a woman,” he
reminded himself aloud.
       Hannah wasn’t listening. Her eyes
twinkled in the morning light, and she ran on excitedly. “Mind you, I’m not a
homeopath, but I use their best ideas. Botanicals do work. I also don’t believe
in using leeches to draw blood. It doesn’t bring down a fever any faster than
not letting blood. It weakens the patient. I’d go as far as to say many have
died from bleeding and purging methods.”
       Jed shook his head, and he pulled
his eyes away from his patient to look into a face brightly lit with the hope
and aspirations of a newly-minted doctor. The woman was much more than he’d
given her at first glance. She was a mature thinker, ripe in mind as well as
body. He found himself anticipating further discussions with her.
       Jed swallowed hard. “OK, Doctor Hannah.
We got off on the wrong foot. I’ll let you stay and work for a week, but only until
the next wagon out.”

 
    Chapter 4

       T hree days passed, and Hannah
quickly established a routine that wove around Jed’s sleeping and eating habits.
She rose early and made breakfast, every day, even after a patient’s needs had
interrupted her sleep. Jed was slower to rouse himself, but he always made it
to the table, and between grunts he ate her eggs and fried pork and pancakes.
       As she worked alongside him, Hannah
came to understand her confident and handsome, but somehow embittered and
brooding, partner. His mood ran from hot to cold, as if he were emotionally
rudderless. At one moment he could be laughing and smiling on the porch,
beneath the stars on a moon-shadowed night, as they discussed the merits of her
aural stethoscope with it’s fancy ivory earpieces and rubber tubing, versus his
older model’s woven fabric tubing and wooden ear horns. Not a half hour later
he’d be back in the surgery, shaking bottles in the lamplight and railing about
how she’d used too much tincture of iodine on scraped knees presented by
schoolboys.
       His vulnerability touched her deeply; he had a need,
something she couldn’t put her finger on, but she’d keep searching. He’d known
danger and suffering. But then again, so had she, and she’d persevered with her
manners and humor intact.
       Hannah faced the man who was stabbing his breakfast sausage with steady
surgical precision. “Doctor Rutherford, I’m grateful for the room upstairs, but
I wish to share it – “
       “The cot is fine.” He swallowed. “I give you leave to call me Jed.” His raspy
voice withered around