The Hardest Goodbye
Book 1 of A HOUSE UNITED series

By Sarah Hendess

Washington, DC
July 1859

Josephine Cartwright blew an errant strand of dark hair out of her face and shifted her position between her patient and the window to shed more light on the back of the man's head. His hair was tacky with blood, and Josie had to wipe it down frequently with a damp cloth.

"However did you manage to do this in your bookshop, Mr. Roberts?" she asked in amazement.

Mark Roberts grimaced as Josie jabbed her needle through his skin for a final stitch.

"Clint was carrying a crate of books, knocked into me, and sent me flying backwards into one of the shelves," he said, clearly exasperated by his son. This was not the first time Clint's infamous clumsiness had forced someone to seek medical attention.

"Well, at least no one landed in horse manure this time." Josie tied off her thread and gently bandaged Mr. Roberts's head to keep the stitches clean. "Come back in a week, and I'll take the stitches out. And take it easy the rest of the day. You may feel dizzy, and we don't need you fainting and splitting open another piece of your head."

Roberts chuckled. "Indeed I will." He stood up and collected his hat. "What do I owe you for this?"

"I wouldn't charge you for five stitches, Mr. Roberts. Reserve me a copy of 'A Tale of Two Cities' when the serial is complete, and we'll call it even."

"I'll be sure to do that," Roberts said and headed toward the front door of the clinic. "Congratulations on your acceptance to medical school, by the way. I hear you had some special guests arrive to help you celebrate."

Josie's face split into a wide smile. "I did! My cousins Adam and Joe came all the way from the Utah Territory! I had not seen either of them since we accompanied Adam home after his graduation from Harvard nine years ago. Little Joe was only eight years old then. It's just too bad my Uncle Ben and Hoss could not come along, too, but I guess someone has to run their ranch."

"It's hard when family is so far away," Roberts reflected. "But it makes your time together that much sweeter."

"I suppose so," Josie agreed. "I would have liked to have gone back to the territory with them to visit for a while, but school starts in September."

Roberts smiled at her. "You'll make a fine doctor."

"Thank you," Josie said, smiling back. "Now remember what I said: take it easy the rest of the day."

"Will do. Tell your father I said hello."

"I will. Take care." Josie closed the door behind Mr. Roberts and returned to the exam room to clean up.

Josie hummed as she dropped her used needle into a jar of alcohol and wiped up some stray drops of blood from the exam table. She would have loved returning to the Nevada region with her cousins, but she had dreamed of going to medical school since she was a small girl, so she knew her visit would have to wait at least the two years it would take her to earn her MD. And it helped that Adam was nearly as excited about her becoming a doctor as she was. He always had been bookish.

"Oh, someday," she sighed to herself as she tossed away a bloody rag.

When her father returned to the clinic just before supper after a round of house calls, Josie related the details of Mr. Roberts's accident. Dr. Cartwright shook his head. "Poor Mark," he chuckled. "That boy will be the death of him."

"In his own bookshop, no less," Josie added.

"Thank you for stitching him up. It's good to have you home, even if it's only for a little while." His face fell, and Josie noticed for the first time the creases that had developed at the outer corners of his eyes.

"Everyone's always missing someone," she mused, her thoughts returning to her uncle and cousins.

Jacob Cartwright looked at her thoughtfully. "That's true, I suppose. But just think! In two years, we'll be ordering a new shingle for the clinic: Cartwright and Cartwright, MDs!"

Josie grinned. She couldn't imagine any other vocation for herself than medicine, and working alongside her father made it that much sweeter. Jacob had taught her much about medicine over the years, but she had always been merely his assistant. Now she was going to be a doctor in her own right, the same as him, and someday take over the clinic for her own.

"Come on, Papa." She threaded her arm through his. "We'd best get home. Mrs. Crenshaw will be furious if we're late for dinner again, and Mama will be furious if she has to deal with Mrs. Crenshaw being furious again."

Father and daughter stepped out onto the front stoop, Dr. Cartwright checked that the door was locked, and they set off down the city street together toward home.

Female Medical College of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Sunday, September 11, 1859

Dear Adam,

I am at medical school! I can hardly believe it. We have had only one week of classes, but I already can tell I am in for a challenging two years. But who loves a challenge more than a Cartwright?

Everyone here is very pleasant. The dormitory mothers keep a tight watch on us, but they are not overly strict. We are allowed a fair amount of independent movement around the city. My roommate's name is Michaela. She is from Boston, and her father is a doctor, too. Like me, she plans to join his practice after graduation. There are only fifteen of us in our class, so I expect we will all grow close.

As I have been in Philadelphia only two weeks, I have not yet had time to see all the sights you recommended, though next weekend Michaela and I intend to visit Independence Hall, and one of the dormitory mothers said she will lead a visit to Valley Forge early next month. I will be sure to write and give you all my impressions.

Philadelphia is a city wholly different from any I have been to before. In Washington, we are accustomed to the city growing up around us – or in the case of the Washington Monument, growing partway and then stopping abruptly – but Philadelphia is established. It is old like Boston, yet seems less preoccupied with decorum. Perhaps this is due to the lack of Transcendentalists. In any event, I expect I will be very happy here. I do not have to worry quite so much if I commit a behavioral faux pas, but thanks to Benjamin Franklin, I still have access to an excellent library.

Thank you for your letter of August 1. Though I am enjoying Philadelphia, it was nice to have something that felt like home waiting for me upon my arrival at school. I am so glad you and Little Joe had an uneventful journey home. I still cannot believe the two of you traveled four weeks each direction to celebrate my medical school acceptance with me, but I am forever grateful that you did. Nine years is too long to be separated, and I hope to visit all of you at the Ponderosa when I complete my medical degree. I am so eager to see the house you designed. The sketch you sent me was beautiful, and I am sure it is even more stunning in person. I expect the area near the Ponderosa will grow rapidly thanks to the Comstock Lode I heard about. They say it is the biggest silver strike ever discovered in the United States. Perhaps Nevada will break away from the Utah Territory and become its own state.

I keep the portrait the three of us had done while you were in Washington on my bureau here in my dormitory, and the other girls often ask about my "handsome brothers." I have attempted to explain to them the Cartwright family tree, but they have collectively decided that you especially should be my brother, and so they call you.

I apologize for this letter's brevity, but I must return to my studies. Please give my love to Uncle Ben, Hoss, and Little Joe, and relay my thanks again to Uncle Ben for giving you and Joe the time off from your work to visit me. It meant more than he will ever know.

I miss you.

All my love,

Josephine

Ponderosa Ranch
Western Utah Territory
Early November, 1859

Adam Cartwright pushed a stray lock of raven hair out of his eyes and reminded himself to go into town for a haircut soon. He had just reread his cousin's first letter from medical school for at least the twelfth time, and he felt guilty he had let two weeks pass without writing back. He typically responded to Josie's letters immediately, but he had felt melancholy since returning home from the East, and he did not want to squelch her excitement over medical school with his own dreariness.

He gently refolded the letter and placed it on his bureau next to a ferrotype of the portrait of himself, Josie, and Little Joe. He and Joe had traveled nearly a month to reach the eastern side of the country. It was five days by stagecoach from nearby Carson City to San Francisco, where the boys boarded a passenger ship. A fortnight at sea delivered them to Panama City, where they spent another day aboard a river boat on the Chargres River traveling to Cristobal. Once there, they had boarded another steamship that carried them through the Caribbean and up the east coast of North America to New York, where they caught a train for Hartford, Connecticut, where Josie was just completing her studies at the Hartford Female Seminary.

Adam was still astounded his father had given him so much time away from the ranch and even more astounded that Ben had also consented to Adam's taking Little Joe along with him. Adam often did not understand his youngest brother, who was twelve years his junior. Joe was hot-tempered while Adam was level-headed, impulsive while Adam was reflective. But after the death of Little Joe's mother, Adam had helped to raise the now seventeen-year-old and wanted to show him more of the world. The boy had never been east of Texas, and Adam had found his brother's utter amazement at just about everything on their journey rather endearing.

They had been an odd sight during their day and a half in Panama – two young men from the American West taking a riverboat through the Central American rainforest. They could have taken the new Panama Railway that had opened since Adam last crossed Central America, but he wanted Little Joe to see the rainforest, and Adam enjoyed every minute of watching Joe experience it. Joe, for his part, had spent most of the day-long journey along the Chargres River shouting. Every time he spotted a new species of bird or animal, he would holler out, "WOW! Adam! Did you see that one?" By the time they had reached Cristobal on the eastern coast of Panama, Joe had concocted an elaborate scheme to capture a parrot to take home to their brother Hoss (something to do with a fishing pole and his left boot – Adam hadn't caught all of the details), and Adam had intervened just in time to stop the boy from spending all of his money on a live spider monkey, after which a loud and rather lengthy argument had broken out over whether a monkey could be happy in Nevada.

Their voyage through the Caribbean and up the Atlantic Coast had been no less amazing to Little Joe, who attempted to dive off the ship near Florida to swim with a pod of dolphins. By the time they disembarked in New York City and boarded their train to Connecticut, Adam was exhausted from keeping his brother out of trouble, but Joe, for all his scheming, was still irritatingly energetic. But when they stepped off their train in Hartford and Adam saw his aunt, uncle, and Josie, grown into a young woman since last he had seen her, his fatigue fell away. The nine-year-old raven-haired little girl who had clung, sobbing, to him at their parting in Carson City nine years prior had grown into a beautiful raven-haired young woman of eighteen who now clung, sobbing, to him at their reunion in Connecticut. That reunion was the best day of his life to that point. Adam loved his father, his brothers, and their ranch, but reunited with his cousin, he felt complete.

They had spent a week in Hartford for farewell parties with Josie's classmates, all of whom were delighted to meet Josie's handsome cousins from Nevada, before traveling a day and a half by train to the eastern Cartwrights' home in Washington, DC. Little Joe was sorry to leave the school and its lovely students and to everyone's amusement expressed his desire to someday attend a ladies' seminary. But he soon found Washington exciting, too. He thought the partially completed Washington Monument was hilarious ("Why would they spend all that money on a silly stone pillar that doesn't do anything, Adam?"), expressed adequate interest while Adam explained the historical significance of the architecture of the White House and the Capitol, and even consented to sit still long enough for a portrait of the three Cartwright cousins before he and Adam had to return home.

Adam now picked up the ferrotype from his bureau and studied it for the hundredth time. Though the slightly mischievous expression on her face identified Josie as undeniably a Cartwright, Adam was still amazed by her uncanny resemblance to his own mother, whose hand-drawn portrait also sat on his bureau. The resemblance was no coincidence; Adam and Josie were double first cousins, leading Josie to sometimes refer to him as "Cousin-Cousin Adam" – a moniker Adam found annoying because he felt it made them sound inbred, yet he had never been able to bring himself to insist Josie stop using it. Josie's father, Dr. Jacob Cartwright, was his own father's younger brother, and Adam's mother, Elizabeth Stoddard, and Josie's mother, Hannah, were sisters. Or had been sisters. Though Josie's mother was alive and well, Adam's had died mere hours after giving birth to him. Grief-stricken, Benjamin Cartwright almost immediately took his infant son across the Great Plains, first to Nebraska, and eventually to the Nevada Territory, where he established the Ponderosa Ranch – now 1,000 square miles of prime land on the shores of Lake Tahoe.

Adam had thrived as a boy in the West. He learned to ride, shoot, and run a ranch. Though his formal schooling was inconsistent until the little family had settled permanently in the western Utah Territory – then still a part of Mexico – when he was nearly ten years old, Ben made sure his oldest son could read, write, and do his figures. Adam exhibited a quick mind early on, and by the time he was fourteen, the local schoolteacher told Ben that she had taught him everything she could and asked if he had considered sending Adam back east to attend a university. By that time, Adam had two younger brothers, Hoss and Joe, by two different stepmothers. Hoss's mother had died tragically when she was shot by a Lakota arrow in Nebraska when Hoss was only a few months old, but Joe's mother, a Creole woman originally from New Orleans, doted on all three boys equally. Ben disliked the idea of sending his fourteen-year-old son so far away from home, so he ordered in books by the dozen from New York. Then, the spring Adam turned seventeen and Little Joe was not quite five, Joe's mother, Marie, died after breaking her neck when she fell from her horse. Adam felt sick at the thought of leaving his father and brothers so soon after yet another family tragedy, but Ben insisted he keep his plans to travel to Harvard that summer. In retrospect, Adam was grateful for his father's insistence. Those years in college had turned out to be some of the best of his life.