Patients were scattered.

Travel was slow.

Weather could make the roads almost unusable.

There was no modern emergency transport.

A medical call could require hours on horseback or in a buggy.

At twenty-four, Susan was suddenly the person people expected to come.

The reversal from the childhood story is almost perfect.

Once, she had waited while a doctor failed to appear.

Now she became the doctor traveling into the night because someone was waiting.

Her workday often began before dawn.