The Doctor Takes a Wife (17 page)

“I
’v
e done some work in the mountains,” he confessed.

“Didn
’
t you like it?”

“Yes
...”

Jennie said nothing. She drove to the dooryard of a tarpaper shanty, went into give some money and a sack of flour to the white woman who carried one twin baby in her arms, while the other sat on the floor at her feet. “I delivered these two a day apart,” Jennie told Phil proudly.

He poured some of his candies on the table, and pumped himself a drink of water.

“About a third of my patients are white,” Jennie told him as they started on.

“The population
...”

“Can
’
t hardly call it that, Doctor—when they live miles apart, some of them. But, yes, it
’
s mostly colored, and poor white.”

She broke off to pull the car to the side of the road, where a man leaned against a tree, coughing and retching. “Brother!” breathed Phil. He went swiftly to the agonized fellow, and held him in his arms.

“Jared?” said Jennie firmly. “You been doin
’
that long?”

He took the tissues which she proffered, and wiped his eyes; red foam flecked his pale lips. He was about thirty.

Phil could both feel and hear the rasping breath. He looked meaningfully at Jennie.

“Yes, Doctor,” she confirmed his unspoken diagnosis. “Of course, that
’
s what it is. Now, Jared, you get in the car; I
’
ll take you home. You get warm into bed, and tomorrow well take you to the sanitarium.”

“Jennie, I can
’
t—”

“You can
’
t leave your mother and sister for two years! You stay here, and you
’
ll leave them forever, Jared. Doctor, tell him!”

“That
’
s right, Jared,” said Phil sternly. Kindly. “Tuberculosis is one thing you can
’
t just let go. Were you in service, boy?”

“Yes, Doctor. The South Pacific
.
..
”

“Why, of course!” cried Jennie. “They got a hospital just for Jared up at Excelsior Springs. I
’
ll phone them from home, Jared. And you
’
ll go up there in the morning.”

The frightened, sick man huddled in the back seat. Phil watched him with concern, and went into his cabin with him, helped him into bed and talked to him while Jennie talked to his sister. A bevy of little girls—sisters, too
—
were on the front porch. Jennie parceled them out to neighbors. Three cabins stood in a row, here. Like a magician she produced a clean dress for each child from the back of her car. A church in St. Louis sewed for her people, she told Phil proudly. Yes, it was a colored church
...

They drove along, Jennie turning up into a rutted side road to leave flour and canned stuff at a pole cabin where children ran barefoot on the cold ground, and a mongrel dog nursed five puppies across the doorway. “None of my people eat right,” mourned the nurse. “I found that family girtin
’
along on jist co
rn
.”

Phil had slid under the wheel. “You sit back,” he told Jennie, “and let me drive. How far is it to your house?”

“Three miles. We pass the school house, you can get your car.”

“All right. Now—”

At the school again, he changed to his car, and followed Jennie. Waiting on the porch of her neat frame house they found more trouble. The midwife attending a woman identified as “Pearly” wanted Jennie to come at once.

“That means trouble, Doctor.”

“Then, may I come too?”

“Would you?”

Pearly lived in a house built of box car siding, four miles “up the mountain.” They must leave their car five hundred yards from where a lamp bloomed pink in the doorway, and with Phil holding their own lantern high to guide them, he and Jennie must pick their way along a wet and slippery road
...

“You need boots.”

“Yes,
d
octor. I need a lot of things. But I
’
ve got boots
...”

The mother, a girl of seventeen, scared and sick, leaned against the door frame, awaiting them. A gaily flowered housecoat was drawn on loosely over a clean muslin slip.

The midwife explained that she hadn
’
t been able to do much for Pearly
—
“Or with her,” she added tartly.

Admiringly, Phil watched Jennie make her preparations. Asepsis was maintained; with about five dollars
’
worth of equipment—clean cloths, a small amount of cotton, scissors, cord ties—Lysol—surgical gown and mask
—
Jennie was prepared to make the delivery.

“You want to watch that lamp if you use ether,” Phil cautioned.

“I
’
m not licensed to give ether—or any drugs, Doctor.”

“I could help you there. I don
’
t have ether in my bag, however.”

“I
’
ll ask your help, thank you. She
’
s worn out already with her false labor.”

The woman prayed her way loudly through labor, and the baby was
born
at eleven o
’
clock; Jennie then asked Phil to administer a sedative. The baby was turned over to the practicing midwife, and Jennie and the doctor could start for home.

“You
’
ve had no dinner, Doctor
!
” she said contritely. “If you
’
ll come to my house—”

“You
’
ll stay up another hour and fix me something. No, sir! I
’
m prescribing for you, now. A bowl of hot soup and bed for you, young woman!”

Jennie chuckled. “Young!”

“You couldn
’
t stand the pace if you were not young! I want to see more of you, Jennie.”

“And I of you!” she said intently.

The next day, Thursday, he devo
t
ed to Page, to driving her through the rain to the places Dr. Caldwell had indicated on a map which he
’
d given them.

He watched her work—and was dismayed.

“You know, Page,” Phil told her at noon, “you make me think all the old jokes I heard in Medical school
h
ad a background of actual happening.”

She looked at him over the vacuum bottle
’
s cup. “What sort of jokes?”

“Oh—there was one I remember about a t.b. patient. Nurse comes into the ward, sets two flasks on a shelf, tells the man she wants sputum and urine samples in them. He looks up at the shelf and the bottles, and drawls he doesn
’
t believe he
’
s skilled enough to hit
‘
em both.”

His bright eyes watched Page.

She sighed with weariness. “You can
’
t even
talk
to these people.”

“You could. But when you come at them with your sample cases, your slides and needles in a cork—they are inclined to run into the hills, and certainly can be understood when they clam up.”

“You expected me to have these difficulties, didn
’
t you?” She was tired, and discouraged. “Are you pleased to discover you were right?”

Phil thought back over their morning—the stony-faced mountain people who had known the ravages of the “sickness”—their gaunt bodies, their sad-sad faces, their resentful eyes
—
And, yes, Phil had been meanly pleased to discover that Page had small skill, if any, in handling these folk. Her test tubes and slides, her scientific talk, had terrified them, or aroused such suspicion
...

She finished her lunch, and dispiritedly turned over the few notes she
’
d made. “I might as well
g
o back to St. Louis,” she admitted.

“Would you, so quickly?”

“Well, if it
’
s to go on this way—”

“It needn
’
t go on this way.”

“Won
’
t they all be alike?”

“Yes, but you could go at them differently.” His brown eyes watched her.

“I don
’
t know how,” she confessed defeat.

“Now! We
’
re getting somewhere! The basic point of all learning is admitted ignorance.”

She laughed ruefully.

“Yes,” he agreed, “I hear the keys jangling. But, Page, darling, you
are
about as ignorant as anyone I ever knew in the matter of personal relationships. You don
’
t know people, you don
’
t like people. And those facts stick out on you like porcupine quills.”

“A charming picture, Dr. Scoles!”

“I had a dog that caught a porcupine one time. Hurt like the devil when we pulled the quills out of his nose
—
but he had a hell of a time until we did. And afterwards he was fine again.”

“Moral?”

“Atta girl! Now, I
’
ve been nasty. On our next call, let me tackle the
‘
folks.
’
”

“They
’
re so poor, Phil, so—so ignorant, and yet so
—
well—you can
’
t say proud
...”

“Why can
’
t you? They
are
proud.”

Things went better during the afternoon, but not well enough to satisfy either Phil or Page. The “sickness” had somewhat localized on what Dr. Caldwell called a “ridge.” This was the hogback of one of the wooded, gravel mountains. The car could go only “nigh” the little homes. Page in jeans and leather jacket and bright green cap must scramble up the steep paths, with Phil carrying the heavy sample cases. The houses, and the people, looked all alike
—
a single room, usually, with a porch, sometimes a lean-to and a loft. There
’
d be a pole enclosure for a mule, and occasionally a rack-boned cow. All the cabin people were poor; living was hard. But here and there one found beauty in their hand-loomed coverlets, their pieced kivers. Often there was pride, and sometimes hope, expressed in a son or daughter to be sent to school
...
This was the country of ballad singer, walking preacher and the feud. The better homes had a few hens; all of them had hound dogs and puppies, all of them had children. The people were thin to gauntness, many illnesses were evident to the doctor—tuberculosis, possible trachoma, rickets
...

Yes, they
’
d say grudgingly, a child had had the “sickness”—Died. Jist seemed to git so wore out, then burned up with a fever till he didn
’
t know nuthin—and died. Patient eyes, still hands
...

Phil talked as persuasively as he could, he used his candy to make friends with the children. Page got some blood samples on her slides—a few pages of family history—

By four o
’
clock she was ready to suggest a return to the Inn. It was raining; below them mist filled the valley through which a river snaked its silver length.

Phil stood looking out across the trees. To his left a spring gushed its silver flood out of the brown rocks. Halfway down the slope was the slanting roof of still another cabin—hand-hewn slabs held together with plaster, a rock chimney, mud-chinked. He pointed to it. “We
’
ll look in there,” he agreed, “and then go on. The house is close enough that they may be related.”

“They
’
re all related,” said Page, catching herself before she would slide entirely down the slope. “Intermarriage, incestuous conceptions
...”

“You
’
ve a suspicious mind
!”

“I have a couple of such facts down in my book.” Her voice then mimicked the flat drawl of the mountain people. “I guess you could say the boy was a grandchild. My oldest boy got foolin
’
with his little sister one time—
’
twar a pity she ever had thet baby.”

The usual snarling dog came at them from the cabin yard, but no one appeared on the porch, and no smoke curled upward from the stone chimney. Page and Phil were about to turn away when they were stopped by a whimpering sound—an animal in pain—or a child, frightened, hurt maybe. Phil rapped loudly on the door, then opened it and peered into the darkness of the cabin.

Against the far wall, there was a tumbled pallet-bed, on it a child—a small woman?—tossed and cried. Like a woman in labor, but
—
He swiftly crossed the room. “My God!” he blurted. “She can
’
t be over eleven!”