Comes a Time for Burning (10 page)

“You won’t be late tonight, I hope?” Alvi said.

“I have some reading that I must do for tomorrow,” Thomas said. “The Schmidts are coming to the clinic to make arrangements for her surgery. If they decide to have it done here.”

“Anything else would be unfortunate.”

“Bertha Auerbach is in agreement with you.”

“Then the Schmidts should heed her advice, Dr. Thomas. And yours.” She squeezed his hand again. “I felt an immediate affection for Dr. Hardy. When he arrived, I was so taken with his manner. He could have been most impatient with Mrs. McLaughlin, you see. But he wasn’t. He could have made an enemy of her, but he didn’t. It is my belief that he understood her skills from the moment he met her. I hope he’ll stay with us.”

“As do I. I think we will make a good team, Alvi.”

She drew in a deep breath, careful not to disturb the infant who had dozed off still affixed to her breast. She enjoyed an enormous yawn.

“He makes me sleepy just looking at him.” She reached out and patted the bed gently. “Tonight.”

“I’ll be just across the hall,” Thomas replied. “An instant away.”

“Absolutely not,” Alvi responded. “Too far away. The loneliness would be unbearable.” She patted the bed again. “I shall move over a bit. I want you here. There’s ample room, Dr. Thomas. For the three of us.” She yawned again. “Bring your book up here. The light will not disturb us.”

“Do you know what Mrs. McLaughlin is going to say about all this?” Thomas laughed.

“I love her to death, Dr. Thomas. But in this, I don’t suppose I care one little bit what she says,” Alvi said sweetly. “We have much to discuss, anyway.
He
should not awaken in the morning without a name. We must see to that.”

“He’ll awaken many times before then, demanding attention,” Thomas observed. He stepped back a bit and almost planted a boot on the dog. “Let me take the beast outside for the night. Then I’ll be back.”

“He’s fine where he is, don’t you think?”

“You wish to smell damp dog all night?”

“I find him soothing,” Alvi replied. “And now that I’ve had sufficient time to consider it, before you come to bed, would you inform Gert that I don’t wish to see Mrs. McLaughlin until morning? I want the uninterrupted time with you and
him.”

Thomas walked back down the stairs, enjoying the jolt of each tread, each shift of weight. It was hard to imagine how many of those steps there might be before the photographer squeezed the bulb, capturing the Parks family that now lived only in Alvi’s imagination.
He
, the infant without a name, would be grown up, a young man in his twenties. Perhaps
he
would be in medical school. Perhaps
he
would be writing letters home about his adventures elsewhere on the globe.

Thomas reached the bottom of the stairway even as the decision coalesced in his mind. Never again would he bring up the issue of the infant’s lineage. Little
He
would be a Parks. John Thomas Parks.

Chapter Thirteen

Thomas heard the bare feet padding up the stairs, and hoped that Gert James would pass by their bedroom door. That was a wasted hope, however. Gert did not venture to the second floor, did not disturb their privacy, without compelling reason. Her own suite was on the first floor on the northwest side of the house, and more often than not, it was she who answered knocks to the front door at all hours of the day or night.

And sure enough, the knuckles on the bedroom door were light and tentative. Thomas sat up, mindful of Alvi and the infant, both of whom had been quiet for the past hour.

He listened, wondering if he had imagined the sound, but in seconds the rapping came again. A hand slid under the covers, strong fingers gripping his flank.

“Go see, and then hurry back,” Alvi whispered.

Loath to leave the bed, loath to give up the comforting smells of wife and newborn, Thomas swung his legs out from under the bedding. Below him in the dark, Prince huffed once, deep in the chest, enough to let them know that he was awake, and that he had recognized the footfalls on the stairway and then the knuckles on the door. Thomas had never known him to bark at a visitor. A rap on the door might prompt a ragged perk of the ears, but beyond that, the dog merely waited for developments. What would happen should someone burst in on them was, happily, untried.

Slipping into his robe, Thomas made his way to the door. Gert waited in the hallway, a small lantern in hand.

“What time is it?” Thomas asked, out of habit wanting to establish the
when
of things in his mind.

“Just after two,” Gert whispered. She didn’t apologize for disturbing him—in a house of physicians, there was nothing sacrosanct about any hour of the day. “Mother and child?”

“They’re fine,” he said abruptly, one hand still on the door knob. “What is it, Gert?”

“Mr. Deaton has brought word, Doctor. Dr. Hardy requests that you come to the clinic immediately.”

“Dr. Hardy requests?”

“Yes. Mr. Deaton did not explain beyond that.” She turned toward the stairway.

“I’ll be dressed in a moment,” Thomas said. “You need not concern yourself any further, Gert. Thank you.” But Gert James ignored his suggestion and headed down the stairs toward the kitchen.

Thomas moved stealthily, not creaking a single floor board. Still, Alvi’s soft whisper floated to him as he shrugged into his shirt and trousers.

“What is it?”

“I have no idea. Dr. Hardy is at the clinic and sends for me.”

“He can’t manage by himself?” She chuckled a little bubble of amusement. “I mean, after all, he has been a Port McKinney resident for some twelve hours now.”

“I have no idea what he wants. But if he sends for me, then it’s something that he or the nurses can’t contend with.” He bent over the bed, and Alvi’s arm circled his neck. Her kiss was enough to tempt him to send word that Dr. Lucius Hardy was on his own. The baby fussed softly, and Alvi’s reply was a brief wash of sweet breath on Thomas’ face. She shifted position.

“If John Thomas continues to eat this much,” she whispered, “he will be a giant.”

“Is there anything you need? What may I bring you?”

“Yourself, Dr. Thomas.” She kissed him again. “I want John Thomas to greet his first dawn with both of us under his command.”

He left the bedroom, but Prince showed no inclination to get up. Even the attraction of his various canine mistresses around Port McKinney couldn’t dislodge the dog from his assumed post.

Well aware of Thomas’ habits by this time, Gert James managed to delay his departure for a few seconds. His heavy medical bag in one hand left one hand free for the inch-thick piece of warm bread, smeared richly with butter and huckleberry jam. He set the bag down and accepted a cup of coffee, taking thirty seconds as the fragrant warmth plunged all the way to his toes.

“You’re a gem, Gert,” he said, talking around a mouthful of bread and jam. “And by the way, we’ve named the child John Thomas. John Thomas Parks.”

“You’re a fortunate man, Doctor.”

“Yes I am.” He set down the empty cup and hefted his medical bag. “Alvi informs me that John Thomas is the first of a brood of fifteen.” He grinned at the blush that touched Gert’s cheeks. “Can you imagine this house with fifteen urchins?”

“Mrs. Jorgenson has thirteen,” Gert allowed.

“I don’t know her. Was Ralph of the broken wrist one of hers?”

“Her eldest.”

“Ah. Well, with fifteen, we shall have to erect some tents out behind the house.” He leaned forward and bussed Gert on the cheek, a familiarity that she both cherished and protested. “Thank you. I’ll see what trouble Dr. Hardy has gotten himself into.”

Thomas had hoped for a canopy of stars when he stepped outside, but the drizzle was fine and cold. Whether it was thick fog or thin rain, he couldn’t tell. He pulled his hat down hard on his head, hunched his shoulders, and headed toward the clinic six blocks away, mindful of his footing on the slick boardwalk.

Every gas lamp on the clinic’s first floor was blazing, the light pouring into the mud of Gamble Street. An oil lantern burned out in the barn, and Thomas could see the outline of one of the ambulances and the slightly stooped, slow-paced figure of Howard Deaton.

“Dr. Hardy is in your office, Dr. Parks,” Adelaide Crowell said as he stepped through the clinic’s front door. The nurse had appeared from the dispensary, and headed for the stairway without another word.

The door of his office was open, and the gas lamps burned high both there and in the small laboratory. That room, added during the clinic’s renovation the past winter, was nothing more than a small addition with a bay window looking out on the empty field beside the clinic. Despite the dispensary’s modest size, six gas sconces flared, shadows like a kaleidoscope about the room.

Dr. Lucius Hardy was in the process of screwing the door closures shut on the gas-fired incubator, and he turned as Thomas entered.

“Good morning,” he said, but without his usual good humor. He glanced over at the small wall clock. “Rather an unpleasant interlude, and I find myself all thumbs in a strange dispensary. I spend so much time searching for things that I trip over myself.”

He beckoned. “Come with me, will you?” He left the tiny room. Thomas followed as Hardy strode through the waiting room and then took the stairway up to the women’s ward two steps at a time.

A single patient rested in the first bed on the right. In the back of the ward, the door to little Matilda Snyder’s room was closed, but Thomas could see a faint sliver of light as if the gas light had been turned to its lowest flicker.

“This is Miss Lucy Levine,” Hardy said. He stood by the woman’s bedside, the tips of his fingers in his vest pockets. “She is twenty-three years old, and until only recently, in excellent health.”

Nurse Crowell waited off to one side, her hands wrapped in her apron. Her gaze flitted from Miss Levine, who appeared ready to roll herself into a ball, to the two physicians.

“I know Miss Levine,” Thomas said, but he was ready to argue that the patient in the bed could not be the bouncy, ebullient young lady with a comical cackle that reminded Thomas of a turkey’s call. He had seen her from time to time at the Clarissa Hotel and at the clinic, including less than a month ago when he had extracted an abscessed molar for her. Although the young woman’s eyes watched him in a singularly unfocused way, there was little life there. Her cheek bones stood out from a sunken face, her eyes dry and hollow. Thomas touched the back of his hand to her face and felt the cool, dry skin. He had expected to feel the rages of an interior furnace of infection, and was startled at the chill.

“What was her temperature the last time you checked, Miss Crowell?”

“Ninety-four degrees, doctor. That was at two on the clock.”

“Ninety-four? You’re certain?”

“Indeed so.”

Miss Levine jerked, a feeble hiccough that recurred several times in rapid succession. An unintelligible murmur passed her lips. Thomas lifted away the light blanket, hesitated, then pulled it entirely off the narrow bed. The linen was foul over the rubber pad, but fresh elsewhere. Mrs. Crowell had been attentive, trying her best to keep up with the evacuations. She now used towels as one would diaper an infant.

The patient’s legs worked feebly, and Thomas knelt to listen to the shrunken chest with his stethoscope. Even Lucy’s breasts, normally so buxom and enticing for her logger clientele, were shriveled in on themselves, as if sucked to desiccation from within. Thomas closed his eyes and concentrated, hearing a laboring heart beat with a feeble second stroke. He tried to rest his hand on her abdomen, but the woman uttered a cry so piteous, so heart-rending, that Thomas flinched. Her gut was hard and he could see every striation between the muscles, the skin drum-tight and dusky.

What had been the body of a healthy, robust young woman now lay as a pathetic creature, all the life shrunken out of her.

Thomas was about to ask Nurse Crowell to remove the bedding when the patient evacuated again, so violently that it caught Thomas by surprise.

The nurse moved quickly with towels, and Thomas stood back, stunned. Perhaps two quarts of light straw colored fluid issued from the now frail body, looking as if someone had upended a cauldron of rice water.

“She looses fluid faster than it can replaced,” Hardy said. “We’re seeing dehydration to the point of desiccation. Look there,” and he touched the corner of a listless eye. “She has not a tear remaining.”

“She is able to hold water given by mouth?” Thomas could see that, although Lucy might be so ill that she couldn’t bear to speak, she was
hearing
the conversation, and the fear in her eyes stabbed his heart. “Anything at all?”

“Not a drop,” Mrs. Crowell said. A robust, determined woman with the heavy foot tread of a laborer, her face was grim. “The poor thing wastes before our eyes,” she whispered. Thomas saw the pan on the next table, the black tubing and bulb coiled in the solution. He nodded at it, and Mrs. Crowell said, “Twice now, at least four liters. So little good.”

“My God. Food poisoning, you think?” he asked, turning to Hardy. Bad fish could be lethal, he knew, but he had never seen a case as violent as this. “How did she come to us? To your attention, Lucius?”

“A friend of hers came to the clinic, and Mrs. Crowell roused Howard. He went and fetched the girl in the ambulance. And a good thing he did, too. That’s been nearly three hours ago, now.” He turned his back to the bed and lowered his voice. “We are losing ground, Thomas.”

“You should have called me earlier. She is alone in this? No others are ill?”

“Apparently not, and frankly, that surprises me.” Hardy turned and regarded the girl. “She managed to tell me that she was taken ill the night before.” He consulted his watch. “Some thirty hours.”

“Poisoned shell fish?” Thomas said, meaning it more as a thought than to be expressed aloud. Hardy inclined his head in skepticism, and Thomas answered for himself. “I see no respiratory spasms, and no paralysis. What else do we know that attacks so suddenly, Lucius? And with sub-grade temperature. She became ill Wednesday evening?”

“It would seem so. She complained of an odd malaise for several hours, but professed to no serious distress until the early morning hours yesterday. And in that short time…” He nodded at the girl’s pathetic figure, and reached down to gently spread the light blanket across her upper body. “Come downstairs for a moment. But first…Mrs. Crowell?” Hardy asked, and she nodded. “I want that stripped linen out of this room. If it cannot be properly washed, then it must be burned in the incinerator.” He turned to Thomas. “You have such?”

“Behind the clinic. Of course. But
burned
? You’re speaking of something that is highly contagious. Surely, with something like food poisoning…”

“We are beyond that,” Hardy said cryptically. “We have contagion, of the worst sort.”

Thomas stared at Hardy, and then at Lucy Levine. “Mrs. Crowell,” he said softly, “I know that Eleanor Stephens was not planning to work tonight, but now it is imperative that she do so.”

Hardy interrupted before Thomas could continue. “If the laundry room is not adequate in some way, you must tell us immediately. If the linen has not been soiled, it may be laundered with lye soap, otherwise burned. At all times, this woman must be on clean linen. I don’t care if it is changed ten times a night. Your use of towels is commendable. Continue to do so.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“And be mindful of your own hygiene, always. Repeated cleansing of the hands is an absolute necessity. Finish with alcohol.”

“You are thinking…” Thomas asked, since it seemed to him that Hardy clearly had a diagnosis in mind.

“Let me show you, with the culture,” Hardy said. He turned away from the bed, beckoning Thomas. “It’s best we be in accord with this.”

“I’ll have Howard fetch Miss Stephens,” Thomas said to Mrs. Crowell. “He’s in the barn still?”

“I believe so,” the nurse replied.

“Good.” He turned to Hardy. “When I arrived, I saw you at the incubator?”

“Indeed. I want to be sure. A culture gives us something to examine in patient detail. In the meantime, I have made a crude suspension for you, taken from the evacuations. I want you to view the slide immediately.”

“This very moment,” Thomas said, and he felt not foreboding but incredible excitement driving his pulse skyward. “Wait…Miss Crowell, stay with the patient. Make sure she remains dry, clean, and warm. If she will take no fluids, then we must try something else…perhaps by injection. Warm wraps over her abdomen may provide some relief. If the pain is great, a single injection of morphine now may be of some help. Begin with a quarter grain.”

He knelt by the head of the bed, looking Miss Levine directly in the face, eye to eye, a hand on her forehead. “We’re with you now, Lucy. Keep your courage. Do you understand me?” Perhaps she did, perhaps not, but Thomas was galvanized by the chill of her breath. “If the cramps in her legs become severe, an inhalation of chloroform may be of help,” he added. “We’ll be right back. I shall alert Mr. Deaton myself.”