Comes a Time for Burning Read online

  “Surely you exaggerate a bit,” Hardy said. “But an interesting woman, your Miss Auerbach. You have other nursing staff, I understand?”

  “Three others. You just missed Helen Whitman, who has gone for the day. She is a competent woman with no particular formal training, but vast experience. The other two provide coverage for us during the nighttime hours. Mrs. Crowell and Miss Stephens, both competent.” He hesitated. “Well, Mrs. Crowell is competent. She has recently lost her husband and finds that working at night is somehow soothing. Miss Stephens is very young, but tried a few months at St. Mary’s across the sound before returning home. She has much to learn, and I have reservations, I admit. She is somehow easily embarrassed by the human body and its functions.”

  “I have to say that I am impressed with Miss Auerbach,” Hardy mused.

  “A gem,” Thomas said fervently. “She and Alvi are the only two who will tell me what I need to hear…exactly what I need to hear, whether I like it or not.”

  “How fortunate you are—I think.” Hardy chuckled again. “You might disagree with Cushing’s comments, then. That in all things, the physician is captain of his ship.”

  “If he meant that no one should be allowed to speak up and remind the physician when he’s being a stubborn mule-headed pedant who is clearly wrong and headed toward disaster, then yes. I couldn’t disagree with him more. What little experience I have has taught me that.”

  Hardy’s eyes twinkled. “You’ve found yourself in that situation, have you?”

  “Too many times.”

  “You’re a remarkable man to admit it, sir.”

  “My convalescence had a lot to do with it. During the six months when I was a patient…” He hunched his shoulders. “Primarily I learned how very little the physician actually knows, without fear of debate. The moment I think I’m in control of all factors in a case, nature proves to me otherwise.”

  “Ah. I suppose so. You must tell me more about your own mishap when you have a moment.”

  Thomas stopped and gestured around the men’s ward they had just entered. “Originally, this was the only ward. Eight beds, no provisions for women or children. No provision for extended care. No way to separate the chronically ill, or the infectiously ill, from otherwise healthy surgical patients. Now this floor is reserved for male patients, with three separate rooms toward the rear for the most challenging cases, or those that require the additional privacy. That’s where we’ve placed Mr. Malone. so he would have complete quiet.” He patted the foot rail of the first bed.

  “The young man with the broken finger was here this morning. He recovered from the oxide quickly, and we saw no reason to keep him further. He left with absolute instructions about how he should take care of himself. I don’t believe that he will,” and the physician grinned ruefully. “But later today, I plan to ride out to the tract and check on him myself. We also have the possibility of food poisoning at the camp, and that can be fearsome. I would be remiss if I didn’t investigate the situation.”

  Thomas gestured toward the rear of the ward, and Dr. Hardy followed him. At one point halfway down the short ward, he once again thrust his hands in his trouser pockets as if not quite trusting them to venture out unsupervised.

  “I heard mention of a women’s ward? You have them separate?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Up?” Hardy looked puzzled.

  “We have an Otis,” Thomas said proudly. “A pregnant woman need navigate not a single step. An absolutely remarkable machine. Hydraulic, you know.”

  “My word. An elevator. How cosmopolitan.”

  Thomas opened the doorway to one of the tiny private rooms. Sonny Malone lay insensible. His mouth hung slack, eye lids parted, breath coming in hesitant, irregular little gasps.

  “So it is a general concussion, then,” Hardy mused. “Very much as if a cannon shell had exploded near his skull.”

  “Absent the fragmentation, yes. Both eardrums are ruptured, massive internal hemorrhage showing itself in the vitreous, little or no reflex at the extremities.”

  “Nothing for it then, is there.”

  “I’m afraid not. I’ve instructed continued cold wraps to the shaved skull, in a vain hope that the bleeding might yet stop and be reabsorbed.”

  “Might I listen?” Hardy held out his hand and Thomas drew the coiled stethoscope from his jacket pocket. For a long time, the physician roamed the instrument across Sonny Malone’s pale chest. “I don’t think that the blast injuries are limited to the brain.”

  “Almost certainly not.”

  “It sounds as if his heart is trying to pump lard.”

  “It amazes me that within an hour of the event he was heard to utter a coherent sentence. And then nothing but groans and cries.” Even as Thomas spoke, Hardy bent over and, placing a hand on each side of Malone’s rib cage, applied compressive pressure in a number of places.

  The physician straightened up and hunched his shoulders. “Will he swallow? A trickle of brandy, perhaps?”

  “No. And the risk of gagging is too great. A single cough might kill him.”

  “As surely as he is already on the way,” Hardy said softly. “We can do nothing for him that you haven’t already done, Thomas.”

  He waited outside the room while Thomas closed the door.

  “So…you have your man with a game leg, another poor man blasted to pieces…and you began your day with surgery of the digits. Now there is a delightful woman suffering a dangerous carcinoma. And it’s not yet dinner time. Somehow we have avoided the constant flow of hypochondriacs who vie for a physician’s time. What else has filled your day, then?” He smiled and clapped Thomas lightly on the shoulder again.

  “We have our full share of the continually ill, as Alvi’s father used to refer to them,” Thomas said. “Bertha is most effective as captain of the guard. In real need, she schedules them for the first three days of the week. She has her techniques.”

  “And your lovely wife is most skillful herself, I have gathered. As she progresses along, you must miss her steadying hand. She is in her seventh month, you say?”

  “I believe so.”

  Hardy stopped short. “You believe so? Dr. Parks, you surprise me.” He crossed his arms over his barrel chest and rested his chin in one with his index along the side of his nose. He frowned at Thomas. “You’ve spoken to the local mid-wife?”

  “Mrs. McLaughlin. Yes, of course.”

  “I mean, surely, sometime in the past nine months of your residency here, a child has been born? Didn’t you mention two?”

  “And many more that I never saw.”

  “But you attended two?”

  A flush crept up Thomas’ neck. “To be honest, I would have to say that I assisted twice.”

  “Assisted the mid-wife? I thought that you were just being modest when you said that earlier.”

  “Yes. I assisted.”

  Hardy regarded him with a mixture of skepticism and amusement. “How very interesting. May I ask a somewhat presumptuous question? May I presume on our past friendship at the University?”

  “Certainly.”

  “You said that your wife is in her seventh month.”

  “Yes.”

  “How has that been ascertained?”

  “She has been in continual conversation with Nurse Auerbach, and with Mrs. McLaughlin. That is what she wished.”

  “You’ve examined her yourself, I assume?”

  “Of course. But she becomes impatient with me. It’s really quite remarkable, Lucius. To feel the outline of the infant…”

  Hardy nodded slowly. “How very interesting. Let us pray that all is progressing perfectly with her pregnancy, then.”

  “It is. In matters of this sort, Alvina has far more experience than I. As does Nurse Auerbach.”

  Hardy laughed. “Thomas, Thomas.” He shook his head, and Thomas wasn’t quite sure what was amusing the physician, who added, “The woman with the carcinoma of the breast…if she chooses to
remain in Port McKinney for the surgery?”

  “I shall operate Saturday morning at nine o’clock. You’ll join me and administer the ether?”

  “Of course. Of course. And you have a good microscope? Mine is being shipped and won’t arrive for some weeks.”

  “I do. A new Heinnenberg with immersion.”

  “Good. Then we can rapidly ascertain whether the beast be benign or malignant, and have the deed be done before she awakes.” He cleared his throat. “We need take no one’s word for it. You know, despite the gloom of the gambler’s choice we were discussing earlier, I’ve read of success rates as high as ninety percent for a mastectomy with axial complications.”

  “I will be satisfied with one hundred percent in this particular case,” Thomas replied.

  “Ah. We love all our patients, don’t we. She is near and dear, then?”

  “I would suppose that in a village the size of Port McKinney,” Thomas said, “that they all are. But you force me to admit that this is my first such case.”

  “We must all turn a new page,” Hardy said. “You know, the time will come soon enough when you’ll bore all your friends and acquaintances with the sheer volume of your case experience. You’ll shake your finger in the air and say things like, ‘Why, in thirty years, I’ve seen too many cases to count.’” He looked at the long flight of stairs up which Thomas had already started. “The Otis?”

  “It takes far too long,” Thomas replied. “Have you performed a mastectomy, Lucius?”

  “On a patient or a cadaver? I have one hundred percent on specimens in the laboratory.” He grinned. “Otherwise, I’ve assisted in perhaps half a dozen. I told you, Thomas. I am not a surgeon.” He held out his hands as he plodded up the stairs after his tour guide. “With hams like these…now, the women somehow find them reassuring. It’s all in the touch, you see.”

  “But the cases in which you assisted?” Thomas persisted.

  “I have yet to experience the pleasure of seeing one survive.”

  Thomas nearly missed a step and stopped, turning to look down at Hardy.

  “None?”

  “In three cases the carcinoma returned more vicious than before, completely inoperable. We could have saved the patients exquisite agony by not operating in the first place, leaving them to the morphine in their final months. In two others, sepsis was the villain. In another, suicide.” He slapped the banister. “But we don’t need to discuss those dismal statistics with your patient.”

  “No, indeed not,” Thomas said fervently. Nurse Helen Whitman, a middle-aged, portly woman with frighteningly glacial eyes but a warm heart, met the two physicians at the top of the stairs. “Ah, Mrs. Whitman. I thought you had gone home.”

  “Both Nurse Auerbach and I like to be here when the other staff arrives for the night.” She nodded deferentially at Lucius Hardy. At their introduction, the physician gave her the same stiff, almost dismissive nod with which he’d favored Bertha Auerbach.

  “Miss Whitman,” Thomas said, “I’ve left instructions with Berti regarding Howard Deaton.”

  “She explained the case to me, Doctor.”

  “Good. If you would help us make sure that Mr. Deaton behaves himself? I want that therapy done exactly as I’ve described regardless of how busy we might otherwise become.”

  “Certainly, Doctor.”

  “Not a single missed session. On no account.”

  “We’ll do our best, Doctor. And a pleasure to meet you, sir,” she added to Hardy.

  Thomas saw a man and woman step briefly into the doorway of one of the private children’s rooms at the end of the empty ward. “Missy’s parents?”

  “They’ve been with her all day,” Helen replied. “Such good people.”

  His gaze swept the otherwise empty ward. “I understood that my wife is here as well? She said she would stay until I could walk her home.”

  “I’m afraid that she returned to One-oh-one,” Mrs. Whitman said. “She tires easily nowadays.” She nodded again at both of them, and bustled down the stairs.

  “Matilda Snyder has had a bilateral tonsillotomy,” Thomas explained. “She seems to be responding well. Somewhat at odds with the cocaine swab, but otherwise good. She’ll go home tomorrow.”

  “Home tomorrow. That’s what a patient wants to hear. Your first?”

  “No, certainly not.” Thomas grinned. “My second. John Roberts supervised the first case last spring at University.”

  “Well, then, there you go. A veteran.”

  Thomas stepped into the single room where he introduced Lucius Hardy to the child’s parents, both of them looking more haggard than the little girl. Flora Snyder, tall and thin, reminded Thomas of an undernourished version of Gert James, his housekeeper—without any of the healthy bloom that Gert enjoyed. Marcus Snyder hovered silently, overly deferential as he shook Hardy’s hand. His clothing carried a heavy fragrance, an odd mixture of fish and sawdust.

  “May I?” Hardy indicated the patient.

  “Certainly.”

  Hardy sat gently on the edge of the child’s bed. Sharing the most unattractive traits of both parents, Matilda was thin to the point of emaciation, hair in straw-colored strands, hollow-eyed and buck-toothed. Hardy reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes with a touch so gentle the child never blinked.

  “Will you face the light and open your mouth for me, my dear?” he whispered, as if sharing a secret for the child’s ears only. Thomas turned up the gas lamp, and Hardy pivoted the child’s head this way and that, peering into the tiny throat. “Beautiful,” he announced, and glanced at the enameled pan on the small table near the bed. “You have plenty of ice, my dear?”

  “Yes,” the child whispered. “Miss Whitman said she was going to find me some ice cream.”

  “Then she shall.” Hardy stroked her face once more and rose. He extended his hand to the child’s parents. “A pleasure to meet you,” he said. “What a delightful child. You’re with the timber industry?”

  Snyder looked flustered, and glanced at Thomas as if he needed permission to speak. “No, I’m a fisherman,” he said. “Do some sharpening on the side.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “My wife here works at the Clarissa,” Snyder added. “She’s been with them since the hotel opened, goin’ on twelve years now.”

  “Ah, the Clarissa,” Hardy said. “Well, my good people, you have a delightful child.”

  Feeling as if he’d just completed rounds with a senior physician, Thomas followed Lucius Hardy from the room.

  “Puzzling that parents can be so blind,” Hardy muttered. “Why in God’s name don’t they feed the child?”

  “I have Miss Whitman putting together a prescribed diet for her,” Thomas said. “I think that in this case, it’s a combination of ignorance, poverty, and the mother’s own constitution. As you saw, she is a wraith herself. But we’ll see what we can do.”

  “There’s a limit, I suppose.”

  “So I’m continually reminded.”

  “So…” Hardy took a deep breath as if to remove an abundance of stale air from his lungs. “You put a great emphasis on privacy,” Hardy said. “That’s both interesting and commendable.”

  “Privacy is an inexpensive enough commodity,” Thomas replied. “Something else learned from the past few months.” He pulled out his watch. “I’m distressed that Alvina chose to walk back to One-oh-one by herself, but that’s a good example. What’s the expression? She marches to her own drummer, Lucius.”

  “And you must love her all the more because of that.”

  “To be sure. And you will join Alvi and me for dinner? We don’t want you ending up looking like the Snyder child, a mere shadow of your former self. Here you’ve just arrived, and we haven’t even given you a moment to settle into your room up at the house. Did Alvi…?”

  Hardy held up a hand to interrupt. “We are ahead of you,” he laughed. “I am to lodge in the third floor of this marvelous clinic. I’m
told it’s a truly magnificent suite, with a marvelous view. Alvina has given me the key.” He look upward and then back at Thomas. “I took the liberty earlier of carrying what little luggage I have to the room. I must say,” and he took a deep breath, “one sight of that magnificent feather bed proved a powerful attraction.”

  “Anything else that you might need…”

  “Ah, not a thing. Not a thing. The suggestion that I join you for dinner is wonderful. I passed by the hotel’s kitchen door on the way up the hill from the coach this morning, and it smelled like they were roasting kelp. At what time shall I reappear this evening?”

  “At eight, then? Unless, of course…I’m planning a ride out to one of the leases this very afternoon. If you’d care to accompany me?”

  “That’s a temptation, but I confess that, after twelve days of constant travel, what appeals to me right now is motionless unconsciousness. Let me join you for dinner tonight, and we’ll map out a strategy for the days to come.”

  “Of course. How stupid of me. Eight it is, then.”

  He watched Hardy take the stairs two at a time toward the third floor.

  When Thomas turned away, he found Bertha Auerbach regarding him.

  “So, what do you think?” Despite their earlier conversation, it didn’t surprise him that Berti responded only with the faintest of unreadable smiles.

  Chapter Nine

  Sunshine was warm on Thomas’ shoulders, so warm that he could smell the sweat from the gelding as Fats plodded through the acres of slash, the hard outlines of stumpage softened by steam rising from the baked duff.

  In another twenty minutes, he reached a valley rank with grasses, sedges, berry bushes and tinny saplings in soft groves. The meadow had been logged long ago, and since then the stumps had been continually hacked and trimmed for firewood until most of them now were stumps the height of a footstool.

  The timber camp stretched half the length of the valley, favoring the upper end where the stream burbled out of the timber. In total, Thomas counted thirty-five structures—tents, tent-shacks, rude little cabins of slabwood.

  Although he knew that timber camps came and went as cutting crews moved, this one appeared impossibly ramshackle, as if the simplest creature comforts meant nothing to the loggers. And perhaps they didn’t. Home at dark from a day of danger and toil, the loggers uncorked the bottle, gambled, and then fell into bed. They rose at dawn, off for another day in the timber.