by John Babb
“This boy and his pa got into an argument with Max Sturdivant. Something about a claim jump. Max shot both of them before Wilbur shot him in front of the hotel. That was the last thing Old Man Easter did, as he breathed his last not five seconds later.”
About that time, Doc bustled into the exam room and took a look at his patient. “What’s your name son?”
The boy was white as rice and sort of gulping for air. “Norman Easter. Am I gonna die?”
“Are you shot anyplace besides your knee?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then you’re probably gonna make it.” He turned to the men. “Put him up here on the table so I can see what we’ve got.”
“How old are you, son?”
“Fifteen.”
Doc looked at B. F. “He’s about the same age as you, isn’t he?”
There was another slamming of the front door and another shout. “Need the doc out here. Got a man shot!”
Doc shrugged and shook his head resignedly. “I guess that’s the other one.” He looked at the men. “Hold on to this boy and keep him still so I can check on the one out front.” Patient number two was in fact Max Sturdivant, who had been shot in the face. His shirt was covered with blood when Doc got to him, but it didn’t seem to prevent him from trying to break away from the men who escorted him. He wasn’t really speaking in words that could be understood, as the bullet seemed to have struck him in the upper lip, smashed through two teeth in the front of his mouth, two more on the left hand side, and exited through his left cheek.
Doc spoke to one of the escorts, who appeared to be a deputy. “I’ve got another patient on the table who needs immediate attention.” He stuck a small towel in Sturdivant’s mouth. “Hold this towel real still so the blood will clot. I’ll be back to work on this one in a few minutes.” He retreated quickly to the exam room, followed by what were indecipherable but undoubtedly strong epithets from Sturdivant.
Doc turned to B.F when he came back in. “Another one waiting on us. Put a pan of water on the stove to heat, and fetch me a cup of whisky and two opium pills.”
Doc used a pair of scissors to cut away his pantleg, poked and proded the knee, and faced young Norman. “Take these two pills and swallow down this whisky.”
“I ain’t a drinkin’ man, Doc.”
Doc gave him an exasperated look. “Son, it’s for the pain and the shock. Drink it down.” He looked more closely at the boy’s mascerated knee, then back to B. F. “Now the chloroform and a cloth, a couple of scalpels, a tourniquet, a suturing needle with catgut thread,” he paused to point toward a glass case. “That bottle of carbolic acid, and the capital saw there . . . better give me a new blade too. Now pour some of that hot water over the scalpels, the needle, and the saw blade.”
Norman was watching the proceedings with wide eyes. “What you gonna do, Doc?”
“Son, that bullet destroyed your knee, and it looks like it got the top of the two bones in your lower leg. I can patch you up, and you’ll likely be dead of the fever in less than a week. Or I can take your leg off at the knee, and you’ll probably live. You got a good chance of making it if I do. You appear to be a strong fellow. The wound is fresh, and it’s not full of dirt and filth.”
“Can’t you just take my knee bone?”
“Your knee cap is blown to bits, and all those pieces of shredded bone are spread all through your leg. The tops of your tibia and fibula are shot away as well. If you want to live, you really don’t have a choice.”
“I don’t know how I can get along without no leg, Doc. I cain’t work no mine with one leg, particularly since I ain’t got no pa now.” The boy struggled unsuccessfully to sit up.
Doc turned away, took the rubber stopper out of the chloroform bottle, sloshed some on the cloth, and nodded at B. F., who stepped beside the boy and grasped his hands together over his stomach. Doc Butterfield then placed the chloroform cloth over young Easter’s mouth and nose, and held it fast. B. F. held on while the patient twisted to get loose from his grip, and wondered what the boy was going to think when he woke up and realized they’d done the deed no matter what his objections had been.
Within fifteen seconds, the boy stopped struggling and B. F. was able to release him. Nonetheless, he tied a sheet tightly around his upper arms and chest to keep him from thrashing about when the surgery started. Doc left the cloth in place on the boy’s face and tied a tourniquet just above his knee to restrict the flow of blood. He waited another three minutes until the chloroform had the boy fully in its grip, then turned to B. F. “Hold that leg steady. I aim to save all of the thigh bone if I can. It’ll be a lot easier for him to wear a wooden prosthesis if I can leave the femur undamaged.”
Doc used the scalpel to slice through the flesh, muscle, and tendons, leaving enough skin to make a proper skin flap. He reached up and removed the chloroform cloth for about thirty seconds. “If you leave it on there for very long, they might not wake up.” He then used the capital saw to cut through a bit of cartilage in the knee joint itself, and employed tweezers to pick away the detritus caused by the bullet. Then he used the scalpel again to trim the tissue at the back of the joint. B. F. jumped when the separated leg fell unceremoniously to the floor.
Doc then quickly used the suturing needle to close off the arteries and veins that he could see, probed as much as he dared for any remaining bits of bone in the tissue, removed the tourniquet, and finding no bleeders, diluted the carbolic acid with five parts of water and poured it into the wound as an antiseptic.
B. F. watched the suturing. “Is that really cat guts?”
“I understand they make it out of sheep or goat intestine. When you have a wound like this, if you use silk, you end up with a problem, because the body can’t absorb it. So this stump would be festered up in a couple of days. But the catgut usually gets broken down by the body and eventually just disappears, so he shouldn’t have as much trouble with it. Wish I’d had it ten years ago!”
Again, he removed the chloroform cloth for half a minute, dusted the wound with morphine powder, sewed a skin flap over his work, and took the chloroform away for good. B. F. bound the stump with strips of cloth, and realized only fifteen minutes had passed since they began work on the one-legged Easter boy, as he would undoubtedly now be known.
He then went into the front room to assist with Sturdivant. Although there would be no drastic limb removal, it was obvious there would be significant pain involved while Doc was working on him, hence the pre-operative preparations were almost identical.
Doc used pliars to remove the remains of the four shattered teeth, then sewed up the gums and front lip, as well as the inside and outside of the cheek. The only real change in procedure was to use Tincture of Iodine as an antiseptic rather than carbolic acid, as the latter was much too toxic when used internally.
In less than an hour, both patients were stirring awake. Predictably, each of them awoke with a terrific headache and retching to beat the band. It was all B. F. could do to keep the two of them cleaned up. Sturdivant’s top lip and mouth was so swollen that his angry tirades still could not be interpreted specifically, although his generic meaning seemed to be pretty clear to everybody in the house.
Sturdivant was laid out on a pallet in the front room and handcuffed to a bench. The deputy sat in the room as well, trying his best to stay awake as the hours wore on. B. F. was up every hour during the night, checking on both patients, with instructions to call the doc if young Easter’s leg started bleeding again, or if Sturdivant had so much swelling that he was having trouble breathing.
About three o’clock, B. F. was awakened by a shout. He ran in the front room to find the deputy sprawled unconscious on the floor by Sturdivant’s pallet with a huge knot on his forehead. As he started for the exam room to see about Easter, he heard Sturdivant’s harsh voice in the room.
It was still affected by his recent injury, but B. F. could make out, “you and yore pappy.”
This w
as followed by “Mister, I don’t know nuthin’ about yore claim. We didn’t come within fifty feet of yore diggings.”
“Hell you say.”
“You kilt my pa and took my leg. What more you want?” The pistol shot sounded like a cannon had gone off in the small room.
“Don’t want no more damned Easters—that’s what I want!”
B. F. realized too late that his own pistol was stuck behind his barber chair. He headed in that direction about the time Sturdivant came striding out of the exam room. B. F. scrambled into the next room for cover as Sturdivant fired an errant round in his direction. By the time he had his hand on his own pistol, Sturdivant had run outside into the street. B. F. ran to the front door to give chase when Doc stepped in front of him and put his weight against the closed door.
“Don’t go after that man, B. F. He’s crazy enough to shoot you down. The law will catch him soon enough.”
“But. . . .”
“Let’s see to our patient.” It was quickly apparent to both of them that the bullet hole in the one-legged Easter boy’s chest could not be fixed. The boy looked at them both in the doorway with a pleading look on his face, tried to speak, and was gone.
Doc walked slowly to the boy’s bedside, closed his eyelids, and picked up the pair of crutches leaning against the wall that would not be needed now. “Why do these things happen?” The question seemed to hang there in the room, unanswered, for a long time.
My story. On December 10, 1856
How can it be that so much medical skill is spent on a patient, yet something happens that always seems to be unknown. People up and die from a simple cut, a boil on their neck, a case of measles, a drink of bad water, breathing bad vapors. One miner even died within about ten minutes of getting stung by a single bumblebee! Why is death so finicky? Why does it happen to some and not others? Why doesn’t Doc ever seem to know the answer? Why does someone innocent die for no good reason, and some low-life manage to survive? Shoot—not just survive, but prosper!
Doc has been talking to me about what I want to do in life, and it didn’t take long to figure out he wants me to go be a doctor. He told me some of his friends want to start a college in San Francisco to train doctors, but he figures right now it’s only talk, and it might be years before that ever happens. So then he asked what I would think about going back east to college. He keeps telling me his old school is the best in the country.
He says the Philadelphia Medical College offers a two year program. You have classes for an entire year, then they repeat them all the second year just to be sure you don’t miss anything. After that, you see patients for a whole month with one of the doctors at the school before you graduate. He says he wants to write some of his friends at the school.
Thirty
The Blue Baby
Columbia, California 1858
It was not something B. F. had ever really considered, particularly since he had attended school for a grand total of four months in his entire life. However, he had come to realize that being a barber was not what he intended to do from now on either. But he always struggled when one of Doc’s patients died—particularly when they were young and it was unexpected. Could he really deal with that if failing to save someone was all of a sudden his responsibility?
He told Doc only that he would think about it. But with the decision yet to be made, it bothered him enough that it intruded on his thoughts almost every single day. It didn’t help that Doc continued to bring up the subject on a regular basis.
He was sitting in his barber chair one afternoon, once again considering what he was going to tell Doc Butterfield, when he was interrupted by a commotion out on the street, and a woman hollering for the doctor. He hurried to the door, meeting a woman who had her arm around a very scared, and very pregnant young girl. The older woman looked accusingly at B. F. “You ain’t the doctor. I need the doctor!”
“He should be back any minute. What seems to be the problem?”
She looked at B. F. as though he was the village idiot. “My daughter’s having a baby! What’s it look like to you?”
“Let’s get her back here on the bed.” He noticed there was blood on her clothing, as well as a bloody fluid on the floor beneath her feet, and he hurried to put a rubber cover on the bed before the girl laid down.
Thankfully, Doc Butterfield returned as he was getting the girl and her mother settled in. “Doc, ye got to do something. We thought we was gonna do this at home, but they’s somethin’ wrong.” The room was punctured by the girl’s screaming as she endured a contraction. “I made her drink some ground ivy tea about three months ago when she first started showin’. I heard that would bring on her flow. When that didn’t work, I steeped some wild nettle and mixed it with the ground ivy, but it still didn’t have no effect. How come that didn’t work?”
“It works only if you give it in the first two or three months after a girl gets pregnant. I’ve never seen it work when a girl is so far along. Is this her first baby?”
The woman gave Doc a mean look. “What the hell ye think! Of course, it’s her first! She ain’t but fourteen. Ain’t got no husband. Ain’t got no business havin’ no baby.”
“Who is the father?”
“She won’t tell me. I’d cut his damned heart out if I knew.”
B. F. considered this response. Perhaps that outcome is the reason the girl neglected to share that bit of information!
Doc washed his hands and quickly examined the girl. The baby seemed to be sideways. He had no desire to have the mother in the room while he tried to save the girl’s life. He turned to B. F. “Take this lady out to the front room so she can be comfortable, and you come back to help.”
This was new territory for B. F. He had been in Columbia four years, and this was the first time he had dealt with childbirth. There were few women in town, save the ladies of the evening in the three saloons. But except for the red-headed whore—Queenie had been her name—it seemed that they never had babies, at least as far as he knew. The way Doc described the use of wild nettle and ground ivy tea, he wondered if that had anything to do with it. He remembered both of those items growing in the herb garden, and for just a second, he wondered just exactly what Doc was using them for.
When he got back in the room, Doc started throwing orders his way. “Put a stack of towels here on the foot of the bed. . . . Heat a pan of water. . . . Look in the back of that cabinet and see if you can find some large forceps—big ones. . . . Sponge off the girl’s face and neck. . . . Sponge me off too. . . . Thread some silk in a suturing needle. . . . We won’t need to use that new catgut—these stitches will just be on the cord. . . . Get me another towel—wet. . . . Stand beside this girl and help hold her knees back over her chest. . . .”
The girl’s screaming drowned out any further understandable conversation between the two of them for a half minute.
Doc was examining her again and talking under his breath. “Got to get this baby turned around and get it out.” He had his hand inside her, struggling. When he withdrew his hand, he was able to pull the baby’s hand, then arm, and then shoulder out as well. Relieving that congestion, he then began to work from the other side, trying to get the head to crown. The room was unusually tight with August heat, and Doc was sweating like B. F. had never seen before. He was turning this way and that, trying to maneuver in any way possible to relieve the girl. Finally, the top of the head was visible, and in another agonizing ten minutes the baby was out.
B. F. was positioned so that he could see the baby when Doc Butterfield retrieved it, and he was instantly aware that the umbilical cord had twice encircled the baby’s neck. Although this was his first exposure to a delivery, he knew that couldn’t be right. Doc was working to untangle the cord, but the baby was a bluish-purple color and had made no effort to gasp or cry.
Doc quickly tied off the umbilical cord and cut it, then turned his back on B. F. and the girl. B. F. slowly let the girl’s knees down, patted her shoulder,
and stepped to the side to see what Doc was doing.
What he saw was difficult to absorb. If anything, the baby was more purplish than before. Doc was holding the little boy in his left arm and had cupped his right hand over the child’s mouth and was pinching its nostrils closed.
B. F. started to react and grab Doc’s hand to pull it away but froze when Doc turned his face toward him, tears running down his face. B. F. turned away, not wanting to watch.
In a couple of minutes, Doc Butterfield laid the infant on the table and turned to the young girl. He held her hand and spoke very quietly. “Your baby was born dead. The umbilical cord was tangled around his neck, and he could not get any air. There was nothing I could do.”
The girl was so exhausted she could barely muster anything more than a weak cry. Her eyes were pleading, and she spoke in a whisper. “That baby was my Pa’s. I know’d no good could come of such an evil deed. Pa said it was really my fault—because I looked too much like Ma when she was a girl.” B. F. thought about the mean-spirited woman in the front room, and had a hard time even considering that she might have once looked anything like the heart-broken, sweet girl in front of them.
She looked at the closed door. Her voice was so weak B. F. had to lean over her. “Please don’t tell Ma. I’m a’feared she’d be blaming me for it.”
B. F. patted her shoulder. “Don’t you worry about that.”
“I knew something bad would happen. I knew I didn’t deserve no sweet little baby.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Ye don’t understand.” She cried for a minute or so, then spoke again. “After the first few times, I started thinking my pa loved me better.” She stopped, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath before she could continue.
“Where is your pa?”
“When he found out I was having a baby, he went off to some place in Canada, chasin’ another gold strike. I expect he’ll be back soon enough.”
Doc came over to her. “What’s your name, child?”