“Missahib!”
Dorothy lifted the presser foot and stopped the flywheel that engaged the needle. It was an instantaneous reaction the moment she heard the pounding feet that accompanied the musical voice that called out to her. She was up from the stool and hurrying to the door before the treadle finished its last revolution.
It wasn’t a panicked cry, no frantic alarm. It was merely the excited voice of one of the paniwallas who often served as runners between the hospital and bungalows on the Satribari Compound.
It could mean anything. Come see the elephant! Or, a cobra was seen on the path and to keep a sharp lookout for it. Naturally, that particular bit of news would never go into a letter home. No use conjuring that kind of vision in the imagination of her loved ones.
But tonight the bearer brought news that Pura’s father had finally shown up. It was good news, news worthy of sending the paniwalla pounding up to her front door.
Ten days earlier, Pura’s father had brought his son to the hospital, dumped him in the arms of the first available nurse, and promptly fled. Nobody knew who he was, and the only information he had given was that the toddler writhing in the nurse’s arms was named Pura.
The child had severe burns across his head and neck, and they had acted swiftly to relieve his excruciating pain. The entire staff sprang into action, even as the father slinked away.
Pura was doing well now, a favorite patient in the ward for children and babies that was somehow nearly always full. The fact that most of the beds were almost always filled was a conundrum Dorothy could not explain. Everything about the culture here worked against the idea of villagers or hill people taking themselves or their children to some distant hospital when they were ill or thought to be dying.
Yet for every woman or child who refused treatment, another woman or child came. Children were brought in by mothers pleading for someone to help them. Or a woman with a sick child would be found on the side of the road on one of their dispensary sojourns into the hills. And all too often a lone child might be found in a ditch succumbing to dysentery, leprosy, or worse. After a frustrating search to gain permission, Dorothy would often manage to secure consent from a village headman to bring the child to the hospital.
December 1934
One day a very poor villager came to the Medical bungalow in Gauhati and asked that the Missionary Doctor go out to his village, some twenty miles distant, and see his wife who was too ill to be moved. The doctor and a nurse went. They found a young woman desperately in need of hospital care. She was lying on the floor of a tiny mud hut.
As usually happens when a white person arrives, a crowd soon gathered. The doctor tried to persuade the relatives to let the little patient be taken to the Hospital. “What! Take this woman away from her home to a strange place—perhaps to die!” This was not according to the custom. It was written on her forehead and if she were to die, she would die in the hospital, and if she were to get well, she would get well at home as well as in the hospital. Therefore, why take her to the hospital.
Such was the talk, and time was slipping away. Then a little woman slipped away from the crowd and coming toward the patient, knelt down beside her. She began to talk to her, She told her that she had been a patient in this Hospital, of what it had meant to her, of the love and care which she had received, of the Message she had heard, and ended up “You must go to the Hospital. It is a good place and there is no night there.”
To this little woman, as to hundreds of others, the Hospital had been a haven, a bit of heaven, a place where there was always someone ready to serve, always a light. May it always be so—no night there.
Some patients arrived at the hospital too soon, some came on time, some came too late. And some—particularly the children—might have died if Dorothy hadn’t learned to seize the opportunity and talk turkey to their parents. Doctoroni Alice Mark had explained that to her early on, and introduced her to the stern way one must speak to some of the locals in order to get them to comply with even the simplest medical procedure.
It was God’s perfect timing that little Pura’s father chose tonight to reappear. Pura’s wounds were at the ideal stage to tolerate the procedure Dorothy wanted to perform. She might have to have a very pointed word or two about what needed to be done to guarantee a good outcome for the little fellow, but that had never been a problem before.
January 1935
Little Pura never moves while we are dressing his head, and is frequently asleep when we finish. He can yell loud enough when there is no one paying any attention to him, however. He is getting along fine now, and I am going to try and persuade his father to give him a bit of his own skin so that things will heal in faster. If he won’t, I think one of the nurses will.
Dorothy hurried along the path that was nicely lit by the paniwalla’s lantern, though dark curtains descended just beyond its field of light. Jungle noises melded with the sound of leaves rustling in the evening’s gentle zephyr, and she found that this little late evening excursion was actually quite a pleasant diversion. It was good to stretch her bones after two hours hunched over the Singer.
As they stepped into the open foyer, Dorothy caught pieces of Lahaori’s explanation of the procedure they hoped to do to hasten healing for little Pura. The father’s head nodded and bobbed like a windmill as he listened.
“Ah yes! No, no!” the father cried, once he understood what the skin graft procedure entailed. He was shocked, horrified, elated all in one huge emotional response. In his experience, children rarely survived burns or the infections that nearly always lurked within the decimated tissue.
“Yes, we may do the skin graft?” Dorothy asked.
“Yes, yes! This you will do for my Pura!”
“Well, then,” Lahaori smiled. “Come with me and I shall prepare you.” She held her arm to the side, indicating he should go with her. “We can take the skin for the graft in the examination room.”
“Take the…no, no. No taking of skin.” Pura’s father planted his feet and held both hands, palm outward, in front of his chest. “No taking of the skin.”
“But that’s how it’s done, Sahib,” Dorothy said with what she hoped was a reassuring smile.
“Yes, yes!” he nodded. “It is done as you say in this way.”
Dorothy let out an impatient sigh. “Then you must go with the nurse—”
“No, no. It is done with the skin, in this way, just as you say. But no never Hindi skin.”
Dorothy felt her exasperation escalate and she tamped it down by broadening her smile. “But you say you love your son, Sahib.”
His eyes grew wide as he glared at her. “Yes, Memsahib. I love my son. As you say. But I am not Brahmana. I am not Kshatrya. I am not even Vaishya.” He worked his jaw as if it caused him pain just to speak the names of castes to which he did not belong. Castes that were far above the poor caste into which he was born.
“I am poorest of poor. Shudra. None are so near to the Dalit…the untouchable…as me. My son…my son…he is Shudra. He must not have unclean father.”
With immense sadness he began to bow and walk away, but Dorothy’s stern voice stopped his retreat.
“There is none so unclean as the man who can help his son but refuses. There is none so unclean as the man who cares more for his place in society that he abandons the needs of his own child.” She walked as she spoke and met him eye to eye. “But there is none more loved in the eyes of God than the man who gives no thought to his own need and would give his very life to save his son.”
A millennia of caste indoctrination whirled in the man’s eyes. It seemed apparent that this was not the first time he’d faced this kind of perplexity. Their unclean tools would cleave his skin, removing a part of him and leaving an unclean mark. He had heard her words and wrestled with the contradiction they made to everything he had known as Shudra, the class of unskilled laborers into which he had been born and would never have an opportunity to climb
out of.
Dorothy saw his dilemma and closed the small circle they made in the central hall of the modest hospital. She took the child from Lahaori, and held little Pura out to him. “It’s not your life Pura needs. It’s just a little patch of your skin.” She lifted the toddler until he was looking directly into his father’s eyes. “Show your son that among the Shudra there is no more honorable and loving man than his father.”
The child cooed and smiled. His small legs jiggled and gyrated as his little hands grabbed and fumbled for the primitively braided frog clasp that held his father’s tunic closed at the neck. The baby boy’s large brown eyes danced with joy.
But the man didn’t reach for his son.
They watched as he battled the demons he had inherited, and Dorothy’s arms began to ache with the effort of holding the hefty child aloft. If the expressions that crawled across the father’s face were any indication, he waged an epic battle. But at last his expression settled.
He looked at his son, then at Lahaori and Dorothy.
“It will be as you say,” he whispered. And without a further word, he took his son into his arms and walked past them into the examining room.
The man had done what they constantly begged the locals to do—he had brought his injured child to the hospital immediately. Now with her challenging words she had risked sending him away. Doctoroni’s example from years ago had opened the door to changing the man’s thinking, and Dorothy had walked through it without a backward glance. To help her patient.
Yes, she had spoken firmly. Yes, she had used more pointed words and more forceful expressions than her ladylike sensibilities preferred. Yes, she had risked shaming the man with her less than gentle scold.
But it had worked.
True, he would most likely remove the hospital bandaging later tonight and replace it with a dirty rag. He’d most likely tell his village he’d sustained his wound while fighting off a ferocious leopard. But always there was a chance that he would feel the weight of her words, that he would sense some god-given courage, and tell the truth.
Time would tell.
Dorothy wasn’t at all surprised how often she repeated the scenario over the years, casting doubt in the minds of those who had never sought to question how things worked in their small world. Sometimes talking turkey worked, sometimes it didn’t. But speaking her Christian heart had to be making a difference. Because the people came. More each year. And each year, more and more left the hospital healed and whole.
Yes, there were always some who could not come. There were some who would die if she couldn’t respond to the desperate emergency call to see a patient in a remote village. Some who would die when she couldn’t run fast enough, borrow a vehicle, or find a mule to ride or a boat or bullock cart that would get her quickly enough to the patient’s side.
And there were still some who found it impossible to summon the courage Pura’s father had found. There were still some who could not step beyond the confines of their religious protocols, even if it meant death for themselves or their children.
But there were others like the small woman who shared her story of healing and hope in order to encourage a hesitant patient to go to the hospital. There were others who chose life and the promises of a Christian god. There were others like little Pura’s father who heard Dorothy’s words, and the words of the nurses, and who accepted with trusting wonder the healing ministrations of the hospital staff.
Dorothy heard with reverence each new voice, and thanked her God for the way in which He was opening their lives.
And she thanked her God that here at Satribari Compound there was no child left untended, no word of comfort left unspoken. No catastrophic event left to seek its own end.
Because the little woman had been right.
Here, truly, there was no night.
CHAPTER NINE
CHEEKY DEVIL
Week by week Dorothy became more anxious to remove the impediments of mindset, of poverty, and especially the dilemma of distance. And day by day she saw ever more clearly that as in everything, God expected that if she saw a problem, she would tackle the problem.
She might not be able to vanquish the choking bonds of caste identity, of poverty, of religious superstition, but she had learned to dish out a rollicking verbal rap when it was needed, hadn’t she? She’d learned how to stand her ground. So when it came to solving the mere matter of transportation, of distance, well, that was a problem she could tackle with gusto. And Dorothy knew just how she would tackle this one.
She’d had enough of scavenging a ride. She’d had enough of begging and borrowing. It was time to take the board to task on the matter.
The hospital should have a motorcar of its own.
In a series of letters, Dorothy pressed her case. First tentatively, then with greater and greater urgency. But as strident as her thoughts on the matter were, Dorothy always modulated them into gentle yet firm, compelling arguments when she wrote to the Board. She couched every justification for an automobile in diplomatic phrases, laudatory words, and subtle reminders of the noble goals the missionary board had in mind when they conceived the very idea of a hospital for women and children in this remote locale.
In truth, she was quite astonished when the words had barely formed in her mind before the idea began to take shape in reality.
Somehow she’d chosen convincing words and the Board had quite readily agreed. In fact, they were surprised she had not pressed the matter earlier. Why of course she should have a motorcar. And she must certainly acquire one. As soon as she could come up with the funds.
Their response both elated and deflated her. Of course she could have a car. Of course she should have a car. They’d agreed!
And dropped the matter right back in her lap.
The hospital was barely scraping along with the few rupees they collected from patients here and there. There were no funds that could be diverted to the purchase of a vehicle.
But Dorothy said thank you, Lord. I think.
And before Dorothy even had a chance to stew over the Board’s conditional answer, things began to happen.
First, a wealthy patient paid over and above his wife’s hospital fee. Then an unexpected check came from a stateside patron. Together with a few dollars she was prepared to donate from her own personal funds she had enough to purchase the automobile.
With less cajoling than she had expected, the missionary board agreed to cover shipping and made the actual purchase—with her funds, of course—a Chevrolet, she had insisted, since there were no machinists who could service a Ford in all of Assam.
January 1935
The other day I received a letter from the Fed agency in Calcutta stating that they had been ordered by the Bombay agency to deliver to us a new Ford Touring car. The letter was addressed to Dr. Kenny Kin, Hospital, Gauhati.
Edna thought that it might be the gift of a man at home who was much interested in the hospital when Dr. Clossen was out here. I wrote telling them that I would take delivery as soon as I could travel to Calcutta.
They wrote back that inasmuch as I had not signed my name as Dr. Kenny Kin they would have to insist on a letter of introduction.
Charlie wrote one, but I have had a hunch that it may be the car that the Board has purchased although I have never had a word from them about any.
I am wiring them this morning to hold it until I know who is sending it. If it is a private gift, all well and good—one can’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
If the Board has purchased it with my money, there will be fireworks, because we don’t want a Ford when the Chevrolets are almost the same price and when the only service station is for Chevy cars.
I am leaving tomorrow night for Calcutta but hope to be back in about five or six days. Hope to make final arrangements and pick up the car while there and investigate several other things and also visit some of the hospitals. I have a list a yard long of errands for various p
eople.
Among other things I am looking forward to having a bath in a real tub (the first in six months) and perhaps a steak if such can be found. I may take in a movie also. (Frivolous person.)
Before dawn that morning Dorothy rose to write a letter home and then took a few moments to pack for her trip. She washed quickly in the only tub available to her out here, shivering as she stood in the four-foot-square cement depression, whose four-inch depth drained through a pipe that led to the area in back of the bungla. A large terracotta cauldron held water that she dipped into a shallow basin to rinse herself off when she was ready.
The cold water raised gooseflesh in the brisk pre-dawn as it splashed downward, taking the soapy residue with it, and she burrowed into the towel she’d left warming on the brazier. She was clean, invigorated. And quite chilled. She should have waited until sunup.
But the unwelcome blessing of a bath taken in this manner guaranteed one thing. She was most assuredly wide awake.
Her day would no doubt become hectic, but the tranquility of this morning soon had her traipsing quite sassily from closet to bed. Now she carefully folded the new afternoon tea dress she had finally finished making for the excursion to Calcutta. Just in time.
A motorcar! Oh, the freedom of it! To speed out to a village on a medical call, no waiting for a cart. To take a Sunday jaunt and leave mile after mile separating her from the hospital compound. It seemed too much to hope for. And yet her personal funds together with those of a generous donor have made it happen.
In a scant few precious hours she would take the night train to Calcutta, collect the car, see to its proper registration, fill the backseat with the shopping she would do for herself and for her staff, enjoy a steak and a real bath—maybe even two of each—and a couple of days later make her merry way home.
A guilty twinge crimped her smile when she considered for a moment the scandalous idea of driving the car back from Calcutta herself. Three hundred miles. Unaccompanied. Horrors!
Courage in a White Coat Page 6