Dorothy down-shifted with less grace than she intended and pulled into the long lane that led to the entrance of the Gauhati Hospital for Women and Children.
She smiled at the sign that greeted her. She smiled at the villagers who waved to her. She slowed to five miles per hour and with one hand retrieved her garden hat from the passenger seat. It most definitely was not the right hat for motoring, the way it flapped madly in the wind and threatened to take sail if her foot became the tiniest bit heavy on the accelerator. So it had ridden from the station in the seat of honor.
But now it just felt right to put it on and arrive in full festive array.
She beeped the horn cheerfully as she slowed to a stop and laughed outright at the staff who poured out onto the verandah to see what in the world all the fuss was about.
“Doctor Kinney!” Lahaori cried. “It is a thing of beauty!” She walked all the way around the car fingering it with graceful awe, then grabbed Dorothy in a crushing hug. “It is yours?”
Dorothy laughed. “It is ours!”
The staff and ambulatory patients crowded around now, caressing the black leather upholstery, rolling the windows up and down, tooting the horn, and remarking in awe over every small feature. The air seemed charged, the very day electric, as Dorothy stood back to watch.
This was indeed a great moment. A very, very great day. She would remember this moment in its smallest detail.
“Doctor Kinney, there is a—”
“Oh, Lahaori, give us a moment, just a moment to watch. Isn’t it marvelous?” She somehow couldn’t let Lahaori end the moment for her. Not just yet.
“But Doc—”
“Lahaori, really, is it something so important? I just brought home our new motorcar. We should celebrate!”
Lahaori lifted her chin and raised a brow in the stern look Dorothy recognized. It was the look that told her with all due respect she had better be quiet and listen. It was rare enough, to be sure, but when she saw that look on Lahaori’s face, she paid immediate attention.
In a flash the car was forgotten.
“What is it, Lahaori?”
The young woman’s face softened. “The headmaster from Jorhat has come.”
“Oh my, all the way from Jorhat? Is it serious?”
Now Lahaori glanced away, an odd look in her eye. “We think perhaps it is. You must see him straight away.”
The last time she’d seen the Jorhat headmaster was at his wife’s funeral. It had been a heartbreaking scene, so devoted had he been to the woman who had accepted with hesitant heart her husband’s missionary appointment to Jorhat. Her illness had claimed her here, in Dorothy’s hospital, half a world away from her own home. It must be very serious indeed for the fellow to have returned to the scene of such misery.
Dorothy took a step toward the door and was jarred back into the moment by the light feminine swish of her tea dress. She stopped and turned. “Oh my! Lahaori, dear, get my bag. I’ll change in my office. Where is he waiting?”
Lahaori stifled the smallest smile that threatened to overtake the corner of her mouth.
“No, Doctor Kinney. No time to change your clothes.”
“Don’t be silly, I—”
“No time, Doctor Kinney. He is waiting.”
Lahaori stood stock still, her hands clasped at her waist, her eyes fixed upon something beyond Dorothy’s left shoulder. Dorothy straightened her skirt and smoothed the bodice of her tea dress. It was entirely discreet, but not at all the appropriate décolletage for examining patients. And in particular not appropriate for a medical consultation with the handsome widower from Jorhat.
Her memory flashed images of the bookish gentleman she’d met the year before at his ailing wife’s bedside. He was kind, compassionate, clever, and completely clueless as to his masculine appeal.
She cleared her throat and lifted her chin, understanding in that instant why there was the trace of a smile on Lahaori’s face.
“He’s behind me, isn’t he.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE EARTH MOVED
One never really expects the truly earth-shaking events that insinuate themselves into an otherwise ordinary life. They always seem to take a person unawares. While Dorothy’s life was far from ordinary compared to the lives of her stateside friends and family, it had nevertheless become quite comfortably ordinary to her over the years.
Women came to the hospital. She treated them and sent them on their way. She dealt with men only as they appeared as husbands and fathers of women and children in her care. She’d treated one male patient in the years she’d been there, and only agreed to that because of his status and the fact that a government official practically begged her to do so.
But to do that, incredibly strict arrangements had to be made. A private room had been quickly prepared for him, far removed from the female patients in the hospital. She had made certain that he was dealt with in the most cautious manner that would ensure that both his dignity and the female nurses’ modesty remained intact. And to ensure that they did not lose their license.
The government allowed them to serve women and children. Period.
So when her heart lurched each time she touched the headmaster from Jorhat, she put it up to the simple fact that she rarely examined an English male and had never before, in her tenure at Gauhati, examined a male of the American variety.
But he had a prescription. An official dispensation, of sorts, approving his treatment here. The headmaster required treatments twice weekly for an extended period, and the treatment could only be performed at a hospital. If it couldn’t be done in Gauhati, his only other option was to leave his work for an extended stay in Calcutta.
So here he was, a hair’s breadth away. In her office. Smiling.
Perhaps it was the fellow’s malady that created the unsettled feeling, the fact that in order to investigate his claim of impacted sinuses she was forced to lean close, hold his head at the proper angle, and rest a steadying hand on his square jaw.
A tangent of her thoughts whirled through other maladies that might have been less compromising to examine. A broken leg, perhaps.
No, that would mean she’d have to lay bare his knee and calf that, from what little she had seen, were sturdy and lithe, and laced with the sinewy bands of an inveterate athlete.
No, no broken legs, please.
But perhaps...Dorothy shut down that line of thinking. There was clearly no part of the man’s anatomy that was going to make this any easier for her.
To her surprise, she had managed to maintain a professional demeanor through the initial exam in spite of the fact that she was conducting it in a dress suitable only for a garden party. The swishing tea-length chiffon constantly set her off guard as she moved around her patient, and she had become completely annoyed at the havoc it had wreaked with her medical demeanor.
At the first available moment she fled to the bungalow and changed into her usual attire. By the time she delivered a supper tray to the good headmaster, she had herself completely back in control, safely armored in her clinical white coat.
By the next day, just as she had expected, she had herself well in hand.
“Well, Mr. Chambers, it looks—”
“Fled.”
“Pardon?”
“Fned.”
She laughed. The cotton she’d packed into the poor fellow’s nostrils had rendered him unable to speak clearly.
“Oh! Um, well, yes, Fred, I, er, um...” Dorothy cleared her throat and probably would have stamped her foot had it not been so close to her patient’s own toes.
She’d sat with her patient as he ate his dinner the previous evening, and they’d become so immediately companionable that they had quite naturally agreed to a first-name basis. But now, in the light of day, with her in her white coat and him with his head in her hands, first names seemed awkward.
But she had agreed.
“It’s looking good
, Fred. You’re responding nicely to the overnight treatment, I’m happy to see.”
“Gnuk.”
“Yes, good. I agree!”
Her hand involuntarily patted Mr. Chambers’ cheek and she stifled her horror at the familiar gesture, hoping he had not noticed.
His head was turned slightly away, making it impossible for her to read his reaction, but as she raised her head, she saw what he saw.
Her lovely Bohemian mirror hung on the wall opposite them, and could not have more perfectly framed their two faces if she had carefully and purposefully arranged it to do so.
He’d been watching her.
And now their eyes met, in the colorful mirror, framed for only an instant, but capturing a moment that would shape their lives.
He was the first to break their mirrored eye contact. And as she watched, mesmerized, Fred turned his head away from the mirror, raised himself from his half-reclining position, and kissed her cheek.
He had noticed.
. . . .
In the hours that followed, Dorothy found her step lighter, her disposition sunnier, and her brain operating in completely unfamiliar fashion. Mr. Chambers had only been in her hospital for three days, but by the time he left to return to Jorhat, she knew her world would never be the same.
He had noticed, alright. And so had she. And every moment since that brief kiss on her cheek had spun itself out in glittery newness. Nothing felt the same, looked the same, tasted the same. And nothing could ever again capture her entire attention—because the dearest corner of her mind was now preoccupied with one Fred Chambers.
How swiftly it had happened. How stunningly simple it had been to open her heart to him. And how thoroughly shattering it had been to wave him goodbye when they came from the Jorhat School for Boys to collect him.
Dorothy reseated the hair pin that had failed to keep her curls out of her eyes. The curls were damp now, after tumbling for too long across her perspiring forehead in the insufferable heat.
Thank heaven Fred had come last week, when they’d had an unseasonably cool spell. Her sweating chin would certainly not have attracted such a thing as the dear kiss he had so briefly planted on her cheek.
She’d tried desperately not to read too much into that kiss, but every glance from him throughout that day and evening had assured her it had not been forgotten by him. And then, when it came time to leave, he held her hand a few breaths too long, and captured her eyes with his, and she had known.
Oh, yes, he had noticed, alright.
And it had shaken her to her core.
So it was not at all surprising to her when the very ground beneath her feet began to quake. Indeed, at first she hadn’t even recognized that this time the ground was truly shaking. And it had nothing whatsoever to do with Fred Chambers.
July 1935
Wednesday night, July 2nd, Alice, Marian, Grace and Ruth left Gauhati for Missourie (or however you spell it—it isn’t Missouri at any rate). We went to the train to see them off. We came home and retired early as we were tired and it was pretty hot.
At three fifteen I woke suddenly to find myself sitting on the edge of my bed and the house swaying like everything—all the doors and windows rattling, and heard Edna call for me. Got on a kimono and slippers altho I bumped my head on the key in my bathroom door while stooping for a pair of heavier slippers. The house continued to sway and rock, but by the time I had gotten out to the verandah it was subsiding a bit. That earthquake, according to the telegraph office here where it was timed, lasted four minutes.
We all gathered on the verandah, and during the next hour there were four more of much lesser intensity. We then went back to bed, but not to sleep. There were four more before seven, and they kept on recurring every hour or so for the next two days. I lost count of them after twenty.
One of the telegraph sahibs said that there were sixty and over altogether. Here in Gauhati one of the merchants’ houses was badly damaged and two men were seriously hurt. Otherwise there were no injuries. Here on the compound there was quite a bit of plaster knocked off in one place in the hall and in one place on the front verandah. But in the dispensary—Boy Howdy—it looked as though seventeen monkeys had been turned lose with malice aforethought. Bottles of medicine were strewn over the floors, many of them broken, and pills, powders, stains, etc. in one grand mess. Our big bottle that we use for distilled water for washing the slides (16 rupees) was broken into fifty pieces. We got Monbahadur and some of the coolies to work clearing up and cleaning up, and things began to look better.
The patients were not as frightened as the night nurses were. Doctoroni went over and found the two night nurses outside. She lectured them properly about staying with the ship, etc. Early in the morning when the husband of a private room case came to see if all was well with his wife, one of these nurses assured him that if the patient died, they would die with her.
Kika, one of the nurses, thought that the end of the world had come, and stayed in her bed praying until the others called to her to come outside. It was not until today that the papers came and the telegraph lines have been down so that practically no news was obtained until the first train came thru yesterday.
At one point about 160 miles from here about twenty miles of track were broken by the bed sinking down. From a letter from Marian we found out that the girls arrived in Calcutta safely and not too late, but that in spite of their being almost in the heart of it, they didn’t know that there had been an earthquake until they saw the papers in Calcutta. They evidently attributed the jolts, etc., to a rough road bed. It is notoriously rough over that particular stretch.
It seemed remarkable to Dorothy that the whole episode of caring for a hospital full of patients through a month-long spate of over sixty earthquakes and hundreds of tremors could come to feel so commonplace. For a while it had simply become the new normal.
But whether in matters geological, or in matters of the heart, Dorothy knew that there was nothing whatsoever normal about the manner in which her world had just been shaken.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AND TIME STOOD STILL
If Fred Chambers’ presence in her life upended Dorothy and set her racing pellmell toward her future, nothing could have stopped time in its tracks more swiftly for her than another emergency foray into the Garo hills.
In so many ways these emergencies were much the same, and yet again each case had its own unique aspect. Each time she came up against a new challenge as she knelt on the floor of a Garo hut, she remembered that first time.
How could she not? Even though there had been hundreds like that first unspeakably jolting experience in her first year in Gauhati, none had truly been more eye-opening than her first case. That night was stamped like a firebrand in her memory, the shocking encounter with a rampaging case of tetanus and the havoc it had wreaked on a simple matter of childbirth.
It happened on February 5th of 1929, little more than six weeks into her mission. She had attended less than a dozen emergencies away from the hospital when this late night cry for help brought Dorothy and the assisting nurse to the hut of a woman who’d suffered horribly for three days before anyone thought to send to the hospital for help.
February 1929
I love the work here more and more all the time and wouldn’t trade places with anyone that I know of. ... About five o’clock there came a call to go out into the jungle on an OB call. It was dark when we got there and the house was dark. It was one of the “better class” huts according to S (the midwife), but looked rather dubious to me. Thatched roof, matting walls etc. There were four lamps which were about the size of my little alcohol lamp and smoked like the dickens. The woman was lying on a mat on the floor and grouped around her in this room were sixteen women, most of them with a small baby in their arms. In the front room was a circle of men, most of them relatives. S got her things out and put them on a mat on the floor. One of the women brought me a mat to sit on. I fina
lly decided that I might as well. I guess I sat rather gingerly (not being able to see where I was sitting, and knowing that S had just kicked a dead rat off the mat where the woman was lying).
A lecture on cleanliness had threatened to spew from her novice lips as Dorothy had focused on the deathly pallor of the young woman who lay moaning on the mat. Death then as now was the last thing Dorothy would countenance. She had not come to India to allow death an easy inroad. And yet the gray-tinged face that lay beneath her mostly steady hand said death may have already found an open door.
No matter how many years had passed, images from that night were forever burned in her mind’s eye.
The woman was barely twenty, her small body terribly brutalized by the labor of the previous thirty hours. The mat was filthy with fluids both new and crusted, the rags that covered her clearly heavy with grime. A few of the women who hovered at the outer fringes seemed freshly bathed and their colorful tunics danced prettily in the light of Dorothy’s Coleman lantern. How they managed to look fresh and unsoiled in these impoverished circumstances was nothing short of miraculous.
The women closer by, who tended to the needs of the young patient, had been dressed in rags that could be cast away when the ordeal was over. Their tatters twirled and floated as they tried to conceal their movements, but Dorothy had seen what it was that they had just pitched out of the hut.
The dead rat.
To any seasoned eye, this poor young woman had to die. How could she not, after thirty hours struggling on the dung-glazed floor of her home, as its bacteria-laced varnish mingled with the blood on her soaked limbs and invaded her weakened system.
Centuries-old birthing practices in this ancient Indian community dictated that any articles coming in contact with birth fluids must be burned. So risking contamination of bedding and bed clothes that would have to be destroyed would have been irresponsible, would have been simply too great a sacrifice for these frugal people, to say nothing of the fact that it would have gone against their closely held religious tenets.
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