Courage in a White Coat

by Mary Schwaner

  “Wanna dance, pretty lady?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  LET IT GO

  New Year’s Day 1940 came in with a smile and left with a tear. Dorothy had spent a euphoric post-Christmas week feeling all was right with the world. Carol spent hours at her little toy piano Santa had brought. The new girl Dorothy had hired—Rosa—was adapting beautifully to their household. She seemed to enjoy making foods in the particular way the three of them liked, and she was quickly learning to sew on Dorothy’s rented machine. She had a happy outlook on life and a foresight that Dorothy truly admired. Fred practically whistled his way through each day. His work was going well.

  And Dorothy shuffled through every day with immense content, one hand resting on her swollen belly, a smile planted on her face. For hours she would stroll through the house, recalling each possession that surely was on its way to them from Assam by now, picturing the way in which it had been acquired, and then deciding where it might best be placed in their little home.

  Wedding gifts, tablecloths, handmade curtains, the little nesting tables, all would fit beautifully in their cottage. Her medical books would go with her to the hospital once she got word she’d passed her exams. If she passed her exams. Their record collection would fit right into the record nook of their Christmas Victor phonograph cabinet.

  And she knew exactly where the colorful Bohemian mirror from her childhood bedroom—the one that she’d hung in her office in Gauhati—would go. She would hang it in the front hall just above an occasional chair, so both she and Carol could check their appearance each time they headed out the door.

  Life in Iloilo was good. The baby was kicking up a storm. God was in their hearts. What more could they need?

  And then it came.

  Dorothy was startled out of a half-doze by someone knocking at the door.

  “Fred? Fred, can you get that?”

  She waited to hear Fred’s footsteps heading out to answer it, but there was silence. Through the window she saw him in the back yard shoveling more dirt. New Year’s Day and he was shoveling dirt. It made her smile. He was determined to elevate their yard so it wasn’t a constant mass of puddles.

  Dorothy heaved herself out of the rocking chair and waddled to the front door. It was a postman. They never came to the house. It was Fred’s habit to collect the mail from the post office on his way in to campus.

  She opened the door.

  “Mabuhay!” the breathless young fellow said as he politely doffed his cap. The wheels of his bicycle still spun where he had dropped it to its side out in the poinsettia lane.

  Such nice manners he had. She would never tire of hearing the lovely Filipino greeting. Mabuhay! Cheers! Welcome! May you live! Always delivered as a cheery command. You must be cheerful. You must feel welcome. You must live. Mabuhay!

  He held out an envelope with a smile. “It say oo-gen, so all us say bring it hurry-like.” He turned to step back onto the planked walk but Dorothy stopped him with a thank you and a coin from her apron pocket.

  It did indeed say “urgent”. The word was stamped in red on the front of the envelope.

  Dorothy checked the post mark. It was a month old. Well, at least this fellow took the urgent marking seriously. But the letter had clearly taken its sweet time getting here.

  January 1, 1940

  We got word about our freight from Assam—it has gone down to the bottom of Singapore Bay on the S.S. Sirdhana which struck a mine sometime in the first half of November. It seems the Captain (it was a British boat I think) didn’t know the mine fields that had been laid out.

  I do not know if lives were lost, but pray they were not.

  Well, we don’t have to wait for it now, and Fred won’t have to spend two or three days getting it out of customs, and there were probably many things that we didn’t really need, but it included about $250 worth of my medical books, all my uniforms, curtain materials that I wanted for upholstering cushions here, and curtains, dishes, aluminum wear, two table lamps, toaster, little vacuum cleaner, all of Fred’s books, and the ones that we wanted to keep just as old friends, about thirty lovely Victrola records, some brass wear, extra sheets, pillow cases, towels, vases and our lovely pictures.

  All her worldly goods. At the bottom of Singapore Bay. It pinched her heart to think of the loss. The pictures. Fred’s books. Her sewing machine. The priceless bundle of medical sketchbooks.

  As her mind ticked off the things that had been lost, she relegated most of them to the past. Much of it could be replaced. But the thing that had a tear slipping down her cheek was her oldest possession. The piece from her childhood that had reflected images of her at every stage of her youth and adult life. The piece that had captured that first fateful image of her own face hovering near Fred’s.

  The piece she would miss most had her swallowing hard. She would never see it again.

  Her lovely Bohemian mirror.

  Hocking C., Dictionary of Disasters at Sea

  During the Age of Steam

  The steamship Sirdhana SS, Capt. P. Fairbairn, was leaving Singapore harbour on Monday, November 13th, 1939, with a large number of passengers on board, of whom 137 were Chinese deportees, when she struck a mine some three miles offshore and sank in 20 minutes. Twenty Asiatic deck passengers were killed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  THESE HANDS

  Dorothy found herself avoiding the living room. The furniture she’d intended to use was at the bottom of Singapore Bay, and that was that. But each time she saw the crates occupying the places where her furniture should be sitting it made her out-of-sorts. And sad. Until she finally took matters in hand to do something about it.

  Their shopping expedition to the market district had proven fruitless so far, except for the second-hand wicker baby carriage that had certainly seen its better days. But it would do, and now that the buggy was partially filled with packages she was awfully glad she’d bought the squeaky thing.

  But it was furniture that she craved today, and the furniture she liked was beyond her price range. The furniture she could afford was hardly a step up from the crates. She gently pulled Carol’s fingers from the baby carriage and set them on the buggy’s handle. Perhaps if Carol could help push she might—

  “Mommy!!! Yook!”

  Carol jumped away from the carriage and dove into the little shop they were passing. There was nothing Dorothy could do but hurriedly park the baby carriage in front of the window and follow her daughter inside the tumbledown second-hand store.

  When her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she found Carol gazing up at the ceiling with a look of awe on her face as if she’d seen Santa Claus himself, just coming down the chimney.

  “Oh my!”

  Now Dorothy’s own eyes flew open. Amid the jumble of things hanging from the ceiling of the little shop was a rattan loveseat, very like the chair they already had. On the floor below was a tall torchiere lamp with a lovely glass bowl. It was chipped in two places, but they were close enough together that the chips and the hairline crack could easily be turned toward the wall and hidden from view. She could see how perfectly suited the loveseat and lamp were, and how marvelously well they would look in her living room.

  “You like?”

  A little clerk appeared from nowhere, hovering now that she saw how taken Dorothy was with the two pieces.

  “Well, they would certainly do nicely,” Dorothy said, marshalling her enthusiasm so as not to show too much interest. “Do you have the cushions?”

  The small Filipina looked confused.

  “Seat cushions? Pillows?”

  “Ah!” the clerk cried. “Pillow! Yes. Here.”

  She swept aside a pile of used clutter and pulled out two horrid purple and pink cushions, both sadly ripped and water-stained.

  “Hm,” Dorothy sighed disappointedly as she fingered the cushions. But it truly didn’t matter that the coverings were unusable, because what she felt beneath her fin
gers was a good solid cushion. She’d be changing the covers anyway. And bringing it closer to her nose revealed an odor she was fairly certain she could banish.

  “I yike, Mommy! Peez!”

  The Filipina clerk smiled at Carol, then turned her hopeful face up to Dorothy. “I give you plenny good deal,” she said. “Twenty peso. I bringa you house.”

  Ten dollars. The lamp was cracked and she had no idea if the loveseat was sturdy. It looked sturdy. Would Fred like it? Of course he’d like it. But ten dollars. There must be something wrong with it.

  These thoughts flew through her mind as she paced a couple of steps, craning her neck to examine the loveseat. How could one tell if it was a broken down frame when it hung from the ceiling like that?

  “Peeze, Mommy?” Carol fairly danced around her.

  Dorothy fished in her purse and handed the woman a twenty-peso bill. The woman responded by hollering at the top of her lungs to summon two boys to the front of the store. They scrambled up on precarious piles of this and that to untie the loveseat. Moments later they had it down. Dorothy was about to sit to test it out when one of the boys laid the torchiere lamp across the seat and the two picked up the loveseat, clearly waiting for her to lead the way to her home.

  She felt defeat all the way to her toes. They hadn’t wanted her to sit, which meant it was a broken down bit of trash. How would she explain it to Fred? Their entire grocery allowance for the month spent on a worthless piece of furniture.

  But once inside the house, the boys placed the loveseat where she asked them to and set the floor lamp beside it. One of the boys produced a dusty light bulb from his pocket and screwed it into the socket.

  “La-deez and gennamen!” The second boy made a great show of finding the plug at the end of the cord, and with a grand flourish he plunged it into the socket.

  Dorothy held her breath as the first boy reached for the switch.

  But when she heard the small click she saw no puff of smoke. No popping of ruined light bulbs. She merely saw the soft glow of a perfectly good lamp lighting the room.

  Without thinking, she sat down on the loveseat to enjoy the glow. The seat beneath her did not so much as quiver. Strong and well made, it showed itself worthy of her little family.

  They were second-hand goods. And to her, they were good as gold.

  . . . .

  The delivery boys were long gone and Dorothy still sat in the loveseat with no cushions, enjoying the transformation to her living room, when once again urgent mail was delivered to her doorstep. But this time it set Dorothy dancing about the kitchen. She squealed, let out a whoop, and trundled off to tell someone—anyone—the wonderful news. Carol Joy was the lucky recipient of her ebullient hug.

  It felt as if she’d been holding her breath for two months. But at last—at long last—her medical exam results had arrived.

  Dorothy took a deep breath and exhaled her silent prayer.

  Then she tore open the letter to find that she had passed. Very nearly at the top of her class.

  January 8, 1940

  Got my grades from Manila today. They weren’t too bad—an average of 80.63 for the seventeen exams. I got 90, 90, 91, 93 in Anatomy, surgery, gynecology and obstetrics respectively, and was quite tickled with a grade of 88 in their sanitation and hygiene (the exam where they wanted plans for sewage disposal for a municipality, plans and sketch for a cemetery for another community, plans for a village for 2,000, etc.) Got my lowest grades in physiology, histology. Considering everything, it wasn’t too bad. The highest composite score was only 82, which makes me feel even better.

  Things were starting to fall into place. Her friends organized a remarkable surprise shower for her, having somehow received from Fred a list of many things that were lost in Singapore harbor. Carol had found the wonderful new loveseat and lamp for them. There was a position waiting for her at Iloilo Mission Hospital. And now that she’d passed her exams she would waste no time at all getting back to work.

  After the baby, of course. It was one thing to waddle about her own home, but quite another to do the same in a hospital corridor. It would be completely frowned upon.

  But was passing her exams enough? Would her hands remember what to do? Was her mind quick enough? Had she lost too much time to step back into that arena that required razor sharp instincts?

  Dorothy lifted the lid of the box where she kept her medical supplies, careful not to disturb the mothballs she’d arranged around its perimeter to keep the red ants at bay. She slipped the letter from Manila into a folder she’d tucked along the side.

  The corner of a folded page caught on her ring as she withdrew her hand, and curious, she pulled the page from the box. The handwriting brought a flood of Gauhati memory. The brief note from her fellow missionary in Gauhati had meant a great deal to her at the time. But now, on the eve of beginning her new practice in Iloilo it meant even more.

  With tender care she unfolded the familiar stationery.

  Letter from Ethel Nichols — Gauhati, June 28th, 1936

  Dear Dorothy:

  This morning in church as I looked at your hands, I suddenly thought of what those hands did for me nearly six years ago and that, with all the happenings of the last few days and the fact that you’d be leaving us all in a few months, etc., caused me not to be able to “keep all of the salt on the inside”. . . .

  I do hope there will be some way for those hands of yours to go on saving lives. You have my very best wishes for your future.

  With much love,

  Ethel Nichols

  She’d completely forgotten Ethel’s note, so uncharacteristic for a woman who held her feelings close. And how very odd that she’d found it now, when spirals of doubt were prone to twist their way into her thoughts. Here, now, at this moment, it spoke to her with open conviction.

  These hands, her healing hands, were about to go back into service. Any doubt was banished with Ethel’s simple, direct message written nearly four years past.

  Dorothy took a last look into the box.

  Her white coat lay folded on top. Pristine. Starched. Ready.

  “This is Mommy’s special coat, babykins,” she whispered as she rubbed her straining back. “One day I’ll model it for you. Soon, I hope. I probably couldn’t get it buttoned at the moment, many thanks to you, my big beautiful baby belly.”

  Carol bounced into the room singing, “We getta baby boy, we getta baby boy” over and over with the insurmountable joy only a two-year-old can express.

  “I hope so, sweet pea. I surely do hope so.”

  Dorothy opened the case of the rented sewing machine thinking she’d set in the sleeves on another uniform and then changed her mind. She’d already sewn two new uniforms to wear once she got back to work. What she really wanted to sew was a new dress. Something that might make her look less “increasing” when she went to tea at the Iloilo Club next week. Once the baby arrived and she went to work at the hospital her social opportunities would take a dramatic dive. So she would lumber over there to tea and endeavor to enjoy. And try to remember not to use her baby bump as a tea tray.

  February 12, 1940

  Have a tea at the Iloilo Club on Thursday and hope to meet quite a number of folks there. Am rather up against it for afternoon dresses. My bemberg has proved to be a white elephant. The thing has stretched (it was cut on the diagonal) until there is no fullness around the waist in front and the result is that it cups in under my “forwardness” in a most revealing fashion and there is nothing I can do about it except let it hang in the closet.

  Thanks so much for the shirt for Fred. I am thrilled with my powder—it is lovely (only Carol would like to use it all in one day if she could have half a chance.) Plan to take it to the hospital with me and feel luxuriously scented up. Thanks heaps, one and all.

  Had another check up this A.M. and everything seems okay. B.P. 108/88 and feeling pretty good. The baby still rides very high, and cannot be entice
d into the pelvis. Dr. Myers of Capiz is coming down next Friday to help Henry Waters with the Caesarian, and I am looking forward to getting this little acrobat into another bed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  BABYKINS

  A baby boy. Yes, that’s wonderful.

  Dorothy felt Fred’s euphoria even though she couldn’t fully react to it. The druggy haze was still full upon her after the long Caesarean, making her limbs heavy and her mind dull. But the babe was here. All fingers and toes intact and happy to nurse at the first opportunity.

  She knew she’d held the baby, kissed his sweet little cheek, cooed something which had meant a great deal to her at the time but now she couldn’t for the life of her remember what she’d said.

  It was her own fault they’d had to give her a heavy pain med. She’d tried to go too long between medications, against her good doctor’s recommendation. Then when the rolling, pitching pain was too much for even a stoic Colorado girl she’d had to beg, to put a night nurse off her routine in order to get the injection ready. She’d wasted the girl’s time with her silly pride. But once the pain had truly taken hold, pride went out the window and she humbly accepted what they’d been trying to give her all along.

  She’d promised to be a model patient from that moment on.

  As the buzzing in her ears ebbed and flowed she caught a word or two of Fred’s excited monologue—which she knew he considered dialogue but she was completely bungling her end of it.

  Buzzzzz “college” buzzzzz “dean”.

  What did he just say?

  Buzzzzz “not to worry” buzzzzz “double duty”.

  She heard him laugh and then he leaned close and kissed her. For a moment the scent and taste of Fred over-ruled the antiseptic smell and she thought she was home. He brushed a kiss across her lips and the warmth of it had her swimming to the surface, forcing her drug-calmed mind to open her eyes, lift her head, reach out a hand.