Chapter Thirty-six
The drive of a few blocks from the clinic to 101 had been a revelation to Thomas when he discovered that he could support himself on his crutches and swing his right foot up to the step, then push up and pivot to land on the cushioned seat with his right hip. Immediately, visions of something as simple as a hot bath and then drives around Port McKinney had swirled in his head—until Horace had snapped the reins. The carriage’s hard narrow wheels jounced through the ruts of Gambel Street at speeds no more than a sedate stroll, all of it torture. Once back at 101, the idea of a hot bath was more appealing than the reality of achieving it. Determined to shed clothing that now felt like a second, smelly skin, Thomas eschewed offers of help from Horace, from Dr. Haines—even from Alvina. The high-laced shoes were the most frustrating impediment, but Thomas stubbornly fussed and fumed until he discovered that he could actually flex his left knee sufficiently to reach the laces with the tips of his right fingers.
Finally he stood naked beside the tub, his body a spectacular array of colorful bruises. Laying the crutches across the tub, one behind him and one in front, he sat gently on the rim between them, put his weight on his right arm with his elbow resting on the rear crutch, and maneuvered his right leg over the rim.
He gasped as the water touched the sole of his foot, then shifted his weight until he could balance, right foot on the bottom of the tub, both hands holding his weight on the crutches.
Holding his breath, he lowered himself until his knees touched the bottom, and stopped, head pounding. For several minutes he knelt, arms folded on the crutch in front of him. By the time his rump hit the tub bottom and he could sit with legs stretched in front of him, he was panting from the exertion…and was thoroughly impressed with himself.
A knuckle rapped on the door, and Alvi Haines didn’t wait for an invitation. She cracked open the door, and Thomas groped wildly for the towel. It was out of reach.
“You’re all right?” she asked.
“I am,” Thomas said. “And indecent.”
“Oh, good,” she said, and Thomas heard none of the reserve that had marked the young woman’s mood earlier.
She opened the door and slipped into the room. “Gert wants to know if you need more hot water.”
“I don’t think so. I don’t want to get the dressing on my ribs wet.”
“It would be best to remove that so you can wash the rest,” Alvi said. “Then we’ll fix you up a fresh one. Let me get a scissors.”
She disappeared before Thomas could protest, and he took the opportunity to reach out for the nearest towel with the crutch. He hadn’t managed the task when she returned. She cocked her head.
“The towel?”
“Yes. Please.”
She handed it to him. “You’re really rather beautiful, you know. In an artist’s palette sort of way.” She laughed gently and watched him spread the towel across the platform of crutches.
“The whole town will talk,” Thomas joked. He lifted his arms so she could unfasten the rib dressing.
“Do you think so?” she said. “Are they all lined up outside the window, watching lasciviously?’’
“Watching me get into this tub would have made a side show, I suppose.”
“Which brings to mind another question,” Alvi said, unwinding the bandage. “Hold the dressing for me, please.” As her arms encircled him, Thomas breathed in her unique fragrance, and wondered what it was that she bathed in. “How are you going to get out?”
“I prefer not to dwell on that,” Thomas said. A fraction of an inch at a time, she pulled the bandage loose from his ribs. Without being asked, Alvi handed him a mirror, and he carefully inspected the wound. It appeared to be scabbing well, with only a small halo of inflammation around the deepest gash.
In a moment the head bandage was removed as well, and Thomas held up the mirror. His eye was bloodshot, the lid swollen and grotesque, and the stitches along the wound pulled a little at the swelling.
“How is the vision?”
Thomas closed his left eye and peered through the swollen window of eyelids. He looked around the room, and then at her. One long strand of her auburn hair curled down past her left eye, touching her cheek. “Fine enough.”
“You’re really going back to the clinic this evening?”
“Yes. I have to. We have patients in the ward. I’m not about to ask Bertha to remain all night. It’s enough that she agreed to remain at the clinic until I return.”
I was surprised to see you in the carriage,” she said. She reached down and swirled an index finger in the water. chasing a soap bubble. “We haven’t had a chance to talk about last night,” she said.
“Nor anything else, for that matter.”
Alvi nodded. “Zachary says that you may have reservations.”
Thomas mulled several ways he might respond. “I find it difficult to obtain straight answers from him,” he said. Alvi withdrew her hand and folded her forearms on the edge of the tub staring at Thomas. Her eyes roamed his face, and she tilted her head and examined the way the long row of stitches curled up into his hair, then looped back down to his right ear.
“Answers to what?” she said at last.
“Well, for instance. Tell me about the two physicians I’ve never met. Doctors Tessier and Sorrel.”
“What would you like to know about them?”
“Let’s begin with the most simple thing. Do they exist?”
A slight smile touched her mouth. “In the minds of desperate patients, they are as real as you or me.”
“So they’re inventions, then.”
“I prefer to call them advertising techniques,” Alvi replied.
“Techniques? Like the book’s engraving of the enormous clinic that exists only in our dreams?”
“Think about what can be, Thomas.”
“Oh, I am, I am. Right now, we have a solid three-story building—I haven’t found my way to the third yet—and not a proper ward for patients. Not a proper surgery. We wheel patients from the treatment room through the waiting room, no doubt to the horror of those waiting. With Bertha, we do have more staff than a country doctor, but hardly that of a grandiose clinic and research center.”
He stopped when he saw that Alvi was smiling at him.
“What? You find all this amusing, I take it?”
“I find your umbrage amusing,” she said. “How long have you been seeing patients at the clinic?”
He didn’t reply, unsure of what she meant. She outwaited him, however, and he finally said, “I have completed my second day.” That sounded foolish, and he felt the cursed blush wash up his neck, knowing exactly what she meant.
“We have an additional nurse who will arrive in a matter of days,” Alvi said. “Jake Tate agreed to work for us if need be to renovate the clinic to suit you. Mr. Schmidt has given him permission.” Her eyebrows rose as she reached out to push a strand of his hair away from the stitches. “Those are things that not only can be, but will be. And sooner rather than later.”
“I fail to understand how letters from fictitious physicians who promise the heavens with their personal and prompt attention constitute merely an advertising ‘technique,’ Alvi. The patient must read those and believe that the entire resources of an enormous clinic and its distinguished staff are working on their behalf.”
“There’s something wrong with that surge of hope?”
“Certainly there is. It’s all illusion. What do the world-renowned physicians actually do for the patient?”
She didn’t answer, and Thomas nodded. “Just so. A bit of patent concoction, no doubt laced with opiates to keep them coming back for more. Their hopes are raised, only to be dashed.”
“If anything dashes their hopes, Thomas, it is the dreadful disease—not anything we do.” Her gaze was unflinching, but no smile now softened her f
eatures.
“Let me ask you something,” Thomas said. “What does your father think of all this? I mean what does he really think?”
“You would have to ask him,” she said with a sigh. “I know that he thinks highly of Zachary, as we all do. Zachary’s work makes many things possible, Thomas. Like your nurses, and the carpenters, and everything else you’re planning to ask for in weeks to come.” She nodded at him. “Think on that.” She pushed herself to her feet. “In point of fact, without Zachary’s efforts, you would be but a country doctor, with the country doctor’s limited resources.”
She walked behind him. “Now let me wash your back so we can get to dinner. If Gert’s roast grows cold, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
Thomas started to protest, but the young woman ignored him. In a moment, he had to admit that the attention felt wonderful. Halfway down his spine, she paused. “Are you going to do something about the dog?”
“The dog? You mean Prince? You know, I didn’t see him when we drove up from the clinic.”
“That’s because he can hardly get up, Thomas. I stopped by the Mercantile and saw him lying by the stove. A pitiful wreck, Mr. Lindeman called him.”
“He has an abscess on the inside of his leg that’s going to kill him,” Thomas said. “I must find a way to take him down to the shore so he can be cleaned up a bit. Charlie Grimes had agreed to do that.”
Alvi was silent for another few swipes of the cloth. “A horse trough won’t do?”
“Better than nothing, but I thought the salt water might be soothing…and far easier just to walk the beast into the water and have at it.”
“And then?”
“Then the ether,” Thomas said.
“He’ll let you do that? The smell is awful.”
Thomas flinched as her strong hands scrubbed the small of his back, working too close to his left hip. “With enough morphine, I think he will,” Thomas said, gritting his teeth. “I can see it in his eyes.”
She laughed and stood up. “I’ll see to his washing,” she said.
“Be careful.”
“Oh, I shall,” she said. “But he’ll let me do it.” She smiled again. “I can see it in his eyes, you know.”
She left the bath, and once more Thomas had that odd sensation of being in a room far emptier than before.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Dinner presented a succulent pork roast with small potatoes, late garden greens, biscuits that sopped up butter like small sponges, and copious wine so dark that it appeared black in the crystal glasses in the gaslight. Thomas did the meal justice, all the while a bit uneasy.
As if sensing his discomfort, Zachary Riggs was at his most charming and solicitous. He poured wine for Gert and Horace James as if they were visiting royalty, was unfailingly deferential and courteous to the rest of them—and playfully flirtatious with Alvi.
His mood was in sharp contrast to Dr. John Haines, whose fatigue was tempered with intoxication.
“My apologies for never making an appearance at the clinic,” he said at one point to Thomas, and Alvi reached over and rested her hand lightly on the elderly physician’s forearm.
“I was distressed to hear about Mrs. Cleary, John,” Thomas said. “A formidable woman.”
“Oh, my,” Gert James said. “Such a sadness.”
“Well, one in, one out,” Haines muttered. “She was a remarkable woman in many ways. We’ll all miss her. On the other side of the balance beam, little Heather Thompson has come into the world, all six pounds seven ounces of her.”
“Oh, my,” Gert said again, and clasped both hands together over her bosom. “And little Janey?”
Alvi leaned toward Thomas and said softly, “Jane Thompson is the mother.”
“Janey is fine,” Dr. Haines said. “A long, long, and difficult birth. I really do think that little Heather didn’t want to have anything to do with this world. But we forced the issue. Now Bruce, on the other hand…he’s not fine.”
“Oh, dear,” Gert breathed. “He’s such a sensitive boy.”
“Bruce is the father,” Alvi whispered, her breath wine-sweet on Thomas’ ear.
“Yes, well, Bruce managed all right, with the help of a bottle of spirits,” Haines said. “If Janey had let out one more scream, I think he would have walked into the sea and not returned.”
“Oh, but he’ll dote on his new daughter,” Gert said.
“I hope so. That’s child number three, and I told him that if he wants to lose his wife, having another child is apt to accommodate the matter.”
“Did he hear you?” Alvi asked. “Sometimes men don’t, you know.”
“I doubt it,” Haines said glumly. “Anyway, Thomas, that’s been the sum and substance of the last twenty-four hours for me…one into the world, one out of it.” He sighed and sipped his wine. “I understand from Zachary that you had adventures of your own last night.”
“I admit so.” Thomas hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. “I confess, my curiosity got the better of me. At first, sixteen steps didn’t seem insurmountable.”
“Your hip is showing marked improvement, at least,” Haines said. “We’ve been a bit concerned about that.”
“Much improved,” Thomas said. “And then Zachary was good enough to give me a tour, so to speak. Quite an undertaking, I must say.” He tried to sound offhanded. “I’m of mixed minds about attempting to treat patients without meeting them face to face.”
“The questionnaire is thorough,” Riggs said.
“That it is. But the issue is simple, it seems to me. Can a patient be trusted to describe his own illness? Will the questionnaire be a fair and true reflection of what is actually wrong? We know how one pain may initiate another, referring to some other part of the body.”
“Of course,” Haines said. “That’s an issue even when the patient is sitting in front of you, true?”
“I suppose so. But my observations might reveal what the patient fails to tell me. That’s not so with the questionnaire.”
“Well,” Riggs said with some resignation, “what it allows is treatment where none is possible otherwise. Or all else fails, and the patient has nowhere to turn. And I think we may assume further that in such cases, the patient has heard enough about his condition, has discussed it sufficiently with various physicians, that he has a fair notion of what his ailments might be. We may assume that what is reflected in the questionnaire is fair and true. And then we act upon it.”
“But there is nothing…There is no drug or medication that is known to treat cancer, for instance. Much less cure it,” Thomas interjected. “To promote some patent medicine as a cure is to raise false hopes.”
“We have countless testimonials that support the treatment,” Riggs said.
“That’s human nature,” Thomas replied. “When someone has lost all hope, is truly grasping at straws, there is a surge of desperate optimism when something new is offered. For a time the patient is convinced that this new thing has worked miracles for them.”
“You’ve seen that happen often enough, then?” Riggs commented. His tone was not derisive, but Thomas, who was acutely aware of his own lack of experience, understood him clearly.
“No, sir, I haven’t. But I’ve studied. I’ve read. I’ve listened to the most eminent professors in the field. Nostrums build false hopes. A bit of alcohol, a pinch of opiates to dull the pain…”
Horace shifted uncomfortably, and Thomas bit off what he was about to say. “I apologize,” he said instead. “I’m tired. I should make my way back to the clinic.”
“I’ll drive you when you’re ready,” Horace muttered.
“Thank you.” He smiled at John. “Now that I’ve survived my first ride, I anticipate being able to explore the environs. If the people I’ve met are any indication, the country has much to offer.” He watched his wine catch the
gaslight. “And I’m intrigued with some I haven’t met as of yet.”
“Really?” John prompted. “For instance?”
“You mentioned Bruce…Thompson was it?”
“Indeed.”
“I had an infant patient today suffering a broken arm, compliments of his father. The arm of a four-month-old. Can you imagine that?”
“Unfortunately, I can,” John said sadly. “You refer to the Beautards?”
“Yes. The same. The mother is absolutely charming. And pregnant for the second time. She’s fearful of what her husband will say—or do—when he finds out.”
“I know Lawrence,” John said slowly. “He works at Schmidt’s mill. The mother is fearful, you say?”
“Decidedly so.” Thomas cleared his throat. “So much so, in fact, that she won’t nurse the baby.”
“May I take your plate, dear?” Gert said, rising suddenly and reaching out for Alvi’s plate. “Honestly,” she added, but let it go at that.
“That’s not unusual.” Haines ignored his housekeeper’s discomfort at such risqué conversation. “People harbor these odd ideas.”
“The child cries, and the father loses his temper at the disturbance. Now with a second child coming, Mrs. Beautard is distraught. She was feeding the child teething syrup to quiet his fussing. I told her no more opiates. Can you imagine? Opiates with an infant?”
“There are no opiates in the tonic,” Riggs said pleasantly. “Perhaps she should try that, in judicious amounts.”
“Brandy with an infant? Hardly.”
“What did you suggest?” Haines asked.
“That she feed the child in the natural way. That she attend to the child’s general health, and that she reason with her bone-headed husband. Perhaps teach the man how to hold the infant. I said that I’d be pleased to speak with him myself.”
“Most—,” but Riggs was interrupted by the bell on the front door as someone twisted the thumb crank.
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