by Pamela Morsi
“No, no, I should never have mentioned it. I mean, it’s not really that bad. Probably nobody else would even notice.”
Jesse looked directly at him then. Tears were welling in her eyes. He had literally embarrassed her to tears.
She grabbed her purse as if it were a lifeline. “I need to get out of here,” she said desperately.
“No, no, sit,” he told her, choosing to rise himself. “Sit.”
Piney had no idea how to fix this. Out of habit he fell back on the clinical demeanor that was so often necessary in the course of dealing with the realities of unpleasant bodily functions.
“How far into the treatment are you?”
“What?”
“How many poultices has Aunt Will made up for you?”
“Two.”
Piney nodded. “It’s a six-night treatment,” he said. “So there is no benefit in attempting to rid yourself of the smell just yet. I think a baking soda bath gives the best results. Next Tuesday when you come in, you’ll be all finished and I’ll let you borrow my tub. You can soak for hours in there if you like. Believe me, this is all no big deal.”
She still looked ready to bolt.
“Why don’t you wait in here, by yourself. I’ll see how Dr. Mo is doing with Aunt Will. And the two of you will be back up the mountain in no time.”
Piney backed out of his office, deliberately, desperately smiling.
What an idiot! he silently screamed at himself.
He glanced at the door and decided to leave it open. She wouldn’t feel so locked up that way, he told himself. But he also didn’t want the poultice smell to linger on in his office.
It had been years since Aunt Will had dosed him, but he’d recognized the scent immediately, and recoiled at it. He had been pretty sure that the whole purpose of the lovesick cure was to instill an aversion to romance altogether. Who would risk falling in love again if the outcome might be that dreaded poultice?
Piney shook his head thoughtfully as he went back to his patients. Dr. Mo had sent Handley Piggott on his way, most likely with a sample of docusate and an admonition to get more fiber in his diet.
Piney had tried to put Kelvy Jay and her baby, Eli, in the exam room next, but the young woman apologized and said that she didn’t think she needed to see the doctor. She’d talked to Aunt Will and thought she might take her advice.
Piney nodded. “Sure, I understand,” he told her. “Ask Viola to refund your co-pay. Aunt Will brought some eggs and vegetables, why don’t you take some home.”
The young woman eagerly looked through the basket. “I’ll take a few eggs and one of those squash,” she said. “But no onions for me.”
Piney put Burt Turley into the exam room. The farmer was pulling up his sleeves as he repeated what Aunt Will had told him.
“There are garden pests that have cyanide inside them,” Piney told him. “You’d better let Doc Mo look at the rash, just to be certain.”
Piney spent a few minutes taking his temp, blood pressure and oxygen level. Then he stripped off his latex gloves and threw them in the trash can.
“Go ahead and take off your shirt,” he said to Turley. “Doc Mo will be with you in a few minutes.
Piney shut the door to Exam Room Two and made his way to Exam Room One. He slipped inside as unobtrusively as possible. He quickly squirted his hands with the door-side sanitizer solution and regloved.
Aunt Will lay on her back. A paper gown covered her from the breasts up and a paper sheet from the pelvic bone down. In between, her bare, aged skin had an unhealthy color. The doctor had his hand splayed on the right upper quadrant of her abdomen and was percussing with his fingers on the midclavicular line, measuring the organ beneath the ribs. Dr. Mo’s dark eyes exchanged a quick glance with Piney’s but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. He dug his fingers down in the bottom right-hand corner, just below the rib cage.
“Now take a deep, deep breath, Mrs. Weston,” he said. He pressed his fingers in more deeply through the layers of skin and muscle. “Exhale.”
As she did, she flinched slightly and the barest exclamation of pain escaped her lips. Piney looked down into her face. He didn’t have to take note of the white-as-a-sheet pallor or the beads of sweat that had popped up on her brow to know that it hurt more than she let on.
“Very good, Mrs. Weston, very good,” the doctor said in his crisp accent that always sounded slightly British to Piney’s own Ozark ear. He gave her an encouraging nod. “It is some worse, I think, but not a lot worse. We’re going to draw some of this fluid out of your abdomen. That should improve the symptoms. Okay?”
“I’ll gladly take any improvements you have handy,” Aunt Will said.
Doc Mo left the room and Piney quickly set up the tubing for the aspiration. The old woman’s belly was nearly as taut as a basketball. He cleaned the area thoroughly and painted it with Betadine. Using the needle from an IV cannula he punched through the skin. Almost immediately a stream of straw-colored liquid began filling the drainage bag. He taped it all down.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine,” she answered. “Did you see my DuJess?”
“Yes, of course. Would you like her to be in here with you?”
Aunt Will made a tutting sound. “No. I’m fine. You go on about your business.”
Barring some emergency, Piney wouldn’t leave the frail senior alone on the procedure table. Instead he piddled around checking things that didn’t need to be checked and rearranging things that didn’t need to be rearranged for several minutes. By the time the fluid flow dropped to a trickle, Aunt Will’s abdomen looked almost normal. He removed the needle, cleaned up the Betadine with alcohol and put a small round bandage on the needle mark.
“Would you like to sit up now?”
“Yes, I believe I would.”
Piney slipped an arm beneath her shoulders and raised her up.
“Are you dizzy? Nauseous?”
“No, no. I think I’m fine.”
“Good. Would you like for me to help you get dressed?”
Aunt Will cocked her head and raised an eyebrow at him. “Now I’m thinking a fellow like you ought to spend more time helping some young gal out of her clothes than helping us old gals into ours.”
“You know I’m way out of practice with that,” he said.
The old woman gave a disapproving snort. “That’s what I tried to tell my second husband,” she said. “He convinced me it’s like riding a bicycle. You just got to climb on and it’ll all come back to you.”
Piney shook his head and discarded all the waste from the procedure into the red bin. He peeled off his gloves and made an exit, hurrying to his office where Jesse continued to sit on the couch. She was flipping through screens on her phone.
“Aunt Will is a little shaky after her exam,” he said. “Maybe you could help her get dressed.”
Piney saw genuine surprise on the woman’s face. Jesse obviously had no clue about Aunt Will’s health. But she gamely tucked her phone in her purse and allowed herself to be directed to the exam room.
“When she’s dressed, Doc Mo wants to talk to her,” Piney said. “And it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to sit in on the conversation if Aunt Will is agreeable to that.”
Jesse’s coppery-brown eyes widened with concern. Piney offered her his most professional reassuring smile.
By the time he got back to Exam Room Two, Burt Turley was on his way out, his arms smeared with white antipruritic cream.
“Feels better?” he asked the farmer.
Turley nodded. “It’s sure easing up some.”
Piney had the man repeat the instructions that Doc Mo had given him. Assuring himself that despite any language barrier, no mistakes were going to be made.
When Aunt Will and Jesse came out, he directed them to Doc Mo’s office on the opposite corner from Piney’s own. He followed behind them. Aunt Will seemed to have recovered herself somewhat, but she was still using the improvised g
arden stake for balance.
Doc Mo rose to his feet as the old woman entered the doorway. His old-fashioned and strangely continental manners had aided him somehow in winning over the older generation on the mountain. Piney had doubts when Dr. Mohammed El Azziz had responded to inquiries for a part-time doctor to head the clinic. Piney had envisioned an older physician who wanted to retire to the mountains, but maintain his skills and continue a small income stream.
Doc Mo did not fit that type. Medium height with olive complexion and dark, thinning hair, the naturalized citizen, a native of Egypt, had spent the previous decade doing emergency room medicine at a giant New York City hospital. He’d never even visited Arkansas before he came to prospect the business.
“I’m a single father now,” he’d told Piney. “I need to arrange my career with more time for my children.”
Piney understood that. Maybe that shared vision cemented their relationship. Whatever the cause, Piney respected Doc Mo, trusted him with the health of friends and family and thought the community lucky to have snagged him as their physician, even for only one day a week.
“Please be seated, Mrs. Weston,” Doc Mo said, deferentially offering her the best chair.
He then offered his hand to Jesse and introduced himself. She was offered the seat beside her aunt but the old woman intervened.
“DuJess, there’s no cause for you to sit here and listen to these fellows scold me about what I eat,” she said. “Why don’t you go sit on the porch for a spell and take in the fresh air.”
The younger woman looked for a moment as if she might argue. But she didn’t. She got up and left the room, sharing one quick glance with Piney.
He sat down near the door, his notebook open to record anything that he thought might need to be noted on the chart.
The three people were silent for a moment while Doc Mo perused the lab results on the computer. Piney knew the doctor was fully aware of the numbers he was seeing. The man was either stalling for time or gathering his thoughts. Piney was pretty sure that Aunt Will knew what was going on without even needing the numbers to tell her.
Doc Mo raised his hands in almost a supplicating gesture. “It is worse,” he said. “But not so much worse.”
Aunt Will nodded.
“Your enzymes continue to go up,” he continued. “Metabolism of bilirubin is down. No surprises here. Clotting factor…” Doc Mo tutted in lieu of words. “The news that you are still feeling well enough to continue your regular activity is a good sign.”
“I cain’t just lay down and quit,” the old woman told him. “I’ve got things to do.”
He nodded. “That is positive. Life needs purpose. I would have all my patients so dedicated. But I would encourage you not to overdo it.” The doctor leaned forward slightly, resting his chin upon hands together in a prayerful pose. “Try to think of your liver as a delicate and fragile piece of spun glass. You would not toss it around your kitchen or drop it in your sink with ordinary dishes. You would be aware of it, take care of it, knowing how easily and quickly it could break. And how irreplaceable when it does.”
Aunt Will chuckled. “Doc Mo, Piney can tell you, I’ve never been one of those spun glass women. I’m more the galvanized wash bucket kind of gal.”
Piney hid his grin behind his hand. Even in the darkest of moments, Aunt Will had a way about her—no nonsense, no obfuscation—that was refreshingly reassuring. When the diagnosis first became evident, Piney had hoped that he was wrong. When Doc Mo concurred and explained it to Aunt Will, her lack of reaction had made him worry that she didn’t understand.
“You realize that you’re dying,” he’d said to her.
Aunt Will had smiled at him. “Good Lord, Piney, I’ve been headed that direction my whole life. The question was never ‘if?’ It was ‘when?’ and ‘how?’ Having my druthers on it, I think I prefer this over a cancer or a danged old heart attack. Still, nothing’s certain. A tree could fall on me on the walk home.”
Time had not appeared to heighten her anxiety.
“Have you told family members yet?” Doc Mo asked her.
She shook her head. “With all the people I’m related to, I’d have to put an announcement on the radio. I’d rather wait until it’s all over. Let ’em save their tears for when I can’t see ’em.”
“What about Jesse?” Piney asked. “If she’s come to stay and help you, she needs to know what’s headed in her direction.”
“DuJess is merely visiting,” Aunt Will assured him. “I don’t want my last bit of time with her marred with worrying about something we cain’t change.”
“Someone will need to stay with you soon,” Doc Mo pointed out. “I can order home health care, but they have a waiting list.”
Piney nodded. “And you live very far up the mountain,” he pointed out. “If not Jesse, then you need to confide in someone. It will worry me too much to have you up in that cabin all alone.”
Aunt Will took that suggestion thoughtfully, nodding for a moment before she spoke. “I’ll give it some consideration,” she told the two. “I’ll surely give it some consideration.”
Doc Mo reiterated his previous admonitions about diet and activity and reminded her of the symptoms she should watch out for and which she needed to report to Piney right away.
Aunt Will agreed and the doctor suggested another visit in a week if she’d seen no changes. Doc Mo was deferential and respectful to her as they said their goodbyes.
At the reception desk, Piney wrote out a card for her next appointment.
“I brought you some of those pickled beets you hanker for,” Aunt Will told him.
“Thanks,” he said. “Yours are the best on the mountain, hands down.”
“You’d better keep your hands down if you start bragging on pickles. In my day, women set a store by that like no other. If you was to play favorites, all the other aunts and grannies would skin you alive.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He handed Aunt Will the card and she slipped it into her purse and readied herself to leave.
“Didn’t your niece drive you down?”
Aunt Will shook her head. “She can’t get that dinky car of hers up the approach. She had to leave it at Marcy’s store.”
“I don’t want you walking up the mountain. After that procedure, you should lie down and rest a couple of hours. By then, I’ll be free to drive you home.”
“You know, Piney,” she said, “I did miss my nap and I’m plumb tuckered. I believe I will try to catch a few winks upstairs on your couch.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “But the couch is way too lumpy. I’ve got clean sheets on the bed. I’ll walk you up there.”
8
Jesse sat in the living room of the apartment over the clinic. The strange building was set up against the side of the upper slope. There were no stairs to the second floor, they’d simply walked up the hill to a porch on the back and then in through the door. The space beyond the porch, she noted, was a cut-out karst where the limestone had long ago collapsed, creating a relatively flat and protected area far enough from the next rise of the mountain to form a little yard of sorts with flower beds and lawn furniture.
Inside, the pine floors and eight-inch baseboards were original. The inexpensive discount furniture was not. But the place was clean and cozy and well kept.
Jesse had been very surprised to hear that Aunt Will wanted to take a rest before they started back home. The fact that Piney had obviously wanted her in the conference with the doctor, and Aunt Will had explicitly not wanted her there, was worrying. Jesse knew that Aunt Will was frailer than the last time she’d seen her, but that was so long ago. Her aunt seemed strong and vibrant. Still, Jesse reminded herself, Aunt Will was getting pretty old. And the afternoon nap seemed as much a part of her routine as breakfast at dawn.
So Jesse made herself at home on what proved to be a not particularly lumpy couch, while Aunt Will slept quietly in the main bedroom.
Sh
e was able to connect to the Wi-Fi downstairs and took the opportunity to go through all one hundred and twenty-two emails that had come in since she’d hiked up to Aunt Will’s cabin and out of civilization. She reassured a couple of concerned, sympathetic girlfriends that she wasn’t hiding, simply taking in an autumn in the mountains and visiting family.
She quickly clicked through the ones from her fellow laid-off teachers loop. Some people were coping, some were scared, some were taking the opportunity to vent. It had been the same for months.
Her little brother Ryan had sent a couple of video links to cats doing weird things. She didn’t laugh, but she did grin and roll her eyes.
Then she clicked on something from the school. Her heart immediately caught in her throat. At the top left side of the page was a smiling photograph of Sarah Wilkinson, Greg’s Sarah. The email announced itself as “the first installment in an all-new blog for the families of Lake Grove Middle School.”
Jesse saw the title of the blog, The Not-So-Secret Life of the Principal’s Wife, and groaned aloud. “Oh, brother.”
Almost against her will, Jesse read the first line.
I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be married to a middle school principal and involved in the spirit of education in our community.
“And to think,” Jesse said aloud with a degree of sarcasm she would never have allowed herself in public, “just a few short weeks ago you were merely a backstabbing boyfriend stealer. Give me a break!”
She wanted to look away, but she felt almost compelled to read. And as she read, she found herself frantically looking for gloating, hypocrisy, anything that she could point to and say, “Ah, hah!”
Sarah’s blog, however, was standard, ordinary, boring, filled with platitudes and lingo. Exactly the kind of wishy-washy, could-mean-anything advice one would expect from a principal’s wife. But clearly, Sarah relished her newfound status.
It made Jesse angry. Mad enough to spit, Aunt Will would have said. Then surprisingly, she calmed enough to actually think about that for a moment.
Greg’s career had been one of the things Jesse had liked the least and worried about the most. Although you had to be a teacher to become a school administrator, being a school administrator was not at all like teaching. It was the ins and outs of running a not-for-profit business. And it was the narrow, everyday politics of a tight-knit community. Jesse had been warned not to make close friends with anyone in particular. The teachers to whom she was already close, well that could not be helped, but she shouldn’t go out of her way to be especially friendly with any of the parents or neighborhood people. She needed to be equally nice to everyone. She was to avoid revealing anything personal about herself or Greg. And she was to keep any opinions about anyone or anything strictly to herself.