One Shenandoah Winter

by Davis Bunn

  He started to turn away, knowing there was no answer he could give to her original question. Then he remembered and leaned over the desk. He said softly, “Poppa Joe is supposed to come in later.”

  A hand flew to Hattie’s throat. “Oh no. Is there—”

  “Just bring him in as soon as he arrives, all right?” He straightened and gave an abrupt nod to the people waiting. There was a quiet murmur of response, the same reserved greeting he met in the town. Nathan opened the door to the back, and wondered how he could feel both enriched and saddened by such a soft little sound.

  The day continued at a normal pace. Most of the ailments Nathan confronted were predictable and would heal with time.

  He found himself enormously satisfied by this, which surprised him. There was little of the intellectual challenge he had known in the hospital, no sense of pushing forward the boundaries of medical knowledge. He had always considered himself a solid clinician with little ability to deal with patients personally. Yet these people responded to him with trust and almost pathetic appreciation. And addressing complaints which would improve was gratifying beyond words.

  Nathan found himself learning from these simple folk, watching their reactions to his words as much as studying their ailments. He did not know exactly what he was seeking, yet found himself comforted to be searching at all. And he saw how most of these people held traces of the same quiet highland strength as Poppa Joe. Softened by life in a town, yet there all the same.

  Which was perhaps why he was ready when he opened the door to the rear consulting room and found Poppa Joe seated in the chair by the window. The old man pushed himself erect and said, “Don’t look like things is changed much since the last time I was here.”

  “Medicine has changed enormously. This place is a museum.” He shook the coarsened palm, looked around for the file, picked it up, and saw that it was empty. “When was the last time you saw the doctor?”

  “Oh, it weren’t for me. That was back when my Mavis was feeling poorly.”

  Nathan set down the empty folder. “How long ago was that?”

  “Must be nigh on twenty years now.”

  “And you’ve never seen a doctor since then?”

  “Nary a time.”

  Nathan pointed to the examining table. “Sit here on the edge, please. How are you feeling?”

  “Not too bad. Few aches and pains. Bit off my feed of late.”

  Nathan crossed his arms and tried hard to concentrate. Poppa Joe’s hand gave palsied tremors as he held the windowsill and settled himself back down. It was a common trait of age, tied to muscle and nerve deterioration. Yet all the medical knowledge in the world could not erase his sudden ache at the thought of Poppa Joe joining the legions of the lost. “Then could you tell me why you think you’re seriously ill?”

  “I don’t think, son. I know.” The old man was so out of place here, among the antiseptic smells and harsh clanging sounds and bright instruments. But his blue eyes held the same calm, distant stare. “I’m thinking you ain’t a believer.”

  The quiet statement seemed somehow correct here. “No.”

  “Well, then. I don’t know what I can tell you that you’ll understand.”

  Nathan nodded, aware of how bizarre this conversation would have sounded to his compatriots at the hospital. And yet how natural it sounded here. “Do you have any swellings or discolorations, any unusual pains?”

  “Yep. Them I do. But I’ve had ‘em before, mind.”

  “Well, would you show me what it is you have this time?”

  “If’n you want.” The old man pushed himself erect and began the laborious process of undoing his shirt. “Ain’t gonna do neither of us any good, though.”

  Nathan resisted the urge to go over and help. “Why did you agree to come in this afternoon?”

  “‘Cause it was a friend what did the asking.” Poppa Joe finished with the last button and pulled off his shirt. “I don’t like saying no to a friend.”

  But Nathan was no longer listening. Even before he had crossed the room, he knew. Before he was close enough to study the discoloration, before he palpitated the skin and noted the lack of normal tension, he was certain.

  He eased himself upright, moving as slow as the old man now. Poppa Joe watched him with the calmness of one already aware of what was coming. “I was right, now, wasn’t I?”

  “I need to get you over to Charlottesville for some blood work and an X ray.” He started for the door. “Let me go give them a call and see if they’ll fit us in tonight.”

  “Son?”

  But he did not stop. He did not want to answer that question or have his face inspected by those wise old eyes.

  His ancient enemy had found him again.

  Fourteen

  Mrs. Wilkes? I’m Margaret Simmons.” The gray-haired woman approached with a professional smile and an outstretched hand.

  “It’s Miss Wilkes. Connie, actually.” Now that she was here, she was nervous. No less determined, but nervous. The woman facing her was impressive. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “You sounded very, well, obstinate.” The smile was quick but genuine. “I decided it was better to accept than risk losing an argument.”

  “There are things I need to know,” Connie said doggedly. Standing there in the hospital lobby, however, she felt less positive. Everything here was so polished. The place reeked of money and power and knowledge and citified ways. Especially this woman. Margaret Simmons was perfectly dressed in muted tones of cream and ivory and coffee. Her gray hair was fashionably cut, her only jewelry was a watch and a brooch that together probably cost more than Connie’s car. The woman stood impossibly erect, and spoke with quick, intelligent bursts. Connie wished she had taken the time to check her makeup. Or that she had not come at all. “We’ve got a right to know more than you’ve told us.”

  “Yes, I see.” Margaret Simmons studied her a moment. “Perhaps I was wrong to insist you accept Nathan Reynolds with so little background information.”

  “Doggone right.”

  “But you sounded, well, desperate. And beggars cannot always be choosers.”

  “We may be hard up, Mrs. Simmons. But we’re still a town that holds fast to our values and our citizens. We need somebody we can trust.”

  The gaze remained steady. “You don’t find Nathan to be a competent physician?”

  “No, it’s not that.” Again there was the sense of having stepped off into a void. “He’s a fine doctor. But he’s, he’s . . .”

  “The most irascible, difficult, stubborn, domineering, extraordinarily infuriating individual you have ever met.”

  Connie tried to repress the grin, but it managed to slip out of its own accord. “I guess we’re talking about the same fellow after all.”

  Margaret Simmons laughed, and shed both years and her professional barriers. “The first six months Nathan Reynolds worked here, I alternated between wanting to shoot him and wanting to pin a medal on him.”

  “Which one won?”

  “Oh, he was far too talented to shoot. So I just made do by trying to avoid him whenever possible.”

  “Yeah, that sounds familiar.” Connie could not help it. She was finding herself not only outgunned, but actually liking this woman. “I hope it worked better for you than it has for me.”

  “No, it didn’t work at all.” She motioned with her hand for Connie to accompany her back through the front doors. “My guess is that a well-run hospital is like a small town in a lot of ways, Miss Wilkes.”

  “Please, call me Connie.”

  “And I’m Margaret. A hospital can become a home in and of itself for the dedicated doctor. And there has never been a doctor more dedicated than Nathan Reynolds. At least not one I have met.” She led Connie down around the side of the building, following a path which fronted a baffling array of departmental signs. “A good specialist can become so absolutely lost in his work that the outside world becomes a mere shadow. There is a risk in this
. A terrible risk, especially if his specialization is one of the, well, one of the more critical ones.”

  “Nathan’s was one of these?”

  “Yes,” she said, the word a sigh. “Yes, it was.”

  Connie glanced over as they passed the emergency entrance, with a trio of gleaming ambulances parked alongside. “It takes almost two hours for the nearest ambulance to get to our town. For the past three years, since our old doctor died, folks with a real emergency got carted to Charlottesville in the back of the town hearse. We always said it was so they could get used to the ride.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Yes, it is. Hard to believe Nathan Reynolds would give up a place like this and start over in our little town.”

  Lines tightened and lengthened from Margaret’s eyes and mouth. “He did not have much choice.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  The woman sighed herself to a stop. “There’s a similar danger for a hospital administrator. We can come to feel that every day is a battle over money. We can forget we’re dealing with lives here. And pain. And fear. And families with hopes and dreams and anxieties that spread out far beyond the confines of our little hospital.”

  “Not so little,” Connie said, wondering at what she was observing emerge in the other woman. “But I hear what you’re saying.”

  “Yes, I believe you do.” She gave a quick smile and started off again.

  The path led around a protective wall of shrubbery and brought them to a one-story brick building. Its glass entranceway was decorated with smiling suns and huge flowers and children’s drawings. In front stood a gleaming jungle gym and seesaw and sandbox. Despite the day’s cool sunshine, however, the playground was empty and still. The wind pushed a seesaw back and forth with a dreary squeak. The sight of that silent building and the empty playground drew a shiver from Connie.

  “Miss Wilkes, Connie, you have asked me for details about Nathan Reynolds. There is only one way you would understand, and that is for you to walk through those doors. But I warn you, it is a positively terrifying place. I want you to be absolutely sure you are strong enough to learn the answers to your questions.”

  Margaret Simmons waited, an implacable, determined, very focused woman. Connie looked from her face to the doorway and back again. The desire to turn and run was so great she could actually taste it. She started to speak but halted herself, for the woman’s gaze said it all.

  She took a deep breath, clenched her hands into tight little balls, and nodded.

  “Very well.” Margaret Simmons walked over and pulled open the door.

  Connie forced herself to enter. The determination that had carried her this far kept her going through the lobby, even though every further step was a struggle. Even though there was no air to breathe inside that large chamber.

  The bright pictures and the music and the sunlight streaming through the glass doors did not belong here any more than she did. Nor did the smile which the receptionist gave them. “Mrs. Simmons, what a pleasant surprise.”

  “Hello, Jill. This is Connie Wilkes. She’s city manager of Hillsboro, the town where Nathan is now practicing.”

  The woman’s face brightened even further. “You don’t say! How is Doctor Reynolds?”

  “Fine.” Connie’s voice sounded foreign to her ears, shaky and empty. “He’s fine.”

  “Oh, I’m so glad to hear it. He was one of my favorite people.”

  “Jill,” Margaret warned, “come on, now.”

  “Well, it’s true,” the woman said stubbornly. “That man was the most caring individual I have ever met, when it came to our children.”

  A new voice coming down the hallway chimed in, “You can say that again, sister.”

  Connie turned to meet a large black woman with the same determined strength and intelligence she had found in Margaret Simmons’s eyes. “Nathan’s working in your town, that what I heard?”

  “Yes. Yes, he is.”

  “Well, you tell him Dolores said we miss him. All of us. The children most of all.”

  “All right. I will.” How could these people be so cheerful? How did they have the strength to come in here at all? It was one thing to walk through those doors the first time. But to do this day after day, how was it possible?

  Dolores offered her a warm hand. “Nathan is a gold-plated saint in my book. You can tell him that as well.” She gave Connie’s hand a brisk squeeze, then turned away, calling, “I see you over there, Johnny. You hiding from me?”

  A young voice said glumly, “It wouldn’t do any good if I did, would it?”

  “Not a bit. Come on now, the sooner we start, the sooner we finish.” She stood and waited for a too-thin waif of a boy to walk over. He had no hair. His scalp was bare save for thin wisps of blond-gray fuzz. He wheeled a metal stand holding a drip attached to his wrist as he walked. The wrist was so thin it made Connie’s heart hurt just to look at it. Over in the corner a woman watched the boy walk down the hall with Dolores. A magazine rested opened and unread in her lap.

  The receptionist said cheerfully to Margaret, “Anything we can do for you?”

  “No, nothing. I just wanted to show Miss Wilkes where Nathan used to work.”

  Connie wanted to say something. It was only polite. But she could not pull her gaze away from the woman seated in the corner. Her eyes stayed fixed upon the empty hallway, the place where her son had once been. Connie felt if she looked much longer into those red-rimmed eyes, she would never find her way out again.

  She started down the hallway because Margaret Simmons took hold of her arm and walked her. “Our hospital is one of four or five in the country to have established such a clinic as this. We specialize in what is coming to be known as pediatric oncology. That is the new medical term for what goes on here. Nathan Reynolds specialized in cancers that attack children. Nathan came here straight from his residency at Sloan-Kettering. He was a prize. Even the senior doctors were amazed at some of the work he did, and those doctors are a hard-bitten lot.”

  They passed door after door. Connie looked because she could not help herself. Every one of the rooms held a bed and a body too small for the bed. Most of them also held families. All the families held gazes that mirrored the woman in the reception area.

  “But Nathan never could learn the vital lesson of separating his private life from his work. He never learned how to walk away and leave this behind, to keep that kernel of spirit and life set apart from what you see here. For Nathan, there simply wasn’t anything but work. He gave himself to his patients. Heart and mind and soul.”

  Margaret Simmons stopped in front of another door. The room held a single bed. An empty one. It should have been comforting to look in that room. But Margaret stared in there with an unreadable expression, and she said, “Oncology is an area of tremendous growth and opportunity. We are making enormous strides. Almost on a monthly basis we are seeing one breakthrough or another.” She paused a long moment then, her eyes gazing at the empty bed. “But the fact of the matter is, most of the children who come in here suffer through radical and experimental treatments, and then they die.”

  The words held such a bitter edge that Connie found herself shivering again. Shivering and sweating at the same time. Radical. She could not look at the empty bed any longer.

  “Nathan was responsible for two new treatments which have now become standards in the field. He worked not only on healing the children, but protecting them from pain. I can remember some nights, working late, coming down into the cafeteria and finding him poring over reams of scientific journals. And his face . . .”

  The hard-edged professional exterior slipped for a moment as Margaret Simmons bit down hard on her lips. There was an instant of waiting, the only sound the murmur of voices from two adjoining rooms. Connie looked away, trying to focus on something, anything else. She found herself reading the signs that marched down the ceiling of the long hallway. Each one of them held such unknown terrors she had to lo
ok away.

  “His face,” Margaret sighed. “His face carried all the pains and the miseries of what he was confronting in here.”

  Connie wanted to stop the flow. Turn and walk away, or simply say the words, That’s enough. But she was held by the moment and the place, in a grip as cold and firm as death.

  Margaret drew herself upright. “Nathan Reynolds had a nervous breakdown. I could see it coming. All of us could. We tried to talk to him. We urged him to take time off, to go for counseling. We did everything but the one thing we should have done, which was to order him to leave. But the work he was doing, the work . . .”

  Then it came. A sound from one of the rooms farther down the hall. A single whimper. A sound as clear as a shattering crystal bell. A voice murmured in response, a man’s this time, full of love and pain all its own. And Connie knew if she stayed one instant more in this ward she would go insane.

  She turned and started for the doors. She did not care what she looked like, fleeing from the cold shadows that gripped this place and squeezed it dry of air and light and life. She did not care. She had to get out.

  She did not stop until the sunlight was bathing her in an elixir she wished she could take and pour straight into her bones. She heard footsteps come up and stop alongside her. She heard the now familiar voice say, “Nathan was in our mental-care facility on and off for eighteen months. When he came out, he was spent. Utterly spent. I brought him home with me for a while. He had become very close to both my husband and me. But Nathan is a doctor. He lives to heal. We had to find some way for him to practice, some place utterly removed from here and everything . . .”

  “I understand,” Connie said. Finally. And what was more, “I feel like such a fool.”

  “No, I’m the fool. I made such a botch of this. I tried to correct one mistake by making an even greater one.” Margaret Simmons’s hand came to rest on Connie’s arm a second time. But now her tone was pleading. “I wanted to give Nathan the chance of a fresh start, do you see? But that was hopeless. I should never have thrust him and his impossible manner into a town of utter strangers, and hope that everything would work out fine. I was blind. Totally blind.”