Elijah’s head jerked around quickly, his expression amazed at Sam’s comprehension. “That’s exactly it,” he admitted. “The most desperate situation here is usually still better than what we saw there every day,” he said. “The people have so little, and they’re so grateful for help. It’s hard, too, when I visit churches and see how absorbed everyone is in their lives and how little they think of or pray for the missionaries. I try not to judge,” he said quietly, “but it’s hard sometimes.”
“I can imagine.” He felt convicted himself.
“But the thing that is the hardest of all is the lack of faith I see here.”
Sam frowned. “What do you mean, exactly?”
“Living on the edge as we did, we had to have faith. We couldn’t have functioned without it. We were in desperate straits, and we prayed desperate prayers. And I believe as a result of that, we got answers. I’ve seen miracles. I’ve gone to villages, and as we prayed I literally saw medicine not run out when it should have. I saw dose after dose—thirty or forty—being administered from the same vial, and when we left it was still half full. I saw a little girl once, ready to die from malnutrition. We laid hands on her and prayed after we’d done all we could, but to tell you the truth, I never expected to see her alive when we went back the following week. She was up walking and talking,” he said, shaking his head. “I saw a man healed of leprosy.” Elijah carefully looked toward him for his response.
“I’ve seen miracles, too,” Sam admitted after a moment, and he remembered how he used to feel the empowering as he picked up the scalpel and did what he shouldn’t have been able to do. “Perhaps not quite like those, but they were miracles all the same. I haven’t seen too many recently,” he admitted.
“You’re here, aren’t you?” Elijah pointed out. “And so is Annie.”
“I guess you’re right about that.” He smiled.
They didn’t speak much after that. They arrived at Carl and Diane’s. He parked the car, and the two of them got out.
Annie was there, and Sam’s heart thumped when he saw her. She had apparently finished the chores and was headed somewhere. She was dressed in a beige linen suit, looked polished and professional, and he remembered what she had said about moving to Los Angeles. He realized how foolish he had been to take hope from a few conversations and smiles.
“I’m going to see Papa,” she said, and he could have imagined it, but it seemed as if she was looking everywhere except at his face. “There’s some cereal on the stove and fruit in the refrigerator if you’re hungry.”
“We’ll grab something on our way out of town,” Sam clipped back, and he saw her eyes cloud.
“Fine. Do you want the house key?”
“No. Go ahead and lock it up. I won’t need anything but what’s in the office. Tell Carl I’m glad he’s better and that I’ll be down to see him soon.”
Annie nodded. “See you both later, then.”
He doubted it. He nodded back. “Good-bye.”
Throughout their exchange Sam had been aware of Elijah watching with an expression of pain on his face, but now he lowered his gaze.
As Annie turned to leave, Sam turned his own face resolutely away, then unlocked the door to Carl’s office. He checked the appointment book. There were three office visits scheduled for this afternoon and two home visits this morning. And his patient in the hospital could probably be discharged today. He would go there first. He checked the telephone for messages and took care of them quickly. They were prescription refills and appointments to be scheduled. When he was finished, he changed the message on the greeting, giving his cell phone number as the one to be contacted in case of emergencies.
Sam and Elijah left, locking the office door behind them. They went to the hospital and discharged Sam’s patient, who was doing much better on the new heart medication.
“Thank you so much, Dr. Truelove,” she beamed, and Sam felt a flush of pleasure. She was a lovely lady.
“It was entirely my privilege,” he said, and she fairly glowed.
He bought Elijah breakfast at the Cracker Barrel and saw Ricky coming in on their way out. “That’s what I’m talking about, bro!” his brother crowed. “You’re getting the hang of this now.”
“The hang of what?” Sam asked, acting irritated with his brother out of habit.
“The hang of having a life.” Ricky grinned delightedly and shook hands with Elijah. “Good to see you again, brother. This gentleman is speaking at our church next Sunday, Sam,” Ricky informed him. “You ought to come. The quartet’s singing, too.”
Of course. Sam calculated and realized the annual Truelove reunion was coming up, traditionally the month when the Ambassadors reassembled and made their yearly appearances. With all the upheaval in his personal life and Carl’s illness, he had forgotten. He wondered if his mother had forgotten, as well, since no mention of the reunion had been made. “We’ll see,” he told Ricky, though Mama would probably invite him to church, too. If he wanted to say no to her, he would need to be hardening his heart well in advance. He was grateful for the warning.
“Gotta go,” he said to Ricky, who beamed and waved good-bye on his way to the booth.
Sam paid and then they headed for the hills to make their first call.
****
“How did this happen?” Sam asked, examining the farmer’s swollen eye.
“Got kicked by a mule.”
“How?”
“Shoeing him.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“This is going to need to be seen in a hospital.”
“Not going to no hospital.”
“This gash is going to require sutures.”
No answer, just a shake of his head.
Elijah cocked his eye and shrugged, began taking out the 4.0 Prolene and lidocaine. “Any loss of consciousness?” he asked. “Vomiting?”
“Neither one,” the man answered and hooked a thumb through the strap of his overalls.
“Seeing double?” Elijah continued.
“Seeing just fine. One of everything.”
Sam examined the eye, touched the bones and felt nothing obviously out of place. He wondered if he should make an excuse to go to the car and check his Merck’s Manual. “Look this way,” he instructed. “Now over there. Now up. Down.” No trapped ligaments, and the pupils looked good to him. He handed the ophthalmoscope to Elijah, who did the same.
“I ain’t paying for two doctors,” the man said suspiciously.
“I’m here as a bonus,” Elijah said with a smile. “Won’t cost you a dime. Looks all right to me,” he said to Sam after a quick look.
“You should really go and have this looked at by an ophthalmologist,” Sam urged. “And have a CT scan of your head to make sure you didn’t injure your brain.”
“I’m not going to do that,” the farmer said flatly. “I didn’t even want to call you.”
Sam could see the wife hovering around the corner.
He sighed, swabbed the eye area with Betadine, took the syringe from Elijah, injected the local anesthetic, and sutured the wound. The man sat stoic through the entire procedure. It took four stitches. Sam clipped the last one, and Elijah cleaned up. “Any problem getting a prescription filled?” Sam asked, wondering if the man was morally opposed to pharmacies as well as hospitals.
“I can take a prescription to town,” the wife said, suddenly appearing with coffee and a plate of cookies.
Sam wrote out two. One for an antibiotic and another for a nasal decongestant. “Don’t blow your nose for a week or two,” he said.
The farmer nodded, put back on his John Deere cap, and left. The wife wrote out a check for fifteen dollars while Sam and Elijah sat down and ate molasses cookies and helped themselves to coffee.
“He’s an ornery old coot, but I love him,” she told Sam, her eyes shining.
Sam smiled and took the check. He put it in his pocket and thought about how his life had changed.
“Thank you kindly, doctors,” she said.
“The pleasure was ours,” Elijah answered, and they went on to the next call.
****
Eliza Goddard was the exact opposite of the mule-kicked farmer. She lived in a huge Victorian house perched incongruously on a ridgetop. Sam could see a panoramic vista of the Great Smokies from the bay windows in the living room. She wrote romance novels for a living. Her message said she felt a little woozy, like her blood pressure might be a bit high. Sam rang the bell, he and Elijah were admitted by a maid, and when the waifish mistress of the house appeared, her face fell with disappointment upon seeing the two of them.
“Where’s Carl?” she asked, longing in her voice, and Sam made his diagnosis immediately.
“I’m afraid Dr. Dalton is in the hospital himself,” he said, and his analysis was confirmed when her face went white with dismay. Miss Goddard was in the grip of a vicious case of doctor crush. He would prescribe a dose of reality. “He’s recuperating, with his wife and daughter by his side.”
“Oh.” Silence. “He’s all right, though?”
“He should be fine.”
Another silence.
“You were concerned about your blood pressure?”
She brightened and nodded, apparently the topic of her health sparking her interest. “When I stand up I get dizzy and have to sit down again. I wondered if I might be having high-blood pressure. My father had it, you know.”
“Are you on medication for your blood pressure?”
“No.”
Sam nodded noncommittally. “Why don’t you just have a seat, and we’ll see what it’s reading.” Elijah opened the bag and handed him the cuff and stethoscope. He took it once. Twice. Standing. Sitting. Lying down. “One twenty over eighty,” he said. “Textbook normal.”
“Oh.” Definitely a disappointment.
“Any other symptoms?”
She thought, her expression hopeful. “Sometimes when I first wake up, I see little spots before my eyes.”
“Do you see them now?”
“No. I guess not.”
“When you do are there a lot of them, what you’d describe as a shower?”
“No. Just one or two.”
“Flashes of light or stars?”
“No.”
“Anything like heat waves?”
“No.”
Elijah handed him the opthalmoscope. Sam handed it back. “Be my guest,” he said.
Elijah obliged. “Looks just fine,” he said. He patted her arm and she brightened.
“What you’ve described are called vitreous floaters,” Sam told her. “They’re usually harmless clumps of cells. A normal part of the aging process.” Her face fell at the word aging.
“I don’t suppose you’d happen to have such a thing as a cup of coffee, would you?” Elijah asked, and she brightened considerably.
“Why, I was just going to offer you some,” she said. “Josie, bring coffee and scones.”
Elijah beamed. Sam shook his head. “Excuse me,” he said, and went into the hall to check messages at the office. There was one from another patient. He jotted the information down on his memo pad. An end-stage cancer patient needed something for pain. That definitely trumped scones and coffee.
“I’m afraid we have another call,” Sam said. Elijah made his apologies, and they were leaving just as the refreshments arrived.
“This is for Dr. Dalton’s free clinic,” Mrs. Goddard said, handing him a folded check. Sam put it in his pocket. “What hospital is he in?” she asked. “I’d like to send flowers.”
“Baptist in Asheville,” he answered.
He looked at the check when he was in the car. Five hundred dollars. No wonder Carl was willing to make a house call for a hypochondriac.
Elijah was more philosophical. “She’s lonely,” he said. “You can tell that by looking at her face.”
Sam shrugged, not bothering to argue that this wasn’t what he’d trained fifteen years for. They drove to their last call.
It was difficult. Their patient was a forty-three-year-old man in the end stages of stomach cancer. He was down to a hundred and twenty pounds. Sam administered an injection of morphine and prescribed fentanyl patches. The man fell mercifully asleep as the medication took effect. The family was grateful but worn down by the worry and grief. No cookies or coffee were offered. No money changed hands.
“It’s hard,” the drained wife said, and Sam looked into her eyes with compassion.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, his own words surprising him. He wasn’t sure where they had come from. Her eyes welled.
“Carl always prays with us,” she answered simply. Sam looked to Elijah. He stared down at his shoes.
Sam nodded and they all bowed their heads. “Heavenly Father,” Sam began quietly, “you see the suffering of your children. Your Word says you see every tear and your ears are open to their cries. That you have compassion on all you have made. Rain down, Lord,” he prayed, and he suddenly departed from the script he’d been composing in his mind. “Rain down.” His voice grew more intense. “We’re hungry for your touch, Lord. Have mercy. Give us healing. Help us, Lord. Help us.”
She was sobbing softly.
“Yes, Lord,” Elijah murmured. “Do it, Lord. In Jesus’ name.”
They drove back to town in silence, Sam lost in his own thoughts, Elijah in his.
****
Her father was sitting up in bed when Annie arrived, regaling the nurses with stories of the time old Jonas Carter popped both shoulders out of joint trying to lift his ’65 Pontiac off his prize-winning sow.
“He was drunk as a coot,” Carl said, “so I didn’t need any anesthetic to pop ’em back in.”
The nurse giggled. Annie cleared her throat. The story abruptly ended, details forever lost. How, for instance, the sow had come to be under the wheels of the ’65 Pontiac. Annie didn’t believe she cared to know.
“Annie, darling,” her father cried, and she went to him.
After their embrace, she inspected her father. She had expected a pale, wan, preparing-to-meet-the-Maker kind of attitude. She should have known better. Her father looked wonderful. His color was improving, his eyes were snapping and bright, and the most hopeful sign of all—his mouth was moving.
“I turn my back on you for a few days and look what happens,” Annie reproached him.
“Don’t I know it? But I’m on the mend now.”
Diane came in with a tray of food, and she and Annie greeted each other.
“What’s for lunch?” Annie asked.
Carl made a face as Diane lifted the lid off the plate. It was steamed whitefish and rice with cooked carrots and peas.
“I’m not bringing you a cheeseburger and fries, so don’t even start with me,” Diane said sternly.
“Sugar, it says unrestricted diet in big letters on my chart,” he argued back to his wife. “I just need to drink decaf instead of regular coffee.”
“That kind of thinking is what got you into this mess,” Diane snapped back. Carl looked at Annie with appeal in his eyes.
“No way. Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “I’m not getting in the middle of this.” Matlock played on the television. It ended and JAG started. Carl started in on the fish and cheered himself by taking a small bite of his dessert, a bowl of peach cobbler that was mostly canned peaches with a sprinkling of oatmeal and brown sugar over the top. Diane bustled about, rearranging cards and flowers.
“Sugar,” Carl said to his wife, “would you mind running down to the cafeteria and getting me something to drink? A caffeine-free diet soda?” he asked, and her face brightened immediately.
“Of course I wouldn’t mind.” She took her purse, and after leaning over and planting a kiss on his pursed lips, she left them.
“How do you feel about a quick trip to the drive-through, Annie Ruth?” he asked, a twinkle in his eye.
She shook her head firmly. “No way, Papa. Don’t waste your breath.”
He shrugged philosophically, as if he were required to try for his own self-respect, then revealed his true agenda. “How are you doing, Annie?” he asked, his voice nonchalant, and Annie smiled. Only Papa could suffer a heart attack, go through major surgery, charm the entire floor of nurses, expend untold energy attempting to con friends and relatives into bringing him forbidden food, and still have the energy to probe his daughter’s affairs.
“I’m doing all right.”
“And Sam?”
“He seems to be doing fine. The little girl’s tube was put back in, you know,” she said, and her father’s face became serious.
“There were a lot of prayers going up for that little girl,” he said soberly. “If the Lord does take her, it should be in His time and His way, not like that.”
She nodded. Her own feelings exactly.
“How is Sam doing with my patients?” Papa asked, going to work halfheartedly on the fish.
“He saw a big crowd yesterday at the free clinic. Elijah Walker’s helping him.”
“Ah yes, the missionary doctor home from the field.”
Trust that Papa would know. Even in the hospital he had his ear to the ground.
“How did you find out?”
“Margie Sue came by and told me,” he said. “Now there’s a story,” he said, and Annie’s interest was piqued.
“Why do you say that?”
Her father looked coy for a minute, but neither one of them was fooled. He couldn’t keep a piece of news to himself any more than fly to the moon.
“Oh, nothing. Just that they aren’t strangers.”
Annie shrugged. “Sam said they had known each other before.”
Her father’s eyes lit. “Oh, it was a little more than that.”
She looked at him with interest. “Well? Are you going to tell me or keep me guessing all day?”
“They were engaged.”
“No!”
He nodded. “Elijah gave her a ring and everything, but then he got the call to the mission field. Next thing you know, he was gone, and Mary Ellen Anderson wasn’t engaged anymore. John waited around a decent amount of time, then moved in before somebody else snapped her up.”
At the Scent of Water Page 24