Good Medicine

by Bobby Hutchinson

  She felt relaxed and peaceful, sitting in the bright kitchen with these kind and tactful women.

  “I made Nanaimo bars,” Rose Marie said when everyone was finished eating. “You drink coffee, Doctor? Or I can make tea, herbal or regular, whatever you want.”

  “Coffee’s fine.” A jolt of caffeine would help get her through the afternoon.

  The Nanaimo bars were decadent—layers of sweet custard, coconut and smooth dark chocolate. Between the sugar and caffeine, Jordan was soon wide-awake again.

  “I read that now they think chocolate is actually good for you,” Christina said. “What’s your professional opinion, Jordan? You can lie—we’ll all be grateful.”

  They all turned to look at her.

  “Women have always known chocolate’s good for them,” she said, munching a second slice. “We didn’t need scientists to prove it.”

  The others smiled and nodded, and then fell silent. Waiting politely for her to tell them something about herself. But she couldn’t. She’d learned to talk to Helen, but she still couldn’t let others into her private space. “You’re an amazing cook, Rose Marie,” she said. “I’ll have to learn to cook, too. I’ve gotten way too used to eating out and ordering in.”

  “Here, we don’t have much choice,” Alice said. “And most of us don’t have the money, even if there was somewhere to go besides Mabel’s.”

  “Working in Emerg, you probably came home too tired to do much cooking,” Christina said in her defense. “You’re gonna find life a lot slower here.”

  “I’m looking forward to that.”

  “You got family on the mainland?” Alice asked.

  “No.” Jordan hesitated. “An ex-husband.” The ex part was stretching the truth somewhat. “No kids,” she added with a sense of regret. “I have one brother, but he’s in Seattle. I don’t see him very often.”

  “Your folks passed on?” Alice obviously believed family was very important.

  It would be rude to avoid a direct answer. “My mother died when I was four,” Jordan managed to say. “My father figured he couldn’t take care of us on his own so he put my brother and me into foster care. He’s still alive, but I don’t have any contact with him.”

  “Too bad,” Alice said shaking her head. “We all need family.”

  The women nodded.

  “We have a saying,” Grandmother Alice said, murmuring in her own language. “It means we are all related.”

  “Most of us, my generation anyways, we got separated from our folks, too,” Rose Marie said. “They took the kids from the reserves and put us either with foster families in the city or in residential schools.”

  “I’ve read about that,” Jordan said. “That had to be one of the most destructive things politicians ever did.”

  “Yeah.” All three women agreed, but without any show of emotion.

  “It was bad, getting taken away,” Alice said, matter-of-fact. “And then it was real hard, comin’ back.”

  “Culture shock comin’ and goin’,” Rose Marie agreed, and they all laughed.

  “But now we got our own school, our kids stay here in Ahousaht.”

  Jordan recognized the pride in her tone. “When I saw the school the first time I came here, I was impressed. It’s beautiful.”

  Rose Marie nodded. “And we got some really good teachers.”

  “Did any of them grow up here?”

  “Three.” Alice poured Jordan another cup of coffee. “There’s two from Away, but they’ve been here two years now. Looks like they might just stay.”

  “Is that a problem?” Jordan asked. “Teachers leaving?”

  “Oh, yeah, big-time,” Christina said. “Last year we had some leave before September was even over. That young couple who came from the Interior—”

  She was interrupted by a man in rough work clothes and rubber boots who opened the sliding door wide and stepped inside.

  Rose Marie got up fast. “Peter, what’s happened?”

  “Louie’s cut his leg damned near off with the power saw,” he said, breathing hard. “I knew the new doc was comin’ here for lunch—we called for the ambulance but it’s got a flat tire.”

  “This is my husband, Peter Crow,” Rose Marie said.

  “We’d better hurry, Peter.” Jordan got up quickly, adrenaline pumping. “I’ll have to get my medical bag from the apartment.”

  “You go with Dad,” Christina said. “Give me your key, I’ll bring your bag.” She turned to her father. “Where’s Louie?”

  “Down by the old wharf, he’s bleedin’ pretty bad, but Silas is there. He’ll get it stopped. C’mon, Doc.”

  Jordan had to run to keep up with him. He’d left a battered green half ton running, and she climbed into the passenger seat, barely getting the door shut before Peter stepped hard on the accelerator.

  A medical emergency. For the first time all day, Jordan felt confident that she was doing exactly what she was meant to do.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HER PATIENT WAS LYING FLAT on an old dock in a pool of coagulating blood. His right thigh, halfway between knee and groin, had been torn open in a crosswise cut. Someone had been smart enough to elevate the wound and apply a pressure bandage.

  Jordan knelt and looked into the man’s eyes, at the same time taking his wrist, gauging his pulse.

  “Hi, I’m Doctor Burke. Can you tell me your name?” She knew it, but needed to ascertain his level of shock.

  “Louie Adams.” His voice was thin and reedy, but he was conscious and responding. Rapid pulse, dilated pupils. Shock, but not bad. Considering.

  Louie was stoically silent, and an equally silent crowd had collected around him. Someone had draped a jacket over his chest and shoulders, possibly the lean man who knelt beside him. He was talking to Louie in a low tone, his shoulder-length black hair partially hiding his face.

  The man’s hair had a dramatic white streak, although he looked young. His black leather jacket was well-worn, open to reveal a white T-shirt with a picture of an eagle in full flight. His jeans fit like a second skin, molding to his long, strong thighs. He looked up, meeting Jordan’s eyes. His were clear and cool, a surprising pale green with specks of gold, and for an instant she had the disconcerting feeling that he could see into her mind.

  “I’m Silas Keefer,” he said in a deep, soft voice. He didn’t smile.

  “Jordan Burke. Hi.” She’d heard that voice before, she thought, turning back to her patient. “Okay, Louie, we’ll get some fluids into you and then take you up to the medical center.”

  Although just how she was going to accomplish that without any medical supplies or an ambulance—

  “It’s slowing down now, Silas. I’ll have it stopped in a minute.” Louie’s glazed eyes looked to the man beside her.

  Obviously he was in shock. Silas leaned over her patient and murmured something close to his ear. Jordan couldn’t make it out.

  From somewhere nearby, she heard Christina. “I’ve got your bag here, Jordan, and the medical pack from the ambulance. The first-aid guys are bringing a stretcher. We’ll have to use a pickup to get him to the center—it’ll take too long to fix the damned tire. You want me to establish a line?”

  Christina crouched beside Jordan, proving herself first-rate at finding a vein.

  The flow of blood from the wound was much less than Jordan had expected, and there didn’t appear to be a severed artery or nerve damage. The saw had bit deeply into the muscle, the fleshy part of the thigh.

  Jordan supervised Louie’s transfer first to a stretcher and then to the back of the pickup truck that had backed in close. Through it all, Silas Keefer helped without once getting in the way. Jordan was aware of him the whole time, as she was sometimes aware of electricity in the air before a thunderstorm.

  In the back of the truck, she crouched beside her patient, feeling a little like a pioneer doctor as she steadied the drip and kept tabs on Louie’s pulse and breathing. Christina and Silas Keefer rode in front b
eside the driver.

  At the medical center, Jordan had to argue with Louie, who refused to be airlifted to Tofino.

  “What good’s having a doctor here if you’re gonna send me to the hospital over there? Can’t you sew me up right here, Doc?”

  Jordan considered it. It would have been impossible if there was major nerve damage or arterial bleeding, but Louie had lucked out.

  “I’d have to give you a brief general anesthetic,” she warned. Christina had said she was qualified at anesthesia, but they’d never worked together. “Wouldn’t you feel safer having this procedure done in hospital?”

  “Hell, no,” Louie insisted. “You’ve sewed people up before, haven’t you?”

  “Oh, yes.” Jordan grinned. “One or two.” She’d done more than her share of minor surgery in the E.R.

  “Then do it, Doc. I want you to patch me up here, that way I can be home in a couple days, keep an eye on the kids for the wife. She works at the RCMP office.”

  Jordan hoped she was making the right decision. “Okay, that’s what we’ll do.”

  As she and Christina scrubbed, Jordan said, “That tall guy, Silas Keefer, who is he? He knew a lot about first aid, but he left before I could talk to him.”

  “Oh, that’s my older brother.”

  “Your brother?” Jordan shot Christina a surprised look. Different surnames and no family resemblance. Even Silas’s speech patterns were unlike Christina’s slow, measured delivery.

  “He’s my half brother,” Christina amended. “From Mom’s first marriage.”

  “I see. Has he had medical training? He seemed to know exactly what to do.”

  “Not really.” Christina concentrated on soaping her hands. “Silas does a lot of things. He’s a writer, he’s published a few books and he writes articles for various journals. He lives in the bush outside of town. He’s not very social. I keep telling him thirty-six is too young to be eccentric, but he’s determined to play the part.”

  “So he’s your big brother.” Jordan felt a familiar jolt of homesickness, thinking of her own big brother. “Is he married?” There was no real reason for the question—except that she very much wanted to know.

  “Nope. He came close a couple years back, a nurse from Edmonton who spent a year up here. But she couldn’t stand the isolation. She went home, Silas didn’t follow, so that was that.”

  Jordan filed that information away and forcefully evicted Silas Keefer from her mind. She had work to do.

  The surgery on Louie’s leg took every ounce of Jordan’s concentration. She was accustomed to an entire crew of nurses and aides, and far more sophisticated equipment. The clinic had the basics, but it was a strange experience to work with only Christina and an ambulance attendant standing by. Jordan was acutely conscious of being totally responsible for her patient’s well-being, in a way she never had been at St. Joe’s.

  The wound was jagged and dirty, the flesh ripped by the teeth of the saw. Splinters of wood needed careful extraction, and there was heightened danger of infection from the dirt and oil off the blade of the saw. She heaved a sigh of relief when the procedure was finally over, shocked to learn that the afternoon had faded into evening.

  She talked to Louie’s wife, Roberta, and then to his mother, Angie. A long string of concerned relatives and friends dropped by the clinic, and Christina was kept busy reassuring them.

  Louie came out of the anesthetic in record time, and within an hour was asking for something to eat, which astonished Jordan.

  He had to be in severe pain. She’d ordered five milligrams of morphine every hour to keep him comfortable, and she couldn’t believe he was actually hungry. “Food’s not a good idea,” she warned. “You may be nauseous, I’d recommend only liquids until tomorrow.”

  “C’mon, Doc,” Louie wheedled. “I cut my leg, not my stomach. Can’t I at least have some soup?”

  “Okay, then. I’ll see if I can find a tin of clear broth,” Jordan offered doubtfully, thinking of the woodstove she had no idea how to light. She felt more than a little nostalgic about St. Joe’s, where one call to housekeeping took care of these kind of details.

  “Oh, you won’t have to make anything. I think somebody left a pot of soup back there in your kitchen,” Christina said with a mischievous grin. “I unlocked your door so the donor could get in. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Mind? What are you, nuts?”

  Jordan went through the connecting door into her apartment, and stopped dead at the kitchen. The cookstove was giving off waves of heat. Not only was there a pot of soup simmering, but on the table someone had laid out three kinds of salad, a tray of sliced beef, what looked like a meat pie, along with jars of pickles, relish and berries. On the counter, she saw another pie, chocolate cake, oatmeal cookies—and homemade bread.

  Jordan studied the bounty, and for the second time that day, tears burned at the back of her eyes. For several long moments she couldn’t contain them.

  Get a grip, for God’s sake. It’s only way too much food. But there was something about women welcoming her by bringing gifts of food that touched her deeply.

  “Louie’s hungry,” she said aloud to no one, blowing her nose and studying the feast. She filled a small bowl with broth from the potato chowder, poured a glass of apple juice and, folding paper towel into a napkin, used a battered cookie sheet as a tray. Then she took it all to the room where Louie was stretched out, his heavily bandaged leg elevated and IV firmly in place.

  Roberta was there with him and she took over, putting the tray on a bedside stand, spooning the soup into her husband’s mouth.

  “You and Christina go have some supper,” she suggested. “I’ll take care of Louie. Nothin’ to it, I been doin’ it for ten years already. He’s an awful baby when something goes wrong.” But the glance she and Louie exchanged was tender.

  “I dunno about you, Jordan, but I’m starving,” Christina said.

  “Have I got a dinner for you.” Jordan took her back to the kitchen, and together they filled plates and sat on the rump-sprung couch to eat.

  “I’ll have to give some of this away or it’ll go bad. There’s enough here for twenty people,” Jordan said.

  “We can put some of it out in the clinic for a free lunch tomorrow. There’ll be a crowd around—everybody will want to size up the new doc.”

  That should have unnerved her, but Jordan was far too tired. By the time she’d finished a slice of blueberry pie, she was yawning.

  “Excuse me,” she apologized, and then yawned again.

  “Why not go to bed?” Christina gathered up their dishes and stacked them in the plastic dishpan in the sink. “These’ll keep till morning, dirty dishes always do. We’ll just stow the meat and salad in the fridge— I’ll take Roberta a plateful. I’m gonna set up a cot for her beside Louie’s bed. That way she can keep an eye on him for us during the night. I’ll check the drip and make sure there’s no bleeding.”

  “Bless you. I’m absolutely wiped out. It must be the sea air.”

  “Or it could have something to do with a major emergency your first day on the job. I meant to ask, are you planning on having office hours every day? A couple of Roberta’s relatives were asking.”

  “Every day except Sunday. I didn’t come here to laze around, I’m used to the pace in the E.R. I’ll put a sign on the door with the hours. What do you think is reasonable? Eight to twelve, and then two to five?”

  “You can try that.” Christina laughed. “People here don’t go much by the clock, we run on what we call Indian time. That means people will turn up when it suits them. But they also don’t mind waiting, so it evens out. There’s also a lot of extra stuff that won’t fit into rigid office hours. Like the well-baby clinic once a week and Community Care where we go out to whoever needs us. There’s also a drug education program for teens and a prenatal group. You sure don’t have to attend all those things all the time, but it would be great if you’d come once in a while.”

 
“I wish now I’d gone into general practice. Until I get the hang of it, I’m going to have to rely on you to keep me on track.”

  “It shouldn’t take that long, you strike me as a reasonably bright woman.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  They both grinned. Today they’d worked together as a smooth, efficient unit. As if they’d done it for years.

  “We’ll grab time tomorrow to work out a sort of timetable,” Christina said. “You go on to bed. If anybody needs you, they know where to come.”

  “Thanks, Christina. For everything. And tell your mom thanks for the lunch, I sort of ate and ran.”

  “No kidding, I wonder why? I’ll tell her.”

  After Christina went back into the clinic, Jordan covered the remaining food, turned out the lights, and made her way into the bedroom. Groaning when she realized her suitcase had been flopped onto the double bed, she wrestled it to the floor so there’d be room for her to sleep. She put on the worn flannel nightgown she’d had since her intern days, and after a quick wash in the bathroom, tumbled into bed. She’d unpack in the morning.

  The mattress was firm, the sheets soft, and Jordan burrowed into the fluffy comforter. The window she’d opened let in the smell of the sea with a distinct tinge of pine, mingling with wood smoke, maybe from her own kitchen stove.

  She really had to learn how to light that thing—she’d probably even have to learn how to use the oven. Unless the women took pity on her and kept bringing food, she’d also have to learn to cook. There was so much for her to learn here. It felt as if she’d been catapulted to a different planet. One where Garry couldn’t find her.

  But it wasn’t Garry’s face that came to mind as she began to relax. It was the lean, hard-edged features of Silas Keefer.

  You’re out of it, Burke. You’re so tired you’re hallucinating.

  With a sigh of exhaustion and something closer to contentment than she’d felt in a long while, she closed her eyes and fell asleep.

  LESS THAN A MILE AWAY, Silas slumped in front of his laptop, struggling with the lengthy article he’d agreed to write on ideological differences toward healing between native and white culture. It was for the University Press, to be included in a book on many diverse healing modalities. It had been assigned by a professor he’d come to respect during his student days, and Silas was being well paid for it—the main reason he’d taken on the contract.