George maintained his poker face. Esme Levine had not wanted him to tell Carlton anything and he had to respect that. “Medical things are not always straight forward, Carlton. I’ll see what I can do today.”
The schoolteacher bit his lip and nodded. George patted his arm reassuringly and then headed off along Toughnut Street. He didn’t mention Carlton’s conjunctivitis.
* * *
His surgery that morning was not busy so he was able to visit Esme Levine earlier than he thought he would.
He found her in bed, leaning back against a bank of pillows. There was a smell of vomit and he noted the bowl on the floor.
“Carlton tells me that he wanted to get Doctor Matthews to see you while I was away, Esme.”
“I only wanted to see you, Doctor Goodfellow. I only trust you.”
“So how are you feeling? Any better.”
She shook her head. I’m still sick every day and I can’t eat. My throat burns and these abdominal pains keep coming.” She sighed and touched her head. “And I think I am losing my hair. More and more seems to be just falling out.”
“You are losing weight as well, I think. Can I examine you?”
As he did he found her abdomen to be tender and the abdominal mass was either slightly larger, or the same but easier to feel, because of the weight loss.
“Esme, I think that surgery is the only answer here. You must let me operate.”
“No!” she said firmly.
“Then you should at least come into hospital.”
She shook her head.“No hospital.”
“Then I need to have a frank talk with Carlton. He needs to know. I saw him at school this morning and he asked me what was wrong with you.”
She bit her lip and shook her head again. “No, I don’t want him to know.”
“But why? He is understandably very concerned about you. And if this lump in your abdomen is malignant, then he has a right to know what can happen.”
“You mean, he needs to know that I am going to die?”
“Yes. He needs to know that it is a possibility.”
She turned her face away and let out a sob. “The thing is…it may be for the best. I…I don’t think he would care.”
“That’s not true. He’s worried sick. In fact, I believe he may be getting ill himself.” George thought that the conjunctivitis could be a sign that his health was starting to fail. He was all too well aware that people often picked up infections when they were run down with worry.
“I am sorry, “ she said. “Perhaps you could give me some more of that medicine. It seems to help a little.”
“Are you still having your beef tea?”
She nodded. “Carlton makes it for me. I can manage that and some soup now and then. Oh, and those delicious cinnamon and arrowroot biscuits that he brings me from Fiona Parker.
“Well, both cinnamon and arrowroot are good for upset stomachs. They are probably helping.”
He recalled that her cat Tabitha enjoyed them.
“Where is your cat? He’s usually your companion, isn’t he.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. “He..he was. But he’s gone and Carlton can’t find him anywhere.”
“That’s cats for you. I’ve had several cats and all of them would take off for days on end. I’m sure she’ll be back in her own good time.”
Before leaving his surgery George had made up more bottles of Bismuthi Subcarbonas and Laudanum et Asafoetidae. He took them out of his black bag and placed them on the bedside table.
“Just take these exactly as before. I’ll call back tomorrow. But please reconsider about the operation and about letting me talk to Carlton.”
He heard her start to cry as he let himself out of the house.
* * *
That evening Edith was full of news about her first day at the Tombstone School.
“Mrs. Parker is just so sweet. She seems to know lots and lots. She taught the girls about Household Management, while Mr. Levine was teaching the boys mathematics.”
George sipped his coffee. “That reminds me, Stella. I saw her yesterday and she was telling me about this book that she thinks every woman ought to know about. It was called Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management. It is a British book, but she has copies in the library and if you are interested she will put one aside for you.”
“She showed us the book today,” Edith said. “It’s a huge thick book, like one of your medical books, Daddy.”
“I have heard of it,” said Stella. “It is full of thousands of recipes and advice about running a house, and even about how to treat people.”
George laughed. “Yes, so I gather. She told me that after I gave her an ointment.”
“She is going to teach us about the chemistry of soups,” Edith announced.
“Chemistry of soup?” Stella repeated. “Making soup is cooking not chemistry.”
“Nothing wrong with a scientific approach to cooking, Stella,” George said with a smile.
“Oh you and your science. I might have guessed you would stick up for that. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind having a look at this book.”
“Then I shall ask her tomorrow when I take Edith to school.”
Talking about science stimulated George to go and do some work on his research into making a bulletproof vest. Once settled in his study he laid his notes and jottings out on the desk and then filled and lit his pipe.
And as he sat thinking about bullets his mind turned to Doctor John Handy. Immediately he felt a twinge of guilt again and started to mentally berate himself for failing to save his friend.
“You could have done with a few layers of silk, John,” he mused. He shook his head. “Such a waste of talent.”
And then he recalled the argument that he had with Stella about Dr. Handy and Gila Monsters. Stella had been convinced that John had said they were poisonous. He remembered him recounting how Walter Vail, the owner of the Empire Ranch was riding near Pantano and clubbed a Gila Monster. Thinking that it was dead he tied it to his saddle to take to a friend. Then the Gila woke up and he tried to prod it away, only for it to bite and latch onto his finger. He tried to free himself, but it wouldn’t let go. He got back to his ranch house and one of his men prized its jaws apart with a knife.
Apparently he felt really ill and so he was taken straight to Tucson, where they sought out Dr. John Handy, who treated him in the usual manner, by incising the wound to let the flow of blood carry out the poison and then cauterized it. Vail was ill for days, John said, with swollen and bleeding glands in his neck, but he survived.
It irked George that he couldn’t remember whether John had actually said that he thought Gilas were poisonous or not. And it irked him that so many folk thought that they dangerous and shot them on sight.
He had been incensed by a paper in the Scientific American journal of the year before saying that the Gila Monster’s breath was fetid and that it was this foul smelling gas that overcame insects and small animals so that it could catch them. He had thought this to be just another of the myths about the creatures, hence he started collecting and studying them.
“Damn it! I’d better go and check on my little collection of them.”
None of them were visible in their enclosures, so he opened up Lucrezia’s gate and stepped in.
“Where are you, Lucrezia?” he said, clicking his tongue as if to tempt the largest of the Gilas out of her cave. Then he mentally castigated himself.
“What the hell am I doing? It’s a reptile not a dog.” And he bent down and peered inside.
Lucrezia was there. She was lying motionless in the shadows of her little cave.
“Darn. You’re not dead are you? Edith would be heartbroken.”
He reached in and prodded her side.
He was not prepared for the speed of her attack. Before he knew it she had bitten him on the forefinger and would not let go.
“Gah! Let go, you brute,” he said as he pulled his arm out with the Gila firmly atta
ched to his finger.
He struck it on the head with his other hand and then tried to open its jaws. But she still would not let go.
“I’m a surgeon and I need my fingers,” he said between gritted teeth. He reached behind his back for his Italian poniard dagger. “And so…”
He was about to stab her when she suddenly let go and scuttled back into her cave.
George stared at the throbbing finger with the teeth marks that were already oozing blood. He was about to suck the finger, then stopped himself.
“I don’t believe they are as poisonous as everyone says,” he said to himself. “I’ll treat this scientifically, first with a good wash with water and carbolic, then with a magnesium sulfate poultice to draw any venom out, and then I’ll take painkiller.”
He wrapped a handkerchief around it as a first measure then let himself out of the enclosure and strode back to the house.
“Daddy, have you been checking on Lucrezia and Socrates and the others?” Edith asked.
“Yes, they are all fine, Princess,” he said, tousling her hair with his left hand as he passed her.
“Are you all right, Doctor Goodfellow, sir?” Stella asked, having noticed that his right hand was stuffed firmly in his pocket.
“Perfectly fine, thank you, Stella,” he said, collecting his medical bag from the hall stand as he went back to his study.
Once on his own he dressed the finger then poured himself a large whiskey before returning to his desk.
“Whiskey is the best painkiller for me. Now let’s just see what happens. I reckon I’ll know soon enough if Lucrezia deserves her name as a poisoner.”
And he sat and sipped his whiskey, ready to begin recording any symptoms.
Despite the whiskey the whole of his hand was starting to hurt and he was beginning to feel light-headed.
Chapter 10
YELLOW SLUDGE
George woke up with a slight headache after a fitful night in bed. He was aware that he had been dreaming vividly, but as often happened with him the content of the dreams disappeared like smoke upon waking.
The headache he attributed to the whiskey he had drunk in his study while he waited to see whether he was going to experience any effects from Gila venom.
He threw back his blanket and swung his legs out of bed. He looked at his bandaged finger. The whole hand was painful, but there was no sign of inflammation tracking up his arm.
“That’s good. There’s no sign of lymphangitis so there won’t be any gland swelling.” He stood up and shook his head.
“And other than this little headache I have no light-headedness. All looking good.”
He pulled on a dressing gown and went through to his study where he sat and made notes about how he felt. Later on he would collate it with his other researches about the Gila Monsters.
There was a tap on his door and Edith put her head around it. She was already dressed and ready for school. But he noted the worried look on her face.
“Good morning, Daddy. Could you come and look at Lucrezia. She’s lying half in and half outside her cave. She doesn’t look well. I’m worried that she may have eaten something that has upset her.”
George could barely suppress a grin. Maybe Doctor George Goodfellow was poisonous to Gilas.
“I’ll come and look at her now, Princess.”
But as he stood up he had a strange sense of foreboding. It was as if some dream image of the night before, something that had been troubling him was demanding his attention.
* * *
Carlton was outside the school talking to Stanley Bagg when George arrived with Edith.
Carrie and her friends Dorothy and Isabel immediately greeted Edith and included her in their chatter.
George noted that Carton’s conjunctivitis was looking worse.
“Are you taking anything for that eye infection?” he asked.
“That’s just what I asked him,” said Stanley.
“No, it will go, I am sure,” Carlton replied airily. “These things don’t last long with me.” He nodded at George’s bandaged finger. “But what have you done, George?”
“Oh nothing. Just trapped my finger in a door, he lied evasively, for he had no desire for Edith to know that he had provoked Lucrezia into biting him. It had been all that he could do to reassure her that the Gila wasn’t ill.
“Will you…will you be going to see Esme?” Carlton asked.“Right after my surgery.”
“Could, er…could you go before it? I wanted to stay with her this morning, but she insisted that I go to work.”
“Of course, Carlton. I have my bag here, so I’ll go straight there.”
“I’ll walk with you, George,” said Stanley. “I have to drop in to see the Reverend Franklin at St Paul’s Episcopal Church. I’m doing a piece for The Epitaph about strange noises and lights that have been heard and seen in the church after dark.”
“Good luck on that, then,” Carlton said with a sneer. “We live across the street from it and I suspect that any noises and lights the Reverend Franklin has experienced are the result of imbibing too much rye whiskey.”
And raising his handbell he rang it to bring the children into school.
* * *
George found Esme in bed as usual. She looked miserable and she had clearly been crying. She had dark rings around her sunken eyes.
“I…I feel so unwell, Doctor,” she moaned.
“Still being sick?”
“And…and I have the runs.”
“Anything else?”
“I am breathless when I get up.”
George opened his bag and pulled out his stethoscope. “Let me listen to your heart and chest, Esme.”
It took him a few minutes to complete his examination. He coiled his stethoscope up and replaced it in the bag.
“You have some swelling of your ankles, Esme, and you are starting to get fluid in your lungs. This is dropsy that you are getting now. That means that your heart is starting to find it hard to pump blood around your body.”
He looked at her tongue.
“Have you had soup?”
“No, Doctor, I couldn’t face it last night.”
“Any beef tea.”
“Yes, Carlton makes me have it. And my cinnamon and arrowroot biscuits are the only solid food that I can manage.”
“Does Carlton put garlic in your beef tea?” George asked with narrowed eyes.
“No, he just makes it as plain as possible.”
Once again, George experienced a strange sense of foreboding.
He picked up her vomit bowl and stared at the contents. Then he sniffed it.
“Tell me truthfully, Esme, how long have you been feeling melancholic?”
She looked down at her hands, which George noted were trembling. “For…for a long time.”
“Since when, Esme?”
“For about a year, it’s been getting worse. Ever since it became obvious that Carlton no longer loved me and that he wanted someone else.”
“Who is that, Esme?”
“I…I think you probably know the answer, Doctor.”
“Mrs. Parker?”
As he said it, it all seemed to make sense. Carlton and Fiona Parker, both teaching at the school, and when she wasn’t helping she was just next door in the Tombstone Library. And she had recently consulted him with conjunctivitis, only for him to have developed it himself over the last couple of days. It was likely that they had been close in the last days or two. Very close, like when kissing, or more.
That sense of foreboding just got ten times worse.
“Yes, Fiona Parker. I think he…he loves her. She is all he would talk about for weeks, then he stopped talking about her. That’s when I started to get suspicious that he might be in love with her. That he might be…having a liaison with her.”
“I can’t see that, Esme. Carlton is always so concerned about you. He seems to really care for you.”
She raised a hand to her mouth and bit the back of her
knuckle. “I…I think that is what he would like everyone to believe.”
“And this recent illness, how long have you been ill?”
“Vomiting and abdominal pains, really bad for a few weeks, but I’ve been unwell for about a couple of months, just getting worse. Is it a cancer, Doctor? Is this breathlessness and dropsy a result of that?”
George had felt constricted in what Esme was prepared to let him say to Carlton, now he felt he had to hold back about what was in his mind.
“I am afraid that it is possible, Esme. But I need to do some tests. I have an idea. I want to take that vomit bowl of yours.”
“Of course. Whatever you need. Just tell me, Doctor Goodfellow, will it be painful…when…when it…”
George laid a hand on her shoulder. “It is too soon to talk about that, Esme.”
He found a flannel and draped it over the bowl, then picked up his bag ready to go.
“It isn’t that I’m afraid of death, Doctor,” Esme said, leaning back against her pillows. “In fact, I think I…I will welcome it.”
George patted her hand. “You must try not to think like that. Look, I will do some tests after my surgery this morning and then I will come back to see you as soon as I can. And then I am going to talk to your husband.”
* * *
Stanley was just coming out of St Paul’s Episcopal Church as George left the Levine house.
“Ah Stanley, just the man. Can you come over to my surgery about eleven o’clock. I’d like you to witness something.”
“Of course. You look serious, George. Anything wrong?”
“Maybe something seriously wrong.”
“Is there a story in it for me?”
George clicked his tongue. ‘There may be, but then again, there might be a story that you won’t care to publish.”
The surgery was busier than George would have liked, but that was often his experience the longer he practiced medicine. When you were under pressure then more patients with more complex needs turned up to heap more pressure on you. In the course of the morning he had to lance three boils, remove a splinter of metal from the blacksmith’s eye, listen to the troubles and woes of half a dozen folk who were afflicted with melancholia or nervous anxiety, and make up and dispense several tonics, elixirs and fever powders.
West of the Big River: Boxed Set of Eight Western Novels Page 77