by Bryn Donovan
* * *
“No. They’re my patients.”
* * *
“Levi, this isn’t about whose patients they are. We’re supposed to be a team here. They could have pneumonia…”
* * *
“Wrong!” Levi bellowed, and stood abruptly. “We aren’t a team. You’re here to learn!
From me!” He moved around the desk and headed for the waiting area
. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I haven’t slept for more than a day. Lock up when you’re finished!”
* * *
Liam winced when the front door slammed shut, causing the little bell to jingle wildly. He sighed and slid off the table. He went to the window behind Levi’s desk and watched Dr. Hughes stomp to his little house and slam his own door behind himself. The only thing that separated Dr. Hughes’ home from the office was a short yard with an apple tree and a handful of free-range scratching, clucking chickens.
* * *
Liam shook his head. He lived half a mile from town. To his estimation the Goodall’s lived about half a mile east of him. The Smith’s lived a mile past both locations, headed north. It would be so simple to care for this family between the three of them. He knew the Ellie part was a pipe dream. He hadn’t seen her for three days, and Mary had made it clear that Ellie’s only desire was to birth babies. Still… When the medical bug bit, it rarely only bit for one field. She had mentioned ‘passion’. Yes, medicine was passion. He looked at Dr. Hughes’ home one last time before turning away from the window. He just wished Dr. Hughes still had his passion.
The knock was so weak that Liam wasn’t even sure that he had heard it. Living in a row house only half a mile from town and the local saloon often brought unwelcome noises that lifted him from sleep. He blinked in the darkness before allowing his eyes to drift closed again. The knock sounded once more, and this time he sat straight up. He found his matches and lit his bedside kerosene lamp, glancing at his pocket watch lying on the edge of the wash basin. 12:01. It couldn’t be anything but an emergency.
* * *
“I’m coming!” he yelled out as he threw a robe over his night shirt. He swung the door open and held the lamp upward. Patrick Smith was breathing heavily as he braced himself against the door jams. He was sweating profusely, and his skin had a greyish pallor. The worst of it was the ghastly wet wheezing, as if he was trying to breathe through a pin hole that was filling with water.
* * *
“Doctor…Parsons…” he began and tried to straighten himself.
* * *
“Please, Patrick, come in!” Liam rushed to the sideboard and set the lamp on it
. When he tried to help Patrick into his home, the man collapsed at Liam’s feet.
* * *
“Please…” He reached upward and Liam grabbed his hand and forearm. The man was burning with fever. “Dr. Hughes…I couldn’t get…there…my family…”
* * *
“Don’t try to speak.” Liam sprang to his feet and went to the little bucket of water he kept on his eating table
. He spooned a cupful for Mr. Smith. He knelt beside him, supporting his head at the neck, and gently coaxed him to take a sip. Patrick began coughing and frantically looked at Liam with bulging, red-rimmed eyes when he couldn’t get any more breath. Liam turned him on his side as Patrick coughed up thick mucus tinted red.
* * *
“Stay just like that! Don’t move!” Liam ordered and lit his other lantern
. He rushed from the home and ran to the house next to his. He banged loudly on the door and bounced from one foot to the other as he waited for someone to answer. Roland Wallace answered the door with his wavy salt and pepper hair sticking up in all directions.
* * *
“What ye want?” he grumbled, his Scottish accent bleeding through. “Oh…Doctor. What’s wrong?”
* * *
“Please, Patrick Smith has collapsed on my doorstep. He’s very ill. I think it’s pneumonia. I need to get to his family.”
* * *
“That catching?”
* * *
“No, it’s not catching.” Melinda Wallace barked, pushing past her husband, gripping the shawl around her with one hand and holding her own lantern with another. “What can we do?”
* * *
Gratitude rushed through Liam. “I need to get to his family. He has a couple children, you know,” he talked as he motioned for Melinda to follow. “He’s burning up with fever. I need you to wipe his face and neck with water and try to get him to take a sip of water at least every half an hour.”
* * *
They stepped through Liam’s open front door and Melinda immediately dropped to her knees beside Patrick. Roland joined her, his face set in a deep frown. He turned his face upward to Liam.
* * *
“Why did they all catch it if it wasn’t contagious?”
* * *
“Whatever caused the initial respiratory infection was what was contagious,” Liam responded and hurried from the room. Liam continued to talk from his bedroom as he hurriedly dressed. “Please keep him on his side but propped up would be better. Here, let’s move him to my bed.” He gently rolled him over and grabbed him under the arms as Roland lifted his legs
. “We need more pillows. He could drown in his own body fluid if he lies flat for too long.”
* * *
“I’ll grab ours,” Roland said, and rushed from the room.
* * *
“Thank you, Melinda. I am grateful to you both.”
* * *
Melinda squeezed Liam’s hands and prayed a quickly over him. “Lord Jesus, we know you hold the lives of the Smith family in your hands. Have mercy, Lord. Grant Liam strength to do what needs to be done this night. Carry him safely to them. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.”
Liam ran a hand over his face when he entered the Smith home. Deep wet coughs were echoed by the same high-pitched wheezing Mr. Smith had been exhibiting. Sarah Smith could barely stay conscious and only had concern for her children.
* * *
The first that Liam checked was Patrick Jr. He would be a tall, strapping young man like his father. But the eleven-year-old was currently lying on the floor, emaciated and shivering from the fever. It was obvious he had been trying to tend to his mother. Liam propped him up against the wall and took the stairs two at a time to get to the little girl’s room. Alice Smith was lying perfectly still on her back, her quilt pulled up to her chin. Had it not been for the faint wheeze and the occasional tremor, Liam would have assumed her dead. He checked her pulse, and grimaced when he found it faint and thin.
* * *
“Alice?”
* * *
The six year old opened her eyes slowly.
* * *
“Alice, it’s Dr. Parsons. I need to sit you upright.” The girl was limp in his hands as he grabbed her by the upper arms and scooted her upward
. He positioned her pillow behind her and ran back downstairs to the parents’ room.
* * *
“Sarah, I need to get help. You have to stay propped up or lay on your side.”
* * *
“My children?” she rasped.
* * *
“They will be fine, but I need to get help. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
* * *
Liam couldn’t wait for an answer. He ran into the night and mounted his horse and looked to the starry sky. Frogs and crickets seemed to scream at him.
* * *
“Lord, what do I do?”
* * *
Liam’s mind immediately went to Ellie. She was much closer than going back into town. He dug his heels into the sides of his mare and flicked the reins over her back. He prayed Ellie would be willing to come back with him, but he knew in his gut that the Lord had already placed her on his heart as the one to help. Besides, he didn’t have a moment to spare.
* * *
Liam’s horse had barely stopped be
fore he was on the ground and running for Roy Goodall’s door. Roy must have heard him because the door flung open and Liam was met with a shotgun pointed at his chest. He threw his hands up.
* * *
“Whoa there, Roy, it’s me, Dr. Parsons.”
* * *
Roy lowered the gun and set it just inside the doorway. “Dr. Parsons? What’s happened?”
* * *
“The Smith family is terribly sick. I was hoping to convince Ellie to come with me.”
* * *
“What about Dr. Hughes?”
* * *
“It was closer to come here than go into town.”
* * *
Light bloomed behind Roy and Ellie’s face appeared beside him. She was pinning her shortish dark hair behind her ears. “Of course, I’ll come. Just give me a moment.”
* * *
Roy turned from the door, and Liam could hear an intense yet hushed discussion happening within the house. He hadn’t been invited to wait inside. He caught words like unseemly and rash. Finally, Ellie’s voice silenced all discussion with a definitive, “I’m going and that’s final!”
* * *
Ellie appeared with several white cloths in her arms. “I brought quite a few of these for the birth, but I can spare these. We might need to soak them in cool water. Are they feverish?”
* * *
“Yes. I suspect pneumonia,” Liam said as he mounted the horse and reached a hand out to her. “Can you ride?”
* * *
Ellie only hesitated for a moment, but it was long enough for Roy to come out and offer the wagon to them. “You might need it if you need to…well, you just might need it.”
* * *
The hitching of the mules was time Liam didn’t want to spare, but he suspected it had more to do with saving face for Ellie and of course Roy and Eva. No one would want wanton gossip that Ellie rode out in the middle of the night in Liam’s arms; medical emergency or not.
The next twenty-four hours were long and neither Ellie nor Liam slept. It was a time of Liam instructing Ellie, and once Patrick had been brought back to his family by Roland, it was a time of waiting, and for Liam, praying. Once he felt the family was stable enough, he left Ellie long enough to go to town and alert Dr. Hughes to the situation.
* * *
“Have you let any of their blood?”
* * *
“No, and I don’t intend to.”
* * *
“Bloodletting has long been proven to help with blood issues.”
* * *
Liam counted to three. He was too tired to argue, but he wasn’t about to let Dr. Hughes convince, or order, him into doing something detrimental to the Smith family.
* * *
“They don’t have a blood disorder. They have pneumonia.”
* * *
“You can’t know that for certain.”
* * *
Liam turned and headed for the door. “You come see for yourself, Doctor.” He heard his name being called once as the office door slammed shut
. He needed to get to the general store before he headed back. Honey and hot black tea could benefit the family. He had read that the consumption of honey and garlic could pull infection from the body. He doubted Mr. Murdock had garlic, but he was sure he had honey. Honey was brought in all summer long from a reclusive family that lived in the marsh area. It was supposedly one of the only times throughout the year they were seen in public. Liam had hoped to have time to offer his services to them one day, a checkup maybe.
* * *
He bought the honey and tea and headed back to the Smith place. He was bone weary tired, but there was still work to be done, and he didn’t want to leave Ellie too long.
* * *
Once back he had Ellie fix the tea with a generous portion of the honey. After everyone was able to have some they began drifting off to sleep again, one by one. Liam motioned for Ellie to follow him outside. He kept his voice low.
* * *
“I think they are all out of immediate danger. I want you to head home and get some rest.”
* * *
“No.” Ellie shook her head
. “I’m needed here.”
* * *
“What if your sister needs you?”
* * *
Ellie chewed on her bottom lip. “I suppose going home is the sensible thing to do.” She stared at him with impossibly big, dark eyes
. “I’ll return first thing in the morning, but please fetch me if you need me beforehand.” She moved past him to retrieve her shawl
. Once she had returned, Liam stopped her from climbing into the wagon.
* * *
“You were a tremendous help. I thank you.” His smile was tired, but Ellie could see it was genuine
.
* * *
“It was my pleasure to serve.”
* * *
“I could really use your help in this town. You handled yourself as if you had been practicing medicine for years.”
* * *
Ellie blushed and lowered her head. “I just take to it, I guess.”
* * *
“Maybe you are called to more than just babies.”
* * *
Ellie lifted her head. “Maybe.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Within two days, The Smith family were talking and gingerly moving around. Although still weak and coughing, they were definitely on the mend. Ellie told Eva of her visit with them and how she felt certain they would all make full recoveries.
“You still need to speak to Dr. Hughes,” Eva pressed. “What he did nearly killed that family.”
Roy shook his head. “No need getting folks upset, Eva. What’s done is done. You know I like Patrick just as much as any man of this community but accusing Levi Hughes of anything other than being a good doctor is only going to cause hard feelings.”
The women exchanged glances over the dinner table. It was the most words Roy had strung together at one time in days.
Ellie opened her mouth to continue the conversation, but Eva gave her head a quick shake. Ellie decided she would simply pay Dr. Hughes a visit herself. She didn’t need Roy’s permission.
Ellie sat placed her gloves in her purse and sat primly waiting for Dr. Hughes to emerge from his examination/office. She had chosen her travelling dress to wear, supposing that the nicer she looked the more credibility her words would have with him. Luckily, Liam wasn’t in the office. She didn’t need him attempting to control the conversation.
The door creaked open and Dr. Hughes came out ahead of a timber worker who had his hand heavily bandaged. He dug in his pocket, causing fine bits of dirt to fall from his pants leg. He produced two coins.
“This is all I have today, Doctor.”
Dr. Hughes took the coins and smiled. “Your mother still bakes the best rhubarb pie in Clinton?”
“Yes, Sir,” the young man grinned.
“Well, you have her drop one off to me, and we will call it even.”
Ellie had only met Dr. Hughes once, and the first impression of him wasn’t very kind. Once the young man had left, he turned his attention to Ellie.
“How can I help you?” He smiled, but it quickly dimmed
. “You’re Roy Goodall’s sister in law. You helped Liam with the Smith family.”
“Yes, Sir. That’s why I’m here. I wanted to speak to you about them.”
Dr. Hughes rolled his eyes and marched into the examination room. He began packing his medical bag as he spoke. “Look, I know Liam has a differing opinion on the care of the Smith family. As a matter of fact, he has a differing opinion from mine on most all cases, but I know what I did was correct! An expenditure of any more energy on their part would have most likely killed them!”
Ellie’s head moved back on her neck as the doctor ranted, haphazardly shoving things into his bag. She noticed the tremor to his hand and hoped it was anger related and nothing else. Her origin
al plan of conversation was fading with her resolve.
“Oh, I’m certain you did all you could!” She stepped forward and touched his forearm lightly, purposeful with the brightness of her smile
. “I simply wanted to ask how you knew to tell them to lie still. Pneumonia is such a tricky malady.” She removed her hand as he looked at it then at her face