Race for the Dying (6 page)

Chapter Ten

Thomas Parks was astonished to find the prospect of bed welcome. The excursion to the bathroom and then managing an enormous breakfast had all been agonizing work.

Back in the room, he found that his clothing had been neatly hung in the armoire and arranged efficiently in two of the drawers of the bureau. Wheeling the chair next to the wardrobe, he pushed the empty duffel to one side and searched for his black medical bag. It was missing. Perhaps it lay at the bottom of the inlet.

An instant after struggling into bed, he awoke with a start, surprised and disoriented. The pungent fragrance of cooking seafood filled the house, and in a moment Alvi Haines appeared, her wrap showing signs of rain.

“Oh, good, you're awake,” she said. As she approached the bed, Thomas could smell her damp woolens. “It's positively nasty out. So tell me, what's Connecticut like? It's coastal, too, is it not? Is it the same as this, like the inside of a water bucket?”

“You're joking, of course,” he said.

She turned to look at him, eyebrows raised. “Why would that be? I've never been there.”

“Never Back East? Good heavens. Well, it rains a good deal in Connecticut, too, of course,” Thomas said, “but more sunshine than here, I should think. By the way, I'm a bit concerned about my medical bag. There are some things…”

“Bertha has it, down at the clinic,” Alvi interrupted. “I'm afraid it took a nasty bashing. She wanted to clean all the instruments and see what she could do with the rest.”

“Ah. I'm indebted, then. I haven't met the young lady.”

“Oh, you will,” Alvi said. “So…” She stood in what Thomas had learned was a characteristic pose, hands balled into fists on her hips, elbows akimbo, ready to confront the world. “You found your luggage.” She nodded toward the armoire. One of its doors stood ajar.

“I did, and thanks to whoever took care of it all. But then, apparently I fell asleep. What time is it?”

“Just after noon.”

“My God.”

“Shall I help you up for a little while?”

“I can manage,” Thomas said.

“I know you can, Dr. Thomas. Here.” She pulled the wheelchair closer to the bed. “What kind of flexion are you getting with that leg now?”

“None. The progress is that I can move it a bit by hand. It's been busy at the clinic?”

“Always,” she replied. “Always. And Father was called up the coast to one of the camps to tend a difficult birth, I think.” She smiled at the expression on Thomas' face. “He has delivered half the population of Washington, I imagine.”

“I had hoped not to spend my practice in obstetrics,” Thomas said, and realized immediately how stuffy he sounded.

Alvi laughed. “I'd be interested to learn how that's done.”

With no clear idea himself, he changed the subject. “How many patients have you at the clinic?”

She cocked her head. “We have eight beds, and at the moment one of them is occupied. At least until dinnertime.”

“Eight beds.”

“Yes.”

“I had imagined the clinic as considerably larger than that.”

“Oh, it will be,” Alvi said, “but one sure step at a time. So,” and she picked up the robe that lay on the corner of the bed, “are you feeling strong enough to venture to lunch? I could smell the chowder the instant I walked into the house.”

“Indeed,” Thomas said. “I was thinking of getting dressed today.” He fingered the large flannel nightshirt that Alvi had found for him, a cozy thing that encouraged sloth. Even with the rain, he thought, what a fine, invigorating outing to make his way across the rutted street to Lindeman's Mercantile. Or somewhat less ambitious, to walk the length of the front porch. Or to dress himself.

“May I collect your clothing?”

Thomas started to refuse, then thought better of pointless heroics. In a moment, with the clothing lying on the bed, Thomas waited until the door had closed behind Alvi Haines and then rolled onto his right side and hip, working off the baggy pajamas. Pulling on a clean pair of his own long johns was a second endurance contest, but he persisted, an inch gained here and there. He had selected a woolen shirt that he had purchased in San Francisco, and working his arms into the sleeves prompted optimism. Trousers would be impossible, but the huge robe borrowed from John Haines worked perfectly as a housecoat.

Exhausted but quite proud of himself, he wheeled out toward the kitchen. A lanky man whose face appeared to be set in a perpetual grin nodded at Thomas, and the grin spread to bare a prodigious expanse of gums and crooked teeth.

“Well, glory, look who's up,” Gert announced.

“Good day to you, sir.” The man nodded as if that settled that.

“Good day,” Thomas replied. “I'm Thomas Parks.” He extended his hand.

“This is my brother, Horace,” Gert James said. Horace smiled agreement and shook Thomas' hands with a grip that would have made a blacksmith take notice. “If it weren't for Horace, this big old place would fall down around our ears.”

“Oh, go on,” Horace rasped. “You going to feed us or yap?”

“As much of both as I please,” Gert replied easily. “Here, then.” She set a huge earthenware bowl at his place, and slid a loaf of dark brown bread onto the board. “Start on that.” Pointing with the wooden spoon, she directed Thomas to the open spot beside Alvi. “Over there, if you please,” she ordered, and Thomas wheeled his chair into place. The chowder was thick, a savory deluge of flavors and spices that made his nose run.

“What's in this?” he asked.

“Everything that swims.” She patted his shoulder. “Have some bread. I made it just this morning.”

The four of them ate in companionable silence, sopping chowder with bread. “I'd best get back,” Alvi announced as Gert poured more coffee, first for her brother and then for Thomas.

“You haven't mentioned who your patient is,” Thomas said, loath to see her go.

Alvi leaned back. “At the moment, we have one young man from Gershon's Mill up north. He ran afoul of some piece of machinery that removed several necessary body parts,” and she grinned as Gert grimaced at her language choice. “I've been stitching on him all morning.” She leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “None of his injuries are as serious as they look. And a bit earlier, we had Clarissa. She decided she did not want her baby and—”

“Oh, for heaven's sakes, Alvina,” Gert snapped.

“Well—” Thomas said, but Gert cut him off.

“I can't bear to imagine what dinners are going to be like,” the housekeeper groused. “By the time we have all four of you around the table, serving up these choice tidbits of information that we don't need to hear? It's going to be absolutely repugnant.”

“Is there some way that I may be of assistance?” Thomas asked.

“Your time will come.” Alvi brightened suddenly. “Oh, and Father received a telegram this morning. His books have shipped. We should have them…” She made a face. “Someday. Hopefully before we're all old and gray.”

“His books?” Thomas said.

“A labor of love,” Alvi said. “A compendium of helpful medical advice and counsel.”

“He has written a book?”

“Oh, he has indeed, with Zachary's help. A tome. A volume of weight and dignity.” For a moment Thomas could not tell whether Alvi was speaking in jest, but her excitement seemed genuine as she continued, “
The Universal Medical Advisor.
He hasn't mentioned it?”

“No, indeed. He hasn't.”

“Well, he's too modest. We have one of the presentation copies in the library. You may find it a delightful way to pass the afternoon, Dr. Thomas.”

“I would be in your debt.” He pushed himself away from the table. “Thank you so much, Gert. You are a magician.”

“You stay warm, now,” she admonished.

“I have my robe, and my blanket,” Thomas said. “I can steam the day away.” Alvi wheeled him to the spacious library, where an impressive collection of volumes rested on shelves towering to the ceiling. “My word,” he whispered. An enormous leather chair presided behind a dark, polished wooden desk, its great, carved legs ending in massive claw-and-ball feet.

“Here we are,” Alvi said. She indicated a massive volume that rested on the corner of the desk. With leather binding, gilt-edged paper, and a sewn-in ribbon for a bookmark,
The Universal Medical Advisor
was a magnificent book. “Here,” Alvi said, and pushed the monstrous leather chair to one side. “You can wheel in here, and just enjoy yourself,” she said.

Thomas did so, and pulled the book toward him. “This must weigh ten pounds,” he said. “My goodness, what an accomplishment.”

“He's very proud,” Alvi said. “As you look through it, you'll come to see what he expects of the clinic, and what we're all about.”

“I'm enchanted.” he said. “You're sure he won't mind me working here?”

“Of course he won't mind. He'll be honored. In fact, he mentioned this morning that you should.”

“I was wondering,” Thomas said, resting his bandaged left hand on the book. “Do you have a set of crutches I might use?”

“Of course. Do you think that's wise, with your ribs as they are?”

He grinned. “It would be helpful, I think. Some gentle therapy will be just the thing.”

“I'll fetch them, then.” She stepped across the room. “And this is the shelf that matters, as Father would say.” She pushed open a small, carved folding door to reveal a generous decanter and a silver tray holding six glasses. “He would tell you to help yourself.”

In a moment she reappeared with the crutches. “I'll leave them here,” she said, placing them in the corner within easy reach. “That door?” and she pointed off to Thomas' left. “That leads to the porch as well. Perhaps a safe promenade for you.”

“All the town can cheer as I crash down the front steps.”

“You'd best not. That would make us very unhappy indeed,” Alvi said. “Perhaps if you don't wear yourself out, we'll see you at dinner?”

“Would you make sure?” Thomas said. “I seem to be doing a prodigious amount of sleeping of late. If you'd wake me in time, I'd appreciate it. Will Dr. Riggs join us today?”

“I would think so.”

“Good. I look forward to thanking him properly. We haven't had a chance to do so much as say a how-do-you-do. He must think me a terrible imposition.”

“I don't suppose he thinks that at all,” Alvi said, and left him with a bright smile.

Thomas pulled the enormous volume closer and fingered open the weighty cover. After two blank pages of marbled paper that was a delight to the touch, he turned to a tissue-protected engraving of John L. Haines, M.D., gazing out at him with an expression of benign wisdom and beneficence. Thomas bent close to read the tiny print that bordered the bottom of the picture: Northern Alliance Bank Note & Eng. Co. Chicago. Dominating the page below the portrait was the physician's signature, executed with a broad-nibbed pen.

Thomas smiled with delight and turned his attention to the title page, where bold lettering announced
The Universal Medical Advisor, In Common Sense Language, the Medicine Clarified for Universal Understanding
, by John Luther Haines M.D., founder of Haines Clinic and Vital Research Center. The bottom of the page bore the date 1891, along with the legend that the volume had been published by The Research Center Printing Office and Bindery, Port McKinney, Washington, and subsidiary facilities, Gruenberg, Austria, and Port Darkling, Ontario, Canada.

Another engraving filled the facing page, this one of an elegant edifice, an imposing, multistory clinic building that appeared to be a bustling medical center. Carved stone over the front doors announced the Haines Clinic. The place was the equal of any that Thomas had seen—even in the medical centers in major eastern cities.

“One patient…he must rattle around a bit,” Thomas mused. He turned past the title page and found the dedication, although printed in simple font on an unadorned page, to be just as grandiose:

To my patients, who have sought the services of this clinic and research center as guardians of their health and well being, from every hamlet, village, or city of the Union and Canada; and to those dwelling in Europe, Africa, Asia, and other foreign lands who have likewise benefited from our treatments; I respectfully dedicate this work, hoping that it includes those aspects of medical knowledge and advice most profound and most important in the pursuit of a healthy and productive life.

“My goodness.” Thomas said, and turned to the two-page preface, attributed to “The Author,” and written from “Port McKinney, November, 1890.”

Chapter Eleven

Time evaporated, and when a clock somewhere deep in the house chimed three that afternoon, Thomas sat back, puzzled. The book's opening hundred pages addressed a simplified description of human anatomy. The material, including a generous number of engravings, was shared by other texts of similar kind—generic and traditional. The second section, grandly titled “Human Temperament,” examined the much debated forces that molded behavior—including a lengthy discussion of the relationship inherent between skull shape and human character.

Once the reader could look himself full in the mirror and decide that his physiognomy did not hide the most base motives or unpleasant personal characteristics, he could then turn to the sections on foods, household maintenance, and the pursuit of healthy activities guided by the most common conventions of the past half century.

Having skimmed the first three hundred pages, Thomas arrived at a section titled “The Thoughtful Physician,” in which Haines proposed the foundations upon which his medical practice was based, borrowing freely and without apology from the work of “allopathics, homeopathics, eclectics, and hydropathics, all to be sifted and selected by the rational physician determined to practice to full effect in the approaching twentieth century.”

“The able and creative physician must stand ready,” Haines had written, “to employ every weapon in his arsenal, recognizing that there may even be times when an agent that is poisonous in health may clearly prove curative in the battle against disease.”

Thomas stopped and slipped the silk bookmark in place. He stretched carefully. Rain still pounded outside, an oppressive drumming that reminded him of the paragraphs that had discussed the “salubrious, healing nature of sunshine.” His left eye watered and his joints felt stiff and wooden. Across the room stood the tempting, large decanter of brandy, a medication that several times had earned special mention by Haines: “Alcohol, although in abuse clearly noxious, holds special station as a curative against the morbid state.”

Pushing back from the desk, Thomas wheeled over to the curtained doorway leading to the porch. A rush of sweet, wet air greeted him as he opened the door, and the sensation of a million tiny fingers massaged his skin. He pushed forward until the wheels nudged against the low sill. The porch ended a dozen feet to his left, but to the right, it extended all the way to the front corner of the house, then circled to the broad steps. He watched the rain as it curtained in gusting torrents to spew off the eaves of the Mercantile. He could see to the intersection of Lincoln and Gambel, but no farther. If there was a sawmill out there on the spit, or a waterway beyond that, or a grand clinic down the street, all was well hidden by an impenetrable gray curtain.

Thomas regarded the broad, smooth, expanse of wooden porch decking, with the handy railing running full length. He nodded to himself, and wheeled back into the room to fetch the crutches. Balancing them across his lap, he eased the wheelchair across the doorsill, then turned left and wheeled into the corner where he could brace the chair against the walls of the house. By levering himself against the railing with his right arm, he was able to push himself out of the chair and hunch over the broad railing.

He balanced thus for a moment, and then reached out to secure first one crutch and then the other, edging around until his right rump rested on the railing. Easing forward, he tried to push himself upright. When his weight rested on the leather crutch pads, the action pushed his shoulders upward, which in turn tugged his torn ribs.

Gritting his teeth, he edged the crutches forward, shuffling his right foot a few inches. Across the street, a figure darted through the rain toward the store, splashing across a growing, sludgy lake. How simple such a thing used to be, Thomas thought. He looked ahead and saw that fifty feet of porch separated him from the front steps. Impossible. He calculated the distance, counting the carved columns that supported the porch roof, one every ten feet. “Just one, then,” he said aloud.

A slicker-cloaked rider sitting on a miserable-looking mule rode out of an alley and then down Gambel. Somewhere off in the distance a pair of dogs traded news. The side door of Lindeman's Mercantile opened and Lars appeared, throwing something out into the street. He paused when he saw Thomas, but the young man didn't dare lift a hand from his crutches in greeting. The eight feet to the first column wasn't possible…not and be able to return to the chair. He cursed and turned enough to lean against the rail, breathing through his teeth.

The chair was but six feet away, and seemed a mile. Six feet, he thought. All right, if that's the way progress is to be measured. Three days ago, he couldn't roll over in bed. He had tried to stand up and been rewarded by falling on his face. Six feet was progress.

A dark shadow appeared from behind the Mercantile, and Prince plodded out into the middle of the street, looking first left and then right, as if traffic might be a threat. Thomas watched the dog limp through the mud, head and tail down. Surely the rain was uncomfortable, beating on his broad skull, pounding his kinky fur flat so that it parted along his back as if that were the seam where his coat was taken on and off. The dog apparently knew where he was going, though, and disappeared around the corner.

The brandy beckoned, and Thomas turned the chair back toward the library. The rush of wet air followed him inside, soothing his aching head. In a moment, the brandy's bloom erupted through his mouth, nose, even his sinuses, and he sat with his eyes closed, letting the sensation roll around his tongue.

“Oh, my,” he sighed, and splashed a full inch into the tumbler. He turned the chair away from the cabinet and stopped. The rank aroma of wet dog wafted into the room. The creature stood on the porch, a pace from the library doorway, watching Thomas.

“What deep thoughts are going through your mind?” Thomas said. “I would think you'd be curled up in a dry corner somewhere.” He pushed the chair forward, and the dog retreated a step. He saw that its body from belly to claws was thick with mud, a second coat that would harden to armor should the sun come out.

“What a remarkably disreputable creature,” the young man observed. He heard the clang of a pot somewhere in the house, and immediately remembered Gert James. “I'd invite you in, old man, but Miss James would have our hides.” He wheeled closer, and this time the dog simply stood there, a soggy, gray statue, only his eyes interested.

“What's wrong with your leg, then?” Thomas asked. He set the brandy glass on the desk, pushed back through the door and then turned the chair so that it was broadside to the animal. The dog remained motionless. The coating of mucky fur was enough to hide a multitude of ailments or injuries. Reaching out slowly, Thomas rested his right hand on the large dome of the dog's head, then stroked his thumb along the top of the dog's left eye, lifting the eyebrow slightly. “You've had better days, I'm guessing,” he said. He withdrew his hand and the dog immediately took a half step closer to the chair, standing sideways, expectant. His fragrance was more than that of wet dog.

Fingers gently probing, Thomas ran his free hand along the dog's spine, feeling the ribs. “You could do with a bit more flesh on your bones,” he said. As his hand neared the animal's rump, the dog shifted slightly, as if to turn away. He didn't, but his head swung around, eyes half-lidded. With but one good hand, Thomas' intent was to stroke down the animal's left hind leg and follow the line of bones to the source of discomfort. The moment his hand passed the bony promontory of the dog's rump and started downward, the animal contorted enough to reach Thomas' hand. His large jaws opened and snapped around the young man's wrist, the massive canines locking on the far side.

Captured thus, Thomas froze. He did not try to pull his hand away. The pressure of the animal's jaws was impressive, but Thomas noted with an almost detached astonishment that he wasn't being bitten…only held. The dog didn't growl. He just stood there, eyes searching Thomas' face.

“It's back there, then,” Thomas said quietly. “Hurts, does it? What have you got there? Twisting slightly, he tried to grip the right arm of the chair with his left hand, but that was impossible. In a moment, the dog released him with a deep-throated huff. Thomas hooked the wheel rim to twist the chair a bit. “Let me,” he said to the dog as if its understanding of English was perfect. He touched the dog's left hip and this time immediately felt the swelling that extended from just behind the animal's knee to the base of its tail. Before he could probe more, the animal stepped away.

Thomas grimaced at the rank odor. “My God, old man, I'd think you could at least walk belly deep into the sound for a bit of a bath,” he said. “I'll speak to Mr. Lindeman,” he said. “We'll see what can be done.” Thomas straightened up and rubbed the silky underside of one of the dog's ears. “I'll see what can be done,” he said again, and rolled the chair back away from the door. The dog took a couple of steps as if he might leave, then apparently thought better of it. With a loud grunt, he lay down on the porch on his right side, back snuggled up against the house. For a moment Thomas watched him, but the animal no longer seemed interested in him.

The rank odor lingered despite a trip to the bathroom to wash his hands, and Thomas sacrificed a bit of brandy as hand lotion. He refilled the glass and returned to the desk, leaving the door to the porch ajar. Returning to the impressive
Universal Medical Advisor
, he soon forgot weather, brandy, and dog.