Skip Rock Shallows (6 page)

The hound dog was waiting for her at the edge of his yard. Lilly tossed the half pancake she had saved from breakfast to the ground. He slurped it up, stood still for her to scratch behind his ears, and then trotted up the street toward the clinic, as fine an escort as she had ever had.

Though it was not yet full light, Ned was outside, slapping something on the door with a wide brush.

Lilly’s eyes watered from the sting of gypsum. “What in the world are you doing, Ned?”

Startled, he jumped, nearly dropping the bucket, before he opened the door as wide as it would go. “Just sprucing things up.”

“At six in the morning?”

“Darrell’s sleeping. I had a little time on my hands.”

“You’re acting guilty as a fox in the chicken coop, Ned. Please close the door.”

Ned’s chin dropped to his chest. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t think you needed to see this.”

The door swung shut. A leering skull shone faintly through the wash, and black crossbones still marred the door.

“It’ll need several coats of whitewash,” Ned said. “I mixed some plaster of Paris from the back storeroom—hope you don’t mind. I didn’t have any paint.”

“Why would someone do this? Is it supposed to be a warning?”

“It’s my fault. I reckon I fell asleep. I didn’t hear a thing.”

“I think covering this up is a good idea, Ned. Let’s keep this to ourselves, shall we?”

Lilly reached for the knob, but Ned beat her to it. “I’ll let you get back to work,” she said. “And, Ned, thank you for caring.”

“You’re more than welcome,” he said, dipping the brush into the bucket. “I’d best hurry before this sets up on me.”

Lilly had barely finished Darrell’s a.m. routine before Armina rapped on the doorframe.

“You ready?” she said when Lilly stepped around the privacy screen Ned had pulled in front of the door left propped open. Bubby bounced on Armina’s slight hip.

“I’ll be back this afternoon,” Lilly called to Ned, who was in the back. “I’m making a house call.”

“Watch careful for snakes,” he replied. “They’ll likely be sunning today.”

“I’ve got my walking stick,” Lilly said. “I’ll make a ruckus.”

The path was steep and twisted into hairpin turns, but they made their way easily enough until they came to a wide and stagnant creek.

Armina gathered her skirts to one side, secured them under Bubby’s bottom, and waded in up to her knees.

Lilly paused on the bank. The water was murky and smelled of rotten leaves and dead fish. Something sinister slithered by.

“I reckon you’ll want to take your shoes off,” Armina said.

“Isn’t there a bridge somewhere about?”

“You afeered of snakes?”

“Well, I don’t want to step on one,” Lilly said, “and this water is not very clean.”

Armina swirled the water with one foot. “This here’s Swampy. It’s always brackish.” She bent down to pick up a good-size rock and lobbed it underhanded, up the bed. Oily water splashed. “There now. The snakes will all go up under the riffles. They won’t hurt you none.” The tail of her skirt broke loose and trailed behind her as she made her way to the far bank.

With her shoes and stockings in one hand and her skirts over her arm, Lilly followed.

Once they crossed the creek, it was not far to the Eldridges’ cabin nestled deep in the hollow of the woods. The cabin sat four feet off the ground, balanced on rocks stacked underneath each corner. A trace of smoke wafted upward from a massive stone chimney. They climbed six wide wooden steps up to the porch. Armina crossed silently on bare feet, but Lilly’s footsteps rang out hollowly.

The door opened inward. Armina stood back and allowed Lilly to step into the cool shadows of the one-room house. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she saw that everything was clean and orderly. A kitchen table was laid with tin cups and plates as if for dinner. A shelf against one wall held a gray granite bucket and round granite pan. On the wall beside the bucket, a long-handled gourd dipper hung from a leather string looped over a nail. Warmth emanated from the cookstove in one corner.

The biggest woman Lilly had ever seen sat in a huge chair placed in front of the empty fireplace. Her dimpled elbows were planted on the arms of the chair, and she rested her double chin in one palm. Aunt Orie, Lilly surmised.

“Mrs. Eldridge? I’m Dr. Corbett. What can I do for you today?”

“Honey, I cain’t hardly draw any air.”

Each word was punctuated with a singing gasp. She sounded like the full gospel preacher Lilly had once heard at a brush arbor meeting.

“Doc said she’s got the dropsy,” Armina said.

“May I?” Lilly asked, pulling her black stethoscope from her bag and placing the bell over Mrs. Eldridge’s heart. The heart galloped—straining. Her short, labored breath crackled through the bell when Lilly put it on her chest. “Could I listen to you from the back?”

Mrs. Eldridge leaned forward heavily. The chair popped and creaked. Tiny hands lifted the tent of Mrs. Eldridge’s skirts and a little girl crawled out from under the seat. She didn’t go far, however, for the tail of her dress was caught tight under one of the legs.

“Sissy, sit still now,” Armina said, plopping Bubby down on the floor beside her. She’d carried the boy nearly a mile up the side of the mountain.

The toddler poked Bubby’s button nose. “Node?”

“Shh, Sissy,” Armina said.

“Twins?” Lilly asked.

“Same as,” Armina said. “Ten months apart—he’s eight months but already outweighs her. She’d be easier to pack when I have to leave the house, but I cain’t wag both and she don’t fuss.” She wet one fingertip and wiped a smudge from the boy’s cheek. “Bubby and Sissy, double trouble.”

“They sure are cute.”

“Yeah.”

After listening to the patient’s lungs, Lilly knelt and used the bell for auscultation of the four quadrants of the ponderous abdomen. Obvious to her, heart disease was causing copious amounts of fluid to collect, which pressed against the diaphragm, thus the labored breathing. “May I?” she asked again before hanging her stethoscope around her neck and lifting the hem of Mrs. Eldridge’s long skirt. Lilly had to stop herself from shaking her head in dismay, for as she had expected, the lady’s feet and ankles were hugely swollen. The flesh dented when she pressed with her fingertip. She’d learned to rate the pitting with numbers: one plus, two plus, three plus, or four. This had to be four plus plus plus, if there was such a score.

“Do your feet and ankles hurt?” she asked, sure of the answer. She couldn’t imagine how the poor woman walked about.

“Pains me some.” Long wheeze. “Mostly wearies me.”

“Do you want me to get the bucket?” Armina asked.

“Bucket?”

“For the water. Old Doc drains her belly ever couple of visits. He ain’t been here for a long time. That’s why she’s got so bad.”

“Hmm,” Lilly said, giving thought to the problem. Surely there was a chapter in one of her medical texts titled “Drawing Water Other Than from the Well.”

“Pity,” Mrs. Eldridge gasped.

“Pardon?” Lilly asked.

“Old Doc,” she said.

“Tragedy,” Lilly said, truly. She could have learned a lot from Old Doc.

A white enamelware bucket clanked against the rough wooden floor. “Here you go,” Armina said.

Bubby grasped the black-trimmed rim and pulled himself up. His grin spread ear to ear before Sissy jerked him back down.

“Good girl,” Armina said. “Last thing I need’s for him to start walking.”

From where she knelt on the floor, Lilly could see inside the bucket. It held a long, skinny packet of gauze and a brown rubber suction bulb.

“It’s Aunt Orie’s silver tube,” Armina said. “I boiled it clean just like Old Doc showed me.”

Of course, Lilly thought, a trocar. Old Doc drained the fluid from Mrs. Eldridge’s abdomen by way of the sharply pointed surgical instrument contained in a metal cannula. Her mind scrambled backward through many lectures and demonstrations to a day in clinical when she’d observed the treatment of a patient with the same symptoms as these. The difference was the woman that day had been skin and bones. The only thing big about her had been her belly, whereas Mrs. Eldridge was markedly obese and not just from retained fluid. It would be a challenge, but fat or skinny the treatment would be the same.

“I’ll need to wash up,” she said, standing.

A teakettle whistled. “Water’s hot,” Armina said. “I’ll fix you a pan.”

“Let’s get our patient settled first,” Lilly said. “Mrs. Eldridge, will you be able to walk to the bed?”

“Don’t stand on ceremony,” she labored to say. “I’m plain Aunt Orie.”

“Of course,” Lilly said. “Thank you.”

Armina positioned her body in front the chair. “Grab hold.”

It was then Lilly noticed the knotted rope suspended from the ceiling. Aunt Orie reached overhead, grabbed the rope above the double knot with both hands, and heaved herself upright. The chair tipped forward and Sissy scooted free. Bubby laughed and clapped his chubby hands.

With support on both sides, Aunt Orie shuffled lock-kneed to the bed, which Lilly saw was made up with linen sheeting folded over a rubber mackintosh sheet. Managing to turn herself around, Aunt Orie dropped down. The mattress sighed under her weight.

“Lie on your side as close to the edge as possible,” Lilly said.

Armina positioned a stack of pillows. “We know what to do.”

Lilly waited for Armina to pour the hot water before she scrubbed up. It was always best to remember whose kitchen you were in so you wouldn’t overstep your bounds.

Armina washed and oiled her aunt’s belly before Lilly removed the gauze from the trocar. In one sure and steady move, Lilly plunged the instrument into Aunt Orie’s flesh. With the encouragement of suction, a stream of fluid flowed freely as water through the cannula and into the bucket on the floor. After the first gush, the flow settled into a steady drip.

“Good,” Lilly said. “You don’t want to shock the body by removing the fluid too quickly.”

“It’s just like tapping a maple tree for sugar water,” Armina said.

Aunt Orie relaxed and closed her eyes.

“She’ll nap now.”

“That’s good,” Lilly said as she applied a pad of lint and strapping around the puncture site. “How much did Old Doc usually get?”

“Oh, it’ll drain a couple gallons.” Armina smoothed stray wisps of hair from her aunt’s forehead. “She’ll feel better for a while.”

Lilly recognized the look of resignation in Armina’s eyes. She’d seen it many times in people who nursed loved ones for whom they had no real hope.

As she cleansed her hands, Lilly wondered about the circumstances of the Eldridge family. Young as she was, Armina seemed perfectly at home with her aunt’s care, but surely she didn’t also have the care of the two babies.

Armina poured tea into two cups. “I thank ye for coming,” she said. “I feared for Aunt Orie once Old Doc passed on.”

Lilly took a seat at the kitchen table and sipped the hot tea. “Who helps you with Aunt Orie?”

“Right now there’s just the three of us—me, myself, and I,” Armina said as she tossed her braids over her shoulders. “Aunt Orie’s sisters drop by ever other Sunday on their way home from church. They don’t stay long enough to take their hats off, but Uncle Bud helps out. He comes over from his place of a morning. He weeds the garden, keeps the wood box filled, and milks the goat.”

“Goat?”

“For the kids,” Armina said. “The nanny goat’s and these.”

Sissy toddled to Lilly’s side and held her arms up. Lilly bent to lift her.

“Sorry,” Armina said. “She’s always begging for something.”

Bubby skirted Lilly’s chair and crawled to Armina’s. She picked him up and kissed the top of his fuzzy head.

Lilly broke a piece of the cinnamon biscuit on her plate and fed it to Sissy. The little girl was so slight she barely made a dent in Lilly’s lap.

“Are Sissy and Bubby brother and sister?”

“Yeah, they’re my sister’s kids. She’s gone, but she’ll be back sooner or later.” Armina tied a dishrag loosely under Bubby’s chin. “She followed their daddy off somewheres. He’s supposedly working.”

“Hmm,” Lilly said, disengaging Sissy’s hand from her pearl necklace. “How old are you, Armina?”

“I’m seventeen next week. How old are you?”

Lilly smiled. Fair enough. “I was twenty-three last November.”

“How’d you come to be a doctor? I thought only men were doctors.”

“I was not much younger than you when I decided I wanted to go to medical school.” Lilly added a cube of sugar to the tea in her cup. An aroma akin to that of root beer tickled her nose. Her mother had made her this special drink whenever she was ill. Lilly hadn’t had sassafras tea in a long time.

“Wasn’t you afraid you’d be an old maid?” Armina gave Lilly a calculating look. “I guess you wasn’t.”

Lilly laughed. “I suppose not,” she said. “My daddy always said I had a one-track mind. Once I decided what I wanted to do, there really wasn’t much time for romance.”

“Maybe it ain’t too late. Do you have a boyfriend?”

Bubby kicked his legs out and started fussing. Armina lifted him to a standing position. He bent his knees and jounced up and down.

“My sister always kept a beau,” Armina went on. “I hope to get me one someday.”

Lilly felt like a young girl sharing secrets, but there was something compelling about Armina’s questions. “I do have a fiancé. He’s a doctor also.”

“So where’s he at?”

“He’s in Boston. That’s a big city in Massachusetts.”

“That’s where they had the Tea Party.” Armina gave a sly grin. “Reckon it was sassafras?”

Lilly laughed again. This girl was smart—smart and funny. Sissy drooped against her arm. “She’s gone to sleep. Should I put her down?”

“The crib’s on the other side of the bed. With any luck Bubby will go down too; then I can get some work done.”

Lilly laid the little girl in the crib and covered her with a knit baby blanket. She checked Aunt Orie’s drain, then picked up her doctor’s kit.

“Are you comfortable with your aunt’s care?” she asked. “Do you have any questions?”