Gray (Book 3) (23 page)

“I’m at the laundry this morning.”

“Then come at midday when your shift is done.”

Abigail nodded and then left the room, her head down.

“Poor kid,” said one of their table mates.

“Poor all of us,” said another. “Doug was a good guy.” He started guiltily. “
Is
a good guy, I mean. Let’s pray he makes it back today.”

Work at the clinic was normal until almost midday, when Megan, the person with the tremors, came back in. She brought a neighbor woman, Claire, one of the oldest patients Coral had seen so far, at fifty-eight. Her symptoms were identical to Megan’s. She also complained of stiffness in her toes.

Coral examined her but found nothing more than she’d found with the first patient. “In your case, I’m inclined to say this is the beginning of essential tremor. And your feet—that could be osteoarthritis.” She went on to give her by-now well-rehearsed speech about how all her diagnoses, without lab equipment to verify them, were nothing more than educated guesses.

“What about Megan?”

“Well, it’s not a communicable disease, so far as they know.” She corrected herself. “Knew. And the medical knowledge we had before? That’s about all we’re likely to ever have.” She had thought about this, about the end of civilization being the end of science, the end of testing hypotheses and making new discoveries. Ninety-five percent of what had been known was already lost. If she was the top medical expert in Idaho—and she might be—her pitiful collection of knowledge was all there was. Over time, she’d forget some of it. And if she could never pass it on, it would die with her.

She felt bad for not having more help for Claire, but this was the best she could do.

Her patient accepted it better than Coral herself. “Is there anything I should do for it?”

“Is it making it hard to eat, or dress yourself, or function?”

“Not yet, but I sew. I mean, that’s my job, at the laundry. Like Megan. She’s been taken off fine work because of her shakes. I guess I will be, too.”

“What about chemicals? Do you use anything at the laundry that the rest of us aren’t exposed to?”

“No. Just the soap made here. But everybody uses that. Nothing else. I mean, there’s nothing around
to
use.”

Then that wasn’t the cause.

“Can you talk to Megan again today, too?” the woman asked. “She came with me. I know she’s worried. And I don’t mind if you tell her about me.”

“Okay.” Coral went out to get the other tremor patient and saw Abigail sitting in the waiting room. She caught her eye. “Ten minutes,” she told her, and then finished talking to the two ailing women.

She set water to boil for Abigail’s tea and thought that the puzzle of diagnosis was really what fascinated her about medicine.

It was less fun to solve more nebulous human puzzles, the puzzles of the heart, she thought, as she brought Abigail to the smaller of the two exam rooms. Clearly, Abigail was still miffed at Coral. Coral forgave the woman. Anger was an easier emotion to hold on to than terror her husband was dead or grief over having an abortion.

“I want you in here all afternoon,” she told Abigail.

“I have kitchen duty at three,” she said.

“I’ll get a message to Chef that you’re sick. I’m going to send Edith home this afternoon, in fact, so she can tell him on her way home. I don’t want her here—and you don’t either, not if you want to keep this a secret.”

“Why do I need to be here all day?”

“Because the herbs are here and the stove is here. And because if they work, I want to be nearby if you begin to miscarry.” Coral wasn’t entirely sure what she could do if Abigail did miscarry, beyond soaking up the blood. If Abigail began to hemorrhage, she could pack her vagina with clean cotton cloths, and hope for the best. There were drugs that could stop uterine bleeding in a snap, but they weren’t among the paltry supply of pharmaceuticals in the cabinets.

Coral was following the brief directions she’d found in one of the herbals, which meant steeping a tablespoon each of the herbs for fifteen minutes, and re-dosing once an hour. She’d keep at it until dark. If it didn’t work by then, she’d start again tomorrow morning, until a miscarriage happened, or until the herbs ran out. It was all she could do.

The head cold—or whatever it had been running through the children of the town—seemed to have run its course. One child came in with a hacking cough, but no fever or other symptoms. It might be bronchitis or the start of pneumonia, and Coral considered a dose of antibiotics, but decided to give it another day rather than torture the poor child with the makeshift syringe. Perhaps his own immune system would take hold and fight it off. She set the kid over a bowl of steaming water, his head covered with a towel, hoping to loosen the mucus and let him cough it up.

She gave him a cotton rag and told him, “Spit. Don’t swallow.”

From under the towel he said, “Mom says spitting is rude.”

“Not this time.” She smiled at the worried mother. “Right, Mom?”

“You do what the doctor says,” the woman said.

Coral left them sitting there and took another dose of tea to Abigail in the other treatment room. “Anything?”

She shook her head. She was flipping through the anatomy reference book, the red muscles of the human upper leg. Front and back view.

“Not very cheerful reading material. We have some old magazines.”

“I don’t feel very cheerful.”

“You’re still sure about this?”

“Absolutely. I will not have a baby, just to watch it die.” The word “too” hung there somehow. She seemed to be realizing that Doug wasn’t likely to return.

Coral felt a stab of sadness at that, too. She had liked Doug. “Okay. Drink the tea, fast as you can.”

“I’ll need to use the latrine soon.”

“Sure. Come right back here after you do.”

A few hours later, the last of the patients were dealt with, and Abigail had her fifth dose of herb tea, but she hadn’t felt so much as a twinge, much less the intense cramping that would precede a miscarriage. Coral thought it was best to pack it in for the day and try again tomorrow.

Coral banked the stove, locked the clinic, and walked with Abigail over to the dining hall. They didn’t speak as they walked. Abigail was, understandably, lost in her troubles, and Coral didn’t have any comfort to offer her.

As they made the turn to the hall, Coral could see Kathy standing and talking to Benjamin. She still thought the woman probably had a crush on him, but the thought no longer troubled her. It probably never should have, but it certainly did not now. She and Benjamin’s physical relationship had made their connection even stronger. Nothing would come between them.

She glanced at Abigail, who had had a happy marriage until this week. Except death, she amended. Nothing would come between her and Benjamin except for that. And she’d do her damnedest to make sure neither of them died. Getting out of this place before it fell apart was a crucial step on that journey. Another day or two, and they’d be gone.

The next morning, she explained to Abigail that Edith would be back in the clinic. She’d have to tell her about Abigail’s pregnancy.

“I don’t want you to.”

“And I haven’t broken that promise. All she knows is that someone is pregnant.”

“But you promised!”

“I had to find information about how to trigger a miscarriage.” She didn’t want to point this out, not in Abigail’s current mood, but she had to. “She may have heard gossip that you were at the clinic yesterday afternoon and put two and two together anyway.”

“I didn’t want anyone to know!” Abigail wailed.

Coral could see Benjamin out of the corner of her eye, standing at the top of the stairs. “Benjamin knows.”

“You told him?”

“No. I haven’t told anyone. He figured it out on his own, Ab.” She used the nickname Doug had, hoping it would break through to the woman. “He lives here. You’ve had morning sickness. He’s not stupid, so he figured it out.”

“It’s not anybody’s business.”

“I agree. It isn’t. But it’s a small town, and there’s only one medical facility, and damned few places there’s a stove where I can make tea. It’s either there at the clinic, or the kitchen, or Levi’s office, or in his apartment, and I don’t think you want to tell any of those people more than you want to tell Edith. Right?”

Abigail sat and covered her face with her hands. Coral took the moment to look up to Benjamin. He shrugged. She shrugged back. “Look, Ab. Benjamin and I are going to walk over to the dining hall. You sit here and think for a minute. Figure out what you want to do. I want you to think about if you can trust Edith or not. I believe you can.” She motioned for Benjamin to come down, and the two of them went out quietly, leaving Abigail to her misery.

“I wish I could do more for her,” Coral said to Benjamin.

“You’re doing plenty. I couldn’t put up with all that crying. I keep wanting to yell ‘Man up!’”

“Pregnancy gives women crazy hormones,” she said.

“She was never strong to begin with, I think.” He bumped her as they walked. “If you got pregnant, you wouldn’t fall apart on me, would you?”

“Shut your mouth,” she said. “The way we live out there, if I got pregnant, you’d be burying me inside of a month.”

“You think?”

“I think, yeah. There’s too little food. It’d kill me. And if it didn’t, how could we keep a baby alive?”

“Then maybe we shouldn’t...you know, any more.” He didn’t sound happy about the idea.

“Maybe not. Or, we should save that part of it for special occasions. There’s still plenty to do in bed without risking pregnancy.”

“What qualifies for a special occasion?”

“I’ll know it when I see it. And then I’ll let you know.”

He sighed.

“C’mon, man up,” she said, unable to stop a laugh.

“Huh,” he said, but his lip was twitching as he fought off a smile.

She threaded her arm through his and smiled too, happy for this moment, and trying to hold on to the feeling for as long as she could.

The next afternoon, Abigail was on her seventeenth dose of the herbs, and nothing was happening. The herbs were nearly gone. Edith had been let in on the secret, and she tended to Abigail while Coral saw other patients.

She felt guilty to admit it, but it was nice to be away from Abigail’s weeping and bouts of anger. Coral felt impatient when one of the more neurotic patients came back, complaining about vague symptoms and how much she missed her pills. People had been overmedicated before the Event, and most of them were probably healthier for being off the drugs, but they missed them. Coral wished she had a bottle of placebos to calm people like this.

She was walking the woman out to the waiting room, half listening, when Kathy walked in the front door. Her face was grim.

Coral knew. But she waited for the words.

“It’s Doug. Parnell’s back. Doug is dead. There was a rock fall.”

The waiting room went still as the few patients remaining took in the news. Everyone in the community knew everyone else. Doug was a nice man, and he would be mourned.

Coral wasn’t surprised, but she was sad. “I’ll tell Abigail. Thanks for bringing the news.” She looked around at the waiting room. No one was bleeding or bandaged. “If you can possibly wait until tomorrow, please come back then.”

Two people immediately got up and left, and the last one got up more slowly. Within minutes, the whole town would know, if they didn’t already. Coral turned for the exam rooms, knowing she couldn’t delay telling Abigail.

At the door to the treatment room, she took a deep breath and tried to prepare herself. It struck her, as she reached for the door knob, that had she gone on with her studies, had the world not changed and she had become a doctor for real, delivering news like this would have been something she learned how to do. Had the world gone on normally, she might have done it a hundred times over the course of a career, or maybe more. She wondered if a person ever got used to it.

She pushed through the door. Edith looked at her and her eyebrows lifted at the sight of Coral’s face. Coral gave a little shake of the head and approached Abigail, who was curled up on a chair, her eyes closed.

“She’s been cramping,” Edith said.

“Ah,” said Coral. She squatted in front of Abigail and touched her arm. Her eyes opened. “I’m sorry. Parnell’s back. Doug—”

“No,” she said.

“I’m so sorry. It was a rock fall.”

The wail that came out of Abigail just about broke Coral’s heart. It was a terrible sound, full of the loss of a last hope, full of loneliness and despair. It fell quickly to a whimper. “No, no, no,” she said. She swatted Coral’s arm away. “No!”

Edith pushed by and took Abigail in her arms. The new widow started to sob. Coral backed away and watched the tableau, feeling helpless. How many people since the Event had cried like this, how many times?

A wave of anger made her fists clench. She was so damned mad at it. Asteroid or whatever it had been. It wasn’t fair!

Life isn’t fair
. Her father had told her that, more than once.

Screw that. It wasn’t fair that life wasn’t fair! A year ago, here’s this nice woman, living a nice life, with a nice husband, with a whole life stretching ahead of her. And what does she have now? No husband, chronic hunger, and a fetus that if it keeps growing inside her will likely kill her sooner than even the short period Coral predicted for her, instead of growing to be the joy of two people’s lives.

Coral slammed out of the room and into the next exam room. She spied the emesis basin, snatched it up, and threw it against the wall. Then she started crying, too. She dropped to the floor and sat, tears dripping, sad for Doug’s death and Abigail’s pain. Weeping for the world. Soon the tears were for anger—at her own damned impotence. She couldn’t do anything for any of these people. Her one success as a doctor? Cutting off bits of someone’s body without killing her. Big fuckin’ whoop. Her patient might die anyway in a month when Boise ran out of food.

Coral dashed away her tears and poured herself a glass of water. She drank half of it down then wet her hands with the rest and scrubbed at her face. Out there, in the town, everyone was talking about Doug’s death. And it could be everyone already knew about Abigail’s pregnancy. Small town gossip.

Coral would be glad to be rid of that, too. She wanted out of this place.

A few minutes later, another patient came in with a strained back, and all she could do for him was put a hot cloth on his back and tell him to stay in bed for a couple days. What a joke this clinic was. What a joke Doc Coral herself was.

Coral was straightening up the waiting room for the night when she heard Edith calling her name.

She went back into the hallway. Edith stood outside the room Abigail was in. In a near-whisper, she said, “She’s started bleeding.”

“Oh.” She pinched the bridge of her nose, suddenly aware she had a headache coming on. “So the herbs worked.”

“Or the shock of the news.”

Coral almost said then it was a blessing, but stopped herself in time. It was no blessing, but a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. But Abigail wanted to miscarry, and it seemed she finally was. “I’ll lock the door now so no one else can come in.”

“Make it quick, please.” Edith looked upset.

When Coral joined the two women again, Abigail was hunched around herself, rocking, her eyes closed. Her face was tear-stained and pale.

“How much bleeding?” Coral asked Edith.

“Not much.”

She knelt by Abigail. “You’re cramping?”

“Yeah. Bad as a period has ever been.”

“I’m so sorry about Doug.”

“Just get me through this,” Abigail said. She sounded afraid. “I don’t want to die too. I know that’s awful of me. I should want to die. But I want to live.” She began to cry again.

“Of course you do. And you will live,” said Coral.

The next two hours were not ones she ever wanted to repeat. Abigail’s bleeding quickly accelerated, and finally she passed a clot that Coral was pretty sure was the fetus. The blood seemed to thin out after that. Edith kept Abigail clean while Coral took the expelled tissue into the next room to try and figure out if she indeed had miscarried. She sluiced the clot in a bucket, and strings of blood came off, until she was left with something much tinier than she expected, smaller than the last joint of her little finger, pale, no formed head, and a tail. A little tadpole.

It was done.

“Poor thing,” said Coral. She wrapped the fetus in a cotton cloth, tied it up, and put it aside. Edith was religious. She thought she might want to pray over it before they got rid of it, or something. Maybe Abigail would care about that, too.

Coral was exhausted. She hadn’t done anything physical, but the emotion of the afternoon, of the past few days, and of the steady strain of working with other people had drained her. She checked on Edith and Abigail again. The bleeding seemed to be no worse, at least. The other two women seemed to be giving each other some comfort, and Coral felt like a third wheel. She said, “I’ll be outside,” and went back and cleaned up the other treatment room.

As she was finishing, a knock came at the front door. She really did not want to see another patient. It was late afternoon, still light, and when she went out into the reception area, she saw Benjamin through the door. She hurried to it and opened it, and threw herself into his arms. It felt good to be held. She misted up again but fought back the tears.

“Are you okay?” he asked, as she pulled away.

“Yeah. It’s a—a tough day.”

“We knew Doug probably wasn’t going to come back. I’m surprised Parnell made it.”

“Did he bring Doug? The body?”

Benjamin shook his head. “He was buried under rocks. But there’s talk of a memorial service for tomorrow afternoon.”

“Ah. Well.” She walked over and sank into one of the waiting room chairs. Benjamin sat next to her. “Abigail has miscarried,” she told him.

“Wow. Rough day for you both.”

“For her, mostly.” She leaned against him and he put an arm around her. “Abigail is devastated, of course. I don’t know what I would do if I lost you.”

“Survive.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

“And I’d survive if I lost you.” But his arm tightening around her told her he felt no happier about the thought than she did.

“It’d be hard alone, either one of us. Pure logistics, I mean, putting aside the emotion of it. Chances of survival would be worse than cut in half.”

“So we’ll both work hard at not dying, right? We owe it to each other to live.”

“Yeah.” She grabbed his gloved hand, gave it a squeeze, dropped it, and stood. “I need to keep checking on Abigail.”

“Is Edith here?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you can take a minute.”

“I guess,” she said, but she remained standing. “And they’re pretty bonded.”

“Is she going to be all right?”

“I think so. I mean physically, it seemed like a pretty clean event. Over with in a couple hours. No hemorrhage. Not even terrible pain.”

“Mother Nature does it a lot, I guess. Knows what she’s doing.”

“That makes one of us.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. You figured out the herb thing. You kept her secret as quiet as humanly possible. You stayed patient when she was yelling at you the other day. What else do you expect of yourself?”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. It was a good question. She’d done what she could for these people. She didn’t owe them anything and never had. She’d paid her way for her days here, for her food, with work, and so had Benjamin. The entire situation at the clinic was hopeless, though. She’d been playing like a kid, with a kiddie doctor set, and doing hardly more good than that.

“Whatever you’re thinking right now, knock it off. You’re being too hard on yourself, Coral.” He hesitated, but then plowed on. “And you’re awfully attached to the people here. You’re not thinking of staying?”

That shook her out of her mood. “No. Not at all. I want to be with you, and I want us gone. I want to live, and I don’t know how long that will be possible here. It seems like the soup is thinner every night. I’m still hungry all the time. Aren’t you?”

“Except when we were out scavenging. I was pretty well-fed then.”

“Did Parnell bring back anything from scavenging? Food, medicine?”

“Not that I heard.”

“What did he say about how Doug died? Did you hear?”

“I heard it second hand only. I guess it was sort of like an avalanche. Rocks, snow. Buried Doug, and after a day of digging, Parnell gave up. Couldn’t find him, never heard a call for help, then he got hurt trying, finally gave up and came back.”

“Makes me wish I had been there.”

“Why? I’m not sure you or I could have found him either. And probably not soon enough.”

“We might have been more motivated. And if we did, maybe I could have done something....” She trailed off, realizing that once again she was expecting more of her doctor self than was rational. “I guess not.”

He stood and put his hand on her shoulder. “Dinnertime is almost here. Are you coming over?”

“I probably couldn’t eat.”

“I need you strong for—” he looked around to make sure they were alone “—you know. So you’ll eat, please, no matter if you feel like it or not.”

“You’re right. Do you think you could bring a bucket of stew to us here? There are three of us.”

“Will Abigail eat?”

“I’ll try to make her. She needs her strength to recover. Probably needs iron supplements or something, but I can’t help with that, either.”

“Quit that.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m quitting it. I’m just sad, I guess, about Doug. Making me all emotional and weird and full of self-pity.”

“You’re about the least self-pitying person I’ve ever known.” He went for the door. “I’ll be back with food as soon as I can. I’ll bring mine and eat with you, if that’s okay.”

“I’d like that.”

Coral checked on Abigail again. She was lying down, a cloth over her eyes. Edith said, “I think she’s going to be fine—or as fine as she can be.”

“You did great, Edith. Thanks for taking over.”

“She seemed to want me.”

“Of course she did. You’re really good with patients. You have that healing touch. If I were sick, I’d want you, too.”

Edith looked surprised at the praise. “Thanks.”

“Haven’t I told you that enough? I’m sorry. You’re really good with people. You comfort them. It’s part of your nature, I think, and a very valuable part.” Coral thought of how she was leaving Edith in the lurch here in a few days. Now she wanted to say something Edith could hold on to when she discovered she would be running the clinic alone again. “There’s almost nothing my book-learning has done for anyone. Most of what gets done here is listening and comforting and common sense. You’re a pro at those.”

Edith was starting to look uncomfortable, probably not used to hearing that much praise at once. “Okay.”