The Reluctant Midwife (28 page)

“There's a nakedness to the land when the snow melts off,” Patience muses. “Have you ever noticed? The yard is littered and muddy, a tin can here, a pile of tomato stakes there, chips of firewood and blown-down branches, but already the grass is greening; the green of Ireland, Mrs. Kelly would say.”

We sit with Danny on the front porch, drinking cold milk and eating gingersnaps. It's only fifty-six degrees by the thermometer but feels like summer, and the men are in their shirtsleeves out in the garden clearing tall weeds.

“I always listen for the bird sounds. To me, that's the first sign of spring,” I answer.

A few minutes later, Patience starts up again. “So, how was your trip to Torrington with Captain Wolfe? Did you talk to him about the way he's been treating you?”

“Tense. The road was bad on the way there, so we didn't talk at all. Even Boodean, my medic, was silent.”

“So? Is it TB?”

“I don't know. The physician wasn't sure. There's some scarring of the lungs, he said, and some pleural effusion, so he's sending the
plates to a specialist in Pittsburgh and wanted to keep Drake at the hospital until he gets the results.

“I felt so bad. Drake
really
didn't want to be admitted, but the report should be back in another three days and we'll go get him. It's going to cost the camp an arm and a leg.”

“What will you do if the report says tuberculosis? Weren't all the boys tested before they enrolled?”

“They
were
all tested . . .
all but Drake!
Remember, I told you he just climbed in the CCC truck around Hagerstown and no one even noticed he hadn't joined up at the processing center? I'm worried about him, but not just him—I also feel responsible for the rest of the corpsmen. When I hid his secret, it never occurred to me that he hadn't gone through the usual health screenings. Now, if TB spreads through the camp, there will be hell to pay, and think of the reaction in Union County. The locals don't like the CCC boys much anyway.”

“Try not to worry so much, Becky. Even if he has TB, it doesn't always spread. Most of the things we worry about never happen.”

I take a deep breath and let out my air. She's probably right. Most of the things we worry about never happen.

“Look, Danny,” Patience says. “There's a robin sitting on the fence post, his red chest shining, his yellow beak open. . . .”

I am furious! I'm so mad I could spit. Today, after leaving three messages I finally spoke to Dr. H. A. Raymond, radiologist at West Penn Hospital in Pittsburgh.

“So sorry,” he said, “for not getting back to you sooner. I was in Boston speaking at the New England Roentgen Ray Society's yearly meeting.” (He waited to be sure I was properly impressed.) “Can I give my report to the camp physician?”

For god's sake! We have no physician!
I wanted to shout, but I kept my temper. “This is Becky Myers, RN. I'm the nurse for the camp infirmary.”

There was a long pause with only static on the line, and for a minute I thought we had lost the connection.

“You don't have a supervising physician? Well then, who's in charge? There must be someone.”

“
I'm
in charge. We had a part-time doctor, but he went back to Ohio. Meanwhile I deal with all the medical emergencies and illnesses, nothing my medic and I can't handle.”

“Well, I can only give the report to a physician . . .” he says, as if it's a federal law.

“All I need to know is, does Mr. Trustler have TB?”

“Trustler, you say? I thought you were calling about William Taylor at Camp Wolf Rock, in Pennsylvania.”

“This is
Camp White Rock in West Virginia
,” I explain. “I've been calling every day. We have reason to believe
Drake Trustler
has tuberculosis. He's hospitalized at Boone Memorial in Torrington, West Virginia, until we have a definite diagnosis, and it's costing the CCC camp a bundle.”

“Did you do a sputum culture?”

“Of course, but the lab at Johns Hopkins said it would be two to four weeks until we have the results.”

“Well, I haven't seen Drake Trustler's images yet and, regardless, you will have to find a supervising physician willing to talk to me.”

At this point I hung up. I did! I know it was unprofessional, but I just couldn't stand it! What will I do now?

“So where could he be? You think he just got in your Olds and drove away?” I ask.

Hester, Patience, Danny, and I are sitting down to supper and have said our brief grace.

“How long has he been gone?”

“All day, I guess.” That's Patience.

Daniel interrupts. “I was tuberculin-testing two herds in Grant County. Patience thought Blum was with me.”

“Yes, I just assumed he was with Daniel, until Daniel got home and asked where my Oldsmobile was. All day I'd been puttering around the house and hadn't been out to the driveway to notice.”

I'm worried about Isaac, of course, but also angry. I've been at work and assumed all was well. He's never wandered off before, not since that time when he joined the soup line in Liberty. Certainly he's never taken a vehicle, although at Christmas the vet divulged that Blum could drive a tractor. I let out a heavy breath. If a man previously thought to be catatonic can do a cesarean section, who knows what else he is capable of.

“Honey, drink your milk.” That's Patience speaking to Danny, who grins, takes up his tin cup, and dribbles white down his chin.

“He'll come back,” Daniel reassures. “Can you pass me the butter?”

It's the stillest part of the night and I am still awake, thinking about what could have happened to Isaac. Did he run off the road? He might be injured and trapped behind the wheel, though Daniel and I drove to Liberty and back looking in all the ditches. We even drove up Wild Rose Road to check the house with the blue door. No Oldsmobile. No Dr. Blum.

The irony is that, even though I've felt burdened by having to care for him for so long, now it seems I've grown to care
about him
. I think of his kindly ways with children, of his beautiful woodworking, of his companionship with Daniel, of his surgical skill when Patience was hemorrhaging. He is Isaac Blum, but a
new Isaac Blum. Even his body is different; muscular and brown, a farmer. But where is he now?

At dawn, I wake to the sound of Danny laughing up in his bedroom. “Uncle Isaac. Uncle Isaac is home!”

Then Hester, “Dammit, man! You gave us a scare! Where the hell did you go? Becky and I drove around half the night looking for you.” (This is an exaggeration. We only drove into Liberty and back, then up Wild Rose Road.)

There's no answer, of course, but what is Blum playing at? Stealing a car, leaving us for twenty-four hours, and then sneaking home like a teenager and crawling in bed! I throw on my bathrobe, ready to stomp upstairs and confront him, give him a piece of my mind for making me worry all night, but as I rush through the kitchen a file folder on the table catches my eye.

WEST PENNSYLVANIA HOSPITAL
is stamped on the front. It takes me a moment to realize what I'm looking at. It's Drake Trustler's X-ray report.

Did Dr. Blum drive to Pittsburgh? No, it's not possible! How could he find the way? How did he communicate with the hospital personnel? He can barely talk, unless he's been faking the whole time. I pace the cold kitchen floor. Did he pretend to be a physician from the Civilian Conservation Corps? I'm still riding the wave of my anger and am unsure how to react, but before I can go off the deep end, I take a big breath and I flip open the folder.

I skip to the bottom of the report with a sinking heart, looking for the summary.

Silicosis
. I whip through the report a second time and am stunned. Not TB? Silicosis! But how could Drake have contracted silicosis? He's only twenty-four. Usually, it's a chronic disease of old men or miners like those at the Hawk's Nest disaster. Then I remember that Drake once told me he worked alongside his father and grandfather at a brick factory in Ohio before he ran away. Could the lungs of a young boy be more susceptible to the disease than a man's? Is this good news for Drake or another death sentence? I really don't know.

“Becky! Isaac's back,” Daniel calls down to me. “He just went up to Pittsburgh to West Penn Hospital and had a hard time getting back.”

I tighten my jaw and don't answer. What can I say? I am shocked and I'm furious. I am also happy. Drake doesn't have TB and Isaac is safe. The S.O.B.!

“I'm sorry I've been so withdrawn. The thought of Drake having tuberculosis was really upsetting me,” Captain Wolfe opens up. “My wife died of TB, but silicosis, that's different. There's hope.”

We are in his sedan, driving to Torrington to pick up Drake Trustler and I am elated. Silicosis, I've read, is serious, but at least it's not communicable, and Drake can come back to the camp.

“I didn't want to do it,” he goes on, stroking his scarred cheek, and for the first time telling me about his dead wife. “I didn't want to put her in the tuberculin asylum, but the doctors said it was her only chance. The cool mountain air would soothe her lungs and isolating her would keep me from getting it.

“I drove her up to Cresson near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in the middle of winter. It was the nicest sanatorium I could find. She had her own room and everything. Caroline was a teacher, an elementary school teacher, and she loved children, though we never had any ourselves, a beautiful, delicate woman. They say that happens. The good die young. . . .”

He looks over with tears in his eyes and it strikes me that the
man is still in love with his wife. I think about my husband, David. Do I still love him?

The captain goes on. “I went up to see her every other week and the last day is like a hand-tinted photograph imprinted in my mind. It was a beautiful spring day, but something was off, the yellow of the forsythia was too yellow, the grass was too green, the red on her handkerchief too goddamn red.

“I left with a bad feeling and the next day she died,
died alone
.” The captain wipes his eyes. “If Drake had had TB, I couldn't have stood it.” After that there's silence.

“Drake can't stop talking since he's been back at the camp. It's like he's been given a new life,” Boodean confides later that afternoon when we'd sent Drake over to the cookhouse for supper.

“Well, I'm sure he was worried about TB. Everyone knows tuberculosis is incurable. The thing is, Boodean . . . ” Here I lower my voice. “Silicosis isn't much better. It's not contagious, which is a plus, and the deterioration is slower, but in the end . . .” I stop, hoping my meaning is clear enough.

A few minutes later, Drake comes back into the infirmary whistling. His color is better, he gained five pounds while in the hospital, and we intend to keep the weight on. Mrs. Ross even got him some smaller uniforms so he doesn't look like a scarecrow, and she plans to bring him pound cake that's full of eggs and cream from her farm every week.

“From now on, until it gets warmer, Drake, I want you to sleep in the clinic, and the major says you can be Mrs. Ross's assistant, sending out the twenty-five-dollar checks to the boys' families and doing other little jobs for her.”

Drake just chews his gum and smiles.

“Then in a couple of weeks, the captain plans to station you in the new fire tower during the day, a nice easy job, so you can get
your strength back and continue to heal. A corpsman from the motor pool will drive you up with your lunch, and you'll sit in the lookout station with a shortwave radio and binoculars, looking for signs of smoke and calling in anything suspicious.

“That's swell, Nurse Becky. I know I'm blessed that I don't have TB. I was pretty sure you'd have to send me to one of those sanatoriums, like where my grandpap went to die.”

“March through May is fire season,” Boodean interjects, “and the fire index is higher this year because we didn't get the heavy snows, so it's not like this job is a piece of cake.

“Before the oak and maple leaves pop out and provide shade, the forest floor is as dry as a tinderbox. One spark from a steam engine or an untended fire and it's all over. Thousands of acres can burn in a day.”

“That's why us boys are ready and trained,” Drake adds with pride. “It's part of the CCC mission . . . to stamp out forest fires. Yee-ha!” He laughs, proud, but still making fun of himself.

Today is April Fools' Day and the doctor and I have been home in the little house at the end of Wild Rose Road for three days. It was hard coming back. I miss the Hesters, but Patience is well and doing fine; in fact she attended a birth on her own the day I went into Torrington. An easy one, she told me, right on the outskirts of Liberty, so she didn't have to drive too far. It was Ida May's cousin Betty Lou Cross, having her third, and now all the women on Patience's list are delivered. In a way this gives me peace, but also a feeling of emptiness, like something important has gone out of my life.

So now here we are, back where we started, but it's not a happy landing. I watch Blum out in the garden turning over the soil with a garden fork, and I'm still pissed as hell. All this time, he could drive, find his way to Pittsburgh, go to a hospital, and pick up a report, while I have been taking care of him as if he were a prince! What a fool I've been! And how did I not realize that the man was so functional? It can only be that I was still treating him like an invalid while clearly he was recovering.

And another thing: how did he know where to go? Patience didn't seem as surprised as I was. She knew he'd been driving the tractor and even the Model T when he went out on calls with Daniel, but neither of us can remember talking about
which hospital
or
which radiologist
was causing me grief. For the first time, it occurs to me, with a turn of the stomach, that he has been reading my journal.

The son of a bitch!

“Hip, hip, hooray!” we all cry. Today Mrs. Maddock walked!

Mr. Maddock, who was once an engineer, invited us all over, even Dr. Blum, whom he apparently no longer fears, to witness the demonstration of a pair of leg braces, much like President Roosevelt's, that he's made for Sarah. She was able, using the wheelchair for support, to walk down the garden path to the driveway and back again. Maddock hovered behind her in case she fell.

“I have been practicing standing for weeks,” she tells us, straightening the collar on her pretty flowered dress. “Holding myself up with the help of the braces, on the backs of chairs and the back of the sofa. I figure if FDR can do it, so can I, but I still get very tired. I don't know how the president does it!”

“He has a handsome young man who pretends to be his body guard stand next to him to give him support,” Daniel explains. “Look at the photos of him in the newspapers giving a speech or waving to the crowd, there's always someone at his side.”

“Well, I have my guardian angel, Milton.” She plunks back down in her wheelchair and Mr. Maddock pushes the conveyance up the side ramp to the porch, where we find celebration refreshments on a white wicker table—lemonade and sugar cookies that Mrs. Maddock has made herself.

Whenever I have been in Sarah Maddock's home, I've appreciated all the adaptations Mr. Maddock has made to accommodate his wheelchair-bound wife and wonder if he will have to remake all the shelves and cupboards now that she can walk. In the kitchen, pantry, and water closet everything has been built low, so that Sarah can reach from her wheelchair. It's amazing what disabled people can do if given the appropriate tools.

“Saw fire warning signs on Salt Lick today as I came into Liberty,” Daniel mentions, munching a cookie. “I guess the CCC boys put them up. Surprised we haven't had more trouble with the corpsmen. In some towns they raise holy hell.”

“Couple of boys got drunk at the bar a few nights ago,” I add, “and Sheriff Hardman put them in the drunk tank overnight, but that's the only trouble I've heard of. Captain Wolfe and the superintendent run a tight ship.”

“That's good,” Daniel agrees. “Got to make those boys tow the line.” Here he looks at Blum as if this were an inside joke and I swear Blum actually smiles, the bastard!

A few years ago, I'd have been glad not to hear doors banging, children crying, voices in another room, but now that we've returned to the house with the blue door it's the silence that gets me. With only the doctor for company, it's quiet as a mausoleum. Even our three-legged dog doesn't bark unless a deer walks right past him.

The worst part is my relationship with Blum. Since I realized he'd been reading my journal, I don't brush his teeth anymore or lay out his clothes. I cook for him, so he won't starve, but that's all.

What bothers me most is the suspicion that it wasn't just once that he read my journal but many times. Thusly, I have doubled my effort to locate a good hiding spot. So far, the loose floorboard under my dresser seems the best place. I don't think he can possibly find it, but still I keep picturing him with the little leather-bound book open over his knees.

Yesterday at breakfast, I finally came out with it.

“Blum, you are a bastard and a dickhead!” (Those were the only words I could find.) “After all I've done for you, you creep into my room and look in my journal. What kind of man are you?” That's what I said. He just hung his head, didn't answer. Not that I really expected him to.

The idea of leaving him has come to me lately. If he can drive to Pittsburgh, he's much more functional than I imagined. But if I left,
where would I go?
I still have my job at Camp White Rock and I could move into town, but I don't make enough money to afford it.

On the other hand, I have become fond of the farm at the end of Wild Rose Road, the daffodils, the brook, the oak in front just budding out. This is our second spring here and the early crops
have already been sowed. And then there's the chickens, only six of them, but they all have names, Mary, Martha, Madeline, Molly, Maria, and Minny. Minny's the littlest, a red Bantam that lays brown eggs. What would I do with them if I left?

I suppose I could tell Blum to leave. Tell him to wrap his few clothes in a bundle, tie them to a stick, and hit the road like a hobo, but then I'd be here alone. That would
not
be a good idea, not with the homeless men drifting over the land.

Just yesterday two rough-looking fellows came to the door and the hair on my neck rose up like a cat's. Bums, I thought, looking for handouts, but it turns out I was wrong.

“Would you like to buy some nice hard coal, ma'am?” the bearded one asks, taking off his dirty cap. His hands are almost black and there's soot on his nose. They lead a jackass loaded with burlap bags of the black gold. “Two bits a bag; burns nice and hot.”

“Where'd you get it?”

“We dug it ourselves. We're no thieves if that's what you're thinking.”

“You dug it? I thought all the mines had closed in Union County.”

“They did. MacIntosh Consolidated went bust five years ago. Horse Shoe barred the gates and evicted us from our mining shacks this December, but the coal is still down there. It belongs to the people, same as air or water.” (This must be what Sally was talking about when she told me her pa was working his coal mine!)