Skip Rock Shallows (3 page)

Once inside the office, the men put Darrell on a waist-height operating table.

“I need hot water,” she said, “and lots of it.”

People gathered outside the door, murmuring among themselves. A man came in with a big black Bible. He laid his hand on Darrell’s forehead and began to pray.

Outside, a near-grown boy added a thick cord of wood to a hastily assembled campfire. A woman poured clean water into a kettle hanging from a tripod over the fire. Wisps of smoke drifted by the open door.

Lilly could tell these people had been through times like this before. Everyone seemed to want to be of service.

As soon as the water was steaming, Lilly scrubbed her filthy hands and arms up to the elbow with strong lye soap and frequent changes of water; then she dipped them in a solution of 1:2000 per chloride of mercury. Mrs. James stepped in and tied a white, long-skirted, bibbed apron around Lilly’s neck and waist. It flowed nearly to the floor and was starched stiff as an ironing board.

As Lilly had ascertained before, the previous doctor had kept the office surprisingly well stocked. There was nothing Lilly needed that she didn’t find, from silk sutures to rolls of gauze. She would be all set as soon as she got an assistant.

“Who would be best to help me?” she asked of Mr. James. “I need a stalwart soul. We’ll be here a long time.”

When Mr. James brought a young man in and introduced him as Ned Tippen, Lilly shooed him out. “Scrub up first,” she said. She stood, elbows bent and hands held upward, careful not to touch a thing as she waited to begin the repair of her patient’s mangled shin.

Mrs. James picked up the antiseptic solution. “Should I take this out for Ned?”

“Just mix a tablespoon of it into a full pan of rinse water,” Lilly said. “We don’t want him to burn his hide off.”

Whip-poor-wills began their eventide croon before Lilly finished putting Darrell back together. Her back seemed to have a permanent crook and her neck was stiff. She balled her fists and pressed them into her lower back.

Lilly thanked Ned, whom she had learned was a first cousin to Darrell. Once their patient began to come out of the anesthesia Lilly had administered, they transferred him to a bed in the alcove of the surgery suite. Ned volunteered to spend the night so Lilly could get some sleep.

“I don’t know,” Lilly said. “It’s a half-mile walk to the Jameses’. What if you needed me? I wouldn’t want Darrell to be left alone for a minute.”

Ned opened the door that had been closed during the procedure. The yard was crowded with folks all waiting. “The rest of his family’s here,” he said. “I’ll send one of them if he takes a turn.”

Lilly shook her head. “Surely they won’t spend the night.”

“Surely they will,” Ned said. “You couldn’t drive them off with a pointed stick.”

Lilly leaned back in the galvanized tub and sighed. Even Aunt Alice’s modern claw-foot bath had not felt this good.

“I put some rose hips in there,” Mrs. James said from the other side of a privacy screen. “Don’t they smell pretty?”

“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven. You are so thoughtful.”

“Do ye want a vinegar rinse for your hair? I’ve got it ready.”

“Um, just a minute,” Lilly said. She sank back in the water, then scrubbed her scalp with the castile soap she’d brought from the city. Her fingers sought and found a nickel-size sore from where she’d caught her hair on the rock. Gingerly, she probed it. She hoped it didn’t cause a bald spot. She’d always been vain about her hair.

“Okay,” she called.

Mrs. James waddled around the screen holding a full bucket of water with both hands. Her eyes were closed tightly. “Do ye care if I look?”

Lilly laughed. “I expect we’ve both got the same equipment.”

“Yours might be a little better placed,” Mrs. James said and then tee-heed.

Cool water streamed from the bucket over Lilly’s head and into the tub. She gasped.

“I should have warned you, but nothing brings out the shine like cold water and vinegar.”

“It feels wonderful to be clean. Thank you.”

Mrs. James averted her eyes as she held a towel for Lilly to step into.

Lilly wrapped herself up and then tied a towel around her head turban fashion. The coal-oil lamp sputtered on a table.

Mrs. James pulled a straight-backed chair up close to the wall. “Sit here on yon side of the door, where cain’t nobody see you, so I can empty the tub.”

Lilly sat and dried her hair while Mrs. James carried buckets of dirty water outside. Lilly could hear her slosh the bathwater over the side of the stone stoop. “Too dirty to save,” she said as if Lilly would think she was wasteful. Mrs. James reminded her of her mother and her use-it-up-or-do-without attitude.

While Lilly combed her hair, Mrs. James carried the near-empty tub outside, rinsed it, and hung it from a nail beside the door.

“I just wanted to say you done a good job today,” she said when she came back in. “I heard Stanley saying you saved that fellow’s life.”

“Mr. James and the other men were the ones who knew what to do. Me, I was scared silly.”

“Well, don’t think what you did was unnoticed.” Mrs. James straightened a lace runner under the lamp. “I almost forgot.” She took an envelope from her pocket and handed it to Lilly. “From a beau, I suspect.”

Lilly Gray Corbett MD, Rt. 1, Skip Rock, Kentucky
flowed in Paul’s precise script across the front of the dove-gray envelope. “Could be,” Lilly said.

“I’ll be leaving, then,” Mrs. James said. “You just holler if you need anything.”

“Thank you. I’ll be going back to the office later to check on . . . goodness, I don’t even know Darrell’s last name.”

“It’s Tippen, Darrell Tippen. He’s Turnip Tippen’s youngest. Darrell’s a fine young man. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you to call me Myrtie.”

“All right, if you’ll call me Lilly.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be respectful, you being a medical doctor and all.”

“But, Mrs. James—Myrtie—I don’t want to be treated any differently than anyone else.”

“Yes, you do. You’ll never get on with these people if you carry water on both shoulders. They need to see you’re set apart, else they won’t have any respect for you. It’s hard enough you being a woman working alongside of men without giving up your station, so to say.”

Lilly had braided her hair into one long tail while they talked. She wound it into a thick bun, which she fastened with pins at the nape of her neck. “You sound as if you speak from experience.”

“You wouldn’t know it now, but I trained as a teacher before I married Stanley. But you cain’t be married and a teacher both, so it’s said. Folks would rather the schoolhouse stand empty than to have a married woman in it.”

Lilly turned up the wick on the lamp. “Why is that, do you suppose?”

“It’s menfolk having their way,” Mrs. James said as she headed for the door. “They’re all afraid won’t be anybody to home when they come in for supper. They don’t ever get over needing a mommy.”

As soon as the door closed, Lilly dressed in a white button-front shirtwaist and an ankle-length navy-blue serge skirt. She held the envelope to her heart before she opened it. There was much truth to what Myrtie said. Lilly would heed her warning, but for now there was news from Paul—her dear Paul.

She slid the pages out. She was sure to get encouragement and laughter from his words. He was the funniest fellow. Scooting her chair closer to the light, she read:

I trust this missive finds you hale and hearty there in the land of family feuds and moonshine. As for myself, I have just returned from a stroll through the invigorating streets of Boston and will shortly go to meet friends at a local pub for a bit of food and conversation. I fear for your mind, darling Lilly, in that backward place and wish you had accepted the internship in Lexington. Your intelligence and exceptional charm will be wasted there. Skip Rock? Really, what were you thinking?

I can see from miles away that I have stepped, though ever so lightly, on your pretty toes, and if I were there, you would give me a fine argument concerning privilege and heritage and all that folderol. Truly, dearest, forgive me. My longing for you overrides my common sense. The sense that tells me you are right and I am wrong. Far from being the weaker sex, you put me and our other colleagues to shame with your bent to save the world one downtrodden person at a time.

Ouch. I ducked that shoe you threw my way.

Tomorrow I report for duty at Hamilton Hospital. It is certain to bring me down a peg, and I will be begging you to let me come to Skip Rock, where all is simple and serene.

Paul

Lilly tucked the letter under her feather pillow, then plopped down on the brightly embroidered counterpane. Paul’s letter stirred the homesickness that she hid in her heart like a faded photograph.

It was late. Her family would no doubt be in bed. The lamps would be turned out and the screened windows all flung open to catch the soft night breezes. Her sisters, Molly and Mazy, might be awake, whispering secrets back and forth. Her brother Jack would be dead to the world—he slept as hard as he worked and played. Did her youngest brother, Aaron, still sleep in the hammock outdoors when the weather was hot? She didn’t know. It had been two years since she’d been back to Troublesome Creek, two long years since she’d felt the touch of her mother’s hand or seen the twinkle of pride in her Daddy John’s eye. And that had been a quick trip between semesters, not the long visit she pined for.

She never would have thought her studies would separate her from her home place for such a length of time. Even though she’d lived with her aunt Alice and her cousin Dodie while attending the university, it wasn’t the same as home. It was better than being alone, though. She didn’t know if she would have survived the first semester at college without Aunt Alice.

Oh, my goodness, that first year had been hard. Lilly knew she was in trouble when she walked into the lecture hall and beheld a long and complicated chemical formula marching in chalk across three blackboards. Three blackboards! It was daunting to say the least. But with prayer and determination she had learned and thrived.

Absentmindedly, she smoothed the counterpane with one hand. Dr. Coldiron had been surprised when Lilly chose to intern for the summer in a coal camp. She was surprised herself, for she’d expected to stay at St. Joseph Hospital in Lexington to continue her training. But then the letter had come to the university from the old doctor who worked for the coal company in Skip Rock, pleading for assistance. That letter was an arrow straight to Lilly’s heart. She wondered if he knew he was ill when he wrote it—if he knew his time was short.

After finding her extra pair of shoes tucked under the bed, she went to the chest of drawers for a pair of hose. The drawer was stuck and squeaked like a mouse when she wrenched it open. She’d have to ask Mrs. James for a candle stub to run along the sliders.

Myrtie. I must remember to call her Myrtie.
Mrs. James might be offended if Lilly was too formal. Now Mr. James—that was a different story, but she had heard him call her
Doc
instead of
gal
. Maybe he was lightening up a tad.

She pulled the laces tight on her sturdy brogans, ever so thankful for modern times. No more buttons on shoes and no more buttonhooks. Progress was a wonderful thing.

Sticking her feet out before her, she made a face. These shoes might be proper for the place, but they were also ugly—lumpy, black ugly. She much preferred the pretty pumps still wrapped in tissue paper and tucked away in the bottom of her traveling case.

Ah, well, once she and Paul were wed and she doctored in Boston, she’d wear only pretty shoes and pretty dresses covered by a lab coat instead of aprons—and her pearls. Aunt Alice had given her the strand of lustrous pearls as a graduation gift, and Lilly wore them always, even with overalls. She must have looked a sight today, operating in those too-big britches cinched in by twine, her face still black with dust, her apron two sizes too large.

A flush of pride warmed her. She knew she’d done a good job on Darrell’s shin. Putting bones back together was like a complicated jigsaw puzzle, requiring patience and dexterity. She had plenty of each, she wasn’t too modest to say.

Lilly closed the door to her cabin gently. The high yellow moon gave plenty of light to guide her way. In a treetop somewhere close by, an owl hooted, plaintively calling,
“Whoo-whoo”
to a distant sweetheart. Or so Lilly fancied. She’d always been one to give notions to animals as if she could discern their feelings.

The dark gloom of homesickness stole across her heart again. Once you gave in to that old high-lonesome feeling, it craved attention like a drunk craves whiskey. She wished she had a dog to walk alongside her as she made her way to the clinic. She missed her old beagle, Steady, and the way she’d push her long nose into Lilly’s hand when they went for walks along Troublesome Creek. She couldn’t help but smile remembering their good times together. Steady had been dead for years now, but still Lilly yearned for her sweet companionship. Maybe when she got to Boston . . .

Shivering, she tightened the shawl she’d thrown around her shoulders against the night air. It was spooky walking after dark in an unfamiliar place. The trees cast long, wavering shadows in the moonlight, and something fast and low to the ground scurried across her path. She should have kept to the street that ran smack down the middle of town instead of this path alongside the railroad track. She’d thought this way would be less distracting, as she was sure the townsfolk weren’t used to a woman walking out alone so late.

Something caught her eye. Was that a man darting between the trees?

“Who’s there?” she asked. She slowed without stopping and looked into the deep shadows. Nothing stirred. It was just her mind playing tricks, conjuring up specters, she was sure as she hurried up a side street to Main. She wasn’t fearful as much as cautious. Past experience had taught her to be wary.

When she got to the clinic, folks who were obviously camped out for the night stepped aside as she made her way to the door.
There must be a lot of Tippens hereabouts.
She hated to close the door in their expectant faces, but her patient came first.

Ned Tippen sat in a straight-backed chair beside his cousin. He stood and moved the chair aside.

“How is he?” Lilly asked, checking Darrell’s bandages and the circulation in his toes.

“Stirred enough to ask for water, then conked right back out.”

Lilly held the water to the light. “He didn’t take much,” she said. The glass invalid straw clinked against the side of the glass when she set it back on the table.

“I didn’t know whether to force it or not,” Ned said.

“Sips are enough for now. We’ll try some barley water tomorrow and progress to clear broth as he tolerates.” Lilly shook down a thermometer and drew Darrell’s elbow forward across his chest. She slid the thermometer between the folds of his armpit. Holding it in place, she timed five minutes by her watch. “His temperature’s 101. Not unexpected. Have you ever given an alcohol bath, Ned?”

“No, ma’am, but that don’t mean I can’t.”

“All right then,” Lilly said as she assembled a basin of water, a jar of rubbing alcohol, and clean linen. Once Ned had the technique down pat, she stepped outside.

Darrell’s family gathered round. “How’s he doing?” a man who was an older version of Darrell asked.

“Are you Darrell’s father?”

“Turnip Tippen,” the man said, doffing a worn cap.

A portly woman pushed her way in front of Turnip Tippen. “Why are you banning his family from in there? What gives you the right? Are you doing some kind of experiments on my boy?”

A murmur with an undercurrent of anger arose from the crowd.

Lilly was taken aback. Nothing she’d learned in medical school prepared her for the outright hostility she felt emanating from the woman’s body like heat off a potbellied stove.

Mr. Tippen stuck out one strong arm and swept the woman behind him. “Shut up, Tillie. This here’s a doctor.”

“Don’t look like no doctor to me!” someone in the crowd shot back.

“Mrs. Tippen, Mr. Tippen, wait just a second,” Lilly said. She cracked the door and slipped inside. Ned was sponging Darrell’s uninjured foot. Otherwise the patient’s body was covered. The assuring scent of diluted alcohol drifted from the bath. Everything was in order. She opened the door. “Come in,” she said to the parents.