Stone Dreaming Woman (17 page)

When they reached the clearing around which North Village clustered, she felt the usual pang of shame and regret that people had to live in such a fashion. Winter had left the ramshackle houses that much sadder and wearier. Porches leaned farther, walls stood a little more crooked, and more and more tarpaper had been added everywhere. Jimmy bounced down, and she noticed with satisfaction that he took as much of the shock on his stump as on his good leg.
Exceptional healing
, she thought, giving herself a mental pat on the back. Then hard on its heels came the thought that the young heal well given half the chance. She paused to tether Fleur to a hitching rail and unfasten her medical bag, and Jimmy led her into his own house.

Unlike Madame LaPorte’s log cabin, this was a box-framed board-and-batten shack with a leaning porch. Two children, a boy of about eight years and a girl somewhat younger, retreated to a corner when Jimmy opened the door. Jenny smiled at them as Jimmy said something in Iroquois. The girl looked at Jenny for an instant, but the boy, his eyes fixed on his older brother, gestured toward a door in the back wall.

This house, too, was a two-room shotgun, somewhat better than the run of shacks in North Village in which an entire family lived in one featureless room. She heard voices in the back, and then the door opened and Jimmy’s parents exited, followed by the thin, wizened priest she remembered as Father André from Our Lady of the Angels. The priest looked at her as though seeing an apparition.

“What are you doing here?” he asked in his very Parisian French.

“I am a doctor, Father André. If you remember, I treated Jimmy when he injured his leg in the trap. He came for me, saying that his brother is ill.”

“A doctor?” the priest echoed. Jenny felt herself becoming impatient and took a deep breath.

“Yes. I’ve been practicing with Dr. MacBride for the last few months.” Father André looked hard at her for a moment, then shook his head slowly.

“The Good Lord never ceases to surprise us, does He? I doubt there is much you can do for Johnny. He received a valid Last Sacrament, but…” He broke off with a sigh and a helpless gesture of spread hands and shook his head again. “I’ll come with you as interpreter if you’d like me to.”

“Thank you, Father. I’m learning Iroquois, but I haven’t come too far yet.”

He gave her a sad smile full of wrinkles and weariness, ushered her into the miniscule back room, and turned away, leaving her with her patient.

She swallowed against a lump in her throat when she saw the boy, a thin, slightly taller version of Jimmy, lying unconscious and hyperpyrexic on a pallet of hides and worn blankets. His dark face was flushed hotly save that there was a pale margin around his lips, and as she watched, she noted his erratic breathing. She shook her head. Why had these people waited so long to call her? With a nod to Madame LaPorte, who sat on her knees a few feet away, she opened her medical bag, produced a thermometer, and tucked it into the boy’s armpit. But the bright red, sandpapery rash across his chest sounded a more grave alarm within her. Scarlet fever—deadly, and very contagious. And in the next room, three innocent children were defenseless against it. She said a silent prayer that the killer would go no further than this room, but in all probability the streptococcus already had done its ugly work. She plucked the thermometer from Johnny’s armpit and read it: 105.8. And the axillary temperature usually ran at least a degree lower than the actual body core temperature. The hideous fire had already wrought irreparable harm, and even as she read the strip of mercury, Johnny’s breathing failed for several seconds and resumed with a lurching gasp. Cheyne-Stokes Respiration. It indicated irreversible and terminal neurological damage to the respiratory center in the brain. At that moment Father André entered again, as quietly as a cat. His faded blue eyes questioned her.

“Father, I’m sorry. He’s too far gone. It’s a matter of time now, probably within the hour. All we can do is wait out the end. Madame, I’m very sorry.” Renee LaPorte translated for Helen Richardson, whose face registered no change of expression. Jenny listened with her stethoscope as Johnny’s heart stopped. Then she drew the blanket over his face and tried her best not to cry. Once outside the shotgun shack, she turned on Father André.

“Why did they wait? He must have been ill for days!”

“He was, but Doctor MacBride is old and frail, and these people have their own ways of treating things.”

“Ways that lead to this!” Jenny retorted, softly but nonetheless vehemently. “If I’d been summoned earlier, he might have had a chance!”

“All is as God wills it, my child,” Father André murmured, and she wanted nothing more than the luxury of flying at him. However, she knew the futility of arguing. She had been caught out by this attitude before.

“Be that as it may, we can help keep the disease from spreading. It’s scarlet fever. The early symptoms are sore throat, headache, rash, fever, chills. The schoolhouse will be ideal for an isolation ward. Please go among the people and have any who have experienced these symptoms, especially children, come to me there. If we can isolate the sick ones, it’ll minimize the risk of contagion, and scarlet fever is one of the worst for spreading. Can you get them to cooperate, Father? And I’ll need a few people to help me, but be certain they know they’ve had the disease. One episode of infection confers lifetime immunity.” He continued to look down at her with timeless patience.

“Every adult here has had the disease. It’ll strike only children, like all diseases do in North Village.”

“Then can you get the parents to help? I’ll check the children for sore throats, but it’s imperative that all who have any symptoms whatsoever be isolated. And get some of the men to barricade the trail so that no one will accidentally come up here.” Father André nodded, and it struck her that she did not have to give him directions. He had doubtless seen enough epidemics that he would know exactly what had to be done. After a long, sorrowful look toward the mean little house of mourning, he left, and she was alone in the muddy village square. She turned toward Madame LaPorte, who had followed her out of the Richardsons’ shack.

“I will help you,” the Indian woman murmured in very provincial French.

“
Merci, Madame
,” Jenny responded.

By afternoon Jenny had five children in the schoolhouse infirmary. The North Village children reminded her of little squirrels, all dark eyes and furtiveness. Raised in the woods, they were silent, woodsy little things themselves, and it took a lot of cozening on her part to overcome their fear of a white woman. She dispensed aspirin for fever and sprayed throats, though she did not know how much good it would do. Once the disease took hold, it could only be allowed to run its course, and the most she could do was provide good supportive care. The ones who were actually ill were isolated and bundled onto pallets on the floor, attended by five Indian women, among them Madame LaPorte and her sister, who held her deep, maternal grief behind expressionless black eyes.

Just before dusk Jenny checked into the progress in barricading the trail. Four men had dragged a large log across the path just below the village, and after some digging in the schoolhouse, she found a sheet of paper and a charcoal crayon, printed a large sign reading QUARANTINE—SCARLET FEVER, and affixed it to the log. She had no more than finished her task when a voice called up to them and she stepped over the log to see Shane riding up the trail. She moved out to warn him off.

“Don’t come any closer. There’s scarlet fever here. We’ve had six cases and one death already.” She backed up a step as he pulled Midnight to a stop a little closer than she would have liked.

“Jenny…” he began, but she silenced him with a shake of her head. “No,” he insisted. “I’m in this now, so I may as well stay. You’re going to need help.”

“I have all the help I need. The only thing I need from you is a burial permit. Johnny Richardson died about four hours ago. They’d waited so long to call me that he was comatose when I got here, and there was nothing to be done by then.”

His eyes flickered downward. “That’s too bad. I’ve known Johnny a long time. He was a good boy. But how about the other children? We have to work with the ones we can save.”

“Not
we
.
Me.
Don’t come in.” She moved as though to block his path, but he heeled Midnight over the log and she was forced to step out of the way of the big warmblood. “Why did you do that?” she demanded as he swung down from Midnight’s back.

“As I said before, you’ll need help.”

“There’s plenty of help here. Father André is with us, and Madame LaPorte. We have enough French to communicate nicely. You have had scarlet fever, I hope?” He nodded, his face tense.

“A long time ago. I don’t specifically remember, but I must have had it. I had everything else. There’s an outbreak around here every few years.”

“Well, as long as you’re here, please make out a permit so the body can be buried as soon as possible. That’s one small thing we can do to help prevent contagion.”

“As soon as I put Midnight up. Jenny, this is a brave thing you’re doing.”

“I’m a doctor; it’s no more than my duty. Would you have told Doctor MacBride he was doing a brave thing?”

“Perhaps I take Angus too much for granted,” he replied cryptically.

Later, as she went from child to child in the schoolhouse, changing cool compresses and administering aspirin, she had to admit to herself that Shane’s presence was comforting. She had never known anyone so strong and so quietly competent. She could not imagine a situation he could not handle. Then she realized she had begun to feel a deep fondness for him, and in her life that was very much an unknown quantity.

In the half-dark of the schoolhouse she meditated on that for a few minutes. She had never had a regular beau, though her father was staunchly in favor of Phillip Hildebrand. However, she and Phillip, thrown together by parental agreement, had never developed any sort of attraction for each other, and deep inside Jenny suspected the Hildebrands’ motives. After all, the Westons had a great deal of money, and she could reasonably be expected to inherit it all. Idly she wondered if it would matter to Shane whether she inherited money or not. Her first impulse was to doubt it absolutely.

She did not have time to speculate long, though. The worsening condition of ten-year-old Marie Ansiaux claimed her entire attention. Marie’s fever climbed to equal Johnny’s, and in spite of endless fever baths and cold packs she died shortly before dawn. As though untouched by the death, Madame LaPorte washed and readied the small, fever-ravaged body, and Jenny, who had thrown so much of her energy into keeping the girl alive, felt compelled to question the older woman.

“Madame, was she related to you?” she asked.

“The granddaughter of my late sister,” she responded, undoing a braid and brushing out the baby-fine, dusky hair. “Her mother is lucky. She has four others, and this is the first she has lost.”

“Lucky?” Jenny prodded. “It’s tragic to lose any child so young.”

“Tragic for a white woman, perhaps. Here we have two babies to keep one. Some have two families, or even three.”

“And you, Madame? How many children did you have?”

“Five. I kept none.” There was deep sorrow in the black eyes then, and Jenny had the distinct feeling she had probed too far. But to her the mere concept of bearing two children so that one would grow up was repugnant. She wanted to rage at the poverty around her, at the dirt and the ignorance, at the lack of proper medical attention, and ultimately at God for letting it all happen. But the helpless whimper of the youngest victim, a sturdy-legged boy of two, brought her back to reality. If the Chinese proverb were true and the journey of ten thousand miles begins with a single step, there were several steps she could take right here in North Village within the next few days.

She went to his pallet and picked him up, balancing him against her left shoulder. He whimpered again, a high, drawn-out moan rather than a cry, and made a halfhearted effort to thrust a finger into his mouth. She spent the next half hour coaxing him to drink, and considered it a victory when she managed to spoon half a cup of water into him. With adequate fluids he had a chance, as he seemed much less sick than the others.

The next morning Father André and the men from the village carried their sad, small burden up the hill to be buried. Jenny, though, stayed behind, tending the four remaining children and catching an hour’s nap when she could. Later she watched the group come back, Shane’s bright tunic conspicuous against the more somberly dressed Indians. He walked in the middle of the party, with Father André on one side and Jimmy Richardson on the other. As usual, she observed with satisfaction that Jimmy had lost all but a hint of his limp. She breathed on the streaked windowpane and rubbed it with her cuff to see better. Her heart constricted as Jimmy stumbled heavily against Shane. Then she saw that it was more than a stumble as Shane caught Jimmy’s inert form and lifted the boy in his arms. The look of alarm on Father André’s face did not escape her either. Her heart constricted into a cold knot. It was probable that another one of the Richardson children would contract the disease, but did it have to be Jimmy? He had been through so much already. She ran from the schoolhouse as Shane turned down the path.

“Is it...?” she called softly. He looked at her, his face grave.

“I’m afraid so,” he responded, glancing at Jimmy, unconscious in his arms. When she reached them, she could diagnose it without even touching her patient. His face was flushed save for the characteristic pale ring about the lips, and his breathing was stertorous. Through the half-open collar she could see the classic rash at the base of his throat. Sadly she shook her head.

“Bring him inside,” she murmured.

She had the gut feeling that she could do little for Jimmy. It was a diagnostic sixth sense she possessed in equal measure to her father’s. This time it made her strive all the harder. As much as she wanted to deny it, she had developed an attachment to the boy. Shane, too, seemed to catch her determination, spending hours sitting by Jimmy’s pallet, speaking quietly to him when he awoke, and sponging his body endlessly until his own hands became waterlogged. She marveled at his patience and his physical ability to sit cross-legged for so long at a time. Long since she would have become as stiff as a board. But in spite of aggressive doses of fluids, endless fever baths, and Jimmy’s own heroic strength, twenty-six hours later the fever won.