David Nickle - Eutopia

Ask Dr. Bergstrom , Sam Green had told him. Never mind , Dr. Bergstrom had told him. And as for Garrison Harper? The man, with whom all responsibility in Eliada ultimately rested, was too spooked to say anything at all. Andrew set his fork down and pushed the dining table aside.

It was a mystery, there in that quarantine. He could not let go of it.

Andrew Waggoner winced as he swung his feet over the side of the bed. When he settled his weight on them, he wanted to scream. But he held it in, for nearly a minute, before he flopped back onto the bed, bathed in new sweat and breathing in hitching gasps. Pain was a message from the body to the mind—a message that a fellow failed to heed at his peril. Andrew knew this.

But Andrew also knew that if he was smart about it and had a good enough reason, a fellow could ignore pain all the same. It was just, thought Andrew as he gasped air and felt the tears welling out, a matter of will.

The hospital at Eliada was busiest Mondays, but as Sam Green pointed out, it stood to be busy any day the mill was running and men were engaged in the dangerous profession of sawing up trees for lumber. Tonight was Tuesday, and the Pinkerton man would not offer any guarantees.

“Mondays are bad because men are coming off their weekend drunks,” said Sam Green. “But it doesn’t matter. Drunk or sober, they cut their hands and break their bones, and sometimes a chain will snap and a log will swing and one or the other or both will catch a man in the skull. There are saws and axes and mallets, swinging and sawing all the time, and not always true—and if one of those does not get him, why, you put enough men in a room doing nothing but twiddling their thumbs and sipping tea, and even here in this perfect world, before too long one of them’s bound to fall down with a bad appendix or a kidney stone or some awful tumour.”

Or, thought Jason Thistledown, the whole room of them could drop dead from a strange disease, like Cracked Wheel did in the winter. Would this place, this hospital, have helped out any? If he’d been able to bring his mama here, would that have made a difference?

“Thank you, Mr. Green,” said Aunt Germaine.

The three of them stood in front of Eliada’s hospital in the deepening twilight. The building was a simple, rectangular box, made of white-painted wood and climbing fully three storeys tall. It was back some distance from the dock area (where a few moments earlier they’d bid fare-thee-well to Ruth Harper and Louise Butler) on what Jason figured was the very south edge of town. The land right around it had been cleared but it backed on thick, shadowy forest.

“What I mean to say, ma’am, is that you may not be able to see Dr. Bergstrom for some time. He may be occupied. If you like, I could send for a boxed meal.”

“Don’t be vulgar,” said Aunt Germaine. “We won’t be filling our faces in a waiting room, while others before us suffer.”

Sam smiled and shrugged. “As you please, ma’am,” he said to Aunt Germaine. He tipped his hat first to her and then Jason. “Will you be all right with that bag, Mr. Thistledown?”

“I expect.”

“Then, I shall take my leave of you. Welcome to Eliada.”

“Good night, Mr. Green,” said Aunt Germaine, and Jason repeated it. Then the two of them headed up the walk to the wide front doors to Eliada’s hospital.

Carved into their frame were the words:

Compassion. Community. Hygiene.

“That’s Eliada’s motto,” said Aunt Germaine, and Jason said, “Sounds like a fine one to me.”

The entry hall to the hospital was not the pandemonium that Sam Green had led Jason to expect. It was a large room, bigger than the town hall at Cracked Wheel by about half, with benches along the walls. The tall windows had their curtains drawn, and the only light came from kerosene lamps set into little brass wall sconces. Aside from Jason and his aunt, there were perhaps a half-dozen other people there: a band of men huddled together on a bench and talking quietly. One, a young man not much older than Jason, looked hard pressed. Jason didn’t have to count on his fingers to put it together: someone had died or was dying—a person who was kin to the poor fellow. He knew how that felt, and from seeing himself in the glass those weeks alone in the cabin, he knew how it looked too.

At the other end of the room, next to another set of doors, was a long dark wood counter. Aunt Germaine went there, and pressed down on a little silver bell. Jason set the carpet bag and his own sack down beside Aunt Germaine, excused himself politely and made his way back to the bench. He wasn’t intending to eavesdrop, but that wasn’t clear to the group of men and the preacher he supposed, the way they shut right up and gave him a look as he went to sit down.

“Pardon me,” he said, and skidded farther down the bench until they judged him enough past earshot to start up talking again.

Jason didn’t hold it against them; after all, he’d damn near shot his Aunt Germaine in the back, just for looking at his mama’s corpse the wrong way. Sadness had a way of changing the rules.

Up at the counter, Aunt Germaine was talking to a woman wearing some kind of uniform. Jason had never seen a bona fide nurse before but he expected that was what this woman was. She wore a white smock and a sort of frilly white cap that held most of her hair in. Jason started to get up as the nurse, nodding, backed through the swinging double doors. Aunt Germaine turned to Jason with a look that was, if he were to be honest about it, more than a little bit smug.

“It is as I said,” she said. “We were expected, and Dr. Bergstrom will see us presently.”

“Well good,” said Jason. “Why don’t we sit a spell. But—” he leaned to Aunt Germaine “—not next to those fellows. Let’s give them their room.”

“It is,” said the doctor, “a boy.”

The sad-looking fellow on the bench stood up and hooted, and the doctor, wearing a white smock, long black rubber gloves and a facecloth dangling by the strings around his neck, strode across the waiting room to clap him on the shoulder.

“Congratulations, Albert,” he said. “Baby and mother are fine and resting.”

“That is Dr. Bergstrom,” said Aunt Germaine.

“And that’s a new father. I sure figured him wrong.”

Germaine shrugged. “I would have made the same guess, had I not known Dr. Bergstrom as I do. Hospitals are places for the dying and the sick, hmm? Not babies.”

Dr. Bergstrom let the other men shake his hand and nodded and smiled at their thanks, before he extricated himself. Dr. Bergstrom looked over to Jason and Aunt Germaine. He was a tall fellow, tall and lean, and he stood to his full height and huffed, as though he’d just finished some heavy lifting.

“Mrs. Frost!” he exclaimed. “Welcome to Eliada—at last!”

Aunt Germaine got to her feet, and Dr. Bergstrom beckoned her over. “Come, we will go to my office where it is a bit more private.” And then he looked to Jason.

“And this is—?”

“Forgive me,” said Aunt Germaine. “He is my nephew, Jason.”

“Your—nephew.” An odd expression fled like cloud-shade across the doctor’s eyes. “I wasn’t aware you had a nephew .”

“Well, I do. This is he. Say hello to the doctor, Jason.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir,” said Jason.

“Hmm. Likewise.” Then, to Germaine: “He’s a strong lad, Mrs. Frost. Surely he did not travel all the way from Philadelphia with you.”

“No. We met along the way. He has experienced a family tragedy.”

“I see. My condolences, young man.” Dr. Bergstrom turned back to Aunt Germaine. “How is our Dr. Davenport keeping?”