Ellen Firebaugh - The Story of a Doctor's Telephone—Told by His Wife

They walked down the street and as they drew near the office they saw the figure of the office boy in the doorway silhouetted against the light within. He was looking anxiously in their direction. Suddenly he disappeared and the faint sound of a bell came to their ears. They quickened their pace and as they came up the boy came hurriedly to the door again.

“Is that you, Doctor?” he asked, peering out.

“Yes.”

“I told a lady at the 'phone to wait a minute, she's 'phoned twice.” Mary waited at the door while her husband went into the office and over to the 'phone.

“Yes. What is it?.. No. No. No! … Listen to me… Be still and listen to me ! She's in no more danger of dying than you are. She couldn't die if she tried… Be still, I say, and listen to me!” He stamped his foot mightily. Mary laughed softly to herself. “Now don't hang over her and sympathize with her; that's exactly what she don't need. And don't let the neighbors hang around her either. Shut the whole tea-party out… Well, tell 'em I said so… I don't care a damn what they think. Your duty and mine is to do the very best we can for that girl. Now remember… Yes, I'll be down on the nine o'clock train tomorrow morning. Good-bye.” He joined his wife at the door. “If anybody wants me, come to the church,” he said, turning to the boy.

Mary laid her hand within her husband's arm and they started on. They met a man who stopped and asked the doctor how soon he would be at the office, as he was on his way there to get some medicine.

“I'd better go back,” said the doctor and back they went. It seemed to Mary that her husband might move with more celerity in fixing up the medicine. He was deliberation itself as he cut and arranged the little squares of paper. Still more deliberately he heaped the little mounds of white powder upon them. She looked on anxiously. At last he was ready to fold them up! No, he reached for another bottle. He took out the cork, but his spatula was not in sight. Nowise disturbed, he shifted bottles and little boxes about on the table.

“Can't you use your knife, Doctor?” asked Mary.

“O, I'll find it – it's around here somewhere.” In a minute or two the missing spatula was discovered under a paper, and then the doctor slowly, so slowly, dished out little additions to the little mounds. Then he laid the spatula up, put the cork carefully back in the bottle, turned in his chair and put two questions to the waiting man, turned back and folded the mounds in the squares with the most painstaking care. In spite of herself Mary fidgeted and when the powders with instructions were delivered and the man had gone, she rose hastily. “ Do come now before somebody else wants something.”

The singing was over and the sermon just beginning when they reached the church. It progressed satisfactorily to the end. The doctor usually made an important unit in producing that “brisk and lively air which a sermon inspires when it is quite finished.” But tonight, a few minutes before the finale came, Mary saw the usher advancing down the aisle. He stopped at their seat and bending down whispered something to the doctor, who turned and whispered something to his wife.

“No, I'll stay and walk home with the Rands. I see they're here,” she whispered back.

The doctor rose and went out. “Who's at the office?” he asked, as he walked away with the boy.

“She's not there yet, she telephoned. I told her you was at church.”

“Did she say she couldn't wait?”

“She said she had been at church too, but a bug flew in her ear and she had to leave, and she guessed you'd have to leave too, because she couldn't stand it. She said it felt awful .”

“Where is she?”

“She was at a house by the Methodist church, she said, when she 'phoned to see if you was at the office. When I told her I'd get you from the other church, she said she'd be at the office by the time you got there.”

And she was, sitting uneasily in a big chair.

“Doctor, I've had a flea in my ear sometimes, but this is a different proposition. Ugh! Please get this creature out now . It feels as big as a bat. Ugh! It's crawling further in, hurry!”

“Maybe we'd better wait a minute and see if it won't be like some other things, in at one ear and out at the other.”

“O, hurry, it'll get so far in you can't reach it.”

“Turn more to the light,” commanded the doctor, and in a few seconds he held up the offending insect.

“O, you only got a little of it!”

“I got it all.”

“Well, it certainly felt a million times bigger than that,” and she departed radiantly happy.

One day in early spring the doctor surprised his wife by asking her if she would like to take a drive.

“In March? The roads are not passable yet, surely.”

But the doctor assured her that the roads were getting pretty good except in spots. “I have such a long journey ahead of me today that I want you to ride out as far as Centerville and I can pick you up as I come back.”

“That's seven or eight miles. I'll go. I can stop at Dr. Parkin's and chat with Mrs. Parkin till you come.”

Accordingly a few minutes later the doctor and Mary were speeding along through the town which they soon left far behind them.

About two miles out they saw a buggy down the road ahead of them which seemed to be at a stand-still. When they drew near they found a woman at the horses' heads with a broken strap in her hand. She was gazing helplessly at the buggy which stood hub-deep in mud. She recognized the doctor and called out, “Dr. Blank, if ever I needed a doctor in my life, it's now.”

“Stuck fast, eh?”

The doctor handed the reins to his wife and got out.

“I see – a broken single-tree. Well, I always unload when I get stuck, so the first thing we do we'll take this big lummox out of here,” he said picking his way to the buggy. The lummox rose to her feet with a broad grin and permitted herself to be taken out. She was a fat girl about fourteen years old.

“My! I'll bet she weighs three hundred pounds,” observed the doctor when she was landed, which was immediately resented. Then he took the hitching-rein and tied the tug to the broken end of the single-tree; after which he went to the horses' heads and commanded them to “Come on.” They started and the next instant the vehicle was on terra firma. Mother and daughter gave the doctor warm thanks and each buggy went its separate way.

Mary was looking about her. “The elms have a faint suspicion that spring is coming; the willows only are quite sure of it,” she said, noting their tender greenth which formed a soft blur of color, the only color in all the gray landscape. No, there is a swift dash of blue, for a jay has settled down on the top of a rail just at our travelers' right.

Soon they were crossing a long and high bridge spanning a creek which only a week before had been a raging torrent; the drift, caught and held by the trunks of the trees, and the weeds and grasses all bending in one direction, told the story. But the waters had subsided and now lay in deep, placid pools.

“Stop, John, quick!” commanded Mary when they were about half way across. The doctor obeyed wondering what could be the matter. He looked at his wife, who was gazing down into the pool beneath.

“I suppose I'm to stop while you count all the fish you can see.”

“I was looking at that lovely concave sky down there. See those two white clouds floating so serenely across the blue far, far below the tip-tops of the elm trees.”

The doctor drove relentlessly on.

“Another mudhole,” said Mary after a while, “but this time the travelers tremble on the brink and fear to launch away.”