Brad Watson: Miss Jane

“I reckon if Chisolm can still make it happen and she can still accommodate it, it’ll happen,” the doctor said.

“Heh,” the old man wheezed. Then he said, Oof , like laughing hurt him.

“Take it easy. You got arrhythmia going on in there. Means your heart’s not beating regular. I’ll give you something just to calm it down.”

“All right.”

“Is he gon’ live?” the young man said.

“Of course,” the doctor said. “Just how long is always the question, isn’t it? I’ve seen young men your age die of a bad heart, too. Seen old men with bad hearts live on and on.”

He administered a hypodermic and gave the young man some pills.

“These here are nitroglycerine tablets. Make sure he keeps them on him and if he feels a pain in his chest, put one under the tongue. If he knows he’s going to be doing something strenuous — hard work, I mean — he can take one a few minutes before and maybe ward it off. Take an aspirin every morning.”

“What if he just gives out like today?”

“Make him go to bed till he feels better. Cut out the bacon.”

“That’s about all he eats,” the young man said.

“Just a new idea going around. Vegetables, cornbread, a little lean ham. Easy on the chores. Plenty of rest. No conjugal relations.”

“What?” the old man said.

“Fornication.”

“Oh.”

“Or if you do, take one of those tablets before that, too.”

“Heh. I ain’t like old Chisolm down there.”

“Equipment not standing like it used to, eh? Well, that’s the way it goes. Chisolm’s younger than you.”

“Sometimes it just gets kind of thick,” the old man said.

The young man snickered.

“Well, just enjoy that, if you can, means you’re still alive,” the doctor said.

“What was it?”

“What?”

“A boy or a girl them Chisolms had.”

The doctor didn’t answer for a moment, then said, “Baby girl.”

“Healthy, then?”

“I believe so.”

“Well, God bless ’em.”

“I’ll pass that along.”

Then he helped the young man help the older man out. The man with the goose egg on his head looked paler, and the goose egg larger, and he signaled for the man’s wife to help him into the office.

“He can make it in on his own,” the woman said.

“Suit yourself,” the doctor said. “If he dies, you know, the sheriff just might charge you with murder for knocking him in the head like that.”

“Wouldn’t be nothing he didn’t deserve,” she muttered as the doctor closed the door to his office behind him. He sat the man down, examined the big bump.

“I’ll have to drain that off, if I can,” he said.

The man said nothing.

“You got a concussion, at best, but I’m worried you got bleeding still going on in there.”

The man still said nothing. Then he said, slowly, “Just tell the sheriff she was lying. I dropped a ax head on myself splitting firewood.” Then he closed his eyes and stopped breathing, still sitting upright in the chair.

“Well, damn,” the doctor said. He checked for a pulse, fingered the carotid.

“You need to come in here,” he said to the woman still sitting on the porch. She looked at him hard for a moment, then got up and followed him in. She looked at her husband sitting dead in the chair.

“Is he gone?” she said.

The doctor nodded.

“He said you were lying and that he dropped an ax on his own head chopping firewood.”

“Well,” the woman said after a long minute. “You don’t need no help around here, do you? Cleaning, what-all? I got a daughter can do it, won’t cost you much.”

The doctor stared at her in near disbelief. Then he said, “Got all the help I need right now. I’ll ask the coroner if he can use anyone.”

“I appreciate it,” the woman said, and left the office, climbed up onto the seat of a buckboard behind a swayback mule. The doctor had the young man, who had not left yet with his ailing father, help him carry the dead man outside and lay him into the back of the woman’s wagon. He unwrapped the reins, traveled them over the mule, handed them to the woman, who looked as if she didn’t know what they were. Then he went back up onto the porch and motioned to the woman with the goiter. Before he closed the door behind them, he said to the rest on the porch, “She was just mad-talking. He dropped an ax on his own head, splitting firewood, by his own admission. You all know how it goes, long married.”

All on the porch nodded and murmured. One said, “Lord, yes.”

“Well, the rest of you figure out the order amongst yourselves.”

He wasn’t tired anymore when he was done with them all, so he went into town and sent a telegraph to his friend from medical school, Ellis Adams, now a urological surgeon at Johns Hopkins. Then waited an hour and called him, long-distance. Described the Chisolm baby from his notes and drawings, asked some questions. Then went home again. No patients waiting this time, thank God.

His wife, Lett, was in the parlor drinking coffee. He sat down and she brought him a cup, sat with him. She was tall, like him, with long brown hair she kept pinned up nicely. A locket cameo beauty carved from ivory, come miraculously to life. But she looked tired. Beautifully so, but tired. And so was he, now. Exhausted.

“I guess you didn’t sleep much last night, either,” he said.

“No.” She set her coffee cup down and tapped on her wedding ring, a habit she had when bothered. “Ed, have you thought anymore about setting up a clinic in town? Or joining someone? Not everyone makes house calls anymore, you know.”

He sipped his coffee. It entered his blood as what it was, some powerful drug.

“I don’t know what to say, Lett. I’ve told you it seems unethical to abandon a practice, especially this kind.”

“Well, find someone to take it, then. As I have suggested before.”

“And, as I have explained, the youngest doctors — the ones who don’t like house calls — don’t want this kind of practice anymore. And the older ones are already settled.”

“Well. Ed.”

“Yes.”

“If you come home from a late-night call and I’m not here, you can figure I’ve gone to Mother’s for the night. I don’t like being here on the edge of town in this big house by myself when you go out. It didn’t bother me so much for a while, but it’s begun to. I wake up, find you gone, and can’t get back to sleep.”

“How is getting up, getting dressed, and driving or taking a buggy into town, waking up your mother — just how is that going to help you sleep, Lett?”

“It’s not all about not being able to sleep, Ed. It’s feeling left alone.”

He noticed her hands were shaking just the slightest bit. She saw him notice, clasped one over the other, and went to the window, facing out.

“Did you sleep at all last night, Lett?”

He was gazing at her tall slim figure there, her lovely neck exposed and half in shadow of diagonal light, and suddenly he felt a fear for her.

“I’m scarcely ever gone more than a few hours, often less.”

She gestured with one hand, as if helpless against her frustration.

“I could give you something to help you sleep,” he said.

She turned then, looking so on the verge of tears he was startled.

“Laudanum, are you saying? No, thank you.”

“No, Lett. There are herbs.”

“They don’t work for me.” She looked at the floor, shook her head.

“Come along with me, then. At least sometimes.”

She turned back to the window and seemed to stiffen.

“You know I don’t like being around sick people. I’m ashamed of it but it’s true. I guess I shouldn’t have married a doctor,” she said, trying to laugh it off. But her laughter was momentary, false, and he could only gaze at her as tenderly as possible, knowing that her feelings for him had been weakening for some time. Detecting the loss of love from one he’d hoped would always give it.