Cherry Ames 22 Rural Nurse (7 page)

“The roots look like little men,” Jane said. “See, here is the body, here are two arms, and here are two legs.”

“You’re right,” Cherry said. “Think you can walk as far as the house?
Your
house.” She could, in her eagerness, with Cherry helping.

Closer up, the house was really dilapidated. The girls could see that once it had been a comfortable farm home. It was small, with many windows, long and narrow and old fashioned now, but still inviting. They tried to visualize the house with repairs for windows and roof, and a fresh coat of paint.

“White paint,” Jane said. “White with dark-green shutters and roof. Stop me from dreaming. Let’s go in.”

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“Well, if it’s as unsafe as Floyd said, we’d better not.

But we could at least stand in the main door and look in,” Cherry suggested.

There was no front porch, just a stoop, though Jane vaguely remembered a big back porch facing the river.

The house itself was pleasantly close to the river.

Cherry and Jane stepped up into the front entrance door. The door was unlocked and swung open easily into a long hall.

“Oh, there’s the staircase. I remember sliding down the banister!” Jane said. “And just to our left, that’s the living room. Or was.” Beyond that, down the hall, was the old dining room, and across the rear of the house they could see a kitchen.

The house was so still, as they stood on the threshold and peered in, that they could hear their own breathing. Jane muttered that she wished she knew the century old secret of this place.

“You wouldn’t let a ghost keep you away?” Cherry teased her.

“I’d simply invite the ghost to live with us,” Jane said.

“Joking aside, there must be some reason why there’s a legend or story about this farm. If I could only—Why, what are you doing, Cherry?”

“Sniffi ng. Don’t you smell it?”

A curious sour odor came from somewhere in the house. Cherry could not identify it. At the same time, she noticed how warm the air was in the house. Well, an old, closed-up house, with the mid-September sun beating down on it, could be expected to be hot and 58
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AMES,

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smell musty. Except that this sour, moldy odor was not quite the same as dust and mustiness—Cherry sniffed again, trying to locate where the odor came from. It seemed to hang in the air everywhere.

Jane was laughing at her. “You look like a puppy, sniffi ng in all directions! Can’t we go in?…Not a good idea? Well, then, Miss Nurse, I admit I’m getting awfully tired.”

They agreed it was enough exploring for a fi rst visit.

They slowly made their way back to the car. Then they drove on to Sauk. Dr. Hal X-rayed Jane’s ankle, which was healing satisfactorily, and Cherry drove her back to the Barkers’. Since she was out in the fi eld anyway, she visited two more patients.

After supper with Aunt Cora, Cherry was so full of fresh air that she could hardly keep her eyes open.

She did write a long letter to her nurse friends—all about rural nursing. Then Cherry telephoned her family in Illinois and had a good talk with her mother and father.

Sunday was fun. At church Cherry saw her new friends again, and Dr. Hal. He invited Cherry and Aunt Cora to the potluck supper. Since it was fi fteen miles away, and since Cherry and Dr. Hal drove all week at work, Aunt Cora decided they’d go no farther than her own dining table. She appointed Dr. Hal to help her while she made coffee and buttermilk biscuits. Cherry was delegated to bring in the rest of the food, and set the table, not forgetting candles and fl owers.

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59

The three of them lingered over supper. Dr. Hal seemed to be enjoying himself. He told them of a discovery he had made about the cave at Riverside Park.

“You remember, Cherry, that you wondered so much what was on the other side of that barrier, deep in the cave? Well, even though I was sure there was nothing, you got me to wondering, too. So I went back there, late yesterday afternoon. Went with Joe Mercer. Took two of us to dislodge that old barn door.” He explained to Mrs. Ames how the old door was wedged against, almost into, the walls of the cave. “And what do you suppose Joe and I found?”

“What?” Cherry asked, holding her breath.

“Nothing. A pile of dirt. Just dirt and darkness. Some kids must’ve dug loose enough dirt to put the old barn door in place. They probably did it to make a hiding place for some game. Joe and I felt foolish, I can tell you! We put the door back as we found it.”

“If that’s a discovery,” Aunt Cora said, “then I’m a ring-tailed monkey.”

The fi rst person to tell Cherry the bad news was the highway patrolman. He hailed her to a stop on the highway early Tuesday morning, and braked his car alongside her car.

“Morning! You’re Cherry Ames, the county nurse, aren’t you? I’m Tom Richards.” He touched his broad-brimmed hat in greeting. He was a strapping, sun-reddened man. “There’s some people suddenly taken sick around here, Nurse. Seems they went to the potluck 60
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AMES,

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supper—here’s their names. One of their youngsters stopped me on the road. They have no telephone to call the county health offi ce.”

“Thanks, Offi cer.” Cherry took the slip of paper he handed her. Nichols, R.D. No. 3. She didn’t know them.

“I’ll go right over there.”

“Right. See you again, Miss Ames.” The highway patrolman drove off.

Taken sick after the community supper! If one family was stricken, others might be, too. No one had reported sick yesterday, but it took time for an illness to develop. Cherry had left Sauk very early this morning. She stopped at a highway telephone booth and called her offi ce.

“Yes,” the clerk said, “several families have phoned in asking for emergency help.” The clerk read off their names.

“I’ll go see them right away,” Cherry said. “Any word from Dr. Miller?”

“He’s on his way to the appendicitis case at the Anderson farm,” the clerk said. Cherry could make connections with him by telephoning the clerk peri-odically, as Dr. Miller would do.

At the Nichols’ place, Cherry found the father, mother, and the two eldest children in bed, seriously ill. All of them had similar symptoms: fever, extreme weakness, aching back and limbs, running nose, sore throat. Cherry recognized they had respiratory fl u, in its acute stage. These were routine symptoms of respiratory fl u.

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She did not understand, though, why Mrs. Nichols reported that they all had diarrhea and cramps, and the younger child had been vomiting. Those were not respiratory fl u symptoms. Those were symptoms of some
other
type of virus. But what? These patients had fl u
and
something else which Cherry could not recognize. The symptoms of the unknown illness—the diarrhea, cramps, and vomiting—had started yesterday.

“Did you call a doctor, Mrs. Nichols?” Cherry asked.

“No, we treated ourselves.”

“With what?”

“Oh, just home remedies,” the woman said vaguely.

Cherry put her vagueness down to her weak, sick state.

She asked a few questions about the pot luck supper on Sunday. Mrs. Nichols said the room had been crowded and poorly ventilated.

“I guess some people there had colds,” the woman said.

“Someone there probably had a fl u virus,” Cherry said,

“and you caught it. I’m going to ask Dr. Miller to come to treat the four of you. Don’t try to get out of bed.” Cherry gave fi rst aid. She quickly made the four sick people as comfortable as she could, told the well children to keep away from them, left there, and telephoned for Dr. Miller. Then she drove to the next emergency names on her list.

In some of these families she found fl u symptoms.

In others she found even more acute fl u symptoms plus the unexplained diarrhea and vomiting. Cherry 62
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AMES,

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was puzzled. In all the latter cases she noted that the families had “treated themselves with home remedies.”
Exactly what home remedies
? Nobody would tell the nurse. They seemed to be evading or too sick to talk.

Among these persons was the forbidding Jacob Hummer. His hand was healing—the man was strong and lucky! But Cherry urgently advised calling a doctor to check his fl u infection.

“No!” said Hummer. “Nature will heal me.”

“Mr. Hummer, it’s necessary! If you won’t call a doctor, you can’t call me again, either. The rule is that the county nurse can make two home visits to encourage medical care. Only two calls, and no more if the family refuses to call a doctor when the nurse tells them it’s necessary.”

The Hummers gave in then, reluctant, but frightened by the man’s condition. Cherry telephoned in a call for Dr. Miller, and arranged to meet him later that afternoon.

They met and worked together at the Nichols’ and the Hummers’. Then they went to the crossroads grocery store, for a conference over a carton of milk.

Cherry described her day’s cases to Dr. Hal.

“What’s this about so many having diarrhea and cramps?” Dr. Hal asked. “Those aren’t fl u symptoms.”

“I think those patients all dosed themseves with some kind of home remedy,” Cherry reported, “instead of getting medical help right away.” Dr. Hal frowned. “Find out what the remedy is. I’ll inquire, too.”

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Nobody was willing to tell Cherry what the remedy was. And she could not fi nd out the reason for this silence. One farm woman said she had been advised to “keep mum,” but swore she’d heard it effected many cures. Cherry noticed, in the next day or two, that those fl u patients who had taken the remedy were sicker than ever. And
not
with fl u! The ordinary fl u cases were getting well! Dr. Miller, aided by other county physicians, was kept busy treating this emergency. He had a hard time diagnosing the elusive ailment, and when these patients began to recover, it was slowly. On an off chance, he treated some patients for poisoning; it helped.

“What in the world have they taken?” he said to Cherry. “We
must
fi nd out.” Cherry fi nally learned something on Friday at the Swaybill’s farm. Marge and Clyde, the teenagers, had attended the potluck supper, and while Clyde had a mild runny nose and sore throat, Marge was acutely sick. She was in bed in her own room. She complained privately to Cherry of terrible cramps.

“I think what did it,” Marge said, “was that new patent medicine Mother dosed me with. I wasn’t hardly sick until she gave me that stuff yesterday.” Cherry pricked up her ears. “
What
new patent medicine?”

“That herb remedy. Everybody for miles around has been buying it,” Marge said. “Mother always thinks this or that new remedy is going to make her stronger, and cure everything.”

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CHERRY

AMES,

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NURSE

Cherry went to question Mrs. Swaybill. The hospital laboratory had examined her throat swab of the last visit and found it did not carry any virus; Mrs. Swaybill had just a common, very sore throat. Now Cherry was concerned lest Amy Swaybill catch a further infection from Marge—and she wanted to learn about that new patent medicine.

“Why, it’s just a harmless mixture of natural herbs,” Mrs. Swaybill answered Cherry’s question. “A bowl of herb tea saves you from a fever, they say. So I thought, when Marge began to run a fever, that this new herb medicine sounded good—”

Apparently Mrs. Swaybill relied as much on “natural” remedies as Aunt Cora’s friend, Phoebe Grisbee, did. But a patent medicine, even if it included herbs, was quite another matter.

“Where did you get this patent medicine, Mrs. Swaybill?” Cherry asked. Mrs. Swaybill hesitated. Cherry pressed her.

“I bought it from an old door-to-door pedlar. He lives around here somewhere. In a shack in the woods, near Muir, I heard. Oh, I can see from the look on your face, Miss Cherry, that you don’t think much of these cure-alls! But we’ve all been buying odds and ends from Old Snell for years, aspirin and show laces and vanilla, and herbs and berries in season, and we trust him.” Cherry recalled seeing a shabby old man selling from a basket at the Swaybill’s door. She asked Mrs. Swaybill what the patent remedy was like.

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65

“It’s a smelly liquid. Nature’s Herb Care is the name.

I wish you wouldn’t ask questions about it.” Cherry inquired why not. “Well, Old Snell asked us to keep quiet. As a friendly favor. Seems this remedy is brand new, and he has only a small amount of it to sell to his steady customers, and he didn’t want to offend any other folks who’d ask to buy it if they heard about it.”

“I don’t like the sound of all this,” Cherry said.

“Well, Old Snell
was
a mite uneasy about selling a new product,” Mrs. Swaybill admitted. “But I tell you, the stuff is real good! I tried a little bit of it a couple of weeks ago for my weak spells, and it perked me right up! Why, I was so pleased with it, I sent Old Snell to sell some to my cousins across the river, in Missouri.

Here’s the jar if you want to see it.” Cherry took the jar from Amy Swaybill and studied the printed label. It made claims too numerous and too extreme for Cherry to believe. Its directions for use were crude. The label listed the ingredients only as

“natural herbs and preservatives.” It gave the manufacturer’s name and address as “Natures Herb Co., Flushing, Iowa.” Cherry asked about that.

“Land’s sakes, I don’t know the company that makes it,” Mrs. Swaybill said.

“Hmm.” Cherry remembered Dr. Hal wanted a sample. “May I keep this jar?”

“Surely, if you like. There are only a couple table-spoonfuls left. But you won’t get me or Old Snell in trouble, will you? He’s only a poor old man trying to 66
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make a living. And—and it’s helped my cousins in Missouri, too!”

Cherry reported this conversation to Dr. Hal, at her offi ce on Friday evening, and turned the sample over to him.