Dr. Lilly Still
hung her stethoscope on the hall tree in the great room, set her doctor’s kit on the oak side table, pulled off her work shoes, and went to the kitchen. It was odd to find no supper ready when she came in from the clinic. She put her palm against the enamel front of the oven door. It was cold.
She found her sister Mazy in the back bedroom.
“Have you seen Armina?”
Mazy slowly lowered the book she was reading. “Um, no. . . . I helped her wash the breakfast dishes; then I guess I got lost in this.” She waved the Elsie Dinsmore novel around before placing a crocheted marker between the pages. “I’d
like to be an author like Martha Finley. How hard could it be to write a book?”
Disturbed from his nap, a small, short-haired terrier jumped from Mazy’s lap and rushed to greet Lilly.
Lilly bent to ruffle the fur of Kip’s head. “Did you have lunch with her?”
Mazy lowered her feet from the ottoman that matched the linen-covered chair she was sitting in, stretched, and stood. At the mirror over the dresser, she plumped her hair. “She was going berry picking. I didn’t want to go. The sun causes freckles, you know.”
“That’s why we keep umbrellas in the stand by the front door. They’re not just for rainy days.”
Mazy frowned. “I’m not going to climb up some mountain carrying an umbrella like an old lady. I don’t even like blackberries.”
“Did you go to the Tippens’ for the laundry?”
“Armina said she’d pick it up after she got back.”
Lilly sighed. Why her mother had sent Mazy to help her this summer, instead of her more industrious twin sister, Molly, she’d never understand. She couldn’t be aggravated with her sister for long, though. Mazy was really a sweet and thoughtful girl, if a tad bit lazy. “Would you go across the road and check on her?”
“Sure.” Mazy twisted a spiral of her blonde locks around her finger. “I want to try some of that new solution I read about in
Woman’s Home Companion
.”
“And what would that do for you exactly?” Lilly asked.
“Straighten this mess!” Mazy picked up a hand mirror and turned her back on the dresser. She shook her head to watch the curls on the back of her head tremble, then slammed the looking glass down and threw herself across the bed. “I hate the way I look. I’ll never get a fellow.”
“You’re seventeen. There’s plenty of time for fellows.”
“Almost eighteen,” Mazy said, sticking her lower lip out in a pout. “You don’t understand, Lilly. You’re old already, and besides, you have Tern
—if he was ever home, that is.”
Her sister’s statement gave Lilly pause. Did she look old at twenty-six? What a dreadful thought. She stole a look at the mirror, rearranging her hairpins. Maybe she could use a new updo.
Mazy left the bed and came up behind Lilly. She rested her chin on Lilly’s shoulder and stared at their reflection. “What we need is a trip to the city. There’s no fashion here in Skip Rock.”
Lilly couldn’t help but laugh. Mazy was right
—there was no fashion sensibility in the coal camp. The women who lived here were more interested in survival. Lilly wore white shirtwaists and lightweight wool or linen skirts every day as befitted a physician. Instead of fashionable pumps, she laced on sturdy shoes. The last time she’d had a chance to dress up had been in early spring when she’d accompanied her husband to a charity affair in Washington, D.C. After the event, he’d taken her to the opera. The opera! Her dove-gray watered-silk gown had fit right in.
She slipped an arm around her sister. “A trip to Lexington
would be wonderful. We could shop, and I could visit some colleagues. Catch up on the latest.”
Mazy squealed, jumping up and down. “You’re the best sister in the world.” She flipped through a stack of magazines. “I’ll have to plan our wardrobe. We don’t want to look like hoboes on the train.”
Lilly took the magazines from her sister and put them back on the ottoman. “You have plenty of time. We can’t even think of a trip until Ned gets back to take my place at the office.”
“Oh yeah,” Mazy said, scooping Kip into her arms. “Where is he exactly?”
“He’s finishing nurse’s training in Boston. Don’t you remember Armina talking about it?”
“Alls I remember is how crabby she is. Good grief, if I were her husband, I’d never come back.”
“Mazy Pelfrey! Bite your tongue.”
Mazy giggled as Kip licked her chin. “Lilly, you sound just like Mama. You both would try the patience of a saint.”
Gauzy white curtains danced in a quick breeze. Lilly lowered the window. “Looks like a storm is brewing. Be a good girl and run on over to Armina’s for me. I’ll fix a bite of supper.”
Back at the dresser, Mazy dabbed carmine on her lips. “Just let me freshen up a bit.”
Lilly might as well go herself. “Mazy, I don’t think Mama would approve of your coloring your lips.”
Mazy smacked her lips together. “What Mama don’t
know . . . ,” she sassed as she straightened her collar. “There. I’ll be right back.”
“Leave Kip here,” Lilly said. “We don’t need him running off if it storms.”
Lilly went from window to window, closing them. She loved the simple geometry and horizontal lines of the prairie-style house Tern had built after they’d married. He’d modeled it after the designs of the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright. At first, Lilly resisted a house so different from its neighbors. Especially after Tern confided he’d once witnessed Mr. Wright zipping around the streets of Chicago in his custom yellow raceabout, married mistress at his side. But Tern wore her down, going so far as to show Lilly two issues of
Ladies’ Home Journal
featuring the architect’s modern design and promising her that he’d not line the iniquitous Mr. Wright’s pockets with any of their hard-earned money.
He’d kept his promise, although he’d fretted that the stained-glass windows he had specially made would have been much cheaper if purchased in Chicago. Lilly had requested that the long, low windows have sashes and the lower half be plain and fitted with screens. Now they were a delight to her. She loved how the air circulated through the house in warm weather and how the morning light shone through the leaded glass, casting beautiful patterns on the hardwood floors.
The house was built on the outskirts of town, putting her at some remove from the clinic. Tern didn’t want people thinking they could just drop in anytime. Her husband was a wise man.
Armina and Ned lived in a cottage across the street
—or road, as they called it here in Skip Rock. Ned was Lilly’s distant cousin as well as her assistant. Although the practical nurses and nurse aides she’d hired for the clinic were competent, she missed Ned sorely. She hadn’t been aware of how dependent she’d become on him until he left to finish his schooling and take his boards. When he came back, he’d have his degree as a registered nurse
—a huge accomplishment considering his background.
In front of the open icebox, Lilly stared at an array of leftovers and mused about her first meeting with Ned three years before. She’d been the brand-spanking-new doctor fresh out of medical school and interning at the rugged coal camp dubbed Skip Rock. He’d assisted with her first surgery
—patching up a young miner injured in a roof fall
—and championed her through long-held superstitions about the bad luck caused by having a woman in the mines. She and Ned made a perfect switched-around team
—she was doing what most considered a man’s job, and he was becoming a nurse.
After slipping on an apron, she selected a ham butt and a bowl of potato salad and carried the food to the counter. Armina had left a colander full of cucumbers and one ripe red tomato in the deep sandstone sink. She must have worked in the garden before she went berry picking. Lilly held the tomato to her nose. It smelled of summer. She laid it on the wooden cutting board and reached for a knife. Juice spilled over the edge of the board with the first cut. A small salad
of tomato and cucumber would be delicious with the ham and potatoes.
Lilly’s stomach grumbled. She couldn’t remember if she’d eaten lunch. It had been a busy day at the clinic. Along with other problems, Timmy Blair had a greenstick fracture of his radial bone and Mrs. Cooper’s three-year-old had the measles. She’d had to quarantine the family
—never a popular choice, but measles could spread like wildfire. She must remember to notify the health department, a job Ned usually took care of. No wonder she missed him.
What was keeping Mazy? Lilly leaned across the sink to look out the only window she hadn’t closed. Heavy gray clouds draped over the roof of Armina’s house like a giant bolster pillow, spitting raindrops instead of feathers. She watched heat lightning flash in the distance.
Kip tugged at her skirt tail. She cut him a bite of ham and put it in his bowl. His stumpy tail wagged in appreciation.
Lilly poured hot water into the sink, added a bit of Gold Dust dish powder, and washed the knife and cutting board. All the while she watched through the window for Mazy. Her sister was probably talking Armina’s ear off. That was funny to think of because Armina wasn’t given to chatter. She tolerated Mazy, though. Mazy charmed everyone.
Mama was concerned that Mazy didn’t seem to have a sense of direction. Molly had known she wanted to be a teacher since the twins were four years old, but Mazy flitted from one interest to another like a butterfly in a garden of delight.
Although her mother hadn’t said so in the letter she’d sent prior to Mazy’s coming, Lilly suspected there was a fellow in the woodpile somewhere. She’d caught Mazy drawing hearts and arrows in the fog of her bathroom mirror.
T. M. + M. P.
She’d wiped the letters away with the curve of her hand when she saw Lilly watching.
“Is T. M. someone important?” Lilly had asked.
“Not anymore,” Mazy had sighed.
Lilly dried her hands on the red-checked tea towel and twisted the black cap from the bottle of lotion she kept on the windowsill. It was hard to keep her hands soft when she washed them so many times a day, but she was determined. She’d seen too many doctors with cracked and bleeding knuckles. Besides, Tern liked a soft touch.
Just thinking of her husband made Lilly’s heart skip a beat. She missed him dreadfully. It seemed he was away more than he was home, always boarding a train
—off to another mine site or a directors’ meeting, instigating inquiries into the safety practices in coal mines.
In the dining room, she set the table for three, tucked linen napkins under the heavy monogrammed silverware, and lit the candles. She liked a civilized dinner. As a girl, she’d often visited her aunt Alice in Lexington and admired the careful way her aunt laid a table. At her mother’s house it was “grab a fork and find a seat.” There’d be a dog begging at the door, babies sitting in laps, and strangers helping themselves to the pot of pinto beans and the skillet of corn bread ever ready on the wood-burning cookstove. Her mother tried to feed the world.
Kip whined at Lilly’s feet and she had to laugh at herself. Her mother might have a dog begging at the door, but she had one begging at her feet. She supposed she was a mix of her mother’s easy hospitality and her aunt Alice’s social consciousness.
“One more bite,” she said as Kip ran circles around her.
At the sink, she cut meat from the bone, making sure to include a bit of marbling. A little fat each day made Kip’s fur shiny and kept him from getting dreadfully itchy hot spots. Armina gave him half a teaspoon of bacon grease every morning.
“Help!” she heard her sister’s voice call through the open window. “Lilly, help!”
Lilly ran outside and crossed the road, wiping grease from the ham on the skirt of her apron.
Mazy was backing out of Armina’s front door, dragging something with her.
“Mazy? What happened? What’s wrong with Armina?”
Mazy knelt
under the deadweight of Armina’s body, letting Armina’s head rest in her lap. “I don’t know what happened. I called her name, but she didn’t answer, so I sat down at the table and waited. Then I heard this awful gurgling sound. Armina was lying on the floor in the parlor by the sofa. I couldn’t just leave her there, so I was bringing her with me.” Mazy mopped her brow with her forearm. “Who’d have thought Armina is so heavy?”
“We need to get her inside,” Lilly said, noting Armina’s pale color and the pulse that beat faintly in the curve of her neck.
Like an answer to prayer, Turnip Tippen came up the
road, carrying a bundle of laundry. “Do you need some help? I was just bringing your washing by before the rain sets in,” he said.
“Thank goodness you did. Help us get her into my house.”
Turnip scooped Armina up. “She’s light as air. What happened to her?”
Lilly pulled Armina’s door closed and followed with the bundle of linen. “We don’t know. Mazy just found her like this.”
In the house, Turnip gently laid Armina on the sofa. “I saw her earlier today. I think she was going berry picking
—probably got too much sun.”
Lilly placed two fingers on Armina’s wrist. “Fetch my stethoscope, Mazy, and wet a cloth to put on her forehead.”
At the touch of the wet cloth, Armina stirred. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she tried to sit up.
“Looks like she’s gonna be okay.” Turnip turned up the collar of his jacket and put his hat back on as hard rain began to pound on the roof. “Me and Tillie’s just down the road if you should need us tonight.”
“Yes, thank you again, Mr. Tippen. Tell Tillie I’ll pay her when I pick up the ironing tomorrow.”
“Sure thing,” he said. “You ladies take care.”
“Well, if this ain’t a pretty how-do-you-do,” Armina sputtered. “Me laying stretched out like the dead in front of who knows who.”
“Didn’t you recognize Mr. Tippen, Armina?”
“Whether I recognize Turnip or not is beside the point.
I don’t like people staring at me.” She collapsed against the couch cushion. “I’m all swimmy-headed again.”
“Mazy, bring me the honey,” Lilly said.
Mazy brought the jar and a spoon. Lilly propped Armina up. “Take this,” she said, bringing the honey to Armina’s lips.
“Right out of the pot? I ain’t a heathen. Least you could do is put it in some tea.”
“I’ll put on the kettle,” Mazy said, hurrying from the room.
Lilly set the spoon back in the little earthenware container. She’d best go slowly with Armina. If she got angry, she’d clam up and Lilly would get no answers from her.
“Do you want to tell me how you were feeling before you fainted?” Lilly asked.
“Is that what I did? Huh. I got them black squiggles in my eyes. I sat down quick right on the floor in the front room. Next thing I knowed, Turnip Tippen was taking my measure.”
“Did you have a headache? Were you short of breath?”
“Maybe a little. Seems like I was in a hurry to get somewheres. Probably I was rushing around too much.”
Lilly nodded, letting Armina take her time. “Maybe it was the heat. Mazy and Mr. Tippen said you’d been berry picking.”
“Turnip Tippen thinks he’s the mayor of Skip Rock. He don’t know nothing about my whereabouts.”
“What did you do today? Mazy remembers washing the breakfast dishes with you.” Lilly wasn’t about to mention
berry picking a second time. She didn’t want to set Armina off again.
“That girl,” Armina said. “She tries but she can’t do nothing but dry. She can’t seem to get the egg off the forks. I would say something, but I don’t want to discourage her from learning.”
A sense of unease captured Lilly. Armina was talking around the subject because she couldn’t recall most of the day. Perhaps she’d suffered a mild stroke. “Take my hands and I’ll help you sit up.”
With Armina’s hands in hers, Lilly tested her grip. She noted a minute tremor, subtle as a gentle rain, in the left. “May I look at your eyes?”
Lilly moved one finger side to side and up and down. Armina tracked perfectly, and her pupils were normal. “One more thing
—I’ll need you to sit in a straight chair for this, okay?”
Armina grunted dismissively, but she walked to the library table and sat down on a rush-bottomed chair as Lilly watched. There seemed to be just the slightest stiffness in her gait. “You gonna hammer me like you do them folks comes by the clinic?”
Using a small rubber hammer, Lilly tested her friend’s reflexes
—normal on the right with some weakness on the left. Armina had always been a puzzle. When Lilly first met her, she’d been fractious as a feral cat. At the tender age of seventeen, she was living up the mountain past Swampy
Creek seeing to the needs of her medically fragile aunt and her sister’s two abandoned children.
Lilly knew well the snare of being a caregiver; that’s why she was a doctor practicing in a coal camp when she could be working in a research lab as she’d intended to do with her medical degree. The study of disease, its causes and cures, was her first love, but duty had called, and she came to Skip Rock and then couldn’t leave. Maybe someday she and Tern could live elsewhere. For now, she felt she was where the Lord wanted her to be.
It was surprising to Lilly when Ned Tippen and Armina fell in love and married. Maybe it shouldn’t have been, for Ned was as patient and kind as anyone could be. And he was smitten with Armina from the moment he first saw her. Nobody had ever given much thought to Armina’s needs until Ned. He was determined to make her life easier. And he had, but still Armina could be cantankerous if rubbed the wrong way. She was like an ornery old lady in a young woman’s body. Lilly couldn’t imagine how she’d be at eighty.
“You have a nasty scratch on your face, Armina.”
“Huh.” Armina raised her hand to the wound. “I wondered what was stinging me.”
Lilly caught her fingers before she could touch the scrape. “Best leave it alone. It’s already scabbing.”
“That’s a good sign, right? It means your blood’s good if it scabs quick?”
“Yes, that’s generally a good thing, but right now it’s more important to determine what caused the injury.” Lilly stood
back, examining her patient with her eyes
—always a physician’s best tools. Armina had recovered her senses without the use of honey. So she could probably rule out the dreadful diabetes.
“Have you been ill at all that you can remember? Even the slightest bit? It could be important.”
Armina opened her mouth to speak but then closed it. She repeated the motion a couple of times before she answered, like she was giving up state secrets. “Back in the spring, when I was at my sister’s, I got the quinsy, but that’s weeks ago. I don’t have a bit of sore throat anymore.” She elongated her neck and swallowed as if proving her point.
“Hmm,” Lilly said, pondering Armina as Armina had pondered the question.
Mazy brought a tray laden with cups of tea and ham sandwiches cut in small squares. She’d trimmed the crusts from the bread and arranged slices of cucumbers on a saucer. “I thought we could eat in here,” she said, setting the tray on the library table.
“This is perfect,” Lilly said.
Armina nibbled the edge of her sandwich. “Where’s the crust? It seems wasteful to throw them away.”
“Oh, I saved them,” Mazy said, beaming with satisfaction. “Tomorrow I’ll toast croutons and make a salad for lunch. I love to cook. I might be a chef one day.”
Lilly exchanged a look of amusement with Armina. As far as she knew, Mazy hadn’t touched the stove since she’d been here.
She brought two more chairs to the table and they ate in companionable silence, listening to the rain, while Kip played musical chairs, begging at each knee in turn.
“Mr. Still ain’t gonna appreciate how you’re spoiling this dog,” Armina said, pinching a piece of bread from the corner of her sandwich and offering it to Kip.
Lilly pushed back her chair and patted her lap. Kip jumped up, right at home. “I know,” she said. “Tern thinks dogs belong outdoors, but Kip’s my weakness. Tern will have to adjust.” She rubbed the sweet spot between Kip’s ears with her knuckles. “Isn’t that right, Kippy?”
Kip licked Lilly’s chin in agreement. Lilly turned her face away and laughed. “Give a dog an inch . . .”
A roll of thunder muffled the sound of Armina’s teacup shattering against the floor. Armina slapped the top of the table with an open hand in jerky, irregular movement. The muscles of her face contorted ridiculously as if she were making mouths at somebody.
Mazy shot up from the table, her eyes wide with fear. Her chair tipped over. The back bounced once, then settled. Kip whined and leaped from Lilly’s lap, beating a path to the couch, where he disappeared under the skirt.
Lilly steadied Armina. “Mazy, help me lower her before she falls.”
Once Armina was on the floor, Mazy went for pillows and blankets, which Lilly used to cocoon Armina.
“I know what she has,” Mazy said. “I read about this in one of your medical books. It’s called epilogue
—or something
like that. We should stick a spoon in her mouth so she doesn’t swallow her tongue.”
“A spoon?” Armina said. “Make sure it’s a silver spoon.” She giggled, then began to sing: “‘By the light of the silvery moon, we’re gonna spoon. With my baby, I’ll . . .’”
“Armina doesn’t sing, Lilly, not even in church. I think she’s gone stark, raving mad.”
Lilly held a finger to her lips to hush her sister. “Mazy, don’t be so dramatic. It’s nothing of the sort.” She laid the back of her hand against Armina’s fevered brow. “You’ll be fine, Armina.” How many times had she said that very thing to other patients while praying it was so? Now she sent that silent prayer upward again.
Motioning for Mazy to follow, Lilly led her sister to the foyer closet and took a rain slicker from a wooden hanger. “I need you to go to the clinic and get one of the nurses. Have her bring a bottle of salicylic acid.” She tied a scarf firmly under Mazy’s chin.
“Acid?” Mazy said, narrowing her eyes seriously.
“Sorry, I’m being obtuse. Have her bring a bottle of aspirin and some alcohol.”
Mazy buttoned the jacket up to her throat and opened the door. Wind and rain whipped around her. “This is so exciting, Lilly. This is like something Elsie would do.”
“Elsie?”
“From the book
—Elsie Dinsmore. Her life is
so
interesting,” she said, unfurling an umbrella against the storm.
“Go straight there, Mazy, and don’t tarry.”