The Doctor's Apprentice

by Ann Walsh

  A young woman approached our table. “Doctor,” she said, “will you come with me, please?” I recognized her, although I didn’t remember her name. She was a chambermaid at The Hotel de France, and I had seen her when she had come to Pa’s shop to fetch him. Pa often went to the hotels to do small repairs to furniture, rather than having the damaged piece brought to his shop.

  “Ah, Bridget,” said J.B. He seemed to know everyone’s name. “Sit down. Join Ted and me for some victuals.”

  “No, thank you kindly, Doctor. It’s about Mrs. Fraser. She’s … it’s her time and it’s her first.” Bridget blushed and looked down at her feet, avoiding my eyes. “The foolish woman has locked the door to her room, Doctor, and will let no one near her. She only weeps and calls for her husband.”

  “He won’t be much help to her now,” said J.B.

  Bridget blushed again. “The Frasers are new to town; they arrived by stagecoach two weeks ago. Her husband has gone to Wingdam where he hopes to buy a claim, and she has been alone all week. She keeps to herself; she’s no older than I am, yet she puts on airs as if she were a fine lady and could not possibly associate with the likes of me.”

  “That will be her great loss, my dear,” said J.B., smiling at her. “Perhaps, however, she is merely shy.”

  She smiled back at him. “That is possible. But wouldn’t you think that any woman great with child would welcome friendship, no matter how shy she might be?”

  “With child?” I asked. “You mean she’s…”

  Bridget blushed again and looked down at the floor, but J.B. answered me. “Yes, Ted. I believe that Barkerville will have a new inhabitant before the day is out.”

  “Will you come, Doctor?” asked Bridget again. “Perhaps you can persuade her to unlock the door. I have helped with all three of my sister’s children. I know what to do if she will let me.”

  “Certainly, Bridget. We’ll come with you.”

  “We?” I asked.

  “Yes, Ted. You are young and personable. If I can not persuade Mrs. Fraser to unlock the door and allow me to help with the delivery, you will have to try. We can not leave the poor woman all alone to give birth to her first child, can we?”

  “Me? You mean you want me to—”

  “Come along, Ted. Don’t dawdle. Put aside your food, you can eat later. The baby will not wait until your stomach is satisfied, whereas your daily bread—or beans, bacon and bannock,” he added, after a look at my meal, “will keep safely until we are finished.”

  “Baby? But I know nothing of—”

  “Stop procrastinating. There will be much for you to do, especially since you have become so skilled at boiling water. Bridget and I can use the help of an extra pair of hands, isn’t that so, Bridget?”

  She giggled. “Him? Young Ted? Oh, he will be of much help, I am sure! He is but a child himself.”

  I stood up. “I am not a child,” I announced. “I am Doctor Wilkinson’s apprentice, and soon to be a medical man myself. And I am nearly fourteen.”

  “Quite old enough to help deliver a baby,” said J.B. “Definitely quite old enough.” He pushed his plate away from him. “Lead on, fair Bridget.”

  Looking back regretfully at my unfinished meal, I followed them. I was hungry, but I was also worried, not only about my role in the delivery of Mrs. Fraser’s baby, but about J.B. as well. I wondered if he was ill—he seemed to be trying to hold back a violent attack of coughing and something was wrong with his left eye. It twitched violently whenever he looked at Bridget.

  I had seen many of J.B.’s patients at his surgery, had even helped him when he needed an extra pair of hands to hold an inebriated miner while a broken bone was being set and again when he sewed up a knife wound. I no longer fainted at the sight of blood and considered myself an accomplished assistant, but I had never accompanied the doctor on any of his visits to patients’ homes. This was my first “house call.”

  “This way, Doctor. It’s the front room on the second floor. Hurry.” J.B. and I followed Bridget up a narrow flight of stairs and down the hotel’s long hallway. It was quiet in the building and dark in the windowless corridor. I waited nervously while Bridget knocked and called, “Mrs. Fraser? I’ve brought the doctor for you, ma’am.”

  There was no answer but something heavy thudded against the closed door, causing me to jump back.

  “Now, Mrs. Fraser,” said Bridget. “It will do you no good to throw things. The doctor is here. Open the door.”

  “Go away,” said a small voice from the room. “Leave me alone. I don’t want anyone with me. Go away.”

  Bridget shrugged her shoulders and turned to J.B. “That one has a temper, she does!”

  “Let me try,” said J.B. and he knocked on the door himself. “Mrs. Fraser? Please open the door. I am Doctor Wilkinson and I can assure you that I have delivered many babies. I will be able to help you if you will open the door and allow me to enter the room.”

  There was another thud against the door and the sound of glass shattering. Then silence.

  “See what I mean, Doctor?” said Bridget. “She is no longer calling for her husband, but I suspect that was a lamp which she just threw at us.”

  “Luckily, the lamp appears not to have been lit,” said J.B., sniffing the air. “I do not smell burning, do you? However, I agree that Mrs. Fraser seems most reluctant to accept help.”

  “Then perhaps we can go and finish our meal?” I said, hopefully. “If she won’t open the door, then we’re of no use here.”

  J.B. looked at me and smiled. “Childbirth can be an unsettling experience for many women,” he said. “We can not leave her alone in this state.”

  “But if she won’t allow us to enter the room…” I began, then from behind the closed door there suddenly came the sound of someone panting, their breath coming in fast, shallow gasps as if they had just run a long and tiring race.

  J.B. listened for a moment, then turned to Bridget. “Unlock the door,” he said. “You do have a master key, don’t you? Use it, quickly. I suspect Mrs. Fraser is too busy right now to care if we enter her chamber without her permission. Hurry, lass. We are needed in there.”

  Bridget took a large key ring from her pocket, selected a key and unlocked the door. The doctor disappeared inside the room, and Bridget followed. I stood in the doorway wondering if Mrs. Fraser were still intent on throwing things in this direction.

  “J.B. What shall I do now?”

  “We’ve no time for you, Ted,” said Bridget. “Go away.”

  The window curtains were drawn, and it was dark in the room. I could barely see J.B. standing beside the bed. He looked up at me, and I think he smiled.

  “It’s all right, Ted,” he said. “I was only joking when I said that your help would be needed to deliver the baby. Bridget and I—and Mrs. Fraser—can handle the situation. But if you wish to be of assistance, you could find the kitchen and fetch us hot water. Also clean rags, towels, sheets, anything they’ll let you have. Bring them back here, and then stay out of the way.”

  I could hear Bridget’s voice, soft and gentle, and the doctor’s reassuring words. Over both of their voices rose the sound of panting, louder now, louder and faster, and once in a while I thought I heard a cuss word shouted in a woman’s voice. I shut the door and went in search of hot water, unsure whether I felt anger or relief.

  I was relieved, I finally decided. Definitely relieved.

  When I found the hotel’s kitchen, the cook already had a large kettle of water nearing the boil. “Ah,” she said when she saw me. “So the doctor has come at last. About time, if you ask me.”

  “I need—” I started to say, but she didn’t let me finish.

  “Sit down,” she said. “There’s a pot of tea on the stove. I’ll pour you a cup—you look as if you could do with something warm in your stomach. You’re looking peaked, Master Ted, if I do say so.”

  “But I have to take the hot water—”

  “In a while, but not yet. Yo
u’ve time for a cup of tea and a slice of bread and preserves before you’ll be needed up there. Babies take their time coming, especially the first ones. You’ll just be in the way, like as not. Sit down, sit down.”

  I sat down and guiltily drank tea, ate two slices of bread, then the cook let me go. She handed me the kettle of hot water, tucked a bundle of clean rags under my arm, grinned and sent me away.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “The first one is always the hardest. Soon you’ll be doing the doctor’s work and he’ll be down here with me, sipping tea.”

  Bridget came into the hall shortly after I arrived back upstairs. “It’s a boy,” she said. “Have you brought something to wash the wee thing with?”

  I handed her the rags and the water. “A baby?” I said. “A baby boy?”

  “And what did you think it would be,” said Bridget as she disappeared back into the room. “A baby moose?”

  I hear J.B. laugh, and then a thin, small sound, rather like a cat mewling for a dish of cream. For a while the room was silent except for the low voices of J.B. and Bridget.

  Then all at once Mrs. Fraser’s ragged breathing began again, growing louder and faster. J.B. shouted at Bridget, Bridget yelled back at him, and the bedroom door swung open.

  “Lord help us, there’s another one coming,” Bridget gasped, rushing towards me. “Here, take this.” She thrust the bundle of rags at me and dashed back into the room. The bundle squirmed in my hands and made a small, cat-like noise. I was holding a baby.

  I held it out in front of me, rather as if I were carrying a tray, and stared at it. The baby opened its eyes and stared back. It didn’t look much like any small child I had ever seen before. Although it had the right number of eyes and ears, it had no hair at all and its skin was red and wrinkled-looking. It moved again, and I held it tightly, afraid it would squirm right out of my grasp. I must have gripped it too hard, because its face twisted into a strange grimace, its eyes shut tightly, its mouth opened, and it began to cry.

  “Hush,” I said, bouncing it up and down in my arms. “Please, hush.”

  It did no good. The infant squealed louder. How could I ever have thought that the noises coming out of that toothless mouth sounded like a kitten—the cries were much louder than any cat that I had ever heard.

  “Quiet,” I said. “Please, don’t cry.” I looked at it balanced on my hands, and suddenly a tiny hand found its way free of the covers. It was so small, so very small. The largest fingernail on that hand seemed hardly larger that a grain of rice.

  “Poor thing,” I thought, and I pulled it to me and held it against my chest, cradling it the way I had seen women hold their babies. The crying stopped, and for what seemed like a long time I rocked the child and watched it sleep peacefully in my arms.

  “Now who taught you how to tend to wee ones, Ted? You’ve a gentle touch—look, the babe is sleeping.”

  I looked up. “He’s so small, J.B. I didn’t know babies were this tiny. He hardly weighs anything.”

  “To his mother’s great relief,” he answered. “She would have found it far more difficult to carry two large babies than two tiny ones. But let me take him. He needs to go and meet his brother, and his mother is anxious to see him. She didn’t have much of a chance to get formally acquainted.”

  Almost reluctantly I handed the baby over to him. “Come with me,” he said. “Mrs. Fraser wants to meet you, too.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Ask her yourself.”

  I followed J.B. into the room, nervously keeping an eye open for flying objects. But although my boots crunched on shards of glass from the broken chimney of an oil lamp, Mrs. Fraser no longer seemed inclined to hurl objects in my direction.

  “Go ahead,” said J.B., motioning me towards the bed. I moved slowly forward.

  Mrs. Fraser was a young woman, much younger than I had imagined. I’d always thought of mothers as being, well, older. Like Ma. But Mrs. Fraser looked not much more than my age. She lay back against the bed pillows, one child beside her. J.B. handed her the baby I had held and she kissed it, then tucked it into the curve of her other arm and smiled.

  “They’re beautiful,” she said.

  “Indeed, they are certainly a couple of comely children, Mrs. Fraser. Your husband will be proud.”

  “When he overcomes his surprise at seeing two he will be,” said Mrs. Fraser. She had red hair, curly and tangled, and it lay on the pillow around her face. Her skin was very pale, and she had many freckles, a great many. She smiled at me.

  “This is Ted MacIntosh,” said J.B. “He is my assistant.”

  “Thank you for your help, Ted,” she said. “Doctor Wilkinson assured me that his assistant was caring for my firstborn. I did not know that you were either so young or so red-headed.”

  “Now that you mention it,” said J.B., studying me, “Ted looks enough like you to be your brother, Mrs. Fraser.”

  “He does at that!” said Bridget. “Red hair and freckles, and even their eyes are the same.”

  “I wish you were my brother,” said Mrs. Fraser. “My husband and I have no kin in this country, and I miss my family. Perhaps we are related, Ted. There have been MacIntoshes in my family, although several generations ago.”

  “My parents are from Inverness,” I said.

  “Mine too,” she said and smiled. She looked tired and pale, but when she smiled her face seemed to glow.

  “You must meet Ted’s parents,” said J.B. “Once you are up and about I shall introduce you and your husband to them. Perhaps you have found kinfolk in the goldfields after all.”

  “I hope so,” she said. “I feel less lonely already.”

  “You will scarcely have time to be lonely now,” said Bridget. “Not with those two to care for. What will you call them?”

  “I think I will name them after their godfathers,” said Mrs. Fraser, smiling. “That is, if Ted and Doctor Wilkinson will accept the positions.”

  “Godfather? Me?”

  “I think Ted means that he would be honoured, Mrs. Fraser. As would I, of course.”

  “Then they shall carry your names,” she said. “Doctor, I know your first name is ‘John’ but I am not fond of that name. Also, my husband has an uncle named ‘Theodore’— that is what ‘Ted’ is short for, isn’t it—who has the meanest temper of any man alive. I would not wish his name on a child of mine. But perhaps you both have second given names which will suit. Tell me, what are your middle names?”

  “Our middle names?” said J.B.

  “The middle ones?” I said. “That is what she asked,” said Bridget. “Your middle names. What is wrong with the two of you? Do you not understand?”

  I didn’t know what to say, but Bridget did. “I believe I have heard Ted referred to as Master Per…” she began.

  “Robert,” I said, interrupting her. “Robert is a good name.” Bridget looked surprised.

  J.B. nodded. “Robert is a grand name,” he said. “As for me, I have always liked ‘Andrew.’ I would be content if one child were to be called Andrew.”

  “Both are good Scottish names,” said Mrs. Fraser. “It is settled, then. Robert and Andrew their names shall be.”

  “Very distinguished names they are, too,” said J.B. “An excellent choice, Mrs. Fraser, if I do say so myself. Don’t you agree, Ted?”

  “Uh… yes.”

  They were fine names, but they weren’t ours.

  Six

  “Robert?” asked J.B. The doctor and I had returned to Wake Up Jake’s where we ordered another meal. I saw no reason to tell J.B. that I had been fed in the Hotel de France’s kitchen, because I was hungry enough to eat again. “Robert?” he repeated.

  “Andrew?” I asked him in return. “Your middle name begins with the letter ‘B’ and ‘Andrew’ definitely does not.”

  “Nor is ‘Robert’ the accepted short form of Per… your middle moniker.”

  “I never claimed that Robert was my name, only that I thought it a good na
me. I did not lie.”

  “Nor did I,” said J.B. “Although I confess that I found it a difficult situation. I, too, perched on the precipice of prevarication.”

  “Why must you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Speak that way.”

  “Ah, Ted, I am merely indulging a whim of mine. Besides, I hope that I am improving your vocabulary.”

  “My vocabulary does not need your help. I understand many difficult words, but must you always use them when you talk? Such as ‘perched on the precipice of pre…’ whatever that other word meant.”

  “Prevarication means lying.”

  “I don’t care! I wish you would just speak the way a normal person does.”

  “I am sorry if it offends you,” said J.B. He looked surprised. “I had no idea that you found my speech patterns such an aimless and annoying attribute.”

  I glared at him. “You’re doing it again.”

  “So I am. I apologize. I do not mean to cause you distress.”

  “It doesn’t distress me,” I said, reluctantly. “At least it doesn’t most of the time. But just now it seemed… I don’t know why it made me angry. I’m sorry I spoke harshly.”

  He smiled at me. “The birth of a child is an emotional time, both for the parents and for those who are present. I always find it…”

  His voice trailed off. Our food came and I ate heartily, making up for the meal I had left on the table when we rushed off. I was too busy eating to talk much, but when I had finished I realized that J.B. was unusually quiet. He had only picked at his food, and much of it was untouched.

  “J.B.? You have not spoken a word for the whole meal. Are you angry at me?”

  “What? No, Ted, I am not angry.”

  “Then what is wrong? Do you feel sick?”

  “No, my body is perfectly healthy.” He sighed, then pushed away his plate. “It is my thoughts and memories which distress me. I fear that tonight I shall dream.”

  “Dream of what?” I asked. “Surely you do not suffer from nightmares. You are a doctor; you know best how to cure yourself of upsetting dreams. Besides, you are a grown man and night terrors are things only children suffer.”