They Called Her Mrs. Doc.

by Janette Oke

  Then the snow came with swirling, obscuring gusts, completely blotting out the outside world when at its peak and then falling back to give the viewer a look at what it was burying in white. Cassandra could soon tell that even the children were worried, though none of them confessed to the fact.

  She was nearly wild with concern when the newly installed phone rang once—and then again. It was their number.

  Thomas was the one to answer it.

  “Hello. Hello,” he called. “Yes … I can’t hear you.” A pause. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear.” Another longer pause. Cassandra felt her whole inner self twist.

  “Pa? Is that you? Yes. Yes.”

  “Let me talk to him—please,” pleaded Cassandra and Thomas handed her the receiver.

  “Samuel?” said Cassandra. “Where are you?”

  The phone line sputtered and cracked. It seemed forever before Cassandra heard his voice.

  “—here at Lawsons’,” he was saying. “Think … stay … storm …” Cassandra could pick up only a word now and then.

  “If you are safe, stay where you are!” she shouted into the mouthpiece, not realizing that her words probably were no clearer to Samuel than his were to her. “Just stay where you are. We are fine. Come home when the storm is over,” she continued to shout to him over the crackling line.

  “—go now,” she heard Samuel say and then, “Good-night,” and the snapping turned to a buzz.

  Cassandra stepped back and hung up the receiver. Three pairs of eyes studied her face.

  “He’s safe—at Lawsons’,” she explained even though she was sure they already had the information. She had to say the words for her own comfort. “He’s fine. He’ll stay there until the storm is over.” She read the relief on their faces.

  “We’d better get to bed. Thomas—bank the fire, please. Peter, make sure the door is fastened securely. That wind could rip off anything. Christina, move the water pail over here away from the window. It could freeze if it’s left there.”

  And Cassandra scurried about the room, making things secure and ready for the night and the raging storm.

  She slept fitfully. Again and again she awakened to listen to the wind howl around them. Off and on she would think that it had abated, and then another gust would come, shaking the windows and rattling the eaves trough. Every time she heard its fury she thanked God again that Samuel was safe, and tried to get back to sleep.

  It was toward morning when a new sound roused her. At first she dismissed it as just another sound of the storm and then she knew it wasn’t so. It sounded more like knocking than the hammering of the wind. Someone was pounding on their door.

  She climbed from bed and reached to light the lamp. Her bedroom held a chill in spite of the banked fires. She fumbled with the matches and finally got the wick to catch flame. Then she hurriedly wrapped her woolen robe around her and hastened to the door. On the way she met Thomas. He, too, was carrying a lamp. He had already been to the door and was coming back to get her.

  “It’s Mr. Hick. His wife is having her baby. They want Pa.”

  Cassandra looked at the window. She couldn’t see out into the darkness, but she could still hear the wind blowing.

  “But he isn’t here,” Cassandra said unnecessarily to her son.

  “I told him. He wants to talk to you.”

  Cassandra passed on to the kitchen. She found a nervous man pacing the floor and stopping now and then to rage at the storm and the darkness.

  “Mr. Hick?” said Cassandra, thinking to herself that prayer might work much better than cursing.

  He swung to face her.

  “The baby’s on the way,” he said quickly. “We’ve got to get back to Esther.”

  “But the doctor isn’t in,” repeated Cassandra, setting her lamp on the kitchen table. “He has been storm-delayed at the Lawsons’.”

  “I know—yer boy told me—an’ I’m sorry to be askin’ you to go out in this weather but—”

  “Me?” said Cassandra incredulously.

  “We need to hurry—beggin’ yer pardon.”

  “But I’ve never delivered a baby,” blurted out Cassandra.

  “You know a lot more about it than I do, ma’am,” insisted the father-to-be, and Cassandra had to concede the point.

  “I’ll get dressed,” she replied in a shaky voice and picked up the lamp to head back to her bedroom, forgetting that she was leaving the man in the dark.

  “Mama,” said Thomas, appearing again with his lamp in his hand, “surely you don’t intend to go out on a night like this.”

  “What choice do I have?” replied Cassandra. “If it were me lying in that bed, I’d want someone, anyone, to come to me.”

  Thomas realized she was not to be swayed and he moved toward the kitchen, determined to have her coat and boots warmed by the fire before she slipped into them.

  Cassandra felt that they would never fight their way through the tearing wind. Several times, Mr. Hick had to stop and take her arm, almost pulling her through the storm. The snow swirled around them, adding to the already knee-deep drifts that hindered their progress. Icy chips struck them in the face, stinging cheeks and chin cruelly. Wind pulled at her clothing, threatening to tear her coat from her body. Cassandra clung to her garment, vainly trying to keep its protective warmth wrapped securely around her.

  It seemed as if they would never make the short trip through the snow-camouflaged streets of the little town to the house that Joseph had helped to build, but eventually they managed to stumble up the walk and fight their way through the door.

  Cassandra was out of breath and slumped into a nearby chair, gasping for air while the sudden warmth of the building threatened to suffocate her.

  A groan from the bedroom reminded her of the reason for her coming, and she stiffened and looked to Mr. Hick, who had already cast his coat aside and was reaching for the lamp on the table.

  “She’s in here,” he said to Cassandra, and she knew that she must somehow find the strength to follow him. With a quick prayer for guidance, she forced herself back onto her feet and followed the man, dropping her coat on the floor somewhere along the short journey.

  Cassandra knew very little about assisting a birthing, but she did judge, and correctly so, that the woman did not have much longer.

  “Some clean linens,” she told the man. “And warm towels or blankets for the baby. Place some of them on the oven door and warm them up. This is a cold night to be welcoming a little one.”

  The little bit of action seemed to settle her and she drew a few deep breaths and approached the woman.

  “This your first?” she asked and the woman shook her head.

  “I lost one,” she answered, fear in her voice.

  Cassandra felt her body shiver. She prayed that the woman would not lose another baby.

  “We are going to do our best to make sure that you and your baby are fine,” she said, and knew that it was the most she could promise.

  “We? Is Doc here, too?” asked the woman.

  “No,” admitted Cassandra. “No, just me. But I—I never work alone. I—I—” Would the woman understand? she wondered. “I always ask God to be with me,” she said evenly and the woman looked at her blankly and then nodded her head in understanding. Cassandra saw tears in her eyes, but she didn’t know if it was from the pain of childbirth—or some other pain that troubled her more deeply.

  A baby girl was born just as the clock on the bedroom mantel said eight. Cassandra waited for a moment, tied and cut the umbilical cord, bundled the little one in a warm blanket that her father held out, and hastened off with her to the warmth of the kitchen. She looked fine and Cassandra prayed that it might be so.

  She wasn’t sure just what to do next, but she remembered Samuel cleaning up each of her babies.

  “Little one,” she said to the complaining infant, “you don’t have the best welcoming committee in the world. Oh, not that we aren’t glad to see you—it’s just that we don�
�t know the proper rules of etiquette in welcoming the newborn. If only Samuel were here—”

  But Samuel and his black bag were somewhere out there in the new day, waiting for the storm to release them. Cassandra did the best she could, bundled the small baby up warmly and passed her to her father while she went to attend the new mother.

  “She’s fine,” Cassandra smiled. “I think she’s going to look just like you.”

  The young woman was in tears.

  Cassandra moved to smooth the hair back from the mother’s face and look into her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” she asked earnestly.

  “I’m fine—now,” the young woman answered.

  “I think the storm has passed,” went on Cassandra. “We have nothing to worry about now, except for you to get some rest. Do you think you can do that?”

  “I’m sure I can,” replied Mrs. Hick. “I feel like I’ve done five laundries.”

  Cassandra smiled at her description of labor.

  “I’ll send Dr. Smith over to see you as soon as he gets home,” she promised. “And if you should need me in the meantime, get a neighbor boy to come for me.”

  The woman nodded. She was already looking sleepy.

  Cassandra left the room and went to the kitchen.

  “She needs to rest now,” she said to the father, who sat by the kitchen stove with the baby in his arms. “If the baby fusses, take her in to her mother. She might want to nurse. If she sleeps, let your wife sleep, too.”

  He nodded.

  Cassandra pulled on her heavy boots and found her coat lying across a kitchen chair.

  “I’ll send my husband over to check on both of them as soon as he gets home,” she said and he nodded again.

  She was about to pass out into the cold morning air when he called softly after her, “Mrs. Doc?”

  She turned to look at him.

  “Thanks,” he blurted. “Thanks more than I can say. It woulda killed her to lose another baby.”

  Cassandra nodded and closed the door tightly.

  By the afternoon everyone in town seemed to have heard about the new baby. Virginia walked through the snow to see Cassandra.

  “I hear you had quite a night,” she said as she shrugged out of her coat and leaned to slip off her boots.

  Cassandra just smiled.

  “Did Doc get home yet?”

  “He’s over checking on the new baby now,” said Cassandra.

  “Well, from what everyone is saying, Doc couldn’t have done a better job himself,” said Virginia.

  “Don’t tease,” responded Cassandra. “I was scared to death.”

  She turned to the stove to push the teakettle over the heat for a cup of tea.

  “I suppose you’ve heard what they’re calling her,” went on Virginia.

  “No,” admitted Cassandra. “They hadn’t named her when I left.”

  “Cassandra,” said Virginia smugly. “Cassandra Joy.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Weddings

  Vivian was the first of their children to marry.

  “It seems that all she got out of her Arts course was a young professor,” Samuel remarked as he read her glowing letter home, telling of her plans.

  The wedding was to take place in Montreal. “In Grandmother’s church,” Vivian said. Samuel arranged for a young intern to come in and cover for him during his absence and took two weeks off to travel with the family.

  “You can stay longer if you wish,” he told Cassandra. “But I should get back.”

  Cassandra shook her head. She knew from her last trip back East that two weeks would be long enough.

  The children were all excited about the trip. Christina fairly bubbled. She, of course, couldn’t remember that long-ago trip, and her young brothers had never seen their Montreal grandparents. Cassandra regretted that they would not know their grandfather, as Henry P. Winston had been gone for almost a year.

  The days on the train not only gave Samuel a much-needed rest, but also gave the family time to sit together and chat about many things.

  “You would have liked your grandfather,” Cassandra told her family. “He was an energetic, intelligent man. Always busy. Always doing.” She might have added “always gone,” but she didn’t. Though she realized now that she had resented his constant absence when she was a child.

  Samuel added to the conversation. “If it hadn’t been for Dr. Henry P. Winston, my professor, your grandfather, I might never have made it into medicine.”

  Cassandra looked at Samuel as though she wished to challenge the statement.

  “You stood in the top five of your class,” she said quietly.

  “In class work, yes. But Henry P., through avenues unbeknown to me, managed to find funding so that I could stay in school.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said Cassandra, a new respect for her father growing within her.

  “He did it for a number of his students,” Samuel said.

  “His ‘pets,’ you mean,” teased Cassandra. “I tell you truthfully, children, his students, his ‘pets,’ saw far more of him than his family did.”

  Cassandra still referred to her offspring as “children” and thought of them as such, even though the youngest, Peter, was now fifteen and seeing himself as quite adult. If they resented it, they did not say so. As Thomas put it, “I expect she’ll still be calling us children when God takes her home,” and the others had smiled at the thought.

  “Tell us what Grandmother is like,” begged Christina, and Cassandra began a long presentation of her mother, her Montreal home, and her growing up years. Even Thomas listened intently. Cassandra painted such a glowing picture that when she finally stopped for a breath, Peter asked openly, “What did you go west for?”

  Cassandra looked up, startled by his sudden question, then smiled and reached to clasp Samuel’s hand. “I met a young man,” she said coyly, “and he was going west—no stopping him.”

  “Well, I’m glad you did, Pa,” said Peter. They no longer referred to Samuel as Papa. “Too childish” was their assessment. Samuel did not argue. Cassandra guessed that he rather preferred “Pa.” It had been the name he used for his own father.

  “I can hardly wait to see Vivian,” said Christina, changing the conversation.

  “She’ll likely be a snob now that she’s lived in the East,” put in Thomas.

  “Where’d you ever get that idea?” asked Cassandra, turning quickly to confront her son.

  He shrugged carelessly. “I dunno. Heard it around. Folks are always saying it.”

  “Well, just because folks are saying it doesn’t make it so.” Not all of Cassandra’s bit of red-headed temper had been dealt with over the years. But she cooled more quickly, was more repentant, when her temper did flare. It always seemed to amuse Samuel, and at times Cassandra felt that he teased her just to provoke a response. He chuckled now and Cassandra flushed and checked her outburst.

  “I—I can’t abide sweeping statements that—that take everyone in with one big brush,” said Cassandra, gesturing widely with her hand. “All Easterners or all Westerners, all English or all Spanish, all doctors or farmers. We are individuals. We can make our own choices—even though we might not be allowed to shape our circumstances. If I’m a snob—it’s because I choose to be one—not because I was born and raised in the East.”

  “You’re not a snob,” Christina answered her mother.

  Cassandra flashed her a look that might have said she wasn’t getting the point; at the same time she thanked the girl with her eyes for her support.

  “You—all of you,” Cassandra went on, waving a hand to include all her children in her circle of concern, “your father and I have tried to raise you properly. We have taught you the laws of God, the rules of proper conduct, the etiquette of society—but in the end you make your own choices. You decide who and what you will be.”

  She stopped for a breath and went on.

  “I thank God that you have all made
the most important first choice. You have, at various ages, come to the place where you have recognized God for who He is and given your hearts and lives to Him. That big step has been taken.” Cassandra paused briefly, remembering the times over the years when each child had made his or her individual decision to invite Jesus to cleanse a heart and be in charge of a young life. She was so thankful for each of those decisions. So thankful.

  Then she continued. “But you will have many more choices to make in life. Many changes. Many seasons of growth. Your father and I might guide you—will still give our love and support—but in all honesty, you are now all—even you, Peter—adults and responsible for what you do with your lives. As your father and I have done our best for you and taught you the proper way to live, we will not accept the blame if you—if you make foolish decisions—and end up—end up—stupid—and poor—and—and sinful. The choice is yours. We’ve given you some proper tools for life, but you must do the work.”

  Cassandra leaned back in her seat and took a deep breath. She had delivered her sermonette to her children with a good deal of passion in each word. She felt Samuel’s fingers tighten around hers.

  “Whew!” said Peter, ducking exaggeratedly in the corner, “I don’t quite know whether to celebrate or—or cower.”

  Joseph began to laugh and soon the whole family joined in. When they had enjoyed a good chuckle, Samuel brought them back to seriousness again.

  “Your mother is quite right,” he said in his usual calm way. “We love you dearly—each one of you. If you give us cause to be proud by what you do in life, it will be your own doing—not ours. We will grant you full credit. We can take you only so far—you must go on from there. We have every confidence that because you have allowed God to be with you and in you, your choices will be right. He will guide you when we no longer are there for you. Always remember that. Pray for His direction—and when He makes it known to you—don’t argue with Him concerning it. Be in agreement with His will.”