Tattler's Branch

by Jan Watson

  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.”

  Chapter 4

  Finally her house was at rest. Lilly rubbed tired eyes as she went for one last check on Armina.

  The night nurse, Hannah, sat under a dim light. Her fingers worked a skein of blue yarn with two needles. “She’s resting well, Dr. Still,” she whispered. “The aspirin and the alcohol bath did the trick.”

  “Temp?”

  “It was 99.6 fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Very good. I’m going to catch some sleep, then.”

  Hannah laid her knitting aside and followed Lilly to the bedroom door. “So what’s wrong with her, Doctor?”

  “There’s a history of severe sore throat—now with the fever and the odd movements, I suspect Saint Vitus’ dance brought on by untreated rheumatic fever.”

  “Oh, poor thing.” The nurse shook her head sympathetically. “So we’re in for the long haul.”

  “I’ll go over her treatment plan more thoroughly in the morning, Hannah.” Lilly covered her mouth against a yawn. “You know she must be kept quiet to avoid agitation.”

  “Yes, ma’am, Dr. Still. My sister had the very same thing. I’ll take good care.”

  Lilly’s head had barely dented the pillow before Kip started whining. “Lie down, Kip. You’ve had your walk already.”

  Kip moved to the end of the bed. Taking a guarding stance with ears alert and tail straight out, he growled low in his throat.

  Lilly sighed as her feet sought her bedroom slippers. “I give up,” she said, tightening the sash of her robe. “This had better be important.”

  At the front door she fished a dog lead from the four-gallon crock that held Kip’s things: leashes, brush, worn towels for feet wiping, and such. She kept a carbide lantern sitting on a shelf there as well, and now she switched it on.

  Kip’s little body trembled in anticipation, and he cast a hurry-up look over his shoulder at her. She fastened the lead to a ring on his collar even though the bad weather had passed. Despite Tern’s opinion, the dog was well-behaved and would not stray far from her unless it was storming. Thunder and lightning released something primal in the animal, as if he were in charge of chasing the tempest away.

  Now it was she giving hurry-up looks as Kip strained against the lead, wanting to cross the road instead of using his favorite spot under the lilac bush. Lilly released the lead—maybe he needed a bit of privacy. As soon as he was free, Kip shot across the road to Armina’s house, traversing two mud puddles on the way. He pushed his nose against the front door, his whole body wagging. When she caught up with him, he rewarded her with a shake of dirty water.

  Lilly positioned the light from the lantern on the doorknob. What could be in the house that had Kip in such a state?

  There was only one way to find out. She turned the knob.

  The door creaked open. The inside of the house was pitch-dark and smelled faintly of spoiled milk. Lilly trained the light on Kip. Along the ridge of his backbone, a line of fur stood stiff as the bristles on a boar’s-hair brush. He whined again, urgently this time.

  Then Lilly heard it—the weak, almost-ineffectual cry of an infant. Lilly could hardly believe her ears. How very strange. “Good boy, Kip.”

  Armina’s house was small—just the living room with a kitchen to one side and a bedroom in back. Kip led Lilly to the bedroom.

  She found the baby lying in a basket made of rush that sat in the middle of Armina’s perfectly made bed. Beside the basket she saw a stack of folded diapers and a tin of Cashmere Bouquet talc.

  Kip jumped up on the bed and peered into the basket. “Are you this baby’s mother?” Lilly asked as she scooted him aside and unfastened the diaper pin. A cloud of talc wafted her way. A girl, clean and dry—Armina must have changed her before her own befuddling incident occurred. Lilly would have much preferred to find a wet nappy. Dehydration was a killer of infants.

  “Sh, sh,” she cro
oned as she wrapped the baby again and gathered her up. The little girl lay limply in her arms as she rushed to the kitchen and pulled the string to the bare overhead bulb. She laid the baby on the table and opened the blanket around her, taking in the child’s sloping forehead, the flat nose and low-set ears. The baby barely gripped Lilly’s finger when she stroked her tiny palm. “Poor dear little thing.”

  Leaving the baby where she lay, Lilly went to Armina’s pantry and got a can of condensed milk. At the sink she filled the teakettle. Thankfully, Armina was not one to let her stove grow cold. Lilly lifted a stove lid with a prong, shoved a chunk of hickory down the eye, and set the kettle to boil.

  Kip pawed something on the floor. Keeping his nose low to the ground and his rump in the air, he watched as a bottle spun in circles toward Lilly’s feet. He barked expectantly—like he’d found something necessary.

  “My word, Kip, it’s a baby bottle. The baby’s bottle. What’s it doing on the floor? But then why wouldn’t a bottle full of curdled milk be on Armina’s kitchen floor?”

  Kip cocked his head as if giving thought to Lilly’s question.

  “After all,” Lilly said as she popped the rubber nipple from the bottle and poured its contents into the slop bucket kept under the curtained sink, “we’ve just found a baby on her bed. It all makes a strange kind of sense.”

  The baby whimpered from her nest on the table as Lilly washed the bottle and nipple. The teakettle roiled. She poured a cup of the water and set it aside to cool, then sterilized the bottle, the nipple, a mason jar, and a zinc lid. While she waited, she dropped a tea ball into a white mug and fixed herself a strong cup of tea. She needed it. This night might never end.

  After her tea had steeped, she punched a hole in the top of the tin of milk. She stirred a spoonful of the creamy liquid into the cup of water and mixed the baby’s formula. Upending the can, she let the rest of the milk drip slowly into the canning jar.

  A cushioned kitchen chair comforted Lilly as she sat holding the baby in her arms. She teased the baby’s lips with the nipple, but she would not suck. A stream of milk leaked from the corner of her mouth and dribbled onto her gown. Tiny embroidered yellow ducks paddled across the front of the long white sleeper. “Somebody loves you,” Lilly crooned. “Somebody loves you to have dressed you in a gown so fine.”

  The baby looked at Lilly through weary, fading eyes. Lilly had seen those deathbed eyes before but never on one so young. “Don’t give up,” she said, giving the baby a gentle shake. “Don’t you give up on me.”

  Babies were not Lilly’s specialty. Oh, she could turn a breech or wield a set of forceps with the best of them, but once babies were delivered, the mother or a midwife was the expert. Lilly much preferred a full-blown heart attack or a compound fracture to the ills of the newborn. If only her own mother were here. She would know exactly what to do. As the only baby catcher on Troublesome Creek, Mama had probably delivered a thousand infants by now. She would be a great help when Lilly had children of her own.

  Lilly pinched the baby’s cheeks to make a seal around the nipple. Milk gushed out her nose, and in mere seconds her pale face turned a dusky leaden color. Upending the infant, Lilly let the milk drain, mopping it up with a tea towel.

  With one finger she examined the roof of the baby’s mouth and found the hidden cleft that allowed communication between the cavity of the nose and mouth.

  “Two strikes,” she said as the baby made a snuffling sound and the color returned to her face. “Let’s pray there’s not a third.”

  Lilly bundled the baby, the bottle, and the remainder of the condensed milk, then said, “Come on” to Kip.

  The dog stuck close as they walked down the road to the clinic, using the lantern for light until they came closer to town, where the sidewalk was lit by gas lamps. The door was locked and her key was in the bag left at home. She rapped sharply on the door.

  “Dr. Still?” Anne, the other night nurse, said as she opened up. “What have you got there?”

  “A very hungry baby,” Lilly said. “I’m guessing she’s two weeks old.”

  Anne took the baby into her ample arms. “She’s scrawny for two weeks, Doctor. She should be gaining weight.”

  “Yes, but she has a cleft palate. Obviously she’s been getting some nourishment but not enough to thrive.”

  “Dear, dear,” Anne said, her forehead knitting in a frown of worry.

  “I’ve brought her formula, but don’t attempt a feeding. I’m going to get a length of India-rubber tubing. I’ll be right back.”

  Lilly stood in the walk-in supply closet and perused the stacks. She saw skeins of gauze, rolls of tape, dozens of thermometers, brown-paper packages of sterilized linens and autoclaved instruments, but no tubing. Her ire rose as she rummaged around. A body could never find anything when she needed it.

  “Top shelf, right-hand corner,” Anne said behind her. “You’ll find a tube just there—a little to your left. There you go.”

  “Thank you, Anne,” Lilly said, more than a little discomfited. A nurse could put you in your place quicker than anybody. I should have asked, she thought as she cut the tubing to size and inserted it into the opening she’d widened in the nipple. “Pray this will work,” she said.

  Anne settled into a rocking chair and held the baby in a sitting position. “Let’s give her a try.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the baby had gotten no more than a tablespoon of liquid from the slapped-together feeding system. “This takes much too long. She’ll starve to death with the bottle in her mouth,” Anne said, raising the baby to her shoulder for a burp.

  “What we need is a wet nurse. The human breast makes the best seal.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” Anne said. “My Amy’s nearly two, but she ain’t weaned yet. Likes her ninny, she does.”

  “Would you be willing?”

  “Of course,” Anne said, settling deeper into the chair and unbuttoning her blouse. “Little thing needs all the loving she can get.”

  Lilly closed the window blind and draped a blanket over Anne’s shoulders. The bit of milk the baby had received from the bottle had piqued her interest. Finally she began to feed.

  Anne patted the baby’s bottom as she rocked and nursed. “Mongoloid, ain’t she?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “Mongoloid and harelip. Don’t seem fair.”

  “Cleft palate—not cleft lip. You can’t see it from the outside, which is why I nearly choked her to death.” Lilly stirred honey into the mugs of tea she’d made for herself and for Anne. “You’ll need extra fluids if you’re nursing two,” she said, taking a seat close by.

  “Where’s her mother anyway?” Anne’s face fell. “No! Don’t tell me. She’s dead—ain’t she?”

  “I’m going to trust your discretion, Anne. I want nothing repeated.”

  Anne crossed her heart right over the baby’s head. “I took the Nightingale Pledge, Dr. Still. I never talk about my patients, though I admit it’s hard sometimes.”

  Lilly leaned forward. “It seems Armina found her this morning, but now she’s sick herself.”

  “Is that why your sister came for Hannah?”

  “Yes, but they don’t know about the baby. I expect someone will show up asking about her. After all, someone is missing her daughter.”

  “What’s your gut saying, Doc?”

  “I think something has happened, something terrible enough to cause Armina’s system to go into shock.”

  “Must be bad. Armina’s tough as a pine knot.” Anne took a drink before setting the mug down to shift the baby from one side to the other. “What do you aim to do?”

  Lilly rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “I’ll talk to the sheriff, of course—”

  “Chanis Clay! Ha, he’s still wet behind the ears. He won’t have a clue.”

  “Probably not,” Lilly said, leaning forward in her chair, “but since his father was killed, he’s all the law we have. I don’t thi
nk it would be right for me not to say anything to him. What if a crime has been committed?”

  “I get your point. Meanwhile, why don’t I take this little gal home with me? Amy won’t mind to share, and we can trust my husband. He don’t talk to anybody. The most you can get out of him is a grunt.”

  “You’re an angel, Anne. Let me run home to get dressed and check on Armina; then I’ll come back and man the clinic until the day-shift nurse arrives. You’ll have to take some time off, but I’ll see that you get your full salary.”

  “Good thing it’s a quiet night. We only got the two patients in-house. Guy in bed two is going home in the a.m. You already wrote his discharge.”

  “Gracious, I didn’t even ask about the others.”

  “The others are my department, Doctor. I’d of told you if they was in need.”

  Lilly picked up the lantern. She nudged Kip from his slumber by the door. “Thank you, Anne. I’ll be back shortly.”

  Chapter 5

  Lilly had barely finished breakfast when she heard knocking at the back door. She wiped the corners of her mouth, folded her napkin, and pushed her chair back.

  A workman in striped coveralls stood on the kitchen stoop, holding a rectangular wooden box under one beefy arm. Kip, fresh from his solo morning walk, sniffed at the man’s shoes.

  “Where you want this thing, missus?” the workman asked.

  With all the turmoil of the day before, it had slipped Lilly’s mind that she and Tern had ordered the installation of a calling system. “I’m sorry. I have a patient here. We’ll have to arrange another time.”

  “A telephone? We’re getting a telephone?” Mazy said from behind her. “Don’t make him go away, Lilly. This thing could change my life.”

  “Just pick a place, little lady,” the man said, looking at Lilly. “The mister done paid for it.”

  Lilly extended her hand. “I’m Dr. Still—and you are?”

  “Jim Jones, at your service. Sorry; didn’t mean to be rude.” He leaned the device against the doorjamb and doffed his cap before taking Lilly’s hand. “I didn’t realize this was the doctor’s house. The work order just says Still.”