Rorey's Secret

by Leisha Kelly

  “Heard you were having a new baby out here,” he called to me. “I was sorry not to make it last night. Made sure to find a way to get here this morning.”

  “Bless you,” I told him with my heart suddenly thumping faster. I wouldn’t have had to send Robert for Dr. Howell, if only we’d been patient.

  “Mr. Post was telling me the baby’s just the beginning, with the fire and all.”

  “Yes. Yes, please come in.”

  I ushered him straight to the house to see Samuel. I thought maybe Franky would follow us. He knew I would want the doctor to look at his hands. But he didn’t follow, only turned around toward the woodshop again.

  “Guess your home became something of a hospital last night, Mrs. Wortham,” Dr. Hall was saying. “You must be exhausted.”

  “I suppose we should’ve tried bringing everybody in to you—it’s just . . .” I looked at him and almost broke down in sobs. “Oh, I don’t know . . .”

  “It’s all right. I don’t mind coming out. I know you’ve had a hard time of it.”

  He heard the baby in the sitting room and glanced in that direction, but I urged him toward Samuel again, and Delores agreed with me.

  “Take a look at Mr. Wortham first,” she told the doctor. “He give us all quite a scare.”

  Samuel was still awake when we came in, and I was grateful for that. He greeted Dr. Hall by name, which I’m sure the doctor would understand as a good thing. Sarah came in behind us and wanted to watch, but the doctor told me it might be better if she didn’t.

  “You can come back soon as he’s done, pumpkin,” Samuel said to help her feel better. But she was none too happy about being asked to go out.

  Dr. Hall was thorough. He took his time looking Samuel over, arms and legs, chest and back. In the daylight I could see so many bruises and scratches I hadn’t seen before. It looked just like what Samuel had said, that the barn had fallen on him. I knew it to be a miracle that he’d survived.

  “Well, Samuel,” Dr. Hall said quietly. “I’m pleasantly surprised not to find you dealing with obvious broken bones. Only thing I’m wondering about in that way is your ribs here.” He pointed to Samuel’s right side. “You’ve got some bad bruising in this area, and you seem awfully tender.”

  Samuel nodded. I took a deep breath, but it came hard. Broken ribs? How much of a problem might that be? And what could be done?

  “It’s a little hard to know for sure,” the doctor continued, “unless we put you under an X-ray picture machine. I don’t blame you for not coming into town, though. With your head injury, the bumpy roads wouldn’t have done you any good.”

  That scared me. Terrible. What about the head injury? I wanted to ask how bad it was, but I couldn’t seem to get a word out. Thank God we hadn’t let Sarah stay in the room. I just stood there and watched, twisting my apron between my fingers. Dear God, let him be all right. Let it be that the doctor’s only being cautious and it’s not really all that bad. Please, God.

  Dr. Hall spent some time looking in Samuel’s eyes and ears with some kind of magnifier and an even longer time looking over the obvious wound on the back of his head and then asking a whole series of questions, some of which didn’t seem relevant at all.

  Finally the doctor turned and looked at me. “Was he unconscious?”

  “Yes. For a while. When it first happened. And then later. He seemed to be sleeping, but I wasn’t sure if it was normal sleep.”

  Samuel glanced over at me with something strange in his eyes.

  The doctor frowned and did some more looking, feeling over Samuel’s head with his hand. I could tell it hurt. Finally, the doctor spoke to me again. “Could have been much worse. I’d say you have a lot to be thankful for that your husband’s still here.”

  “I know,” I managed to say, hoping he’d go ahead and say more. And he did.

  “His eyes are fine. His thinking’s fine. No fluid in his ears at all. Structure of the skull feels fine despite some swelling in the skin. I don’t expect any skull fracture. Bit of a miracle, I’d say.”

  I smiled.

  “Still, a whack on the head’s nothing to mess around with, especially when he’s lost consciousness. He been dizzy or nauseous at all?”

  “Yes,” I said. “And hurting too.”

  “You’d about have to expect that. I’d say he’s got a concussion. Have to be careful for a while, till we know the swelling’s gone, and pray there’s none on the inside.”

  “On the inside?” Those words hit me hard. “What would that be like?”

  He turned away from Samuel to face me. “Mrs. Wortham, I wasn’t meaning to alarm you. There’s no reason at all to expect—”

  “Expect what? What could happen?” I thought of the man from the cave, the man who’d been hit with the rock and then died in his bed.

  The doctor looked uncomfortable. “We should expect him to just be getting better—”

  “But if there’s a chance . . .” I stammered, “if there’s a chance of complications, I want to know.”

  He sighed. “Mrs. Wortham, don’t be worrying yourself. There’s always a chance, but—”

  “Tell me. Please tell me what could happen.”

  He sighed again. “It’s a tricky thing,” he said, turning his eyes back toward Samuel. “We just can’t predict something like this very well. I’m sure he’s fine. But in some cases there can be bleeding or swelling inside. You can’t tell it looking at the outside, and it doesn’t always show in the X-ray pictures we can get, because it’s gradual. If it happens, it can cause problems. Loss of memory, or function, or worse. But we’ve no reason to think—”

  My heart was pounding in my throat. “Could he die?”

  Dr. Hall shook his head. “Mrs. Wortham, there’s no cause for such alarm. I don’t believe we have any such problem here.”

  “Can we know for sure?”

  “I wish I could say so. Soon they’ll have machines, and we’ll be able to tell anything you want to know. For now, the best thing to do is relax and make sure he gets plenty of rest. I saw you had ice on his head. That’s a good thing. Get more if you can. Keep him still. There’s not much more you can do, unless you want to move him to town, but I’m not sure that would be to any real benefit. He should recover fine at home.”

  “What about his ribs?”

  “I’ll wrap them tight. That’s another reason he shouldn’t be up moving around. They should heal on their own all right. You can expect it to be painful, though. And four to six weeks, probably, before he’s full on the mend.”

  Surely he must be wrong about it taking so long! Surely there must be some way to help him more quickly. I knew I shouldn’t worry, but it was pouring over me like water. Could broken ribs create bleeding and swelling inside too? Should I ask? How could we know?

  “I’m sorry if this seems like bad news, Mrs. Wortham,” the doctor told me. “But I believe he’ll come out fine. You’ve got plenty to be grateful for, that he’s doing this well. And with him sitting here talking to us, I don’t expect any complications.”

  “Yes,” I told him. “Thank you.”

  He looked at Samuel’s leg and told me I’d done a fine job bandaging it. I’d thought it would need stitches, but he said it was already closing on its own and he believed it’d do all right.

  “Maybe I’d best take a look at the others while I’m here,” he said then. “I’ll come back in to Mr. Wortham again before I go.”

  I knew it could have been so much worse, and I was probably just irrational for worrying over what might be. But still I felt numb inside. It was hard to move, showing Dr. Hall into the sitting room toward Berty and baby Rosemary. Sarah and Katie both came up beside me, and I hugged them, telling them not to worry, that the doctor said we had plenty to be thankful for.

  “Go get Franky,” I told them. “I want to make sure the doctor looks at his hands.”

  Thelma was sitting up on the old davenport, happy to talk to the doctor. I was relieved there
’d be no difficult news with her. She seemed to be fine, just like her mother had said. The doctor said so too, and congratulated me on doing so well.

  “Fine baby you got here,” he said, lifting Rosemary into his arms. “She nursing well for you?”

  “Took the breast twice already this morning,” Delores told him like the proud grandmother she was.

  It didn’t take the doctor long to look the baby over and pronounce her healthy. “Congratulations to you,” he told Thelma. “Where’s the father?”

  Thelma looked down for a moment. “Over with his pa. They lost their barn last night, and we don’t know what all else. They’re making sure the flames don’t kick back up. And I think Pa Hammond’s having a hard time of it.”

  “I understand. Quite a night you’ve all been through.” He turned his attention to Berty. “Let me take a look at you, young man.”

  Bert didn’t look up. “It’s only just my ankle. An’ . . . an’ I reckon I deserve that much.”

  “Oh, Bert—” I started to say.

  “Why?” the doctor asked him.

  “Because I run in after Imey, my calf, that’s why. An’ I shoulda knowed better. I shoulda knowed I couldn’t save her, an’ it weren’t worth it to try. I near got Mr. Wortham killed. He was the one rushed in there an’ got me out.”

  The doctor glanced up at me for a second, and then back to the boy. “Well, a lesson learned, I’d say.”

  Bert nodded. “I’m just awful sorry, that’s all. I ain’t never felt so bad over nothin’.”

  “Let me see that ankle?”

  Bert looked at me, but then he assented, stretching his leg out in front of him. It was kind of puffy and pink, but the doctor wasn’t worried.

  “Can you put weight on it?”

  “A little. It hurts, though.”

  Dr. Hall didn’t take long looking it over. “Got you a bad sprain, I’d say. And angels watching out for you. Could have died going in a burning structure. Don’t ever do it again.”

  “No, sir, I won’t.”

  “You’ll have to stay off of that ankle a few days. Soak it morning and night. If you’re not on it by next week, have your pa bring you in. But I think it’ll be fine.”

  The doctor patted Bert’s shoulder, then turned to me. “Well, Mrs. Wortham. You had one busy night. Any more?”

  “Yes. One. Bert’s brother Franky has a burn on one hand and what looks like a nail puncture on the other. He was fighting the fire. And he helped pull my Samuel out. Can’t keep him from working today, though. I sent the girls for him.”

  “Well, where is he? I can go to him.”

  He did. We were started on the way when Sarah and Katie came back, telling me Franky wouldn’t come. “He says he don’t need a doctor, that his pa’ll be mad,” Katie said.

  I was immediately stirred almost to anger over the idea. Surely George wouldn’t be angry over his son seeing the doctor. Not if he had a lick of sense about him.

  I took Dr. Hall straight to the woodshop, and there was Franky sanding away on the beautiful hope chest he and Samuel had been working on earlier in the week. He didn’t stop when we came in. He didn’t even look up. I’d never known Franky to be stubborn before, but I thought that was what I was seeing in the set of his jaw. Until I came closer and saw the tears in his eyes.

  “Franky, let Dr. Hall look at your hands, please.”

  He didn’t even stop what he was doing. “I’m all right.”

  The doctor reached forward and took the sanding board right out of his hands. “I already know you’re a brave young man. It doesn’t hurt to let me look.”

  Not having much choice, Franky consented. The burn on his left hand wasn’t bad, but the doctor spent some time looking at the nail puncture. “You’re gonna have this infected if you don’t take care,” he said. “If you’ve got to work, it’ll have to be bandaged. Let me clean it out for you first.”

  We went to the well. I got washcloths and a towel, and Dr. Hall cleaned him up and took a bottle of something called Landin’s Disinfectant and poured it over the puncture. I could see that the skin all around the wound was red. The doctor put Baxter’s Wound Cream on the burn and the puncture wound, and handed me the rest of the jar. Then he bandaged both hands. Franky wasn’t very happy with that, I could tell.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve seen any of you,” Dr. Hall remarked, looking into Franky’s face. “You the one had the broken leg some years back?”

  “Yes, sir,” Franky acknowledged.

  “Doing all right with it?”

  Franky didn’t answer.

  “He still has some limp,” I said gently, though I expected Franky probably would’ve preferred me to keep quiet.

  “Well,” the doctor said with a sigh, addressing Franky as though he’d been the one to speak. “I hate to hear that. But it was a bad break, no question of that. I still wish your pa had let you stay in the hospital longer. Might have helped. Can’t say for sure now.” He glanced over at me. “Their mother’s been gone a long time now, hasn’t she?”

  “Yes. Seven years.”

  He nodded. “I’d appreciate it if you or Mrs. Pratt would see that Bert soaks his ankle. And this young man needs to keep the bandages on except for twice a day to put on some more of the ointment I’m leaving with you. In a couple of days you can leave the wounds open to the air a while. I’ll try to be back to take another look and see about Samuel then too.”

  I thought he was finished, but he was still eyeing Franky pretty straight. He reached his hand up to touch Franky’s bruised cheek. “Did this happen fighting the fire too?”

  “No, sir,” Franky answered. “That was earlier.”

  “What happened?”

  It took Franky a moment to answer. I knew he didn’t want to. “I was in a fight, sir.”

  “Well, let’s hope you’ve managed to learn a lesson about that sort of thing. Put a cool cloth on it if it bothers you.”

  I knew Dr. Hall would be going soon. He still had patients at the hospital in Mcleansboro. But he started back toward the house to see Samuel again first.

  “Do you think we should bring him to your hospital?” I asked him, even though I knew what he’d already said.

  He shook his head. “I wouldn’t be doing much different for him than what you can do here. And I can’t say that he ought to be moved right now, Mrs. Wortham. Better him staying as still as possible. I’ll be out to check on him as much as I can or send Nurse McCulley.”

  “But you said you could take X-ray pictures.”

  “You’re right. We could. But with the head and the ribs, there’s not much we could do if we did see that they’re broken.”

  “Should we have brought him last night?” I continued to question.

  “Hard to know those things. But don’t worry. I’m thinking he’ll get along all right.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. I wasn’t even sure if I was hearing good news or bad. “But what if he does bleed or swell inside?” I asked him plainly, glad there were no children close enough to hear.

  He stopped on the porch and turned to me with a sigh. “Mrs. Wortham, the best thing you can do is pray and believe for the best. We’ve got no cause to expect more problems.”

  That should’ve been enough for me. In ordinary times, it would’ve been. But my heart was still racing along, afraid for the husband I loved more than life itself. “We weren’t expecting the problems we’ve already had,” I told him. “If he were to have trouble, I just want to know what we could do.”

  He took a deep breath. I could tell he really didn’t want to say more. There was such softness in his eyes. “I’m not a surgeon, Mrs. Wortham. If he were to have complications, we could try to get him to one. But the best thing we can do is believe he won’t need more help. You know I’ll do everything I can. And I’ll move him if you want me to. But it would only make him uncomfortable.”

  I stood on the porch step and took a deep breath, willing myself to
do what he said and believe for the best. Why was I having such trouble with that?

  “Please don’t worry. It’s a wonderful sign, him talking to us the way he did. There’s no reason to expect anything but a full recovery.”

  He went walking on in, and I mustered myself to follow.

  Samuel was still awake. Dr. Hall applied a generous amount of the wound cream to a square of cotton, laid that against the back of Samuel’s head, and bandaged it in place. He did the same with his leg, telling me again that he thought it would do fine without stitches and that I’d done well with what I’d done before he got there. He said he’d leave a bottle of Chandler’s Aspirin Tablets along with the cream for the wounds, since I didn’t have any in the house. I helped him pull a wide cloth band underneath Samuel’s middle in order to wrap his ribs. Samuel was still hurting, I could tell, especially with the movement and the contact, but he didn’t say a word.

  “Let your friends and family take care of the farm,” the doctor cautioned him. “I want you to stay in this bed.”

  “How long?” There was a determination in Samuel when he asked it that I was glad to see. Of course, I didn’t want him in a hurry to get up, but I was glad he was thinking on it.

  “A couple of days, for starters,” the doctor answered. “I’ll be back to see you, and we’ll talk about it then.”

  Samuel looked at me.

  “We’ll manage fine with you in bed,” I told him. “Don’t you worry about that.”

  “All right,” he agreed.

  “It was good of you, saving that boy,” the doctor said. He held out his hand, and Samuel shook it. “I’ve got other patients waiting.” He turned toward the door. I asked him what we owed him for his trouble.

  “I’ll not be charging you in this,” he told me. “Looks like you folks have had more trouble than what it was to me coming out here. But next time, I might take a meal.”

  “We could feed you now,” I offered.

  “No. But thank you. I’ve got to get back.” He turned to go, and I followed. He stopped again by the back door.

  “Mrs. Wortham, get some rest. Don’t be worrying, and don’t wear yourself down seeing to everybody else.”