Here and Again Page 15

  “Calves are big creatures.” Ginger stood and took Mr. Wheldon by his arm, helping him toward a bed.

  “Jack was so upset. But he said for me not to worry about the car or anythin’ ’cause the calf had insurance.”

  “What’s that?” Ginger asked, stopping their progress toward the bed.

  “Jack said the calf had insurance so y’all be paid and sich.”

  “The calf had insurance,” Ginger repeated, nodding as she helped Mr. Wheldon to the bed.

  “Yup.”

  “Well, Mr. Wheldon, why don’t you take off your coat and let me get the doctor.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ginger stepped back into triage, grinning at the irony. The calf had insurance. What kind of world was it when livestock had insurance and people went bankrupt paying for their medical care? As she picked up the phone, there was a rap at the glass door again. Coming around the triage desk, she found the doctor already standing out in the snow. It was not Anna Maria D., MD. It was a very clean-cut young man with dark hair and dark eyes. When Ginger opened the door, he hurried in.

  “Damn, it’s cold out there,” he said, his accent clearly Northern. His name tag read, “Ernest P., MD.”

  “Doctor?” Ginger prompted as they walked to triage.

  “Patterson. Dr. Patterson. The patient’s car backfired so loud, I thought it was a gun going off.”

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  “No. Albuquerque. What do we have?”

  “A car accident.”

  “Ah, a FIRT—Failed Impact Resistance Test. He’s driving a GTO, so I’ll guess he hit a . . . 1972 Ford pickup.”

  “No,” Ginger said, hiding her frown.

  “A pole?”

  “No,” she said, her hidden frown deepening. She didn’t want to tell him. He sounded condescending and she liked Mr. Wheldon.

  “What, then, Nurse, ah—” He read her name badge. “Virginia.” He chuckled.

  “A calf.”

  “What say?”

  “He hit a calf.”

  The doctor’s eyes brightened enormously and he smiled quite broadly. Was he going to laugh?

  “It’s very quiet tonight, Doctor,” Ginger said with a chill to match the night outside. She led Dr. Patterson to Joshua’s room. Entering, the doctor’s demeanor changed to a very professional one, so Ginger saw that at least he had clearly been trained. He took the chart Ginger offered to him.

  “Good evening, Mr. Wheldon. Seems you’ve had a car accident.”

  “Yessir. Ah have. Mah back is just a-achin’.”

  “Hmm. Let’s take off those shoes and your shirt and have a look.”

  Ernest P., MD, walked to the sink and washed his hands. With a snap, he put on latex gloves. As Ginger washed her hands, she caught, out of the corner of her eye, Joshua Wheldon pulling a large hunting knife out of his boot. Ernest P., MD, backed up toward the wall, his eyes wide on the knife and his hand reaching for the telephone.

  “Uh, Mr. Wheldon,” Ginger said calmly. “Go ahead and just drop the knife on your coat.”

  “Ah-rahght,” he said and, as directed, he dropped the knife.

  Ginger chuckled inwardly to herself. Such things used to surprise her, too, but out here in the rural areas, whether Washington, Virginia, West Virginia, or anywhere else, people generally carried hunting knives or guns on their person. It was not for show. It was for survival—literally. She smiled kindly at the doctor and nodded reassuringly.

  Composing himself once again, Ernest P., MD, began his assessment. It took about half an hour, after which time he indicated to Mr. Wheldon that he thought the man had pulled muscles in his lumbar region. He prescribed muscle relaxers and painkillers and instructed the patient to return if he wasn’t feeling better in a week. Then Ernest P., MD, left the patient with Ginger.

  To avoid Mr. Wheldon bending, Ginger helped him on with his boots.

  “Ma’am?” he said.

  “Yes, Mr. Wheldon?”

  “Did ah do somethin’ wrong?”

  She stood and looked into the man’s hazel eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, mah knife.”

  “Oh. No, Mr. Wheldon. Dr. Patterson isn’t from around here.”

  “Ah kinda noticed. You’re not, neither.”

  She smiled. “No. I’m not, and you’re fine. Now, here is your prescription to fill and a couple of pills to take when you get home. See you through the night.” She helped the man to his feet. “You understand the instructions?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ginger motioned him to the door. “If you see Jack Wolfe,” she said, “tell him to keep the chocolate bars down to one a day.”

  Joshua Wheldon turned around, grinning ear to ear. “You do know Jack!” he declared.

  “Oh, yes. I do. And only after one meeting.” They laughed together.

  “Ya know anyone what needs a cow?” Mr. Wheldon asked.

  Ginger shook her head, confused.

  “The calf a-dyin’ just made ole Jack realize he cain’t keep his farm goin’. Cain’t keep the fences up and sich. He’s kinda afraid for his cow. If yah meet anyone that needs a good milker, let me know. I’ll tell Jack.”

  Ginger nodded, and as they turned to the glass door, they watched a thin shadow of a person slip and slide across the parking lot.

  “He don’t look lahk he’s a-walkin’ too good.”

  Ginger squinted into the darkness as she turned the lock on the door. The thin shadow stopped and threw up.

  “Ya need help with ’im?”

  The shadowy figure stepped closer to the light and then sat down in the snow.

  “No, thank you, Mr. Wheldon. That’s very kind.”

  “He’s mighty sick,” the mountaineer said.

  “He’s mighty drunk,” Ginger corrected and, securing the door open, she walked out into the clear, cold night to retrieve Jacob Esch.

  “You be careful, Mr. Wheldon, crossing the parking lot,” she said as she approached the boy.

  “Ah will. Good night, ma’am.”

  “Jacob Esch?” she said, bending down. He smelled of whiskey.

  “My side hurts,” he gurgled, holding his right abdomen.

  “How much alcohol have you had?” she asked, helping him up. Even in this light, she could see his face was pale and pressed in pain.

  “Just a couple. I started throwing up. I hurt something awful.” He grunted.

  “Let’s get you inside.” With his left arm swung across her shoulders, Ginger walked Jacob toward the glass door of the ER. Before they arrived, Ernest P., MD, came trotting across the icy parking lot.

  “I’ll take him,” Dr. Patterson said, relieving Ginger of her burden.

  “He has pain in his lower right abdomen,” she said, walking briskly but carefully ahead.

  “Yup,” the doctor replied. “You been throwing up, uh—”

  “Jacob,” Ginger prompted, stepping through the door. She waited for the doctor and his patient to pass and then shut and locked winter outside.

  “Jacob?” Ernest P., MD, finished.

  “Yeah.”

  “You been drinking?” he asked.

  “I think I threw it all up,” Jacob replied with a moan as he was lowered onto the bed.

  “Let’s get this shirt off.”

  Dr. Patterson helped Jacob off with his shirt and then laid the boy down as Ginger washed her hands. When the doctor turned to wash his, Ginger stuck a thermometer in Jacob’s mouth. It beeped as the doctor’s gloves snapped into place.

  “A hundred degrees, Doctor,” Ginger said.

  “Yup.” He nodded as he helped Jacob lie back.

  “How long have you had the pain?” the doctor inquired.

  “Since last night.”

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nbsp; “Last night early?” The doctor pushed across Jacob’s abdomen, left to right.

  “After dinner. I threw uh—ahh!” The doctor pressed the abdomen right where the appendix was and, as expected, Jacob went off like an alarm does when the right button is pushed.

  “I’ll get the on-call surgical team,” Ginger said, turning to leave.

  “Yup,” the doctor replied.

  First she phoned the hospital exchange to call in the surgical team and then she rang Yvette in acute care to prep surgery. When she returned, she found the doctor helping Jacob off with his clothes. She started Jacob’s IV.

  At five a.m., Jacob was rolled into surgery. At six a.m., Dr. Patterson’s relief showed up.

  “We got that in time,” Dr. Patterson replied as he walked into triage. Aside from Jacob, there had been no other patient.

  “Yes, we did,” Ginger replied.

  “You working tonight?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m here for a week,” Ernest P., MD, replied. “I suppose this was a quiet night.”

  “Yes,” Ginger said. “We’re used as general medicine as well as emergency care.”

  Dr. Patterson nodded. “Not enough money out here to keep a GP, I suppose.”

  “And very little insurance,” Ginger affirmed.

  Dr. Patterson nodded again.

  “The calf had insurance, though,” she added.

  “What say?” Ernest P., MD, tilted his head.

  “The calf Mr. Wheldon hit. It had insurance, so we’ll be paid. So Mr. Wheldon says.” Ginger waited and watched Dr. Patterson process her words.

  “Mr. Wheldon has no insurance?”

  “Yup.” She said it exactly as the doctor always did. A wry smile grew on his face.

  “That’s just wrong,” he said.

  “Welcome to American medicine.”

  “Something’s wrong with us.”

  “We’re independent. Don’t like anyone telling us what to do. Need to turn a profit on everything, including illness and death, you know.” Ginger smiled.

  “The calf has insurance!” Ernest P., MD, announced. “I gotta call my dad with that one. All that money to put me through college and a dead cow pays my fee.”

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  “Holy cow,” Ginger added.

  They laughed louder.

  “I work the six p.m. to six a.m. shift,” Dr. Patterson said. “What do you work?”

  “The two a.m. to two p.m. shift,” Ginger replied. “Nurses and doctors have different shifts here.”

  “Okay. See you tonight,” Dr. Patterson said, shaking his head and chuckling as he walked toward the glass door. Morning was waking outside; it stretched its long rays into the clear sky as it yawned.

  “Sleep well,” Ginger said, deciding she might like Dr. Patterson after all.

  The door shut. She looked at it. No need to lock it. She turned and walked down the hall past the doors into acute care, where Jacob had been taken. She found him lying quietly, the IV dripping slowly in the dim light of his room. She stepped over to check it.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?”

  She gazed down and found the young man peering up at her with a pop eye.

  “No. Neither are you.”

  “I’m here by mistake. By many mistakes.” He closed his eyes and faded back into a drug-induced rest.

  Chapter 12

  Cuttin’ a Shine

  When Ginger stepped out at two thirty p.m. Saturday afternoon, the world was less white. She blinked as if waking from a short nap, listening to the dripping tears of snow melting as winter realized it was losing its grip. The sun was a warm fifty-two degrees, according to the large, round temperature gauge on the hospital’s brick wall. She shuddered. Not from cold, but from the anticipation of the smell in her truck and the fact that the world was telling her as clearly as it could that it was now time to plow.

  “Maybe it’s colder in the valley,” she said to the slush that gave way under her feet.

  She knew, though, there was little time now to put off the inevitable. The world was waking up, ready to grow again, and she and Osbee could not plant on their own. Osbee was also clear on this point, for she was selling the farm. On the other hand, Ginger was not clear at all. She didn’t want to be clear because it meant the time was approaching to leave Virginia—time to say good-bye to Osbee. It was time to let go of Jesse.

  When she opened the truck, she didn’t even wince at the odor. She was aching, her body spent and weak from the growing pain of loss. She climbed in, feeling as if she would never stop losing—losing Jesse, losing his dream, losing Osbee, losing her children’s childhood.

  “I’m so tired of losing,” she whispered as she engaged her engine. The roads were shiny and wet as if it had rained. The snow was a patchwork of white and brown and as she drove down the hill to Harrisonburg the valley spread below her, a mist-covered quilt of green and white rolling hills glowing brightly beneath a golden peach sun. She opened her window, finding birds chirping louder than the caw of the crows. The sun was warm but the wind was cold. She did not roll up her window. Instead, she turned the heater on. It seemed to Ginger that winter hadn’t even put up a fight last night. What had been the dead of winter yesterday was the sheer rise of spring in glory today, having won the battle with not one little skirmish.

  She drove on, gazing around at the trees whose branches were covered with tiny bright green buds that sparkled like so many small green Christmas lights in the sun. The valley was clear and fresh, cleaned by some mysterious housekeeper the night before and ready for all that was new.

  Yet as she turned onto her lane and looked in wonder at the miracle of Virginia’s waking spring, winter was still upon Ginger. Solomon Schaaf sat his tractor, feeling the earth call to him. He waved as she passed, his face as bright as the sun above. He was in his element—an earth sprite sewing a field of dirt to make a cloth of wheat to adorn his land in a golden dress some months from now.

  The Creed farm had long, winding furrows set as if by magic overnight. Grasses budded green through the unplowed patches of snow in the far field. Finally, if there had been any question in Ginger’s mind as to the state of the seasons before, the two cars that made their way slowly toward her as she headed home on the road punctuated the fact that it was spring. She smiled through the windshield at both drivers.

  Though they were strangers, she knew them. They were going for a Saturday drive and had seen the sign on Highway 81 pointing to the covered bridge. As so many people had done over the years, they exited and followed the road this way and that to the end of the lane where the covered bridge stood in the open field near a fruit orchard and small family cemetery. They had stopped, finding nothing really to look at but the bridge spanning a small, dried-up stream. Perhaps they took a picture, perhaps not. Either way, with nothing much else to do, they turned around and made their way back to the highway.

  Ginger’s stomach hurt. Up ahead was the rise of Smoot’s farm. There in the driveway was Ester and Hugh Martin’s black Mercedes, sitting like a vulture waiting for a death. As she bumped off the asphalt, she found her three children slumped over the railing near the front steps. There, right behind them, leaning on the post of the porch with his arms crossed, was Samuel Annanais. Ginger slammed on her brakes.

  No one moved. They stared at her as she stared at them. Slowly, she disengaged the engine, not daring to make more of a ripple in the heavy stillness that enveloped her. It was Samuel who left the porch first, followed as if obediently by her children—Bea, then Oliver, then Henry. Ginger sat motionless, her eyes tracking their progress from the house to her truck door. Bending down a little to peer at her through the glass, Samuel smiled a reticent smile as he reached the front end. Henry trotted from behind, reaching the door first, and, as his father taught him to do
, he opened it for his mother.

  “Good afternoon, Virginia Moon,” Samuel quietly greeted.

  Ginger said nothing.

  “We all see him, Mama,” Henry whispered.

  The ghost, Oliver mouthed, his eyes wide, his body shaking. Ginger gazed sideways in his direction and he smiled secretly at her. He wasn’t afraid. He was wound with excitement.

  “Your youngest was cuttin’ a shine in the house when I came across the bridge. Could hear him all the way in your orchard.”

  Ginger made no response.

  “Grandma and Grandpa Martin are here with Mr. Glenmore, a lawyer,” Henry said.

  “They talk and talk and talk,” Oliver breathed, slumping his shoulders and rolling his eyes back into his sockets.

  “When I reached the porch, your children were pushed out the door.” Samuel shrugged apologetically.

  Ginger sat, having no idea what to do. It would be a mistake to say her mind raced. It didn’t. It had seized. It had come to a complete and utter stop. She had nothing to say—nothing to offer. She had nothing. The birds somewhere in the eves sang a little do-re-me to fill the void.

  “Virginia Moon, I cannot go home.”

  “He can’t cross the river, Mama,” Bea added. “He keeps coming back here.”

  River . . . that was a body of water.

  “I can hear them talking to Grandma Osbee, Virginia, through the window. They seek to sell the farm.”

  “What will happen to Penny and Christian?” Oliver whined.

  Ginger winced. She had reached the day she didn’t ever want to live—the day her children would know they were leaving Osbee. They would be removed from the grace of Mr. Mitchell and all the others on this hairpin curve of the Shenandoah. But she wasn’t choosing to do such a thing. It was happening without her consent. It was an inevitable wall of reality bearing down on them—a flood of change in their small world. A disaster.

  “I can help,” Samuel said.

  Ginger peered up into his soft brown eyes. They looked at her just as they had done when he stood on the fallen tree. Her seizure made no answer.

  “I am supposed to help,” he added.

  The birds stopped singing. Silence. Stillness. A picture formed clearly in her mind: Samuel on the tree. She was on her knees in the snow by the fallen ash near the river, asking Jesse for something—anything. Ginger felt a trickle of movement in her synapses. It was small. It was flowing from the center of her body through the middle of her mind and found its way to her mouth.