Island Hospital (2 page)

Sheila gazed with wondering eyes at the houses clustered in each clearing that they passed. Most were wooden, built of rough-dressed boards overlapping; the gently sloping roofs were made from wide cedar planks, and the newer, more prosperous homes had wide picture windows overlooking the sea. Here and
there a stone house stood out bleakly against its green forested background, reminding Sheila of the cottages of northern England.

They were silent as the
Queen Mary's
bows cut through the still expanse of water. As the shadows lengthened Sheila felt that the mountains had moved in closer, but it was too soon to decide whether their embrace would be friendly. They came into the inner harbor and Clare was maneuvering to round the first reef when there was the roar of a widely opened throttle and the hospital launch rushed past them, leaving the
Queen Mary
tossing like an angry cork in its wake.

“I bet he did that on purpose,” Sheila gasped as she clutched the gunwale for support. There couldn’t be two men at Mary Harbor with such red hair.

Sheila felt rather than heard the silence that followed. She could hear the dying splash of the bigger boat’s waves against the rocks, the quiet phut-phut of the
Queen Mary's
engine. She turned to Clare and comment died on her lips.

The older girl crouched by the engine, her small face so pale that the tiny dusting of freckles across her nose stood out, her green eyes seemed to glow like jewels, so intense was her anger, and her hands automatically guiding their course through the passage were clenched into whiteness. She spoke after a moment, and the words were sharp with bitterness.

“Don’t you believe it! Alan never even noticed us.” Her hand adjusted the throttle as they cleared the last reef and she swung the
Queen Mary
alongside the wooden jetty with a flourish that sent protesting wavelets swishing against the cedar branches dropped at the water’s edge.

A querulous voice reached them. “Whatever are you danged girls playing at? The doctor’s been shouting for plasma to go way out in the bush and you’re messing about like two kids let out of school! Step smartly!”

Sheila stepped ashore in haste, but Clare made no move. She looked at Jim, the handyman, with cool eyes.

“If he needs plasma, he needs one of us,” she said flatly.

Jim jumped aboard with a flourish and placed his crate of plasma carefully on the seat. “You can think it, Miss Boothby, but you'd be wrong. The matron has been asking sarcastic like for the past half-hour where her nursing staffs got to. Hop it!”

A fuming Clare scorned his helping hand and went off up the path.

“Could I be of any use?” Sheila asked hesitantly.

Jim pushed the
Queen Mary
away from the dock with a decisive movement. “Not on your first day, Miss,” he said kindly. “Besides, those pretty city clothes aren’t cut out for trudging up trails through the bush. ’Spect the doctor will be bringing the patient back here anyways.”

Sheila watched the
Queen Mary
disappear through the inner cut. She looked ruefully down on her well-cut summer tweed suit. The soft periwinkle blue might emphasize the golden fairness of her hair and put blue lights in the grayness of her eyes, but she had to admit that even with the clinging warmth of her heavy cardigan it was not meant for duty calls in the backwoods. She looked up the path toward the hospital, but Clare had disappeared from sight.

Sheila sighed a little and took a last look at the harbor. Lights were beginning to twinkle amongst the darkening green of the trees as the sun disappeared in a final blaze of glory behind the farthest island. Flaming scarlet faded to palest pink and the curtains of the horizon were held back by the departing spears of sunlight. A solitary juniper stood out stark and black against the dying gold and the first star of the evening appeared caught in the gnarled branches. A cool breeze from the faraway snowfields made Sheila shiver.

She hurried up the winding path, stumbling a little over unfamiliar obstacles. The blinding blaze of the great window in the lounge hid the rock garden flowers but she could smell the sweet scent of the early summer flowers lingering on the cooling air. She went up the steps and through into the lounge. It was deserted, but through an open door she could see a girl setting the supper table.

The maid looked up as she heard Sheila’s footsteps. “Matron says to tell you dinner’s at seven, but not to wait as there’s a case coming off.”

Sheila watched the plump Indian girl pad softly around the table, her black eyes friendly, but curious and wary at the same time. She had never felt quite so useless in all her twenty-three years. If matron had needed help, she would have been the first to ask for it. Clare was bound to be busy. The red headed doctor was plunging through the growing darkness with his patient, the faithful Jim in attendance. And she still had to meet the rest of the staff.

She went back into the lounge. A small wood fire crackled brightly on the wide stone hearth. Magazines raised inviting faces from low tables, and comfortable chairs beckoned, but she was in no mood to settle. The clock told her that she had an hour before dinner.

With sudden energy she found her way back to her own room. A neat pile of suitcases begged to be unpacked. Sheila pottered happily putting her things away in drawers that smelled faintly of the fir forests from whence they had been hewn. Sheila adjusted the last picture on her wall with a happy little sigh. Someone had drawn the curtains across her picture window, shutting out the darkness of the night. She parted them and looked out, but not even a mountain showed its face. She turned back into the room and picked up a frock from the bed. She would just have time to change.

Sheila adjusted the clinging folds of the cherry red jersey dress and clasped the bracelet of Chinese jade on her wrist. She thought of the great-grandfather who had brought it back to England from one of his journeys across the great Pacific.

Sheila found herself alone in the dining room. The Indian girl placed a steaming bowl in front of her.

“Do you like clam chowder, Miss?” her soft voice queried. Sheila tasted it cautiously. Tender morsels of clam suggested the mysterious tang of the sea that pulled restlessly over the sand flats where the clams had their home. Golden kernels of corn, cubes of potato and other unidentifiable vegetables made up the thick mixture of the chowder.

A door opened hastily and Alan Greenwood came in.

“Hello there. Trying out some of our chowder, eh? A large bowl, please, Mary.” He pulled out a chair and sat down heavily. He smiled at Sheila and she knew an unfamiliar tightening of her senses. “If you like chowder, it becomes a vice, and second helpings are never enough.”

He dipped into his own dish with hearty appetite. In the temporary silence that followed Sheila found herself stealing covert glances at her companion. No one could call him handsome. It was the brilliance of his hair and the intense vitality of his whole personality that shrieked for attention.

“Another bowl, Mary, there’s a good girl.” He eased his position. “Um-umm, that’s better. Lunch was a long time ago. Thanks, Mary.” He tackled his second helping with undiminished gusto. He chuckled as he saw Sheila refuse a second. “You’re not an addict yet, I see.”

Sheila sat watching him for a moment. “Why do you call the girl Mary? Hasn’t she an Indian name?”

Alan put down his spoon. “Funny you should ask that. You’ll find Mary a very common name along the coast. Don’t tell the padre as he likes to think he’s a pioneer in these parts, but it’s a silent tribute to the priests who trekked through the mountains with the early explorers. They came with Fraser, sailed with Vancouver, lived with the Indians often in semi-captivity, until the fact that both white man and Indian believed in a Great Spirit helped to found the seeds of a friendship that still lingers in the scattered settlements.”

Sheila found herself asking questions. “Do the Indians still keep to the old ways?”

Alan chuckled. “The potlatches with all their ceremonies and wild extravagances may be forbidden, but if you had ever been fortunate enough to see one, you would have seen Hudson Bay blankets and Singer sewing machines vying for first place among the gifts of furs and Indian handicrafts. The modern Indian lives in a mixture of the old and new. He may build his shack in the shadow of the tumbledown splendor of the ancient Community House, and catch his fish from the rig of a modern trolling boat, but the old men and women of his village still remember the old ways. And I’ll bet you anything you like that in times of trouble the old men will be consulted before anyone appears at the Mission door.” He pushed back his plate. “Let’s have coffee in front of the fire.”

Sheila sank back gratefully into one of the easy chairs by the fire. Her day had stretched back to the early morning rush at the Vancouver docks catching the steamer, and her brain was packed to saturation point with all she had seen since then.

Alan reached out a lazy hand for sugar and stirred his coffee slowly. “Been a big day for you, eh? Me, too.”

Sheila remembered his trip across the harbor. “Did you get to your patient in time?” she asked softly.

Alan put down his cup with a clatter. “Just,” he said shortly. He poked at the fire vigorously. “I don’t know how much you know about our setup here, but there’s been a gap between doctors. This woman today was booked to have her baby here but hadn’t been in for any recent checkup ... no doctor here. I suppose you know that we don’t have midwives in the same way as you do in England. Our nurses do their obstetrics in with their general training. Those who want to do district work do an extra two years with the V.O.N.—Victorian Order of Nurses to you—but technically all deliveries are doctor’s cases. Anyway this woman had gone into labor. Her husband was away fishing up north, and there were only the other two kids at home. Luckily a neighbor from farther up the creek stopped by to visit. She rowed over and got a message through to the wireless station and they contacted us. The kids had sense enough to have all the pans in the place full of boiling water, and thanks to the plasma she was fit to be brought back with us, and the babe was yelling its head off none the worse for its rough trip into the world.” Some of the anger had gone out of him as he talked. “What makes me wild is that more isn’t done to encourage them to come here for early checkups. A hospital is meant to be used, not to be kept tidy.”

Sheila stared at him. “What do you mean?”

Alan got up abruptly and some of the friendliness had gone out of him. “You’ll find out soon enough. Look at you! All dolled up in city clothes ... pretty to look at, but no good for a job like this!”

Sheila stared at him unbelievingly and angry color splashed across her face. “You’ve no right to judge me before you know what I can do! Why, in England I ran a busy surgical ward while Sister was ill and there was no extra staff.”

Alan glowered down at her. “Maybe, but you had all the equipment you needed right at hand. You just had to raise your soft voice and house surgeons and registrars came running. Can you take an X-ray? Could you give an anaesthetic to a man who has been trapped by a falling tree? Bah! You women make me sick! Angels with cool hands and a lot of fancy words out of textbooks, but not an ounce of pioneering blood flows in your veins!”

The sharp clatter of heels cut through the angry silence that followed Alan’s outburst.

Clare stared at the two furious faces and a flicker of amusement twitched across her small face. “Fighting already? Alan, your patient is hemorrhaging again, and Matron says will you do something about it, please.”

Her eyes followed his charging figure out of the room. “What stirred you two up?”

Sheila relaxed her tense body. “I don’t know, unless he just doesn’t like women, especially English women,” she said helplessly.

“You can say that again! What with a matron who doesn’t like men, a surgeon who doesn’t like women, everything’s just fine and dandy! Well, have a good sleep. One of my mums is having her baby the old-fashioned way, slow and hard. She doesn’t believe in any of these new-fangled drugs, and she thinks forceps deliveries an invention of the devil.” She turned to go. “Matron says you can come on at nine tomorrow, if you feel like it.”

Sheila stirred uneasily. “Can’t I give you a hand now? I feel such a fool doing nothing with all you people working so hard.”

Clare shook her head. “Skip it, baby.” She held out her small hands. “See, no callouses! According to our redheaded surgeon, I ain’t done nothing yet!”

Sheila rested her head against the back of the chair. She was tired. Her head ached and her eyes throbbed with all the
impression’s they had registered. The fire burned softly on the hearth, the coals settling occasionally with a warm rustle. She must have dozed off, because she awoke suddenly conscious that the fire was very low and she was cold. She became aware that someone was watching her, and startled, she looked up to meet the dark eyes of Mary.

“The doctor says you can come quickly. Everybody else is busy.” She started off down the hospital corridor, not doubting that Sheila would follow.

Still half dazed from her nap, Sheila followed her guide into a brightly lit operating room. A burly logger was sitting on one of the stools, his lumber jacket vivid against the sterile white of his surroundings. His arm was resting on the table, and Mary was staring fascinated at the ugly gash across the wrist.

Alan Greenwood was placing instruments on a trolley from a small sterilizer. He looked up briefly. “Oh, it’s you, is it? Don’t just stand there. Put on a gown. Masks in the jar.”

Sheila subdued her angry trembling and did what she was told. The logger watched her with appreciative eyes as she dabbed antiseptic on his wound with a gentle touch. She held forceps and used scissors with steady hands while Alan repaired the damage. There was no sound but the occasional clatter of instruments, the heavy breathing of the man and the hiss of the sterilizer.

“Sorry, old chap. Can’t use local on an infected wound like this. Why in heaven’s name couldn’t you have come in sooner?”

The logger unlocked clenched teeth long enough to mutter: “You hadn’t come yet, Doc.”

Alan’s reply rang through the quiet theater and then abruptly he shrugged heavy shoulders. “There you are. And for the love of Mike, let your old woman chop her own kindling next time! Call yourself an axeman and can’t even use a blinking kid’s hatchet!”

The logger brushed the sweat from his forehead with his good hand and shuffled his feet. “Gee, Doc, it was her birthday, and I wanted to surprise her.”

Alan let out a bellow of laughter. “And you’re another of the soft ones, eh?”

Alan started to chuck instruments into a dish. “Leave them, there’s a good girl. They can do with a soak.”

Sheila started to unfasten her gown, and Alan came to her assistance.

A voice from the doorway startled them. “You could have called me, Alan. Sheila isn’t on duty until tomorrow.”

Alan turned and glared at Clare. “So what! I did ask for you, but you were busy. Mary had the sense to get someone who wasn’t. You’re nothing but a nattering female. Shut up and get out, both of you.”

Sheila and Clare found themselves out in the corridor. Clare raised cool green eyes.

“See what I mean?”

The door opened behind them. “Take a look at my mum as you go by, Clare.” The door slammed again.