The Flowers in the Attic Series: The Dollangangers: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday, and a New Excerpt! (54 page)

“Darling, darling.” I comforted and then kissed her.
“Hang on. We’re taking you to a doctor soon. It won’t be so long before we reach Florida and there we’ll never be locked up.”

Carrie slumped in my arms as I miserably stared out at the dangling Spanish moss that indicated we were now in South Carolina. We still had to pass through Georgia. It would be a long time before we arrived in Sarasota. Violently Carrie jerked upright and began to choke and retch.

I’d judiciously stuffed my pockets with paper napkins during our last rest break, so I was able to clean up Carrie. I handed her over to Chris so I could kneel on the floor to clean up the rest. Chris slid over to the window and tried to force it open to throw out the sodden paper napkins. The window refused to budge no matter how hard he pushed and shoved. Carrie began to cry.

“Put the napkins in the crevice between the seat and the side of the bus,” whispered Chris, but that keen-eyed bus driver must have been watching through his rear-view mirror, for he bellowed out, “You kids back there—get rid of that stinking mess some other way!” What other way but to take everything from the outside pocket of Chris’s Polaroid camera case, which I was using as a purse, and stuff the smelly napkins in there.

“I’m sorry,” sobbed Carrie as she clung desperately to Chris. “I didn’t mean to do it. Will they put us in jail now?”

“No, of course not,” said Chris in his fatherly way. “In less than two hours we’ll be in Florida. Just try to hang on until then. If we get off now we’ll lose the money we’ve paid for our tickets, and we don’t have much money to waste.”

Carrie began to whimper and tremble. I felt her forehead and it was clammy, and now her face wasn’t just pale, but white! Like Cory’s before he had died.

I prayed that just once God would have some mercy on us. Hadn’t we endured enough? Did it have to go on and on? While I hesitated with the squeamish desire to vomit myself,
Carrie let go again. I couldn’t believe she had anything left. I sagged against Chris while Carrie went limp in his arms and looked heartbreakingly near unconsciousness. “I think she’s going into shock,” whispered Chris, his face almost as pale as Carrie’s.

This was when a mean, heartless passenger really began to complain, and loudly, so the compassionate ones looked embarrassed and undecided as to what to do to help us. Chris’s eyes met mine. He asked a mute question—what were we to do next?

I was beginning to panic. Then, down the aisle, swaying from side to side as she advanced toward us, came that huge black woman smiling at us reassuringly. She had paper bags with her which she held for me to drop the smelly napkins in. With gestures but no words she patted my shoulder, chucked Carrie under the chin and then handed me a handful of rags taken from one of her bundles. “Thank you,” I whispered, and smiled weakly as I did a better job of cleaning myself, Carrie and Chris. She took the rags and stuffed them in the bag, then stood back as if to protect us.

Full of gratitude, I smiled at the very, very fat woman who filled the aisle with her brilliantly gowned body. She winked, then smiled back.

“Cathy,” said Chris, his expression more worried than before, “we’ve got to get Carrie to a doctor, and soon!”

“But we’ve paid our way to Sarasota!”

“I know, but this is an emergency.”

Our benefactor smiled reassuringly, then she leaned over to peer into Carrie’s face. She put her large black hand to Carrie’s clammy brow, then put her fingers to her pulse. She made some gestures with her hands which puzzled me, but Chris said, “She must not be able to talk, Cathy. Those are the signs deaf people make.” I shrugged to tell her we didn’t understand her signs. She frowned, then whipped from a dress pocket beneath a heavy red sweater she wore a pad of
multicolored sheets of notepaper and very swiftly she wrote a note which she handed to me.

My name Henrietta Beech
, she’d written,
Can hear, but no talk. Little girl is very, very sick and need good doctor.
I read this, then looked at her hoping she’d have more information. “Do you know of a good doctor?” I asked. She nodded vigorously, then quickly dashed off another green note.
Your good fortune I be on your bus, and can take you to my own doctor-son, who is very best doctor
.

“Good golly,” murmured Chris when I handed him the note, “we sure must be under a lucky star to have someone to direct us to such a doctor.”

“Look here, driver,” yelled the meanest man on the bus. “Get that sick kid to a hospital! Damned if I paid my good money to ride on a stinking bus!”

The other passengers looked at him with disapproval, and I could see in the rear-view mirror that the driver’s face flushed with anger, or perhaps it was humiliation. In the mirror our eyes met. He lamely called to me. “I’m sorry but I’ve got a wife and five kids and if I don’t keep my schedules, then my wife and kids won’t eat, because I’ll be out of a job.” Mutely I pleaded with my eyes, making him mumble to himself, “Damn Sundays. Let the week days go by just fine, then comes Sunday, damn Sundays.”

This was when Henrietta Beech seemed to have heard enough. Again she picked up her pencil and notepad and wrote. This note she showed to me.

Okay, man in driver’s seat who hates Sundays. Keep on ignoring little sick girl, and her parents will sue big shot bus owners for two million!

No sooner had Chris had the chance to skim this note than she was waddling up the aisle and she pushed the note into the driver’s face. Impatiently he shoved it away, but she thrust it forward again, and this time he made an attempt to read it while keeping one eye on the traffic.

“Oh, God,” sighed the driver whose face I could clearly see in the mirror. “The nearest hospital is twenty miles off my route.”

Both Chris and I watched, fascinated, as the mammoth black lady made gestures and signals that left the driver as frustrated as we had been. Once again she had to write a note, and whatever she wrote in that one soon had him turning the bus off the wide highway onto a side road that led into a city named Clairmont. Henrietta Beech stayed with the driver, obviously giving him instructions, but she took the time to look back at us and shine on us a brilliant smile, assuring us that everything would be just fine.

Soon we were rolling along quiet, wide streets with trees that arched gracefully overhead. The houses I stared at were large, aristocratic, with verandas and towering cupolas. Though in the mountains of Virginia it had already snowed once or twice, autumn had not yet laid a frosty hand here. The maples, beeches, oaks and magnolias still held most of their summer leaves, and a few flowers still bloomed.

The bus driver didn’t think Henrietta Beech was directing him right, and to be honest I didn’t think she was either. Really, they didn’t put medical buildings on this kind of residential street. But just as I was beginning to get worried, the bus jerked to a sudden halt in front of a big white house perched on a low, gentle hill and surrounded by spacious lawns and flower beds.

“You kids!” the bus driver bellowed back to us, “pack your gear, turn in your tickets for a refund, or use them before the time limit expires!” Then quickly he was out of the bus and opening up the locked underbelly, and from there he pulled out forty or so suitcases before he came to our two. I slung Cory’s guitar and banjo over my shoulders, as Chris very gently, and with a great deal of tenderness, lifted Carrie in his arms.

Like a fat mother hen, Henrietta Beech hustled us up the
long brick walk to the front veranda and there I hesitated, staring at the house, the double black doors. To the right a small sign read F
OR
P
ATIENTS
O
NLY
. This was obviously a doctor who had offices in his own home. Our two suitcases were left back in the shade near the concrete sidewalk while I scanned the veranda to spy a man sleeping in a white wicker chair. Our good Samaritan approached him with a wide smile before she gently touched him on the arm, and when he still slept on she gestured for us to advance and speak for ourselves. Next she pointed to the house, and made signals to indicate she had to get inside and prepare a meal for us to eat.

I wished she’d stayed to introduce us, to explain why we were on his porch on Sunday. Even as Chris and I stole on cautious pussywillow feet toward him, even as I filled with fear I was sniffing the air filled with the scent of roses and feeling that I’d been here before and knew this place. This fresh air perfumed with roses was not the kind of air I’d grown to expect as the kind deemed worthy for such as me. “It’s Sunday, damn Sunday,” I whispered to Chris, “and that doctor may not appreciate our being here.”

“He’s a doctor,” said Chris, “and he’s used to having his spare time robbed . . . but
you
can wake him up.”

Slowly I approached. He was a large man wearing a pale gray suit with a white carnation in his buttonhole. His long legs were stretched out and lifted to the top of the balustrade. He looked rather elegant, even sprawled out as he was with his hands dangling over the arms of the chair. He appeared so comfortable it seemed a terrible pity to awaken him and put him back on duty.

“Are you Dr. Paul Sheffield?” asked Chris who had read the sign with the doctor’s name. Carrie lay in his arms with her neck arched backwards, her eyes closed and her long golden hair waving in the soft, warm breezes. Reluctantly the doctor came awake. He stared at us long moments, as if disbelieving his eyes. I knew we looked strange in our many layers
of clothing. He shook his head as if trying to focus his eyes, and such beautiful hazel eyes they were, bejeweled with flecks of blue, green and gold on soft brown. Those remarkable eyes drank me in, then swallowed me down. He appeared dazzled, slightly drunk, and much too sleepy to put on his customary professional mask that would keep him from darting his eyes from my face to my breasts, then to my legs before he scanned slowly upward. And again he was hypnotized by my face, my hair. It was hair that was far too long, I knew that, and it was clumsily cut on top, and too pale and fragile on the ends.

“You are the doctor, aren’t you?” demanded Chris.

“Yes, of course. I’m Dr. Sheffield,” he finally said, now turning his attention to Chris and Carrie. Surprisingly graceful and quick, he lifted his legs from the railing, rose to his feet to tower above us, ran long fingers through the mop of his dark hair, and then stepped closer to peer down into Carrie’s small, white face. He parted her closed lids with forefinger and thumb and looked for a moment at whatever was revealed in that blue eye. “How long has this child been unconscious?”

“A few minutes,” said Chris. He was almost a doctor himself, he’d studied so much while we were locked away upstairs. “Carrie threw up on the bus three times, then began to tremble and feel clammy. There was a lady on the bus named Henrietta Beech, and she brought us here to you.”

The doctor nodded, then explained that Mrs. Beech was his housekeeper-cook. He then led us to the door for patients only, and into a section of the house with two small examination rooms and an office, all while apologizing for not having his usual nurse available. “Take off all Carrie’s clothes but her underpants,” he ordered me. While I set about doing this, Chris dashed back to the sidewalk to fetch our suitcases.

Full of a thousand anxieties, Chris and I backed up against a wall and watched as the doctor checked Carrie’s blood pressure, her pulse, her temperature and listened to her heart, front and back. By this time Carrie had come around
so he could request her to cough. All I could do was wonder why everything bad had happened to us. Why was fate so persistently against us? Were we as evil as the grandmother had said? Did Carrie have to die too?

“Carrie,” said Dr. Sheffield pleasantly after I had dressed her again, “we’re going to leave you in this room for a while so you can rest.” He covered her with a thin blanket. “Now don’t be afraid. We’ll be right down the hall in my office. I know that table isn’t too soft, but do try and sleep while I talk to your brother and sister.”

She gazed at him with wide, dull eyes, not really caring if the table was hard or soft.

A few minutes later Dr. Sheffield was seated behind his big impressive desk with his elbows on the blotter pad, and that’s when he began to speak earnestly and with some concern. “The two of you look embarrassed and ill-at-ease. Don’t be afraid you’re depriving me of Sunday fun and games, for I don’t do much of that. I’m a widower, and Sunday for me is no different than any other day. . . .”

Ah, yes. He could say that, but he looked tired, as if he worked too many long hours. I perched uneasily on the soft brown leather sofa, close by Chris. The sunlight filtering through the windows fell directly on our faces while the doctor was in the shadows. My clothes felt damp and miserable, and suddenly I remembered why. Quickly I stood to unzip and remove my filthy outer skirt. I felt quite pleased to see the doctor start in surprise. Since he’d left the room when I undressed Carrie, he didn’t realize that I had two dresses on underneath. When I sat again next to Chris, I wore only one dress of blue, princess styled, and it was flattering and unsoiled.

“Do you always wear more than one outfit on Sundays?” he asked.

“Only on the Sundays I run away,” I said. “And we have only two suitcases and need to save room for the valuables we can hock later on when we have to.” Chris nudged me sharply,
mutely signaling I was revealing too much. But I knew about doctors, from him mostly. That doctor behind the desk could be trusted—it was in his eyes. We could tell him anything, everything.

“Sooo,” he drawled, “you three are running away. And just what are you running from? Parents who offended you by denying you some privileges?”

Oh, if he only knew! “It’s a long story, Doctor,” said Chris, “and right now all we want to hear about is Carrie.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “you’re right. So we’ll talk about Carrie.” All professional now, he continued, “I don’t know who you are, or where you’re from, or why you feel you have to run. But that little girl is very, very ill. If this weren’t Sunday, I’d admit her to a hospital today for further tests I can’t make here. I suggest you contact your parents immediately.”