Page 18 of Dust Bowl Magic (Carnival of Mysteries)

Chapter

Eighteen

Dr. Lucas Hamilton

It’s warm outside when we help Mr. Hobbs into the ambulance. His skin is hot and dry with fever before we leave, and his temperature rises on the way. Since I’m in the back with him, I use a cloth and water from a canteen to bathe his face and arms. I stop often and make him take a few sips to keep him hydrated.

His eyes are open, and he’s watching me.

“Does this feel better?” I ask.

He tries to talk, but he ends up racked by coughing.

“Sh. I’m sorry. Don’t talk.”

We gave him a small dose of laudanum for pain before we left, but it’s making him restless.

“Roscoe,” he mutters. “Who’s feeding Roscoe?”

I gathered from his conversations with Rose that Roscoe was his childhood pet.

“We’re taking good care of Roscoe,” I assure him.

“Best dog. Bravest mutt ever,” he says before he drifts to sleep again.

I wake him a bit later to take more water. He tries to swallow, but some dribbles out the sides of his mouth. I wipe his skin down with the damp cloth again. My twenty-first century self would seethe about doing this kind of thing.

“This is nursing,” he would say. “I didn’t go to school until I was thirty to wipe the sweat off an old man’s brow.”

Now, I don’t mind. I remember how proudly I told my childhood friends my father was a doctor because—in my mind—being a doctor meant healing people. It’s a shame that medicine wasted no time in robbing me of my na?veté. By high school, being a doctor meant rigorous discipline, doing exactly what I was told whether I agreed with it or not, and taking advantage of the network my ancestors seemed to have set in place like guard rails in a bowling alley so I couldn’t possibly fail.

In this time, I’m faced with a battle I can’t fight with a pill, or a scalpel, or a chemical, or radiation. There are no drug trials I can hand Mr. Hobbs over to so I can tell myself I did my best. I can’t offer hope as a last protocol.

Is hope the last resort for facing pneumonia in 1935? I feel like I’m playacting. This depressing line of thinking stays with me until we arrive at our destination. I don’t know what I’m expecting. Maybe some tents, like you see in old war photographs. Instead, the hospital has been set up in the meeting hall of a small church, much along the lines of Sumner’s clinic.

There are fifteen beds. We set Mr. Hobbs up in one of the empty ones. I make sure he’s comfortable and has had a few more sips of water before I leave his side. The beds are sturdier than the cots we use, but I guess they’re intended for comfort rather than portability. There are sheets hanging between them to provide a modicum of privacy.

Tar paper has been taped over the windows from the outside to control dust, so it’s cool enough, but gloomy. My eyes adjust to the low light quickly. Weak coughing forms a morbid soundtrack. Disinfectant and sweat, urine and shit perfume the air. Depression is taking its toll on the nurses here. Not the financial kind of depression. The bone weary sorrow of living with mortality. The exhaustion that makes today flow into tomorrow and the next and the next.

There nurses take shifts, but there are also volunteers—women in street clothes with aprons and red cross armbands. They move among the sick, reading, talking, smoothing sheets, and changing dressings while the nurses provide skilled medical care.

I give my letter of introduction from Sumner to the nurse in charge, whom everyone calls Afton. She’s a sturdy woman with rosacea, wavy red hair, and eyes that look lashless but that are a brilliant shade of green. She’s intelligent and lively, and I can already tell she has a true nurse’s morbid sense of humor. What is it they say? “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

“Glad to have another pair of hands, Dr. Hamilton. Dr. Delano is a hero of mine. If he says you’ll be useful, then by golly, we’ll use you.” She claps me on the back so hard I feel it five minutes later.

Afton has the physical vigor of a Katherine Hepburn character and an equally horsey smile. Before I know what we’re about, she’s taking me from bed to bed, introducing me to the patients who are awake and aware. For each one, she has a silly joke or a personal anecdote.

“Watch out for Mr. Teague here. He’s a card sharp,” she says of one of the older gents, who smiles weakly.

“You want…to play?” He has a coughing fit, wraps his hands around abs, and support his ribs. Afton sits by him and rubs his back until he’s relaxed again.

“Maybe later, darling. Don’t try to talk.” She gives him a pillow to hug when he coughs.

Afton’s eyes are troubled when she returns to me. “You ever had the kind of cough that makes every muscle in your body ache? I haven’t since I was a kid, but I still remember how awful it was.”

“At the clinic, we treated a child who had broken ribs from coughing.”

Her face falls. “Did they pull through?”

I shake my head. If I close my eyes I can see her body as we secured it to the board. I’ll never unsee that. Afton rubs my arm to soothe me. It takes us a minute to resume the tour.

Afton clears her throat. “Andy Canfield over here is our ladies’ man.”

“Afton’s…already got…a sweetheart.” Canfield’s color is bad, and he barely has breath to talk. “More’s…the pity.”

“You get well, Mr. Canfield. I’m not married yet.” Her laughter is contagious.

Once I’ve met some of the patients, Afton gathers the volunteers. “This is Dr. Hamilton. He’s been with Dr. Delano in Boise City. He’s come to see what we’re doing and provide an extra pair of hands.”

The volunteers’ names are Liz, Carol, Gena, and Kate. I say hello to everyone, and we shake hands. When it’s Kate’s turn, she grips my hand with force and pumps it with enthusiasm. Kate pings my spotty gaydar, though it could be because she’s wearing a man’s shirt and vest under a tweed jacket and mismatched wool trousers. I’m still surprised the women in this time, no matter what they’re doing, normally wear skirts or dresses. Except Kate, that is. The nurses wear hose. Most of the volunteers wear short socks. No wonder Sumner got fixated on the fact I didn’t wear socks.

I sense wariness and resentment from everyone but Afton and Kate. I hope I’m mistaken about the cause, but I’m a man, a doctor, and an interloper. Any guy who isn’t aware that the patriarchy walks before them like a flower girl throwing hand grenades isn’t paying attention. It stings, but I had to leave my ego behind with my Range Rover. Little do these people know how useless my skills are in this time and how much I’ll rely on them to get my footing. The only way to prove I won’t be a nuisance is by shock and awe. By that I mean working so hard, I shock them and make them go “Aww.”

“What can I do to help?” I ask.

They exchange looks with one another. Some volunteers seem suspicious. Kate’s eyes fill with mischief.

Afton says, “You can familiarize yourself with patient charts. If you can think of anything we should be doing differently, let us know.”

“Of course. But if there’s anything else you need—fetching and carrying or changing linen—I’m happy to do anything.”

That’s how I find myself hauling in buckets of water and helping with sponge baths. Later, I sweep the floors with what looks like a handmade shaker-style broom. Kate works alongside me.

“Bet you didn’t expect to be doing this when you went to your fancy medical school.”

“Nah, I do whatever needs doing.” This is the most egregious falsehood. I usually enter the hospital to scrub in like a prince and only do what needs doing with an anesthesiologist and a scalpel.

She wraps her hands over the end of her broom and rests her chin on it. “You seem like a man with a houseful of servants.”

I laugh at that image. “I’m not rich like Sumner.”

“Sumner, is it?” She widens her eyes playfully. “Dr. Delano is definitely in a class by himself.”

“I agree.” I hope she can’t read the way my heart skips when I hear his name. I try sweeping my pile of dirt into a dustpan. Half of it escapes. “We’re just moving the dirt around, aren’t we?”

“Yes, but if we mop, the dirt turns to mud that dries like clay. You can never get rid of that.” She wrinkles her nose. “Easy does it, or you’ll make wind.”

I laugh. “Speak for yourself.”

“Oh golly. I didn’t mean it like that.” She blushes furiously. “Troublemaker.”

She doesn’t know how right she is.

While we work, I wonder how things are going at the clinic. Specifically, I wonder what Marie is up to. Has she said anything about Sumner and me to the other nurses, Mrs. McKenzie, or Mrs. Andersen?

“When we’re done, we’ll dump this outside.” Kate uses the dustpan successfully and shows me which waste bin to use. “It’s impossible to keep things clean here, but I guess it’s no better in the city with cars and factories and all.”

“That’s a different kind of mess, but you’re right. It’s still a mess.” Smog and diesel fuel isn’t much of a tradeoff.

She pauses sweeping. “Dr. Delano worked in the coalfields. Is he making a study of lung diseases?”

“The subject interests him, especially when the cause is environmental.”

“Someone ought to figure that out, because the people who get better here go home and breathe in the same dirty air.” She’s slow when she sweeps and careful using the dustpan. I mimic her movements, so I don’t send clouds of dust everywhere and make things worse.

“You’re right. That doesn’t help.”

Kate has finished her corner, so she stops to hold the dustpan for me. I manage to keep things from blowing away this time. “We mostly have old people here. I worry a lot about the kids who have to walk to school or help with chores outside. It’s hard to get them to wear masks. My youngest brother hates his. I tell him he’ll hate it worse if I find out he’s not wearing it.”

I point to the mask I’m wearing. “If people see us wearing them, they’ll be more likely to follow our advice.”

“I wear mine, but my brothers are idiots.” We work another twenty minutes or so before taking the bin of dirt we’ve collected outside to dump behind the church. “I’ll feel accomplished for exactly five minutes, and then we’ll probably have to do it over.”

“Then we’ll feel accomplished again later,” I say as we reenter the building. “What should we do now?”

“You know, the other doctors who come here don’t clean.” She opens the door and waves me inside. “You are an outlier, Dr. Hamilton.”

“You don’t know how right you are, Kate.”

I’m glad I met Kate. It feels as if I we’re going to be friends. I wish I could introduce her to Damian. They’d blow up the gay scene in New Mexico, if there is one.

Afton is my kind of person too. There must be micro expressions or other signs that people recognize subconsciously that say tribe . or we should be friends . Not gaydar but simpatico. I feel comfortable with people who are either quietly rebellious or likely to make a morbid joke. I can be myself with people who organize their bookshelves by subject and author, who only cut their grilled cheese sandwiches diagonally, and who have to open two or more plantation shutters at exactly the same angle.

Afton’s brash warmth and Kate’s nonbinary dress code—whether it’s a style choice or because she gets hand me downs from her brothers—are familiar and comfortable to me.

I’m more inclined toward the anti-establishment types than I thought.

After a morning of backbreaking work, we have coffee and some sandwiches the church provides for us. Homemade bread and American cheese with pickle relish. It’s not a bad lunch, but it makes me long for the farmer’s market in LA. I’d kill for asparagus. Or an artichoke. A ripe tomato seems like a fever dream to me now.

“Dr. Hamilton?” Liz’s voice is soft.

“Yes?”

“It’s Mr. Hobbs.”

When I reach Hobbs’ bedside, I check his vitals. No significant change. There’s little to do now besides keep him nourished, hydrated, and mitigate pain so his body can fight it off. Or not.

“Hang on, Mr. Hobbs.” I bring a chair to his bedside and sit with him. He’s been given broth and water. He’s taking aspirin for the fever and a mild dose of laudanum to keep him comfortable. His skin is hot to the touch, and his breath sounds are crackly, but it isn’t worse.

“How are you feeling?” I ask when I find his eyes open and on me.

“I...found Roscoe. I thought…he was lost. Had to…cut the burrs out of…his fur. Brushed him…good.”

I take a moment to digest this. Roscoe. His childhood dog.

“Otherwise, is he all right?” I ask.

“He’s fulla…beans. As usual.” Hobbs’ bright smile brings the sun indoors for a few seconds. “He’s such…good boy.”

“Yeah, he is.” I pat Hobbs’ shoulder. “Because you take good care of him.”

“Ma says we gotta take good care of all God’s creatures,” Hobbs says.

I sit with him until he drifts to sleep again, and then I put the chair back where I found it. Afton is waiting for me in the dispensary.

“Hobbs. He’s the one you brought with you?”

“Yeah.” Hobbs’ story is my worst nightmare. “His neighbors brought him to us. He lives alone. Keeps a small vegetable garden that barely grows anything. If it weren’t for them checking on him weekly, he’d have slipped away from dehydration and malnourishment.”

She nods. “Who should we notify if the worst happens?”

“He has no one.” I am more than normally affected by this fact. People aren’t meant to live and die alone. “Notify Pastor Andersen, I guess.”

“I’ll make a note of that.” She smiles warmly.

Kodokushi is a Japanese term meaning “lonely death.” It’s not unusual to receive income and pay bills through electronic transfers, so a person living in a crowded apartment building can die unnoticed and remain undiscovered for months or even years.

Hobbs had neighbors to check on him, and the Andersens probably visited him regularly. Even if they aren’t family, someone cares about him. But that doesn’t lessen my horror of a life so isolated, so solitary, that there’s no one left to bury the body.

It doesn’t lessen my fear of disappearing from life, never to be seen again. Either way, you’re cut off from everyone you love. It’s an awful way to go.

Unless you make friends wherever you land.

Afton rests her hand on my forearm. “You’re a big old softie, aren’t you?”

Not that I ever noticed. “I suppose I am.”

I get a break in the afternoon, so I try to catch a power nap in one of the corners I swept out. I dream it’s the early days of the Covid pandemic. I already work bonkers hours, but I take extra shifts when others need time off for family because it’s just me at home. I don’t know about Sophie yet. No one depends on me.

Day blurrs into night. Weeks unfold, one after another. During lockdown, I can drive along streets that have barely any traffic—in LA. It feels as though we’ve transcended reality somehow, and nothing will ever be the same again.

We do an endless parade of intakes and assessments, intubations one after another. There are crowded waiting rooms, and patients who’ve been lying on gurneys in the hallway for days.

I wake feeling powerless.

Back then, I didn’t know the meaning of the word.

Afton comes off her shift. She invites me down to the basement, where the volunteers have a makeshift meal underway. There are cots for those who don’t live nearby, but there’s also some consternation because until now, all the volunteers have been women. This place—this time—is so gender restricted. Nurses and volunteers seem to be unmarried women. Men get the paying jobs. I know there are women in medicine—women surgeons—but I haven’t seen them.

I think the women here feel deliciously naughty when they give me a spot in the corner to myself. They still hang privacy sheets around their sleeping spaces.

“Afton,” I ask over some kind of stew. “Did you nurse during the Influenza outbreak?”

She nods. “I lived in Philadelphia then. The second wave beat us to heck. Why?”

“What was it like?”

“Some say it was like war, but I’ve never been to war to compare the two. Dr. Delano could tell you. He went through both.”

“He mentioned that.” Sumner said his lover died of influenza.

“My Aunt Sylvia got sick with what we thought was a common winter illness.” Afton seem lost to the memory. “That was the first time I saw someone develop cyanosis like that. Aunt Louella, Aunt Mary, and my brother Charles followed within days. Then my mother went, and it was so hard, because we couldn’t have a funeral. We just had to let them go.”

“That must have been difficult.” I remember people standing outside windows with signs: Get well, Grandma. Love you, Dad.

“What I can’t forget is the bodies piling up at the morgue. Men digging mass graves with those horrible steam shovels. People building cheap coffins in the freezing cold. There’s no finesse to death,” she laments. “When it comes roaring in and takes so many, you can’t bury them all properly. You’ve gotta sacrifice some of your humanity.”

“I know what you mean.” I’d lived through Covid, but in 1918, fighting Influenza must have been like groping around in the dark.

“Doctors and nurses got sick, too. They’d be seeing to a patient, and next thing you know, they’d be lying on the floor beside the cot. You weren’t there?”

“I wasn’t here at that time.”

Though she studies me curiously, she doesn’t ask where I was. “Be glad you weren’t. It was an awful thing.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.” I think maybe I should pat her shoulder or something, but it doesn’t feel right. She’s like Sumner in one way—a tower of strength. But I sense she can’t show vulnerability because she’s a woman. She’s probably been burned for showing emotions in the past.

I check on Mr. Hobbs one last time before settling down. He’s still enjoying his time with Roscoe. It’s awful and sweet, and I want his happiness to last, because it doesn’t seem like he’s winning his fight. I make sure he takes some broth and water before I leave. The nurses on duty say they’ll check on him often. I doubt he’ll make it through the night.

Afton loans me a pencil and letter-writing paper. The pencil is about four inches long, and I can tell she’s been using a pen knife to sharpen it. I’m extra careful how much pressure I put on the point when I begin to write.

Dear Sumner,

The Red Cross has set up this “hospital” inside the Methodist church meeting hall. There’s a basement downstairs where the volunteers stay, and I’m here right now. We had some kind of stew—a sort of community meal—and lights are mainly out. If it weren’t for a sliver of moonlight coming through a transom window, I wouldn’t have enough light to write.

I’m afraid Mr. Hobbs isn’t doing very well, but I can tell you that he’s having pleasant hallucinations. Delusions? He’s found his childhood pet, and it seems to be a great comfort to him. I never had a pet. When I was young, my parents wouldn’t allow it, and when I got older, I didn’t have time for anything but work.

As you know, I was working on my work/life balance before I found myself here. The solution remains elusive. I like a quote from a book by an author named Stephen Covey. I paraphrase: If you’re going to climb the ladder of success, make sure you put it against the right wall.

I think I had a midlife crisis before Sophie came along. She’s the answer to a prayer I don’t remember making. There’s so much more to life than being the best at your job, earning money you don’t have time to spend, and going home to an empty Spanish Colonial house every night, even if it has an awesome view.

I wanted more.

You know the strangest thing? I didn’t let myself think before I came off the ladder I’d built against the wrong wall. I shut off my rational mind and asked myself, how do I feel? Once I answered that, I hurled myself down without thought. My ears are still popping.

For the first time in my life, I didn’t plan ten years ahead.

I guess we know how that turned out. Sometimes, I feel painful knots in my gut and at other times, a sort of hollow longing. When I think about Sophie—when I wonder what she’s doing, how she’s feeling, whether she misses me—I want to rage. If I had to gnaw a limb off to return to her, I would do it, yet I know just as surely, if I were there, I would look at the moon every night and pine for the clinic, and No Man’s Land, and most of all you.

The night I went after Sophie, it was because I can’t trust anything I don’t control.

What’s it called when you’re certain you’ve thought through every possible outcome, and then fate drops a piano on your head?

That.

I have that.

I’m so grateful I also have you.

Yours affectionately,

Dr. Luke Hamilton

I will see about sending my letter tomorrow, either from the post office or with someone from town. Moonlight casts a rectangle of light on the floor next to my cot. I’m too keyed up to sleep, so I turn toward it and watch as it moves. The tile lines are like hours marks on a clock. I think I’ll sleep when the light reaches one certain tile or the next. By the time I fall asleep, there’s only a narrow sliver of light, and somehow, I know—don’t ask me how—that Mr. Hobbs has gone to play with Roscoe for good.