Death Train to Boston (17 page)

"Carrie, you tell him," said Verla. A sensible woman. Yet right this minute I was not prepared to do it; I had begun to sort through all the lies I'd concocted,
revising my plan based on my hunches about the doctor.

"I, uh"—I looked from one to the other to the other and back again, rapidly, intentionally building up in myself a sense of panic—"I—I can't talk to a doctor in front of all these people."

"All
these people?" Melancthon Pratt objected in his booming preacher voice. "Good God, woman, there's only the two of us, Verla and me."

I lowered my eyes demurely. "There are some things modesty forbids."

"In that case—" Dr. Striker began, taking the bait; but Pratt interrupted.

He came closer to the bed and leaned over me, as if his overbearing presence alone would produce compliance—and I supposed, in some people, it probably did. But not in me. The more he loomed and boomed, the more stubbornly resistant I became.

Pratt thundered, "Now see here, me and Verla took care of you like you were a baby. You've got nothing to hide from us, Missy, there's not a hair on you we ain't seen!"

I would not look at him. I kept my eyes downcast. "But I was not in my right senses then. I didn't know what was going on. If I had known, I most surely would have objected. Now, I do object. I will talk to Dr. Striker. In fact, I most desperately need his help, but I cannot confide the true nature of my medical problem unless I am alone with him."

Mainly I was buying myself time with this ploy, while I continued to mentally scrabble through the shards of my previously seamless plan. If Striker was going to be as little help to me as I now feared, it didn't really matter whether Verla and Pratt were present or not, because all I'd get from him was a general knowledge of my medical condition.

I sighed again. Oh well. I needed the facts about my
condition rather badly, so all was not entirely lost. And perhaps, if I proceeded very carefully . . .

"I really think, Melancthon," Dr. Striker said, "that it would be entirely appropriate for me to be alone with Miss James, since that is what she has requested. You know how some women are."

"Well," Verla spoke up, "I don't see how it's proper. Woman alone in a room with a man, whether he's a doctor or whatnot, it's just askin' fer trouble. But if it's what she wants, I'll go if my husband will go too. Otherwise I'm stayin'."

I had to bite my lower lip in order to keep from saying something that would not be in my own best interests, just in order to placate her. Verla had been kind to me, and I didn't like to hurt her. But if there was any chance at all that I could come out of this with even a piece of what I wanted, then I had to take that chance.

"Melancthon?" Striker put a tone of insistence into saying the name.

Still Pratt did not agree to leave. I could feel tension passing back and forth over my head, from him to Verla and back. Some kind of unspoken message was being sent. This was fascinating. I had never seen her stand up to him before, hadn't known she had it in her; in fact, I'd never seen anyone stand up to Melancthon Pratt until now.

"You can both wait right outside the door," Striker said, taking yet more initiative, from which I gleaned a modicum of encouragement. From the corner of my eye I saw the doctor touch Melancthon Pratt's arm, turning him gently but firmly away, while with his other hand he gestured across the bed for Verla to come along too.

They were leaving, thank goodness. In fact, all three of them went out, the doctor too, and closed the door behind them.

I'd had not only one plan, but two. Plan the First
was to enlist the doctor's help, to say straightforwardly that I was being kept in the Pratt household against my will and ask that he order me moved to a hospital or some such place of convalescence, and also that he notify some law enforcement agency that Pratt was a kidnapper. I'd thought I might appeal to the doctor's humanity and morality, as I have always assumed that the men—and the very few women—who go into that profession should have plenty of both.
Should
have— but my adult life, especially in recent years, has been a long lesson in how what
should
happen and what
does
happen are all too often entirely different things.

Therefore I had also come up with Plan the Second, though I did not like it nearly as well because it was heavily fraught with things that could go wrong. This second plan grew out of happenstance: In preparation for this trip, for very personal reasons of my own, I had been studying the actions of various poisons and the symptoms they produce. My plan was to recite a series of symptoms that included those of several different poisoning agents in order to convince the doctor I was seriously ill, with symptoms so difficult to diagnose that I needed to be in a hospital. I reasoned that Salt Lake City would have a real hospital, and probably there was one even closer. And I'd thought that, if I presented the poisoning symptoms clearly enough, the doctor might even conclude for himself that the Pratt household was not a good place for me to be.

Either way, with either plan, my goal had been to get the doctor to have me removed from the house and taken to a hospital. I'd reckoned that once I was safely in a hospital, I could get away. Run away. Flee, fly . . .

I sighed again. Plan the First was definitely out. Some strong instinct told me not to even try Plan the Second, not with this man. I was getting the impression that Arnold Striker might not be the world's warmest human being but that he was a good doctor.

He came back into the room. I looked over at him and said, "Thank you."

"I understand your concerns for your modesty. However, the nature of your injuries, as I recall them, leaves me puzzled as to how so much modesty can be required. I shall begin by examining the head wound."

I had almost forgotten that head wound, except when I looked in the mirror or combed my hair. There was a strange gap where the hair was only just beginning to grow back—it looked rather like a crop of new grass, only reddish brown instead of green.

"Any headaches?" the doctor inquired.

"Sometimes. Mostly I am lethargic. I feel dull in general, in my head too, and that is not at all the way I used to be." An accurate description of the way I'd been feeling up until Pratt left the house.

"Um-hm." He poked and patted and worked his fingers through my new crop of hair down to my scalp in a way that might have felt pleasant had his fingers not been so cold.

"What you are describing," he said, "is a certain malaise that is part of the end stage of convalescence. It will pass. I take it you have never had a serious illness?"

"No."

"How old are you, Miss James?"

"Twenty-five."

"And you are a virgin?"

"What has that to do with anything?"

I tried to remember: Had I told the wives I was a widow? Or had I merely said I had wealth in my own right? That is the trouble with lies—one must remember exactly what one has said to whom; it is such a bother. Easier by far to tell the truth, but that is not always possible. Particularly when one is in the detective business.

"Melancthon wants to know."

I narrowed my eyes. I had rather expected Pratt
might have made his own inspection of my private parts during my loss of consciousness, but perhaps he did not know how to tell manually. . . .

I did not wish to complete that thought. I said, "It is none of his business either."

"The man is to be your husband—"

"I rather seriously doubt that."

Suddenly I was seized with an almost irresistible urge not to tell any lies to this doctor. I wanted to tell him the truth and let him do with it what he would. I was sick and tired of this Carrie James masquerade, of trying to continually please, to be careful; in short, I was excessively weary of reining in my whole personality just in order to survive in this wretchedly peculiar household.

"I am not going to marry Melancthon Pratt," I said. "He has never
asked
me to marry him. Instead he has informed me that he will take me in marriage and get children on me because an angel told him so."

"I repeat, Miss James: Are you a virgin? Perhaps that is why you were so concerned for your modesty."

"Are you hard of hearing? That is nobody's business but my own."

Dr. Arnold Striker frowned at me, then made a concession: "Very well. Since you are so adamant we will come back to it. Let us remove the bandages and take a look at your legs, see how the healing is progressing. Are you ready?"

"Yes, and eager to see for myself."

Dr. Striker did seem to be good with his patients, so perhaps his seeming coldness and severity were only a facade. I wondered if he might be basically shy. It was damn hard to tell. Tempting to think, though, that I might trust him. He pulled back the bedcovers gently, I brought the skirt of my thick white flannel nightgown up over my knees, and he began his poking and prodding routine on both my legs. Every now and then he
would ask if what he was doing hurt, to which I generally replied in the negative.

Striker told me to bend my knees, if I could, while keeping the soles of my feet flat on the bed. I was able to do this, to my own surprise. He murmured approval and then slowly pushed first one leg down and then the other. This was slightly painful but not too bad.

"All right, let's have a close look." He began to unwrap the bandages and to remove the corset-like stiffening that had held my legs immobile for—how long had it been?

"Dr. Striker, when were you here taking care of me before? How long ago was that, exactly?" I asked.

"A little over a month, make it five weeks, give or take a day or two. I can't tell you for certain without my book of appointments from last month, and I don't have it with me," he said without a pause in the unwrapping.

I considered this. My sense of that time would forever be distorted by my days of un- and semiconsciousness, I supposed. I thought it had been a little less time, but no matter what, it was too, too long.

"And what, exactly," I asked, "did you find wrong with my legs?"

At that question he did pause, and gave me another of his severe looks. "Surely Pratt or one of his wives has told you."

"Yes, but I would like to hear it from the doctor himself." I forced a smile, and a coaxing tone to my voice. "You are the real authority."

I do so love the male ego; it always rises to such bait, so reliable that way.

Striker perked right up and even managed a faint, fleeting smile himself. "A heavy object had fallen across both your legs. My examination—especially when combined with Mr. Pratt's report that from the time of his finding you and removing the object, you appeared unable to move your legs from the knees down—suggested fractures of both your tibia bones. Fortunately for you, there was no break in the skin, so the fractures were simple, not compound. Do you know the difference?"

I thought I might, but he seemed to be enjoying his explanation and so I simply shook my head.

"In a compound fracture the broken bone protrudes through the skin. It is much more serious, harder to set and to heal. A simple fracture will heal itself in time, provided the bones are aligned properly, and yours were scarcely out of alignment to begin with. They went back in place easily, which means they will knit well."

He continued: "At the time, I was more concerned about that head wound. Your loss of consciousness was due more to its severity, the consequent loss of blood, and accompanying shock. I expect you also had to deal with some infection?"

"Yes. I had a high fever and was delirious, but I came out of it."

Striker smiled, which brought just a hint of warmth to his muddy brown eyes. "You're young and strong, I thought that would be the way of it. Though it must be extremely inconvenient to have two broken legs, I do think you will be right as rain quite soon."

"Right as rain," I muttered.

A not-too-pleasant smell was emerging as the doctor unwrapped more layers of bandages from my legs. It increased in pungency as the process got down nearer to my skin. Yet I was fascinated, as if I had never seen my own legs before, and I quite forgot to be concerned about anything else.

"An odd expression, isn't it?" said Striker. "I've never understood it myself."

I looked up, baffled. "Understood what?"

"Right as rain. What does that mean, do you have any idea?"

"I suppose it has something to do with rain making things grow. But that is a rather wild guess on my part; I really have not the slightest idea— Oh! My God!"

The last layer of wrapping had fallen away from my legs—he had been taking it by turns, so that both legs were simultaneously exposed to the air and light for the first time in weeks. And it was quite a shock.

"They look like chicken legs!" I wailed.

"Muscles are a bit atrophied from lack of use, that's all. I'll have Melancthon get you a pair of crutches; some exercise will soon take care of that. Let's see how you do at a little bit of weight-bearing."

Striker directed me to dangle my chicken legs over the side of the bed, to put both my arms on his shoulders, and to let him take my weight as I eased myself to the floor.

Of course as I did that, my nightgown fell and neither of us could see my legs any longer, but perhaps that was unnecessary. The important thing was how my legs felt, not how they looked. Or so I thought—but a moment later I learned he didn't like the long skirt in this situation any better than I did.

"Lean all your weight on me," Striker said, "that's it. Feet flat on the floor. Now, straighten your knees, give me your weight, that's it, that's it . . . damn these long skirts, I can't see a thing. How are you feeling?"

"Wobbly. And excited. I'm actually standing!"

"Yes, but continue to keep your weight on me. You're not ready to stand alone yet, or to walk without support, but I think you're definitely ready for those crutches. I'll be staying here overnight. Tomorrow morning Pratt and I will go into town. You're as tall as many men, so we should be able to find crutches ready-made. I can teach you how to use them myself before I leave. Will that be satisfactory?"

"Oh yes!" Foolishly, I had tears in my eyes.

"Ready to get back in bed?"

My legs were trembling, so I nodded. My mind had been completely captivated by the thought of these crutches, and the freedom of movement they would bring.

Then in my rather perverse way—I swear sometimes I think my mind operates independent of the rest of me —I leapt ahead to the next question. "How long, then, will I have to use the crutches?"

"That's hard to know precisely. Perhaps only two or three weeks; perhaps longer. You'll be able to tell. If there's bone pain, don't put your weight down. Let your arms transfer the weight to the crutches, the same as they did to my shoulders, and just go easy. Don't worry, I'll teach you, you'll do fine."

"I'm sure I will," I murmured. Of course this was not getting me as much closer to freedom as transfer to a hospital would have done, but somehow it seemed more real and therefore even better.

"Now"—Striker rubbed his hands together in a satisfied gesture—"I'd like to call Verla back to bathe your legs. Then we'll give you new bandages and braces, not so heavy this time."

"More good news!" I said fervently, bestowing on the doctor a genuine smile.

I was beginning to feel quite fond of him, but not so fond as to start thinking again of asking for his help. Exactly how, that was the question.

"Doctor," I ventured, "are you a member of the New Deseret community?"

"No, I am not. The Mormons of New Deseret do not have a doctor among them. They need one, though. I'm too far away to serve this community effectively, yet I am the closest physician available."

"And where do you live and have your practice?"

"Little town called Thistle. Other side of Soldier Summit, right on the railroad."