The Doctor Takes a Wife (3 page)

Phil
’
s books were to be kept in a storage wall. Sports equipment was the decorative motif of the basement play room, which was also amusing—a crescent was cut into the door of the “powder room.” But Phil had old
-
fashioned ideas—which he
’
d not especially discussed with Marynelle—of establishing a home for his family, a place where a man could acquire rest and refreshment against the more hectic demands of his work-a-day world and profession.

And—what was he getting into? How in the world had he done this thing? Was it right that he should be marrying this girl? By being firm, he would be able to defend the rights and claims of his profession, so far as the Clinic went—but outside of that his life would be Marynelle
’
s, and he knew it. Was that what he wanted? Was he doing the right thing? Why had he made such a choice?

Phil had come to Berilo a short, and busy, eighteen months before. At that time, he had completed several residencies in his specialty and had spent a month shopping around for a place to locate. Our Clinic seemed such a place to him; he met our qualifications. He joined us in July, and by October had decided to buy into the place with some money he had from his father
’
s estate.

This decision pleased everyone. He was exactly the sort of pleasant young professional our community liked to attract. On his part, Phil liked Berilo, its cleanness, the beauty of the mountains, the up-and-coming quality of the city. He could laugh at certain oddities of our ways—but in a friendly fashion. He felt he was doing good work, and lots of it, among people he considered worth while. He fitted immediately into what Min called “the cousins,
”
our particular social group of fairly young people interested in the same manner of life and work and pleasure. We were called the Little Theatre crowd.

In age, we were roughly in the ten years centered around thirty; many of the group were married; we liked each other in a general way, but we squabbled and gossiped with malice toward all when the occasion arose. In any case, Phil was a welcome addition. A handsome bachelor—and a doctor—the men took to him at once, and the girls broke into a positive stampede, with a few wives in that galloping herd.

But Marynelle won the prize, I don
’
t know how or why. I
’
m a one-woman man myself, and have not even the imagination to figure the operative procedure of such a girl.

Phil had inside information on this, of course. Marynelle had always been kind to him, he would have said. And her kindness could take on a certain ruthlessness. I know that when we were planning to drive over to Pendleton for the round-up that fall, she
’
d said firmly, “Of course Phil and I will go together.”

They had—just the two of them in Phil
’
s car. Mine was full, and so were the others that went. But Marynelle and Phil were alone together in his, and when we all got back to Berilo, the engagement was an accomplished fact. I suppose it was a matter of turning out to look at the mountains in the moonlight; Marynelle might be a very satisfactory girl to snuggle, and kiss
—
Anyway, there it was. Marynelle and Phil would be married at Christmas; they were going to buy one of those new houses on the first bench
...

And now, easing down that last slope toward Marynelle, (from here they
’
d make their way up to the Inn again, taking short runs where tempting places offered) Phil ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek to realize his own surprise at the engagement.

His surprise had been as great as anyone
’
s, though I
’
d been warning him of his extreme vulnerability. Even now, a week from the wedding itself, he could ask himself, why was it Marynelle? He could just as easily be marrying one of the other girls. He could just as easily be marrying Min
...

He laughed aloud at the thought, and came up to Marynelle with his teeth flashing and his cheeks red.

Marynelle glanced at him, caught the quality of that smile, and turned. “What
’
s the joke?”

And the big sap told her. After all she
’
d been saying about Min!

Of course she was furious. “If that
’
s the way you feel,” she said
icily, “if you
’
re marrying me from chance rather than choice, it might be better to call the whole thing off!”

Phil laughed. “It might be better,” he agreed in a teasing voice, “but you know damn well we won
’
t call it off.” He put out his hand, meaning to draw her to him, to kiss her and cajole her out of her mood.

But she pulled away from his touch, and, beside her crouching shadow, went swiftly down the sheer slope—an unbroken expanse of snow between closely set trees. It was not a trail. Stumps could lie concealed in such a place, and halfway down there was a ledge of lava rock
—
Phil knew this. It was a dangerous run! He called her name sharply, but the wind caught the sound and carried it away. Marynelle did not hear, or heed—she went ever more swiftly, and so must Phil, if he was to catch her.

He drove his poles in vigorously, bent his knees, curved his back—a tall man in a vivid green shirt, submitting his body to the wind. The smooth whiteness of the snow rushed by him; his body swayed, this way and that—the spruces, the firs, clicked toward him and past; and now he was really flying! Down, down
...

He was closer and closer to Marynelle; his hand could all but touch her shoulder—not quite—when her ski struck a hidden rock on that ridge—and she went over, and down
...

Phil went over, too. He had been watching for that ridge and he was in better balance. But he fell very hard, and lay very still among the tall black trees.

CHAPTER 2

He
came
to, slowly, reluctantly, in the dusk of the forest, in the silence of the snow. Now and then, with a breathy, ghostlike sound, a little heap of white would fall from one of the sagging branches; the man
’
s faint groan echoed like a shout there in the stillness. He could see blue sky directly over his head; it was still daylight—but how long had he lain there? He tried to move, and the darkness closed in again upon him.

He was half-buried in a snowdrift; he
’
d fallen on his back, his arms outflung. That had saved him from suffocation. When he came to again, he looked fixedly at a camp robber which perched lightly on a bit of outcropping rock above him—that rock was what Phil had struck! The bird
’
s bright eyes watched him, its head tilted inquiringly. And Phil regarded the bird.

He groaned. In alarm, the bird took instant flight, and Phil tried to move, to lift himself. He was not dead; therefore he must get out of this snow, out of this cold—find Marynelle and
—
Pain swept in a red flood across his eyes,, gripped him in a grinding vise, and he sank back, gasping. His back could be broken—from the pain
—
Gingerly he moved one arm then the other. Even that much motion hurt his chest, and made the tall trees shimmer against the sky. But after a time he managed to get his hands together. He pulled off one chamois mitten and touched the
damp stiffness upon his face—blood—and on his shoulder. He slanted his eyes; his green shirt was dark with blood
—
his blood. He looked up again at the sky. Not blazing blue any longer, but softened by a
peach like
glow—the sun was going down—yes, the shadows up the slope lay longer, and blacker
...

That time he didn
’
t entirely pass out, but drifted for some minutes on the borderline of consciousness, and when enough strength returned, he remembered Marynelle. She must be close—they
’
d been almost side by side when the snow had come up and smacked him into the next world! Easily, carefully, his head turned, turned, until one cheek lay upon the snow. There was nothing in that direction but shadows and snow and black tree trunks. He lay resting for a minute on his back, his eyes on the fading glow of the sky, then he began the ticklish matter of turning his head the other way—a pain shot through his temple, across the back of his
head...

But he had found Marynelle. A small huddle of dark blue—too small for the tall girl she was. One yellow mitten lay on the snow—quite near Phil—but Marynelle was a good hundred feet away. He squinted his eyes against the sickness behind them, against the blurring of threatening unconsciousness, against the ever-deepening shadows. He couldn
’
t see any sign of movement from her, but he was sure Marynelle muttered something. In the stillness, small sounds came to him—not any words that could be distinguished
...

But she was alive. And for a doctor, that meant
she could be helped. It meant that Phil must help her. He was the only one—and he must go to her!

He tried to lift himself, and again unconsciousness wrapped its brown folds smotheringly about him. When it passed, he looked at the stain upon the snow beside his head—and wondered numbly if he would bleed to death without being able to go to Marynelle, to do anything for her—or for himself.

Darkness came on swiftly then, and cold
—
They would both freeze before the others at the Inn should miss them, search for them and find them.

He made a mighty effort to rise, and fell back, gasping with the sickness and pain. He couldn
’
t even feel his legs. His back must be badly hurt—and his head. He lay still for a minute to see if he could hear Marynelle, but no sound came except his own labored breathing, and even when he turned his head, he could only vaguely see the still bulk he knew to be the injured girl.

With the coming of dark, of course, their friends would be alarmed and start out to hunt for them. They knew the general trail which he and Marynelle had taken, but this plunge down the unbroken side of the mountain—though there
’
d be tracks, unless it started to snow again. He searched the sky for stars, and gulped with thankfulness to find them. But it was getting colder; a wind was rising; he could hear it among the trees.

How long had he already lain there? An hour? More? Dark came by four in such a valley. They
’
d left the Inn a little after one—an hour on the trail, and for their quarrel—How long did it take for a man to freeze to death? A doctor should know such things. He lifted his head and called loudly, sharply, to Marynelle.

There was no answer. No sound of any stir in that direction. Everything was quiet, except for the wind and the faint creaking of the tree branches. So he
must
reach her! If he moved very carefully—and he must move, if only to save himself from freezing to death—if he could slowly, slowly turn, get to his knees—if he had knees any more
...
He struggled, he tried. Later, the thrashed and stained snow proved to us how he had struggled.

But the pain was too great; unconsciousness kept taking over his will—and exhaustion—some fever, too, of course. He lapsed into unconsciousness.

And his thoughts became compounded with delirium
...

He was thinking quite calmly about the situation. He was going to die. And that was too bad. A young man, his life so quickly done, his dreams never realized
...

His dreams. He thought with resentment of all the things he had meant to do in the years Which had seemed to stretch endlessly before him.

He had planned and expected to do some genuine research in medicine. Post-partum blood clots—endocrene causes for abortion and sterility
...
Good work—good, important work
...

He
’
d meant to travel, too. To do a lot of that. The ordinary trips, and there were to be a few extraordinary ones. For instance, he had meant to go to New Zealand, to see its green lakes. And to spend a whole summer on the Gaspe peninsula, and there was to have been Scandinavia—oh, he had wanted to go there! He
’
d planned to do some real sport
fishing, too. More than he
’
d managed here in Idaho. Surf fishing, and tarpon—salmon in Canada
...

And, warmest plan of all, he
’
d meant to live in a house overlooking the sea. Perhaps the mountains would have substituted, but in
his
house there was to have been a patio of packed red earth
...

It hurt like the sucking of wind through a bad tooth to know that he now would never do any of those things. It would be such a waste
...

To lie there, helpless, and freeze to death—when he might have
—
It was then that he began to shout and struggle again. But he was weak from loss of blood, and shock; the cold was numbing his limbs and his will—

But thoughts still poured like a film of water across his mind. He
’
d meant to be a really good doctor, to do real medicine. Not a “country doctor”—or a small-time big
-
shot. Berilo wasn
’
t so small, but it was isolated. It offered no exchange of medical ideas no research time or facilities. The doctors at Berry and Chappell were content to get along with what other men discovered They
did almost no charity work
...
The general idea of the clinic was all right, but it was hardly the expression of Phil
’
s ideals.

He
had meant to do more noble work than to care for the hemorrhaging wife of a rancher—or—or—

But all of his plans would be lost if he died in this little cup of the Rocky Mountains, thirty-two years old, his dreams as dead as his strong young body, all his
training
wasted
...

He could lie right here in this spot until spring, with snow piling upon snow and then melting away in crusted layers. Marynelle, too. She was very still: no sound at all had come from her. She was dead, in all probability, because Phil made small sounds if he stirred even slightly. Marynelle had not moved for hours. So she was dead. And he, Dr. Philip Scoles, was her murderer. He had quarreled with her, angered her, and she had plunged away from him to her death.

He—he—

The swirling mists of unconsciousness enfolded him. He lay into their warmth as gratefully as an exhausted child welcomes sleep.