Viola

Viola was seven years old that night.

To most citizens of our land, cold is such a relative term: dankness on a raw, wet day; any temperature below forty degrees Fahrenheit; a draft on one’s back. We in Northpine smile condescendingly when we hear complaints if a thermometer records freezing. We consider thirty below zero to be “nippy,” forty below “chilly” and fifty below... okay, that’s cold.

Seven years, three months and two days old.

I have seen fifty-two below twice during my years “up nord.” Axle grease freezes, and wheels of a car will not turn. I lived through a month-long period when the temperature did not get above zero for the entire spell. Snow crunches underfoot, like walking on spilled corn flakes. Ice becomes metallic in character.

Seven years old is such a special age.

Loggers leave diesel motors running during periods of prolonged cold, for they would not start again in the morning. In the early days of my practice, ether was the preferred agent for general anesthesia; preferred by a doctor in some remote location for its dependability and safety, despised by the patient for its horrible odor. Loggers occasionally came to me to buy a few cans of ether. When poured in the fuel tank, it can jump-start a frozen diesel motor.

At seven, a youngster has not yet realized that parents can be fallible, that they cannot protect from everything.

A country doctor in northern Minnesota sees what real cold can do to warm-blooded flesh.

At seven, glimpses of what a child will become shine through!

Severe cold dulls perception and “chilled” begins to feel warm.

So precious is a child to his parents, to her family.

I was in the second year of my practice. The house my wife, Barbara, and I rented had no garage, so my Ford cooled each night to whatever temperature the weather gods dictated.

The telephone beside my bed jangled. I filtered its message through the dregs of sleep. Hospital. Emergency. Urgent.

My car rarely started after the temperature dropped below a negative thirty degrees. I rubbed frost away from our kitchen window to read what the outdoor thermometer recorded. Forty below. The electrical potential of a car battery leached away at such temperatures, and oil in the crankcase was more glue than lubricant. I would have only one chance to start the car before the battery went dead. A prayer...

That night in February was the coldest of the young year. Life-sustaining air bit my nose with frigid nippers. Tears froze on the eyelids they were trying to protect. There was no wind, typical of the coldest winter nights. A moon transformed snowscapes and ice into argentine glory.

Mr. Ford coughed, hiccuped, caught. A miracle. My breath had already congealed on the inside of the windshield. I scratched a peek hole free of sudden ice crystals and shifted gears. It was like stirring hardened tar. The car groaned into motion, its frame creaking in the way such coldness causes. Tires were flat on one side, rubber frozen in the position of a car at rest. Thump, thump.

I headed for the hospital, then saw...

My way led past the intersection of Pine and Fir streets. The house on one corner was a blazing torch. A dirty-orange puffball of smoke and soaring ashes, lit from below by rumbling flame, writhed above the doomed building. I drove past Ruben, Walt and Fritz, my neighbors who were Northpine’s volunteer fire department. Officer Louie Wagenknect waved me urgently toward the hospital. I heard him shout, “Hurry, Doc!”

Three people lay on gurneys in our tiny emergency department. Fred, fifty or so, was a trucker; his burly frame was still smoking from charred clothing, his skin ready to weep bits of itself after the manner of a burn. Next was his wife, Janice. Her grey hair was a singed-chicken-feather frizz, and she guarded one wrist with her other hand in that fierce way one does when a bone has broken.

Fred pointed awkwardly at the person on the third gurney. “Look after Viola, Doc. We got her out. Thank God she’s not burned.”

Home fires are regular consequences of the kind of cold we have in Northpine. Stealthy flame probes for freedom from confinement. An overheated stovepipe, a cracked chimney flue.

Viola was seven that night.

The girl still wore night clothes. They reeked of smoke, but were not singed. Her skin was unblemished by fire’s torture, her hair intact. And her breathing told me that she was doomed.

She had inhaled air at a temperature well above that in any oven set to cook a roast. Delicate bronchi cannot endure such temperatures. Gasping, she was drowning in the wreckage of her lungs.

Dear God, is not a gorgeous child worth suspension of your rules governing nature?