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Work at the clinic was normal until almost midday, when Megan, the person with the tremors, came back in. She brought a neighbor woman, Claire, one of the oldest patients Coral had seen so far, at fifty-eight. Her symptoms were identical to Megan’s. She also complained of stiffness in her toes.
Coral examined her but found nothing more than she’d found with the first patient. “In your case, I’m inclined to say this is the beginning of essential tremor. And your feet—that could be osteoarthritis.” She went on to give her by-now well-rehearsed speech about how all her diagnoses, without lab equipment to verify them, were nothing more than educated guesses.
“What about Megan?”
“Well, it’s not a communicable disease, so far as they know.” She corrected herself. “Knew. And the medical knowledge we had before? That’s about all we’re likely to ever have.” She had thought about this, about the end of civilization being the end of science, the end of testing hypotheses and making new discoveries. Ninety-five percent of what had been known was already lost. If she was the top medical expert in Idaho—and she might be—her pitiful collection of knowledge was all there was. Over time, she’d forget some of it. And if she could never pass it on, it would die with her.
She felt bad for not having more help for Claire, but this was the best she could do.
Her patient accepted it better than Coral herself. “Is there anything I should do for it?”
“Is it making it hard to eat, or dress yourself, or function?”
“Not yet, but I sew. I mean, that’s my job, at the laundry. Like Megan. She’s been taken off fine work because of her shakes. I guess I will be too.”
“What about chemicals? Do you use anything at the laundry that the rest of us aren’t exposed to?”
“No. Just the soap made here. But everybody uses that. Nothing else. I mean, there’s nothing around to use.”
Then that wasn’t the cause.
“Can you talk to Megan again today too?” the woman asked. “She came with me. I know she’s worried. And I don’t mind if you tell her about me.”
“Okay.” Coral went out to get the other tremor patient and saw Abigail sitting in the waiting room. She caught her eye. “Ten minutes,” she told her, and then finished talking to the two ailing women.
She set water to boil for Abigail’s tea and thought that the puzzle of diagnosis was really what fascinated her about medicine.
It was less fun to solve more nebulous human puzzles, the puzzles of the heart, she thought, as she brought Abigail to the smaller of the two exam rooms. Clearly, Abigail was still miffed at Coral. Coral forgave the woman. Anger was an easier emotion to hold on to than terror her husband was dead or grief over having an abortion.
“I want you in here all afternoon,” she told Abigail.
“I have kitchen duty at three,” she said.
“I’ll get a message to Chef that you’re sick. I’m going to send Edith home this afternoon, in fact, so she can tell him on her way home. I don’t want her here—and you don’t either, not if you want to keep this a secret.”
“Why do I need to be here all day?”
“Because the herbs are here and the stove is here. And because if they work, I want to be nearby if you begin to miscarry.” Coral wasn’t entirely sure what she could do if Abigail did miscarry, beyond soaking up the blood. If Abigail began to hemorrhage, she could pack her vagina with clean cotton cloths, and hope for the best. There were drugs that could stop uterine bleeding in a snap, but they weren’t among the paltry supply of pharmaceuticals in the cabinets.
Coral was following the brief directions she’d found in one of the herbals, which meant steeping a tablespoon each of the herbs for fifteen minutes, and re-dosing once an hour. She’d keep at it until dark. If it didn’t work by then, she’d start again tomorrow morning, until a miscarriage happened, or until the herbs ran out. It was all she could do.
The head cold—or whatever it had been running through the children of the town—seemed to have run its course. One child came in with a hacking cough, but no fever or other symptoms. It might be bronchitis or the start of pneumonia, and Coral considered a dose of antibiotics, but decided to give it another day rather than torture the poor child with the makeshift syringe. Perhaps his own immune system would take hold and fight it off. She set the kid over a bowl of steaming water, his head covered with a towel, hoping to loosen the mucus and let him cough it up.
She gave him a cotton rag and told him, “Spit. Don’t swallow.”
From under the towel he said, “Mom says spitting is rude.”
“Not this time.” She smiled at the worried mother. “Right, Mom?”
“You do what the doctor says,” the woman said.
Coral left them sitting there and took another dose of tea to Abigail in the other treatment room. “Anything?”
She shook her head. She was flipping through the anatomy reference book, the red muscles of the human upper leg. Front and back view.
“Not very cheerful reading material. We have some old magazines.”
“I don’t feel very cheerful.”
“You’re still sure about this?”
“Absolutely. I will not have a baby, just to watch it die.” The word “too” hung there somehow. She seemed to be realizing that Doug wasn’t likely to return.
Coral felt a stab of sadness at that too. She had liked Doug. “Okay. Drink the tea, fast as you can.”
“I’ll need to use the latrine soon.”
“Sure. Come right back here after you do.”
A few hours later, the last of the patients were dealt with, and Abigail had her fifth dose of herb tea, but she hadn’t felt so much as a twinge, much less the intense cramping that would precede a miscarriage. Coral thought it was best to pack it in for the day and try again tomorrow.
Coral banked the stove, locked the clinic, and walked with Abigail over to the dining hall. They didn’t speak as they walked. Abigail was, understandably, lost in her troubles, and Coral didn’t have any comfort to offer her.
As they made the turn to the hall, Coral could see Kathy standing and talking to Benjamin. She still thought the woman probably had a crush on him, but the thought no longer troubled her. It probably never should have, but it certainly did not now. She and Benjamin’s physical relationship had made their connection even stronger. Nothing would come between them.
She glanced at Abigail, who had had a happy marriage until this week. Except death, she amended. Nothing would come between her and Benjamin except for that. And she’d do her damnedest to make sure neither of them died. Getting out of this place before it fell apart was a crucial step on that journey. Another day or two, and they’d be gone.
The next morning, she explained to Abigail that Edith would be back in the clinic. She’d have to tell her about Abigail’s pregnancy.
“I don’t want you to.”
“And I haven’t broken that promise. All she knows is that someone is pregnant.”
“But you promised!”
“I had to find information about how to trigger a miscarriage.” She didn’t want to point this out, not in Abigail’s current mood, but she had to. “She may have heard gossip that you were at the clinic yesterday afternoon and put two and two together anyway.”
“I didn’t want anyone to know!” Abigail wailed.
Coral could see Benjamin out of the corner of her eye, standing at the top of the stairs. “Benjamin knows.”
“You told him?”
“No. I haven’t told anyone. He figured it out on his own, Ab.” She used the nickname Doug had, hoping it would break through to the woman. “He lives here. You’ve had morning sickness. He’s not stupid, so he figured it out.”
“It’s not anybody’s business.”
“I agree. It isn’t. But it’s a small town, and there’s only one medical facility, and damned few places there’s a stove where I can make tea. It’s either there at the clinic, or the kitchen, or Levi’s office, or in his apartment, and I don’t think you want to tell any of those people more than you want to tell Edith. Right?”
Abigail sat and covered her face with her hands. Coral took the moment to look up to Benjamin. He shrugged. She shrugged back. “Look, Ab. Benjamin and I are going to walk over to the dining hall. You sit here and think for a minute. Figure out what you want to do. I want you to think about if you can trust Edith or not. I believe you can.” She motioned for Benjamin to come down, and the two of them went out quietly, leaving Abigail to her misery.
“I wish I could do more for her,” Coral said to Benjamin.
“You’re doing plenty. I couldn’t put up with all that crying. I keep wanting to yell ‘Man up!’”
“Pregnancy gives women crazy hormones,” she said.
“She was never strong to begin with, I think.” He bumped her as they walked. “If you got pregnant, you wouldn’t fall apart on me, would you?”
“Shut your mouth,” she said. “The way we live out there, if I got pregnant, you’d be burying me inside of a month.”
“You think?”
“I think, yeah. There’s too little food. It’d kill me. And if it didn’t, how could we keep a baby alive?”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t...you know, any more.” He didn’t sound happy about the idea.
“Maybe not. Or, we should save that part of it for special occasions. There’s still plenty to do in bed without risking pregnancy.”
“What qualifies for a special occasion?”
“I’ll know it when I see it. And then I’ll let you know.”
He sighed.
“C’mon, man up,” she said, unable to stop a laugh.
“Huh,” he said, but his lip was twitching as he fought off a smile.
She threaded her arm through his and smiled too, happy for this moment, and trying to hold on to the feeling for as long as she could.
