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Chapter 29

29

IT HAD BEEN A GOOD MANY WEEKS SINCE MILLICENT BUNTING HAD FELT THE SUN ON her toes. That day, though, she got up out of bed—her own bed—and walked out the front door and took a seat in the rocking chair where her mother usually sat. Her mother was in the garden behind the house, tending the crops. Millicent rested for a time. It had taken considerable energy even to walk out to the porch, and the longer she sat the more she recovered some of what she had lost. When she felt she could, Millicent stood up and slowly walked down off the porch. She was still in her nightclothes—an ivory, loose-fitting gown—but if any neighbors were watching, she did not care. She stopped at the foot of the steps, where the heat of the sun reached not only her toes but also the crown of her head, and dropped to her knees. With some effort she turned, lowered herself down on her back, stretched her arms out to each side, her palms upon the dirt, which was pebbly and rough, and closed her eyes. A breeze whispered through the air. The birds sang in the trees. It was a beautiful world. Tears seeped from the corners of her eyes and dripped down to the dirt as she thought how she had almost left it, but thank God she had not.

***

THE DAY BEFORE, early in the morning, a low buggy had thundered up to the house. When Millicent heard the horse hooves, when she heard them rumble as they came down the lane, she thought the end had finally come. That specter of horse hooves had been taunting her all along, but now the sound was real. She was certain of that as she lay in Ada’s bed, and she curled her fingers around the bound edge of her quilt and pulled it up over her mouth and her nose and felt her heart race. She did not cover her eyes because part of her, the minuscule part of her that was occasionally brave, felt compelled to look.

Under the quilt, Millicent waited. The horse hooves had stopped. But through the open window she could hear the horses snorting. There was no doubt they were there. Then she heard a man’s deep voice. Millicent squeezed her fingers tighter around the quilt. Murmuring. She could not make out the words. The door opened and closed. Footsteps. They were coming toward her.

***

HE WAS A Black British doctor, handsome, with a sonorous voice. He introduced himself as Dr. Jenkins. He took off his hat, set it on the foot of the bed, placed his bag on the floor, then looked down at Millicent and said, “I hear you have been feeling unwell.”

From under the quilt, Millicent did not answer or move. Her mother was standing next to the doctor.

“May I?” he asked, and reached to fold the quilt down. He smiled as he uncovered her face. “I would like to start with an examination so that I may see for myself. I can make an assessment from there. Do you agree?”

Millicent looked at her mother, who looked back at her and nodded. “Yes.”

Leonard Jenkins, forty-six years old, Cambridge-educated, had met J. R. Robinson many years earlier when both of them had been living in London. They had encountered each other by chance. Each of them had been pleased, so far across the pond, to have found a fellow countryman with whom they could talk about home, and they had, during their London days, gotten together periodically over pints of Burton ale and done just that. Later, once they were both back in Barbados, they had run into each other from time to time. When Leonard’s wife had died, J.R. had sent his condolences. Still, they did not regularly spend time with each other these days, so it was with some surprise that last evening after the sun had gone down, Leonard, who had been enjoying a pipe, heard a knock at his door and opened it to see his old friend. Leonard had greeted him warmly and asked him inside, though he understood that J.R. was not there simply to spend time with him in friendship. People did not come round knocking on a doctor’s door on a Sunday evening for that. Sitting together in the parlor, Leonard had listened as J.R. told him about a young girl who needed medical care. J.R. said he did not know the extent, only that pneumonia was involved, and he had reason to believe that the situation was urgent. Leonard held his clay pipe by the shank and considered whether to ask exactly who the girl was. J.R. had many clients on whose behalf such a request might be made, but there was only one Leonard knew of with whom J.R. was enough of a friend that he would come late on a Sunday evening seeking Leonard’s help. He told J.R. he had patients to see the next morning, and he did not know if their appointments could be rearranged. J.R. said he would pay any price Leonard would name as long as Leonard was discreet. Under no circumstances could he say who had sent him, and it was preferable that he simply say nothing at all. “It will have to be early,” Leonard said. “The earlier the better,” J.R. had replied.

Leonard folded the quilt down to the girl’s waist and, amid the distinctive scent of black cake in the air, lowered his ear to her chest. As her mother looked on, he gently pressed his fingertips to various spots along her ribs and her back. Her breathing was labored. He could hear the dull, percussive sound of fluid on the left side. He asked her to speak and detected evidence of egophony, again on the left. Yet the heartbeat was strong.

“Can you perform the surgery?” the girl’s mother asked.

“Surgery?” Leonard said.

“Isn’t that the reason you come?” She looked at him with the sort of heartbreaking hope he was used to seeing after so many years in this field.

“She does not need a surgery,” Leonard said.

“But we had another doctor, and that’s what he say.”

“I imagine the last doctor was concerned about pneumothorax, but your daughter has pleural effusion, which is far less severe. It means that although she does indeed require intervention, it is not a surgery per se but rather a simple aspiration.”

“What?”

Leonard’s wife, when she had been alive, had sometimes laughingly accused him of speaking in a language people could not understand. He tried again. “A needle will be inserted through the back of the rib cage to drain what fluid there is.”

“But before...”

In his mind, Leonard questioned how thorough the previous examination had truly been, but he did not want to cast aspersions on another physician, so instead he allowed himself to say, “The potential for pneumothorax was a logical concern, but I find no evidence that it has come to fruition. We need only drain her lung.”

“You sure?”

He looked directly at the woman. “I would stake my life on it.”

Millicent, listening in bed, felt hope rise in her heart.

“When?” her mother asked softly.

“I can do it now. It takes only ten minutes or so.”

“Now?”

“I have with me everything that I need.”

Millicent watched her mother. Her eyes were wide, and she started blinking fast as if she were holding back tears. But she said nothing. So even as the doctor was still looking at her mother, from the bed Millicent herself said, “Yes.”

***

LUCILLE FELT ALMOST dizzy with disbelief as she helped Millicent out of the bed and walked her to the kitchen, where the doctor was setting up. Not even half an hour earlier she had been sitting on the porch, sunk in desperation, convinced that the only option left was to sell the house. The house and the land. Her piece of the world. She had been studying the wood floorboards, wondering how much she might get for the wood. How much for each window sash and nail and joist? How much for the solid front door? Were the stones that held the porch worth anything? They were worth plenty to her—adding the porch had been a mark of her success—but would someone else pay well for them? At the sound of horses, she had looked up to see a buggy bumping down Aster Lane all the way to her house. A man had climbed out of the buggy and she had sat still as he walked up to the porch, carrying a black leather bag, and even when he came to the foot of the steps and said, “Lucille Bunting?” she answered yes but did not stand. Lucille had the terrible thought that he was a messenger coming to tell her that something had happened to Ada in Panama. She tightened her fingers round the arms of her chair.

The man had tipped his hat. “Dr. Leonard Jenkins,” he said.

That was such a shock—not at all what she was expecting—that she had to ask him to say it again. He repeated his name and asked if she had a daughter who required medical care, and when Lucille, overcome, whispered that she did, he said, “I am here to offer that.”

“You come from the vestry?” she asked.

“No. I have a practice in town. I do travel for calls such as these.”

Slowly, Lucille nodded. If the vestry had not sent him...

“How much?” she asked hesitantly.

“There will be no charge.”

It would take some time from that day, but Lucille would save every pence and shilling she could. She would stash it all in a glass jar, and on the day she finally accumulated what she guessed was enough, she would take the jar to the Camby estate—the final time she would ever go there—and set it by the front door. She would not be beholden to him. That was important to her. She wanted to walk through the world without owing anyone, especially Henry, a thing.

***

THE DOCTOR HAD Millicent sit upright, leaning over the kitchen table. He tapped his finger over her ribs, counting aloud as he went. He said, “Sit still now.” Then the needle slid in with a sharp bolt of pain. Millicent winced but tried not to move. “Good,” the doctor said. “Hold your breath now.” Her mother was sitting across from her, holding her hands, and Millicent had her eyes closed. She could hear small sounds: breathing, the doctor placing something down and picking something else up. “You’re doing well,” he repeated now and again. After a time, he said, “Hum for me, please.”

Millicent did not know what to hum until she heard her mother start—and what her mother hummed was not even a song, but a note. A single note that she held, rolling out through the air steady and strong. It was the only time outside of church that Millicent had heard her mother make a sound approaching music at all. Millicent took a breath and matched the note, and suddenly, she felt a new burst of pain.

“It is out,” the doctor said.

Millicent opened her eyes. She could feel the doctor affixing a bandage, securing the wound. His hands were gentle as he worked. Across the table, her mother was still holding her hands, looking into her eyes. “Is it done?” she asked.

“It is done,” the doctor replied. “And I have every faith she will be just fine.”

Millicent watched her mother again blink back tears. She squeezed Millicent’s fingers and whispered, “The Lord will take care.”

Her mother helped Millicent back to the bed while the doctor packed up his things, and after her mother tucked the quilt around Millicent’s shoulders and kissed her on the forehead and went to see the good doctor out, Millicent lay there by herself. She felt a peace come over her, a peace that she had been trying to find a year ago and that now, she believed, had come to find her. Her mother would never say how she had the means to pay for the second doctor, and Millicent would never ask. She thought she knew. From the bed, she listened to the clomp of the horse hooves as the buggy started off down the lane and wondered why she had ever imagined that the sound of horse hooves was something to fear. Maybe it was something she had read once in a book.

***

WILLOUGHBY’S LIMPING LEG was tired, but he pulled it along, telling himself, Just a few more steps now , even when it wasn’t, and then telling himself that again. Little by little was the only way he knew to get through this life.

In one hand he had a copper kettle that had once belonged to the church. Years of use had worn it out, and the church had recently purchased a new one. Without shame, Willoughby had asked whether he might have the old one, and he had spent the past few evenings working out the dents and resoldering the leaky spout, and then, when he had repaired as much as he could, polishing it with a rough cloth and buffing it with a fine one. Now it was a handsome, shining kettle, one that anyone would be happy to own, though there was only one person Willoughby wanted to give it to.

The day was mild and wrapped in good feeling. Willoughby knocked on the door. He expected Lucille to answer it as she always did if she was home or not in the garden out back, but when it opened, he was greeted by the sight of Millicent instead. Willoughby’s mouth dropped. It was the first time he had seen Millicent in over a month, and in all that time she had been unwell. He knew how much it worried Lucille. She shushed him sometimes when he came to the door, telling him Millicent was sleeping and that she should not be disturbed. He himself had brought a few things over the weeks that he thought might improve her condition, though he had no idea what the condition was. He only knew that it was serious and that Lucille fretted, and he took care not to ask more beyond that. Some folks at church said that Lucille’s other daughter, Ada, had even gone to Panama to earn money for the cause, and though it was true that Willoughby had not seen Ada for as long as he had not seen Millicent, he had never asked Lucille directly to confirm it. He did try to be respectful in that regard. Now, though, Millicent was before him, up on her feet, and Willoughby could hardly believe his own eyes.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Willoughby,” she said, and smiled.

“Millicent,” Willoughby stammered.

She looked thin—too thin, she had fallen away—but time and good cooking would remedy that.

From inside the house, Lucille called out, “Who there?”

“It’s me—Willoughby,” he said from the porch.

Lucille walked up next to Millicent and smiled at him, too. In as many weeks as Millicent had been unwell, Willoughby had not seen a smile on Lucille’s face even once. It was a wonder to witness it now.

Lucille set her hand on Millicent’s arm and said, “You see the good news.”

“A blessing.”

Millicent blushed and murmured that she had something she needed to do. She slipped back into the house, but even when she was gone, the smile stayed fixed on Lucille’s face.

In the surprise of seeing Millicent, Willoughby had almost forgotten why he had come, but now he held up the teakettle and offered it to Lucille just as he had offered everything he could think of for the past year.

“What’s that?” Lucille asked.

“I bring you a kettle.”

“A kettle?”

“A nice, reliable kettle.”

“What reason you think I need that?”

“I figure everyone can use a kettle, no?”

She was still smiling at him. “Reliable, you say?”

“I tell you in truth, it is old. I salvage it from the church, but I fix it up, and I believe it can serve you for many years still.”

“It looks fine.”

He was surprised to hear her say that. “See here. It’s made of copper that brings water up to a boil faster than most.”

“For true?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I could use that.”

“You could?”

She nodded. “Seems to take me too long to get things warmed up.”

And something about the way she said it made Willoughby wonder whether she was talking about the kettle anymore. He swallowed a little lump that formed in his throat and said, “I imagine this should help,” and handed the kettle to her.

Standing in the doorway, he watched as she ran her hand over the side, mostly smooth but still with dents he had not been able to get out. “Thank you,” she said.

“You quite welcome.” Willoughby shuffled back a step. He knew how it went. Now was the time when he was supposed to walk back down the porch steps and be on his way.

But instead of goodbye, Lucille said, “I do thank you, but you know what else I would like?”

Willoughby tried to think. In all the time he had been coming to her, Lucille had never asked for anything. “What?”

“Some company.”

“Company?”

“I can make us some tea,” Lucille said, nodding at the kettle. “If you want to come in.”

Willoughby nearly laughed, and in the next second he thought he might cry. If he wanted? It was all he wanted. He nodded.

“Good,” Lucille said.

She stepped inside the house, past the threshold of the front door that Willoughby had knocked on and walked away from so many times before. He followed her in.

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