Darkest Hour (Cutler 5)

NO DENYING THE TRUTH

When Mamma returned to talk to me, I was curled up in bed with the blanket drawn up to my chin. Shortly after she had left me, I was seized with a terrible chill that made my teeth click. Even with my blanket wound tightly around my body, I couldn't get warm enough to stop shivering. I felt as if I had fallen into that cold puddle again.

"Oh, you poor dear," Mamma lamented, and hurried to my side. She thought I had gone to bed only because of the terrible things that had been said. She brushed back the strands of my hair that had dropped over my forehead and kissed me on the cheek. The moment she did so, she sat up sharply. "You're burning up!" she said.

"No, I'm not, Mamma. I'm co . . . co . . . cold," I told her, but she shook her head.

"You must have gotten a chill after you fell into that puddle and walked around all day in a damp dress. Now you've got a terrible fever. The teacher should have sent you home directly."

"No, Mamma. I got my dress dry and Miss Walker gave me half of her own sandwich," I said. Mamma gazed at me as if I were babbling gibberish and shook her head. Then she pressed her palm to my forehead again and gasped.

"You're scorching. I've got to send for Doctor Cory," she decided, and rushed out to find Henry.

Ever since Eugenia had been born with a lung ailment, the smallest sign of illness in me, Emily or Papa stirred a tempest of worry in Mamma. She would pace about and wring her hands. Her face would whiten with panic, her eyes become washed in anxiety. Old Doctor Cory had been called here so often that Papa said his horse could make the trip blindfolded. Sometimes, Mamma was in such a frenzy, she would insist that Henry bring him immediately in our carriage and not wait for him to harness his horses to his own.

Doctor Cory lived on the north side of Upland Station in a small house. He was a Northerner who had been brought South by his family when he was only six. Papa called him a "converted Yankee." Doctor Cory was one of the first residents of Upland Station to have a telephone installed, but we still had none. Papa said that if he put one of those gossip machines in the house, Mamma would spend most of her day with it glued to her ear, and it was bad enough that she cackled with the other hens once a week.

Doctor Cory was a diminutive man whose strawberry red hair was mixed with strands of gray, and whose almond-shaped eyes were always so friendly and young-looking, they put me at ease almost as soon as he set his concerned gaze on me. He always carried something sweet in his worn, dark-brown leather satchel. Sometimes it was an all-day sucker, sometimes it was a sugar stick.

While we waited for his arrival, Mamma had one of the chambermaids bring me another quilt. The added weight and heat made me more comfortable. Louella brought up some sweet tea and Mamma fed it to me a teaspoon at a time. I found it hard to swallow and that made her even more nervous.

"Oh dear, dear," she chanted. "What if it's scarlet fever or tetanus or strep throat," she moaned, starting her litany of possible illnesses. She would go through everything in the medical dictionary she could recall. Her lily-white cheeks were blotched and her neck was red. Mama eventually broke out in splotches when she was this upset.

"It don't look like no scarlet fever or tetanus," Louella said. "My sister died of scarlet fever and I knew a blacksmith who died of tetanus."

"Oooooh," Mamma groaned. She paraded from the window to the door and back to the window looking for signs of Doctor Cory's arrival. "I told the Captain we should have a telephone now. He can be the most stubborn man."

She rambled on, wrapping her thoughts around herself for comfort. Finally, after what seemed like an interminable wait, Doctor Cory arrived and Louella went down to show him in. Mamma swallowed a gasp and nodded at me all bundled up in bed when he stepped into my room.

"Now don't get yourself all flustered and sick with worry, Georgia," he told her firmly.

He sat on the bed and smiled at me.

r /> "How are you doing, Lillian honey?" he asked.

"I'm still cold," I complained.

"Oh, I see. Well, we'll fix that." He opened his satchel and took out his stethoscope. I anticipated the icy metal on my skin when he asked me to sit up and pull up my nightshirt, so I cringed before he touched me. He laughed and breathed on his stethoscope before placing it against my back. Then he asked me to take deep breaths. He put it on my chest and I did the same, breathing in as deeply as I could.

My temperature was taken; I had to open my mouth and say "Ahh" and then he looked into my ears. While he examined me, Mamma ranted and raved about what had happened on my way to school.

"Who knows what was in that puddle? It could have been infested with germs," she wailed.

Finally, Doctor Cory reached into his satchel and brought out an all-day sucker.

"This will make your throat feel better, too," he said.

'What is it? What's wrong with her, Doctor?" Mamma demanded when he rose slowly and calmly and began to put things back into his satchel.

"She's got some redness, a little infection. Nothing very serious, Georgia, believe me. We always get a lot of this when the seasons change. We'll give her some aspirin and some sulfur. With plenty of bed rest and hot tea, in a day or so she'll be like new," Doctor Cory promised.

"But I've got to go to school!" I cried. "I just started today."

"I'm afraid you'll have to take a little holiday right away, my dear," Doctor Cory said. If I thought I felt miserable before, it was nothing like how I felt now. Miss school, the very first week, the very next day? What would Miss Walker think of me?

I couldn't help myself; I started to cry. This now, on top of the horrible things Emily had said and Mamma had not denied, seemed too much to bear.

"Now, now," Doctor Cory said. "If you do that, you'll make yourself sicker and it will take you that much longer to get back to school."