Wake the Dawn Read online

  “Talk about a textbook delivery. Beth, you did really well.” Esther closed her eyes for a moment. “Did you bring a diaper or gown?”

  “Sorry, I was afraid the house was crashing down around our ears. It was. The big oak in our yard went down on it just as we backed out of the driveway. So, I guess you could say we are homeless.”

  Esther wagged her head sadly. “You’re not the only ones.” She turned to Ben. “We should still have diapers somewhere. See if you can find any.”

  “Is that a baby crying?” Mrs. Unfeld’s quivery voice rose from the corner. Ben had forgotten all about her.

  “Take her with you, please.”

  Ben stared at Esther. “But…”

  “Take her to Barbara.”

  Nuts. “All right.” He handled that dead man, he could handle this. He lifted the slight body and carried her from the room to the area behind the reception desk, nearly gagging on the odor. “Can you keep her here?” He didn’t wait for a reply but put her down, still all curled up in her fetal position, behind Barbara’s chair.

  “I’ll try.” Barbara sighed and pushed her dark hair back from her forehead. “Mrs. Unfeld, Bessie, you stay here with me for a while so Ben can go looking for Harold. Okay?”

  “She needs to be washed up and I don’t know what happened to the jacket that guy loaned her. We found her in the corner behind the door of room one.”

  “Was that a baby cry I heard?”

  “Yes, a very unhappy little boy and he’s letting the whole world know about it. But mother and baby are doing fine and Ansel is, too.”

  “One ray of good in this mess.”

  “Yah, that big old oak tree took out their house, just as they backed out of the driveway.”

  “Dear Lord, thank you for keeping them safe.”

  Ben kept his response to himself. He was too tired to argue faith matters at the moment. “We need to get some food in here for these people.” And a nice stiff belt for me. And this time, I earned it.

  “I know. And we’re out of coffee. I’ll put out the call. Reception is so erratic. Sometimes I can get out, sometimes I can’t.”

  The ambulance blipped outside.

  “Here we go again.” Ben detoured through the break room. Hannah had the baby on her shoulder, burping her. The man on the gurney slept soundly and Ansel’s toddler daughter did the same, except the kid didn’t snore softly like that man did.

  Hannah looked up. “Beth is all right?”

  “Yes. I’ll probably be bringing them back in here. What can we lay her on?”

  Bo was staring at him. Of course. When Mrs. Unfeld had to go, she went. Bo was holding it. “Come on, Bo. Your legs must be crossed.”

  Almost eagerly, his dog abandoned his protective watch over the baby and followed Ben out through the back service door. Black dog in the black night, he disappeared instantly. When the hospital was on generator, it burned no outside lights.

  In fact, no one was burning lights. Every power line in town must be down. The wind still screamed through the trees. Things still whipped past now and then—roofing shingles, small branches—but the wind was definitely tapering off. The rain was not.

  Bo came back to the door soaking wet, stopped at Ben’s knee, and shook. Stupid dog. They went back inside, out of chaos into chaos, back to reality. Bo resumed his post curled up at Hannah’s feet.

  Ben returned to the front reception area, but Barbara and Mrs. Unfeld were not there. Avis had taken Barbara’s place at the desk again. The waiting room was still stuffed full, but now most people were curled up in the chairs or stretched out on the floor, sleeping. A short guy Ben knew only as Dominic consulted a list in his hand and looked around the room. He threaded his way to a couple sitting in a corner. They climbed stiffly to their feet and followed him out into the hall. The Culpepper kid was coming out of one and he didn’t even look tired. He smiled at Ben. Ben smiled back.

  Dominic led the couple into one. “Someone will be here shortly.”

  “Dominic?” Ben wiggled a finger. “Where is Hannah on that list?”

  He frowned. “I don’t have a Hannah on this list. Who’s Hannah?”

  That old familiar fury boiled up instantly. She wasn’t even on the list! All night she’d been holding that helpless baby and she wasn’t even on the list! And he…

  “Ben!” Dennis and Yvette shoved a man in a wheelchair through the double doors. “Asthma! Our O2 ran out. We gave him a shot of epinephrine, so his heart is racing.”

  The fury would just have to wait. This fellow looked terrified, fighting for breath, and he had turned blue. “Dominic, put Hannah on the list now! Dennis, maybe three is open again.”

  Behind him, Dominic was asking, “Yeah, but who is she?”

  Three was a mess, but it was open. They lifted him onto the table Rob and his patient had just vacated. The Culpepper kid showed up in the doorway. Dennis adjusted the table to half sitting as Ben hooked the line from the nose prongs to the nozzle in the wall. How much oxygen remained in the big bottle in the supply closet? He set it while Dennis checked to make sure the life-giving air was flowing. The Culpepper kid started picking up.

  “Surely we have albuterol,” Ben muttered as he searched the cupboards; in all of his looking for stuff, he had not checked these cabinets. No meds of any kind.

  He turned to the patient. “You have any sort of bronchodilators with you?”

  No response.

  Dennis said, “We didn’t find any, but we didn’t look far. Wanted to get him here.”

  “Dennis, go ask Esther. She’s in the next room, or at least she was. If she’s not, Barbara is in the restroom, cleaning up Mrs. Unfeld. Barbara will know.” Barbara, a registered nurse, knew everything. Nurses knew more than doctors did, at least regarding the practical stuff. Might as well check under the sink; it was the only door left. “Oh, for pete’s sake.”

  Who would stash a big plastic box of meds under the sink? But there it was, and rifling through it Ben found albuterol. He bit the cap off the vial so he could pour it into the nebulizer.

  Dennis came back in. “Under the sink. And the clamp is over the sink.”

  He opened a cabinet door above the sink, dragged out a plastic bag of various gizmos, poked through it with one finger, found a clamp. “Now we get to find out whether this thing works.” He slipped the little black clamp over the patient’s middle finger, fiddled with it, studied it. “Okay; at least now we know his oxygen level. Up the saturation, can you?” Ben had no idea where his stethoscope had gotten to. “Need your ears.” He pulled Dennis’s ’scope off his neck and shoved the bell against the victim’s chest. With the guy’s shirt on he wasn’t going to hear much, but the heartbeat was all he was looking for anyway.

  Slowly but surely the man’s breathing eased. At least they didn’t have to do a tracheotomy. He’d done a couple of trachs in the past and dreaded attempting another.

  The heart rhythm eased as the oxygen flowed more freely. The deathly blue pallor faded.

  “Where’s Yvette?” Ben had not even been aware she’d left the room.

  “Someone needed another set of hands. Is there any coffee?”

  “I’m not sure but if you find some, please bring me a cup, too. We need to get some food in here for these people.”

  Dennis took out his cell phone and thumbed buttons.

  “Who you calling?”

  “My mother heads the church ladies’ group. They’ll get some food in here. We can go pick it up with the ambulance if need be.” He put his cell to his ear a couple of times and shook his head. “No signal. By the way, your house is still standing. Doesn’t really look damaged, like the roof is still on. That birch out back went down.”

  “Thanks.”

  Dennis’s radio howled his code. “Looks like we’ll be on our way. Now I get to go look for Yvette.”

  “The place isn’t that big. Probably the ladies’ room.” Ben checked their patient’s vitals again. Here at least was one they�
�d been able to save. The man’s eyelashes fluttered, and he started to sit up. Gently pushing him back down, Ben nodded. “Just take it easy, we’re through the worst. What happened?”

  “Power went out, no nebulizer, panic.” His voice rasped.

  “Well, they got to you in time. I’ll be moving you out of this room because we need it, but you can rest here for a minute. Okay?”

  The man nodded and let his eyes close again.

  Ben turned at a knock on the door.

  “How is he?” Yvette asked, handing him a cup of coffee.

  “Good. Where did you find this?” Coffee, third on his list of beverages, behind beer and whiskey.

  “Barbara said someone brought over a can of coffee.”

  “But no one is supposed to be out in this storm.”

  “Just say thank you and enjoy it.” She turned away. “Oh, and mother and baby are sound asleep on some quilts someone else brought in.” She raised a hand. “Don’t ask. Call them our guardian angels.”

  Guardian angels. Where were they two years ago when Allie needed them, out having a beer?

  Ben followed her down the hall, careful to not trip over sleepers. They’d need to start hanging hammocks next. He peeked into the break room. Ansel looked up from checking on the man on the gurney. “Everyone in here is sound asleep but him and me. Thank God for the quilts.”

  Beth was curled up near her daughter, the new son nestled in a quilt. Someone had slipped a sock over his head in lieu of a newborn cap. Hannah’s head had dropped forward, but the baby slept in her arms.

  Grateful for a moment of respite, Ben listened to his stomach growl and grumble from the coffee. Too bad, at least it would help him be alert again. Someone had swept up the glass from the vending machines at some point, but they were now empty of snacks and drinks. He left the break room and stopped behind the front desk. “What’s the weather report?”

  Barbara glanced up with a smile. “No letup on the rain, but the winds are now at strong breeze, not gale. You’re familiar with the Beaufort scale, right?”

  “Right. Twenty-five to thirty.”

  She smirked and continued. “You can be sure the power crews are out there. And the highway trucks, moving the trees off the roads. If they can get us clear one way, we could send the ambulances with our bad ones to the hospital. Perhaps the choppers can fly come daylight. We’re all praying for that.”

  Ben felt his jaw tighten. Why waste your time praying to a God who kills women and babies? At the look on her face, he realized she’d guessed what he was thinking.

  She laid a hand on his arm. “No easy answers, I know.”

  Ben turned away and thought about Mrs. Unfeld curled up on a quilt in the corner of the break room. Bessie Unfeld, a church leader for years, and look how God rewarded her. He almost said something but kept on going; he’d not seen Esther for how long? He opened the doors to the examining rooms, peeked in. Rob was cleaning two, apparently having just handled a case. Denise, the internal bleed, was sleeping on her table, Roy stretched out on the floor beside her. Culpepper was cleaning one, working around their asthma guy.

  Here was Esther, in the mini surgery with a patient on the table. “I could use another pair of hands here.”

  “Scrub?”

  “Get the gloves on.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Strange, it wasn’t that hot in here.

  Though she had snapped at him before, he decided to try again.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t keep the blood out of the field.”

  Ben didn’t mean what was wrong with the patient, but he said nothing.

  Ben looked from her to the child whose compound fracture of the tibia lay exposed under the lights. Sure there was blood, but not a bleeder, or else she had already stopped it. The man hovering at the head of the table looked up at Ben. He poured a bit of water on the wound, irrigating it, keeping the bone moist lest it die.

  “Hi, Jensen.” Ben turned to Esther. “You going to try to set that?”

  Jensen nodded. “Hi, Ben. It was bleeding pretty bad, but she got that stopped.”

  “How’s the rest of your family?”

  “Safe. Down in the basement. With all this rain, that’s starting to leak, but I got a pump and a generator.”

  “Okay, here we go. Jensen, you hang on to your son.” She gave Ben orders and together they pulled the bone back into place. She picked out small bone fragments and blew out a breath. “Thank God for anesthetics. Clear the field for me again, and I’ll go searching.”

  Ben recognized the gauze sponges as having come from the OB kit. They were using every bit of supplies, and now these were used up as well.

  They placed a drain, Esther did some fancy sewing to close it up, they bandaged the wound. Slipping an inflatable splint onto the leg was the easy part. Ben blew it up by mouth, since he had no idea where the pump was. At least their supply of inflatables was still adequately stocked.

  Jensen was smiling a sad, weary, grateful smile. “Just as good as the big city.”

  Ben chuckled mirthlessly. “That’s what we told some other guy. He didn’t want quacks working on him.” That was long ago, so very, very long ago! Ben looked up at the clock. Seven A.M. He’d been on the go for twenty-four hours and he knew others were functioning on even less sleep. Dennis and Yvette, and…

  Let’s insert a ray of sunshine here, Ben, boy. “Barbara thinks the choppers might be flying now that the wind has died some.”

  Esther stepped back and pulled off her gloves, the ones that had been in the OB kit. Or had she raided other OB kits to get more? “Please, God, I hope so. The woman…”

  Ben knew she meant Denise. “I looked in on them a few moments ago. Want me to check again for you?”

  “No, you stay here until the anesthetic wears off and I’ll go see.”

  Ben watched her tilt and thump against the doorjamb as she went through the door, lurch erect, continue on out. How much longer could she keep functioning? Were the rest of them in as bad a shape as she was?

  Chapter Six

  Esther sagged against the wall behind her office door. Come on, woman, you know the tools to deal with this. Stay with it. Breathe deep, again. Again! Shut it out! Focus!

  The orders marched through her mind but for some reason, they didn’t connect with her body. She knew lack of sleep and meals was part of the culprit, but since neither was available…

  She sucked in another breath, shrugged her shoulders to release some of the kinks, and rotated her head. Holding one hand out, she could tell from the reduction in quivering that she was doing better. As soon as you get home, you can get back on your sertraline, but now you just keep going. You know what’ll happen if someone figures out what is wrong.

  She knew, all right. She couldn’t shake the memory of the night one of these attacks caught her in the middle of an examination in the ER where she had worked some weekends. She’d been working anywhere she could, anything to bring in enough money to keep going. Her dream of med school started to die that night.

  She dug a clean lab coat out of the nearly empty supply cupboard and headed back for the break room. At least in there she would find new life and hope. Two babies, one with two doting parents and one who would be given over to social services. Parents unknown.

  She glanced toward the waiting room as she passed, checked her watch; after seven A.M. and the waiting room looked just as full. A small child whimpered and was shushed by a parent.

  “But I’m hungry!” rose from a different part of the room. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Ben had picked up the chair and slammed it into the glass door of the drink and snack machines. The contents disappeared quickly after that. If there was a complaint from the vending company, so be it. But he hadn’t signed the lease agreement for those machines; she had.

  Ben. Intriguing in a way. Cute guy. Dark, though. Grumpy. A couple of people said he drank too much, but she had never seen him drunk at all, and
those times he came in for his service-mandated physical, he tested out just fine. When she’d arrived in the Pineville clinic six years ago, the old women were still talking about the wedding over a year before. “Oh, Esther, you missed the wedding of the century!” “Loveliest wedding I’ve ever been to, and I’ve attended many a one.” “Such a cute couple! Just perfect for each other.” Ben and his Allie. The whole town, absolutely the whole town, had turned out for it. Chief Harden had proudly given the bride away, Allie’s own father having died.

  Esther only met Allie once and to her, the girl seemed a little vapid. Not real deep, not interested in weighty stuff, not much ambition. But Ben was obviously smitten with her and she with him. Then the whole town turned out for Allie’s funeral, too, every person stunned, grief-stricken. Esther was handling the clinic full-time by then, and she was accustomed to the taciturn, easygoing nature of Pineville’s citizens, so the outpouring of vivid grief surprised her.

  She stepped around those on the floor, some sleeping, some with pain-glazed eyes. How long since the ambulances last arrived? She made her way down the short hall that felt like a mile. Was she really ricocheting off the sides of the doorway or did it just feel that way? She was afraid to stop in the restroom and look in the mirror. Some things were better left unknown, but since several people had asked if she was all right, it must be bad.

  The ambulance siren wailed again; she was beginning to abhor the blip signal that they needed to be on the move. She tapped on the door to the room where Denise and Roy had spent the night. No answer. She peeked in; they were both still sound asleep. She hesitated. Disturb them or wait until…? Without entering, she looked over at the hanging bag. Empty. They had nothing left to give her. She shut the door so gently, it did not even click.