The Doctor of Summitville
[© 2009 Bill Carrigan, all rights reserved]
[Unnamed prologue on separate right page.]
We called him “Doc” almost from the day he hung out his shingle. Maybe we thought he should be older. But the town was pleased to have a doctor, and a native son at that. He had grown up here, gone off for his training, and returned to start a practice.
Age came up again when we learned about the love affair. This time it wasn’t his youth in question. Nearly thirty now, he had gained well-earned renown―but she was seventeen. True, it was mainly the women who talked. Since the girl was a beauty, we men had little to say.
Then came the Depression, and our thoughts turned to graver matters. Doc ceased to be the center of attention.
Until the killing . . .
Years later, some of us looking back saw another picture, like an old snapshot in an album: Doc Martin as one of an unsung breed fast fading from the American scene.
He was a quiet man, and his life inspired no monuments. Yet his name today, among those he served in our once-country town, summons affection, gratitude, and respect. It has even the ring of legend . . .
[Chapter 1 starts on page 1, right.]
Chapter One
Dr. James Arthur Martin paused midway up the farmhouse steps, alert to an ominous chain of sounds. The calm morning air had carried the usual whistle blast as the 7:25 neared Summitville, but now came the din and shock waves of a crushing, rending impact.
Train wreck?
At first the young doctor doubted his ears. Then, gripping the handle of his black bag, he turned and rushed to his car. The chronic patient he had come to see would soon understand.
From the sounds echoing through the countryside, Jim placed the wreck between the river trestle and the station. To save time he skirted the town by means of a dirt road he had known since childhood. He drove as fast as the ruts and stones allowed, weaving to avoid a blowout.
The Hudson sedan wasn’t well suited to a country practice, but Margaret had liked the blue color . . . One fleeting thought led to another. Why hadn’t he stocked the trunk with emergency supplies? No time now to stop for splints, water, more bandages and drugs. He hoped these would come with the ambulance, if anyone called to launch its thirty-minute run.
Mist obscured the sun and hung in the wooded hollows. At length the woods opened on plowed fields already green with spring shoots. At the railroad crossing, Smith’s Quarry Road became blacktop. It shortly met the state highway, and Jim, turning west, could see the small brick station on his left. He passed other cars and, about a mile farther on, spied a damaged boxcar and the train itself.
Chaos. Titanic ruin and certain tragedy. Shunted onto a siding, the passenger train had driven the boxcar into a barrier. Black, choking smoke poured from the still-upright engine. Jim winced as he pictured the cabin crew caught between the onrushing coal and the firebox. All four coaches of the 7:25 lay against an embankment, each crushed into the next.
He stopped at the roadside, vaulted a split-rail fence, and ran across a grassy field and the main track. He carried his bag―a potent symbol, but little more than that, he feared, in face of the carnage ahead. Nearing the train, he saw people inside, stunned or panicked, and began to hear their cries.
A dog barked at a woman who clung to an open door. “O Jesus, save me!” she wailed. Jim recognized her, a neighbor who often visited someone in Carroll, the previous town on the line. She screamed as smoke rolled over the car. A young man tried to help her down, and Jim stepped up to lend a hand. “Call the hospital,” he said. “Tell them to send the ambulance.” The man nodded and led the woman toward a parked roadster. The dog ran after them barking.
Up close the engine and wrecked coaches looked huge and threatening. Townsmen approached them, hesitant, grim. Some were helping passengers down from the sloping doors as Jim reached the last car, where he entered the train from the canted observation platform.
Most of the passengers passed Summitville daily on their way to the city, but others could be local people. For a moment Jim felt hollow inside at the challenge he faced. In his twenty-eighth year, in the town of his birth now chosen for his practice, he’d met his first real test as a doctor.
Refusing to be daunted―it was his town, and he had to do his best―he rolled up his sleeves and surveyed the scene before him. Groans and agitated movements of the ten or twelve passengers spelled various degrees of trauma. Many must have been injured in striking the seat ahead, and there was shattered glass everywhere. Two men lay in the aisle, one at his feet, the other near the front of the car.
He knelt before the nearer man, who was unconscious and breathing in short gasps. A whiff of ammonia woke him to severe chest pain. He groaned, “Gimme a shot, doc.”
Jim felt broken ribs. Short on morphine, he said. “Put this powder under your tongue. Later I’ll help you up.” He placed a folded jacket under the man’s head.
He hurried to the other man in the aisle. The crushed, bloody forehead told him there was nothing he could do. He doubled back, treating those most in need, helping others to their feet. Bituminous smoke swept him in waves as he forced open the door to the next car.
Many of the injured leaving the train would require hospitalization. To a large man lumbering toward him, he said, “Would you try to get . . .” His words died as the dazed man shoved past.
Two boys entered and the doctor put his request to them. “I need your help. Round up drivers to take people to the hospital. Ask women to bring coffee and blankets.” Glad to have a part to play, the boys ran off, and Jim was hopeful of gaining a measure of control. He was encouraged to hear a siren in the distance.
Through a broken window, he saw that a light rain had started. His nose and throat stung from the smoke pouring in. He watched the crew of Summitville’s fire engine approach the train, and the ambulance drew up, its siren dying. Shameful that in 1927 it bore on its side a red cross, marking it a relic of the World War. He was relieved to see orderlies unfold a stretcher.
Around Jim were bruised, bleeding, stunned passengers moaning or crying out. Only emergency measures were possible―dressings for open wounds, analgesics, a sling for a broken jaw. Low on antiseptics, he might have to rely on mere cleaning and binding, said to counter infection in the trenches of France.
He knelt beside a young man who writhed with a broken leg. Jim injected morphine, aligned the femur, wrapped the thigh with a stiff canvas shade, and secured it with tape. The man, though in agony, voiced his gratitude. With a strained smile, he said he’d slept through his stop at Carroll.
Jim forced his way into the next car, where he saw a crumpled figure on the floor ahead. He pressed forward, grasping handles on the seats, avoiding brambles that invaded the shattered windows. The figure proved to be the conductor, unconscious and barely breathing. Foaming blood at his mouth indicated a rib-punctured lung. Jim dragged him to a door and lowered him to men below.
At the front end of the car, he noted something odd. A tourniquet contrived from a silk stocking and a pen had been applied to a woman’s calf. Who could have done it? Surely not one of the wounded about him. As he loosened the stocking to permit circulation, he saw that a button had been used at the pressure point. Someone skilled in first aid had preceded him through the train.
#
In the next car, Jim came upon his helper. To his surprise, it was a young girl, maybe fifteen or sixteen. She was tying a strip of polka-dot cloth around a woman’s head, and he noted her care and dexterity despite the patient’s flailing. “Open her sleeve,” he said as he knelt and prepared to inject a sedative. Instead, the girl just grasped the woman’s wrist. Puzzled but too focused to speculate, he unbuttoned the sleeve and pushed it up.
As he eased the needle into a vein, other passengers cried out for water. He looked around. There was no one to send for it but his aide. “Would you fetch some water,” he said.
“Wa-ter?” she echoed with an accent.
Jim glanced at her. What next? “You don’t speak English?” he asked in a tone almost accusing.
Her blue eyes were alert as she shook her head. “No—a leetle Engleesh.” Self-consciously she brushed strands of gold hair from her soot-smudged face. Her black overcoat and high shoes looked foreign.
“Go. Bring water,” he said. “Much water.”
She nodded with vigor and hurried off.
He wondered about her as he went on treating the injured. Had she been on the train when it crashed? Her skill in applying first aid continued to puzzle him. She returned not only with water but also a young man to tote it―two buckets. Jim was impressed in view of her limitation. Taking one of the buckets, he told the bearer to offer water to the passengers outside.
From a window, he saw firemen remove a man from the engine cabin. It would be one of the train crew, trapped by onrushing coal and in need of immediate attention. Jim dropped down from the car and sprinted toward the group. Kneeling beside the victim, who had been crushed and burned, he applied his stethoscope with care, then met the sober faces. A slight shake of his head verified the gruesome death.
Meanwhile, the ambulance had set out with a full load. It would weave through Summitville’s narrow streets before making its long run to the city. Other ambulances were on the way, and cars and trucks were leaving with casualties. Jim greeted two doctors from Carroll. A few passengers remained on the ground, now wrapped in blankets, as it was raining harder and growing chilly. Trodden areas had turned to mud.
He went back through the coaches, treating wounds he had missed (but passing some bound with polka-dot cloth). Volunteers were still helping the injured off the train. The man with broken ribs was nowhere in sight. Finally Jim stepped from the rear platform and headed for his car, chilled by the rain and the water seeping through his shoes.
He spied his young helper, now talking with animation to a local cattleman he had met at the Presbyterian church. The man, named Duval, insisted she leave with him. She knelt, however, to offer coffee to a blanket-wrapped figure. Then she saw the doctor and spoke to Duval, who gave him a stony look.
Jim approached them and waved a greeting. “She’s been a real help,” he said, nodding toward her. “If she could stay a while longer . . .” He paused at the sullen lack of response. A muttered exchange between the two eluded him, his high school French having mostly slipped away.
“Your daughter?” he asked in a friendly tone.
“Niece. My brother’s girl.”
Jim now noticed that her face, minus the soot, was pretty, with full lips and straight white teeth. “There’s a family resemblance,” he said, thinking to flatter Duval a bit. In the ensuing silence, he asked if she lived hereabouts.
“Nope. Just got here,” said the cattleman.
Pressed for time, Jim came straight to the point. “If she could help until we get through this. She sure knows her first aid.”
“Had some training, I’m told. Worked with a sage femme in the old country.”
She smiled at the familiar term. Jim recalled the meaning from medical texts: midwife. That could explain her composure in the face of crisis and bloodshed. “Could you leave her here while you give some passengers a lift?”
But Duval moved off, barking “Allons-y” at the girl, whose eyes clung to the doctor as she slowly climbed into a farm truck. They pulled away with a clash of gears and a trail of blue smoke.
Jim continued to see an image of her bright blue eyes and flashes of their work together. He couldn’t dismiss the echoes of tension between her and her uncle. And he would later reflect that her hesitation may have planted a seed of caring in his subconscious mind.