The Story of a Doctor's Telephone—Told by His Wife

“Oh, yes, I know.” Exasperation was in every letter of every word.

“Take one every six months and let me hear from you when they're all gone.” Slam! “There's always some damned thing,” he muttered, and turning faced his wife.

“A surprising prescription, John. What does it mean?”

“It means that she's one of these everlasting complainers and that I'm tired of hearing her. She's been to Chicago and St. Louis and Cincinnati. She's had three or four laparotomies and every time she comes back to me with a longer story and a worse one. They've got about everything but her appendix and they'll get that if she don't watch out.”

“Why, I thought they always got that the first thing.”

“You have no idea how it tires a man to have people come to him and complain, complain, complain. The story is ever new to them but it gets mighty old to the doctor. Then they go away to the city and some surgeon with a great name does what may seem to him to be best. Sometimes they come back improved, sometimes not, and sometimes they come back worse than when they went. In all probability the operator never sees the patient again and so the last chapters of the story must be told to the home doctor over and over again.”

Mary gave a little sigh. The doctor went on:

“In many cases it isn't treatment of any kind that is needed. It is occupation – occupation for the mind and for the hands. Something that will make people forget themselves in their work or in their play.”

Ting-a-ling-ling-ling. Ting-a-ling-ling-ling.

“Is this you, Doctor?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to see if you were at the office. I'll be over there right away.”

In a few minutes the door opened and a gentleman about thirty-five years of age entered. His manner was greatly agitated and he did not notice Mrs. Blank at the window near the corner of the room.

“Good morning, Mr. Blake,” said the doctor, shaking hands with him, “back again, are you?”

Mr. Blake had been to C – , his native city. He had not been well for some time and had evinced a desire to go back and consult his old physician there, in which Dr. Blank had heartily concurred.

“How long do you think I can live?” Mr. Blake asked now.

“What do you mean?” replied the doctor, regarding him closely.

“I want to know how much time I have. I want to get my business fixed up before – ”

“Blake, you couldn't die if you wanted to. You're not a sick enough man for that.”

The patient took a letter from his pocket and handed it in silence to the doctor. The latter took it, looked carefully at the superscription, read it slowly through, then folded it with cool deliberation and put it back into the envelope.

“I thought you were going to your old physician,” he said.

“Dr. Kenton was out of the city so I went to the great specialist.”

“Did he tell you what was in this letter he sent to me?”

“No, but the letter was not sealed and I read it. I was so anxious to know his opinion that I couldn't help it. Tuberculosis of the larynx – ” his voice faltered.

“Yes,” said the doctor, calmly, “that is a thing a man may well be frightened about. But listen to me, Blake. You've not got tuberculosis of the larynx.”

“Do you think a great physician like Dr. Wentworth doesn't know what he is talking about?”

“Dr. Wentworth is a great physician; I know him well. But he is only a man like the rest of us and therefore liable to err in judgment sometimes. He knew you half an hour, perhaps, before he pronounced upon your case. I have known you and watched you for fifteen years. I say you have not got tuberculosis and I know I am right.”

Mary saw Mr. Blake grasp her husband's hand with a look in his face that made her think within herself, “Blessings on the country doctor wherever he may be, who has experience and knowledge and wisdom enough to draw just and true conclusions of his own and bravely state them when occasion demands.”

When the patient had gone Mary said to her husband, “One gets a kaleidoscopic view of life in a doctor's office. What comes through the ear at home comes before the eye here. The kaleidoscope turned a bright-colored bit into the place of a dark one this time, John. I am glad I was here to see.”

As she spoke footsteps were heard on the stairs. Slow and feeble steps they were, but at last they reached the landing and paused at the open door. Looking out Mary saw a poorly clad woman perhaps forty years of age, carrying in her hands a speckled hen. She was pale and trembling violently, and sank down exhausted into the chair the doctor set for her. He took the hen from her hands and set it on the floor. Its feet were securely tied and it made no effort to escape. The doctor had never seen the woman before but noting the emaciated form and the hectic flush on the cheek he saw that consumption was fast doing its work. Mary took the palm leaf fan lying on the table and stood beside her, fanning her gently.

When the woman could speak she said, “I oughtn't to 'a' tried to walk, Doctor, but there didn't seem to be anyone passin' an' this cough is killin' me. I want something for it.”

“How far did you walk?” asked Mary, kindly.

“Four mile.”

“Four miles!” she looked down at the trembling form with deep pity in her brown eyes.

“I didn't have any money, Doctor, but will the hen pay for the medicine?” her eyes were raised anxiously to his face and Mary's eyes met the look in the eyes of her husband.

“I don't want the hen. We haven't any place to keep her. Besides my wife, here, is afraid of hens.” A little smile flitted across the wan face.

He told her how to take the medicine and then said, “Whenever you need any more let me know and I'll send it to you. You needn't worry about the pay.”

“I'm very much obleeged to you, Doctor.”

“Just take the hen back home with you.”

“I wonder if I couldn't sell her at the store,” she said, looking at the doctor with a bright, expectant face.

“Wait here and rest awhile and then we'll see about it. I'll go down and perhaps I can find some one in town from out your way that you can ride home with. Where do you live?” She told him and he went down the stairs. In a little while he came back.

“One of your neighbors is down here now waiting for you. He's just starting home,” he said. He took the hen and as they started down the stairs Mary came out and joined them. At the foot of the stairway he said to the grocer standing in front of his establishment, “Here, Keller, I want you to give me a dollar for this hen.”

“She ain't worth it.”

“She is worth it,” said the doctor so emphatically that Keller put his hand in his pocket and handed out the dollar. The poor woman did not see the half dollar that passed from the doctor's hand to the grocer's, but Mary saw and was glad.

The doctor laid the dollar in the trembling palm, helped the feeble woman into the wagon and they drove off.

Mary turned to her husband and said with a little break in her voice, “I'm going home, John. I want to get away from your kaleidoscope.”

Ting-a-ling-ling-ling. Ting-a-ling-ling-ling.

“And I must go for another peep into it. Good-bye. Come again.”

“Is this Dr. Blank?”

“Yes.”

“This is Jim Sampson, Doctor, out at Sampson's mill. My boy fell out of a tree a while ago and broke his leg, and I'm sort o' worried about it.”

“It don't have to stay broke, you know.”

“That's just the point. I'm afraid it will – for a while at least.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, my wife says she won't have it set unless the signs are right for setting a broken bone. She's great on the almanac signs.”

“The devil! You have that bone set—today! Do you understand?”

“Yes, but Mary's awful set in her way.”

“I'm a darned sight more set. That boy's not going to lie there and suffer because of a fool whim of his mother's. Where is she? Send her to the 'phone and I'll talk to her.”

“She couldn't find her almanac and ran across to the neighbor's to get one.”

“Call me when she gets back.”

Ten minutes passed and the call came.

“It's all right, Doctor, the signs says so.”

A note of humor but of unmistakable relief vibrated in the voice.

“Come right out.”

“All right, Jim, I'll be out as soon as I make my round here in town. Tell your wife to have that almanac handy. I may learn something from it.”

An hour or two later he was starting out to get into the buggy, with splints and other needful things when the 'phone called him back. Hastily cramming them under the seat he went.

“Hello.”

“Is this Dr. Blank?”

“This is Millie Hastings. Do you remember me?”

“No-o – I don't believe I do.”

“You doctored me.”

“Yes, I've ‘doctored’ several people.”

“I had typhoid fever two years ago up in the country at my uncle's.”

“What's your uncle's name?”

“Henry Peters.”

“Yes, I remember now.”

“I wanted to find out what my bill is.”

“Wait here a moment till I look at the book.”

In a minute he had found it: Millie Hastings – so many visits at such and such a date, amounting to thirty-six dollars. He went back to the 'phone.

“Do you make your money by working by the week?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have you learned how to save it?”

“Yes, sir, I had to. I have to help mother.”

“Your bill is eighteen dollars.”

He heard a little gasp, then a delighted voice said: “I was afraid it would be a good deal more. And now Dr. Blank, I want to ask a favor of you.”

“Ask away.”

“I brought four dollars to town with me today to pay on my bill, but I want a rocking chair so bad – I'm over here at the furniture store now – and there's such a nice one here that just costs four dollars and I thought maybe you'd wait a – ”

“Certainly I will. Get the rocking chair by all means,” and he laughed heartily as he went out to the buggy. He climbed in and drove away, the smile still lingering on his face. At the outskirts of the town a tall girl hailed him from the sidewalk. He stopped.

“I was just going to your office to get my medicine,” she said.

“I left it with the man there. He'll give it to you.”

“Must I take it just like the other?”

“Yes. Laugh some, though, just before you take it.”

“Why?”

“Because you won't feel like it afterward.”

The girl looked after him as he drove on.

“He's laughing,” she said to herself and a grin overspread her face as she pursued her leisurely way.

Ting-a-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling-ling!!!

“Must be something unusual,” thought Mary as the doctor went to the 'phone.

“Doctor, is this you?”

“Yes.”

“Come out to John Lansing's quick!”

“What's the matter?”

“My wife swallowed poison. Hurry, Doctor, for God's sake!”

In a few minutes the doctor was on his horse (the roads being too bad for a buggy) and was off. We will follow him as he plunges along through the darkness.

Because of the mud the horse's progress was so slow that the doctor pulled him to one side, urged him on to the board walk, much against his inclination, and went clattering on at such a pace that the doors began to fly open on both sides of the street and heads, turned wonderingly after the fleeting horseman, were framed in rectangles of light.

“What is the matter out there?” The angle of the heads said it so plainly that the doctor laughed within himself as he thundered on. Now it chanced that one of the heads belonged to a Meddlesome Matty who, next day, stirred the matter up, and that evening two officers of the law presented themselves at Dr. Blank's office and arrested him.

“I don't care anything about the fine. All I wanted was to get there,” he said, handing out the three dollars.

After the horse left the board walk the road became more solid and in about ten minutes the doctor arrived at his destination. Before he could knock the door was opened. The patient sat reclining in a chair, motionless, rigid, her eyes closed.

“What has she taken?” asked the doctor of the woman's husband.

“Laudanum.”

“How much?”

“She told me she took this bottle full,” and he held up a two ounce bottle.

“I think she's lying,” thought the doctor as he laid his fingers upon her pulse. Then he raised the lids and looked carefully at the pupils of the eyes. “Not much contraction here,” he thought. Turning to the husband who stood pale and trembling beside him, he said,

“Don't be alarmed – she's in no more danger than you are.” He watched the patient's face as he spoke and saw what he expected – a faint facial movement.

“To be on the safe side we'll treat the case as if she had taken two ounces.” He gave her a hypodermic emetic then called for warm water.

“How much?” asked the husband.

“O, a half gallon will do.”

A big fat woman came panting through the doorway. “I got here as quick as I could,” she gasped.

“We don't need you at all,” said the doctor quietly. “Better go back home to your children, Mrs. Johnson.”

Mrs. Johnson, not liking to be cheated out of a sensation which she dearly loved, stood still. Mr. Lansing came back with the warm water. A faint slit appeared under the eyelids of the patient. The doctor took the big cup and said abruptly, “Here! drink this!”

No response. “Mrs. Lansing!” he said so sharply that her eyes opened. “Drink this water.”

“I ca-an't,” she murmured feebly.

“Yes, you can.”

“I won't,” the voice was getting stronger.

“You will.”

“You'll see.”

“Yes, I'll see.”

He held the big vessel to her mouth. When the water began to pour down her neck she sprang to her feet fighting it off. He held the cup in his left hand while with his right he reached around her neck and took her firmly by the nose. Then he held the cup against her mouth and when it opened for breath he poured the life-saving fluid forcefully down. Great gulps of it were swallowed while a wide sheet of water poured down her neck and over her night-dress to the floor.

“That was very well done. Better sit down now.”

The husband stood in awed silence. The fat woman shook her fist at the doctor's back which he beheld, nothing daunted, in the looking-glass on the wall. The patient herself sat down in absolute quiet. In a minute she began retching and vomited some of the water. The doctor inspected it carefully. Then he went to his overcoat on a chair, felt in the pocket and drew out a coil of something. It looked like red rubber and was about half an inch in diameter. He slowly unwound it. It was five or six feet in length. A subdued voice asked,

“What are you going to do now, Doctor?”

“I am going to turn on the hose.”

“Wha-a-t?”

“I am going to put this tube down into your stomach. You haven't thrown up much of that laudanum yet.”

She opened her mouth to speak and the doctor inserted one end of the tube and began ramming it down. “Unfasten a button or two here,” he said to her husband and rammed some more. She gagged and gurgled and tried to push his hands away.

“Hold on, we're not down yet – we're only about to the third button.” He began ramming the tube again when she looked up at her husband so imploringly that he said, “Hold on a minute, Doctor, she wants to say something.” The doctor withdrew the tube and waited.

“I'm sure I threw it all up.”

“Oh no,” he said beginning to lift it again.

“I – only – took – two – or three drops.”

“Why the devil didn't you say so at the start?”

“I wish I had. I just told Jim that.”

“To get even with him for something,” announced the doctor quietly.

“How can he know so much,” mused Jim's wife.

“Now I advise you not to try this game again,” said the doctor as he wound up the stomach tube and put it into his pocket. “You can't fool Jim all the time, and you can't fool me any of the time. Good night.” And he rode home and found Mary asleep in her chair.

Ting-a-ling-ling-ling. Ting-a-ling-ling-ling.

“Is this you, Dr. Blank?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to ask you about an electric vibrator.”

“About what?”

“An electric vibrator.”

“An electric something – I didn't get the last word.”

A little laugh, then “v-i-b-r-a-t-o-r.”

“Oh! vibrator.”

“Yes. Do you think it would help my aunt?”

“Not a durned bit.”

Another little laugh, “You don't think it would?”

“No!”

“I had a letter today from my cousin and she said she knew a lady who had had a stroke and this vibrator helped her more than anything.”

“It didn't. She imagined it.”

“Well, I didn't know anything about it and I knew you would, so I thought I'd 'phone you before going any further. Much obliged, Doctor.”

It would save much time and money and disappointment if all those who don't know would pause to put a question or two to those who do. But so it is not, and the maker of worthless devices and the concocter of nostrums galore cometh oft to fortune by leaps and bounds, while the poor, conscientious physician who sticks to the truth of things, arriveth betimes at starvation's gate.

(I was startled a few days ago to learn that the average income of physicians in the United States does not exceed six hundred dollars.)

Ting-a-ling-ling-ling. Ting-a-ling-ling-ling.

“Tell papa he's wanted at the 'phone,” said Mary.

“Where is he?”

“Isn't he there in the dining room?”

“No, he isn't here.”

“He must be in the kitchen then; go to the door and call him.”

The small boy obeyed. “He's not out here either,” he announced from the door-way.

“Why, where can he be!” cried Mary, springing up and going swiftly to the 'phone. “Hello.”

“Is the doctor there?”

“Yes. Wait just a minute and I will call him.”

She hurried through the dining room, then through the kitchen and out into the yard. No doctor to be seen. “He passed through the house not three minutes ago,” she said to herself.

“John!”

“Doctor!”

“Doc-tor!”

“O, dear! I don't see how he could disappear from the face of the earth in three minutes' time!”

She hurried around a projecting corner through a little gate and called again.

“What is it?” asked a placid voice as its owner emerged from his new auto garage.

“Hurry to the 'phone for pity's sake!” and he hurried. Mary, following, all out of breath, heard this:

“Two teaspoonfuls.” Then the doctor hung up the receiver. He turned to Mary and laughed as he quoted Emerson on the mountain and the mouse.

“I chased you all over the place this afternoon, John, when the 'phone was calling you, and couldn't find you at all. Some people have days to ‘appear’ but this seems to be your day to disappear. Where were you then?”

“Out in the garage.”

“Fascinating spot! I'll know where to look next time. Now come to supper.”

CHAPTER XV

It was October – the carnival time of the year,

When on the ground red apples lieIn piles like jewels shining,And redder still on old stone wallsAre leaves of woodbine twining.When comrades seek sweet country haunts,By twos and twos together,And count like misers, hour by hour,October's bright blue weather.

On a lovely afternoon our travelers were driving leisurely along through partially cleared woodland. The doctor had proposed that they take this trip in the new automobile. But Mary had declined with great firmness.

“I will not be hurled along the road in October of all months. What fools these mortals be,” she went on. “Last year while driving slowly through the glorious Austrian Tyrol fairly holding my breath with delight, one machine after another whizzed by, the occupants fancying they were ‘doing’ the Tyrol, I dare say.”

Mary looked about her, drinking in deep draughts of the delicious air. The beautifully-tinted leaves upon every tree and bush, the blue haze in the distance and the dreamful melancholy over all, were delightful to her. The fragrance of wild grapes came to them as they emerged from the woods and Mary said, “Couldn't you wait a minute, John, until I go back and find them? I'll bring you some.”

“If you were sick and had sent for a doctor would you like to have him fool around gathering grapes and everything else on his way?”

“No, I wouldn't. I really wouldn't.”

They laughed as they sped along the open country road, skirted on either side by a rail fence. From a fence corner here and there arose tall sumac, like candelabra bearing aloft their burning tapers. The poke-weed flung out its royal purple banners while golden-rod and asters were blooming everywhere. Suddenly Mary exclaimed, “I'm going to get out of the buggy this minute.”

“What for?”

“To gather those brown bunches of hazelnuts.”

“Mary, I positively will not wait for you.”

“John, I positively don't want you to wait for me,” said Mary, putting her foot on the step, “I'm going to stay here and gather nuts till you come back. See how many there are?” and she sprang lightly to the ground.

“It will be an hour or more before I can get back. I've got to take up that pesky artery.”

“It won't seem long. You know I like to be alone.”

“Good-bye, then,” and the doctor started off.

“Wait! John,” his wife called after him. “I haven't a thing to put the nuts in, please throw me the laprobe.” The doctor crushed the robe into a sort of bundle and threw it to her.

She spread the robe upon the ground and began plucking the bunches. Her fingers flew nimbly over the bushes and soon she had a pile of the brown treasures. Dear old times came trooping back. She thought of far-off autumn days when she had taken her little wagon and gone out to the hazel bushes growing near her father's house, and filled it to the top and tramped it down and filled it yet again. Then a gray October day came back when three or four girls and boys, all busy in the bushes, talked in awed tones of the great fire – Chicago was burning up! Big, big Chicago, which they had never seen or dreamed of seeing – all because a cow kicked over a lamp.

Mary moved to another clump of bushes. As she worked she thought if she had never known the joy of gathering nuts and wild grapes and persimmons, of wandering through woods and meadows, her childhood would have lost much that is beautiful and best, and her womanhood many of its dearest recollections.

“You're the doctor's wife, ain't ye?”

Mary looked around quite startled. A tall woman in a blue calico dress and a brown gingham sunbonnet was standing there. “I didn't want to scare ye, I guess you didn't see me comin'.”

“I didn't know you were coming – yes, I am the doctor's wife.”

“We saw ye from the house and supposed he'd gone on to see old man Benning and that you had stopped to pick nuts.”

“You guessed it exactly,” said Mary with a smile.

“We live about a quarter mile back from the road so I didn't see the doctor in time to stop him.”

“Is some one sick at your house, then?”

“Well, my man ain't a doin' right, somehow. He's been ailin' for some time and his left foot and leg is a turnin' blue. I come to see if you could tell me somethin' I could do for it. I'm afraid it's mortifyin'.”

Mary's brown eyes opened wide. “Why, my dear woman, I couldn't tell you anything to do. I don't know anything at all about such things.”

“I supposed bein' a doctor's wife you'd learnt everything like that.”

“I have learned many things by being a doctor's wife, very many things, but what to do with a leg and foot that are mortifying I really could not tell you.” Mary turned her face away to hide a laugh that was getting near the surface. “I will have the doctor drive up to the house when he gets back if you wish,” she said, turning to her companion.

“Maybe that would be best. Your husband cured me once when I thought nothing would ever get me well again. I think more of him than any other man in the world.”

“Thank you. So do I.”

She started off and Mary went on gathering nuts, her face breaking into smiles at the queer errand and the restorative power imputed to herself. “If it is as serious as she thinks, all the doctors in the world can't do much for it, much less one meek and humble doctor's wife. But they could amputate, I suppose, and I'm sure I couldn't, not in a scientific way.”

Thus soliloquizing, she went from clump to clump of the low bushes till they were bereft of their fruitage. She looked down well-pleased at the robe with the nuts piled upon it. She drew the corners up and tied her bundle securely. This done she looked down the road where the doctor had disappeared. “I'll just walk on and meet him,” she thought. She went leisurely along, stopping now and then to pluck a spray of goldenrod. When she had gathered quite a bunch she looked at it closely. “You are like some people in this world – you have a pretty name and at a little distance you are pretty: but seen too close you are a disappointment, and more than that you are coarse. I don't want you,” and she flung them away. She saw dust rising far down the road and hoped it might be the doctor. Yes, it was he, and Bucephalus seemed to know that he was traveling toward home. When her husband came up and she was seated beside him, she said, “You are wanted at that little house over yonder,” and she told him what had taken place in the hazel bushes. “You're second choice though, they came for me first,” she said laughing.