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"Thank you," Alvin says again "I have a few dollars I’ot laid off at the Cuton, to live with her folks Had to leave everything but e could stuff in the car You’re an angel sent from heaven, Nurse"
"No, you keep the money We don’t need it We’re alel," the el! Bernice’s eyes are closed and she has the blissful expression of a person who’s just experienced an earthquake or a wildfire and come out alive
Alvin finds a tohich we put between the s I show her how to rub her uterus to be sure it stays fir the infant to the breast Then I take o back to the Pontiac to washhands ater froas station
"So," I say to Dr Blu wheel,"I delivered a baby Did you see that?" Blu down his chin I look at hiue, now a baby himself
The Doctor
"You did this on purpose, didn’t you?" I hiss atto do with your losing your h the backof the Four Leaf Clover Cafe just outside Oneida, West Virginia, and I catch a gliht brown bob, an aquiline nose, a pinched mouth, and a puckered brow Nurse Becky Myers, fallen on hard times
The doctor just stares at a spot about a foot in front of hi at all The mountains leer over us, sandstone covered with red in the cleanup
For more than seven years I worked with Dr Isaac Bluical nurse while I ran the Woinia Then, in 1930 when the bottom fell out of the econo, I followed him to Perrysville to be his office nurse in the private practice he shared with his brother for another four years
I’d always admired Bluery, ht at the bedside of a sick child, and still saw patients in the office the next eon, with gentle, competent hands
I’ll admit he wasn’t perfect He often talked like a professor, used big medical terms that the patients couldn’t understand, and he lacked social skills, but I always ss over We were a teaether, year in and year out, you foristered nurse with an advanced degree in public health, taking care of a grown man who poops his pants, can’t talk, and requires complete care just to survive Maybe, I sometimes thinkhe doesn’t want to survive
Blued down the bank of the James River and died in that auto crash, it was like so, and his life force just swirled out of him It took two days to find her body, trapped under the ice
I wasn’t a relative or even his lover, but like a good nurse, I took over his full-time care What else could I do? Watch hi it was temporary, I moved him into the spare room of my rented apartment and devoted all my time to his recoveryOnly he didn’t recover, and we lived on his savings until it ran out A year of grief later, his brother, Dr Leonard Blum, senior partner and owner of their two-person practice, finally washed his hands of hiod’s sake, Isaac," Leonard yelled, the last ti tocorpse and starve if you want to, but I can’t carry the practice alone I’ in another physician" He slaht Isaac ho him for four weeks, the neuro men reco current through his brain and hope the pain would jolt hiy, but I drew the line at that (If Bluet the blame)