Topic: Circle Game

Cath · Date: 2013-01-27 14:59 EST

This is one of the first memories of Robert Cath:

He's sitting, propped up against the wall, on the yellow slab of wood that served as a kitchen table for most of his childhood, watching his mother bustle in the kitchen. There are various items hanging from strings tied up on the ceiling: mostly herbs, but also the occasional colored piece of paper or pretty bit of glass put up there to catch the eye of a baby, and some that are just designed to make nice noises when they clink together. The window is open; gusts of wind every once in a while sending everything swirling around and into each other. The house smells, as always, so strongly of cabbage that the breeze from outside tastes sweet and grassy, even to the baby breathing it.

She's moving as fast and as wild as anything on the ceiling; directed, but not by anything Robert can figure out. To him, she's swirling with the wind just like everything else. He's been placed up here, out of the way, out of trouble. To hang at her skirts now, while she's moving like this, is to risk getting accidentally stepped on, as he and she have already learned quite well to their detriment. But it's okay; there's plenty to watch in fascination.

His attention's brought back to his mother when she starts singing. She, just as she almost always did for years before and since, has her sleeves rolled up as high as they can go and her curly dark hair pinned out of her way at the back of her neck. He doesn't know the difference between Russian and English yet, and he won't until he gets to school and he's taught not to speak half the words he knows for fear of a welt on the back of his hand, he just knows that the song is made up of mommy words instead of daddy words. And that it makes him think of bedtime. Even with her singing loudly at the top of her lungs, dancing as she moves round the kitchen, whirling as the wind picks up.

She ends the song with a last twirl in the center of the kitchen, with a bright laugh, head thrown back, and then seems to fade a bit as she steps back to the stove to stir the food in the pot.

Then, he realizes he's being studied, too.

And, next thing he knows, she's singing another loud, bright song and he's going whirling across the kitchen in her arms.

Cath · Date: 2013-01-27 15:03 EST

(1909)

Theoretically, he knew this was going to happen. You spend eight years at school to be a doctor, set out your shingle, and there's certain things you take for given. Not to mention growing up under the thumb of a doctor himself. So, he had more than a vague idea of how this was going to happen.

Not that it prepared him for a damn bit of anything.

Certainly not for a young gentleman who could barely speak any English pounding on his door in the middle of the night, twisting his cap in his hands, out of his mind with worry.

Robert Cath, 24, newly graduated from Yale and fresh into practice, went from bleary to wide awake with his heart in his throat in three minutes flat. He got his coat, got his bag, and left with the man. Later on, he'd discover shakily over a cup of tea that he forgot to lock his door or extinguish the lights.

* * *

There was a young woman on the bed, heavily pregnant and very sweaty. Not a surprise, given her husband's rambling on the way there. What was a surprise was just how young and tired looking she was. Even more tired than the midwife standing next to her bed.

It was just the three of them, her, the midwife, and Cath; her husband was out pacing a hole in the sitting room carpet. Cath dismissed him from his mind with some difficulty, and put his mind to washing up and questioning the midwife instead--who, fortunately, spoke Russian better than she did English.

Breech, definitely breech, and almost to dilation. And only eight and a half months along, it would seem. Although the parents had only been married for six, or so she shared wryly. The trick was going to be getting the baby out safely, with as little loss of air as possible.

He grabbed everything he was going to need out of his bag and placed them on a fresh towel by the nightstand. The forceps slipped out of his hands and clattered down, startling everyone in the room, including him. He apologized and kept going, before placing his bag itself on an out of the way chair.

He came around the side of the bed and knelt down in front of the mother, and came face-to-face with a dilated vagina. The midwife shouted at her to push one more time from her post at the head of the bed, and a foot popped out.

* * *

Cath would later be amazed at how much he didn't panic. At how easy it was, after the first hour or so, to ignore the pacing in the front room. At how his focus narrowed completely to the woman, the baby, and occasionally the midwife handing him instruments and hesitantly offering advice. At how he knew at the back of his mind how likely it was that the baby wouldn't survive, but didn't let it overwhelm him completely. At how steady his hands were when he had to help turn the baby. At how his training came right back to him when it happened again. At how he didn't freeze when it came time to use the forceps, even when the back of his brain once again told him how careful he had to be not to hurt mother and child. Just a bit of hesitation, then he carefully placed them around the baby's head and maneuvered him out. It wasn't perfect, wasn't practiced a thousand times over, but it was enough to get him into this world alive.

And then, somehow, impossibly, it was time for him to cut the umbilical cord. And there he was, early morning light filtering through the curtains, standing there in the middle of the room, in his pajamas, covered in blood, sweat, and placental fluids, holding a newborn baby.

The midwife handed him a blanket to swaddle him in and clean him off some, and Cath just grinned at her while he took it, on top of the world. Sure, the father helped create the tiny little boy, the mother did most of the work...but damn, he certainly had his own part in bringing him into the world.

It was only a minute before he had to hand the baby off again, and help clean up the placenta as best he can, and go out and inform the new father, which was its own special pleasure. The man's face lit right up like a campfire and he wrung the shaky and tired doctor's hand in sheer joy.

He took his time finishing up; partly because of exhaustion, mostly because he lingered to watch the new, happy family. It didn't take long for the exhausted mother to fall asleep. The father kept hold of the baby as long as he could. The midwife was apparently a friend of the family and was staying. So eventually he left, by virtue of the fact that he was no longer needed and just getting in the way. He stopped on the front stoop to light a cigarette, and then began the long, uneventful walk home.

Cath · Date: 2013-03-11 10:10 EST

I think I must've been nine or ten when my father started taking me along on house calls. My brothers, by then, were either too old and had their own lives and their own plans, or much too young to be separated from our mother, let alone hold his bag for him. And, in his words, at least I "had enough brains to tell a scalpel from a copper penny." Besides, I tended to be quiet, and that, for once, turned out to be what I think he wanted from me.

So I walked alongside him. And I held his doctor's bag. And I handed him a scalpel when he asked for it, or his pills, or his stethoscope. And I watched, and I listened, and sometimes he'd explain to me what he was doing, or I'd chatter at the patient to distract them from it.

I was ten years old the first time I saw someone die.

My father made me tie a cloth around my face when we entered. I don't know if he was feeling protective of me personally, or if it was something he'd have had any assistant do in that particular case. He didn't wear one himself and wouldn't tell me why, just to mind my own beeswax.

I remember him trying to give the old man an ice bath. I assumed fever at the time, and I never had cause to doubt it afterwards. I remember him giving medicine; bleeding the man in desperation (you never forget the sight of that once you see it, even if it's fortunately long fallen out of fashion). Even I could tell he wasn't doing well. Gasping and wheezing, achingly so, and I just wished he would be able to stop.

And then, well, he did.

I thought it was a good thing at first. I thought he was easing; I thought he was getting better. I even said so. "Look, he's stopped wheezing! You did it!" Things like that. Happily congratulating my father on his supposed triumph, light shining in my eyes.

Which is when he walked out without another word. I will never blame him for that. But he left me alone with the body.

It took a long minute for it to dawn on me that something was wrong. It felt like a long eternity, standing there, watching, waiting, pleading for him to take in another breath; to move, to twitch, to do something other than be an empty husk. The horror felt like it started as a crawling sensation in my palms that slowly made its way to the top of my head, where it became pure, irrational panic. I still have no idea how long he was gone. Logically, it can't have been more than a minute or two. Still felt like longer. All I know is that when he made to come back in, I was bursting past the other way.

There was a stream a little ways away, and he caught up with me there. I don't remember what I was doing. But he came up to me, dropped to his knees, and pulled my hands away from my face; yelling at me for trying to take my mask off without washing my hands first. And then somehow I ended up in his arms sobbing while he held me tight.

The way home was strained, but we both put a brave face on it.

The dreams lasted a lot longer. Horrifying things. Dreams where I reached out to touch him and his skin fell away in huge clumps. Dreams that were perfectly normal, except where I'd turn around and he'd be standing there, hollow-eyed. Other dreams where I'd be on that bed instead of him. Or my mother, or my baby brother, or my dog. Dreams where somehow I'd ended up in Heaven, but my family was left behind on earth and all I wanted to do was to tell Ma something important. Nightmares, all of them; except for the last, which simply broke my heart every time I had it. But they faded in time; leaving room for other things to come. Every once in a while I'll still get one. I can no longer remember his face--except for in those dreams, where it comes back to me as clear as a bell.

For the next six months to a year, my father went on his house calls alone, or with the cajoled company of one of my brothers. But, in the end, I remember him sitting down next to me on the stoop, looking me over, and then asking me if I'd like to come with him. (Before that, he'd never asked. Just told, and occasionally threatened.) I looked back at him, thought about it, said "Okay!" and jumped up to get ready. And then he clapped me hard on the shoulder as I turned away to go.

And so, here I am. Sitting in my lovely little house, having turned my face away from medicine once again. It feels permanent this time, but so did it then. Only time will tell, I suppose. And until then, the chickens need tending to, the roof needs mending, and the scope of the projects I could tackle today seems never ending. But, we'll see.