my brother Jemmy. Valancy’s his wife.”
“This is Mr. and Mrs. Diemus,” I said. “And Mr. and Mrs. Peters, Abie’s parents. It’s Abie, you know. My second grade.” I was suddenly overwhelmed by how long ago and far away school felt. How far I’d gone from my accustomed pattern!
“What shall we do about the doctor?” I asked. “Will he have to know?”
“Yes,” said Valancy. “We can help him but we can’t do the actual work. Can we trust him?”
I hesitated, remembering the few scanty glimpses I’d had of him. “I-” I began.
“Pardon me,” Karen said. “I wanted to save time. I went in to you. We know now what you know of him. We’ll trust Dr. Curtis.”
I felt an eerie creeping up my spine. To have my thoughts taken so casually! Even to the doctor’s name!
Bethie stirred restlessly and looked at Valancy. “He’ll be in convulsions soon. We’d better hurry.”
“You’re sure you have the knowledge?” Valancy asked.
“Yes,” Bethie murmured. “If I can make the doctor see-if he’s willing to follow.”
“Follow what?”
The heavy tones of the doctor’s voice startled us all as he stepped out on the porch.
I stood aghast at the impossibility of the task ahead oL us and looked at Karen and Valancy to see how they would make the doctor understand. They said nothing. They just looked at him. There was a breathless pause. The doctor’s startled face caught the glint oL light from the open door as he turned to Valancy. He rubbed his hand across his face in bewilderment and, after a moment, turned to me.
“Do you hear her?”
“No,” I admitted. “She isn’t talking to me.”
“Do you know these people?”
“Oh, yes!” I cried, wishing passionately it were true. “Oh, yes!’”
“And believe them?”
“Implicitly.”
“But she says that Bethie-who’s Bethie?” He glanced around.
“She is,” Karen said, nodding at Bethie.
“She is?” Dr. Curtis looked intently at the shy lovely face. He shook his head wonderingly and turned back to me.
“Anyway this one, Valancy, says Bethie can sense every condition in the child’s body and that she will be able to tell all the injuries, their location and extent without X rays! Without equipment!”
“Yes,” I said. “If they say so.”
“You would be willing to risk a child’s life-?”
“Yes. They know. They really do.” And I swallowed hard to keep down the fist of doubt that clenched in my chest.
“You believe they can see through flesh and bone?”
“Maybe not see,” I said, wondering at my own words. “But know with a knowledge that is sure and complete.” I glanced, startled, at Karen. Her nod was very small but it told me where my words came from.
“Are you willing to trust these people?” The doctor turned to Abie’s parents.
“They’re our People,” Mr. Peters said with quiet pride.
“I’d operate on him myself with a pickax if they said so.”
“Of all the screwball deals-!” The doctor’s hand rubbed across his face again. “I know I needed this vacation, but this is ridiculous!”
We all listened to the silence of the night and-at least I-to the drumming of anxious pulses until Dr. Curtis sighed heavily.
“Okay, Valancy. I don’t believe a word of it. At least I wouldn’t if I were in my right mind, but you’ve got the terminology down pat as if you knew something-Well, I’ll do it. It’s either that or let him die. And God have mercy on our souls!”
I couldn’t bear the thought of shutting myself in with my own dark fears, so I walked back toward the school, hugging myself in my inadequate coat against the sudden sharp chill of the night. I wandered down to the grove, praying wordlessly, and on up to the school. But I couldn’t go in. I shuddered away from the blank glint of the windows and turned back to the grove. There wasn’t any more time or direction or light or anything familiar, only a confused cloud of anxiety and a final icy weariness that drove me back to Abie’s house.
I stumbled into the kitchen, my stiff hands fumbling at the doorknob. I huddled in a chair, gratefully leaning over the hot wood stove that flicked the semidarkness of the big homey room with warm red light, trying to coax some feeling back into my fingers.
I drowsed as the warmth began to penetrate, and then the door was flung open and slammed shut. The doctor leaned back against it, his hand still clutching the knob.
“Do you know what they did?” he cried, not so much to me as to himself. “What they made me do? Oh, Lord!” He staggered over to the stove, stumbling over my feet. He collapsed by my chair, rocking his head between his hands. “They made me operate on his brain! Repair it. Trace circuits and rebuild them. You can’t do that! It can’t be done! Brain cells damaged can’t be repaired. No one can restore circuits that are destroyed! It can’t be done. But I did it! I did it!”
