The Burying Ground. Janet Kellough
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to get through the examinations that were looming, he began to turn to Ben for help. The older man knew nothing of medicine, of course, but seemed happy enough to use the notes Luke had taken to grill him on the indications for the use of cupping and plasters, the pros and cons of administering ergot in cases of prolonged labour, and the pharmacological properties of recipes, compounds, and formulae from the endless list of preparations commonly encountered in a modern medical practice.
It was clear that Ferguson was an educated man, but when Luke asked about this, he merely shrugged, and said that he had had “a few years of schooling, but not in anything useful.” He had a grounding in classical studies, “like all good Scots,” but beyond that he had little to say about his life before he had come to Canada and opened his store.
Luke asked no further questions, although he was curious about Ferguson’s background. The man appeared to love anything that was printed on paper. He constantly tidied the bins of maps that became disarranged when a customer shuffled through them, straightened shelves, and dusted books with a reverent care.
“Knowledge is everything,” he said one time as he rearranged a section of reference books, “and this is where it’s kept.”
Dr. Christie seemed to share Ben’s respect for the printed word, if not his liking for tidiness. The small parlour at the front of the house was filled with encyclopedias and dictionaries, compendiums of English literature and periodicals of every nature. Newspapers spilled from a table under the window and the office itself was home to a stack of leather-bound medical texts jammed, in no particular order, into a bookcase behind the desk.
Luke ran his finger along the titles. There were the usual tomes on medical chemistry, surgical techniques, and midwifery, but Christie had collected numerous other related publications as well. Randomly, he pulled out a book with handsomely marbled boards. It was The Complete Herbal and English Physician Enlarged by Nicholas Culpeper, apparently an addendum to a book called The English Physician by the same author. It was no more than a curiosity, its medical theory based on the movement of the planets, but it did have a number of handsome coloured plates that illustrated the herbs and other botanical sources that Culpeper had found useful, and which Luke recognized as the basis for the current knowledge on pharmaceuticals. He was soon absorbed in the work, fascinated by the careful drawings and acute observations — so absorbed that he jumped when the door behind him slammed open.
Dr. Christie stood in the doorway glaring at him. “For God’s sake boy, there’s been someone pounding on the door for the last five minutes. Are you deaf?”
Luke rushed to the front door and opened it. A young girl stood there, her face streaked with tears.
“Please, could you come, sir? It’s my gran. We think she’s going.”
“Of course,” Luke said. “I’ll just get my bag.”
As he returned to the office to grab his leather instrument bag, he realized that Dr. Christie was still standing at the interior doorway, and that he looked most peculiar. He had removed his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, over which he had tied a white apron of the sort that a butcher might use. Or at least the apron had once been white. The entire front of it was covered in ugly brown smears and rust-coloured stains. Again Luke was aware of a most peculiar smell emanating from the kitchen behind him.
“You’d better get in here.” Mrs. Dunphy’s voice floated out into the room.
Christie glared at Luke again, then returned to the kitchen, slamming the door behind him.
Luke followed the girl down the street. She led him across Yonge Street and past the Red Lion Tavern, where, even at this early hour of the day, three openly intoxicated men loitered in front.
She turned into one of the short streets that led toward the edge of the escarpment that marked Yorkville’s boundary. Beyond this lay the complex of ravines that scarred the lands around the Rosedale estate.
The girl turned in at a modest wooden cottage, its front dooryard neatly fenced to protect the riot of flowers that bloomed in the beds beside the plank walk. The front door led directly into a small parlour, where Luke’s patient had been installed on a daybed. Not only to facilitate her care, he figured, but also to afford her a degree of privacy in her final days. Judging from the girl’s tear-streaked face, the old woman was a beloved grandmother whose passing would be mourned.
Luke knelt beside the cot and took the woman’s hand. It was covered with dry, parchment-like skin tinged with the blue of the veins underneath. He stroked it lightly and was rewarded when the woman’s eyelids fluttered a little, although the eyes did not open.
“What’s her name?” he asked.
“Bessie.” The name startled him for a moment. Almost the same name as his mother’s, and this woman, he judged, was close to the same final circumstance — death was not far off.
A middle-aged, careworn-looking woman and a young man who appeared to be in his late teens crowded into the room.
“I’m Dr. Lewis, Dr. Christie’s partner,” Luke said in response to the question on her face.
“Thank you for coming. I’m Margaret Johnson. I hadn’t heard that there was a new doctor, but then I’ve been so busy with Ma.”
“How old is she?”
“Seventy-eight her last birthday.”
“And has she been ill for a long time?”
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Johnson said. “She has a growth in her stomach. Dr. Christie told us it was cancer.”
Luke peeled back the light blanket that covered the old woman, but he didn’t have to search long to find the problem. Her abdomen was huge, the outline of the tumour clearly visible.
“Has she been in a lot of pain?”
“She was before today. Now she seems to have sunk too low to feel anything.”
There was no mercy in doing anything to prolong this battle, Luke knew. The best he could do was to make sure she went peacefully. He turned to the family members.
“I don’t think she can last much longer,” he said. “But I don’t want to see her go in pain, even if she can’t let you know she’s feeling it. I’ll give her something, just to make sure she’s comfortable.”
“How long?” Mrs. Johnson asked.
“It’s impossible to predict,” Luke replied, “but I would be surprised if she lasts the day.”
The young girl burst into tears at this, but the daughter just nodded. “I thought as much.”
Luke pulled a bottle of commercial laudanum preparation from his bag, then hesitated a moment before he also retrieved the tiny bottle that was beside it. Pure opium extract. He would strengthen the dose to speed her along. There was no point in letting her linger.
“Could I use your kitchen for a moment?” he asked. “I need to mix this.”
The young man led Luke through the doorway and hovered nearby while he carefully added a few extra drops of opium to the laudanum bottle, pouring it over the kitchen basin in case he spilled it.
“Be a good lad and rinse the basin for me?” Luke directed, before returning to the parlour. Mrs. Johnson lifted the old woman to a sitting position and Luke spooned a little of the medicine into her mouth.
“Let me know if anything changes,” he said. “I’ll come back as soon as it does.”
Luke left them clustered around the dying woman, certain that it wouldn’t be long before he returned.
It happened even faster than he expected. Dinner was ready when he returned to the Christie house, but he had scarcely finished his custardy dessert when there was a rap on the door. It was the young man who had watched him mix the medicine he had given to the old woman.
“We think she’s gone,” he said. “She took a big deep