The Doctor's Mission

Hannah Jansen was as plump and well-rounded as her husband was spare. Mary resisted the urge to check her ribs when the apple-cheeked matron stepped back. “I’m Dr. O’Hara. But you may call me Mary.” She telegraphed the stuffy Pastor Mayweather a look over Hannah’s shoulder that she hoped said, “And you may not.”

“Hannah, this is my friend and travel companion, Mrs. Clara Smith.”

Clara stepped toward them and smiled. “We introduced ourselves while you were meeting Pastor Mayweather, Dr. Mary.”

“Yes,” Hannah said. “Dr. Mary, this is my husband, Karl.” She pointed to the tall gentleman who had helped Clara from her hammock chair.

Karl stepped up and took one of her hands between his bony pair and pressed gently. His eyes twinkled with good humor that carried in his voice. “We are so pleased to have you, Dr. Mary. I can’t tell you how happy we are to finally be assigned a physician in our area.”

“Why thank you, Pastor Jansen. It’s very polite of you to say so.” Mary avoided looking at William. “Most men are less accepting of a female doctor.”

“We just didn’t expect such a beautiful young woman.” Karl chuckled and offered Mary his arm. “Let me show you and Mrs. Smith to our home. Someone will bring your bags in a moment.”

“Dr. O’Hara?”

Mary swung around and forced a civil smile in spite of William Mayweather’s serious countenance. “Yes?”

“Please don’t unpack more than the essentials. I plan on sending you back when the porters are ready to return. Or, if the Jansens don’t mind, you can wait here for a more suitable posting at one of the safer coastal stations. While I’m sure your skills are more than adequate, regrettably I cannot take you and your companion into the interior with me.”

Shock at his highhanded assumption froze Mary’s tongue into silence. Silence he must have taken for acceptance as he turned and walked away. The nerve of the man. Drop his little piece of emotional ordnance and walk off before the explosion hit. Good thing she didn’t intend to answer to him in this decision.

Disappointment laid itself heavily on his heart as William walked away from the two workers who should have been his entry back to Nynabo. With his back to the sun’s glare, despair managed to cloud his vision. He’d prayed about the workers God would have assigned to Nynabo. But where was God in this obvious mistake? What reason could He have to delay William’s return to Nynabo? Was this some sort of test or temptation? He wouldn’t have believed it, but Dr. O’Hara, with her long, red locks and smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, was even more beautiful than his beloved Alice.

William stopped short at the base of the porch steps. Where did those traitorous observations come from? He ran a hand through his unruly black mane and rebuked himself. Widowed only a year and reacting to a pretty face. It wouldn’t do.

He took the porch steps two at a time and entered the relative cool of the mission house. If he was so easily noticing this woman’s beauty, he would have to flee temptation’s possibilities. If it wasn’t inhumane to the porters, he would’ve ordered them to simply turn around and start back. Even if he could have done so, Hannah and Karl would have none of it. Basic hospitality dictated that the women be fed and rested along with their carriers.

He understood Hannah welcoming another woman with open arms, but he’d been shocked when Karl reacted kindly, as if not seeing the obvious problems. The fatherly man had heard William’s heart many times on the subject since he’d returned from his stateside leave. Well, he would have a man-to-man talk with Karl later, and then William would make sure that both women went on their way back the moment the porters were rested.

A lilting laugh flowed through the open windows. The petite doctor no doubt. The sound stirred the buried pain of the lost laughter of another precious woman, one he’d buried at Nynabo. He had no intentions of burying another woman there. The jungle’s interior was just not the place for a delicate female.

Oh, Mary O’Hara had pluck. He’d give her that. But she also had no true understanding of the dangers of practicing medicine among hostile natives, most of whom had never seen a white person of either gender before. This time he’d make sure a member of the fairer sex didn’t die on his watch. The sooner she was sent packing toward the safer coastal regions the better. Even if she stayed here at Newaka, it would be substantially safer than Nynabo.

William made a quick decision. He would spend as little time as possible in her company. It would alleviate some of the guilt he would inevitably feel at crushing her dreams of working in the interior. With that thought in mind, he headed through the kitchen, out the back door and around to the boys’ dormitory. There would be enough work there to legitimately occupy him until the women were settled in for the night.

Later, he could talk to Karl and make arrangements. The Mission Board’s policy on malaria would force him to stay longer here at Newaka until replacements could come or William contracted his first bout of the inevitable disease. There was enough work here and he enjoyed the Jansens’ company. Surely this was all in God’s ultimate plan.

He rounded the corner to the boys’ cottage at the same time the door flew open, disgorging seven chattering little brown bodies in their khaki drawstring pants, minus the white shirts they’d worn in class. As if all one confused sculpture, they froze silently in place when they saw him. Seven sets of eyes flitted their gazes between him and each other, finally coming to rest on the tallest boy, Sabo. The designated speaker of the pack swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and straightened his bony spine before asking, “Nana Pastor?” Sabo managed the honorific title and paused before blurting his question. “Is it true more white mammies have come and one is a medicine woman?”

All eyes turned to him for an answer. William bit back a growl and mentally chided himself for not realizing this would of course be big news for the children. He’d come to escape the frying pan and walked straight into the proverbial fire. He chose his next words carefully, well aware that the boys were from a world that saw women as property. None of these children had ever seen a white woman before Hannah Jansen, a married woman in the company of her husband.

“Yes, it is true that we have two new guests and one is a doctor.”

Seven voices clamored with questions. He put up his hand and waited to be heard. As they quieted down, the smallest one braved a question. “Are her conjures strong?”

It was William’s turn to freeze like a statue. It was so easy to forget that even though the boys had been baptized, they still struggled between beliefs from two vastly different spiritual worlds. Their education wasn’t such yet that they would see what Dr. O’Hara did as science and not magic. A male doctor wouldn’t have been such an event for the boys. Medicine could have been explained rationally. Her presence was already causing trouble.

Trouble he had to straighten out now.

“Boys, let’s go back inside and talk.”

In unison, seven little faces frowned their distress, realizing they were losing their chance to go see the new arrivals. Before any could protest, William put his body between them and their intended route of escape and waited till they turned and shuffled barefoot back into the cottage. He closed the door behind him and prayed that God would give him the words to explain the difference between their medicine men’s fetish bags of charms and a female doctor who practiced science. But more important, how faith in God was stronger than what their medicine men offered.

Mary pushed her chair away from the dinner table. “Oh my, Hannah. I haven’t eaten this well since before I left home two years ago. Fresh fruit is such a luxury.”

Clara nodded vigorously, sending her double chin to jiggling though she was still chewing a mouthful of bread.

Hannah responded. “Most of the fruit grows naturally here without planting. You’ll find it the same where you’re headed.”

Karl’s thick brows knit together. “Two years. I knew the Kaiser disrupted ocean travel, but who’d have thought it would take that long to make all the connections to cross. It’s a good thing the Allies finally put him in his place.”

Clara spoke up. “Well, it was the Kaiser, but not the way you think.”

Mary chided nicely, “Hannah and Karl don’t need to hear our war stories.”

Karl smiled. “We don’t get much news about the rest of the world here. So we’d love to hear any stories from the outside.”

Before Mary could think of another way to change the subject, Clara launched into her tale. Normally she was such a quiet woman. Why did she have to become loquacious on the one subject Mary preferred to avoid? Even though the armistice was signed, the Great War was still a big topic. She just preferred not to talk about her part in it, though avoiding the topic hadn’t stopped the unmerciful memories.

“Dr. Mary and I met at Argonne. We both worked for the Red Cross at the field hospital.”

Hannah’s hand froze over the plate she was about to pick up. “You were at the battle they called the Big Show?” Her fingers fluttered over her heart. “Even here we’ve heard about that battle. How horrible for you.”

Mary put on a professional mask as best she could while Clara nodded and said, “It was truly. If Hades exists anywhere on earth, it would have to have been there at Argonne Forest. So many young boys lost tragically, brutally.” Tears brimmed in Clara’s eyes. “Why Dr. Mary here… .”

The chair legs screeched against the floor when Mary abruptly stood. “Clara. I don’t think we need to burden the Jansens with those horrors. I’m sure their imagination will suffice.” The last thing she wanted dredged up was the death of her brother. That wound was too raw to touch. Even now pain stabbed through her chest as she tried to shut out her memories—that final glimpse of him alive, bloody and barely breathing. Would she ever be free of that horrible image?

She caught the questioning look on Karl’s face. Those eyes saw too much. Before he could ask any questions, she turned to Hannah and asked, “May I lend you a hand with the dishes? I’m not used to being idle while others are working.”

“You’ll both be busy soon enough once you get to Nynabo. Tonight you’re our guests. Next time you come, I’ll put you right to work.”

“If Pastor Mayweather has his way, there won’t be any Nynabo in our futures. And certainly not a next time here.”

Hannah laughed as she continued her tasks. “Karl will set him straight on that. Won’t you, dear?”

Karl stood and pushed his chair under the table. “I’ll try, but it would be better if he realized the severity of the situation for himself, Hannah.”

Mary seized on what sounded like a life preserver. “The severity of what, Pastor?”

“Well, if he refuses to work with you ladies, he won’t be able to reestablish Nynabo for quite some time. When you consider how possessive the jungle is, any more significant delays risk the station not being restorable. He might have to start from scratch once the white ants get finished with an unoccupied compound.”

Clara asked, “The white ants?”

“African termites, dear. The natives call them bugabugs,” Hannah answered.

Mary’s curiosity overruled her good manners. “What’s stopping him from going on without us?”

“The malaria policy.” Hannah tossed the answer back over her shoulder on her way to the kitchen.