Ten Mountain Men’s Baby by Nicole Casey
Ryker
In Suches, my first stop was at Union General Hospital. I expected to find a run-down, fly-infested operation—like the older residents in Massachusetts had warned me about. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised. I even wondered how spending a few days here could be considered charity work. It seemed more like a hospital I would be very lucky to get hired by.
I shared my impressions with Doctor Raskin. He laughed. “Yes, Union General is a fine hospital, but your colleagues back home weren’t exaggerating. The conditions can get pretty dire the farther you go into the mountains. There are communities there, some twenty to thirty miles away, with next to no access to care.” He winked and pointed at me. “That is until you show up.”
I had hiked all day to reach Suches only to be told that I would spend the next three days hiking around it, reaching into isolated communities too dispersed, too distrusting, too poor, or too proud, though mostly all of the above, to come into town for check-ups or for basic medicines they needed.
“They only come to us when it’s too late,” said Doctor Rankin. “And sometimes, they aren’t able to do even that. Imagine a simple cut gets infected, and the nearest doctor is twenty-some miles away. Plus, you don’t have money to pay a doctor, even if you did trust doctors. Which you don’t.”
“I see.”
“Most of what ails them gets treated with distilled liquor,” he said.
I followed him through the hospital as he passed from room to room, saying hello to the nurses, checking in on the patients, and resuming our conversation each time we stepped back into the corridor.
“Diabetes, malnutrition, alcoholism, infected sores, and abrasions—that’s what you’ll be dealing with mostly.”
I nodded though he wasn’t looking at me but peeking into the rooms along the corridor.
He stopped and looked at me. “They’ll look at you sideways, at first. Don’t be thrown by their suspicions. They’re good people. They’re just guarded, you know?”
“But they’re expecting me, aren’t they?”
“Sort of,” he said, then we entered what I presumed was his office, though it could have been a somewhat organized storage room. In Georgia, like in Massachusetts, it was often difficult to tell the difference between a doctor’s office or a make-shift storage room.
“Do you know how to read a map?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“Good.” He picked up a map from the clutter on a nearby shelf, flashed it at me, then folded it and put it into the front pocket of a camouflage backpack that had been lying against the foot of a chair. “That’s your itinerary. There are fourteen stops.”
He handed me the backpack. It was lighter than my hiking backpack, and I was thankful for that.
“Plus, you’ll need medicine, of course.” He reached to another shelf, pulled from it a tin medical kit, and handed it to me.
It was significantly heavier than it looked. I took it and let out an “ouf.”
“She gets lighter the longer you carry her,” he said.
I eyed him with a raised brow. “Is that the truth?”
He smiled, clapped his hands together, and pursed his lips into a tight smile.
“Is that it?” I asked.
He extended his hands, open with the palms up. “Unless you have any questions.”
I had a thousand. I didn’t know where to begin. “They’re expecting me, right?”
“We like to make visits once every two months. But”—he shrugged— “we’re short-staffed as it is, and volunteers are hard to come by.”
I nodded.
“It’s been a while,” he continued defeatedly. “Some may be surprised to see you.”
The other questions, I figured, could only be answered on site. That was the typical learning experience of a resident.
“We’ll meet up tomorrow morning, and you can tell me all about it?” he asked.
“How’s eight am?”
He gave me a thumb’s up.
I saluted him, pivoted, and marched out.
* * *
The map Doctor Raskin had given me was clear and precise. However, it failed to prepare me for the stunning variety of terrains I was made to cross. I’d take a relatively wide dirt path around a bend only to be confronted by a cliff of rock ten-feet tall I’d have to climb or a sloping riverbank I’d need to get on hands and knees to navigate.
The barking of dogs announced my arrival, well before I’d gotten a glimpse of the home I was heading to. I let the sound guide me to them. I arrived at a small clearing set with a dirt path leading to three wood homes distributed in a semicircle around a well. A man, perhaps in his late twenties, greeted me at the head of the path. Two dogs paced excitedly at his heel. Farther behind him, staying close to the home on my left, was a girl, probably my age, mid-twenties, and a small child clinging to her skirt. Next to the house on the right, an elderly man rocked on the porch. Two small children stood next to him, watching me approach.
“Hello,” said the man. Despite the cool weather, he wore a brown tank-top and loose-fitting pants. They looked like he’d been in them for days. Conversely, the skin that was showing, his lanky arms and stubbled face looked freshly cleaned, as if I’d caught him just coming out of the shower.
“Hello,” I said. I raised the medical kit. “I’m from Union General.”
I was shown to the porch. I was offered a seat and something to drink. The greeting was cordial, though, as I expected, I felt they were looking at me with suspicion. It could have been my nerves confronting the new experience. While I had consulted with hundreds of patients already in my residency, the difference was that they knew they were patients; they had come to me.
He told me he and his family didn’t have any ailments to speak of. He didn’t object to me having a look at the children. They were undernourished, and their teeth would not be long for the wear. But I had no medication for that except iron supplements.
When I handed him the bottle of supplements, he took it reluctantly and with a creased brow.
We had a conversation about iron: the health benefits, where it comes from, and what it can do for the body. As we talked, I sensed his suspicions ease, and I felt relatively confident that he would be giving the vitamins to his children.
“You don’t sound like you’re from Georgia,” he said.
I chuckled. “I’m from Massachusetts.”
“Massachusetts? Why’d you come all the way down here, then?”
“I was born in North Carolina,” I said. Then I shifted in my seat to get nice and comfortable because I was about to tell him a very long story.
* * *
Doctor Raskin was happy, though not surprised, to hear about the success I had, both in reaching all fourteen spots on the map and getting to examine everyone I had set out to see.
He lifted the medical kit, most of its contents gone. “It’s good news when the kit comes back empty.”
“It means people are getting the medicine they need,” I said.
He slipped the kit back onto the shelf. “Didn’t I tell you: it gets lighter the longer you carry it?”
I chuckled. “I was a fool to ever doubt you.”
I was in a hurry to get back on the trail, so I spoke fast as I filled him in on the people I had seen. I was glad that he took the cue and spoke fast himself, keeping the questions short and simple.
“I wish I could talk to you longer,” he said as he rose from his seat, “but I’ve got patients waiting.”
“Of course,” I said. I stood as well. “I’m anxious to hit the trail, anyway.”
“Hit the trail?” He cocked his head to the side and furrowed his brow.
“Yeah. I’m to be at Hiawassee tomorrow night.”
“Oh.” He looked visibly upset. He snapped his fingers. “Shucks. I got my days confused.”
“Is there a problem?”
He looked at me and shook his head. “No, it’s not a problem. It’s just that you’re going to miss her.”
“Miss her?”
He chuckled. “A journalist is coming. Not really a journalist. She’s some kind of mega-wealthy socialite.”
I cocked my head to the side.
“She’s from California, married to a politician, or something. I don’t know. She does lots of charity. Now, she’s hiking the trail, visiting hospitals and clinics along the way.”
“Interesting.”
“Yeah. She wants to interview the staff”—he motioned to me— “and the volunteers, so she can blog about them to her donors.”
“Really?”
He laughed. “Yeah. ‘Get to know the people,’ she said. Get her donors to know the people.” He rubbed his fingers together, implying money, lots of money. “Last year, she traveled the Amazon with some famous writer. Apparently raised millions for cerebral palsy.” He raised his hands in incomprehension. “Posted videos of their trip. Apparently, people donated money to follow her adventure. I don’t know.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“I don’t understand it.” He gave me an apologetic smile. “But what can I say? We need all the help we can get.”
“Well, I’m sorry that I’m going to miss her.”
“Hey”—he flashed an index finger vertical in the air and, with his other hand, searched through the clutter on his desk— “would you mind maybe writing a little paragraph or so about yourself?”
“Okay. I can do that.”
“She told me, ‘It’s the people-stories that bring in donations.’” He found a pen and a pad of paper and handed them to me. “A young resident from Massachusetts decided to leave his cushy life and trek the mountains, bringing medical care to the disadvantaged. That sounds like the sort of thing she’d be interested in.”
I raised my eyebrows, pointed the pen at him, and smiled. “And, in addition to hiking the trail, bringing medical care to the disadvantaged, he came here also to find his birth parents.”
“Is that true?”
I nodded.
He motioned to the pad I was holding. “Definitely put that in there.”
