“According to my diploma, I am a doctor,” Blair said icily.
“I’m sure I didn’t mean anything. I was just passing the message along.” She hesitated. “Why can’t Leander go?”
Nosy woman! Blair thought. She wasn’t about to tell her Lee was on another of his mysterious missions. “Because I exhausted him,” she said, and hung up the phone with a smile. That should give them something to gossip about.
Blair tore up the stairs and minutes later she was running down the street while still pinning her hair up. By the time she got to the top of Archer Avenue, she saw the men lounging against the wagons and looking impatient.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Westfield.”
One burly man, mouth full of tobacco juice, looked her up and down for a moment, while the other men peered around the wagon frames—as if they were trying not to show interest in a freak of nature. The first man spat a big wad of juice.
“Where do you want this unloaded?”
“Inside,” she said, pointing to the warehouse.
Immediately, there were problems. She had no key, nor had she any idea where Lee kept a key to the place. The men just stood there looking at her skeptically, as if this were what they would have expected from a woman who called herself a doctor.
“It’s too bad we can’t get in,” she said sadly, “because my stepfather owns the Chandler Brewery, and he promised a barrel of beer, as thanks, to the men who helped me with the new equipment. But I guess—.”
The sound of breaking glass cut her words off.
“Sorry, ma’am,” said one of the men. “I guess I leaned against the window too hard. But it looks like maybe somebody little could get through here.”
A moment later, Blair was inside and unbolting the heavy front door for them. With the sunlight coming in, she could see the place: cobwebs hanging down, the floor littered, the ceiling with at least three leaks. “Over there,” she said absently, pointing to a corner that at least looked dry, if not clean. While the men unloaded, she walked through the one vast room and tried to imagine how it would be arranged for the clinic.
The men brought in oak tables, cabinets with little drawers, tall cabinets with glass doors, big sinks, small boxes of instruments, cases of bandages and cotton, everything for 9 fully equipped infirmary.
“Seem to be enough?”
She turned to Lee, standing there, surveying the crates and furniture.
He was watching her with eyes narrowed, a lit cigar between his lips. His clothes were dirty and he looked tired.
“More than enough,” she said, and wondered how much it had cost him. “You look exhausted. You should go home and sleep. I’m going to get some women in here to clean this place.”
With a smile, he tossed her a key. “This is to spare the rest of the windows. Come home soon,” he said with a wink and then was gone.
For a moment, Blair felt tears come to her eyes. Whatever he was doing, he was doing so he could help other people, of
that she was sure. Whatever this equipment had cost him, he was willing to do anything to pay the price.
When the men had finished unloading, they gave her a ride back to her house and she called her mother, explaining about the beer. Opal said that Mr. Gates was so pleased that Blair was at last married to a decent man that she was sure he’d give the men a barrel of beer.
After calling her mother, Blair called Houston. Houston would know whom to get to clean the warehouse. Sure enough, by ten o’clock, the place was full of women with cloths about their heads, brooms flying, huge pails of water full of big mops and scrub rags, working.
By eleven, Blair had talked to Mr. Hitchman, who’d built the Chandler house, and arranged for his two sons to start the remodelling according to Leander’s plans.
At two, Lee came back and, through the noise and dust, she told him what she’d arranged.
Protesting that she couldn’t possibly leave, she allowed him to pull her out to his carriage and drive her into town to Miss Emily’s Tea Shop.
Miss Emily took one look at Blair and sent her to the back with an order to wash all of her body that was possible because all of it was dirty. When Blair returned, Lee was waiting behind a table loaded with little chicken sandwiches and cakes iced with strawberry frosting.
Blair, ravenous, began stuffing herself and talking all at once. “…and we can use the tall cabinet, the one with the countertop, in the surgery, and I thought that big sink could go—.”
“Slow down a minute. All the work doesn’t have to be done in a day.”
“I don’t think it can be. It’s just that this town needs a place for women. Years ago, Mother took me to see the Women’s Infirmary here. Is it still as bad?”