One Week Later

It was another lovely late spring evening and R.J. was just settling into his evening slice of apple pie and a cold glass of milk when Mrs. Burke came rushing into the saloon. 

“Oh thank the good Lord, Doctor Alcorn, there you are.” Mrs. Burke said, catching her breath and attempting to appear collected (she was a mess.)

“I need your assistance at once, will you come with me please?” R.J. could see that she had been crying and was even more slight than ever. 

Poor woman, he thought to himself. I shall have to tend to her as well.

“Lead the way, ma’am.” R.J. left his evening nosh and followed Mrs. Burke into the waiting carriage outside where Miss Cora Burke was not totally conscious and profusely sweating. 

“She passed the baby the day after we saw you…I was so grateful to God that he saw fit to release her from her imminent shame…she didn’t stop bleeding right away, I have lost children at that stage myself and knew it to be a normal occurrence. But the following day she became feverish and retreated to her bed again. She's been getting worse for the past two days, doctor. I don’t know how to help her, please, Dr. Alcorn, please help my sweet girl….” Mrs. Burke spoke in a desperate, hushed whisper. 

R.J. felt the young woman’s forehead and immediately knew she was the victim of an infection that would take her life.  I must keep my composure, he thought to himself, taking a deep breath before turning his gaze to her mother.

“It’s alright, Mrs. Burke. Let’s get to my office with all haste.” R.J. knocked twice on the top of the cab and directed the driver to his office at the other end of Main Street. 

The two were barely able to rouse Miss Burke and struggled to get her out of the cab and into Dr. Alcorn’s office, to any onlookers the sight would have been odd to say the least. 

Once in the examination room, they were able to get Cora onto the table. Her skin was waxy and covered in a cold sweat as her body fought to relieve her from the inferno the infection was forging.

“Bend her legs for me, will you - and hold them open,” R.J. instructed, Mrs. Burke did as she was bid immediately as R.J. produced a speculum from a drawer and disappeared under Miss Burke’s skirts. 

“There’s no persistent bleeding, that’s a good sign, but with this fever I suspect there is remaining fetal tissue in her uterus. I shall do my best to remove it, but I have to warn you that the sort of infection that results from such an occurrence is famously… unresolvable.” R.J. again heard himself. 

Too cold, he thought, though he felt the full terror this woman was experiencing quite acutely. 

Mrs. Burke burst into tears, “I would have brought her to you sooner sir, I just didn’t know how to do that without Mr. Burke discovering us, I had to wait until he left this evening to visit his sister. What have I done?” she sobbed. 

R.J. held a lantern as he peered into Cora’s body. “Mrs. Burke, you said the baby passed by the grace of God himself and not by any of your own intervention, is that correct?” 

“Yes, Cora came to me on Wednesday and told me that she was bleeding and could not stop it. I helped her to bed and stayed with her until it subsided, she passed a large amount of blood and other matter.” Mrs. Burke responded, suddenly quite calm. 

“I just see some tearing around the opening to her womb, ma’am,” R.J. said delicately. “It may be that she took actions without telling you, I’m sorry to say.” 

Just then Cora moaned, “Mama?”

“I’m right here, darling girl. Mama is right here.” Mrs. Burke whispered in her ear. 

“Miss Burke, did you remove the fetus from your womb with some sort of apparatus? Please, dear, you must tell me.” pleaded Dr. Alcorn. 

Cora again loses consciousness and seems to seize. 

“What’s happening?!” Mrs. Burke shrieked

“Please, madam. We must not cause alarm lest we draw attention to ourselves.” whispered Dr. Alcorn. “Please attempt to hold her steady while I take a closer look.” 

Mrs. Burke did as she was bid and Dr. Alcorn again disappeared into Cora skirts. A few seconds later he appeared with a tweezer holding an oblong black object. 

“Do you have any notion of what this might be?” R.J. asked. 

Mrs. Burke looked closely at the item. “Could it be the end from a hairpin?”

Dr. Alcorn retrieved a magnifying glass from his desk and looked harder yet, bringing the item close to the gas light. “I think you may be correct.” 

“In this case I think we can gather that your daughter aborted this fetus using a hairpin.” Dr. Alcorn stated matter of factly. “It is my belief that she not only left behind fetal tissue, but clearly the rubber hair pin cover which I imagine was covered with germs and bacteria as your daughter likely is not up to date on germ theory….” His voice trailed off as he saw Mrs. Burke’s expression turn from fear to despair. 

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Burke. But your daughter has contracted an infection from her efforts to free herself of her burden. And there is no cure for such an infection. I’m so sorry….” 

The woman began to wail a deep guttural sound R.J had. heard before. It’s a very unique tone, he’d recognize it anywhere as the sound of a mother losing her child. She was wracked with sobs as she fell to her knees and began to wind herself into a shell on the floor, pounding her head against the polished wooden floorboards in time with her keening,

“My dear lady, please stop,” R.J. begged. He lifted Mrs. Burke to a chair before returning to Cora on the table, relaxing her legs and making sure she was properly covered. 

“There, there.” R.J. did his best to soothe her grief, but what was there to do? He had to help her cover the nature of her daughter’s passing and that meant getting the girl out of his office before God took her.  “I’ll be right back, Mrs. Burke. Please spend this time with your daughter.”

R.J. exited the office through the backdoor and hurried down the sidestreet where he found a cab for hire and slipped the driver a sack of coins, “Please take me behind Burke’s Haberdashery.” 

Moments later R.J. was back inside the office, shuttling Mrs. Burke out the backdoor and into the cab as he and the driver carried Cora from the examination table, out the door behind her. 

“Delivery these ladies home and help Mrs. Burke put her daughter into bed.” R.J. instructed the driver and sent mother and daughter into the night, acutely feeling the coming pain of the former and lamenting the senseless loss of the latter. 

The next morning R.J. arrived at the undertaker early to report the sad news of Miss Cora Burke’s untimely passing from a fever and then went about his day. 

Later that Evening

Mrs. Burke returned with her daughter shortly after 11 o’clock that night. After a short examination to which Mrs. Burke was a witness, Alcorn found that Cora was past the point of no return, not much, but still too far gone to safely remove the fetus from her uterus. Far past the time that the herbs he had learned about from a local Chinese healer would do the trick.

 

“Miss Burke, I am sorry you have found yourself in this predicament. I am aware that members of my sex can be truly evil when it comes to carnal sins, telling young women whatever they think they want to hear in order to accomplish what they believe to be a coup. On behalf of my kind I apologize. I regret to tell you that you have progressed too far in the gestation of this fetus to safely terminate the pregnancy.”

 

“But doctor,” Mrs. Burke immediately protested,”How can that possibly be the case? I had heard you were able to help a young woman from the camp with her problem and surely Cora has only missed one cycle. How can that be?”  She very clearly was terrified. 

 

“I do apologize and I am sympathetic to your daughter’s plight, but I would guess that your daughter has missed at least three cycles if not four,” he turned to Cora, “Isn’t that right, Miss Burke?”

 

Cora Burke just stared at her toes as they dangled over the side of the table, her shift waving a little with the breeze created by her mother’s rapid fanning. She nodded. 

 

“I might suggest tracking down the young man responsible for your condition, Miss Burke. I trust you know something about him other than his name?” 

 

Miss Burke did not answer.

 

R.J. hoped the girl did. He had seen a great many young ladies in this condition in these first years of his medical practice. He knew the best this girl could hope for is a wedding day. And very soon. And she might want to move to another town anyway. 

 

As if she could hear R.J.’s thoughts, Mrs. Burke fell to pieces in the middle of the examination room floor, her frail body wracked with sobs as Cora Burke stared straight ahead. 

 

No tears, barely an expression at all. Her dark brown eyes suddenly closed and she said without changing her expression in the slightest: “The man responsible for this is not a man I would or could want to marry, the way I became to be in the family way had nothing to do with love or what family should be made of. It was violence, doctor. Please, sir, I beg of you - what exactly is the risk? You ask me to carry a child that was given to me by the acts of a violent man.” 

 

“My dear, I am truly sorry that I can not help you, more so now that you have revealed the author of your unfortuitous situation.” R.J. heard it only when there was no time to undo it. This was so often the case with his mouth.

 

“UNFORTUITOUS??” Mrs. Burke suddenly sprang back to life and was all business, on her feet with her chest held out as if she was ready for a fight. 

 

“I do apologize, ma’am and madame. I realize that my choice of words was clumsy at best and heartless at worst.” R.J. wasn’t the kind of man to be offended by a woman expressing her strength - and, as was mentioned, he had heard it and regretted it as he had said it. He was always willing to admit when he was wrong - how, in fact, could one be a scientist of any worth at all if one is not willing to admit one’s mistakes?

 

The women seemed satisfied with R.J. 's offering of atonement, having made the emotional transference from outrage to humility in a breath. 

 

“Thank you for seeing me, doctor.” Cora said steadily as she gathered herself to leave. 

 

“I only hope the best outcome for you and your child, Ms. Burke. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to be of assistance, anything at all.” R.J. said, dropping any pretense of Cora being a child.

 

The two women departed Doctor Alcorn’s office by the back entrance and hurried to the same cab that brought them, paid to wait as long as needed and longer.

 

But this as far as his involvement with Miss Burke would go. He must try to put her predicament out of his mind, the ability to keep his rather big heart out of things was his biggest challenge as a physician. 

 

He bid the two women goodnight, closed up his office and strolled down main street to the saloon on the other end of town for his supper and perhaps a game of cards, who knew what the night would bring? He was a bachelor for the time being. His beautiful, smart wife in St. Joseph Missouri, just months away from becoming a doctor herself. She had just departed for the fall term with their son, Argie, who would be watched by the kind woman from which Cora rented her rooms while she attended seminars. 

 

They were truly lucky, he thought to himself, for so many things, not least of which the people they came across together. They’d been married almost 7-years and he never regretted it for a moment, though many doubted the strength of their union. They had met at a teachers conference in Lewiston, Montana. Cora, just 23 years old, living with her sister in Butte and hoping to obtain a teaching position through her attendance at the conference that spring. Their meeting had been filled with the kind of love at first sight magic Cora said she had read about in dime store novels. They were married just 3-months later, a whirlwind of sapiosexual rapture. 

 

R.J. sighed to himself as he entered though the saloon's swinging doors and left the sweet spring air for the smell of smoke and humans. It would be a lonely few months without Cora and Argie, who was beginning to be such a grand, if not a slightly insane, little person. Three year old humans sure are something. Argie’s ability to reason was nowhere to be found, but his ability to charm the pants off of anyone he met was way above average, R.J. suspected. And such a handsome little chap, he mused as he took his seat at a table. 

 

The barkeep was a young German man who had recently made his way across the country from Baltimore, Christof Reinekei. A cheerful young man, always whistling a  familiar, chipper tune R.J. could never place but enjoyed nonetheless. Christof greeted R.J. with a tip of his hat and walked over to his table, 

 

“Guten abend, Doktor,” Christof placed a napkin on the doctor's lap for him, doing his best to earn the tip that were his only wages at this job, that and room and board he felt quite lucky to have. It gave him time to work his small quartz claim by day, a gamble he had invested all his Baltimore family’s savings into. 

 

“Can I get you a steak and a nice drink of something brown in color?” Christof joked, knowing the doctor was a teetotaling vegetarian. 

 

“That you can, Herr Reineke, just milk and a piece of that pie if there’s still any left.” 

 

“Coming right up, Herr Alcorn!” 

 

“Doktor!” R.J. retorted with a chuckle. 

 

Harrison, ID June 12th, 1899

150 miles north of Grangeville

Dr. R.J. Alcorn walked briskly down Main Street to the office next to Burke’s Haberdashery that he shared with Dr. Gerald Stackhouse, who specialized in diseases of the ear, nose, and throat. He enjoyed quite a brisk business attending to the miners, who inhaled all manner of dust and bugs and Lord knows what else as they dredged the mountainsides in hopes of uncovering a fortune hidden beneath layers of earth.

As for Dr. Alcorn, he specialized in broken bones, sprained joints, fevers, and ailments of a venereal nature. There was a roaring market for such things, thanks to those same camps. Dr. R.J. was more than happy to be one of the few doctors who would venture out to far-flung places like Harrison. Boomtowns like this had made for a good living and allowed him and his wife, Cora, to teach the local children in addition to offering medical services.

Unfortunately for Dr. Alcorn, his healing services were not always appreciated by the spouses of those who received them. He was often seen as a purveyor of vice by local clergy due to his ability to relieve sinners from the wrath they had surely incurred from God. A way was usually found to run him out of town, most often through a slanderous article in the local newspaper and gossip whispered in church pews—pews one never found Dr. Alcorn in. That was no help to him at all, but R.J. was a man of science and one who enjoyed the calm of a lone Sunday morning.

“Good morning, Mr. Burke,” Dr. Alcorn sang to the portly, graying man sweeping the walk in front of the haberdashery.

“Good morning to you, Dr. Alcorn,” Burke replied as Dr. Alcorn unlocked the door to a modest storefront painted with a shiny white coat that made it seem as though the filth of the outside stopped abruptly at its threshold.

Inside, Dr. Alcorn took off his hat and settled behind his desk with The Mountain Messenger. He was finishing the front page, which had been obnoxiously cluttered with advertisements intermingled with the real news, so that one wasn’t quite sure where the news of electrification ended and advertisements for electrical appliances began.

This can’t be good for the everyman’s conception of reality, Dr. Alcorn thought, just before there was a knock at the door.

He looked up to see Mrs. Burke, the wife of his neighbor in commerce, waving at him through the glass door. He motioned for her to come in.

“Lovely morning, isn’t it, Dr. Alcorn?” Mrs. Burke began, which tipped Dr. Alcorn off to the fact that she wasn’t there for some typical ailment. When a woman of Mrs. Burke’s age came to see him, it generally ended in a bottle of laudanum. There just wasn’t much else to do for women of a certain age but help them cope with the fact that they were no longer of use to society—sad as it might be. At any rate, the approach was generally direct in such cases; there was never any mention of the weather.

“You are certainly correct, ma’am. It is quite lovely. And how can I be of assistance to you?”

Dr. Alcorn wasn’t one for spending time on things he didn’t enjoy, and he didn’t enjoy small talk.

“Oh, well, I certainly didn’t want to take up any of your valuable time, Doctor,” replied Mrs. Burke with a glance at the newspaper on his desk. “I just had a question to ask of you. It’s of a very delicate nature, and I must know that I can trust you will keep my confidence about this matter.”

This can be one of only a few things:

1. This proper lady has gone so long without a bath that she’s given herself a urinary tract infection to rival the gods—unlikely, as he knew Mrs. Burke to be a clean and godly woman.
2. This proper lady’s husband had brought a disease home with him from a brothel.
3. Because this proper lady was also the mother of a proper young lady, there was the possibility that the proper young lady had found herself in a decidedly improper situation.

“You can trust me absolutely, madam—as though I were your clergyman, perhaps more,” Dr. Alcorn quipped as he walked to the door and pulled the shade. “We’ll make sure no one walks in on our conversation as an added precaution.”

He pushed the slide latch closed and gestured to Mrs. Burke to take a seat.

Mrs. Burke sat at the edge of the chair, her pocketbook held tightly in her hands.

“It’s my daughter, Dr. Alcorn,” she began.

Ah. The final of the three possibilities.

R.J. kept his gaze steady and softened his eyes. He could see the torment the poor woman was experiencing. She was slight to begin with, but it was clear she had not been eating or sleeping. Dark circles under her eyes and hollows in her usually rosy cheeks betrayed her stress.

Mrs. Burke paused, took a deep breath, and continued.

“It seems that she has found herself in the family way, and the young man responsible has disappeared from the area. Her father does not know anything of her troubles, so please, Dr. Alcorn—please keep the subject of my visit from him.”

“Again, Mrs. Burke, you can be sure that I will keep your confidence at all costs,” he replied gently. “Does Miss Burke have an idea of when this came to pass? In other words, how far along would you say your daughter is?”

“Cora told me that she missed her cycle just last week,” Mrs. Burke replied.

“Ah, Cora, you say. That’s my wife’s name as well. She’s currently away in Missouri completing her medical studies—with our three-year-old son, if you can believe it.”

He quickly realized this did nothing to comfort Mrs. Burke and returned to the matter at hand.

“Please bring her to me this evening, and I will examine her.”