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Light was filtering through
the leaves of the large old trees before it fell onto the floor and this
was what woke me. Birds were singing in a chorus. Everything from Robins,
Blue Jays, Mockingbirds, and even a Wren chortled, laughingly, a lovely
song. It was, after all, August 24, 1959, summertime. There was no
air-conditioning at the time but the heavy stone building made the room
comfortably pleasant. A bustling about of nurses and staff as they went to
their duties reminded me of when I was working in the hospital at Chilocco
Indian School. Still, there was the remembrance of the doctor's talk the
night before even though the drugs made it more like a dream than reality.
The peacefulness of this world held no evidence of the horror of the last
two days and it was as if nothing at all had happened.
“Did the doctor come in
here last night or did I just dream that?” The girl in the next bed held
my middle name, Colleen. She was of my tribe, Ponca, and I felt a kinship
to her so much so that I trusted her to be honest. Even her maiden name,
Collins, was the same as my Grandmother Bell’s.
“Yes, he did,” she replied
and then Colleen, the young woman, looked down at her hands. Somehow, the
gesture alone was telling the girl's sadness and this confirmed what was
said in the eerie darkness of the shadows of this room where everything
now was bright and pleasant.
Voiceless weeping bound my
body like the wrappings of a mummy. There was no tearing it away from a
being that was alive, yet dead to what had been the joy of youth only a
couple days ago. The wracking sobs were stifled but couldn't be stopped.
Soon it would be learned how grief can be hidden from the world but not at
this time. I was a stranger to this kind of tragedy and anything this base
only happened to animals, I believed.
Colleen must have alerted
the nurses because they were all at once beside me. One of the nurses who
was the one to keep calling for assistance from a doctor stood at my bed,
again. She was of the Otoe tribe and, maybe, a kindness given to her niece
while we were in school at Chilocco gave her the feeling for protection
toward me. No discrimination existed among the Native people. Most of them
had children of mixed blood and they accepted such things.
It was doubtful that Mother
had been called because she couldn't have arrived from Ponca City in such
a short time. The scene she walked in on was not what the woman wanted to
see. Her captain's position at Chilocco had already groomed her, many
years ago, to confront the situation, either to squelch or at least, get
to the bottom of things.
This last incident was all
Velma needed for bringing down her wrath on the young doctor's head. No
one heard what she said, or how she said it, but it must have been
vehement enough so that the young man denied he had said anything. She was
like a mother lion, no doubt, defending a cub.
Experience comes upon us
ever so slowly and even the movements of the giant sloth couldn't be
compared to how wisdom begins. This was only the start of a long walk
through unfamiliar, dark places. For every weight there is a counter
balance and this was what family proved to be. The strength, love and
encouragement of each of them acted like a rudder to guide me through the
heaviest of storms.
Rod and I were young, but I
was less of a veteran than he was. His trip through the terrors of war in
Korea as a Marine had hardened him to what was important and what wasn't.
He was steady and unbending to grief. It was his presence to give strength
and courage to what was the start of our own small family. He had come
face to face with death over and over on Korean ground in different,
difficult ways. As is the case with all veterans they wish to speak very
little about the atrocities of war. I knew Rod’s eardrums had been damaged
from his feeding shells into the big guns and the resulting blast from
that. He talked about the cold being as much an enemy as anything. The
heavy, rubber-like poncho issued so they could keep their uniforms dry was
a testament to that. Only once he spoke of the horrors of being on the
pick up duty for the dead.
His little daughter and I
were not dead. We were alive, and this must have been how he looked at it.
If the Flood's held the blood of Vikings there on the Isle of Wight off
England's coast, I knew nothing of that. All I saw was how he stepped up
with courage and unflinching loyalty to me and his injured child. Had he
been trained to master this kind of thing or was in just something in the
strength of his genetic make-up and we will have to admit to a bit of
both.
Rhonda was born in 1959 and
this was just the beginning of those who were crying and sighing for truth
in regards to blood infected with disease, syphilis being one of such.
Later the nation would become aware of another great plague and that was
A.I.D.’s transmitted by blood transfusion. So as it seems not only was
there strength in blood as spoken of in the Vikings there was also
weakness. The warnings in our own Christian-Hebrew scriptures were there
to tell about using care in handling blood. In ancient days nothing was
known about microscopes. All they had was a willingness to be obedient to
a Greater Power’s instructions.
With this in mind I had and
still have a deep respect for the doctor who stayed with me and was
obedient not only to his oath as a doctor but to the calling of a Greater
Intelligence who has, no doubt, already recorded this for his memory. |
