Dark as the Night

11

As promised, Odessa remembered her birthday before Wednesday.  She had been harvesting herbs from the little garden behind the medical center when she heard the bell outside the front office, which was only used by patients and deliveries, ding. She walked to the entrance and was greeted by a pretty, but currently frantic woman in her early twenties, holding the hand of a very plump little boy. The woman smiled gratefully. "Hi! I'm Linda Adams. Are you the new assistant healer I've been hearing about?" She had a deep southern twang.

Odessa bowed and smiled at the young woman. "Yes! I'm Odessa. I'm not officially the assistant until tomorrow and Leila is out right now, so would you like me to take a message for when she gets back?"

Linda's face fell. "My son is sick, so I don't really want to wait until tomorrow..." she trailed off then bit her lip as she looked around nervously. "Are you sure you can't see him yourself? I mean, one day isn't going to make you more able to handle this, is it?" She turned her pleading eyes to Odessa.

Odessa looked at the little boy in front of her. He looked tired and his pudgy little cheeks and neck were tinged with red. He might have a fever and making him walk home and back the next day would probably be a bad idea. She turned back to his mother, whose anxious fidgeting was giving away just how concerned she was for her son. She decided that she couldn't make them wait.

"Alright, come on back," she said and led them down the hall to the first examination room, and sat the boy down on the bed. She looked at him hard, taking in all the visible facts. He was young, possibly in kindergarten, just past chubby, and other than his fevered rosy cheeks, he was pallid. His movements were very sluggish and he seemed just generally ill. She looked up at his mother. "What are his symptoms, Ms. Adams, and when did they start?"

His mother exhaled. "Please, call me Linda. As you can see, he's pale and he's been very tired lately, and not really wanting to eat much the last couple days. Yesterday he started getting red spots on his back and stomach." Odessa lifted the boy's shirt to examine the rash. Her eyes widened. It can't be...

She put his shirt down and looked into the boy's glassy eyes. "What's your name?" she asked him softly. He looked up at her.

"Byron."

She smiled. "How old are you, Byron?"

He grinned. "6." Odessa noticed that his gums looked a little swollen and red. She sighed inwardly.

"Let me get his medical records," she said, turning to Linda. "I'll be right back." She smiled again at Byron then left to retrieve the tablet computer used exclusively for medical records that Leila kept in the office. She found the file labeled 'Adams, Byron' and opened it, scanning the contents. "I see here that you joined the Camp a year ago. Do you mind my asking the circumstances? Having some background into your situation might help me understand what led to him getting sick." As she waited for Linda's reply, she opened a drawer next to a sink and pulled out a thermometer.

Linda fidgeted, clearly worried but unsure what to do in this sort of situation. She apparently didn't have a lot of experience dealing with a sick child. Odessa watched her as she ran the thermometer over Byron's forehead and recorded the temperature on the tablet. He did indeed have a fever.

Linda sat down on the chair next to the examination bed, took a breath, and finally began, "I had Byron when I was 16. I wasn't married to his father, who disappeared as soon as he learned I was pregnant. Byron and I lived with my mother, who wasn't exactly thrilled about my having had a child out of wedlock, but she helped take care of him while I finished high school and got a job. She's the one who handled most of the child rearing those first few years.

"But she died two years ago of a brain aneurism and I couldn't afford the mortgage on my own. And Texas isn't exactly a friendly place for young, single mothers. So many people down there are stuck in their moral superiority and I had trouble keeping a job that would support us and pay for a babysitter. There were programs to help young mothers but there was still so much stigma around it and a lot of the so-called 'aid' just made me feel worthless.

"My mother wasn't the nicest lady, but it was still hard to lose her, and the stress of that on top of raising Byron alone was a lot to handle." Her voice cracked and she took another deep breath, exhaling slowly. "I have an aunt that lives in Helena so we moved up here to live with her, just until I could get on my feet. But when we got here, she was even meaner and more religious than my mama and she wouldn't have anything to do with us. I'd thought it would be easier to get work out here, but it seems compassion is in short supply, even in Montana."

Her face took on a hard look as she continued, "I was struggling to keep us fed and for a while we were living out of my car. I was at such a loss for what to do when I met someone at a women's shelter who told me about Camp McKenna and gave me directions and gas money to get out here. She said the people here would be more welcoming and I might be able to find that second start I needed so badly. So we came, and she was right. Everyone here has been so kind to us."

While Linda was speaking, Odessa weighed Byron, examined his movements, and felt for swelling in his arms and legs. As she listened to Linda's story, she felt a burning lump of anger grow in her stomach at everything this young woman and her son had endured. Odessa hugged her. "I'm so very sorry you went through such an ordeal. What have things been like since you got to Camp?"

Linda's face brightened. "Life is so much better for us. I've always loved clothes and I'm good at sewing, so I managed to get a job with the seamstress. I work while Byron is in school, and make enough money to keep him clothed and buy treats for him.  I hate how he had been treated like an entity that shouldn't have existed, so I make sure he never has to go through any of that now. I'm able to give him anything he wants, and that makes me feel so happy."

Odessa inhaled deeply. Poor Linda had been through a lot of heartache and seemed to have had no real guidance in raising a child, so her logic seemed perfectly reasonable to her. How to break the news that she was literally loving her son to death?

"When did Byron become overweight?" she asked.

Linda seemed startled. "After we moved here. He was very underweight at first because I was struggling to feed him before we came here. He was malnourished. We both were. I thought it was probably like how anorexics suddenly gain a lot of weight after they start eating again, but he'll grow into it, right? I mean, I know I probably shouldn't give him dessert after every meal, but I just feel like he's been through so much and if such a simple thing can make him so happy, then it's hard not to."

Odessa shook her head. "Yes and no. The body does go into a sort of 'starvation mode' when it doesn't get enough nourishment, slowing the metabolism, and this causes people to gain a burst of weight when they suddenly start getting enough to eat. But the weight gain doesn't continue at such a fast rate. He's gaining weight faster than he's growing, so there is no way he can 'grow into it.' If he doesn't start losing weight, he's going to end up with a lot of health problems."

She stroked Byron's hair as she took in Linda's shocked eyes and trembling lip. "You also need to realize that he's not the one who's been through a lot, you are. You're the one who was made to feel worthless for a situation you were just trying to make the best of. So you ease those feelings of guilt by spoiling him. Do you understand what I'm saying? You're trying to make up for something that wasn't your fault in the first place, and that behavior is making him sick."

Linda gasped and began crying. Odessa knelt down in front of her and offered her a box of tissues. "His ailment right now is easily treatable and reversible. But I am telling you this because if you don't change his eating habits, he's going to get something that cannot be reversed."

Linda took the box, wiped her eyes, and looked at her. "What does he have right now?"

"Scurvy," Odessa said on a sigh.