When Dodd first joined Harvey Bloom in practice, Carson City was growing extremely fast. The medical practice was emotionally and physically exhausting. In spite of the pressure, an atmosphere that could have generated friction, Harvey Bloom and Dodd became more than partners. They became fast friends. Dodd concerned himself with Harvey’s loneliness but he also saw in him remnants of a pain that only he and his God could relieve. If Harvey wanted to talk, Dodd was quick to listen but Dodd did not pry.
Even though Harvey also had a room at Mrs. Looney’s, he could not bring himself to pay Reva any attention. He did not want to hurt the child so he asked Mrs. Looney to explain to Reva the distance he kept. The girl understood. Rather than feeling hurt or rejected by Harvey’s lack of attention, she felt sorry for him. Although she had never known her parents—her mother was a whore who delivered her to the orphanage as soon as she was born—she had lived all her life with a sense of loss. She knew what Harvey was feeling, and she knew not to do anything to intensify that feeling.
Just a month after he had moved into Mrs. Looney’s boarding house, however, Dodd did find himself prying into Harvey’s feelings. Harvey generally carried his painful memories well but one evening he came home extremely distraught. He did not, as he usually did, come to the sitting room and exchange the experiences of the day with Dodd. He went directly to his room and did not come down for supper. Dodd was called out that evening and when he came home, Mrs. Looney told him that Harvey had still not left his room.
Dodd knocked. When Dodd entered the room, Harvey burst into tears. He embraced Dodd and sobbed violently for several minutes. Finally, he was able to compose himself enough to say, “I’m a doctor, Dodd. I should be able to deal with death without falling apart. But Ivan Prater died today. He had seven children, Dodd. Seven Children! Maribelle, the oldest is only twelve. He was thirty-two years old.
“I’m a doctor, Dodd, and I don’t even know what took him. I could not get the fever down. I couldn’t even find out what was causing it.” Harvey again dissolved into sobs.
Dodd was shocked at the news. He, too, had tried to find the cause of Ivan’s illness. Ivan had been such a strong, robust man and in only two months, for no explainable reason, he had withered away and burned up with a fever that finally had boiled away his life. Dodd could, to some extent, share Harvey’s feeling. At times like this, he hated that he knew anything about medicine because he never seemed to know enough.
But Dodd could not completely share Harvey’s anguish. Harvey kept talking about the shock and horror and complete desperation he saw in the children’s faces. He mentioned Hannah’s pain, but it was the suffering of the children that was mangling his soul.
Harvey was not good medically with children. Dodd was sure that in each suffering child he still saw Marie, Alice and Little Harvey. Dodd did most of the pediatric work for their practice.
Unless specifically invited, Harvey seldom went to the funeral of a patient he had lost but he went to this one. Because of Harvey’s state of mind, Dodd went with him. Dodd, too, was haunted by the hopeless, empty terror on the faces of those three little girls and four little boys. They had loved their daddy. He had always been there. The older ones knew the relationship between his leaving home each morning and their having something to eat and a place to live. They had never before had to worry about food or shelter and they didn’t know how to do it. They were emotionally numb, not yet aware how real that terror in their faces would become. The sight of them broke Dodd’s heart but he was afraid it was going to destroy Harvey’s mind.
For several weeks, it seemed to Dodd, Harvey took personal responsibility for Ivan’s death. Dodd knew that there was no danger of Harvey reverting to the drunkenness of his former despair but Dodd feared that he would fall into a depression of compassion.
Harvey could not let go. Perhaps he saw in living this suffering with the Prater family a way to let go of his own. He made at least weekly visits to the Prater home. He forced himself to comfort and cuddle the children. He wanted to provide a comforting presence, a shoulder to cry on, so to speak, for Hannah, but she seemed almost to resent his presence. At first she refused, but eventually she had to take money from him so that she could feed her children. She had no relatives in the area and there was no work, not even washing to take in. Ivan had had a good job at the mine. The Praters were better off than any of their neighbors. Hannah Prater knew of no one who had more money than was needed simply to keep their family alive. None had money to pay her to do their washing.
At first his visits precipitated new bouts of depression in Harvey. Each time he left the Prater house he vowed that he would never return. He would cry himself to sleep or he would not sleep, knowing the fear of the Prater children and knowing that the fear and pain of his own three babies had been far greater. In Maribelle, the same age Marie would have been were she living, he saw pain that both grieved and angered him. No child should have to suffer and fear, but Maribelle would survive. Marie was dead and she had died a horrible, painful death. Yes, Harvey vowed each time never to go back, but he always did.
Harvey was not aware of the subtle metamorphosis until he was, in a sense, a butterfly. Dodd had seen it happening. As the months progressed, there was an increasing lightness of spirit and of step. He began to speak kindly and even lovingly of the Prater children. He could not only tolerate, but sought out, Reva’s company.
Harvey had broken the chains of horror and longing that had bound him to his children. He would always love them but he could finally let them rest peacefully in the arms of Jesus. He was sure that in that place of perfect peace, they did not remember the horror of their death. Harvey would never completely forget that horror but he could now concentrate on their lives, both the physical life that had brought him so much joy and the spiritual life in that place of perfect bliss. Their death had been but an instant, a horrible instant, but only an instant. Their lives, both in his memory and with God, were eternal. He understood that now. It was life that was to be honored and celebrated, and God had again given him the ability to celebrate it, this time with seven very much alive children.
Harvey really came alive when he was with or when he spoke of Hannah. He had loved so deeply before but he had lost that love. He could think of no one he knew who understood the value of the love of a woman more than he did. He had pitied his children for the manner of their death, and he grieved for them, but he truly mourned the loss of his wife. She had given reason to his being. She not only made his life worth living, she was, for him, life itself. At the time of Bertha’s death he knew that he could never love again. He had been aware since the fire that he must keep his mind on the loss of his children. He could not let Bertie into his thinking. He would have gone mad.
He did not really know which phenomena struck him first, the fact that he loved Hannah or that she loved him. During those first few weeks, Harvey had perceived in Hannah a resentment at his presence. She was always a lady, never rude or even slightly discourteous, but he saw in her the same grudging acceptance he had felt when he had treated rebel soldiers during the war. During the war, Harvey had endured the disdain and even the spoken insults and epithets of the Rebs because he knew they could not survive physically if he allowed them to drive him away. He now endured Hannah’s unwilling but polite tolerance of his presence because he knew that she could not survive emotionally or spiritually if he were not there.
There was no thought that he might fall in love with her. Bertie was still too much with him. Harvey was there because he was the only one who had been in her place emotionally and he was a doctor. He may not have known enough to save Ivan’s life but he did know what was happening to Hannah and her children.
As time went by, Harvey began to wonder who was helping whom. Hannah’s genteel resentment slowly became hesitant acceptance and then friendship. Harvey knew that she sensed the personal crisis he was experiencing, and he could not name the reaction in her that understanding was engendering. It was not sympathy and it was more than kindness, but whatever it was it was the balm that began to heal his spirit and unfetter his soul.
Hannah, too, had loved and been loved deeply. Her loss was to her as his was to him, but multiplied by the additional trepidation of bearing the responsibility for the children alone. She was consumed by guilt because she realized that her mind was occupied with concern for her children and herself. She should have been grieving for Ivan but she had no time for that. Her children had to be fed and clothed and loved, and only she was there to do all of that. She had to stay healthy in mind and body. She could not think of Ivan. He was not only her love but the provider for her children and herself. Thought of him broke her heart and frightened her for the future of her children. Harvey saw that and could not determine which situation caused more emotional distress… dead children to grieve, or living children whose sustenance and future had to be agonized over.
Hannah did so want to think of Ivan. How cruel she felt she was to push him so soon from her mind. He was a good man. He deserved to be grieved and honored but she had neither the time nor the strength for that. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that Ivan had always put his family first. She hoped sincerely that he would want her to do the same.
She could weep for Ivan only at night when she went to her empty bed. She missed his touch. She longed for the comfort of his caresses. She had become so accustomed to the sound of his breathing that the silence of her bed now created in her mind a specter of despair and terror. She wanted to feel that despair and terror. She wanted to feel the loss of her love. She wanted to grieve for Ivan but she must sleep. She must have the vigor to care for her children tomorrow. How sad, she thought, that living forces one so quickly to ignore the dead.
She thought she sensed in Harvey Bloom, at first, the motivation of guilt. She was sure he blamed himself for Ivan’s death. He was a doctor. He must have known why Ivan died and if he blamed himself, she blamed him too. For weeks she resented him deeply. She did not want him there, but she knew that she could not do without him. All her friends appeared to have abandoned her. Harvey was the only one who seemed to realize that the real need for comfort and support is not at the funeral. It is when one has to get back to the business of living.
Slowly she came to realize that Harvey’s motivation was not guilt at causing Ivan’s death but heartbreak that he could not prevent it. She came also to understand why her friends had abandoned her. Her situation frightened them. They did not want to be constantly reminded that if it could happen to her, it could happen to them. They did not want to know the fragile nature of their own mortality.
It was when she realized that Harvey had known that, and that was the reason he was there, that she began to appreciate, then admire, and finally, to love this good man. He had endured great emotional and spiritual pain so that she would not have to endure the same sense of abandonment he had known. He forced himself to watch her suffer. That had to have vividly recalled his own suffering. He had watched her children suffer. That had to have made him relive the horror that his own children had suffered. This man endured pain for her. He put his very sanity in jeopardy for her. How could she not love him? She was not aware that she was doing anything special. She felt Harvey was doing all the giving. But Harvey knew. She was just being herself and that was enough. The beauty of her spirit and the gift of her love was the balm of Harvey’s healing.
The children had allowed Harvey to stop living with the horror of death and start basking in the beauty of life. Hannah’s tender, consuming love for him expanded his understanding of life, and also enriched it. Their love was not an ostentatious display but a deep, quiet, living thing that extended beyond their understanding—a thing, they were sure, that was rooted in Heaven, in God himself, and it drew them to Him as it drew them closer to each other. Their former loves had probably been as sweet and rich, but Harvey was learning that one does not completely recognize the bliss of heaven until he has felt the fires of hell.
Harvey said little of his love for Hannah to Dodd. He didn’t have to. Those portions of their love that existed in the natural world were obvious. Dodd envied that and he yearned for the day when he could share with Elizabeth what he saw in Harvey and Hannah. In them Dodd observed aspects of love that he did not know existed. There were hints of a deeper, mystical love, a kind of love that can only grow out of pain and maturity. Dodd was not surprised when Harvey came to him and told him that in the light of his new relationship with Hannah Prater, he thought it inappropriate for him to continue as her physician. He would be happy to assume some of Dodd’s patient load if Dodd would be willing to add the Prater family to his patient list.
Harvey Bloom and Hannah Prater were married one year and one day after Ivan’s death. Dodd was best man at the wedding. Those childish faces that only a year ago had been filled with hopeless terror now glowed with loving hope. Hannah’s fear and hopelessness had been replaced with the bloom and the mystery of a love that she did not know was possible.
And for Harvey Bloom, his personal valley of the shadow of death had opened into a beautiful green pasture. His soul was restored.
Copyright © 2003 Gordon L. Klopfenstein