Doctored by K'Anne Meinel

baby.  She smiled as she finished cleaning up the woman who was smiling down in wonderment at the perfect baby she had just delivered.
    She said something in her language and the interpreter laughed.
    “What?” Deanna asked in French.
    “She wants to know what your first name is, your Christian name.  She would like to honor you and her baby by giving it a second name.”
    Deanna smiled, knowing this was indeed an honor.  It denoted high status to have a child named after you in a lot of cultures.  She knew of several babies in both Africa and in South America that had her name as their first or second.  Sometimes they used Cooper, especially for boys when they learned that it was an acceptable male name, and sometimes they used Deanna, a hard name to get around some of their tongues.  She told the interpreter and explained about the male surname.  The translation made the new mother smile as she repeated the name Cooper back.
    Deanna gave orders about their patient and the mother was soon installed in the hospital in a corner they called the maternity ward, away from the other patients.  The cries of babies kept people up, but it was the infectious diseases that worried the doctors the most.
    “We should use the meeting house for these cases,” Deanna muttered to Maddie as she checked on her patients, the ones that weren’t infectious.
    “What about this building?” Maddie asked.  She had heard Deanna state this before.
    “It needs to be cleansed: the windows need to be opened and mosquito netting put on them, air out the place, and have the witch doctor do a cleansing,” she ascertained.
    “Surely you don’t believe in all that?” she asked, wide-eyed.
    “Medicine can prove a lot of that wrong, but I’ve seen some things that there is no scientific explanation for.  People can believe and they can will themselves better sometimes.  Having a blessing from the locals is all well and good, but, if you don’t accept them and at least accommodate them, places like this will never work,” she answered sadly as she finished.
    She was as good as her word.  Having thought about it, argued with Burton about it, she approached Wilson with her idea.  She had the village elders come forward with Hamishish and with an interpreter, although she knew Hamishish and a few of the elders understood French.  She formally asked them to bless the meeting house so they could turn it into a general ward.  The more serious cases were left in the old clinic and were surprised to see Hamishish and others coming into the clinic in full dress, paint on their whole bodies, chanting and with smoke issuing from their smudges.  The combination did more for the patients than any medicine.
    Watching cynically, Doctor Burton and others shook their heads at the display, much less the waste of time and effort.  By having two buildings instead of one, they now had to divide their time and efforts.  Some simply didn’t like change, others thought it all foolishness.  Still, Doctor Wilson thought it had some merit and was amused to find an improvement on their never-ending stream of patients.  Word of mouth told of the blessed clinics.  A decrease in cases of death, whether a coincidence or not, helped immeasurably.
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    “Do you ever go into Lamish or one of the other smaller towns to get away?” Deanna asked Lakesh.
    Leida perked up.  They had been working non-stop for weeks.  She needed some downtime, and while they had assigned days off, they rarely took them since there was really nothing else to do.
    Three of them were sitting around the fire—Leida, Maddie, and the doctor—after a long day and a beautiful sunset.  Deanna was poking the fire with a stick when Lakesh walked by.
    “Yes, Missy, we go and get supplies,” he answered automatically, and then realizing it was the doctor who had asked, corrected himself with a distinct twang of ‘Doktor.’
    “Would there be room for passengers?” she