Three Precious Eggs
Dominica, Eastern Caribbean
The man brought to see me had been convulsing for 20 minutes. I gave him an injection to stop the seizures, and he gradually regained consciousness. An hour later, he was able to tell me what had happened.
“My friends come to visit me at my farm. I go to offer them the wine I make at home. But I’m not sure which bottle had the wine.” He stopped, rubbed his aching temples with both hands. His head hurt from the seizures. “There were two bottles, and they look the very same, Doctor.”
He paused again to recollect the details. He was still a little groggy.
“One bottle had the wine I made, but the other had my insecticide. You know, stuff to spray on my crops. The bottles are the very same, Doctor, like I say to you before.”
He looked around the little room, then at me, taking everything in now. A green iguana clung silently on the wall, upside down.
“I taste the first one to know if it is the right one. The one with the wine to give to my friends. Taste bad. I spit it out right away. It was the insecticide. I spit it out, don’t swallow any.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
He raised his brows. “I don’t know. When I next open my eyes there you are, talking to me.”
His friends said that he began convulsing almost right after the tasting. He had absorbed enough toxic insecticide to poison him. When unconscious, he had also vomited and inhaled his vomit. I examined him, and he had aspiration pneumonia. But now that I had the history, I could look up the insecticide in a manual about poisons (the internet was 25 years in the future), and gave him the proper antidote intravenously. I admitted him into the little 6-bed cottage hospital and treated his pneumonia. I visited him two or three times a day to check on his progress.
On the third day, I found him sitting in a chair beside his metal frame bed, waiting for me.
He looked and felt fine. I sent him home.
I was volunteering in Dominica (pronounced DominEEca), then one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, as the only doctor for a district of 15,000 people. Most days I saw 60-80 patients; on my busiest day I saw 140. In addition to staffing the little hospital, I was responsible for running regular clinics in the towns and villages with Mr. Andrews, the pharmacy dispenser. I loved our drives to these clinics through tropical forests of palms and gommier trees. The roads were lined with a profusion of red and orange heliconias, giant orchids.
A week after the poisoned patient went home, Mr. Andrews and I were driving to my weekly clinic in the village of Wesley, when we came across him standing beside the rough road, waving at me. There was a clump of yellow hibiscus flowers behind him. We stopped our white UNESCO jeep, and I hopped out to greet him.
He was wearing a worn cap; the top four buttons of his baggy, brown, short-sleeved shirt were open. There was deference in his eyes.
“I have been waiting for you, Doctor. I knew you would be driving by here today.” Crow’s feet formed at the corner of his eyes and hhe smiled shyly, head bowed a little.
“Thank you for saving my life.”
He shook my hand. His other hand, weathered from the sun and working in the fields, held a small basket. Inside it was the gift for me: three fresh eggs.
In this country of tropical rainforests bursting with fruits and vegetables, but with a scarcity of protein to eat, three eggs were precious. I felt guilty accepting them. I didn’t reach out for the basket.
He saw my hesitation.
“They’re for you, Doctor,” he said.
He’s a poor subsistence farmer, those eggs are valuable, I can’t take them.
“Thank you, but I really… ” I stopped, embarrassed.
“Please,” he said, “they’re for you, take them.” He gave a bashful smile again; he was missing three front teeth.
I grasped the basket and thanked him with a lump in my throat.
“Three Precious Eggs” is excerpted from my memoir awaiting publication.
These events in Dominica took place decades ago. Since then, the small, resource-poor country has made great strides in many areas, including ending protein malnutrition.
Thank you Peter for sharing another one of your stories. They are always interesting, and beautifully written.
Thanks, Peter. Many doctor/writers -- Chekhov, for one -- have written about being paid for their services in kind rather than cash. You are part of a long and admirable tradition. Two traditions, actually. Nicely done.