Ch20 - Guinotte Hospital-ity

CHAPTER 20 GUINOTTE HOSPITAL-ITY October 1980

Mel wasn’t alone in fearing fire, smoke and chemicals. Dogs are afraid of those, too. While we don’t study geometry’s Pythagorean theorem, we know how to stand back.

Despite a long, painful attempt to put her life together following Joseph’s suicide, Aimée wasn’t at peace, certainly not preceding her 1907 death. Nothing had been successful regarding her husband’s suicide, causing her to question why she wasn’t given an opportunity to change features of his final days. But unlike my standing back, Aimée marched at crises, particularly those affecting her beloved manor, Instanhouding as she termed Preservation.

With ensuing decades Guinotte avenue and its surroundings took on a quasi-industrial look While Brussels wouldn’t have chosen the Louizalaan or Avenue Louise as a landfill site, Guinotte avenue primarily connected railroads and warehouses. In contrast Colonel Swope had been memorialized at a gorgeous farm-turnedpark near the Blue River.

By the time of her physical demise, acres of tool room and shedlike cottages extended from the old manor to the St. Paul deaconess school and seminary nearly two miles southeast of the manor.

While the deaconesses-in-training there were professed Methodists,

Aimée reveled in their efforts to aid the poor and in death sought a similar, although angelic, role.

The Guinotte manor land remnant accommodated sixty families.

To Aimée, Preservation was home, a place meriting gezellig, a largely indescribable sense of well-being, contending that manor residents, and those living nearby, deserved a clinic, maybe even a hospital.

About 1870 she had encountered Andrew Taylor Still, a notable physician and osteopathic theorist. impressed with Still’s thoughtfulness, she incorporated several of his themes into hers.

Whether from Still or from her Brussels upbringing, she espoused a curious view of hospital-ity, viewing medical clinics and hospitals as medical homes. Her most recent efforts had consisted of enlisting a middle-aged Marine with a fern fascination and me, a stolen shepherd, in favor of hospital-ity.

Mel and Aimée’s initial exchange likely reflected a long-past era.

Monsieur, did one of our servants welcome you here?

No ma’am, I’ve not met them. But if you need to know about ferns, I’m your man.

Pleased with Mel’s offer, Aimée beamed. As a young woman I lived in Belgium and France, nations known for scholars.

Mel then confided that he had not done well when questioned about wartime experiences. As he explained even innocent inquiries sometimes produced awkward silences or even brusquer who needs to know responses.

The first days of November cooled Cliff drive’s slopes, leaving them wet and slippery. More hours of darkness translated into fewer when light filtered through progressively barer branches.

On then on November’s tenth day, Mel wished us a happy birthday before adding it was his birthday and then claiming the day belonged to the Marines, confusing at best. Mel departed early, indicating he would attend a birthday party that evening at the Sheffield neighborhood’s VFW. When he returned the day following, Mel appeared troubled. I lay long and prone beside him with my jaw resting on my paws, hoping he might mimic a posture that has comforted dogs for eons.

Initially I thought he was talking to himself but as darkness ensued I appreciate others’ presence, two he addressed as Lance

Corporal Davis and Sergeant Higgins. Counting Mel, three Marines crouched near the large ferns, plus a fourth they referred to their Corpsman.

Scenting, I detected a displaced aroma representing sweat and blood, smelling fear but more so courage. They must have been in their early twenties when the 6th Marines landed along Okinawa’s northern beaches.

Perhaps the dichotomy between a quiet, introspective botanist and a troubled who wants to know veteran began there. When I howl, my vocal folds vibrate as air pushes out. Ghosts or no, I joined, howling a common expression...

OHHK-IN-AAAH-WAAH.

When Aimée spoke, tiny lady hands pointed out multiple features of manor properties. Mel and I turned, trying to feature discern one hundred year-old characteristics as well as others belonging to the present. Aimée queried Mel about Instanhouding’s living conditions. If he described abandoned buildings or chemically-scarred properties, that upset her. Mel typically chose well-considered responses but once he said he viewed the former manor as a dumping ground for sub-standard homes and uncertain relationships. Yes, I am only a dog but I found Mel’s words poorly chosen.

During another discourse, Aimée described the plight of a little girl she referred to as Renata. Renata’s parents had apparently lived in a rented house on namesake Guinotte Avenue where the child contracted a dreadful illness, one no doctor could explain.

Aimée related that during Renata’s first eighteen months, the girl laughed, baby-danced and was considered bright. But short of t nineteenth month, the little girl became seriously ill and was taken to a hospital, stuporous and non-responsive. Her doctors were sufficiently worried they consulted specialists, a neurosurgeon and a toxicologist, fearing Renata had a meningeal infection or possibly even a brain tumor.

Renata was dispatched to the operating theater where a surgical team explored her cranium. Someone apparently known as Dr. Wozniak ordered an analysis of heavy metals in Renata’s blood. The girl’s parents fretted through a worrisome post-op period and a

second procedure. On the heels of those a far less animated Renata emerged.

Psychologists adapted gloomy medical terms to describe Renata’s course: Profoundly low IQ, cortical storms, seizures. An analyst unknown to Aimée repeated the analysis before confirming an alarming concentration of lead in Renata’s blood.

A contributing psychologist, one reportedly characterized by coworkers argumentative and troublesome, shared a similar outcome in a young male cousin named Otis, noting he had repeatedly seized prior to emerging with profoundly low IQ. I didn’t know angels cry, but Aimée cried for two children, Renata and Otis.

On occasions I had wondered why Aimée consulted Mel who was a botanist about lead toxicity before remembering how he had earlier described the work of Nikander, a tenth century botanist.

According to Mel Nikander had examined lead poisoning’s basis. I speculated that Aimée regarded Mel as her personal Nikander.

Following her cry session, a more composed guardian angel shared how she planned to bump her angelic chain-of-command regarding the Renata issue. Hearing that, Mel and I stared at Preservation’s Guinotte avenue.