Dr. Grey's Arc

Chapter 3 of 11

The pile by the frame grew for three days. Boards, nails, rope, two crates of glass wrapped in straw. Dr. Grey stood beside it on the fourth morning and understood she did not know where to start. She could set a broken arm and close a belly. She could not raise a wall before the snow came. She walked to the message board at the corner and pinned a short notice. She needed a builder. She had no money. She had materials and a roof to put over them. A woman came the next afternoon. She was older than Dr. Grey, with gray hair cut short and hands that had been broken and healed more than once. She said her name and said she had built the research station on the rise above the river, and the meeting house with the bell. She walked the lot once. She kicked the base of the frame. She told Dr. Grey the shell was square and the footings were honest. She said she would do the work for a bed in the hospital when she was old. Dr. Grey said yes before she finished the sentence. They shook hands beside the pile. The Saint Bernard came out of the doorway and sniffed the builder's coat and sat down at her boot. By the end of the week the lot had changed. The builder raised a canvas tent on poles beside the shell and sorted the donations inside it. Boards by length. Nails by size. Glass on a pallet off the ground. She set a scaffold against the south wall, three platforms high, braced and pinned, and climbed it on the second morning to measure the top plate. She came down and told Dr. Grey the frame would hold a second floor if they wanted one. Dr. Grey said one floor was enough. Then the builder walked the sorted piles and counted. She counted twice. She came back to Dr. Grey with a short list on a scrap of board. They had enough wood for two walls. They had nails for three. They had no roofing at all. She said the donated boards would not close the building. She said winter was six weeks out, maybe five. She said the work could start tomorrow, but it would stop at the rafters unless more came. Dr. Grey looked at the tent, the scaffold, the woman who had agreed to build her hospital for a bed she might never use. She had found her builder. She had the hands and the plan and the ground. She did not have the roof. She walked back to the message board at the corner and stood in front of it with the envelope of names in her coat pocket, and began to think about which door to knock on first.