Margaret Mitchell owns "Gone With the Wind" and all its characters. I own a handful of OC's and a story idea. Book-verse. Not "Scarlett" compliant.

Summer arrived, and none too soon, for the winter had been unusually cold and dreary, with a seemingly endless stretch of cloudy gray days. Spring had not been the usual cheerful harbinger of life renewing itself, either, for it had been too many days of dismal rain. But summer arrived, warm and sunny, being everything a summer should be. Summer, with its promise of long rambles and games for the children, outdoor frolics for the young people, picnics and sociables for the staid married-with-families, and best of all for the old people, blessed relief from the pains of arthritis and rheumatism.

Dr. Meade moved more slowly these days, and he was just starting to admit it to himself. Somehow his medical practice no longer brought him the satisfaction it once did. He was considered a pillar of the community, and once he felt great pride in that knowledge, but he found that it mattered less and less as time went on. He and his wife lived together in harmony, but sometimes he wondered if she was truly happy. He was assured of her love and devotion, and he repaid her with love and devotion of his own, and he knew himself to be truly blessed in spite of everything. But more and more frequently he was feeling a sense of incompleteness, and he suspected she did too, even though she was not a woman who complained about anything.

And, after all, Dr. Meade was no longer a young man. The War Between the States had been lost almost 20 years before. Both his sons had died for the Cause, and while he had been profoundly grief stricken, he maintained that their deaths had not been in vain, and he was proud that they died as heroes.

The doctor was now facing in his own person the trials he had watched his elderly patients endure since the earliest days of his medical practice--when he himself had been young. Some of them had real physical ailments, which he treated with medicines and poultices. Others had sufferings that were expressed in the form of complaining and crankiness, a sort of spiritual distress which was beyond his ability to cure, and whose only treatment consisted of compassion. Among this latter group were included the patients who begged for laudanum or gave themselves "medicinal" sherry to treat the ache in their souls. Dr. Meade never chose to follow their example, but he deeply understood what drove them to such measures.

It was a late afternoon in summer; the doctor was gathering his things to close his office for the day when the door creaked open and a young woman with two small children entered.

"Dr. Meade? Please, my baby girl's sick."

The doctor immediately took the baby from the woman's arms and began to examine the little one and determine a diagnosis. When he glanced at the woman and the little boy clinging to her skirts, he knew he would not charge her full price. She reminded him of the refugees that had poured into Atlanta in the early days after the war. But she was too young to remember that.

"What's your name, young lady?" He asked as he filled out a prescription.

"Marybeth Dandridge, sir," she replied.

"And the baby?"

"Christina."

Dr. Meade handed the prescription to her, and went to his cabinet to find the medications. Marybeth looked at the paper, forehead wrinkled into a frown. She had no idea what a doctor visit would cost, but she was sure it would not come cheap. She still had some of the money Esther had given her, but it wouldn't last forever. Well, she wasn't about to look like a charity case, either. Whatever it cost, she would pay it, by hook or by crook.

Dr. Meade looked over the contents of his medicine cabinet, thinking. The lady looked very young, not even 20. He wondered where her husband was, for he had glanced surreptitiously at her hand for a ring and she was evidently a "Mrs." From her accent he guessed she came from the country. Either poor white or Cracker. Her dress was gray and plain, in good repair, but a little sooty, as if they had just come into town on the train. He told her the fee for the visit, and thought she turned a little pale before she opened her satchel and fished around in it, coming up with the required amount.

"You new in town, young lady?"

Marybeth nodded. "Yes, sir, I'm here looking for work."

"Where do you live?"

The young woman blushed. "I was planning to find a boarding house when we arrived in town, but Christina started getting feverish on the train." She looked at the doctor, who looked back at her with pity, and something prideful flashed in her eyes. She straightened her spine and said defensively, "That's where I'm going right now, to find a place to stay. I have enough money. We aren't going to starve." However, she faltered under his knowing gaze, and to cover her confusion, she bustled about, gathering her satchel and her children preparatory to leaving.

Dr. Meade stroked his goatee and thought. She looked so young and so scared, with the sick baby and the toddler. He couldn't put a woman with a sick baby out on the street, to the mercy of the city. He knew what he was going to do. He just hoped Mrs. Meade wouldn't mind too much.

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