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In
the early 1970s, I came
upon the name of Dr.
Daniel Hiebert in a
biography of Eugene
O’Neill which I was
reading for my
master’s
program. He had been
the playwright’s
roomate in Boston in the
years around World War
I (when
O’Neill was studying
creative writing at
Harvard and Hiebert
medicine at Boston
University) and was lured
to Provincetown in 1919
where O’Neill had
settled with his second
wife Agnes Boulton.
Hiebert delivered
O’Neill and
Agnes’ son Shane,
one of almost
fifteen hundred
babies he brought into the
world in his fifty-three
years as a the only doctor
on the Outer Cape.
Hiebert
was a force of nature, and
he became a legend in
Provincetown for his
indefatigable devotion to
his own brand of medicine.
A revered fixture in
Provincetown life for
decades, he birthed
babies, stitched
fishermen, made house
calls at all hours of the
day and night, created the
first ambilance service on
Cape Cod, served as the
medical professional for
the US Coast Guard during
WW II, and even tended
many a household pet in
the absence of a licensed
veterinarian. Today
many of his methods and
prescriptions might be
considered unorthodox, but
there was never any doubt
that Daniel
Hiebert’s mission in
life was to save
lives. I know
because I was one of those
lives – a summer
tourist who passed through
the doors of his clinic
for a brief moment, but
who never forgot the gift
of caring and humanity I
had received.
This story is my small tribute to someone who was larger than life….
BUMBLEBEES AND O’NEILL’S CAT
(from Round Trip A Collection of Short Stories Weiala Press 2017)
Camilla came to just at
the wrong moment.
Disoriented, she raised
her head from her prone
position only to feel it
crack hard against a
window sash. Hands
immediately pulled her
back, and she realized she
was lying on a stretcher
that was being awkwardly
maneuvered through an open
window. The four
paramedics struggled to
negotiate the sharp angle
of the dilapidated
Victorian porch and to
pass the stretcher and its
occupant into a waiting
room filled with expectant
but unsurprised faces.
The door to the house had
proved too narrow so the
wide veranda window seemed
the only option and even
that was a tight fit. A
few more lurches and
thrusts and Camilla, now
fully awake, felt herself
lowered onto the ground,
then gently lifted up onto
the sofa which had quickly
been vacated by the
waiting-room patients.
Despite her swollen eyes,
engorged tongue, and
bloated face, she was able
to see a grey-haired,
bespectacled man standing
above her, syringe in
hand. She heard her
husband Nils’s
panicked voice running
through all the possible
causes for Camilla’s
fainting and going into
what appeared to be
anaphylactic shock.
The doctor quickly
administered the
epinephrine injection and
popped an adrenalin tablet
into Camilla’s
mouth, all the while
listening intently to Nils.
“We ate at Ciro and
Sal’s – no, no
fish, nothing exotic,
pasta and eggplant
parmesan, some red
wine…..”
“Not that,” the doctor snapped curtly. “Before that?”
“Before that?
Earlier?” And then
Nils remembered.
“She was stung by a
bumblebee this afternoon
in the car. I put
ice on it when we got back
to our cabin, and she
seemed fine ”
“That’s it!” the doctor exclaimed. “Where?”
“On her left shoulder.”
The old man quickly
loosened Camilla’s
blouse, found the huge red
welt, went back into his
examining room, and
re-emerged, armed with
tweezers, alcohol, and
gauze. Despite his
advanced age and gnarled
hands, his touch was
precise and firm, and with
one flick of the tweezers
he removed the stinger and
cleaned the wound.
By the time he finished,
Camilla was feeling
revived by the adrenalin,
a lot less dizzy, and she
realized she was beginning
to be able to swallow once
again.
“So, little
lady,” the doctor
said, “do you feel
up to standing and coming
into my office?’
Nils helped his wife up,
and they made their way
through the motley waiting
room assemblage –
fishermen with bleeding
hands, young men high on
marijuana or worse, crying
babies. Settling Camilla,
then himself in two
leather chairs opposite
the old man’s
massive, battered mahogany
desk, Nils read the brass
nameplate: Daniel Hiebert,
M.D. Without
bothering to introduce
himself or ask his
patient’s name, Dr.
Hiebert cut directly to
the point.
“Do you feel better? It looks as if the swelling is coming down.”
Camilla looked at her
hands, which were
returning to their normal
size.
“Open your
mouth,” Dr. Hiebert
commanded as he reached
across the desk with a
tongue depressor.
“Say
‘ah.’
Yes, much better.
You were choking when you
came in. Almost back
to normal now – your
tongue, that
is.” Coming
round the desk, he felt
her pulse, listened to her
heart and lungs, and then
perching on the desk
opposite her, said,
“So, young lady,
tell me exactly what
happened.”
*************************************************
It had been a brilliant
summer day on the Cape,
and Camilla and Nils
Carlsen were reveling in
the few days of vacation
their newlywed budget
could afford. They
had driven up to Truro
from New Jersey in their
decrepit Buick and settled
into the tiniest of the
Whitman House cabins for a
four-day holiday. On
Saturday afternoon they
had rolled down the
windows in their
airconditionless
automobile and headed down
the back roads toward Corn
Hill Beach.
Camilla was wearing a
bright yellow floral set
of shorts and blouse,
which, to the hapless
insect that lit on her
back, must have resembled
a huge sunflower.
Camilla, who harbored a
life-long fear of bees,
never saw the bee or felt
it crawl down under her
blouse until all at once
she felt a stabbing pain
in her shoulder and
screamed. Nils
swerved to the shoulder
with the car coming to an
abrupt halt just short of
the ditch at the side of
the road. By now
Camilla was hysterical,
flailing her arms and
continuing to shriek.
“Get out of the
car!” Nils
commanded, tugging her by
the hand. He began
to pull his wife’s
blouse over her
head. As he did, a
half-dazed bumblebee the
size of a cherry tomato
fell to the ground. Nils
promptly dispatched the
dying insect by stepping
on it and then put his
arms around his wife and
hugged her tightly until
her sobs ebbed.
“Come on,
let’s go back to the
cabin and put some ice on
it,” he said,
handing the still dazed
Camilla her blouse.
By the time they reached
their little room in the
woods, the welt on
Camilla’s shoulder
was very swollen.
Nils found some ice in the
room fridge and applied a
compress. He also poured
Camilla a glass of chilled
white wine. Half an hour
later the redness seemed
to disappear; the wine had
settled Camilla’s
nerves, and the shadows
were lengthening through
the woods.
“Do you feel like
dinner at Ciro and
Sal’s?” Nils
asked. The legendary
Provincetown eatery was
always their first pick
for dinner whenever they
visited the Cape.
“Sure,” agreed
Camilla.
“I’ll change,
and we’ll go early
before it gets too
crowded.”
They drove to P-town along
6-A past the tiny rows of
beach cottages that lined
the narrow strip of land
between the ocean and the
bay. Camilla could
not help but note their
colorful names – all
flowers like Rosebud,
Gardenia, Dahlia.
She thought about the
flowers on her outfit that
afternoon and made a
mental note to wear less
colorful clothing that
would not act as an
aphrodisiac for bees on
future outings.
The dinner at Ciro and
Sal’s was romantic
and delicious as
always. After
sharing a half bottle of
Chianti, Camilla and Nils
were feeling mellow. So as
they walked down
Commercial Street hand in
hand toward the pier, it
did not immediately strike
Camilla as odd that her
hands were beginning to
tingle – first the
palms, then the fingertips
and then her lips!
“I feel itchy, hon,” she noted softly.
“Maybe something you ate?”
“I just had my
usual.” And then she
stopped
herself. “Oh,
God, hope it’s not
botulism from canned
tomatoes,” she
exclaimed, referring to
the recent lethal outbreak
which had been in the news
of late.
But before Nils could
reject that comment,
Camilla looked down at her
hands. In the time
it had taken to walk a
single block, they had
swollen to four times
their size. Her plain gold
wedding band was sinking
into the growing
fleshiness, and in seconds
her lips began to curl
upward toward her nose and
downward toward her chin.
“Nils,” she stammered. “I feel very dizzy. I can’t breathe well…”
Nils steered her toward
the open door of an art
gallery. “My
wife needs to sit down for
a minute,” he told
the proprietor.
The man did not argue but
began to proffer Camilla a
chair, when she collapsed
to the floor and lost
consciousness. She
woke a few minutes later
as Nils was trying to open
her mouth and holding down
her tongue so that she
could get air.
“Call an ambulance, please!” But the gallery owner had already dialed.
On Saturday evenings in
summer Provincetown the
narrow Commercial Street
is in theory open to
vehicular traffic, but it
is really a massive
pedestrian mall with
crowds filling the roadway
as they amble through
town. Somehow
miraculously, however, the
ambulance arrived from
Arch Street, and the
paramedics quickly slapped
an oxygen mask on Camilla
and loaded her stretcher
into the vehicle. Nils
climbed in beside her,
babbling on about how it
might be food poisoning.
The paramedics were swift
and silent. Turning
on their siren and
flashing top light, they
managed to clear a path
through the sea of
humanity.
“We’re going
right down Commercial
Street – fast
– there’s a
clinic there. Just
breathe deep, miss.”
Camilla closed her eyes
and tried to obey.
Before she lost
consciousness again, she
had a fleeting ironic
thought about the movie Love Story, which they had seen just the week before. Thinking this story might end the same way, she managed to form three words with her swollen lips, whispering to her husband, “I love you.”
*************************************************
Dr. Hiebert had listened
carefully to the
narrative, and when he was
convinced that the crisis
had passed, he sent
Camilla back to Truro with
a supply of adrenalin
tablets. He handed
Nils his card and told him
that if Camilla had any
further reaction to call
this home number at any
hour of the day or night
and “you will get me
or Mrs.
Hiebert.” As
Nils pulled out his
wallet, Hiebert said,
“No, I want to see
you back here tomorrow
morning at 10:00 a.m.
before you head back home,
so we can settle up
then. Off you
go!”
And with that he ushered
them back out through the
still teeming waiting room
and motioned silently for
the next patient to come
in.
Exhausted Camilla and Nils
went to bed as soon as
they got back to their
cabin. But a few
hours later Nils was
awakened by his
wife’s plaintive
voice calling his name.
“Nils, my heart is beating so fast it feels as if it is going to explode.”
Nils sat up in bed,
flipped on the light, and
put his head to her chest
to listen. Sure enough,
her heartbeat was
pounding. Trying to
remain calm, he said,
“I’m sure
it’s just the
adrenalin, but I am going
to call the doctor.
He said we could, no
matter what time,”
Nils added, noting that it
was just past midnight.
Nils dialed, and despite
the hour, a wide-awake
woman answered. He
explained the situation,
apologizing for having
disturbed the doctor.
“No
disturbance,” Mrs.
Hiebert replied.
“Dan is not here
right now.
He’s out stitching
up a fisherman, but he
should be back soon, and
he will call
you. Give me your
number and where
you’re
staying.”
Nils told her they were in
the Whitman House cottages
and gave her the direct
room line. For the
next forty-five minutes
Camilla tried
unsuccessfully to fall
back to sleep while Nils
pretended to read, waiting
for the phone to
ring. But instead,
both were startled by a
robust knock on the door.
“Who is it?” Nils asked, jumping up.
“Dr. Hiebert.”
And sure enough, as Nils
threw open the door, there
stood the doctor, black
bag in hand, his driver in
tow.
“Damn,” he
muttered as he crossed the
threshold. “I had a
devil of a time finding
this cottage. You
didn’t tell my wife
the number. I had to
wake them up at the
desk.”
Stunned by the 1:00 a.m.
house call, Nils could
only stammer, “I
don’t know if
it’s serious.
I just thought you would
call
us….I….”
“No problem. I was
out in Wellfleet stitching
a finger tip back onto a
fisherman He put it
in his pocket and called
me to come. It was
just as easy to stop on my
way home.”
All the while as he spoke
in a soft voice he was
checking Camilla’s
pulse and listening to her
heart rate.
“Well, I’d
stop the adrenalin
tablets,” he
concluded. :”That’s
what’s got her
going, but otherwise she
looks fine. Allergic
reaction seems to be
suppressed.”
And with that he pulled
out a syringe from the bag
and gave Camilla a shot.
“This should relax
you. Try to get some
sleep, and I’ll see
you in the morning.”
“You, too, Doctor. Thank you.”
“Oh, I’ve got
one more call to make
before I go
home.” He
smiled and left as swiftly
as he had come.
*************************************************
The next morning came
rather quickly after only
a few hours of sleep, but
somehow Camilla awoke
feeling refreshed and her
old self again. She
and Nils treated
themselves to a huge
breakfast of pancakes and
eggs before packing the
car and heading up to
P-town.
This time they entered the
clinic by the front door,
finding the waiting room
no less crowded than it
had been the evening
before. They waited about
half an hour before Dr.
Hiebert came out, and
seeing them motioned them
to follow him.
“So, how do you feel, miss?”
“So much better. I can’t thank you enough, Dr. Hiebert.”
The doctor scribbled a
prescription on a
pad. “Two
doors down..take this to
the pharmacy and fill it
before you go.”
“What do we owe you, Doctor?” Nils asked.
“Uh, make it $25.”
Nils and Camilla could not
have looked any more
surprised, but they knew
better than to protest.
They paid in cash, shook
hands, reiterated their
thanks, and left.
A few months later,
Camilla, who was working
on her master’s
degree in literature, was
immersed in Eugene
O’Neill’s
biography when she
exclaimed:
“Nils, come here, listen to this!”
She read her husband a
passage which talked about
Eugene and Agnes’
who were living in
Provincetown in the early
1920s, bringing their cat,
Anna Christie, to Dr.
Hiebert for emergency
surgery after the cat had
been seriously injured by
a dog attack.
Hiebert had been
O’Neill’s
Harvard housemate for a
time and had come to
P-town in 1919 to set up
his practice, enjoying a
friendship with the
playwright and his wife
and delivering their son
Shane.
“It’s got to
be the same Dr.
Hiebert,” Camilla
said to Nils,
“because the dates
work out. He’s
probably in his eighties
now.”
“Must be,”
Nils agreed, and together
they read on in the
biography: how
Hiebert had been the very
face of medicine in
Provincetown for five
decades, delivering
babies, tending the dying,
performing surgery in his
humble clinic, creating
the first rescue squad
using the hearse as an
ambulance and enlarging
the porch window on his
clinic home to accommodate
the stretchers, and
treating emergencies day
or night. Unique in
every sense, he practiced
medicine in a hands-on,
old-fashioned,
people-centric, sometimes
eccentric way. He would
treat a duck or a cat with
as much care as his human
patients; he would keep
O’Neill “just
sober enough to finish his
play Anna Christie,”
or dispense B-12 shots to
anemic druggies without
lecturing.
“Amazing,”
Camilla remarked when they
finished
reading. “We
should stop in and say
hello when we go up this
summer.”
However, intent on
finishing their degrees,
one summer hastened to
another, and Camilla and
Nils never returned to
Provincetown until June
1973. It was a
glorious sunny morning as
they took a leisurely
stroll to 466 Commercial
Street. The old
captain’s house
looked the same as it had
three years before, but
the doctor’s shingle
had disappeared. And
though the oversized
window dominated the
porch, it was sealed shut
and draped in lace and
velvet
curtains. Thinking
that the 19th century
edifice seemed more a
rooming house than a
clinic, Camilla was
determined to discover
what had happened. She
strode down the short
walkway and rang the
bell. A bearded man
with long, straggly hair,
wearing overalls, answered
the door.
“We’re looking for Dr. Hiebert,” Camilla announced.
“He died last year,
miss. His wife has moved
in with her
daughter.
We’re fixing it up
as a B&B. Not open
yet.”
He started to close the
door, but Camilla cried,
“Wait! I knew
him. He saved my
life!”
The man hesitated a moment
and then said softly,
“Come on in. I
can show you the
obituary.”
Camilla and Nils stepped
over the tools and the
pieces of cut molding into
the large room that had
been Hiebert’s
waiting room. The man
disappeared and came back
with a small clipping from
the Provincetown Advocate.
Camilla and Nils read
silently. “Did
you know him?” she
asked the man when she had
finished.
“Oh, yeah. Everyone
did. He delivered me and
my brother. He was the
only doctor for fifty
miles, and there
wasn’t much he
couldn’t or
wouldn’t do. He had
pills for everything, if
you know what I
mean? A regular Dr.
Feelgood.”
The remark, jarring as it
was, did not really
surprise Camilla and
Nils. What had
Hiebert given her that
night three years ago in
the syringe that made her
sleep? And yet, what
would have happened to her
without his emergency care?
“They don’t
make ‘em like
ol’ Hiebert
anymore,” the man
continued. “He sure
was an original!”
Silently, Camilla nodded.
Original, unorthodox,
uncannily effective,
flawed and human –
an old-fashioned medicine
man who didn’t give
a damn about insurance or
malpractice liability or
the rules of the game, but
a man who did care about
life and saving it in any
way he could.
And as she framed those
thoughts, another
realization struck Camilla
like a lightening bolt
– a realization that
for Dr. Hiebert must have
been a daily thought: that
existence was tenuous,
life fragile and
precious. Without
Dr. Daniel Hiebert, she,
Camilla Caruso Carlsen,
would have been one of
those casualties.
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