The Socrates Option: The First Doctor Six Novel

By James Rozhon

Evangeline Sixkiller- Collins has had a painful life but she became a doctor and moved her skills to Kalispell, Montana. Not long after moving there she is asked to join a search party for a missing man. She finds him after three hours of searching through snows of the local hills. Also, she finds that he cannot have been dead for longer th

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gotham Books
• Release date: Dec 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798887751771

Book preview

Chapter 1

We were in the Whitefish Mountains northeast of Whitefish, Montana. It’s hard country here. The mountains are rugged, steep and considering it was the middle of February, the snow just added to their harshness.

My inclusion on the search and rescue team that was looking for a man named Gordon Tucker was a last-minute thing. I heard that one of their team members broke his leg and I volunteered because they were one person short of seven full teams. Since I was considered a probationary member, my teammate was the leader of the operation, Cayn Wyatt. I learned much later that everything he did to get me on that team violated every procedure they had ever instituted. However, he wanted me on the team for a very specific reason.

I am Doctor Evangeline Sixkiller-Collins Collins; Doctor Six for short. My father was a half-blooded Sioux Indian named Brian Sixkiller. I remember him vaguely. He died when I was five. My mother’s name is Melodie Chang; she married a man named Brad Chang; he’s my stepfather. Mom’s maiden name is Collins and she wanted the Collins name kept alive, so she added it to my name when I was born. Brad didn’t mind is what Mom tells me; I believe her. The second Collins in my name? Let’s leave at this: I married a man named Mario Collins and added his name to my lineage.

However, that day on the mountain changed everything about my life. Everything.

We were on skis. Wyatt was a bit surprised that I was as proficient as I am. I might have moved to Kalispell, Montana – which is just south of Whitefish - from Los Angeles but I grew up in Maine. Yes, I know how to ski. It was my proficiency on the ski’s that caused him to point down a particularly rocky point and say, Look in there. Stay in contact. Don’t get cut off. I’ll go ahead.

Sure, I said.

In there was a ravine surrounded by rocky cliffs and ledges; the drifts were easily fifteen feet deep. I pushed ahead slowly. The entire area was slightly downhill, so it was easy. Even so, the terrain grew rougher as I eased my way down the narrow valley. The snow was virginal, not disturbed at all.

The world here was reduced to its barest minimums: snow, ice and rocks. A few stubborn pines grew here and there but it was the starkest terrain this side of the Sea of Tranquility.

I knew better than to call out to him in this place. A stray echo could start an avalanche; the drifts were that deep. It wasn’t hard to go slow. If Tucker had been hiking here as we were told, then his best bet was to be both trained and cautious. I paused, huffed out a plume of vapor, and pushed slowly onward.

The gorge narrowed to a twisting point maybe one hundred yards ahead of me. The distance was difficult to gauge because the terrain was so unforgiving.

My radio squawked. Doctor? You still with me?

Yes, I said. Nothing yet. I’ll keep you informed.

Thank you. Wyatt out.

I was thirty-two that day. While I can’t say that what happened defined my life, it certainly changed its course. In short, that’s why I came to Montana. I needed to spread my wings in a place where I have no family. I needed to know how good I really am. I’m a rich bitch, a dark-haired girl from the great white north. Mario calls me beautiful; in him, I encourage it. Others? I’m flattered but you don’t need to flatter me; I’m already a doctor. And, yes, it was family money that paid for medical schools, both of them. I have mixed feelings over all that. Still, I finished medical school and have a license to practice.

Montana was supposed to be my birth place, the place I made my mark on the world. Maybe I’ll explain that and maybe I’ll live with it. In short? My mother. She’s done everything. This was a way to get out of her shadow. No, don’t go there. I love her immensely. I simply wanted to live in a place where no one knew her, or my family or the things they’ve done. I wanted to live in a place where my mark would be mine and not theirs by default.

I found Kalispell, Montana, when Mario and I took a vacation to Flathead Lake. It seemed like heaven to me and Mario agreed. Better, it felt like home and that vacation is what convinced me to start my practice here. The trip into the mountains with the search and rescue team was nothing more than me trying help my neighbors. I didn’t know Gordon Tucker, but I was going to. Why? Because I found him. When I did, I had no idea that I was about to do it, about to make my mark on the world.

He was at the end of the gorge lying in deep snow. I deliberately did not call Wyatt because I needed to confirm what I had in front of me. Initially, all I saw was a body sprawled in the snow at the base of a cliff that rose at least forty feet above him. It didn’t take much to see that he was dead. I’m a doctor. It’s hard to fool us. Still, I checked for a pulse and found none.

Anyway…

Gordon Tucker was dead at the base of that cliff. I couldn’t say the fall killed him and couldn’t say that he was dead before he fell. All those determinations were in the future. My job that day was to find him and I had. Still, I hesitated to call Wyatt because I needed to make a positive identification.

I pushed myself up to his body and knelt on the skis. I took a photograph from inside my coat and held it down to his face. It was him.

Oddly, as I knelt over his body, I smelled something pungent for a moment. Just as oddly, there was discharge around his mouth. He’d upchucked. Odder still were his eyes. Tucker was suffering from a scleral injection when he died; both of his eyes were bloodshot and open when he died.

I stood and looked at the scene. It’s possible the fall killed him, but he landed in a twenty-foot drift. True, it appeared that he rolled a bit before he came to a stop, but I could not say whether he traversed that small distance while alive or under the influence of inertia. Also, I noted that his arms and legs were somewhat clenched. He died in what I would call a near-fetal position.

The last thing I did was kneel and close his eyes. Why is hard to explain but, briefly, I wanted to test for rigor mortis. If present, he might have been dead when he landed. If not, then it’s possible he survived the fall.

His eyelids closed easily.

That bothered me because it indicated recent death. In this weather, a body would freeze solid easily and quickly; his hadn’t reached a state of rigor yet. All the clues were there to make the next week of my life interesting.

Maybe I was born for this particular moment. I can’t say. I always felt that I was born so that my children would have a mother. Okay, bad joke, but Travis and Madison would not agree. That’s my son and daughter.

But I was.

Maybe I came here to do this. Maybe I came here because this needed doing and there was something in my background that made my contributions mandatory. For example, I had a copy of Grey’s Anatomy long before the stupid TV show got popular. I used to read it at night and began telling my parents what the food they were eating would do to them if they continued to eat it. I even told them about the side effects of aspirin. As an aside, I was convinced Mom was losing her hearing due to the aspirin she was taking for a headache and cried like a newborn because she always listened to me. I felt that she would no longer be able and I begged her stop using it because she was my only audience for medicine.

And now I was in a place to do what I came here to do. Make my mark on the world. Of course, I had to live through it first.

Yeah, there’s always a hitch.

Chapter 2

I figured my job was over as soon as I called Wyatt. I skied to the end of the gorge and waited while the rest of S&R team converged on the site and began to deal with poor Gordon Tucker. Yes, I wondered about his death because I found it both tragic and mysterious. The human being in me knew he was beyond help, but the doctor in me wondered what killed him besides the elements.

All of the teams converged to where I stood, Wyatt included. I led them down to where Tucker lay slowing freezing solid. No one mentioned the odor. My next contribution was going to be when Wyatt wrote his report on the incident. I watched silently as he began to organize the removal of the body. That included a call to the county sheriff. They would come to the site and determine the official cause of death.

Tucker was a hiker who got lost in the mountains during the storm that left all this snow. My involvement in finding him was simple: I was in the hospital, the Kalispell Regional Medical Center, when I heard Wyatt talking to a nurse about their team. He was asking her to join it, but she couldn’t for a whole host of reasons that she gave him. I stepped up to him, extended my hand and introduced myself. I told him I was a doctor and new in town, but if I could help, I’d be glad to offer myself up to the team.

Wyatt is a big guy, the type of man you’d expect to be an outdoorsman, with a red beard and a wide smile. I liked him.

His hand enclosed mine easily and he asked, Doctor Sixkiller? Aren’t you the lady that bought Ernie’s business?

Yes, I was. Doctor Ernest Pillow was seventy-one when he died. His widow, a gracious lady named Florence, was my contact in Montana. I had been looking for a partner and got her. She was trying to sell her husband’s practice and I bought it after meeting her. In some ways, she reminded me of my grandmother, God rest her soul. Grandma was a Maine original and nothing ever slipped past her. Her name was Nikki and I remember her vividly because that’s how she lived her life. Florence was like that, like Grandmother. It took three months, but the lawyers on both sides finally got all the t’s crossed and I was in business.

To my surprise, Mario already had a job in Kalispell. Lord, I do not know how he does it, but I seldom catch him flatfooted. He’s teaching seventh grade social studies and the little girls already have him divided among themselves.

That leaves my kids. I think Madison hates me now. Travis talks to Mario, but not to me. I’m the Bad Guy That Took Away All Their Friends. Fortunately, Mario is keeping up their spirits. I wish I was as confidant about my skills as a mother as he is about being a father.

But, yes. I bought Ernie Pillow’s business and moved my family to Montana. It may as well have been Egypt for the way my kids responded.

At least Cayn Wyatt seemed happy to see me.

A doctor! he exclaimed. Can you ski? he asked wincing.

Yeah, I said smiling. I can ski.

Well, as long as I’m your partner, you can join the team.

I’d be glad to, I said.

That brief interview was how I became a probationary member of the Flathead County Search and Rescue team.

As I stood in the small crowd, I had no idea how far south my life was about to go. Wyatt was directing everything and to that moment, I didn’t have any doubt he was qualified to do it.

The first thing he said that made me wonder was, Exposure. Death by exposure. The second thing that made me wonder was the lady who skied up next to me and said, Hey, Doc. We got kind of lucky getting you on the team. Wyatt is usually a lot more particular about who gets involved. Her name was Wanda Lansing and she was an RN at the medical center.

Maybe he needed someone in a hurry, I said as I watched him direct traffic.

Yeah, maybe, she said. You going to join us at Sonny’s?

That’s when the third thing happened. I didn’t even have a chance to respond to Wanda when Wyatt grabbed his radio and spoke into it. I didn’t know who he was talking to, but I knew what he said wasn’t true. Base? This is Search One. Found our hiker deceased. Looks like he’s been that way for a while. We’re bringing him out.

From the way I found the body, I know that he’d died recently, probably within the hour. If not? There was no way his eyelids would have closed that easily. Sure, maybe Wyatt was being expansive with the facts. That is not how I was trained, however. I was trained to be factual and wholly so.

As we were watching, Wanda added a fourth fact. Doc Pillow was on the team for thirty years that I know of. Getting you involved was a stroke of luck. Then she extended her hand to me. She has bright red hair and the freckles that go with it. She reminds me of Aunt Dora back in Maine. Both of them have that hair and both of them wear it long. Otherwise, Aunt Dora is petite, tiny and short. Wanda is tall and probably popular with men. Note that I didn’t say she encourages it. Men need no encouragement. All I said that Wanda seems pretty. But, then, I’m a girl and not qualified to say.

Tucker was going to make the ride back to Kalispell in a black body bag. That was procedure. I understood that. I also understand about clearing the incident and going home. What I didn’t understand was Wyatt keeping everyone away from the body. I mean, Tucker was dead. Did Wyatt expect him to complain?

All these things were so minute that I didn’t pay much attention. Okay, Wyatt was making the call that Tucker died from exposure. That seemed reasonable. But dead for a while? That was a stretch, one that was going to bother me as time passed. And me on that team? Wanda called it a stroke of luck; but my addition to that team was going to be found to be a thing of plans and plots. Someone wanted me on that team for a reason I did not know. However, the thing that was going to spark me into action was Doctor Ernie Pillow and his death.

None of these things had any impact on me as yet. Wyatt simply cleared the area and waited for the arrival of the county forensic team. After they were done, Tucker would make his last ride.

Sonny’s? I asked. What’s that?

Water hole in Kalispell. It’s sort of a tradition. We meet there to celebrate the incident that brought us out. You should go, Doc. You’d enjoy the crowd.

Had I declined, it’s very possible that none of this would have happened. But I didn’t. I wanted Kalispell, Montana, to be my home the way Portland, Maine, became my mother’s home. She was born up country and found her way to Portland after her parents died. It became her home and I grew up there. Yes, my life would be easier if I stayed there, but I saw what she did with her life and she started with nothing. I mean that literally. Nothing. She was nine when my grandfather adopted her. Everything I am, everything I will ever do is because those two – my grandfather and my mother – needed each other in ways I still can’t see. My grandfather married my grandmother after my mother was already in grandpa’s life. Yes, they had issues but grandmother brought one thing to the table that made everything wonderful.

My father, Brian Sixkiller.

Grandmother was Nikki Sixkiller.

Yes, my mother married her stepbrother.

Now I am in a place like my mother was and I want to make it mine. I want my children to grow up here, want them to love it and see it as the warm spot in their heart.

The birth process is painful, though. And this place, this birth, wasn’t going to happen without a lot of pain. It started that night at Sonny’s. Odd, but I grew to like it.

Go figure.

Chapter 3

The historic section of downtown Kalispell is near the corner of Idaho Street and Main. Sonny’s is on that corner and has been since 1911. The original Sonny was a guy named Sonny Decker. He’s been dead since before I was born. The new Sonny is a guy named Douglas Stevens. I met him when Wanda introduced me as the doctor that’s going to take Doc Pillow’s place.

I could see Wanda in a wagon train crossing the prairie. She was that kind of person. She could be as soft as a cloud or as hard as a shot of whisky. She gave you whatever you needed.

Mario was at home with the kids watching movies. Well, Travis and Madison were probably watching the movies; Mario was probably correcting homework and tests. Such is the life of a teacher. Still, he was encouraging me. He feels the same way I do. This can be our place and our time to do something worthwhile. It isn’t hard to love him.

Stevens smiled, reached across the bar and offered his hand. I took it, smiled back and said, Maybe I’ll become part of the tradition.

He nodded toward the group and said, They’re a good bunch of people. You could do a lot worse.

Agreed, I said.

Sonny’s caters to everyone, not just the bar crowd. Their special flavor comes from the number of cowboy hats they have nailed to the walls. All types, colors and styles, there are hundreds of them. I don’t own one, but I can see that I’m going to have to buy one. Wanda’s is white because good guys wear white hats. There were all colors around the room. Cayn’s was black.

You need a job? I asked.

Got one, she answered with a smile. Why?

I’m interviewing for office help. An RN? You could do a lot of good work for me.

She slowly shook her head and smiled. Sorry, but I like my job. Thanks for the offer, though.

One of the EMT’s on the team, a guy named Tony Magill, reached down to where we were sitting and pulled us to our feet. It’s time for the toast! he bellowed. Tony is our age, mid-thirties with black hair and a two-day beard. Gregarious doesn’t begin to describe him. Even up in the mountains, he had a smile.

The toast was held at the bar. All of us lined up, raised our glasses to the mirror and said, To them that need us! Then we threw back whatever we were drinking and hugged.

One of the female EMT’s, a little thing named Sue Pryde, scurried across to where we sat and settled onto the stool next to where Wanda was sitting. She dropped her chin onto her palm and said, Introduce me. I hear she’s a doctor and I want to find out if she’s as stupid as Carlstrom.

Wanda smirked and joined me in a laugh. This is Sue Pryde. She does stuff like this. You have to forgive her. Sue? Meet Doctor Six.

My friends call me Evie, I said with my best smile.

You want to take this party to a booth? Sue asked.

Sure, I said. Then I deferred to Wanda and said, If that’s okay with you.

We were in the bar portion of the place. There was a Utah Jazz basketball game on the TV above the bar. The men were watching it and the woman were talking among themselves; like us, I guess.

Wanda grabbed her glass and said, Sure. I’d rather talk to you guys than fight the Jazz any day.

There was a booth open in the corner. It was way too big for the three of us. We edged around to the back and huddled together like conspirators.

Sue looked at me and said, Southern California, huh? I’ll bet this is culture shock, all this snow, I mean.

Nah, I said waving my hand. "I grew up in Maine. You ain’t seen snow until you’ve see a nor’easter. That’s a storm. Plus, my family owned a home on Sebago Lake. We used to skate on it in the winter time. I loved it there."

Sue threw back her head and laughed uproariously. Sputtering, she said, Cayn thought you were from California. He thinks you’re one of those Valley Girls. She laughed until her face turned red. Then she held up her beer bottle and said, Here’s a toast to true ignorance, she said.

We all toasted; I drank my tea.

I learned that Wanda was divorced and lived not two football fields distance from me. Sue was married to a guy named Sam and lived in Somers, a small village on the north shore of Flathead Lake. Wanda had a daughter name Rebecca; Sue had two daughters, Christina and Monica. We shared pictures and both of them said that Madison was as cute as a butterfly on a barstool. I think that means they think she’s pretty. Sue just swooned at Travis’s picture and said, Oh, the hearts that boy is going to break.

Our little threesome provided me with more fun than I’d had since I moved my family here. I actually laughed and Mario had nothing to do with it. We traded phone numbers and Wanda promised to call me.

Well, my night had gone so well that I called for a beer. A lady whose name I did not get smiled, asked what kind of beer I wanted and I said, Black Star. It was a local brew and I’d been told it was pretty good.

The lady smiled, wrote something on a pad and disappeared toward the