Читать книгу American Boy - Larry Watson - Страница 9

3.

UPON RETURNING TO THE DUNBAR HOUSE, our senses were immediately assaulted. Though the meal had been prepared hours earlier, the aroma of stuffed turkey and pumpkin pie lingered, as inseparable from the house as its warmth from fire and furnace. Then Janet came bounding toward us shouting, “She’s here! She’s here!”

“Who’s here?” Johnny asked.

“The shot girl!”

Julia ran into the room just in time to correct her sister. “The girl who got shot!”

Mrs. Dunbar hurried close behind, trying to quiet the girls. But their excitement had them bouncing in place.

“Mom?” said Johnny, “what are they talking about?”

Mrs. Dunbar put her finger to her lips, as if to indicate that even his question was too loud. “They brought her here shortly after you left,” she whispered.

Johnny and I looked at each other, trying to comprehend what we’d just been told. It felt almost as if we were the victims of a practical joke.

The snow we’d stamped from our boots hadn’t even melted when Dr. Dunbar entered the room. “Well boys, sorry if your search was for naught.” He was still wearing the vest and tie he’d had on at the dining room table, but he’d exchanged his suit coat for a white lab coat.

“She’s here?” Johnny asked again.

“She is indeed.”

“How is she?” I asked. “Is she ... ?”

“She’s seen better days, I promise you that. But all in all, she’s faring pretty well.” He was smoking a cigarette, but he’d only taken a couple drags. He handed it now to Mrs. Dunbar, who smoked Chesterfields as did the doctor, but she held the cigarette as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. “In fact,” he added, “I should probably get back in there. She’ll be coming around soon.”

As he turned to walk back through the house to the clinic, something came over me. I don’t really remember deciding to follow the doctor, but follow I did, as surely as if I’d been invited.

Johnny trailed along as well, but to this day I believe he was following me and not his father.

Dr. Dunbar had not gone far before he realized he was being shadowed. He slowed and looked back over his shoulder. “Yes?”

Mrs. Dunbar had also joined our little entourage, but all of us stopped now, and we stood in a small, dimly lit parlor. Back in the bright foyer, the twins were still spinning with excitement.

“What is it?” the doctor asked. I had no doubt that his question was directed to me.

I had no reply.

“Would you like to see the patient?”

Of course I wanted to see the patient, but Dr. Dunbar knew this about me before I knew it myself.

“Oh, Rex,” said Mrs. Dunbar, “do you think that’s a good idea?”

“Let’s leave it up to them. If they’d rather not, that’s just fine as well.” He turned to us. “Well?”

I was instantly ready to say yes, but I knew Johnny had to answer first.

“Is she ... okay?” he asked.

Dr. Dunbar reached inside the sleeve of his white coat and readjusted a cuff link. “She is now,” he said succinctly. “Or will be soon enough.”

“All right,” said Johnny, looking at me. “Sure.” Apprehension flickered in his eyes. He might have hoped I’d say that I wasn’t interested, but there was no chance of that.

“Very well then,” Dr. Dunbar said. “Let’s see if I can teach you something about the treatment of bullet wounds.”

As odd as this situation might seem, there was reason and precedent behind it. Both Johnny and I had expressed an interest in medicine as a career. Dr. Dunbar hadn’t prodded us in that direction, but since he made every endeavor—from casting a spinner into the river to manipulating a dislocated shoulder back into joint—look enticing, it was hardly surprising that we were drawn to his profession. Medicine might not have had as strong an appeal for Johnny as it did for me—among other possible reasons, he didn’t share my ambition to forge a life different from the one I’d been born into in Willow Falls—but once we showed an interest, Dr. Dunbar seemed eager to share his knowledge and experience with us.

I couldn’t be sure exactly when Johnny’s medical education began, but I knew to the minute when mine did. I was eight years old, and I woke on a summer night to find Dr. Dunbar sitting on the edge of my bed. I knew who he was, but only vaguely. At that point Johnny and I were only friends as part of a larger group of same-aged boys, and I didn’t associate him with the physician I’d seen for a school checkup. But that night Dr. Dunbar turned on the light beside my bed and softly spoke my name. “Matthew? Matt?” He patted my leg tenderly.

As soon as he thought I was fully awake, Dr. Dunbar said, “Matthew, your father is dead.”

I barely had time to gasp before he went on. “He was killed in an automobile accident.”

“What ... what happened?”

“He ruptured his spleen.” Dr. Dunbar was to be forgiven for this response. I’d wanted to know about the accident itself, but he’d answered according to how his profession interpreted curiosity. “Do you know where your spleen is?”

I shook my head. Dr. Dunbar reached over and pressed three fingers against my abdomen. He poked hard to impress me with that area’s softness and vulnerability, and to make certain I understood what he was telling me.

“His spleen ... ruptured?”

“The spleen’s job,” he explained, “is to filter out impurities in the blood. It’s enclosed in a thin capsule, and when that capsule ruptures, blood rushes into the abdominal cavity. When that happens, no one can survive for long.”

Then he subtly shifted from a physician’s rough tour of anatomy to a family friend’s gentle rub. “I’m sorry, Matthew. Your father thought the world of you. He was a good man. We’ll all miss him.” Did Dr. Dunbar know these things to be true of my father, or was he simply trying to help me feel better?

Dr. Dunbar’s strategy for breaking the news about my father’s death was unusual, but it worked as well as anything could. Detailing that fatal injury had the simultaneous—and paradoxical—effect of hitting me hard with the stark fact of his death and diffusing the force of that blow. With my stomach still tender from the pressure of the doctor’s fingers, I had to concentrate on the physical reality of death, and that diverted me momentarily from thinking about what life would be like without my father. And then on some level I was also flattered that Dr. Dunbar believed I was mature and intelligent enough to handle the hard fact of death along with its complicated physiology.

Dr. Dunbar waited another moment to make sure of my composure, and then said, “Why don’t you get up now. Your mother needs you.”

With Dr. Dunbar’s hand resting gently on my shoulder, we moved into the living room, where my mother sat quietly weeping. Her brother was there too, and as I walked into my mother’s arms, in the instant before my own tears commenced, I looked over at my uncle and thought, I know where the spleen is.

Had Dr. Dunbar already seen something in me before that night, something that led him to conclude I had promise as a physician? And when I took the news of my father’s death without wincing, did he realize that I might have the ability to perform a doctor’s most difficult task—to look into someone’s eyes and give them the hardest news they could ever get? Or had I impressed him with my question about the spleen, suggesting a curiosity that could not be quelled even in the darkest moment?

Whenever our “education” began, Johnny and I were well embarked on our unofficial course of study by the time we were teenagers. In fact, if patients consented, we were occasionally allowed to be present during a treatment or examination. When June Dunbar complained of an earache, for example, Dr. Dunbar let us look through the otoscope, and pointed out the swollen red membrane that indicated an ear infection. And he once summoned us to the clinic to witness him taking a swab of Betty Schaeffer’s niece’s throat, in order to determine if she had strep throat. Harold Schmitke gave us permission to watch while Dr. Dunbar put four stitches in Mr. Schmitke’s forehead, repairing the damage done by a storm window that had slipped from his hands. We listened to many heartbeats and breaths both deep and shallow; we tapped knees with rubber hammers and attached blood-pressure cuffs; we took pulses and temperatures and watched blood be drawn; we looked at x-rays and learned to see broken bones and lungs with pneumonia. Most of Willow Falls came to refer to us as “Dr. Dunbar’s boys,” and regarded our medical ambitions with tolerance and amusement.

The vast majority of Dr. Dunbar’s instruction came in conversation rather than in the presence of patients. “I saw something today,” he might say, “that I haven’t encountered in years.” Then, the hook set, he’d tell us about a patient’s bulging eyes, and how they tipped him off to a thyroid condition. Or, shaking his head, he would remark, “I was afraid that finger would have to come off,” and go on to explain the circulatory problems a diabetic could face. And he once held up his hand for a long moment before describing exactly what that hand felt as he palpated an abdomen and felt the mass that led to the discovery of the tumor that killed Mr. Jensen.

But a bullet wound! Bullet wounds were the stuff of movies and television, and then Louisa Lindahl had not accidentally shot herself while cleaning a weapon—she was the victim of a crime! I couldn’t help but think that we were about to be part of something glamorous and mysterious. And as we followed Dr. Dunbar toward his clinic, I considered the status I’d have at school, with my insider’s knowledge of the event all of Willow Falls would be talking about.

As he opened the door to the clinic, the doctor said, “The deputy’s search party found her stumbling along Highway K. Doubled over and bleeding and nearly frozen from being out in the cold in nothing but a thin dress. I wasn’t sure whether it was more urgent to treat her for the gunshot wound or for frostbite.”

The clinic consisted of a reception area and three small examination rooms, and Dr. Dunbar led us toward the only lighted room. Dr. Dunbar had turned up the heat to thaw out Miss Lindahl, and the corridor was dark and warm.

“Is the deputy here?” Johnny asked.

“He’s back at the jail. Interrogating the assailant. He’ll be back later if she’s up to answering questions.”

In the open doorway, I had my own moment of hesitation. The blood trail that we couldn’t find in the woods was evident now, quarter- and nickel-sized drops dried to a dusty burgundy led to the examination table, where an unconscious woman lay beneath a bright lamp. She was covered with a sheet and a blanket, but her head, neck, and shoulders were bare.

For a moment, I wondered if Dr. Dunbar had invited us into the clinic not to give us a lesson about bullet wounds, but rather to teach us about death. The young woman’s flesh was beyond pale. It was marmoreal, and I couldn’t help but think that I was looking at a corpse. And then I recognized her. For while the name Louisa Lindahl was unknown to me, the face was not.

Burke’s Pharmacy was a popular after-school spot in town, and this young woman worked at its soda fountain, scooping ice cream, mixing phosphates, pouring Cokes, and dodging the straw wrappers frequently blown her way. She wasn’t much older than the teenage patrons, but she showed no interest in us except as customers.

She was tall, slender, and pretty in a way unfamiliar to most of us. She wore no makeup, but her luminous skin and excellent bone structure made the lipstick and eye shadow that the girls our age had begun to wear unnecessary. Her neck was long, and her jaw was delicate but square. Her chestnut hair was not tightly pin-curled or overly coiffed, but simply tied back or piled on top of her head without regard to style or fashion. She wore faded print dresses that looked as if they came out of a grandmother’s closet, though these dresses must have been a smaller person’s hand-me-downs, for they always looked a bit too tight, and the hems and sleeves too short. And yet along with an element of aloofness, her austere, gray-eyed loveliness gave her a refined, almost aristocratic appearance, at least to my small-town eyes. These contradictions fascinated me—not only the shabby attire coupled with her regal beauty, but also the good looks with no apparent attempt to adorn or enhance them. And then there was the fact that she was a waitress, but seemed completely indifferent to pleasing people....

No matter how those of us boys sitting at the soda fountain teased or interrogated her (the girls pretended not to notice her), she wouldn’t say much of anything beyond what her work required. And she always refused to disclose where she was from or why she had come to our town. She even resisted the entreaties and flirtations directed her way by more accomplished suitors. I was sitting at the counter one Friday afternoon, when Rick Carver took his best shot. Rick had graduated from Willow Falls High a few years before, and he was known for scoring both on and off the basketball court. Tall, blond, and possessed of an irresistible smile, Rick attended Augustana College on a scholarship, but he came home occasionally to mingle with mortals. On that day, however, he might as well have been a stammering high school freshman. After trying repeatedly to attract her interest, he finally resigned himself to failure, spun off his stool, softly cursed, and walked out of Burke’s. She didn’t even watch him go, and a part of me silently cheered.

But none of the previous impressions I had of Louisa Lindahl, none of the intriguing ambiguities or puzzling paradoxes, could possibly match the salient facts of this day: Tarpaper shack. Lester Huston. Gunshot wound.

Dr. Dunbar led the way into the room, and we arranged ourselves at the examination table, the doctor on one side, Johnny and I on the other, and the unconscious Louisa Lindahl between us.

“This young lady,” Dr. Dunbar said, “should be rechristened. A more appropriate name for her would be Lucky Lindahl. She was shot in the torso with a small-caliber pistol, probably a .22, and if you think that gun’s smaller slug and slower velocity would constitute a reduced threat to her, you’d be sorely mistaken. At close range a .22 can do plenty of damage. But in this case her assailant could not have injured her any less severely if he had been trying. Look here—”

Slowly, as if his main concern was not to wake the patient, Dr. Dunbar pulled the blanket down to her knees. Only a sheet covered her now, and beneath it the contours of her naked body were apparent.

Dr. Dunbar next took hold of the top of the sheet, but then he left it in place. “Matt, there’s another sheet in that cabinet behind you. Would you get it for me, please?”

I tugged open a drawer, and was greeted by the smell of bleached linens. I handed a folded sheet to the doctor, and he looked Louisa Lindahl up and down. “How shall we do this?”

He partially unfolded the sheet I gave him, and draped it across her upper body, right on top of the other sheet. Then he pulled the lower sheet down below her navel. For an instant, however, this maneuver left her breasts uncovered, an error he hastily corrected by pulling down the top sheet.

The glimpse I had of Louisa Lindahl’s breasts can’t have lasted much more than a second. But it was enough time to take in breasts perfect in their symmetry, pale and faintly blue-veined. The rose-colored aureoles were the size of silver dollars, and there was a tiny slit in each nipple. The breasts were large enough to sag slightly to the side from their own weight.

The doctor didn’t acknowledge the accident with the sheets—no oops, no embarrassed laugh, no humorous remark. In fact, he whisked that sheet back in place so swiftly, so dexterously, that I wondered if he had been testing us, the way he did when he asked us if a boy who cut his foot on a brick at a construction site should be given a tetanus shot. Perhaps he wanted to know if we were mature enough, if we were serious enough about the profession we said we were interested in, to be shown a young woman’s breasts without making a wisecrack to conceal our titillation or discomfort?

If we were being tested, Johnny might have received a lower score. He gasped when Louisa Lindahl’s breasts were first revealed, though it wasn’t much as gasps go, just a quick intake of breath, closer to a pain-induced wince than it was to any sound associated with pleasure. I’m not even sure his father heard it. A look might have passed between them, but I couldn’t be certain. I was unpracticed in the subtle communications between fathers and sons.

A bullet wound was uncommon in Willow Falls, of course, but I had already learned from being around Dr. Dunbar that doctors—and, for that matter, those interested in becoming doctors—differ from other people in a fundamental way: they generally want to get closer to the sights that most people want to turn away from. And when Dr. Dunbar directed us to the wound traversing Louisa Lindahl’s midsection—a foot-wide gash sewn shut with fourteen sutures and painted amber with betadine—the eyes closest to her torso were the doctor’s and mine.

“Do you see why I call her lucky?” Dr. Dunbar said, tracing the wound in the air just inches above her abdomen. “Her assailant was plainly trying to end her life. He wasn’t aiming at an arm or a leg. She probably turned to the side just when he fired at her, and the bullet tunneled under a couple layers of skin and then from one side of her to the other. An inch or two deeper in and who knows what kind of damage it might have done.”

“But an inch the other way and it would have missed her completely,” said Johnny.

Even without the benefit of Dr. Dunbar’s peeved look, I knew that Johnny’s suggestion was not consistent with the lessons his father was trying to teach. “If the bullet had gone in an inch deeper,” I asked, “wouldn’t it have passed through her liver?”

He cocked his head as if he needed that alteration of perspective to note the arrangement of her organs. “Liver? Maybe so.... It could have even hit a rib, and when a projectile hits bone, you generally have serious trouble. Then you can get fragments—of bullet or bone—flying off in any direction.”

Dr. Dunbar stepped back from Louisa Lindahl, and while Johnny must have understood that we were to do the same, I missed the message. I remained bent over the wound, my face less than a foot from Louisa Lindahl’s flesh. I could smell the antiseptic, and under that, faintly, something else.... Blood perhaps, maybe nicotine, and then something deeper, muskier, a smell belonging to Louisa Lindahl’s essence. The black knots of the sutures looked like flies lined up along her pale abdomen. I had to touch her—how could I come this close and not?—and yet I couldn’t decide where. I paused, my hand hovering over her.

That hesitation provided enough time for the doctor to speak my name—“Matthew!”—and step toward me.

But by then it was too late. I placed my palm lightly on Louisa Lindahl’s belly, just below the furrow of flesh that Dr. Dunbar’s stitches had closed. The tip of my little finger slipped into her navel with such ease it seemed to have found its natural place.

My hand rested there for no longer than Louisa Lindahl’s breasts had been bared, but it was long enough for the feeling of her cool soft skin to stamp itself into my memory indelibly.

I jerked my hand back and stood up just in time to escape Dr. Dunbar’s attempt to swat me away.

“Matthew! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I just wanted to see if she felt... cold.”

“You never touch, Matthew. Not without the patient’s permission. I invited you in here because it’s a unique learning situation. It’s not an opportunity for you to indulge your personal curiosity.”

“Sorry.”

He stared sternly at me for a long moment. “Did I make a mistake inviting you in here?” To make clear that the question was meant for both of us, he shifted his gaze to Johnny and then back to me.

“No sir,” I said, intending to answer for both of us.

“You’re still interested in learning something?”

I nodded eagerly.

“Johnny?”

“Sure.”

Once he was assured that he had our attention again, Dr. Dunbar proceeded to lecture us on primary and secondary wounds, temporary and permanent cavities, and the stretching and displacement of tissue. Dr. Dunbar got no closer to combat than a New Jersey Army hospital during the Second World War, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this part of the lesson was intended not only to educate us, but to impress us with his knowledge of ballistics.

And knowing what we had seen of Miss Lindahl, perhaps he wanted to stress the clinical nature of the situation as well. After all, the girl lying there before us was not to be looked at for her naked beauty, but rather as a patient in need of a physician’s help. She was her wound, and the purpose of Dr. Dunbar’s lecture was to remind us of that.

But I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to know so much more than debridement techniques and the dangers of sepsis. “Why’d you knock her out?” I asked.

Dr. Dunbar’s reply came in tones as icy as his earlier glare. “Knock her out? I didn’t knock her out. I anesthetized her. When she came in she was in pain, in shock, and bleeding. I wasn’t sure of the extent of her injuries, or what she’d require in the way of treatment.”

The tension that had developed in the room seemed to make Johnny uneasy, and he rushed to ask an easily answered question: “So there’s no chance she will die?”

“She will not die.”

“Will she have a bad scar?”

“A bad scar? Depends on what you mean by bad. You saw how her body is already trying to heal itself. The scar will be the mark of how well it succeeds. I’d expect there to be some delling. You know what that is, don’t you? It’s a little depression, like a dimple. And then sometimes the body does too good a job, so to speak. She could develop a keloid, a scar that doesn’t know when to stop. I know you’ve seen those—the flesh mounds up, the skin acquires a sheen. Depending on its size it might even look pulpy....”

Louisa Lindahl stirred beneath the sheet, her body twitching and rippling as if an electric current were coursing through it. Dr. Dunbar was suddenly alert, watching for a sign that would probably be meaningless or invisible to Johnny or me. He stepped forward and placed his hand on her shoulder, his fingers extending just below her clavicle, where neither organ nor vital sign pulsed. Instantly, as if his touch had thrown a switch, her contractions ceased.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

The doctor merely smiled. It was the same smile he’d worn when he sent us on our way with pockets full of gauze.