There was not nearly enough light so I moved one of the stand-up brass lamps, whose frayed extension cord buzzed and sparked before shorting out. I cursed again, thunderously, before going back to the kitchen for something to mend it, something I had glimpsed among the scattered items on the floor: a half-roll of green electrician’s tape. I re-spliced and re-plugged, then tilted the lampshade to cast as much light as possible onto my operating table. Around the girl’s face a ghostly blue after-image of the lamp floated like an aura.
On her abdomen, on the left side, was a gash just below the rib cage. Dark blood welled out, slowly but steadily. The other cut was in the inner right thigh, in the middle of the longest muscle of the body, the sartorius, which runs from the outside of the hip to the inside of the knee. There the blood was bright red, pumped directly from the heart, oozing out at each contraction.
Terrific. A bedful of blood and a corpse in my cabin. A girl’s corpse. My ex and her lawyer are going to have a field day with this.
On weak knees I began to sway, and blood thunder pounded against my temples. Was I about to lose it? I shook my head violently, a dozen times, trying to regain some clarity. When that didn’t work I banged my forehead against the door, not once, not twice, but three times. I opened the door, let the wind sting my face with sharp pellets so cold they felt hot. Then stepped out into snow.
From my glovebox, beside a plastic .38, I pulled out a pair of reading glasses and from under the passenger seat, my father’s survival kit. I unsnapped it for the first time and peered in: a shake-to-charge flashlight, radio/lantern, first-aid kit, hand-cranked cellphone charger. But no cellphone. Toolbox, I’d need my toolbox. I rummaged under the passenger seat, but it wasn’t there. Stolen? No, it was never under the passenger seat. It was by the inside hub of the back wheel. I grabbed that and my nylon sleeping bag.
Under the mended lamp I examined the contents of the first-aid kit. It was state-of-the-art, like everything my father owned. I pulled out two bandage compresses, unfolded them, and placed one over each wound, applying pressure with each hand. The bandages were soon saturated, so I opened up packets of gauze and placed them layer upon layer over top.
The bleeding wouldn’t stop. Think, try to remember, scrape the bottom of what’s left of your brain. There are twenty-six pressure points on the body, thirteen on either side. But where, and which ones should be pressed? I placed the heel of my hand directly on the crease in the groin area, mid-bikini line, praying this was the right spot, and applied pressure. The idea was to close the femoral artery, but it wasn’t working … I put my knuckles to my lips, nearing the panic point, smelling and tasting her warm coppery blood.
A paste of cayenne pepper, it came to me, can stop the bleeding in seconds. According to old wives, at least. But I couldn’t remember seeing any spices at all, either here or at my neighbour’s.
With the flat surface of my fingertips, I pressed directly over the artery and applied additional pressure with the heel of my other hand. Counted to sixty, to ninety. Okay, slightly better … To one twenty, one eighty … much better. I let out a breath that felt like it had been held for the full three minutes.
Now what? Elevate the wounds, above the level of the heart. Slow the flow, speed the clotting. I looked around. From the sofa I grabbed a cushion to slip underneath her but quickly changed my mind. Errore molto grande if she has fractures. So I dropped it on the floor, hefted up one end of the bed, kicked the cushion underneath. Then got the other cushion and did the same on the other side.
In the kitchen I turned on the tap full blast onto a spoon lying in the sink, which deflected the water up into my face. I wiped my eyes with my fist, filled a large metal cauldron with water and put it on the stove. I did the same with an old tea kettle, a heavy cast-iron affair, flushing out an alarmed spider. I struck a match and turned two switches. Propane. How long would that last?
From an inside pocket of my duffle bag I pulled out a Best Western sewing kit, with a needle and cardboard spool of black thread. I tossed them into the pot of water. From the toolbox I took out a pair of tweezers and needle-nose pliers. Clamps, I’d need clamps …
On hands and knees on the kitchen floor, I pawed through the mishmash of gear. Nothing. I returned to the bed and stared at the gash in the groin, which was releasing streamlets of red. The numbers 9-1-1 began to bounce inside my head like lottery balls. How can you possibly save her? Someone as spectacularly screwed up as you. You can’t even save yourself. There was no phone in my cabin, but there might be one in my neighbour’s …
I’d forgotten, already, how dark it can get in the north country. I looked up at the sky and wondered whether my eyes were closed. A blanketing coffin jet, wind out of the northwest pushing black clouds across a black sky. In the faint light of the flashlight I could make out only the outlines of brush and conifers, of huge lumps of rock like fairybook beasts.
The snow is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply …
“Oh Christ, don’t start that again,” I advised myself. Turning sounds and shapes into other sounds and shapes, into aural and visual mirages. A throwback, I’ve been told, to the bicameral mind of prehistoric times.
The van wouldn’t start so I put it in neutral, got out and pushed against the door frame. On a slight decline, it rolled a dozen feet. I clicked on the highs, lighting up silvery pinwheels of flakes and pellets, and in the distance, faintly, my neighbour’s front stoop. I’d need a miner’s helmet and pick to get to it. Feet sliding, arms flailing, I followed the paling bands of light.
On both the front and back doors were staple-and-hasp affairs with brass padlocks, so I snatched a cedar log from a cord of firewood on the porch and began bashing at the front windowpane, repeatedly, in overkill mode, insanity mode. The sounds, like the cursing and crash in the kitchen, thundered inside my skull. I dislodged shards of glass with my bare hands, then fumbled my way through the frame. I felt a tug of resistance on my arm and back, heard the sound of snagged fabric ripping. In pitch-darkness, the bits of glass crackled under my shoes as I groped along the wall for a light switch. Click. Power on! But the only phone I could find was a black rotary in the kitchen, whose cord had been ripped out of the wall.
What now? Send a pigeon? While staring at the torn strands of wire, I smelled something repellent, the scent of Javex, reminding me of a tight white coat I was once forced to wear.
I yanked open drawers and cupboards—all, strangely, filled to the bursting point. Cans of everything imaginable stacked up as if the owner was expecting a siege: soup, corn, peas, carrots, stew, salmon, tuna, condensed milk, maple syrup, hot chocolate … At least twenty pounds of rice. Box after box of pasta, crackers, powdered milk, oatmeal, pancake mix, baking soda, canning salt … But no coffee beans, only jars of instant dust, and no alcohol.
In a bathroom drawer, of all places, was a set of clamps, but large orange plastic ones, much too big for this job. There was also an under-the-sink disaster kit with bandages, witch hazel, gauze, rubber gloves, adhesive tape, steri-strips, butterfly tape, gauze pads, tweezers, Betadine ointment, baby shampoo … Baby shampoo? In the mirror above the sink I saw that my arm and back had been slashed, and that my face and hands were laced with tiny cuts. I plucked out bits of glass then splashed freezing, rust-coloured water onto my face.
With two green garbage bags I made a makeshift seal of the smashed window. Then stuffed as many food and medical supplies as I could into a third bag. I was heading out the door when I realized I’d forgotten something. A TAG Heuer watch with a blue face I’d spotted on the bed table. Break and enter, destruction of property and grand theft would now be added to my burgeoning file.
Into my iron cauldron, whose water was on the boil, I dumped a wad of unused J Cloths. And then a pair of scissors. I lowered the flame and put a lid on the pot. With steaming water from the tea kettle I rinsed out a glass pitcher and filled it with tap water. Tossed in three spoonfuls of m
y neighbour’s canning salt and one of baking soda. Now to stir it … I opened the cutlery drawer and took out a bread knife. Stir with a knife, bring on strife: my mother’s words. I set the knife down. Took out a plastic salad fork. Stir with a fork, bring on the stork. I set the fork down. Took out a salad spoon, rinsed it with boiling water, and stirred. The cauldron lid began to rattle.
With the same spoon I fished out the hotel-kit. The thread was soft and creamy, disintegrating. In drawer after drawer, cupboard after cupboard, I searched for something to replace it. Nothing.
In the rafters I spied something promising, something trailing from a beam … I stood on a kitchen chair and pulled at it: a tangle of waxed whipping twine. Already knotted on one end was a needle, a sail needle. But the twine was too thick and the needle too large. So what now? Forget the stitches. I’d use electrician’s tape. Or Krazy Glue.
I glanced at my blue-faced watch, then scoured a metal cookie sheet with steel wool and Ajax for exactly three minutes. Rinsed it in the bathtub with hot water, then returned to the kitchen for the kettle and my neighbour’s rubber gloves. Poured the scalding water over the metal sheet, then the rubber gloves.
From the boiling cauldron I spooned out the pliers, tweezers, scissors and J Cloths and set them on the cookie sheet. I cut the cloths into small squares. Then folded a dishtowel in half and placed it over my mouth and nose like a bank robber. I tried to tie it at the back but it was too short, so I secured it with an elastic band. Put my reading glasses on over top. If she opens her eyes she’ll die laughing.
I pulled on the rubber gloves and set the metal sheet down on a kitchen chair, along with the saline solution and Betadine ointment, and carried it over to the bed. I knelt down, holding my rubber hands up, prayerfully.
With the pliers I dunked a half-dozen cloth squares in the saline solution until they were soaked through. After mopping out both wounds, I placed a square on either side.
Biting my tongue, I pulled the edges of the higher cut together and placed a butterfly bandage across it. I squeezed out globs of Betadine over the adhesive strip, and for good measure secured everything with overlapping wraps of roller gauze.
I wiped my forehead with one forearm, then the other, before turning my attention to the other gash, the one on the thigh. This one would be trickier. It was deeper, for starters—I could see layers of subcutaneous tissue along the sides. A bandage would be harder to keep in place, would loosen if my patient moved, and do little if edema kicked in. Stitches, I’d have to use stitches …
I closed my eyes in concentration. I have a needle but no thread. What would serve instead? Strands of her hair? Think. My neighbour. He must have something. Should I go back, take a closer look? I looked at the wound, which was releasing blood in regular gouts. You’re running out of time …
Yes. I can see it now, in his medicine chest! Coiled in a white plastic box. I ran—masked, coatless, bootless—to get it.
Using tweezers and pliers, I threaded the needle with the Johnson & Johnson dental floss. Then paused to think. There are three kinds of stitches: lock-stitch, interrupted stitch, and … what’s the third? Continuous? Doesn’t matter, because I remember only the second. At the midpoint I made a stitch and drew the edges of the wound closely together. I knotted the waxed floss with a square knot and cut it. The sewing was easier than I thought it would be. The needle pierced the skin, the line pulled through, my patient didn’t budge. It reminded me of skewering a Christmas turkey.
Five stitches, spaced a quarter-inch apart. The knotting was the difficult part: I had to make sure the floss would pull the edges of the wound together without cutting into the flesh, the way it cuts into gums and makes them bleed.
I sat on the floor to rest, my arms afire with tension, my eyes watering. I inhaled deeply, held my breath, watched. Blood rose to the surface, filled the cloth squares. But gradually, without gushing. I mopped the blood and pressed out a line of Betadine along the laceration. Not sure if this was necessary, but did it anyway. Then opened a packet of adhesive gauze and, careful not to touch the portion that would touch the wound, stretched it over the skin.
Although both repairs looked shoddy, amateurish, like a child’s repair of a stuffed animal, I thought they’d do the job. Not that it would make much difference. My patient’s condition was unchanged: somewhere between intensive care and the crematorium.
In the living room, my back against the window, I stared at an end table on which the previous tenant had set up a chess problem I couldn’t solve (“# in 3,” said a finger in dust). With a sweep of the hand I sent the pieces scattering across the room. I then turned toward the window, not registering a thing, anaesthetized against time and distance, feeling everything grow faraway and dim.
II
Under closed lids, lurid images assaulted me on a short loop of memory. From my makeshift bed of twisted sheets I couldn’t blot out a single scene from the night before; the horror of it reached through me and made me shake. I saw every instant, every stitch, with merciless clarity, as though magnified a thousand power under a microscope. Over and over I tried to get up that hill, to the hospital—a mere eight kilometres away!—but my tires spun on pavement that wasn’t pavement but an oozing tide of black-brown blood that was rising fast, that would engulf the van, sweep us away like a child’s plastic boat …
And that sound, that thwack of the body being dropped, woke me again and again, knocking inside my brain with the intervals of a church bell. An absurd association, but it reminded me of the thwack of the Star-Ledger on the stoop, a newspaper I delivered as a child.
In milky 6:00 a.m. light I arose from the sofa to inspect my guest, my princess of the bogs and rushes. Saint Lazarus’s younger sister. Still breathing by luck or miracle. I began to wash. Everything. The rooms, myself, her. As the sun bladed through the front window I wiped the shower curtain with a medicated cloth, shifting her body gently, painstakingly. I washed her from sole to crown, going back for hot water, then towelling down her nylon sleeping bag. For the first time I wondered why neither slash went deeper, why neither went for a major organ. A slow death seemed to be the intent—a bloodletting. Why?
Her matted hair was pasted with dried blood and gooey muck, to which there clung the faint tang of urine, so I wedged a cushion beneath her shoulders and eased her head into a basin of water. With my neighbour’s baby shampoo I washed her hair. It was tar black and cut to shoulder length, straight across the bottom, like Joan of Arc’s.
As I was drying it I began to cough, unstoppably. I fell to my knees, burrowing my head into the floor, trying to return to yesterday through the squares in the carpet. Years of food and filth had been walked into the weave and I retched on it like a dog. I stumbled to my feet, braced myself against the window. Pulled the thick brown curtain to one side, trying not to gag from the dust unleashed, and peered out. The van looked iced, like a confection, and its headlights were jaundiced, near-dead, no brighter than Christmas tree bulbs.
Over the next several hours I checked for signs of infection: inflammation, heat, pus. If I found any of these, I’d have to remove the sutures and drain the infected site. I didn’t. Things seemed to be progressing. Still, every time I saw her on the bed with her eyes closed I wondered if she were asleep or dead.
At my neighbour’s house, in a locked closet whose key was hanging on the wall beside it, I found a microwave still in its box, with a happy-face Walmart tag. I lugged it back to the cabin and cooked up a storm in dingy Tupperware: beef consommé, tomato soup, cream of mushroom, cream of vegetable, hot apple sauce, hot chocolate. I avoided all solids, guessing she’d only choke on them.
My patient didn’t touch any of this. She lay there, asleep, her arm dangling over the edge of the bed. Once she sighed, and once appeared to open her eyes, but I couldn’t be sure. On her throat was a bruise, an expanding map of blue and grey and purple lines.
When I checked to see if there was any bleeding, the plastic sheet was drenched. But not
with blood. Good Christ, how could I forget about that? In the kitchen I rummaged around for something to serve as a bedpan.
On the second day she would neither eat nor drink, and her temperature was off the scale. Starve a fever, as they say, but not here: malnutrition would slow clotting. She needed an I.V., but I’d have to settle for an older type of force-feeding. I prised her lips apart as if examining a horse. Her teeth were stained and crooked, like the cemetery stones. I tilted her head back and with an eye-dropper squeezed as much water as I could down her throat. I thought she’d cough it back up, but she didn’t. I then tried some milk. It went down too, drop by drop. I stopped when she began spewing it back up, along with some greenish slime that dribbled down her chin.
I wasn’t eating either, mind you, though I was drinking nonstop: black-sludged coffee that wired me twenty-four hours, cup after cup till my hands shook. I had slept two hours, tops, since finding the body. And maybe two more on my feet, like a horse. My mind, however, was surprisingly clear. It was a novel feeling being clean, a song of innocence, a return to the sweet long ago.
Around midnight I heard faint gurgling sounds, like those made by an infant. I stood over her and saw her lips tremble, her lids gradually open. She had no eyes! No, they were just dark red. I gaped at her, as though she were in a freak show or zoo, and she looked vacantly back. Her lips began to move, or was it my imagination? Ever so slowly, into the form of an “o.”
Did she mean eau or de l’eau? I ran to the kitchen and returned with a full glass of water. I placed its rim next to her lips, but she didn’t raise her head. She didn’t have the strength! With my free hand, I gently lifted her head from behind. Then tipped the glass. Too abruptly—water ran down her neck. I tried again. This time I felt the straining of her neck muscles and heard a suction sound, an intake of air. She was drinking on her own! And swallowing, again and again, like a parched desert nomad. She then looked up at me, as if to say “enough.” I eased her head back onto the pillow. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.