Taft

by Ann Patchett

  "Hold yourself still," Marion said, her voice a little softer now. "I'll find somebody. The bullet went all the way through, out the back. At least that's something." She slipped her thumb into my mouth and pulled up my lip. I seem to remember her fingers in my mouth from a long time ago. "You're getting shocky," she said. "Your gums look like hell." Then she left the room to make the call.

  I was glad to hear the bullet was gone. I'd been wondering about that. Wallace went to the sink and started washing his hands. "I'll tell you what," he said. "And Fay, I'm sorry, I don't mean any offense to you, but if you die over this, trying to keep him out of jail for what he's done, then I'm going to kill him. You think about that. If you die, then you're not saving Carl's life at all."

  "I'm not going to die."

  "Well, if you do, then you know. Fay, you want me to spell you for a minute? Are your arms getting tired?"

  "I'm okay," she said. She looked up and gave him the weakest sort of smile.

  When Marion came back she was wearing a light blue running suit and carrying a folded blanket of the exact same color. "He'll do it," she said. "As a favor to me. He's not happy about this."

  "Nobody's happy," Wallace said.

  "Help me cover him." The second she said it the cold in my feet spread everywhere and I was freezing. She knew it was coming. Marion handed one end to Wallace and they wrapped me up, working the blanket in between me and Fay.

  "You have to stay here," Marion said to Fay.

  "No," Fay said.

  "We can't be bringing over too many people. The doctor is nervous as it is, and I have to go because I'm a nurse and Wallace has to go because he's the only one who can pick Nickel up if he faints. You've done a good job." She put her hands over Fay's to let her know she meant what she said. Fay understood her. Fay only wanted what was best. She worked her hands out from underneath. Marion was holding my neck.

  Fay had been so close to me all night I could hardly see her, but when she stepped back I saw everything, me shot and her brother lying in the grass with a broken wrist, Taft dead and her here in Memphis. "Can I wait here until you come back?" she said to Marion.

  "Sure."

  We went out past Ruth and the Woodmoores. "How do you feel?" Mrs. Woodmoore asked me.

  I felt shot. "Okay," I said.

  Marion finally seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere and she took me out the front door. She was careful on the steps going down. Wallace came along beside us and held my arm. Fay stopped at the porch with Ruth and the Wood moores. They stood there together under the porch light. I couldn't turn around to see them, but the Woodmoores would wave. We had forgotten to tell them Fay was staying.

  "Fay," Taft says, "go call your brother. Dinner's on the table."

  God help anyone who's trying to find their way through the city of doctors' offices in the triangle made by Baptist, Methodist and the V.A. hospitals. All the buildings are brick, most of them are low and painted light colors with big letters on the front, like they were apartment buildings in those giant complexes out by the airport. All the parking was for doctors. I was always lost when I came down there, but Marion directed Wallace through the turns like she'd never left Memphis. "Pull over here," she said.

  The building we stopped in front of didn't look any different from the others. Marion led us up the walk, holding me by the neck. The door she went to was open, and the three of us got into an elevator. It let us off in a dark hall, but even in the dark she knew exactly where she was and we walked along until we got to the right door and then we went inside.

  The lights in the office were on. We'd come into a small waiting room, two couches, four chairs, stacks of magazines on the table, a fish tank going, but I didn't see any fish. "Doctor Bowles?" Marion called.

  "There're no fish," I said.

  She told me to hush.

  The man who came through the door didn't look enough like a doctor to suit me. He was big, big-boned and tall and his hair was sticking out all over his head like he'd been sleeping on it wrong, which he probably had been. He was wearing blue jeans and a sweatshirt that said VANDERBILT. He looked like a cowboy who'd been sleeping outside on the ground.

  "Thanks for getting over here so fast," Marion said.

  He shook his head. "I was going to go dove hunting in the morning. I was going to be up in three hours. This is why they have emergency rooms." He looked at me hard, like he was trying to decide if he shouldn't just go home and get back in bed. "Come on," he said, and we followed him.

  The four of us went down another hall and the doctor flipped on the lights in a room lined with glass cabinets. There was a long steel table in the middle and a couple of big lights hanging down. It was bright in there. Bright and clean.

  "You know this is against the law," he said, "not reporting gunshot wounds to the police. I don't know who shot you or who you shot, but we've got a system for dealing with these things. Lie down on the table."

  "He didn't shoot anybody," Wallace said in a cold voice. "It was a robbery. He knew the kid who was doing it."

  "Says the man with the gun in his belt," the doctor said.

  Wallace looked down at the gun and started to say something. The doctor put up his hand. "Stop it there. I don't want to know. The less I know about all of this, the better. I like your wife," he said to me. "She's a hard worker. Best nurse we ever had at Baptist. I'm doing this as a favor to her. That's all that needs to be said."

  "Fine with me," I said.

  I got up on the table and Marion helped me put down my head, which I appreciated. Any sort of movement made it crazy. I was looking straight up into a bright light. Sometimes Marion or the doctor would look down at me. Marion would smile. It was good to lie down. I could have gone to sleep for a week. Not for one minute of my life had I been as tired as I was just then.

  "You," the doctor said. "Come here and hold his neck for a minute."

  Then there was Wallace's face. "Hey there, chief," he said.

  "Marion, get some gloves and a packet of towels." She walked away. There was the sound of drawers opening and I wondered how she would know where to look for things. I could hear paper being torn and hands working themselves into rubber. Everything was so bright.

  "Okay now," the doctor said. "You take the towel away, then you and the towel go stand on the other side of the room, or leave the room if you want to."

  I felt Wallace's hands peel off the heavy towel, some towel from the yellow kitchen. I bet it was ruined now. "You hang in there," he said to me, and then I heard the sound of a door opening and shutting. I didn't blame him. I wouldn't have wanted to stay either.

  "Keep the pressure on," the doctor said, "here. I think this is venous bleeding, so it means it has to be the interior or the exterior jugular. If that's the case, then this is your lucky day. Bet you didn't know you were lucky, did you, brother? Bullet hits the carotid and you'd have a hell of a time finding somebody who'd be able to hold your neck tight enough. Even if you didn't bleed to death you'd have a stroke later on. Messy business. Bad if it kills you and worse if it doesn't. I'm going to get some Xylocaine. Keep holding it, just like that."

  Then the doctor's face was gone and I could hear the sound of glass bottles clinking together. Marion's face blocked the light for a minute. "You're doing fine," she said.

  "Franklin didn't?"

  "Never woke up," she said. "You know how he sleeps."

  The doctor's voice came from somewhere else. "You know," it said. "A person isn't supposed to operate on a member of her own family. Marion shouldn't even be doing this." Suddenly his face was back over mine. "What would you say to eight cc's?" he said. "That'll make things a little more pleasant."

  I didn't know why in the hell he was bothering to tell me all of this, considering that I didn't know what he was talking about. Maybe it was for Marion's benefit. Maybe he was just trying to keep himself awake by chattering. Everything he said was noise, a conversation at the table next to yours that you don't care abou
t but can't stop hearing. I felt a stick and a deep burning sting.

  "I'm going to try and wash this out a little. It's a mess. Bullets make such a goddamned mess."

  He was moving around, but it was starting to feel like less. Then there was more paper tearing and he put a piece of cloth over my chest and on my face so I couldn't see anymore. Then somebody covered me up. I was sure I'd be asleep by now. "I'm going to be awake for this?" I said from underneath the cloth.

  "General anesthesia is a luxury afforded to those who go to the emergency room. I can't do everything myself. You let me know if it starts hurting and we'll give you a little more juice. I'm going to turn your head now. You're not going to like this."

  Things turned bright again, everything was wiped clean. I sucked in the air underneath the towel and tried not to make noise.

  "It's all that swelling," he said. "Blood in the muscle, nothing we can do about that. I'm going to open you up now."

  I hadn't thought there would be any cutting. I thought the hole in my neck was plenty big enough for anyone to work through. I guess you never ask the right questions before things start. I could feel him sliding a knife through my neck, but it felt far away. It felt dead, like touching your leg when it's asleep.

  "My, my," he said, clucking his tongue. "That looks like hell. See that? The belly of it there. There's the spinal accessory nerve."

  I could only imagine he was talking to Marion. He seemed to forget about me as soon as he covered me up.

  "There's that jugular. Ripped to shreds. Give me a real operating room and I might be able to do something about fixing it, that would be a real piece of work. But seeing as how some people don't like hospitals, I'm just going to tie it off."

  I was wondering if that wasn't something I might be needing later on. Suddenly there was a sharp pain that laid all the others to rest. It hurt so much I could hear it and I jumped. "Christ," I said from beneath my towels.

  "That hurt?"

  "Damn right it hurts."

  "I'll give you a little more juice," he said. "But if you don't hold still I'll see to it you never walk again."

  He stepped away and when he came back there was the stick again and then the burning, numbing pain.

  "Have you ever seen this done? Here, watch this, just in case the next time he gets shot in the neck you have to do it yourself."

  "He wanted me to do it this time," Marion's voice said.

  The doctor laughed, a good long laugh that I thought was disrespectful to Marion, but she didn't say anything. "Two-o silk," he said. "Put the suture through the vein. See that? That's why you need the round needle. Now make a knot on the side, wrap it around to the other side and make another knot there. That way it doesn't slip off. Hell of a thing if it slips off. Now we do it again here." He was quiet for a minute. "And we cut the vein in the middle. Put a hemostat on that. Good. Now hold it there. Because I like your wife I'm going to do something here called a double ligature, brother. That means you get another set of knots. Backup knots. Marion, you want to do one of these?"

  "No, sir."

  "She doesn't want to do one. Well, that must mean she loves you after all." He started humming then. I tried to remember the song. Something about Paris. "See, that takes care of our bleeding. You can take the hemostat off now. Get me some Vicryl sutures to sew the muscle."

  I could feel some tugging in my neck, but things were good and numb now. The muscle took some time.

  "Four-o nylon to close. We'll make these stitches nice and small. I did a rotation in plastics, you know. I was good at it too. Could have gone in for plastic, the real money. Spend my life making bigger breasts and smaller noses. Nobody calls you at three o'clock in the morning because they don't like their breasts. But no, I had to go head and neck. Strep throats and gunshots. Look at this. Look how pretty that is. There won't even be such a scar."

  Franklin's Coke bottle scar.

  "Let me just debride the wound and we'll be through. I'm just going to cut away what's loose. You got some pieces of muscle and tissue hanging off here that aren't so attractive. This one stays open. Gunshot wounds are dirty things no matter how you clean them up." There were sloshing sounds, the feeling of someone working around inside of me. Then I felt something cold running down the back of my neck. It made a pool on the table underneath me. I had the worst feeling that he had poured it in at the top and it had run all the way through. "Get me some iodoform gauze," he said, and Marion went off. Why did I keep thinking he was talking to me? "I want you to take these stitches out when they're ready. Seven to ten days, whenever it looks good. You'll know."

  "Yessir," she said.

  He pulled back the sheets and the light came flooding in from everywhere. "Sit up, brother. You lived after all."

  Marion was taping pads to my neck and then winding the thing up with gauze. The doctor was writing out notes.

  "Go pick these up tonight," he said. "Five hundred milligrams of Cipro twice a day and some Demerol fifty for the pain. Don't slide on the antibiotics. You are an infection waiting to happen."

  "When do we come back?" I said, bringing my hand up to touch my neck.

  He pushed my hand back down. "You don't ever come back," he said. "I've done my good deed for this year. You have any problems, you go to the hospital. Nobody will bother you about a gunshot wound that's fixed up so nicely."

  "I really appreciate this," Marion said.

  He put his arm around her shoulder. "I wish you'd come back to Memphis. Nurses good as you are hard to find. Keep an eye on him. Keep him down until he feels like getting up. Change the dressing every day. And you," he said to me. "I'm sending you a bill. A huge bill."

  "Right." I put my hands behind me on the table. I was feeling a little lightheaded and I didn't think it would be a good time to fall.

  "Call the big guy," the doctor said. "Get him out of here. He looks like he's going to faint."

  WALLACE CAME BACK and stuck his head in the open car window. "I, um, I don't have enough money. Either of you have any money?"

  "How much is it?" Marion asked.

  "One hundred twenty-three dollars and some change. That's with the tax and everything."

  "A hundred twenty-three?" What was I taking, uranium?

  "It's the Cipro," Marion said, reaching into her purse. "That stuff costs a fortune. I should have thought about that."

  "It's okay," Wallace said. "I just don't—"

  I was trying to reach into my pocket with my left hand, but I couldn't quite get my shoulder to join in. "Reach back there and get my wallet," I said to Marion. She slipped her hand beneath me and went into my pocket. "Give him the credit card."

  Marion handed Wallace my whole wallet out through the window. "Come back and tell us if they give you any trouble."

  The all-night pharmacy wasn't close to anything. It was out by the fairgrounds where they held the farmers' markets in the summer. The store was huge and bright and there were almost no cars parked out front. The windows were full of banners, sales on notebooks and pantyhose and diet pills. No sale on antibiotics.

  "I should have sent him in there with money," Marion said. She was sitting in the back seat. "I don't know what I was thinking of."

  "There's plenty else to think about," I said. I wished the headrest was higher up. I closed my eyes.

  Wallace came back and put my wallet and the sack on the dashboard. He backed out the car and headed towards the Woodmoores. Was it four in the morning? Five? We were all quiet. There wasn't anything left to say. We felt sad. I'd been shot, Wallace had seen it happen, Marion had been saddled with fixing it. The two of them had looked inside my neck while I lay there.

  When we got to the house the front door was unlocked and the lights in the living room were on. Mrs. Woodmoore was asleep sitting up on the couch, her head back and mouth open. Fay was sleeping with her head in Mrs. Woodmoore's lap, her legs stretched out. Ruth and Mr. Woodmoore had gone upstairs to bed, I guess. It was late.

  Wallace
and I stood by the door and looked away. I didn't like coming up on people when they were asleep. Marion leaned over Fay and shook her mother's shoulder. "Mama," she said quietly. "We're home."

  But it was Fay whose eyes opened first. She sat up quickly and looked embarrassed. Fay moving is what woke Mrs. Woodmoore.

  "You're all right," Fay said.

  Mrs. Woodmoore shook her head and pushed her glasses back into place, then she wrapped an arm around Fay. "See there? Didn't I tell you he was coming back? Didn't I say he'd be fine? This girl has been so worried about you." Marion's mother got up and put a light hand on either side of my face. "How you feeling, baby?"

  "He's tired," Marion said. "He's had a hell of a night."

  And I was tired. Too tired to feel like talking about it. Fay stood up from the couch and swayed a little, trying to get used to her own weight. She'd been cleaned up. Her hair had been washed and was still a little damp. She was wearing her jeans and a white undershirt that looked to be one of Mr. Woodmoore's. I could see Mrs. Woodmoore leaning her over the sink and washing her hair, working the blood stains out of her clothes.

  "Wallace," I said, my voice feeling sore. "Any chance I could get you to drive me and Fay home?" The way it sounded we were going together. I hadn't meant that.

  "You can drive her home," Marion said, "but he's staying here. Somebody has to keep an eye on you for a day or two, make sure you don't start bleeding, make sure you take your pills."

  "Isn't it nice having a nurse right here?" Mrs. Woodmoore said to me.

  "I think I should get home," I said, but I could have cared less where I slept.

  "You don't have to think," Marion said. "I let you out of going to the hospital, but we're not even going to talk about this one."

  It would have been good if there'd been a minute to talk to Fay, see how she was doing, but it wasn't going to be possible with everybody standing there. She was looking at her feet. There was still some blood on her tennis shoes.