by Mike Mullin
“Hang in there,” I told Uncle Paul. “Help is coming.” He moaned, and I squeezed his hand.
Less than a minute passed before Darla, Max, and Rebecca ran back into the greenhouse with Aunt Caroline and Anna in tow. They had armloads of blankets and two long poles left over from constructing the greenhouses. Aunt Caroline cringed when she saw the unnatural angle of her husband’s leg, and Anna turned away, burying her face in her mother’s side. Darla spread out the largest blanket and folded it over the poles, forming a makeshift stretcher.
“We should splint that leg before we move him,” Darla said.
“Wouldn’t we have to straighten it out first?” I said.
“Don’t do that,” Caroline said. “You might make it worse.”
“We’ll have to set the bone at some point,” Darla said.
“No. I want Doc McCarthy to do it,” Caroline insisted.
“He’s in Warren?” Darla asked.
“Yes.”
“Let’s just get him inside for now.” I moved down to Uncle Paul’s broken leg and slid one hand under his knee and the other under his calf, just below the break. “I’ll try to hold the break still. Everyone else grab on. We’ll slide him over onto the stretcher.”
When everyone was in position, I called out, “On three. One . . . two . . . three!” We slid Paul onto the stretcher. I tried my best to hold his leg steady, but I heard the bones grind against each other. He grabbed my arm, clutching so tightly it hurt.
We spread two blankets over the top of the stretcher and carried it slowly to the house. Uncle Paul moaned as we lowered him to the living room floor in front of the fireplace. Anna got a pillow off the couch and tucked it under his head.
“Put the pillow under his good leg,” Darla said. “He’s in shock, so we want to elevate his legs, but we probably shouldn’t disturb the broken one until we get it splinted.” Anna moved the pillow.
“I don’t have any idea how to splint that,” Aunt Caroline said, staring at the break.
“We’re going to have to set and splint it to get him all the way to Warren,” Darla said.
“No,” Aunt Caroline said. “I’ll go to town and get Doc McCarthy. I’m sure he’ll come—he’s been our family doctor forever.”
Uncle Paul’s hand shot out from beneath the blankets and seized her ankle. “No. Fix the greenhouse.” His voice sounded thin and breathy.
“We can worry about that after we get your leg fixed, honey.”
“No. The greenhouse is the top priority. We can’t afford to lose the kale.”
“Taking care of your leg is the top priority.” Aunt Caroline’s lips were pressed together in a determined line.
“I swear to God, if someone doesn’t get out there and fix that greenhouse right now—” Uncle Paul let out an involuntary moan and scrunched his eyes closed, “I’ll crawl out of here and do it myself.”
“I’ll get the doctor,” I said. “I can probably run most of the way to Warren.”
Aunt Caroline sighed. “Okay, take Max with you. He knows where the doctor’s office is.”
“Can you run?” I asked Max.
“Yeah,” he said. “My side hurts, but I think it’s just bruised.”
“Take Darla, too,” Aunt Caroline said. “It will be safer with three if you run into any problems. Anna, you take care of Dad. Build the fire higher in here—we want to keep him warm. And get him some water. Rebecca, you and I will try to fix the greenhouse.”
“Work from inside, on a stepladder,” Darla said. “It’ll be safer.”
I had already turned away, heading for the kitchen. I grabbed a backpack, a water bottle, a knife, some dried meat, and a half-full book of matches. In seconds, Darla, Max, and I were jogging down the road toward Warren.
FEMA hadn’t cleared the road after the last storm, but only a few inches of snow had fallen, so it wasn’t difficult to run along the road. Just a little slick. We ran for about ten minutes, then took a breather, walking fast for a few minutes before breaking into a run again.
We covered the distance to Warren in record time, less than an hour. Nobody was out on the streets, but it was cold enough that anyone sensible would stay inside. Max led us to a low building on the south side of town. The sign out front read: FAMILY HEALTH.
Inside the office, a line of people snaked through the waiting room, past the reception desk, and through the door that led to the exam rooms. Almost everyone in the line was either a kid or elderly, although some of the kids had parents with them. It was almost as cold inside the office as it had been outside; everyone was bundled in hats, gloves, and heavy coats. An oil lamp on a table in the middle of the waiting room provided what little light there was.
“Where’s the doctor?” I asked the guy at the back of the line. He gestured toward the front. I hurried forward, pushing past the people standing in the door to the exam rooms.
“Hey, end of the line’s back there!” someone yelled.
“Emergency, sorry,” I said.
Past the door, the line broke into two, leading into adjacent exam rooms. I ducked into the closest one. Another oil lamp burned on the desk at one side of the room. The guy on the exam table had a face corrugated by age and was wearing an old-fashioned Elmer Fudd hat with earflaps. The guy standing in front of him was younger and bundled up tightly against the cold, but he had a miniature flashlight and was shining it into the first guy’s mouth, so I assumed he was the doctor.
“My uncle broke his leg,” I said. “We need help.”
“Hold on, son,” the doctor replied. “I’m almost done here.” He peeled his patient’s lower lip back. It was spotted with deep purple bruises and blood filled the spaces between the guy’s teeth. The doctor reached into a drawer and pulled out what looked like a plastic bag of Froot Loops. “Take these and stop back next week.”
“Thanks, Jim.” The patient slid off the exam table, took the Froot Loops, and left.
“Okay. Now tell me about your uncle.”
I rushed through the story of uncle Paul’s fall from the top of the greenhouse.
“Is it a compound fracture?” the doctor asked.
“What?”
“Is the bone sticking through his skin?”
“I don’t think so, but we didn’t take his pants off.”
“Hmm. Okay, follow me.” The doctor plucked the oil lamp off the desk and left the exam room. In the hall he yelled, “Belinda! I’m leaving for a trauma call.”
A woman’s voice came from the open door of the other exam room. “Crap, it’s going to take me all night to finish this line by myself.”
“It’s just a fracture. I should be back in time to help you finish up.” The doctor ducked through another door and started stuffing supplies into an old-fashioned, black leather doctor’s bag.
When he finished, I turned to head back toward the waiting area.
“Car’s in back.” The doctor turned the other way.
“You have a car?” I asked as we followed him.
“It’s not really mine, but yeah.” The doctor opened the back door, letting daylight and a cold breeze into the hall. He blew out the lamp and left it on the floor just inside the door.
There was only one car in the parking lot—an antique sedan with a huge triangular front hood and big fenders humped up over its white-wall tires.
“Nice.” Darla whistled appreciatively. “This is what you’re driving?”
“Only car in town that runs decent,” the doctor said. “Hop in.”
There were no seatbelts in the car, but Dr. McCarthy drove so slowly that it didn’t worry me much. Max gave him directions, and soon we were rolling down Stagecoach Trail back toward the farm.
“So what is this thing?” Darla asked. “It looks kinda like a ’39 Ford I saw once.”
“It’s a Studebaker,” Dr. McCarthy said. “’41 Champion.”
“Beautiful car. But I thought all doctors drove Mercedes—” Darla said.
“No, Beamers,” Dr
. McCarthy snorted. “I had one. After the ashfall started, the ambulance couldn’t make it here from Galena. So I used my BMW. Ash got in the air intakes and tore up the engine. Pretty much all the cars in town were wrecked by the ashfall. Gale Shipman kept this beauty in his garage under a tarp. Man, he was mad when the mayor told him he had to lend it to me. I don’t know if he’ll ever speak to either of us again.”
“What in the world were you giving that guy at the clinic?” I said. “It looked like . . . Froot Loops?”
“Yep, Kellogg’s Froot Loops,” Dr. McCarthy said.
“Why?”
“We ran out of Special K.”
“Never heard of a doctor prescribing breakfast cereal,” I said.
“I work with what I have. All those people in the clinic have scurvy—it’s caused by vitamin C deficiency. We’re all going to get it if we can’t find anything to eat other than pork. It simply manifests in children and seniors first.”
“And breakfast cereal has vitamin C?”
“Yep, exactly. We found a whole truckload of it abandoned up on Highway 11. I’d have preferred a truckload of multivitamins, but I’ll take what I can get. Don’t know what we’ll do when we run out, though.”
“How is it that you’ve got pork to eat?” Darla asked.
“Factory hog farms. There were three of them near Warren. Had better than ten thousand head of hogs. Whole town pitched in to butcher them and preserve the meat. Still, most of it would have spoiled if we hadn’t gotten this cold weather so early. Saved our bacon, so to speak.”
Darla groaned. “At least you don’t have to worry about getting enough to eat.”
“You don’t have to worry, either,” Max said. “We’ve only run out of food twice, and that was before you got here and built the corn grinder.”
“Yeah,” Darla said, “But with your dad hurt, we won’t be able to dig up as much corn. And losing that greenhouse—”
“It’ll be okay,” I said. I didn’t want Max to worry about the food situation, although truthfully, I was a bit worried myself.
“Turn here,” Max said, and Dr. McCarthy cranked the wheel over, turning down Canyon Park Road. A few minutes later we stopped in the road in front of the farm’s driveway. We had only shoveled one path in the snow from the house to the road, nowhere near wide enough for the Studebaker. All four of us jogged down the driveway toward the house. Aunt Caroline and Rebecca left the damaged greenhouse and joined us.
Uncle Paul’s skin was gray and sweaty. Anna had cut off his left pant leg. Livid bruises blotched his leg around the break, and it was grotesquely lumpy, but there was no blood. Dr. McCarthy knelt by his leg and examined it for a moment.
“How’s it look, Jim?” Uncle Paul asked.
“Not bad. Wish I could X-ray the break, but I think it should set fine.”
“Good, good.” Uncle Paul exhaled heavily.
“I’ll get to work, then. Now the good news is that I still have some fiberglass casting tape.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“We’ve been out of painkillers for weeks.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“I need a pail of water.”
“I’ll get it,” Anna offered.
Dr. McCarthy took a thin stick wrapped in leather from his bag. The leather was dented and scarred with tooth marks. A deep frown creased Uncle Paul’s face, but he reached up and took the stick from the doctor, put it in his mouth, and chomped down.
“Let’s have the adults hold his arms and legs,” Dr. McCarthy said. “The less he moves around, the better.”
I wasn’t sure who he meant at first. Aunt Caroline knelt and took hold of one of her husband’s arms. Dr. McCarthy was looking at me, so I grabbed my uncle’s other arm.
“Who’s the strongest?” Dr. McCarthy asked.
“Alex,” Darla said.
“Darla,” I said.
“Well, one of you should hold his left leg above the break. I need it immobilized while I set the bone.”
“You do it,” I told Darla.
Darla held Uncle Paul’s thigh, and Max grabbed his unbroken leg. Dr. McCarthy gently ran the fingers of his left hand along the break. With his right, he took a firm grip on Uncle Paul’s ankle. A low moan escaped Uncle Paul’s lips around the stick. Rebecca and Anna stood to one side, holding hands and watching.
“Everyone ready?”
I nodded.
Dr. McCarthy pulled back on the ankle, straining with the effort. Uncle Paul screamed, a trumpeting sound muffled by the leather-wrapped stick locked in his teeth. All his muscles clenched, and I had to lean forward, using both hands and all my weight to keep his arm forced against the floor. His face turned into a flaming rictus mask of pain. Even over his scream, I could hear the bones grind as Dr. McCarthy straightened his leg.
The scream ended abruptly and Uncle Paul’s arm went slack in my hands. “Check his breathing! Make sure his airway is clear,” Dr. McCarthy ordered.
I bent lower and put my cheek against his mouth. I felt a puff of breath against my skin. “He’s breathing fine.” I put my fingers against his neck. “Pulse feels strong.”
“Okay, good.” Dr. McCarthy had straightened the leg and was wrapping it in a cloth bandage.
Aunt Caroline swayed. I grabbed her upper arm. “You okay?” I asked.
“A little woozy,” she said.
“You should lie down.” I helped her stretch out on the couch.
Dr. McCarthy ripped open a foil packet and removed a bright purple strip of fiberglass tape. He dunked the tape in water and wrapped it around the break, over the cloth bandages. Darla helped, holding Uncle Paul’s leg off the floor to make it easier to wrap. Dr. McCarthy wrapped three more strips of fiberglass tape over the bandages, completely immobilizing the leg and ankle.
“That should do it,” Dr. McCarthy said as he repacked his bag. “If you see any red streaks or if the leg starts to smell bad, come get me again. Aspirin or willow bark tea would help with the swelling, if you can manage it.”
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “How do we pay you?”
“Pay me with whatever you can. I need medical supplies, gas, lamp oil, batteries, flashlights, candles, and the like. Vitamin C tablets are worth more than gold, on account of the scurvy. Food would be welcome also, so long as it’s not pork. Only reason I’ve been able to keep practicing is that folks have been so generous. Some of them even bring supplies when they’re not sick.”
Uncle Paul was still unconscious, and Aunt Caroline’s eyes were closed. “I’ll get some supplies,” I said.
I went to the kitchen and gathered a dozen duck eggs, two small goat cheeses, a bag of cornmeal, and some kale. “This is all we can spare right now,” I said when I returned to the living room. “We’ll bring more stuff later.”
“That’ll be fine.” Dr. McCarthy pulled a purple leaf out of the bag. “Is this kale?”
“Yeah. The greenhouses are too cold to grow anything else.”
“It’s a member of the cabbage family, right?”
“I think so,” Darla said.
“And none of you have scurvy?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
Dr. McCarthy reached toward my mouth. “Mind if I look?”
“No, go ahead.”
He peeled back my lower lip and looked at my teeth. Then he repeated the process with my upper lip. “No sign of scurvy at all. I bet that kale is loaded with vitamin C. How much of it do you have?”
“Not enough. That storm last night ripped up one of the greenhouses, and a bunch of it froze. It’s all mushy— really only good for the goats.”
“No, no, no. Mushy or not, it’ll treat scurvy fine.”
“I didn’t feed the goats yet,” Rebecca said. “I’ll go get the buckets of frozen kale.”
“Now look,” Darla said, “we appreciate your help, and we’ll give you all the kale we can spare, but we’ve got to eat, too. We don’t have a lot of extra food—we need most of th
e kale ourselves.”
“That’s no problem,” Dr. McCarthy said. “We’ve got plenty of pork in town. I’m sure the mayor will agree to give you all the pork you need in return for your kale.”
“We’ll trade,” Darla said, “ten pounds of pork for one pound of kale.”
“Darla,” I whispered. “He said he’d keep us supplied with pork. And we should help out, anyway.”
“What if the greenhouses fail?” she hissed back. “We need to have a supply of stored food in case something goes wrong.”
I nodded. “Okay,” I said out loud. “We’ll give you all the kale we can now as payment for your help, and then as we harvest more, we’ll trade it for pork.”
“I’ll have to confirm it with the mayor, but that sounds fine,” Dr. McCarthy said. “Why don’t you ride back to town with me, and I’ll set you up with as much pork as you can carry. Call it a down payment for future kale harvests.”
We gathered up all the kale we had: two five-gallon buckets of frozen leaves and four bags of good stuff. I got our three biggest backpacks, and Max, Darla, and I squeezed into the Studebaker for the ride back to town.
Dr. McCarthy drove us to a huge metal building north of town. The sign over the door read: WARREN MEAT PACKING. A wiry guy sat on a metal folding chair in front of a small fire just outside the main door. A shotgun rested on his knees.
“Hey, Stu,” Dr. McCarthy called as we walked up. “Need to trade some pork for medical supplies. I’ll go down to the mayor’s office and get you the paperwork as soon as we’re done.”
“Aw, Jim, you know you’re supposed to bring the paperwork first.” The guard shrugged and handed Dr. McCarthy a key. “But you may as well go ahead. He always approves your trades, anyway.”
“Thanks, Stu.” Dr. McCarthy unlocked the door and ushered us inside.
Pork gleamed pink in the light filtering in through the open door. The plant was packed with hundreds, maybe thousands, of frozen hog carcasses hanging from the ceiling. Shelves lined the walls, filled to overflowing with pink hams, white loins, and huge slabs of uncut bacon.