by Neil Mcmahon
“He’s your son?” Monks said.
Freeboot nodded, then stepped to the other bed and shook the shoulder of the person sleeping in it. The shake was not gentle.
“This is his mom,” Freeboot said.
The woman stirred, then slowly sat up. She was in her mid-twenties, sallow and blowsy. With her messy lank hair, she had the look of a flower child gone to seed.
“I brought a doctor, like you broads wanted,” Freeboot said to her with clear sarcasm, even contempt. “You can watch him do his doctor thing.”
So-it seemed that Monks owed his presence here to the women. “I need more light,” he said.
Marguerite turned up the kerosene lantern and brought it to the bedside. Monks leaned closer over the boy, moving slowly so as not to frighten him.
“How you doing, Mandrake?” Monks said, and sat beside him on the bed. “Not feeling too good, huh? I’m a doctor. I’m going to try to make you feel better.”
He smoothed the boy’s hair back, feeling his forehead. It was clammy and cool, and Monks relaxed a notch. If it were meningitis, Mandrake would have a burning fever, and be dead within a few hours.
There were still plenty of other serious possibilities.
Monks’s hand went to Mandrake’s mouth and eased it open. The lips were cracked, and the inside looked dry and cottony. His breath did not have the sweet milky smell of a normal child’s at that age. It was sharp and oddly fruity.
The first diagnostic tick registed in his brain-acetone. Ketoacidosis?
“Can you tell me what’s hurting you, Mandrake?” he said. “Your head? Tummy?”
Mandrake did not respond.
But his mother suddenly said, “Hi,” in a cracked, sleepy voice.
Monks waited, thinking she was going to tell him something. But she only watched him with vague eyes, then looked around the room as if trying to remember where she was. Such a heavy sleep-especially in a mother with a sick child-suggested sedation.
“He’s had tummy aches,” Marguerite said. “He’s been throwing up.”
“Every kid has tummy aches and throws up,” Freeboot muttered. He stomped around with a few agitated steps, then subsided.
“Anything else?” Monks asked.
“He’s pissing the bed again,” Freeboot said. “After we broke him of it a year ago.”
“Drinking lots of water?”
“Yeah.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“He started acting weird a couple of weeks ago,” Marguerite said.
“Acting weird how?”
“Just weird,” she said defensively. “He looked sick. Didn’t want to go out and play.”
Freeboot snorted in derision. “He’s just scared of the bad weather.”
Monks lowered the covers from Mandrake’s chin down to his waist and lifted up his pajama top. His fingers felt the padded waistband of a diaper.
“I’m just going to touch your tummy for a second, Mandrake,” he said. “It won’t hurt, I promise.” Monks gently massaged the abdomen, feeling for lumps or abnormalities, and continuing his covert check for signs of abuse. So far, there hadn’t been anything obvious. At least it did not seem that the child had been actively harmed.
Mandrake only continued to watch Monks apathetically. Most kids that age would have squirmed, cried, had to be restrained by a parent or a nurse. Such passivity would have been a dangerous enough sign in an adult. In a child, it was chilling.
Monks gently pinched a fold of skin between his thumb and forefinger. The skin felt thin, without turgor, its usual rubbery quality. When he released it, it didn’t snap back flat, but subsided only gradually, like a slowly collapsing tent.
Along with the smell of acetone, that was the second solid bit of diagnostic information.
“Has he been eating?” Monks asked.
“Like a little pig,” Freeboot said, with an air of triumph. “Now you tell me, would he be doing that if he was really sick?”
Monks’s jaw tightened, his anger moving another notch toward the red zone. It was hard to imagine that anyone could ignore the fact of a child eating desperately, but shrinking to skin and bones. And yet, Monks had seen similar neglect many times.
He pulled the pajama top back down and tucked Mandrake in again.
“Okay, Mandrake,” he said. “I’m going to talk to your dad. I’ll be back to visit you again in a little while.”
Monks patted the boy’s shoulder, stood, and motioned with his head for Freeboot to leave the room with him. It was an automatic gesture, developed over many years of being in charge at a patient’s bedside. But he saw Freeboot’s eyes narrow, and realized that even this tiny assertion registered as an insult to his authority.
Freeboot turned his back and pushed through the curtain, leaving Monks to follow.
“Freeboot thinks it’s all in his head,” the mother said, from her bed. Apparently, she was starting to grasp what was happening. “Like, you know, he wants to be sick.”
“Freeboot’s wrong,” Monks said curtly.
“Do you know what it is?”
He shook his head, although in truth, he had a pretty good idea.
He stepped out through the curtain. Marguerite was lingering outside the room.
“What kind of drugs is she on?” he asked, pointing back toward the woman in bed. If she had borne or breast-fed Mandrake while using-or had contracted HIV or hepatitis-that could add an ugly complication.
“Motherlode? She’s heavy into ’codes.” This was slang for oxycodones-synthetic opiates.
“For a long time?”
“She always messed around with them. This last year or so, she’s been pretty much out of it all the time. She just lays around.” Marguerite’s resentment was clear. “Freeboot won’t let her sleep with Mandrake, because he says she’ll roll over on him and smother him.”
It was a tender sentiment for the mother of one’s child.
“Who takes care of him?” Monks asked.
“Me, most of the time.”
“When’s the last time you saw him drink water?”
“Just a little while ago,” she said. “I checked up on him as soon as we got back.” Her gaze faltered, and Monks was tempted to finish the sentence aloud-from kidnapping you at gunpoint.
“It’s very important that he keeps it up,” Monks said. “At least a couple of glasses every hour. Try to give him some more now. If he won’t drink, tell me immediately.”
As he spoke the words, he realized, with a mix of helplessness, anger, and fear, that he was involving himself, even assuming responsibility. But right now, keeping that little boy alive was what mattered more than anything else.
Monks walked on into the lodge’s main room. Freeboot was standing in its center like a presiding judge, somber, arms folded, with Shrinkwrap, Taxman, and Hammerhead as the jury.
“Mandrake needs immediate hospitalization,” Monks said.
The room’s attention turned to Freeboot, with gazes shifting, openly or covertly, to watch his reaction. He remained poker-faced.
“What’s the matter with him?” Freeboot demanded.
“I’d need a lab report to tell you.”
“Then how do you know he should go to a hospital?”
“First off, he’s dehydrated to a life-threatening degree,” Monks said. “That’s why he’s drinking so much water. His body’s trying to stay up with the need. But he’s passing it faster than he can take it in. The only way to replace it at that rate is by IV.”
“We’re not going to hook him up to any of that shit.”
“Hooking him up to ‘that shit’ will keep him alive,” Monks said. “There are other problems, too. You said he’s eating a lot, but he’s losing weight, right? With nausea and vomiting? A normal kid that age is a bundle of energy, but he’s lying there like an old man. He needs a thorough workup by specialists, and he needs it now.”
Freeboot shook his head. “Not for Mandrake.”
“Why
not?” Monks said. “Is it money? I can get you help. I’ll pay for it myself, if it comes to that.”
“We got money,” Freeboot said, with clear condescension.
“What, then? Are you worried about the police? We can keep them out of it.”
Freeboot shook his head again, this time impatiently-the gesture of a man wasting his breath on someone too dense to understand. Then his forehead knotted with worry, as if his own pain was showing through. Monks couldn’t tell if it was genuine or purely a performance.
“I want what’s best for him,” Freeboot said. “But it’s complicated. This is all about faith.”
Monks wasn’t surprised to find an element of religion woven into this. He had encountered a number of people who resisted medical care for religious reasons, and he knew of instances where it had resulted in death-too often, the death of a child.
“I’d be glad to hear about your beliefs some other time,” Monks said. “But don’t tell me you’d let your son be a martyr to them.”
“I didn’t say beliefs. I said faith. There’s a difference.”
“I’ve got plenty of respect for faith,” Monks said. “But it wasn’t faith that built the truck that brought me here, or the guns you’re holding me with. It was reason. And so is medicine.”
Freeboot’s gaze turned appraising, as if to concede that Monks might be worth taking seriously, after all.
“What you see with Mandrake-it’s all adding up to something in your mind, I can tell,” Freeboot said. “I can think about it better if I know what it is.”
Monks’s many years of training had made him cautious about pronouncing a diagnosis until he was as certain as possible. But the normal rules were not operating here, and Freeboot seemed to be offering a glimmer of rationality. Monks decided not to waste the chance.
“Next time he urinates, collect it in a clean container and bring it to me,” he said.
Freeboot looked surprised, even startled.
“What’s that going to tell you?” he said warily.
“Maybe nothing,” Monks said. “Maybe a lot.”
Freeboot barked, “Marguerite!” She appeared quickly in the doorway of Mandrake’s room.
“Get the kid to pee in a cup and bring it here,” Freeboot commanded.
She looked surprised, too, but went back into the room without a question.
“You must be ready for some chow,” Freeboot said to Monks. “How about a drink first? Vodka, right?”
“No, thanks.”
Freeboot’s eyes flared again with quick anger.
“You don’t seem to understand, man,” he said. “You’re our guest.”
He stalked to the rough wooden table and picked up a small bottle by the neck, upending it and taking a long swig. The liquor was clear but oily, with something thick and pinkish bobbing inside it. When he set it down, Monks glimpsed the label: Mezcal con Gusano Monte Alban. It was mescal, the real thing, and the “something” was an agave worm.
He also noticed that the fingertips of Freeboot’s hands were scarred into thick lumps of callus-maybe a childhood injury from touching something hot.
A quick series of beeps sounded across the room. Monks realized that they came from the belt radio that Hammerhead wore. They seemed to have a cadence, like a code.
Hammerhead pulled the radio free and spoke into it. “Brother, this is Site Three. Over.”
A man’s voice spoke, backed by faint static. “Brother, this is Captain America, requesting permission to enter. Over.”
Hammerhead hesitated, his gaze flicking toward the bedroom, where Marguerite was still with Mandrake.
“What’s your position, Captain America?” Hammerhead barked. “Over.”
“I’m right outside, man.” Even with the static, Captain America sounded annoyed.
Hammerhead looked questioningly at Taxman. Taxman nodded.
With obvious reluctance, Hammerhead said, “Permission granted.”
The lodge door opened. Another man stepped inside. He was about thirty, tall and good-looking, with wavy blond hair and an air of assurance. He carried an AK-47 or similar-type assault rifle with a large night-vision scope.
He stepped to attention, facing Taxman, and raised the rifle to port arms, extending it forward as if he were offering it.
“Take this, brother, may it serve you well,” he intoned. “Security was turned over to command of Sidewinder at ohone-hundred hours.”
Taxman acknowledged this, with a slight lifting of his chin.
Captain America relaxed, slinging the rifle over his shoulder, muzzle down, and glancing at Monks incuriously.
“So, Marguerite’s back?” he asked, looking around.
“We put in a long day, man,” Hammerhead said immediately, with a trace of belligerence. “She needs to rest.”
Freeboot swung toward Hammerhead with the riveting gaze that Monks was starting to think of as “the stare.”
“You don’t talk like that to a made maquis, HH,” Freeboot said. His tone was harsh with warning.
“I’m the one who was on the mission with her,” Hammerhead said sullenly, but his eyes shifted away.
“You’re a fucking grunt. You don’t touch the brides. Maybe you’ll make maquis someday, and maybe you won’t.”
Then Taxman said, “You seem to be developing a little attitude problem, HH. Guess we’ll have to work on that.”
Under the hard stares of both men, Hammerhead deflated into fidgeting. Captain America watched, with the air of a seasoned gunfighter irritated by an upstart punk.
“Marguerite needs to help out here another couple of minutes,” Freeboot told him. “She’ll be ready after that.”
Captain America sauntered to the table and twisted the top off a bottle of Red Hook ale.
Monks glimpsed his fingertips. They were thick with callus, like Freeboot’s.
Monks scanned the other men’s hands covertly. They were the same.
That could not be accidental.
The fingerprints had been deliberately obliterated, by burning, cutting, or chemicals.
The blanket in the bedroom doorway shifted aside and Marguerite came out, holding a chipped white enamel mug. The room became still again as she carried it to Monks. He took it from her and knelt beside a lantern so that he could get a good look. The urine was pale yellow and had the same unpleasant fruity smell as the child’s breath.
But with no technological means to measure the blood sugar, there was only one way, the way the old-timers had done it. He dipped his index finger into the cup, then put the finger in his mouth. He waited until the taste was gone, then did it a second time.
There was no doubt. Along with the sour taste of the urine itself, there was a cloying sweetness. It was saturated with sugar.
Monks got to his feet. All attention was focused on him.
“Diabetes mellitus,” Monks said. “Judging from the other symptoms, it’s very advanced. If it’s not treated, it will kill him. Soon.”
Freeboot erupted from his tense, staring pose in a convulsive jerk, his hands rising from his sides as if he was ready to fight.
“How the fuck can you tell that?” His voice shook with rage that seemed far out of proportion.
“It’s sweet,” Monks said. “His blood sugar’s out of control. Go ahead, taste it. Then taste your own. You’ll tell the difference.” He offered Freeboot the cup.
Freeboot strode to him and yanked it away, hoisting it to his mouth as if he was going to down the urine in a single gulp. But the cup hovered at his lips, untasted, for several seconds.
Then Freeboot spun away and slung it into the fireplace. The cup clanged against the stones, the urine spraying into the flames.
“There is nothing. Wrong. With my son!” he roared.
His back remained turned to the room, and Monks had the queasy sense of having offended a primitive, egomaniacal tribal ruler, who next would whirl back and order the death of the messenger bearing bad news.
But w
hen Freeboot turned around again, his face had become an almost mimelike mask of calmness.
“Diabetes,” he said. “There’s a medicine for that, right?”
“Insulin.”
“All right, we’ll get some, and you give it to him.”
“Whoa, wait,” Monks said. “First off, it’s a very complicated procedure. You need a precise way to determine dosages and measure blood sugar. Second, a few shots of insulin are not going to make that kid well. He needs major treatment on several levels, and follow-up treatment for the rest of his life.”
“I’m talking about right now. We get him feeling better, who knows? That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
Monks’s outrage leaped again at the thought that a life-threatening illness might make a four-year-old child stronger.
“It is going to kill him!” he finally exploded. “What the hell’s the matter with you?” He stepped closer to Freeboot, holding his gaze, trying to make contact with the father who had to be in there somewhere.
Freeboot seemed unperturbed. “Let me think it over.”
“There’s nothing to think over,” Monks said. “He needs to get to a hospital, now.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“What would I have to gain by lying?”
“Maybe you’re trying to fuck with our heads.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Monks turned away in disgust.
“So, we’ll just try some of that insulin for a few days,” Freeboot said. “If it helps, maybe I’ll start listening to you.”
He turned his gaze on the others, imperious now, and spoke with the clipped efficiency of having made a decision.
“Taxman, Shrinkwrap, we’ve got to talk. You”-he pointed at Captain America -“take your bride. Hammerhead, you stay here.”
Marguerite flashed a bruised glance at Freeboot, then stepped out into the night. Captain America followed, closing the door behind them.
Hammerhead watched them with flat, unblinking eyes.
Freeboot swung to face Monks. “You go on back with Mandrake.”
There was no point in arguing further. Monks did as he was told.