Crucible: McCoy

by David R. George III

  Lyles told him to unbutton his shirt, and Dickinson immediately excused herself, saying that she would wait in the kitchen. After she’d left, McCoy removed his shirt, and Lyles donned the earpieces of the stethoscope. He placed a hard, rubber-tipped bell at the appropriate locations on McCoy’s chest and back, then switched it out for a cold, metal diaphragm, with which he repeated the process. Once the doctor had finished checking lung and heart function, he retrieved a sphygmomanometer from his bag. Lyles continued to work in silence as he measured McCoy’s blood pressure, his demeanor professional but stern. McCoy couldn’t tell whether the doctor typically displayed such a bedside manner, or whether he simply distrusted—or even disliked—people he did not know.

  “I’m sure my pressure’s running on the low side,” McCoy said as Lyles returned his equipment to his bag. “I lost some blood today.”

  The doctor regarded him with what seemed a questioning look, then leaned forward to examine the cut on his forehead. “Lynn says that you’ve a deep laceration on your leg,” he said.

  “On my left calf,” McCoy specified. “It’s probably going to require stitches.” He almost couldn’t believe his own words. Although in his own medical career he’d been forced to take emergency action under primitive conditions, he’d only twice been called upon to sew through flesh. That he likely needed such a procedure right now seemed to him surreal.

  Lyles’s bushy gray eyebrows rose on his wrinkled forehead. “Why don’t you leave the doctoring to me?” he suggested.

  “Sorry,” McCoy said. Without being asked, he pulled his shirt back on, then stood up, unbuttoned the corduroy pants Dickinson had given him, and slipped out of the left leg. He then turned and leaned on the arm of the sofa so that the doctor could inspect his wound.

  Lyles ran his fingertips over McCoy’s bruised thigh, then examined his bandaged calf. “Who wrapped this?” he asked.

  “I did,” McCoy said. “I tore strips of cloth from my duffel bag.” He waved toward the swathed pile of his sullied clothing, which still sat on the floor beside the front door. “While Missus Dickinson went to get you, I cleaned the wound and redressed it.” In order to do that, he’d needed to tear off more pieces of his duffel.

  Lyles found a pair of scissors in his bag and quickly cut through the cloth encircling McCoy’s leg. For a moment, the material directly covering the deep cut stuck to it, and when it pulled free, a spike of pain seared through his calf. He flinched in response, but said nothing.

  “You said you cleaned this wound a short time ago?” the doctor asked.

  McCoy told him that he had.

  “I’m going to have to clean it again,” Lyles said. “Blood still seems to be seeping into it. It probably will need stitches.” He paused and then said, “You’ve got a lot of lacerations and contusions all over your body, Mister McCoy. Would you care to tell me how you came by them?”

  At first, McCoy resented the question. He sensed the doctor’s wariness of an outsider and thought his scrutiny the product of an insular perspective. At the same time, he realized that his answer could have medical consequences. If McCoy were performing this examination, he confessed to himself, he’d be obliged to pose the same question. “I jumped from a moving train this morning,” he said.

  “You jumped?” Lyles asked, clearly skeptical. “Or you were tossed off by the railroad police?”

  McCoy turned around toward the doctor. “Actually, I jumped.” He sat down and faced Lyles at close range. “I’m sure the railroad police would’ve thrown me off if they’d found me. I was riding in an empty boxcar on a freight train. I didn’t have enough money for a passenger train and I wanted to get home to Atlanta.”

  “If you were trying to get too Atlanta,” Lyles asked, “why did you jump off here?”

  “Because two other men hopped into the same freight car as I did, and they wanted to beat me and rob me of my food and clothes,” McCoy explained. “Considering the situation, leaping from the train seemed liked the wiser course.”

  “I see,” the doctor said. What seemed like a thoughtful silence fell between the two men, until Lyles called out to Dickinson. She answered at once, from right outside the room, indicating that she’d likely heard the conversation, which pleased McCoy; he thought she deserved to know the circumstances that had led to the need for her acts of charity.

  Lyles asked her to bring him soap, water, and some dry cloths, and she said that she would. When she did bring in a basin of water, a bar of soap, and a wad of cloths, she studiously averted her eyes from where McCoy sat. She left the supplies on a small end table, a plain wooden piece that contrasted with the ornate carving on the back, arms, and legs of the sofa.

  Once Dickinson had left, the doctor rolled up his sleeves, washed and dried his hands, then suggested that McCoy lie facedown on the floor. He did so, and Lyles began cleaning the wound in his calf. Pain sliced through McCoy’s leg as though a blade had been dragged through it. He struggled not to cry out, his hands flexing tightly into fists.

  “I know that it hurts,” the doctor said, for the first time expressing himself with a sympathetic tone, “but bearing in mind that you jumped from a moving train, you’re lucky that you weren’t more badly injured.”

  In actuality, McCoy had been more badly injured this morning. He didn’t know how long he’d lain unconscious after hurtling through the trees and brush, but judging from the position of the sun in the sky when he’d revived, it must’ve been at least a couple of hours. He’d come to feeling pain all over his body, but nowhere more so than in his right shoulder. He’d tried to move his arm and had found his mobility limited. Gently feeling along his upper arm and back, it had taken only a few seconds to discover that he’d suffered a shoulder dislocation.

  With few other choices, McCoy had attempted reduction on his own. Maneuvering himself onto his back and starting with his elbows at his sides, he’d slowly raised both hands toward the back of his head. It had taken three agonizing tries, but the head of his humerus had finally snapped back into place. The pain had diminished at once, and a quick neurovascular examination had revealed no nerve damage.

  When Lyles had finished washing out the wound and flushing it with an antiseptic, he reached up to the sofa for his bag. From it, he produced a syringe and an ampoule. McCoy asked about it, and the doctor identified the contents of the tiny bottle as a local anesthetic.

  “Which anesthetic?” McCoy asked.

  “It’s procaine,” Lyles said, “if it helps you to know that.”

  “It does,” McCoy fired back, driven by the pain in his leg and tired of the doctor’s attitude. He searched his memory for whatever he knew about the painkiller. “That’s an ester of para-aminobenzoic acid, isn’t it?” Lying prone, he could not see the look on the doctor’s face, but he could hear the surprise in his voice.

  “How would you know that?” Lyles asked.

  McCoy immediately regretted feeding the doctor’s misgivings about him and thought that perhaps he shouldn’t have said anything. Then again, if he truly intended to return to practicing medicine stuck here in the past, then maybe he should stop hiding his knowledge. Back in New York, he’d told only Edith that he was a physician. He didn’t feel comfortable making that claim right now, but—

  “I have some medical training,” he said.

  “I see,” Lyles said, and this time, McCoy could not read his inflection. “Then I hope this meets with your approval.” With no more warning than that, he injected the anesthetic into McCoy’s calf. McCoy started, but said nothing.

  Fifteen minutes later, Lyles had sewn up the laceration and covered it with a bandage. As he got to his feet, he informed McCoy that he’d finished. McCoy stood up as well, then held his leg out in front of him so that he could see his calf. The rectangular white bandage there looked neat and clean.

  “You’ll need to keep the area clean and dry for a full day,” Lyles said, “and keep the bandage on it for at least two. After that, change it only if the
wound continues to seep, or if it gets wet. No bathing for two days either.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” McCoy said, and he extended his hand. Lyles reached to the back of the chair for his suit jacket, and McCoy thought that he wouldn’t shake his hand. But after the doctor had put his jacket back on, he reached toward McCoy.

  “That’ll be three dollars,” he said flatly as their hands met.

  McCoy smiled. He could’ve been wrong, but he detected a note of humor in the old man’s statement. “I had a few bits,” he said, shrugging, “but I lost them this morning.”

  “I figured,” Lyles said. It came out figgered.

  “Doctor Lyles,” said Lynn Dickinson, who’d quietly come back into the room. “Phil and I will pay for your visit.”

  No matter how long McCoy lived in the past, he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the notion of individuals having to pay for medical care. Still, he had no intention of allowing this nice woman and her husband to settle his obligation. Before he could protest, though, the doctor did. “Nonsense,” he said.

  “I insist,” Dickinson said. “When Phil gets home—”

  “Nonsense,” Lyles said again. “I didn’t treat you and I’m not taking your money.” He reached toward the sofa and grabbed up his black bag, then headed for the front door. Before he left, he pointed back at McCoy’s leg. “I don’t suppose you’ll still be here in ten days,” he said, “but if you are, I’ll need to remove those stitches.” He paused, and then said, “That’s included in the three dollars.” Then he turned and headed across the porch and down the steps, the front door closing after him.

  Dickinson walked over to the door and opened it. “Thank you, Doctor,” she called. She stood there, looking out, as McCoy heard the door of the doctor’s vehicle open and close, and then its engine start. When that sound had faded into the distance, she closed the door and peered over at McCoy.

  “I want to thank you again,” he said.

  “It wasn’t me who just gave you three dollars’ worth of free doctoring,” she joked.

  “Maybe not,” McCoy allowed, “but you were the one who brought Doctor Lyles here, and you did more for me than that. Just finding a friendly face when I needed one meant a lot.”

  “Well, you’re welcome,” she said, and then peered down at the mound of his clothing still sitting on the floor.

  After McCoy had reduced his shoulder dislocation, he’d examined his body for other injuries. He’d found the slice in his calf, and he’d quickly stripped off his shirt and tied it around his thigh as a tourniquet. Then he’d carefully climbed the hill back up to the railroad tracks. There, he’d searched for his duffel bag, finding it in tatters, his clothes scattered. He’d torn pieces from the duffel to bandage his leg, then removed the tourniquet and fashioned it into a sling for his arm. He’d found a shirt to wear, and had collected as much of his clothing as he could locate. He’d found a comb, but not his razor, and none of his food. Somewhere along the way, he’d thought about the small amount of money he’d been carrying in his sock, but that had gone too.

  After heaping the clothes he’d found into the remnants of the duffel bag, McCoy had followed the railroad tracks, traveling north instead of south, not wanting to take a chance on meeting the two men on the train at the next stop, where they might well have disembarked, either on their own or courtesy of the railroad police. When he’d seen a road off in the distance, and a farm beyond that, he’d decided to follow it to try and get some help. The first two farms he’d come to had been abandoned, though, but figuring that there would be a town at the end of the road, he’d kept following it. Eventually, Lynn Dickinson had seen him and invited him into her home, where he’d received more help than he’d ever expected.

  Now, she gathered up his clothes from the floor and into her arms. “I’ll go wash these, like I promised, and hang them out to dry,” she said.

  “That’s not necessary,” McCoy said.

  “You’re wearing my husband’s clothes and all of your own are filthy,” she said, “so it seems like it is necessary.”

  “What I meant was, I can wash them myself,” he said.

  “You were wearing a sling earlier,” Dickinson said, “so maybe that’s not a good idea.”

  “Maybe not,” McCoy relented. “Tell me, is there a hotel or a place to stay in town?”

  “Missus Hartwell runs a boarding house,” she said. “At least she says she does. I don’t know that she’s had but two or three boarders in the last ten years. But since you don’t have any money, I guess you won’t be going there.”

  “No,” McCoy said. “You’ve done so much for me already, but I noticed that you have a barn. Would you mind if I—”

  “Yes, I would mind,” Dickinson said firmly. “If you think Phil and I would leave a guest out in the barn when we’ve got a spare room right in back, well, I guess I’d have to take that as an insult.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Hush up,” she said, and she looked out through the front window. “The sun’s fixing to set, so why don’t you light the lamps in here. Matches are in that little table over yonder.” She pointed across the room, to a small, three-legged stand that sat in the far corner. Without waiting for a response, Dickinson left, headed into the kitchen.

  Shaking his head in amusement, McCoy crossed the room and retrieved the matches from the lone drawer in the triangular table. He then walked over to the front window, where a kerosene lamp sat on the sill. He lighted it, and the room brightened with a warm, yellow glow. As he moved around the room to set the other lamps burning, he smiled to himself.

  It wasn’t 2367, and it wasn’t Atlanta, but at this moment, in this place, McCoy felt comfortable for the first time in a very long while.

  Eighteen

  2268

  Joanna McCoy walked along the pedestrian thoroughfares of Pentabo, exhausted from her night’s training in the clinic, but unwilling just yet to head for home. On the mornings after she worked a graveyard shift, she normally would take the tube all the way down to Avenue Valent, where the station let out directly across from the high-rise where she lived. She often had only enough energy to cross the way, ride the turbolift up to her twenty-second-floor apartment, and fall into bed.

  This morning, though, Joanna had felt the need for some fresh air. No less tired than usual, and perhaps even more so after the night’s activity, she’d gazed out of the car when the tube had pulled in to Naker Square—two stops before her own—and had decided that she wanted to walk outside. Though she’d boarded the tube in darkness after her shift, she’d emerged from the underground station into the gleaming sunlight of the new day.

  Now, she strolled along a wide promenade that nestled in the heart of the city. At this time of day, most of the population had only just roused, and Joanna enjoyed the relative quiet of a public venue usually teeming with citizens. A few people did move about, alone or in groups of two or three, their hurried pace an indication that most probably headed for their day’s work.

  For a while, Joanna stayed away from the walking traffic, keeping to the narrow median of the boulevard, between the rows of leafy trees, some purple, some white. The air there smelled clean and slightly sweet, and it revived her flagging senses. She maintained a leisurely pace, with no plan or timetable for how or when she would go home, though she did travel in the general direction of her apartment.

  As the sun rose higher over the two- and three-story buildings that helped define this lengthy section of town, Joanna drifted from the median and over to the storefronts. Most still had yet to open, but she had no intention of shopping now anyway. She’d disembarked the tube simply because she’d wanted to get out into the open air.

  Wanted to get out? she asked herself. Or needed to get out?

  Did it really matter what level of unease troubled her this morning? Actually, she supposed that it did. If she continued her education and training to become a nurse, she would have to deal with far worse cases than th
ose she’d witnessed last night.

  If I’m going to become a nurse? Had she actually thought that? More important, had she actually meant it? For half a dozen years now, since at least her early teens—and probably since long before that—Joanna had aspired to the profession of nursing. What would it mean now if, in her second year of study and training, she’d begun wavering in the pursuit of her objective?

  She didn’t know, but then she hadn’t come out here looking for answers. Really, she’d come out here attempting to avoid questions. Not terribly mature, perhaps, but she’d had a very long night, and she didn’t feel like being introspective right now.

  Trying to blank her mind and relax, Joanna peered through the windows of the shops she passed. In several, she saw what must have been the newest wave of fashion poised to sweep Verillia: brightly colored saris, worn over black underskirts and cholis. Joanna liked the vibrant hues and the elegantly draped fabrics, but didn’t think herself tall enough, at one and six-tenths meters, to achieve such a look. Of course, these days, she rarely concerned herself with sartorial style. Between the hours she spent in class and at the library, for both of which she tended to dress as comfortably as possible, and the shifts at the clinic, for which she wore the required orange scrubs, she had little opportunity to dress up.

  Gazing at her reflection in a store window, Joanna chuckled to herself. She saw merely a single adornment, the small black bag she carried over one shoulder, which contained a notepad and her identification. Not only did her plain, single-colored uniform do nothing to embellish her appearance, but it actually detracted from it. The simple, unfitted shirt and pants hung on her body loosely enough to completely conceal her shapely, fit figure. As well, the carroty shade of the garments hardly complemented either her pale complexion or her long, red hair.