Healers

by Laurence Dahners

  “Maybe, maybe not. We can explain it to him, but, in the end, it has to be his decision.”

  Eva sat beside their patient and explained to him it was the coughing episodes that were making him better. “Those fluids you’re coughing out? It’s like they’re drowning you from the inside. I know the coughing episodes are terrible, and they might not keep you alive, but you’ve got to get rid of that fluid and I think coughing it up is your best chance.”

  Eventually Paul decided he was ready to live through a few more episodes, though he wanted the right to refuse them if he felt too exhausted.

  This time they had him turn over to lay face down so the stuff would drain out of his mouth better. A few minutes later, Paul was coughing violently.

  Paul’s father had been sleeping, he woke and came over. “What’re you doing?!” he barked, looking terribly frightened.

  Eva looked up, and spoke calmly “Another treatment, trying to get the fluid out of his lungs.”

  “No! It’s too much, you’re killing him!”

  Tarc’s heart sank. If the boy’s father was blaming his death on them now, and Paul did actually die, which seemed pretty likely, there would be hell to pay.

  Eva, however, serenely said, “No problem, we’ll stop. We don’t want to do anything you don’t ask us to do.”

  Tarc and Daussie stood up, stepping away and looking back and forth from their patient, to his father, and then back to their own mother. Eva wiped Paul’s mouth with the rag she’d been holding under his face, then, rather than dropping it immediately into the moonshine, she laid it out where the large quantities of slimy mucus Paul had coughed up were readily visible. She picked up another moonshine soaked rag and used it to wipe her hands and Paul’s face.

  Tarc saw Paul’s father staring at the rag full of disgusting material his son had just spewed from his lungs. The man stepped closer to his son and said, “Paul, son, how’re you feeling?”

  “Terrible! God-awful! Yet… better than I did yesterday. I can breathe better than I did before, at least when they’re not making me suffer through these horrible coughing spells.”

  The older man knelt beside his son, concern all over his face. “Shall I tell them to stop? Or… do you want to continue with these… treatments?”

  “I think… continue,” he said weakly. “But not right now! I can only take so much at a time!”

  After a moment of what appeared to be agonizing indecision, Mr. Spencer said quietly, “Okay son. Whatever you want, we’ll do it.” A tear trickled down his cheek and he swallowed to clear the frog in his throat.

  They made a plan to come back and perform treatments intermittently through the day when business was slow at their booth in the market. For right now they started cooking breakfast for the caravan.

  The day went by in a relatively routine fashion, serving breakfast at the caravan, treating Paul before going to the booth, getting everything set up for the pizza rush around noon and performing another treatment on Paul before the rush actually started.

  When the afternoon pizza rush slowed, Eva, Tarc, and Daussie went back to see if Paul was up to another treatment. On the way they were stopped by Mr. Miller, the man whose ears had been plugged with earwax. He thanked Eva effusively, and asked her if she would look at a friend of his.

  While Miller spoke, another man slowly limped up next to them. He was overweight and had a florid face. Tarc suspected he knew what was wrong before the man even told Eva it was his great toe that hurt. Eva turned to smile at Tarc. “What do you think?”

  “Well, it’s probably gout, but we should get him to take off his shoes so we can look at it.”

  Eva thumped Tarc on the shoulder as they walked the man to their wagon so he could sit down and take off his shoe. “I told you that once you’d seen gout, you’d recognize it the next time!”

  Tarc rolled his eyes. While the man was getting settled and working on taking the shoe off of his painful foot, the Hyllises went to check on Paul. To their dismay, the young man looked significantly worse. Pale, with sweat popped out on his brow, he seemed to be gasping to breathe again. All three of them immediately sent their ghosts in. They found the lower lobes of the right lung had accumulated some fluid again. Much more concerning however, fluid had now accumulated in the upper lobe of his left lung!

  “Oh gods!” Daussie quietly breathed in her mother’s ear. “It’s spreading! Do you think all the coughing we’ve been making him do has spread it around?”

  Eva stepped back away from their patient, shrugging. Once they all had a little distance, she said, “I don’t know.”

  “What are we going to do?!”

  Eva sighed, “In the olden days, when they didn’t have an antibiotic to kill the germs, all they could do was what they called ‘supportive care.’ That could mean giving a patient IV fluids and other medicines to help the patient breathe. Sometimes they actually used a machine to breathe for the patient. Supportive care’s what I feel like we’ve been doing. We’re helping clear the fluid out of Paul’s lungs so he can breathe for himself while we’re waiting for his body to make antibodies and kill the germs itself.”

  “How much longer will that take?!”

  “I’m not sure. Days to weeks, I think.”

  Upset, Daussie said, “It’s already been days! And if it’s going to take weeks, I don’t think we can support him that long!”

  From right behind them, they heard Paul’s father speak, “I don’t think you’ve been supporting him at all! I just see you thumping his ribs and making him cough! To me it seems like he’s only getting sicker!”

  They turned. Daussie felt horrified to realize the patient’s father had walked quietly up behind them while they were arguing. His drawn face showed his exhausted anger.

  Eva turned a calmly sad countenance on Paul’s father. “You’re right of course, he is sicker.” She shrugged, “I believe he isn’t as sick as he would have been without our treatments, but I can’t prove that to you. As I promised you before, if you don’t want the treatments, we certainly won’t continue them.”

  “You’re damned right we don’t want your quackery! Stay away from him! I’ll be back as soon as I can find someone to carry the other end of the litter so I can take him home.”

  Sounding heartbroken, Eva said, “I’m sorry we’ve let you down. Tarc can help you carry the other end of the litter if you want to take Paul home right now.”

  Daussie darted a glance at Tarc. He looked just as dismayed as Daussie would have expected. Carrying one end of the litter of a dying man back to the home of his father who hated you… With a start, she realized that treating constipation might not be the worst of a healer’s tasks.

  The offer of Tarc’s assistance didn’t soften the father’s attitude. “Okay, let’s go!”

  They turned back toward Paul. While they’d been talking, Paul’s mother had appeared at his side. She was sponging his face with a moist cloth and looked up with concern on her face. Quietly she said, “I think Paul’s feeling a little worse.”

  Mr. Spencer, Paul’s father, growled, “You’re damned right he’s feeling worse. That’s because he is worse! We’re taking him home… Now!”

  Mrs. Lee’s eyes widened, first in dismay, then in anger. “Stephen! What have you done!”

  Taken aback, he practically muttered, “Nothing! I’m just…” He petered out. Then gaining resolve he continued, “Taking Paul home. They’re making him worse!”

  “Stephen Spencer,” his formerly mousey wife said, sudden steel in her voice, “These people,” she waved a hand at the Hyllises, “have been doing the very best they can for your son. You can see it in their eyes. They aren’t charging you money! They’re just trying to help Paul… Whether they succeed or not, they’re doing their best and you’d better not disrespect them!”

  Daussie’d been thinking of Paul’s mother as a subservient individual, completely dominated by her husband. Now it was Mr. Spencer who appeared to be cowed. He stared at
his wife for a moment, jaw working, then he turned and started walking towards town.

  Eva muttered, “I’m afraid we haven’t made a friend there.” She knelt beside their patient, “Paul, your pneumonia has spread to another part of your lung. Fluid has been reaccumulating in the parts of your lung we’ve cleared earlier. I can tell you’re having a hard time breathing, and I’ll bet you don’t want to go through another coughing episode, but you’re starting to drown from the inside again. Do you want to try another treatment?”

  He moaned, but nodded. “I can barely breathe,” he said with a little gasp, “you’ve got to do something.”

  Eva said, “Okay, we’ll try it in a minute. We’re just going to talk over a different strategy.” She motioned to Tarc and Daussie to step aside. Mrs. Spencer stepped with them. Eva said, “I’m thinking we should try to do a big section of lung all at once. It will be quite a bit worse for him than doing one of the little sections. But I think it will be better than doing so many little sections, one after another. ‘Get it over with,’ so to speak.” She looked back and forth at her little audience of three to see what they thought.

  Daussie and Tarc glanced at one another feeling helpless. Mrs. Spencer said, “I think that sounds like a lot better strategy, as long as a big one doesn’t kill him?”

  Eva sighed, “I wish I could be sure it wouldn’t.”

  Struck by an idea, Daussie said, “Wait! Let me look…” She stopped herself before she said “look something up,” but both Tarc and Eva knew what she was saying as she turned and strode toward the wagon.

  Eva turned to Mrs. Spencer, “I hope she’s just had a good idea. Tarc and I’ll go ‘look’ with her. We’ll be back in a minute or two.”

  When they reached Daussie in the wagon, she was carefully searching through their medical books. “What’re you looking for?” Eva asked.

  “The nerve to the lung. If Tarc could block it, Paul wouldn’t cough when he pushed the fluids out into the bronchi.”

  Eva frowned, “But Paul’s got to cough. The coughing helps move the fluids up and out of the lung. Certainly he needs to cough them up and out of his throat and mouth.”

  “Tarc can push them up and out! And I’ll bet it’d be easier if everything wasn’t jerking around because Paul was coughing.”

  Eva turned her gaze on Tarc, “Do you think that’s true?”

  Tarc nodded, “Yeah, squeezing lung isn’t all that difficult but it’s a little harder pushing the fluids along in the bronchi when they’re jumping all around.”

  Eva said, “Okay, I think I know where to look.”

  A few minutes later, they were all tracing the course of their own vagus nerves with their ghosts. Eventually they found the branches that mostly fed the lungs. Tarc said, “I guess I can cool that main branch down and we can see what happens. I think I shouldn’t try to squeeze out a really big area of the lung until we see what happens with the nerve blocked.”

  They all trooped back over to Paul. “We think we’ve figured out a way to do this without you feeling like you have to cough quite so much,” Eva said. “But we might need you to cough on purpose at some point to push out some of the fluid. We’ll tell you to cough if that happens, okay?”

  Paul nodded. Tarc had already found and started cooling the pulmonary branch of Paul’s vagus nerve. Moments after Paul gave them the nod, they rolled him up onto his right side and Tarc started squeezing a section of his left upper lobe. Fluids flowed out of the lung tissue and into the bronchi. Tarc started pushing the fluids along while Daussie fluttered her hands over Paul’s ribs and transported dollops of the fluid away.

  Just when Eva was thinking she was going to have to ask Paul to cough the fluids out, they reached areas in his throat that weren’t numb because Tarc’s nerve block hadn’t covered those areas. Paul coughed a few times, bringing up large quantities of sputum, but the coughing episodes didn’t seem as paroxysmal and painful as they had been before.

  Tarc set to work pulling that section of upper lobe back open so it would fill with air. Paul sounded hopeful as he rasped, “Oh, that wasn’t as bad even though it felt to me like I coughed out just as much stuff. Is that right?”

  Eva said, “Uh-huh, you up to having another treatment?”

  “Um, sure, if it’s not any worse than that one.”

  This next time, they tilted the litter head down, put Paul on his left side leaned over towards his face and Tarc squeezed out half of Paul’s left upper lobe. The volume of material Paul produced almost made it look like he was throwing up. Once Tarc reinflated that section of lung, Paul sighed with relief as he breathed better.

  They had stepped away to let Paul have a rest when Tarc glanced back toward their booth, thinking they had been gone for a long time. Embarrassed, he said, “Oh-oh, we forgot about Mr. Miller and his friend with gout!”

  Daussie looked up and saw Miller and his friend staring at them from their seats about twenty feet away. They had astonished looks on their faces.

  Eva called out to them, “I’m so sorry. We’ve been taking care of this young man and were pretty upset that he wasn’t doing well. We forgot all about you!”

  The man with the gout shook his head. “You just take your time. I can see that the young man’s a lot sicker than I am!”

  Eva turned to put a hand on Tarc’s shoulder, “You rest. Daussie and I’ll go take care of this gentleman.”

  Tarc glanced at Daussie’s somewhat pinched face. “Daussie’s been working her talent pretty hard too Mom,” he said. She’s been transporting a fair amount of fluid out for me and I think she’s got a pretty good headache.”

  Eva looked at Daussie and immediately saw she wasn’t feeling well, “Oops, sorry. I’ll take care of him. There’s not much we can do besides willow bark tea anyway.”

  Over the next several hours, working around making dinner for the caravan, Tarc, Daussie, and Eva performed several more treatments on Paul. Though the fluid tended to reaccumulate, and the inflamed lung certainly didn’t work normally, they were able to get him to the point where he felt like he was breathing fairly easily before they went to bed that night.

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning, Paul was having trouble breathing again and their ghosts found he had reaccumulated fluid. They performed a couple of treatments early in the morning before starting breakfast for the caravan.

  Once breakfast was set up, Tarc took his own eggs and a slab of hot buttered bread. He went to sit by the wagon and eat. He’d just begun, when someone thumped down beside him. He looked up. Lizeth!

  She grinned at him, “Hey, you’ve been scarce.”

  “Um, yeah, we’ve been taking care of a really sick patient. It’s been taking up a lot of time.”

  Lizeth drew back with a mildly alarmed look, “Didn’t you guys read the rules about healing here in Realth?!”

  “Well, yes. We aren’t charging people for it.”

  She gave him a considering look, “If one of your patients gets worse instead of better I’m not sure the king’s guardia will care all that much whether you charged or not.”

  “Well, this guy would have died without treatment. He’s got pneumonia.”

  Lizeth’s eyes widened a little. Everyone feared pneumonia, almost 50 percent of people who got it died. “You really think you’re helping him?”

  Tarc wasn’t surprised that Lizeth doubted. People who believed in healers were less common than those who thought they caused harm. Not sure how to respond, he merely nodded.

  “Okaaay,” Lizeth said slowly. “I hope you’re right, but I’m still worried for you guys. I’d hate for you to wind up as slaves here.”

  “Me too.” Tarc said, sounding depressed. “Even if I could let this guy die, I don’t think my Mom could.” He glanced around, thinking he needed to get back to helping make breakfast. Adding insult to injury he saw Sam standing across the way, staring at him with a furious expression. He was in Lizeth’s blind spot since she was facing Tarc. Mentally,
Tarc sighed.

  In case it wasn’t clear that Sam was pissed, he pointed at Tarc, then back at himself. Then he held his left hand out in front of himself and struck it—hard—with the right fist.

  This time Tarc’s sigh was audible. Not knowing what upset him, Lizeth said, “I guess I can see you guys being in kind of a bind then. If you really think you can help these people, then ethically, I guess you should. Is that what’s got you down?”

  “Huh? Oh, yeah.”

  Having tracked the direction of Tarc’s eyes, Lizeth looked behind her, but Sam had stepped out of sight before she’d turned fully.

  Tarc said, “I’d better get back to work. There’s a lot to do to feed all of you guys.” He managed a weak grin.

  Once the caravan’s breakfast had been served, they did another treatment on Paul. Most of the family then started for their booth, while Tarc took the bay horse and headed off to get wood.

  Considering the expression on Sam’s face when Tarc had been talking to Lizeth earlier, Tarc worried Sam would show up to follow through on his promise of a beating. But the Hyllises had to have wood. He wondered uneasily how to deal with Sam if it happened. Tarc badly wanted to continue dealing with him nonviolently, but feared that if Sam really tried to give him a beating, he wouldn’t be able to restrain himself from lashing out. Maybe with a little warning I could just make him slightly dizzy so he’d break off an attack? Resolving not to be caught unawares like he had last time; Tarc kept his ghost out a little ways. Sam wasn’t going to surprise him by stepping out from behind a tree like he had last time.

  Tarc made it to the wood sellers and purchased several bundles without any sign of Sam, however, he suspected the risk was significantly higher on the way back than it had been on the way out. As he returned, he pushed his ghost out even further, hoping against hope he wouldn’t find Sam lurking in the woods.

  In the deepest part of the path through the woods, just where you might expect someone to set an ambush, Tarc’s ghost detected someone in the trees on the left. Though it was always difficult with his ghost, Tarc had an uncertain feeling the person standing there wasn’t as bulky as Sam.