by David Nickle
“My aunt gave it to me.”
“Well, I’ll have to give your aunt a talking-to. This is going to need stitches.”
“Fine by me on both counts, Dr. Waggoner. Now can we get away from here?”
“Of course we can,” said Andrew. “I think we’re going to have to help each other getting back, though. Neither of us is in very good shape tonight.”
§
That was an understatement. Andrew had not been in very good shape for two nights now. The first night he’d tried to get outside, have a look at the quarantine in the cover of the moonlight, he had been in such poor shape that he had only gotten as far as the south staircase before the pain forced him to turn back. Tonight, it had taken him half an hour to make it downstairs and out the back of the hospital. The best that he could do for it was stay still, work the bruised and pulled muscles slowly back to health.
But he knew that something was odd in the quarantine. And there were questions to which he’d received no satisfactory answer.
He had been standing outside, staring at the open door in the front of the great building, willing himself the strength to go a little farther, step inside, when the boy appeared in his bloody sheet.
Well, he thought as he tore a strip from the sheet and tied a bandage around Jason’s hand, there’ll be no more exploration tonight.
“You want help walking back?” said Jason. “My hand’s bad, but I can sure walk all right. And you—”
Andrew nodded. There was no point in standing on pride. “I’d appreciate it,” he said.
“The Klansmen do this to you?” asked Jason as they moved away from the quarantine, across the clear lawn between there and the back of the hospital.
“You know a lot,” he said.
“Sam Green told me,” said Jason. “I don’t know much otherwise.”
Andrew pushed open the door and guided Jason to one of the examination rooms, where they lit a pair of lamps. At Andrew’s instruction, Jason sat down on the examination table. Andrew took a chair with wheels on the legs, and that made things better. He could roll back and forth looking for the things he’d need: primarily, a bottle of iodine and a sterile needle and thread. As he pulled that out of a cabinet, he caught Jason looking at it apprehensively.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ve done this before.”
Jason motioned with his bloody hand. “With your arm like that?”
Andrew smiled. “Well no,” he said, “not with my arm like this. But I can manage. This is simple work. Unless you want to wait for Dr. Bergstrom in the morning?”
“Hell no!”
“All right then,” said Andrew. “Hold still. I’m going to clean your cut out first and that might sting. Try not to shout.”
Jason didn’t shout as Andrew splashed iodine on his hand, but Andrew could tell that the boy wanted to.
“Very stoic,” Andrew said, dabbing the wound clean. “Now tell me—how’d you happen to cut yourself in the middle of the quarantine this fine spring night?”
“Bergstrom did it to me.”
“Dr. Bergstrom cut your hand?”
“No. Bergstrom locked me up in there—on account I might be infectious, even though I got no symptoms.”
“Infectious?” Andrew put a wad of cotton on the wound and pressed down. “Infectious with what?”
“Fever,” said Jason. “The fever that killed my mama and took about all of my town this winter past, I expect. But that’s bunk.”
“Wait a moment. A fever killed all of your town?” Andrew rolled back on his chair, and started to thread the steel needle. “Over one winter?”
“Over one week, more like,” said Jason.
Andrew frowned at Jason. “Are you making up stories?”
Jason shook his head. “Wish I were,” he said.
“Before I start, you want a little whiskey? It helps dull the pain.”
“No sir.”
“Then why don’t you tell more about this sickness that had you locked up in quarantine tonight? It’ll help distract you—and I’m curious.”
“All right.”
And so, as Andrew took the boy’s hand and started to draw the thread through the wound, Jason Thistledown told him his story. He teared up almost immediately. And Andrew wasn’t sure whether it was the pain of the stitches or the sadness of the memories that made him cry.
“Well. I am sorry for your loss,” said Andrew. “It’s a lucky thing your aunt happened by.”
Jason nodded. “I thank the Lord every day. I just wish she’d stopped Dr. Bergstrom.”
“All right, this is the last one.” And he pierced the skin at the very inner edge of the cut. Jason flinched more this time—as though he’d been holding it in until now.
“Can—can I have that bit of that whiskey now?”
“Sure you can.” Andrew wheeled back to the cabinet and got the little whiskey bottle. He poured a capful and handed it to Jason, who slugged it down and coughed.
“This supposed to help?” he finally managed.
“Get enough whiskey into a man, you can saw his leg off.”
“Don’t get any ideas.”
Andrew chuckled at that. “Don’t worry, Jason.” He wrapped the wound in gauze. “I’m done for tonight.”
Now that he was done stitching and bandaging, Andrew got a good look at the boy, assessing him as something other than a patient. He was most of the way to being a man, tall and lean with none of the awkwardness that came on a lot of boys at that time of life. His eyes were pale in the light, but they had a cast to them that Andrew had not often seen, like they looked right through a fellow. Overall, Jason Thistledown just looked strong, and Andrew thought he must be.
This boy, if he were to be believed, had survived an outbreak of something worse than cholera, worse than yellow fever, maybe as bad as Black Plague . . . Some sickness that had killed everybody in a town this past winter. Not a third or a half, but everybody. Everybody but one.
What kind of fever did that?
“Jason,” he asked, “can you tell me what the symptoms of the fever were?”
Jason handed back the cap, and Andrew screwed it back onto the whiskey.
“I only know what happened to my mama.”
“Tell me that.”
Jason nodded. He was quiet for a moment, looking down at his re-bandaged hand. Then he drew a breath, and started talking.
“She started getting sick a day after we got back home from Cracked Wheel. It was a clear day, all right for travel we figured. We were laying in some more supplies, was all. First thing she complained about was a headache. Then she had trouble with the runs, you know what I mean? Then she got all hot with fever, and she said ‘Why, Jason I think I shall lie down a moment.’ She had a hard time getting up after that, so I saw to her.”
“You feel anything during this part?”
“Not symptoms if that’s what you mean.”
“That is what I mean.”
“After that, things took a bad turn. She told me her stomach hurt, and she was sweating something terrible, and when I went to clean her off I saw that she was bleeding.”
“Bleeding? Where?”
“From her nose for a bit, and also—also from the skin around her fingernails.”
“And then—”
“Well,” said Jason, “she got worse and worse, until she seized up—and died.”
“Were you able to take her temperature? With a thermometer?”
“No.”
“Was she bleeding from anywhere else?”
“I don’t know. I think there was some around her toenails, and her eyes were awfully red.”
Andrew sat back and thought about what he’d told him. It was nothing he’d ever encountered—not clinically, certainly, and not even in the case studies that he’d read in Paris.
“And you didn’t have any symptoms.”
“Like my aunt says—I’m immune.”
“And you haven’t had symptoms—for ho
w long?”
“About two months.”
“During which time, you got on a train, and on another train, then made your way up here to Eliada. Meeting all sorts of people at every stop.”
“That is right.”
“So why, I wonder, did Dr. Bergstrom order you into quarantine tonight? It seems as though your aunt’s right—you’re immune. You’re not carrying it either or others would have surely come down with it. So why lock you up now?”
“That is what I want to know.”
Andrew was about to ask his next question when he heard a gentle rapping at the door.
“Dr. Bergstrom?”
“Annie?” He turned his chair around to face the door. “Come on in.”
“Dr. Waggoner.” Annie Rowe stepped in. “What are you doing up? Oh,” she said, looking at Jason. She blushed and averted her eyes. “Hello, young sir.”
“Nurse Rowe, meet Jason Thistledown. Jason, cover yourself, would you?”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” said Jason, pulling the sheet over himself.
Annie Rowe raised her eyes and got a better look at the blood-slick sheet. “What happened here?”
“It is not as bad as it looks,” said Andrew. “The boy cut himself. I saw to it.”
“You should’ve called someone,” she scolded. But it was not heartfelt. She peered at the boy. “He doesn’t look well.”
Andrew cleared his throat. “You know what you might do? Could you find Jason a robe or some clothes—something to cover him up better?”
Annie stood straight. “All right,” she said, “as you please, Doctor.” She spared Andrew a tight smile. “Good to see you back practising so soon.”
When she’d left, Jason finally did it, and asked Andrew the question he’d been dreading.
“What were you doing out there tonight? And who’s Mister Juke?”
“Mister—”
“Yes, sir. You thought I might be him, when I came out of the quarantine. Remember? Well, I’m not. So who is he?”
Now Andrew found himself brought up short. It was a simple question but a difficult one. Who was Mister Juke? He’d seen him, on the hillside waiting for the hangman’s noose—a creature with two faces or so it seemed—one congenitally distorted; one, beautiful. He’d seen Mister Juke hanged, by the neck. And Mister Juke had lived. So who was he?
“That,” said Andrew, “is the question I have been trying to answer. He was with me at . . . at . . .”
“The lynching?” Jason pulled the sheet tighter around himself. “Sam Green told what happened.”
“All right. He was with me at the lynching. They hung him first—they seemed to think he was a rapist, although I doubt that. They pulled him out of that quarantine building. And they hung him. They tried to anyway.”
“Because they thought he was a rapist. Who they think he raped?”
“Sweet girl,” said Andrew. “Her name was Maryanne Leonard. She died, this past Sunday. Right here in hospital. Complications from her pregnancy.”
Jason didn’t ask another question right away. He just sat there and looked at Andrew, and as Andrew looked back, he thought: The boy is dancing around this topic. Just like I am. Because the boy has seen something in there—Devils up from Hell, he called them—that he cannot explain any more than I can explain anything I have seen. And neither of us will be able to figure it out, until one of us takes that step—openly, into that place.
Jason finally asked his question.
“How big is Mister Juke? Is he skinny and tall with a strange bend to his face, like he’s been whacked? Or is he just little? Like a baby, or maybe a bit smaller than a baby? But with . . . teeth?”
They sat quiet again, as Andrew took that in. Andrew’s answer, when it came, had no words. He nodded.
“So both,” said Jason, and Andrew said: “Yes. Both.”
Annie Rowe returned with a hospital gown for Jason, and once he’d changed took the sheet and stuffed it into a sack for washing. As she folded it and stuffed it in the bag, she nagged Andrew a bit about getting back to his room, but Andrew put her off. “Just seeing to my patient,” he said.
“You are the patient,” she huffed. “And a terrible patient at that. Why is that truer with doctors than anyone else?”
“Annie, I promise to return to bed once I’ve seen to a few things.”
“Why don’t you let me see to them? I am on duty tonight.”
“You must have enough to do,” said Andrew.
“Oh,” said Annie, “it’s not so busy. We have a new mother and her baby staying the night, but they’re resting fine. Other than that, there is just a certain doctor who is recovering from an unjust beating, yet prone to wandering. . . .”
She stuffed the cloth into the laundry bag and hung it on the peg outside the examination room door. The whole time, she did not take her eye off Andrew.
“Now what can I take off your hands, Dr. Waggoner, to get you back to bed any sooner?”
Andrew sighed and looked in her eyes and, reading the expression there, he made up his mind.
“All right,” he said, “you can go into the autopsy. You can light up the lamps in there, and you can pull out Maryanne Leonard’s remains and set her on the table. Then you can go up to my room, and you can set up another cot for Jason, and leave the two of us to our work for a moment,” he said. Annie’s eyes widened and she prepared to say something else, no doubt to point out some other damning aspect of Andrew’s obvious infirmities, but he pre-empted her.
“That is how you’ll get me back to bed the quickest.”
§
“Why do you want to look at that lady’s body?” asked Jason as they made their way slowly down the corridor to the autopsy. “Why now?”
“The truth is, I want to find out as much as I can before I talk to Dr. Bergstrom next. I have my suspicions about what has been transpiring here all this time—and I want to see, so I can get some good answers from him. You want to wait outside, I understand.”
Jason pondered. “You don’t get on with that Dr. Bergstrom either, do you?” he said finally.
“No. I guess not.”
“Well then, I got stomach for whatever you’ve got to do. It’s not like I ain’t seen a dead body before. And you still look like you could use some help.”
“All right, then.”
As they came upon the door to the autopsy, Annie Rowe emerged. Seeing her gave Andrew pause. She looked older, the lines in her cheeks standing out in sharp relief, and the shadows around her eyes deep. Those eyes were wide, though—not this time with disapproval. She looked at Andrew and gasped, started to say something, then shook her head.
“Annie?” Dr. Waggoner leaned on Jason’s shoulder. “What—”
“I did what you asked, Dr. Waggoner,” she said. “I brought her out. But—”
“But?”
“Just go do what you got to do,” she said. “But leave that boy out of it.”
Then she turned and fled into the shadows at the end of the hall.
Andrew and Jason looked at one another. “I think you’d better wait here,” said Andrew. “I’ll go see what has Nurse Rowe so upset.”
Jason nodded. “Just don’t cut yourself. I’m not so good at stitching as you are.”
“I’ll be mindful.” And with that, Andrew let go of Jason and headed into the autopsy.
Andrew had been impressed with the Eliada autopsy from his first visit. The fact that there was a hospital in a place this remote was enough in itself; but the Eliada autopsy was also set up with tables like a surgery. The tables were on rollers, and exactly the height of drawers in the wall where the bodies of the deceased rested and there was at hand a full surgery of equipment for the purposes of examination. But for the absence of electric light, the autopsy here would not have been out of place in New York or Paris.
Annie had set things up for him as he’d asked. She’d lit the kerosene lamps that hung from the ceiling beneath big conical reflect
ors, and placed the table underneath them. And on the table, she had placed what Andrew assumed were the remains of Miss Maryanne Leonard.
They were under a sheet—but without even drawing it back, Andrew could see what got Annie so upset. It draped like a covering of attic furniture—tenting high where the body’s face and shoulders lay, and over the up-pointing toes, and the knees. But in the middle, where the hips and belly should have made an impression—there, the fabric held closer to the table. Because there, Andrew realized, there was practically nothing at all. He stepped up closer and drew back the cloth.
Maryanne Leonard had been butchered. The flesh of her chest, her ribcage, everything down to her pelvic bone—it was all removed, nothing but a yawning, blackening space. Looking down at her, he could see her spine, the ribs of her back that shot from it, lying empty. Her viscera had been scooped out; she had been gutted, cleaned like a fish.
Except she was no fish. She was a young lady. As if to give evidence of that, her face floated with the unblemished serenity of the dead above the emptiness of her middle.
Delicately, Andrew drew the sheet back over her face.
Bergstrom must consider the discussion closed, thought Andrew, now that he had so tidily carved away the evidence. Andrew turned around to call Jason in—but saw the boy standing at the door.
“How long have you been there?” asked Andrew.
“Long enough to see,” said Jason. He swallowed and shut his eyes a moment. “Where’s the rest of her?”
“Why don’t you sit down,” said Andrew. “Look away. Let me see to this—”
Jason held up his hand. He opened his eyes and stared hard at Andrew.
“No sir. You think I’m upset like a girl or a baby or someone from a city, because there’s an awful thing here. Well, I ain’t. I’ve seen awful things already and this is another one. You think we should start looking for the rest of her? Can’t be far.”
Andrew drew a breath. This boy had depths to him—he was no baby or girl or city person, that was true. “Yes,” he said. “I think we should. And I’ve got an idea.”
“You need a hand walking?”
“No,” said Andrew. “I better get used to doing that on my own.”