by Mark Dawson
It was his rental. The rear of the vehicle was facing him. There was a small group of black and Hispanic men and women gathered around it. One man had clambered up onto the upturned side, looking down into the cabin. Others were clustered around the hood and the front of the vehicle. Milton brought the car to a stop and got out. As he ran across to the junction, he saw Ziggy Penn’s body as it was carefully lifted through the open windshield frame.
The crowd coalesced around Ziggy’s body as he was laid on the ground. Others were ambling out of their houses.
Milton pushed into the scrum. “Out of my way.”
“Easy, man,” said a man with shocking white hair.
“That’s my friend.”
There was a young woman on the ground next to Ziggy. She was stroking his head and, as she heard Milton’s voice, she turned to look up at him.
“You know him?”
“Yes,” Milton yelled over the roar of the wind. “Is he alive?”
“He’s alive, but he ain’t in a good way.”
“What happened?”
“I heard it. Our place is just over there. There was this huge crash, we came out, and this is what we saw.”
“The other guy?”
“Drove off. Didn’t get the plate.”
Milton knelt down. He knew a little battlefield medicine, but he didn’t need it to know that the woman was right. Ziggy was not in a good way at all. He had been knocked out, and there was a deep cut on the side of his head that was bleeding heavily. His breath was rattling in and out of his mouth, and it looked like his left leg had been broken.
“He needs a doctor.”
“My pops called 911, but they say they can’t tell us when an ambulance will be around. Full capacity, they said. The storm, you know.”
“The hospital, then?”
“I don’t know, sir. They were saying on the radio that they’re full.”
“Turning people away,” added one of the onlookers who was closer behind them.
“That’s not good enough. He needs help.”
“It’s what I was just saying to my mother before you turned up. My brother, Alexander, he can help. I called him. He says he’s coming over, if he can get here. If we can get your friend inside our house, Alex will be able to get him straightened out until we can get him to the hospital.”
“Where’s the house?”
She pointed across the road to a two-storey house that stood amid a welter of battered wooden shacks. “That’s us.”
Milton went around to Ziggy’s head and carefully slipped his hands beneath his shoulders. One of the men took his legs, and moving quickly, but carefully, they transported his unconscious body across the road and into the house.
Chapter Five
THE HOUSE was on a corner plot. It was constructed on a raised foundation and had an asphalt roof that was bearing up well to the battering that it had received from the storm. The sidings were wooden planks, many of which had been secured with additional nails. There were five sash windows on the ground floor and each had been boarded over. The raised porch, which might have contained a table and chairs, had been cleared. The woman led the way, climbing onto the porch and opening the front door. Milton backed inside, cradling Ziggy’s body as gently as he could.
There was an elderly couple waiting just inside the door.
“What’s this?” the man said. “He the guy who got hurt in the crash?”
“That’s right, Pops,” the young woman said. “He’s pretty bad.”
“Well, you best bring him straight in and get him in the front room. Alexander be calling ten minutes ago. He’s on his way. Be here soon.”
Milton nodded to the man who had helped carry Ziggy from the car and, on a count of three, they hoisted him up again and brought him into the house’s main room. The light inside was provided by hurricane lamps. The warm orange flickered around a spacious and pleasant front room. The floors were polished hardwood, the ceiling featured crown moulding, and the furniture was clean and well maintained. They laid Ziggy on the sofa.
“Best of luck to him,” the other man said, nodding down at Ziggy’s recumbent form.
Milton thanked him, and the man nodded to the old man—it appeared as if he knew him—and left.
Milton turned to the young woman. “Could I get him some water?”
“Sure,” she said, her hand laid across Ziggy’s brow. “Kitchen’s out back.”
“I’m sorry—I don’t know your name.”
“I’m sorry, I should’ve told you. I’m Isadora Bartholomew. That’s my pops, Solomon Bartholomew, and that over there’s my mamma, Elsie. Who are you?”
“John Smith,” he said.
“And your friend?”
“Ziggy Penn.”
Milton went through into a pleasant kitchen with wooden work surfaces and patched-up appliances. He started to make an assessment of his situation. They were in a run-down part of town. The house was well looked after, but it couldn’t have been worth more than a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The furniture was well maintained, but cheap. The Bartholomews were a proud family, doing well with the little that they had.
Milton went back into the front room. Isadora took the bowl of water, moistened a dishcloth, and started to mop Ziggy’s brow.
“Your brother—”
“He’ll be here.”
“No, I mean, what does he do?”
“Like I said, just finished college. He’s smart.”
“Gonna make a fine veterinarian,” Solomon Bartholomew opined.
“A vet?”
Solomon shrugged. “Best help your friend’s gonna get tonight.”
Milton looked down at Ziggy and knew that he was in trouble. He hoped that Isadora and her father were right, and not just full of familial pride. Ziggy’s life depended upon it.
#
ALEXANDER BARTHOLOMEW arrived twenty minutes later. He was driving an old Acura that looked like it had seen better days. The hurricane screamed as he pushed against it to open the car door, slamming it back as soon as he let go. He struggled against the wind, crossed the short yard, and came inside the house.
His mother embraced him. “Are you all right?”
“Don’t ever remember a storm like this. It’s worse than they said.”
“Gonna get worse before it gets better. I’m sure glad you’re here, baby.”
“Are you all right?”
“We fine,” she replied.
“The house?”
Solomon stepped forwards and clasped his son on the shoulder. “It’ll be fine. I battened it down good and tight this afternoon. We lose a few shingles, no big deal.”
“It’s crazy out there,” Alexander said. “They’re saying that there are gangs on the streets. Looting. God knows how the police are gonna manage.”
He turned, saw Milton and Ziggy, and stopped talking.
“This is—” Isadora started to say, before forgetting Milton’s name.
“I’m John Smith,” he said. “And my friend is Ziggy Penn.”
“That was you in that smash outside?”
“No, I wasn’t, I’m fine. Just him. He needs help.”
Alexander went over to the couch and looked at Ziggy.
“Can you help him?”
“I’m not a doctor. I’m training to be a vet.”
“But you’re the best he’s going to get tonight, right?”
“Bad luck for him.”
“The hospitals will be a waste of time,” Solomon said. “Mr. Smith is right. It’s you or nothing.”
He paused, taking a deep breath. “Probably.” He sighed, cursing under his breath and then added, “Let’s have a look.”
He undid Ziggy’s belt and pulled it out of the loops. Then, he unbuttoned the fly and took a pair of scissors, cutting down the seam. He carefully cut away the fabric so that he could look at the leg. Milton looked over his shoulder. The whole of the left leg, from the ankle up to the thigh, was discoloured with an
awful contusion. The lower leg, halfway between the knee and the ankle, had been wrecked. A sharp splinter of bone had pierced the muscle and skin, a half inch, showing that was a shocking white against the purple and black.
“Shit.” Alexander winced. “Not good. Compound fracture. A bad one, too.”
He probed the rest of the leg with his fingers, following the line of the bones.
“What do you think?”
“Comminuted tibial shaft fracture. Broken in three places, at least. Displaced fracture here.” He pointed to just below the knee. Then, he indicated a spot above the shin. “Oblique fracture here. And the compound fracture here.”
“What do we need to do?”
“Hold on. Let me check the rest of him.” He worked his way around the rest of his body, pressing and probing with his fingers. “Might have a couple of broken ribs, too.”
“Can you help him?”
“A little, maybe. That’s an open wound. First thing, we need to stop it from getting infected. Is there anything else I need to know? Is he diabetic?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mom, Pops. I need a sterile dressing. Do you still have the first aid kit?”
“Sure we do,” Elsie said.
“I’ll get it,” Solomon said.
“You don’t know where it is,” the old woman said. “Come on.”
She led him out of the room.
“Anything else?” Isadora asked.
“A knife. With the sharpest point you can find. Clean it under boiling water. And keep Mom and Pop out. They don’t need to watch this.”
She nodded and followed her parents.
“You got a strong stomach, Smith?”
“Strong enough.”
Isadora returned with a green plastic case with a white cross on the front. Alexander opened it and laid out the contents: dressings, tape, gauze. She had a kitchen knife, too. He took it and pressed his finger against the tip. “Good,” he said. “That’s sharp. Can you get me a bucket of water and something to splint his leg against? And a roll of tape.”
She left them again.
“What do you need from me?” Milton asked.
“He has a lot of septic tissue around the puncture. If I don’t get rid of it, it’ll be infected, and if he’s lucky, he’ll lose the leg. If he’s not, the bacterial sepsis will kill him. I need to get rid of the dead flesh and a little of the healthy flesh, too. I need you to hold his leg. This is going to hurt like hell. If he wakes up, he’s going to kick. You need to make sure that doesn’t happen. I could easily slice through an artery.”
Alexander took a cushion, placed it on the arm of the sofa, and then carefully elevated Ziggy’s left leg until it was resting there. Milton moved around so that he could anchor it. He knelt on the floor next to him, placed his right hand above the knee and the left around his ankle. He braced himself, ready to exert as much force as was needed to stop the leg from moving.
“Ready?”
Milton nodded.
Alexander took the knife and started to debride the wound. He leant in close, his nose just a few inches from the wound, and started to remove the dirt and foreign bodies that had gathered around the area of the leg where the bone had erupted. There were pieces of glass, fragments of cloth from his trousers, tiny slivers of metal from the door. Patches of skin were blackened, already dead and rotting, and he used the knife to slice them away. He used the edge of the knife to scrape away the debris that had gathered on the shard of bone. He picked out several small pieces of unattached splinters that had been created by the pulverising force of the impact.
It took fifteen minutes. Ziggy shuddered several times, but he did not wake. Milton found that his hands were shaking a little from the adrenaline, but he had not needed to restrain him more than holding the leg firmly in place. Alexander washed out the wound, applied a sterile dressing and then fastened it in place.
Isadora had collected a broom and a roll of packing tape. Alexander undid the broom from the handle and laid it out along the length of the leg.
“I can’t set the bones here. That’s surgery. If I start messing with it, I’ll just make it worse.” He took the tape and started to unroll it around the leg. He used half of the roll, swaddling it generously until the handle was splinted firmly against his leg.
“Thank you,” Milton said.
“Don’t thank me yet. I’m worried that didn’t wake him up.”
“Concussion?”
“If he’s lucky.”
“And if he isn’t?”
“If he has internal bleeding?” He shrugged. “Then he’s dead. I can’t do anything about that here.”
“You think he has?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Chapter Six
THEY FINISHED treating Ziggy at just past midnight. Solomon and Elsie Bartholomew were hovering around outside the room, anxious to offer their help, but since there was nothing to do, Isadora sent them to bed. They were old, she said. They needed their sleep.
Milton doubted whether anyone would sleep tonight.
The room was lit by the lamps and a handful of tea lights that they had placed on the table and the windowsills. The light was warm and evocative. The hurricane shrieked outside, the winds rushing around the house and battering at it as if furious that it had the temerity to resist. Milton went to the front door, opened it and peered out. The wind had stripped the shingles from the roof of the house opposite and, as he watched, it uprooted the individual boards of a fence as if with gentle fingers, flicking them down the street at a hundred miles an hour. The windows rattled in their frames and a loose piece of siding crashed against the house, a last rattle before it was peeled off and flung away. That apart, the house was standing up to the battering.
Milton closed the door and sat down on the floor, his back pressed up against the wall.
“You want a drink, Alex?” Isadora asked.
Her brother opened his eyes and nodded.
“Mr. Smith?”
“It’s John.”
“You want a drink?”
He exhaled. “Thanks.”
Isadora went through into the kitchen just as Ziggy stirred, a low groan emitted between dry lips. Alexander went over to him, pulled back his eyelids and shone the flashlight on his cellphone into his eyes. He shook his head. “Still out,” he said.
“What do you think?”
“It’s a coma.”
“Serious, then?”
He looked at him as if he was an idiot. “Do I think it’s serious? He didn’t wake up when I cut his leg with a knife. What do you think?”
Alexander had a sharp response to everything. He was smart, Milton could see that very clearly. But his attitude was abrasive, as if he had a chip on his shoulder. He had snapped at his sister several times, lacing his replies with sarcasm. Milton didn’t even try to begin to diagnose him. He was difficult, but if Ziggy recovered it would have been entirely thanks to the young man’s efforts. He didn’t know Milton and he didn’t know Ziggy. He could have refused to help, but he hadn’t done that. Milton was prepared to cut him a lot of slack for that.
Isadora returned with a bottle of bourbon and three shot glasses.
“Izzy—” Alexander began.
“I know,” she interrupted. “It’s Papa’s. But I don’t know about you, but I could sure do with something right about now. If that wind don’t stop, it’s gonna peel the roof right off of this place.”
“Sure,” her brother relented. “Why not? It’s not like I’m driving home tonight.”
“Mr. Smith? Sorry—John?”
It was Milton’s usual practice to have a drink after the completion of an assignment. ‘One drink’ was putting it on the low side, especially recently; he had found that he needed more and more to forget the faces of the people he had dispatched. The addition of another two names to that long roster was not a reason to celebrate. He drowned himself in alcohol so that he might forget.
“John?”<
br />
“Sure,” he said. “Why not.”
She poured three large measures and passed them around.
“To your friend,” she said.
Milton turned his head to Ziggy and raised his glass. “Yeah,” he said.
He necked the whiskey and revelled in the warmth that spread out from his gut. Izzy and Alexander drank theirs with similar alacrity, and Milton did not object when she stood to pour replacements. Once he started to drink, he often found it difficult to stop. He would have one more, and that would be that. He couldn’t afford to relax.
Izzy sat down on the floor opposite Milton and extended her long legs. The candles on the table to her left cast her face in warm friendly light and Milton saw again that she was extraordinarily striking. Her skin was flawless, light chocolate, smooth and bursting with health and vitality. Her eyes were big and round, the same colour as her skin, and her lips were wide and soft. Her manner, too, was attractive. She was caring and seemingly completely open, uncomplicated and honest. Her brother was more of an enigma, with hidden depths; she was his antithesis, his mirror.
Milton found that he was staring at her. She looked over at him, noticed, and smiled.
“You want another?” she said.
His glass was empty. He hadn’t even noticed that he had finished it.
“No,” he said, although he had been sorely tempted to say yes.
“Sure?”
“I’m good.”
Alexander took the bottle and poured himself a third glass. Milton hoped that he or Izzy might take the bottle back to the kitchen, where he couldn’t see it, but he left it on the table.
Alexander looked at Milton. “What did you say you were doing in town?”
“I didn’t. Business.”