The Physician's Tale

by Ann Benson

  Everyone sat up straight.

  “You’ve got a doctor? Alive?”

  He cursed himself silently for the mistake—too much trust, too soon. I should have known better. “When I left she was.”

  Lany stood; Evan followed suit quickly, and then Steve. “We’ll be back in a moment,” he said to George. “You know what to do.”

  When they left the room, George repositioned himself in front of the door. He gave Michael a little smile; Michael nodded in return. After that, it was one long stare between the two, until Michael picked up the cheese book again.

  True to their promise, the others returned in short order. This time Evan was not with them.

  “You can lead us back to your place?”

  It seemed a silly question. “Well, of course.” He paused, then said, “But why would I?”

  Steve ignored the question. “How much farther is it from where Lany found you?”

  He stared at them both for a moment. “You don’t really expect—”

  “Please,” Lany said, with marked urgency. “It’s important. We’re not going to hurt you or anyone in your group.”

  He made a leap of faith, one he hoped wouldn’t backfire on him or those he loved. “About an hour or so on horseback, all downhill.”

  Steve and Lany looked at each other and nodded.

  “One of our little girls is very sick,” Lany said.

  Michael stiffened.

  “It’s not DR SAM. It’s something chronic. We think she might have diabetes. We’ll take you back home tomorrow if your doctor will help her.”

  “I’m not sure she’ll be able to help.”

  “If she could just try…”

  “What about the suit and the weapon?”

  They didn’t reply immediately. Finally Steve said, “We’ll give them back, but only after we get to your place.”

  “Agreed,” Michael said. He stood and extended his hand, and Steve took it.

  They left him alone to consider the ramifications of his first act of intercommunal diplomacy.

  “You don’t think I’m a monster, do you?”

  Bruce opened the birdcage. His fingers—also scarred like his face—didn’t work as well as they once had. He dropped a piece of raw meat into a flock of ravenous fledglings whose greedy little beaks bobbed up and down in a frantic hunger dance. Their wrinkled brown faces were even more grotesque-looking with the tongues wagging out and oversize nostrils flared in excitement.

  “No, you can’t say a thing,” he cooed. “You’re the ugliest damned things on earth. Not like your buddies next door. They got their pictures all over the quarters. They’re so pretty, we give them little bracelets on their ankles and then we let them out. Yes, you’ll be really ugly when you grow up.”

  The baby birds screeched at the tops of their little lungs and converged on the food in a fuzzy white huddle.

  “If you grow up,” he said. Some of the turkey vultures would be raised to adulthood, so they could make more baby turkey vultures. They’d feed them until they reached a certain point of maturity, when their droppings would be analyzed.

  It was a far cry from what he’d done in London, where he’d studied humans—their bodies, not their droppings—as a researcher in a prestigious scientific institution. He didn’t know if anything like that still existed. Here, in the abandoned campus of the Worcester Technical Institute, their growing group had everything they required to be fruitful and multiply. Once they were reorganized, Fredo had led a foray outside the enclosed walls of the campus and into the immediate countryside to gather in more people, hoping that those who came to join the community would be friendlies. The few nonfriendlies they’d imported were quickly banished, without the possibility of appeal—there were no legal rights of redress in the new world. Once, one of those nonfriendlies had come back with a gang of sorts to try to take over their little kingdom; all of them were buried in one of the athletic fields just outside the enclosed campus.

  I am not a warrior, he’d told himself. But he’d led a successful resistance and in doing so established himself more firmly as the leader of the Worcester group, whether or not he wanted to be.

  He’d led them to the realization—based on his own thoughts during his healing year, when all he could do was think—that the world, or at least their small part of it, could be rebuilt.

  But first it had to be made safe for human occupation, and that meant finding a way to keep the bacterial monsters at bay. The baby birds now tearing at their food would become—he hoped—an integral part of that process. Their adult stomachs would be lined with enzymes that digested and at the same time destroyed bacteria and viruses; vultures ate carrion, nature’s perfect reservoir for such creatures. Nature in her wisdom had given them the means to survive each virulent meal.

  He glanced at a clutch of spotted eggs in a nearby incubator; they were the result of a mating between two birds with extraordinarily high levels of those substances. He was close to the goal of creating a superrace of antimicrobial birds. Soon enough, they’d know if the liquid gold that lined their stomachs would become the ultimate weapon in the war against disease, in the fight against the remnants of the Coalition, wherever and whenever they showed themselves again, which he was convinced they would do.

  In the meantime, it was comforting to know that there were creatures on this earth more hideous-looking than himself.

  Knife, bow, arrows, mask, the best pair of hiking boots she had left—all were laid out on a counter in the kitchen.

  “This is nuts,” she said to the assembled preparations, with the hope that they might rise up together and pummel some sense into her.

  No, she told herself a moment later, this is right.

  They’d all made an effort to go about the tasks of the day as if nothing had happened to Michael, but an undertone of anxiety tainted every act, word, and thought that took place in the compound. It wasn’t yet noon, but the sun rose steadily, heralding the hour of departure. As Janie was packing the items in a knapsack, Tom came up behind her and folded her into his arms.

  “Don’t go,” he pleaded, his head pressed against hers.

  She turned herself around, still in his arms, and clutched him fiercely.

  “I don’t want to,” she whispered. “I know it can be bad out there. But if Michael’s hurt…Terry won’t know what to do by himself. Ed won’t either.”

  She hugged him closer, then brought her lips to his and kissed him deeply. When she pulled back, her eyes were wet. “Let’s go talk to Alex.”

  Tom grabbed her by the wrist. “Maybe this would be a good time to tell him. About himself, I mean. It should be something we do together.”

  Maybe, Janie thought. But the time was too short, and she still wasn’t properly prepared, despite all the years she’d had to think about how to speak to her son about his uniqueness—or, more accurately, his lack thereof. “Not now,” she said. “There isn’t time to do it right. And if anything happens to me out there, Kristina can help you…talk to him. But you won’t need to, because everything will be fine.”

  “All right,” he said reluctantly. He pulled her into another embrace.

  In the middle of it, Alex charged into the kitchen. “Mom! Dad!” he shouted. “Michael’s back!”

  Janie pulled herself out of Tom’s arms in surprise.

  “And he’s got people with him!” He turned and ran out again before they could catch him.

  Janie stood outside the door and saw Michael, in clothes she’d never seen before, lowering himself off Galen. Terry and Elaine came out shortly and stood together right next to her, their arms around each other as if in protection against the new arrivals. Janie turned to Elaine and said, in a quiet voice, “My God, they look friendly.”

  After Elaine’s nod of agreement, Janie looked at the gate area again. Things were beginning to unfold—it was all happening very quickly, too quickly, she thought. She was stunned to see the ferocity with which Caroline and Sarah attached
themselves to their returned explorer. Janie glanced away, so as not to intrude on their moment, and looked at the newcomers more closely. She observed—waiting patiently for the reunion to be concluded—a small group of people on horseback.

  People. My God.

  Her eyes drank them in. There were three men and two women, and—to her great surprise—a child, a little girl who was almost completely enclosed in a cocoon of sheepskin. She looked very small indeed on the huge horse, and the woman on the saddle behind her didn’t seem much larger.

  Eventually, she saw Michael let go of Caroline and Sarah and watched with curiosity as he reached up to take the child out of the woman’s arms. At that point, everyone dismounted. He was walking directly toward her with the child clutched tightly to his chest. The others followed him, quickly taking in the details of the compound as they approached. Janie started forward, and when she met up with Michael, he offered her the bundle in his arms.

  “I brought you a new patient,” he said.

  Janie pulled aside the sheepskin and looked at the little girl’s face briefly as Michael held her.

  “Diabetes, they think,” he said.

  “Damn,” she said under her breath. “Put her on my bed. I’ll be right there.”

  She ran to the lab, surprising Kristina, and began to gather her equipment. “Come along,” she said.

  “But I’m right in the middle—”

  “Leave it. You won’t believe what’s going on.”

  Michael made the quick and cursory introductions as he laid his precious cargo on Janie and Tom’s bed. “Janie, Kristina, meet Lorraine Dunbar.”

  “Lany,” the visitor corrected him. The small woman wasted no time on the usual pleasantries but got right to the point; as she unwrapped the child, she rattled off a list of the girl’s symptoms. “For the last few days, it’s been really bad. She’s been so lethargic that we can hardly rouse her. We put her to bed yesterday morning; she’s been in and out of consciousness since then.”

  Together the two women undressed the little girl.

  “What about the last few months?”

  “Tired, thirsty, irritable. Infection after infection. Any kind of cut or scrape just becomes a mess.” Lany turned the child onto her back and carefully removed a dressing from one of her legs. Janie gasped when she saw the festering wound that ran from just below her knee to mid-shin.

  “We’ve been treating it with soap and sterilized water. Five, six, seven times a day we wash it, but it just keeps getting worse. We boil the rags before we use them again, but it’s just not healing.”

  The little girl’s face was angelic, surrounded by a halo of curly blond hair, miraculously clean despite her condition; they had cared for her meticulously. When the eyes fluttered open momentarily, Janie saw that they were clear, light blue. But the child seemed all bones with barely any flesh at all, and when Janie smelled her skin, it had a sweetish, fruity odor.

  “Bananas,” she said. “I think you’re right about diabetes.” She placed her stethoscope on the child’s chest; the little girl flinched from the touch of cold metal on her bare skin.

  “Weak, but steady,” she said as she pulled off the stethoscope.

  “Kristina, there are some sugar test strips in the metal cabinet behind my desk. Can you bring them to me?”

  As Kristina was passing through the bedroom door, Janie called out again, speaking each word very deliberately, “Sugar-test-strips.”

  Lany Dunbar gave her an odd look.

  “I’ll explain later.” She ran quickly to the door and called to Caroline. Her friend appeared in just a second.

  “Maggots,” Janie said quietly.

  Caroline glanced at the child’s leg and winced, but nodded her accord. She ran off quickly.

  When Janie returned to the bedside, Lany gave her a worried look. “Maggots?”

  “They eat putrid flesh,” Janie said, “and their droppings, for lack of a better word, contain an enzyme that actually promotes healing. With a little luck, we can save her leg. Now help me get this little one cleaned up.”

  In her delirium, the child had wet herself. They removed the remainder of her clothing and quickly cleaned her. “Ouch,” Janie said when she saw the bedsore that had taken over the child’s coccyx.

  She placed a pillow in the small of her back to keep the sore from touching anything and wrapped the sides of the blanket up over her while they waited for Kristina and Caroline to return.

  “These are old,” she said when Kristina handed her the strips. “We brought them along when we came here, but we’ve never had occasion to use any. Let’s hope they’re still reactive.”

  Very little blood came out when Janie used the lancet on the tip of one small finger, but it was enough to smear on the test paper. It took just a moment for Janie to ascertain that Lany Dunbar’s speculation had been correct.

  “Off the chart. Diabetes, all right.”

  Caroline returned, bearing a small cup, a spoon, and a bundle of rags. Janie glanced into the cup, nodded her approval, and then looked away from the cup’s contents, as if repulsed. Lany stepped back instinctively and let the other two women do their work. She watched as they spooned a long line of white, writhing maggots onto the leg wound, putting her hand over her mouth to contain her nausea when Caroline lifted the leg and Janie wrapped the rags around it to keep the larvae in place.

  “What about the bedsore?” Caroline said quietly.

  Janie turned the child onto her side and looked at it. In a whisper, she said, “I don’t know. Maybe if we keep her on her side…”

  Lany stepped forward at this point. “Aren’t you going to put them on that too?”

  Janie took the stethoscope off her neck and set it down on the bed. She stepped away from the bedside, drawing Lany along with her.

  “Is this your little girl?” she asked.

  “No. One of the men outside is her father. Her mother is gone.”

  Janie didn’t have to ask the cause. “Can you bring him in here?”

  “I’ll go get him,” Lany said, sounding agitated. “But before I do, what can you do for her? He’s going to ask me.”

  Janie pulled in a long breath, then let it out slowly. “I can make her very comfortable.”

  “Is that all?”

  Janie said nothing for a moment. Her thoughts went to a passage in Alejandro’s journal.

  It was all I could do, to watch with pain in my heart, as the child slipped away. Each day her body consumed more of its own flesh. And no matter what herbs or potions I administered to her, nothing revealed itself to be a cure. The frustration was evident in the medieval physician’s writings, but Janie recalled how Alejandro had concluded that passage in his journal with a bit of hope: But the mother was blessed and managed to get herself with child again quite soon, and everyone in her family rejoiced that there would be another daughter to help her.

  “She needs insulin,” Janie said. Her words contained all of the same frustration but none of the hope. “We don’t have any.”

  They put the child in one of the extra bedrooms and set out a cot for her father. All the excitement that should have accompanied the discovery of a friendly clan nearby was dampened by the matter that had brought them together. Janie’s answers to the father’s question were short and tender: Watch and wait, keep her warm and clean. We have something that will take the edge away, but I don’t think she’s feeling much of anything right now. Days, probably, but it could happen at any time; she’s very ill.

  The father sat down on the edge of his daughter’s bed, in the first moment of what Janie knew would be a sad vigil. She touched his shoulder once and tried to revisit a few of the times she’d conveyed bad news in an intimate manner to people she’d met only hours before. A few moments of bonding and then she would walk away, leaving a family to shrink into itself for the duration.

  She turned to leave and saw Alex and Sarah, with their heads peeking inside the door, their eyes fixed on the man at th
e side of the bed, whose shoulders were slumped forward as he cried over his daughter. When their eyes turned up to Janie, she gave them a little shrug and motioned with her hand for them to step back.

  Alex waited until his mother was out of the room and the door fully closed to ask, “Will she be all right?”

  “I don’t know. We just have to wait and see.”

  “You can’t help her?”

  “She needs a certain medicine, and we don’t have any.”

  The children exchanged worried looks, and Janie led them away, one hand on each of their shoulders, toward the main room of the lodge. There, they came upon an unusual sight: The huge, long table in its center was for once seated to its full capacity. Caroline had quickly put together a small feast of sorts—mostly consisting of breads and jams—and introductions were proceeding. Janie sent the awestruck children into the room with gentle pats on their shoulders and watched as they found places among the adults. She took one step forward and was about to enter but felt something clutching her arm. She turned and saw Kristina.

  Her voice was all excitement. “I found a recipe for insulin on one of the DVDs.”

  Janie glanced into the main room, then back at Kristina. “Should we be revealing our capabilities to this degree?”

  Kristina’s eyes flashed in anger. “I can’t believe you even asked that question.”

  Janie let herself be pulled to the lab.

  “It’s more of a process than a recipe,” Janie said as she read through the file on the computer screen. She pulled off a pair of reading glasses that were three years too weak and faced Kristina. “And we’d have to give up a cow or a pig to do it.”

  “But we can do it.”

  “You can do it, Kristina. I don’t have anywhere near the skills for this. And even if you succeed, it might already be too late.”

  “I want to try.”

  Three hours from now, Janie knew, the gangly savante might not remember this moment. But once started on the task, she would persevere until it was done or she was certain of failure, even if the initiating emotion had gone over some synaptic cliff in her brain.