by Mary Lawson
Mr. Hardy sat down behind his desk and raised his eyebrows at Ian. “Am I right to assume I’m speaking to the next Dr. Christopherson?”
He had smiled, and Ian had felt irritation rising up in him like a wave. “I’ve decided I’d like to study agriculture,” he said.
He’d had no idea he was going to say such a thing until the words came out of his mouth, but it was satisfying to see his teacher’s reaction.
“Agriculture,” Mr. Hardy said slowly, as if he hadn’t heard the word before and wasn’t too sure what it meant.
“Yes,” Ian said. “I’d like to be a farmer.”
Mr. Hardy picked up a pencil and doodled a little square on the blotter on his desk. He nodded thoughtfully. Then he looked across at Ian. “You’ve thought seriously about this, have you, Ian?”
“Yes,” Ian said.
“Have you discussed it with your father?”
“Yes.” Which was a lie. He hadn’t discussed it with anyone, because he had no intention of becoming a farmer. He had spent enough time with Arthur to know that farming was not an easy option. It was just that he seemed to have become allergic to the question. It felt as if people had been asking him that question twice a day since the day he was born. Though maybe it wasn’t so. Maybe he just kept asking it of himself.
“Well,” Mr. Hardy said after another pause. “There’s an excellent school of agriculture in Guelph. Would you like to apply to that?”
Ian’s heart started to thump. Was this it, then? Had he just decided his future in a single spasm of irritation?
“Where is…Guelph, exactly?” he said, as if that had anything to do with anything.
“Southern Ontario. Not far from Toronto.”
There was a long silence. The teacher doodled another square. Ian cast about in his mind for a way out. Finally he said, “Can I think about it?”
Mr. Hardy nodded. “I think that would be a good idea.” He looked up and smiled again, and his smile suggested that he knew Ian was bluffing, which irritated Ian so much that he almost decided to become a farmer after all, out of spite.
But here he was, months later, still thinking about it, or to be accurate, still avoiding thinking about it, and the final exams were upon him. Each year the teachers implied that the exams you were taking now were the most critical ones you would ever face, and each year the moment you’d finished you could see the next lot looming. It was like climbing a mountain—it wasn’t until you reached the top that you realized it wasn’t the top, it was merely a foothill. To add to it all, for some unaccountable reason in the past year he had started creating hurdles for himself, mini-peaks within the overall mountain range. He’d be annoyed with himself if he didn’t achieve an A. He had no idea why. He envied Pete, who seemed to be less concerned about the future with every passing day.
It was math he was studying when his father called him. Math was one subject he’d never worried about. He’d always thought that you could either do it or you couldn’t, so there was no point in studying for it, and he’d continued to believe that right up until he’d flipped open the textbook earlier in the evening and seen the chapter on differential equations and integration. He’d understood it fine when they’d studied it in class, but now it looked like Greek—in fact, parts of it were—and the exam was tomorrow.
He’d been working for a couple of hours when there was a commotion in the hallway downstairs. Loud voices and scuffling. A moment later his father called him from the foot of the stairs in the calm but very definite tone he used when he needed help now, this minute. Ian got up from his desk and went down the stairs fast.
There was a trail of blood leading from the side door to his father’s office, and when he got inside there was a sizable pool of blood on the floor. The room was crowded with people. His father and Sergeant Moynihan were trying to lift a struggling man onto the examination table, and there was another man standing against the wall. Most of the blood was coming from the first man, from a wound in his thigh. Ian stepped forward, grabbed a flailing leg and helped heave him onto the table. He didn’t know the man, but guessed from his accent—not French, but something European—and from the stink of alcohol that he was a logger. He was swearing in fractured English, and Sergeant Moynihan was swearing back. “Just shut up, for Christ’s sake,” he was saying. “You’ve caused enough trouble for one night, we don’t need to listen to you as well.”
“Bloody bastar’,” the man said, trying to lunge at the man against the wall. “Stinkin’ bloody bastar’.”
He was young, early twenties at most, and strongly built, and Sergeant Moynihan had to lean hard on his shoulders while Ian lay across his legs. The second he was on the table Ian’s father jammed his hand into the man’s groin to stop the bleeding. It had been spurting out, bright red blood. That spurting, pumping action and bright red blood was bad news, Ian knew. His father tapped the man’s chest sharply with his free hand and said, “Listen to me. You’ve got a bad cut here. If you don’t let us see to it you’re going to be in real trouble. Do you understand?”
“Bastar’,” the man said, but he did stop thrashing about. His face was very pale and his forehead was beaded with sweat. A belt was cinched ineffectually around his thigh a couple of inches above the wound—his own belt, evidently; his trousers were sagging down. Below the belt his trouser leg was soaked with blood. A rag had been wrapped around the wound but it had slipped down. “I’m going to need you to do this, Ian,” his father said. Ian let go of the man’s feet—he was quiet now anyway—and stepped up beside his father. Dr. Christopherson grabbed his hand and wedged it in hard to the groin. “Keep it there,” he said. To the policeman he said, “How long has it been since you got to him, Gerry?”
“Fifteen minutes, maybe. Had to get the both of them into the car.”
“And how much blood was there when you arrived?”
“Fair-sized pool. All of them crowded around outside Ben’s, no one doin’ a damn thing to stop it.”
Dr. Christopherson was slicing the man’s trousers with a pair of scissors, upward from the tourniquet.
“What you doin’?” the man said, lifting his head and craning to see. Suddenly he seemed terrified. “What you bloody doin’?”
“It’s okay,” Dr. Christopherson said quietly. “Don’t worry. What’s your name?” He was working fast; Ian could feel the urgency in his movements. He slit the man’s trousers right up to the waist, then slit the underwear too.
“Right,” he said to Ian. His voice was calm and quiet; if you didn’t know him, you wouldn’t realize there was any cause for concern. “Now we can see what we’re doing. Your job is to shut off the femoral artery. I’ll show you exactly where in a sec. Don’t let up the pressure with your hand just yet.”
Ian nodded. His own heart was pumping hard. He’d seen plenty of blood before, but never like this. He was standing in blood; there was a thick pool of it spreading out under the table. His father pulled the man’s trousers aside as far as Ian’s hand would permit, exposing the groin. The man’s genitals flopped out and the doctor tucked them back under the torn trousers. The man didn’t seem to notice. He’d stopped resisting in any way. “What’s your name?” Dr. Christopherson asked again, sparing a moment to glance at his face, but he didn’t respond. It was scary how fast he’d gone from fighting to apathy. He lay still now, staring vaguely at the ceiling. His mouth was open and he was panting; short, shallow breaths.
“Okay,” Dr. Christopherson said to Ian. “Now I want you to press right there. Use both thumbs. Press hard.”
Ian pressed down, trying to identify the artery with his thumbs. He found it, felt the man’s pulse throbbing, and flattened it hard against the bone beneath. The man’s genitals spilled out again and he couldn’t avoid touching them with the edge of his hand. “Sorry,” he said, but the man didn’t care.
His father was watching to see that the bleeding had stopped. “Good,” he said. “You’ve got it. Keep it like that.” He pulled on
the belt to undo the tourniquet and the man gave a high thin scream and arched his back. Ian struggled to keep his thumbs in position. “Okay,” his father said gently. “It’ll only take a minute. Just hold on.” He removed the belt and started cutting off the bandages around the man’s leg.
“Any idea what made the cut?” he asked Sergeant Moynihan. “Knife? Broken glass?”
“Knife. Both of them had knives.”
Ian glanced over at the man against the wall. He hadn’t even looked at him before, but now he saw that it was Jim Lightfoot, who lived near Pete on the reserve and who had been a year ahead of them in school until he left to work at the lumberyard. He was bleeding from a cut running down the side of his face from forehead to chin. He was moving his head in an odd way, raising his shoulder to wipe the blood away instead of wiping it off with his hand, and Ian realized with a shock that his hands were tied behind his back. Jim felt his glance and looked at him, and Ian gave him a swift embarrassed nod. Jim looked away.
Dr. Christopherson was peering at the wound in the other man’s leg. “We could be in luck,” he said. “It’s not quite severed. I think we can deal with that. You’re going to have to play anesthetist, Gerry, but we have to get some blood into him first.”
He glanced at Jim Lightfoot. “You know your blood group, Jim?” Jim looked at him but didn’t reply. Dr. Christopherson went over to his desk and opened one of the file cabinets in which he had the medical records, including the blood group of every person in Struan and the surrounding area, plus a list of those who would act as donors in an emergency. He flicked through it for Jim’s card, looked at it and shook his head.
“Group B,” he said. “It’s going to be you, Gerry.” He got two sawhorses from over by the wall and set them beside the examination table.
“Jesus,” Sergeant Moynihan said. “It’s always me! Why not Ian?”
“Ian is group B too, and we don’t know this man’s group, and you’re group O, which is the best bet. We’ve been through all of this before. Help me set up the table, please.”
“How about your volunteers?” Gerry said. “Get one of them.”
“We don’t have time,” Dr. Christopherson said. “Help me with this, please.”
“I hate those bloody needles! How many bastards have I given my own blood to over the years?”
“Gerry, we’re in a hurry.”
Still grumbling, the policeman helped him put the old door they used as a transfusion table onto the sawhorses.
“Roll up your sleeve and lie down, please.” Ian’s father was already back at his cabinet, taking things out of the drawer, moving fast.
Ian felt the man give a kind of shudder, then draw in his breath and let it out in a long, slow exhalation. He was still staring at the ceiling. Ian waited for him to take another breath. His father was preparing the transfusion tubing and had his back to them. Sergeant Moynihan was rolling up his sleeve. Ian watched the man’s face. Breathe, he thought. The man stared at the ceiling, unblinking. Ian said, “Dad?” His own heart was suddenly thumping so hard he could hardly breathe himself.
His father looked around. He dropped the tubing and came over, put his hand on the side of the man’s neck. He shook his head, then raised his hand, fist clenched, and hit the man hard on the chest, over the heart, hard enough that Ian jumped.
“Keep up the pressure.” He checked again for a pulse. “Don’t let up. We’ll try it again.”
Again he hit the man, harder this time. Ian felt the shock of it through the man’s body. His own hands and shoulders and neck were almost seizing up with the strain of holding the same position, but he scarcely noticed. All of his concentration was taken up with willing the man to breathe. Breathing was so simple—surely he could do it if only he’d try. Ian found himself taking deep breaths to demonstrate how simple it was.
His father checked once more for a pulse. Shook his head. “One last time,” he said.
He hit the man again. Felt for a pulse. “Poor lad,” he said. “Poor lad.”
Ian stared at his father. He couldn’t believe it. It couldn’t be over as quickly, as simply, as that.
Gerry Moynihan said, “That’s it?”
“Yes.” The doctor sighed, and stepped back. “You can let go, Ian. It’s no good.”
Ian looked down at the man, who was still staring at the ceiling, who surely in a moment would blink, and finally draw a breath.
“You can let go,” his father said again. “He’s gone.” He went over to the cupboard by the window, got out a sheet, brought it back to the table, and started to unfold it. He said gently, “Let go, Ian.” Ian looked down at his hands, his thumbs still pressed into the man’s groin. “Come on, now,” his father said. Ian made himself take his hands away. A thin stream of blood ran out from the wound. He stepped back from the table, clutching his aching hands in his armpits, and watched his father close the man’s eyes and cover him with the sheet. Sergeant Moynihan was whistling between his teeth, looking at Jim Lightfoot. Ian’s father went over to the sink and washed his hands, scrubbing them hard, his face grim. He drew a chair out from the wall and positioned it so that it faced the light.
“Come and sit down, Jim,” he said. “Let’s have a look at you. Take off his handcuffs, Gerry.”
Sergeant Moynihan shook his head. “As of right now this boy’s on a murder charge.”
“This boy’s injured. Take off his handcuffs, please, so I can treat him.”
“You can treat him just like he is. He’s on a murder charge and I’m not taking any chances.”
“I’m not going to argue with you, Gerry. I don’t treat patients with their hands tied behind their backs.”
Ian still couldn’t take it in. The way it had happened so fast, between the letting out of one breath and the drawing in of the next. He couldn’t comprehend it. He watched the standoff between his father and Gerry Moynihan, but it had no interest for him. In any case, his father would win. With some detached corner of his mind he wondered if the two of them had been classmates at school. They were about the same age. There must be dozens of people in Struan who had been all the way through school with the boy who was now their doctor. One day you’d be gouging each other’s eyes out in the schoolyard and the next you’d be obediently saying “aahhh” so he could look at your tonsils, or pulling down your pants so he could stick a needle in your ass.
Gerry Moynihan was digging in the back pocket of his trousers. He pulled out a set of keys. “It’s on your head if he runs for it,” he said flatly.
“I accept full responsibility,” Ian’s father said. “Come over here, Jim.”
The chair was only a couple of feet away from the table where the dead man lay. Did Jim realize yet that he had taken someone’s life? The phrase had a meaning now that it had not possessed before. To take a life. Ian watched while his father cleaned the long, jagged wound and began to stitch it up. Jim gripped the edges of his chair. “Won’t take long,” Dr. Christopherson said. His stitches were small, precise, perfectly placed. He was proud of his stitching, Ian knew. His one vanity. The scars his patients had were fine, faint lines that faded to nothing in a matter of weeks. With the lumber camp out in the bush and the sawmill down the road, he got a lot of practice.
“Could you phone Reverend Thomas for me, Ian,” he said. “Tell him we have a dead man here.”
Ian nodded. He went out into the hall and made the phone call. Then he came back into the office. His father was still stitching. He looked up. “You can go, if you like,” he said.
On his way out Ian noticed that he had tracked blood into the hall. His footprints merged with the trail of blood the man had left on his way in. A life, spilled on the floor. He took off his shoes and put them down by the wall, neatly, side by side. Then he went up to his room. His math books were still spread out on his desk. He sat down and stared at them for a while. They were monumentally unimportant. At about eleven o’clock he heard a car pull up, and voices in the hall. They would be ta
king the body to the church for the night.
Shortly after the car drove off, his father came upstairs and stuck his head around the door.
“You okay?” he said.
“Sure,” Ian said, half turning in his chair.
“Don’t stay up too late.”
“No.”
His father hesitated. “You did well tonight.”
“Thanks,” Ian said.
“Sometimes there’s nothing we can do.”
“No.”
His father went back downstairs and Ian heard him moving around down there. At about midnight his father went to bed.
Ian sat on at his desk, thinking about the cold, hard fact of death. “He’s gone,” his father had said. One moment there had been a man lying on the table, and the next, only a body. They didn’t even know the man’s name. Didn’t know where he had come from. The loggers came and went; many of them were recent immigrants and spoke next to no English. When the trees in one area had been felled, the logging camp would move on and start again. The men had little to do with the town except on the weekends, when they came in to get drunk. The townspeople considered them foul-mouthed and lawless. Their work was dangerous, far more dangerous than working at the sawmill—at least at the mill the saws were fixed and you didn’t have to work at terrifying heights. There were no steel cables whipping around, or dead branches hurtling down on you, or sudden shifts of wind toppling trees in the wrong direction. Floating logs didn’t roll over and trap you beneath them.
Did the loggers know how suddenly death could overtake them? How it could come upon you out of nowhere? Maybe they did. But it seemed to Ian, alone in the silence of his room, that it made life pointless. What was the sense in making plans, in striving for things, if it could all end like that, in an instant? It felt like a betrayal. Like a monstrous joke on the part of God.