Dragonfly

by Farris, John

  "Follow me, damn it! The house."

  Joe trailed the older man to the veranda, past the shocked dark faces of caterers and bartenders. Abby's head was hanging facedown and she was retching. He held her so that all of the vomit spilled out of her mouth and none of it was swallowed as he maneuvered her through a doorway and carried her beyond the kitchen. Abby coughed a couple of times, and began wheezing ominously as she fought for breath.

  "Is she epileptic?" Joe asked.

  "No." Thomason threw open a door and turned on some powerful lights. What might have been servants' quarters at one time had been converted to a home-treatment room with a padded table at the center. A cylinder of oxygen stood beside the table. There were OR lights overhead.

  "Put her on the table," Thomason ordered. He caught his breath and, after a stunned glance at her face, began feeding her oxygen. Abby was still thrashing about, but the vomiting had stopped.

  "Hold her for me, Doctor."

  Charlene appeared in the doorway. "Luke—!"

  "Not now."

  "Is she going to—"

  "Get out, Charlene." Instead of waiting for her to obey, he put the heel of his hand against her dia phragm and shoved her into the hail, saying, "Tell 'em it's okay. Tell 'em she'll be all right." He slammed the door in her face and locked it, went to a cabinet with glass doors, stooped and took a key from its hiding place, a magnetized box beneath the sink next to the cabinet.

  "How is she?" he said to Joe, sorting quickly through ampules on a shelf, seeming momentarily uncertain as to what he should give her.

  "Breathing easier now. Her blood pressure must be sky-high."

  "Right." He seized an ampule, opened a shallow drawer and took out a packaged sterile syringe and a package of latex gloves.

  "Has she done this before?" Joe asked.

  "No." Thomason pulled on gloves, looked sharply at Joe's hands. "Whose blood?"

  "Both of us, I think. She was holding a glass that shattered."

  "I hope to God you weren't screwing the nigger women in that pesthole you're lately from."

  "Give me a little credit, Doctor," Joe said.

  Thomason's forehead was pebbled with drops of perspiration. "Yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. Uncalled for. Just keep a grip on her." He fished for a pair of half glasses in an inside pocket of his Tartan-plaid blazer and put them on.

  Abby was quieting down, her wet scarlet breasts heaving as she dragged in the oxygen. Thomason sterilized a spot just above the elbow on her right arm, then picked up the ampule, which contained Procardia. He withdrew half of the contents into the disposable syringe, and injected her.

  He took over from Joe, continued to hold her while the spasms eased to barely discernible tremors. He used a gauze pad to wipe the saliva from her face, checked inside her mouth to see if she'd bitten her tongue.

  "Doctor, why don't you wash up and bandage any cuts. Then, if you wouldn't mind, I need one hundred twenty milligrams of Luminol and four hundred milligrams of Dilantin from the drug safe."

  Joe washed quickly, found the cut on the heel of his right hand. It was easily covered with a large Band-Aid.

  "Abby, Abby," Thomason said in a whispery voice, "gave us a real scare this time. Doctor? Help me turn her."

  He had stripped Abby while Joe was washing, and placed sheets over her. Her face was still inflamed. She was trying to open her eyes, complaining like a newborn, but even the diffused light from the overhead fixture seemed too punishingly bright for her. Her tongue worked thickly in her mouth.

  Together they placed Abby on her left side. Thomason redraped her, leaving only the upper hemispheres of her buttocks and her lower back exposed. There were small scars near the tip of the spinal column.

  "Is that a reservoir implant?" Joe asked. He had seen a similar implant done at the UCLA Medical Center, in those days before his attention wandered from a respectable career.

  Put it in myself. She's always hated the needles. But there's no alternative, as you may know. With the reservoir, nowadays I only need to do this once a week. If you'll kindly prepare the injections, there's some 25-gauge spinal needles in the first drawer there."

  Joe looked for the drugs Thomason had requested. "Was the cord severed?"

  "No, sir, but it might as well have been. The contusion was severe, and I've been fighting a holding battle against inflammation since her injury, which was thirteen long years ago."

  "What about her spasms? When was the last time she had a scan?"

  "You were in the bush too long, Doctor. Severe spinal cord contusions are not likely to show up on a CT scan."

  "But a tumor would," Joe said. He picked up an ampule labeled Solumedrol and contemplated it.

  Thomason said with unconcealed annoyance, "There's no tumor, and I'll stake my life on that. I won't be needing the Solumedrol right now, Doctor, she's not scheduled for another three days."

  "You're treating the inflammation with epidural steroids?"

  "Which I will continue to do, until someone comes up with a better method. What's the matter, Doctor?"

  "I don't see any Luminol," Joe said, putting the Solumedrol down on the sink counter.

  "May have run short. The Dilantin will have to do for now."

  "Got it." Joe filled a syringe and took it to Thomason. "She was in an accident, wasn't she? How did it happen?"

  "Well, she was run over in the street. Corner of King and Pinckney streets in Beaufort. That's not a brightly lighted area at night. Abby... and her boyfriend"—the young man seemed an afterthought to Thomason—"were on their way from a party at the old Tripeer house, at the bend of the river. Not a witness in sight. Paul, Paul Huskisson was his name, lingered in a coma for a week, but there was never a chance for him. Abby suffered a severe cord compression in the lumbar region and lost the use of her legs. There's some spasticity, but she has no pain."

  "Did she see who hit them?"

  "We don't know. The accident, if you call it that, has long been blocked from her conscious mind."

  Thomason injected the Dilantin into Abby's right buttock; she reacted with a mousy squeal. He straightened and raised the half glasses to the crown of his head. They put Abby on her back again, and Thomason meticulously arranged the sheets over her body. She was still sweaty and restless, but the harsh red tone of her skin was fading. One emerald stud earring gleamed on the left lobe; the other had been lost in transit.

  "Get a towel for me, Doctor, while I take her blood pressure."

  Joe went to the sink. There was a roll of paper towels on the counter. He failed to notice the ampule of Solumedrol he had placed there, and accidentally brushed it to the floor reaching for the towels. When he stepped back to look for the ampule his heel came down on it, mashing it flat with a little crinkling noise.

  "Damn, I'm sorry!"

  Thomason glanced at the flattened ampule, the silver-dollar-size spot of clear fluid on the floor. He shook his head and pumped up the pressure collar on Abby's left arm.

  "Don't fret about it, Doctor."

  "Joe, please."

  "Joe. I do appreciate all the good help you've given me." A few seconds later he reported, "BP's one-eighty over ninety. I wish I knew what caused it to shoot up like that. I'll have to keep an eye on her the rest of the night."

  Joe placed the wetted paper towels on a stainless-steel tray pulled out from the table. "Are you taking her to a hospital?"

  Thomason said, a little edgily, "I don't think that will be necessary. You can see I'm well equipped to take care of Abby right here. Now, if Charlene is still hanging around outside, have her bring me some of Abby's nightclothes. Are we riding in the morning?"

  "I'd like to. But I think—it's time for me to head on home."

  Thomason made no protest for the sake of Southern hospitality. Joe looked at Abby while the doctor listened to the murmurous filling and emptying of the tidal chambers of the heart. Her free hand stirred weakly; she seemed to be trying to signal him. Her voice sought to make words
, but her tongue still wouldn't work properly. Thomason came to the end of the table, a distant look in his eyes, and stripped the latex gloves, which he dropped into a waste pail. He was standing between them, monolithic in meditation, and Joe couldn't see Abby's face anymore.

  "Give her my best," Joe said. It seemed, somehow, bad faith to be leaving her at this critical time. But he had come in bad faith. He let himself out.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Fingering his long, curiously crimped upper lip, Lucas Thomason studied his niece on the padded table in the small and windowless room, included originally as a storehouse for the adjacent kitchen, and later used as a servant's room. The overhead light cast no shadows.

  Under the influence of both Valium and Dilantin Abby's eyes were fixed steadfastly, in a variation of twilight sleep, on a frieze of the mind: a smoky battleground, cannons flaring, soldiers in forage caps in arrested fall; distant voices whispered sadly, as if at a funeral. She correctly supposed that something had gone wrong with her. Her mouth felt excessively dry, and soured. She could feel her heart beating, and a tingling in her fingers. Her nipples were puckered.

  "It's the drinking," Thomason said. "Bound to be. My fault for not keeping closer watch over you."

  "Luke…"

  "You'll be all right. I'll take you up to bed in a little while."

  "Where's..."

  "Don't talk." He moved into her line of sight, still lightly stroking his lip with the side of his finger. Probably getting a fever blister there. They popped up when he was overtired.

  "But he's . . ."

  "Your young doctor friend said to give you his best."

  "Oh... shit."

  "Now, don't start fretting. It's bad for you. It'll lead to a sinking spell, which is worse."

  "I wanted ..."

  "Need to stay in a positive frame of mind. Because that's what good health is all about."

  "Joe."

  "He makes quite an impression on the ladies, young and old. No reason for you to be immune. But some things just can't be. I know you accepted that, long ago."

  "Sometimes... wish… I.could die."

  "No, no, no, we're not gonna talk that way, missy. I forbid it. Hell, I know it's just the booze; you think you're getting a lift when all it does is work against you physiologically and emotionally. You simply don't have a drinker's constitution. If there is such a thing."

  Abby tried, unsuccessfully, to raise herself up. She only succeeded in dropping the sheet from her breasts before lying back in a daze.

  He stared moodily at her exposed breasts, at the fine tracery of veins around aureolae that remained as small and pink as a child's. But in more ways than the physical she would always be his child, his special child. He tucked the sheet up around her collarbones and placed a hand on her forehead, until the slight pressure of his palm caused her eyes to close.

  Time to clean up. He glanced at the flattened ampule on the beige tile floor of the infirmary, kneeled to retrieve it.

  Something jolted him, like a black wasp flying off the floor and nailing him between the eyes.

  The label clinging to the fragments read Solumedrol, that was plain enough. But the ounce of liquid on the floor was clear, not chalky.

  His heartbeat ran up alarmingly. He dipped a finger into the spill and held it to his nose. Then he tasted it, cautiously.

  Distilled water. And not at all what was supposed to be in an ampule labeled Solumedrol, containing epidural steroids.

  The label was wet. He lowered his reading glasses and saw the shadow of words on another label beneath the first one.

  He tried to ply the two labels apart, but they tore like wet tissue paper.

  Thomason straightened slowly, put the fragment of ampule with labels attached on the sink counter, and opened a drawer of the drug cabinet. He was looking for his magnifying glass when someone knocked timidly at the door.

  "It's Charlene."

  "Just a minute." He glanced at the table where Abby had begun to snore lightly. Opened a second drawer and located his magnifying glass in the back. With it he studied the soaked labels clinging to bits of glass until he was certain that someone had carefully removed the Solumedrol label and placed it on the ampule filled with water.

  Which meant that an ampule, once labeled as Solumedrol, was missing from his drug cabinet.

  "Luke?"

  "I'm coming! Don't bother me."

  Pure and simple, someone had come into the infirmary, his infirmary, with suspicions in mind, and hadtaken the one ampule, from among nearly three dozen available on two shelves of the cabinet, that could in the future cause him a problem. A very serious problem. Someone too goddamned clever for their own good.

  Charlene flinched when he opened the infirmary door.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Get in here."

  Charlene quick-walked into the infirmary with pajamas and a robe for Abby. He closed the door behind her and locked it again.

  Charlene was staring at Abby. "Is she—"

  "Abby will be good as gold. Charlene, there's a thief in this house."

  "What?" She looked around at him slowly, the word thief sinking in, and she crossed her arms protectively over her breasts.

  Familiar with the gesture, Thomason said dismissively, "I'm not blaming you. But somebody got into my drug safe in the past, it would be three days since I gave Abby her last injection."

  "Of what?" Charlene ventured.

  "What she has to have on a regular basis," Thomason said, ending her inquiry with a scowl. "Now it's gone and I'm out of it and I'll have to get another shipment from Switzerland right away. Abby's on a course of medication that requires strict scheduling, or else."

  Charlene nodded. "But I don't know who—"

  "Never mind. I just had a notion. Should have occurred to me sooner."

  "I don't think. . . it was Norse. What use would he have for Pamela's—"

  "No, it wasn't him. He's too thick between the ears. I said never mind. Help me get Abby into her pajamas, will you?" He glanced at his wristwatch, and flinched. "Jesus. Where'd the time go? What happened to everybody?"

  "The party broke up. There's a ton of peach shortcake left, nobody wanted any after Abby's fit."

  "Where's Senator Harkness?"

  "He passed out, and they're in the guest room tonight."

  "Oh, good. We'll have a chance to talk at breakfast. If he's not too hungover." Thomason pressed both hands to the back of his neck. "I've got a bitch of a headache."

  "Are you going to come to bed after we take her upstairs?"

  "No, I'll sit with her tonight. I have some thinking to do."

  "I really would like for you to come to bed with me after a while, Luke." A shudder rippled through her. "I'm kind of on edge? I got scared when Pamela—did that."

  "She had a severe convulsion relevant to her ongoing neurological syndrome." But he looked doubtful, even as he provided the diagnosis.

  "Don't you think she ought to be in a hospital for a specialist to check her out?"

  "The convulsion ran her temperature up but didn't do any lasting damage. And this won't be happening again. I'm cutting out the Happy Hours and keeping her on Dilantin for a while."

  "You know what? I just think she's very unhappy."

  "Don't be ridiculous, Charlene."

  Her lips pressed together tightly. Her eyes brimmed.

  "I'm not ridiculous. I try real hard. I do, Luke. Ijust wish you could appreciate that."

  "Charlene, I know what you want and I'm sorry; it's a sad but true fact of life that at age fifty-six I can manage only one decent hard-on a day."

  Charlene sucked wind as if she were about to take a long fall.

  "That is such an asshole thing to say. Sometimes I only want to be held. A sad but true fact. Go ahead then. Play with your Abby doll the way you like to. Catheterize her and give her her enema and stick needles in her. Your favorite pastime, right? Then when you're all worked up you can come to my room and
use me to masturbate while there's nothing on your mind but AbbyAbbyABBY. I'm smart about some things, Luke. And I wouldn't want to have your conscience."

  His shoulders squared in anger, but he had sufficient grace in spite of the provocation not to slap a crying woman. Throbbing from stress, he turned his back on Charlene instead. On the table Abby's fevered, dopey eyes were open, but not as if she were really awake, or even aware of her surroundings. Looking, he thought, with a sympathetic pang that slowly dispelled his anger, just as he had discovered her in the emergency room of the hospital in Beaufort on a September night thirteen years ago.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The caterers were packing up the bar when Joe walked outside on the veranda. One of them glanced at him and said, "Could I fix you something, Doctor?"

  "If there's any beer left."

  "Got it right here." He had long hands and wide shoulders; up close he was taller than Joe had thought.

  "Play any ball?"

  "Yes, sir. Three years at Coastal Carolina." He glanced toward the house as he was filling a glass from one of the steel beer barrels. The question was on the tip of his tongue, but he was reluctant to ask.

  "Miss Abelard's going to be okay. Sometimes these seizures happen when there's spinal-cord damage."

  The young caterer straightened with a look of relief and happiness, and handed Joe his beer. It was no longer very cold, but Joe drank it gratefully. A three-quarter moon surfaced in a boil of cloud over Abby'sworkshop, like a blunt bone separated from a galactic skeleton. The lights were on inside; possibly someone was there. The caterer rose from the brick veranda, a beer keg on each shoulder, and walked them gracefully to a five-ton truck parked beneath the ageless oak on one side of the house. The breeze coursing through the garden carried with it a bouquet of sea life and tangy cold combers.

  The doors of the workshop stood open a couple of feet, framing the images on a big-screen TV. Lizzie, solitary, lounged on a tufted floor pillow watching a wrestling match. She glanced back at his footsteps and bit her lip wordlessly.

  "She'll be okay." He shrugged and offered an explanation. "Probably too much to drink."