Louisa Lindahl’s flesh. I could smell the antiseptic, and under that, faintly, something else.... Blood perhaps, maybe nicotine, and then something deeper, muskier, a smell belonging to Louisa Lindahl’s essence. The black knots of the sutures looked like flies lined up along her pale abdomen. I had to touch her—how could I come this close and not?—and yet I couldn’t decide where. I paused, my hand hovering over her.
That hesitation provided enough time for the doctor to speak my name—“Matthew!”—and step toward me.
But by then it was too late. I placed my palm lightly on Louisa Lindahl’s belly, just below the furrow of flesh that Dr. Dunbar’s stitches had closed. The tip of my little finger slipped into her navel with such ease it seemed to have found its natural place.
My hand rested there for no longer than Louisa Lindahl’s breasts had been bared, but it was long enough for the feeling of her cool soft skin to stamp itself into my memory indelibly.
I jerked my hand back and stood up just in time to escape Dr. Dunbar’s attempt to swat me away.
“Matthew! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I just wanted to see if she felt... cold.”
“You never touch, Matthew. Not without the patient’s permission. I invited you in here because it’s a unique learning situation. It’s not an opportunity for you to indulge your personal curiosity.”
“Sorry.”
He stared sternly at me for a long moment. “Did I make a mistake inviting you in here?” To make clear that the question was meant for both of us, he shifted his gaze to Johnny and then back to me.
“No sir,” I said, intending to answer for both of us.
“You’re still interested in learning something?”
I nodded eagerly.
“Johnny?”
“Sure.”
Once he was assured that he had our attention again, Dr. Dunbar proceeded to lecture us on primary and secondary wounds, temporary and permanent cavities, and the stretching and displacement of tissue. Dr. Dunbar got no closer to combat than a New Jersey Army hospital during the Second World War, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this part of the lesson was intended not only to educate us, but to impress us with his knowledge of ballistics.
And knowing what we had seen of Miss Lindahl, perhaps he wanted to stress the clinical nature of the situation as well. After all, the girl lying there before us was not to be looked at for her naked beauty, but rather as a patient in need of a physician’s help. She was her wound, and the purpose of Dr. Dunbar’s lecture was to remind us of that.
But I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to know so much more than debridement techniques and the dangers of sepsis. “Why’d you knock her out?” I asked.
Dr. Dunbar’s reply came in tones as icy as his earlier glare. “Knock her out? I didn’t knock her out. I anesthetized her. When she came in she was in pain, in shock, and bleeding. I wasn’t sure of the extent of her injuries, or what she’d require in the way of treatment.”
The tension that had developed in the room seemed to make Johnny uneasy, and he rushed to ask an easily answered question: “So there’s no chance she will die?”
“She will not die.”
“Will she have a bad scar?”
“A bad scar? Depends on what you mean by bad. You saw how her body is already trying to heal itself. The scar will be the mark of how well it succeeds. I’d expect there to be some delling. You know what that is, don’t you? It’s a little depression, like a dimple. And then sometimes the body does too good a job, so to speak. She could develop a keloid, a scar that doesn’t know when to stop. I know you’ve seen those—the flesh mounds up, the skin acquires a sheen. Depending on its size it might even look pulpy....”
Louisa Lindahl stirred beneath the sheet, her body twitching and rippling as if an electric current were coursing through it. Dr. Dunbar was suddenly alert, watching for a sign that would probably be meaningless or invisible to Johnny or me. He stepped forward and placed his hand on her shoulder, his fingers extending just below her clavicle, where neither organ nor vital sign pulsed. Instantly, as if his touch had thrown a switch, her contractions ceased.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
The doctor merely smiled. It was the same smile he’d worn when he sent us on our way with pockets full of gauze.
4.
WHEN I ARRIVED HOME THAT NIGHT my mother was in her customary place and engaged in her favorite activity. The telephone cord stretched from the wall to the kitchen table, where she sat with the black receiver in one hand and a Pall Mall in the other. She was wearing a bathrobe, her usual after-work attire, and her hair was done up in curlers. The room’s only light came from the fluorescent strip along the back of the stove. In contrast to the Dunbar home, where the aroma of Mrs. Dunbar’s turkey and all the sumptuous extras still hung in the air, our house smelled like cabbage, though my mother hadn’t prepared cabbage in weeks.
Whoever was on the other end of the line was telling my mother something so fascinating that she couldn’t be bothered to greet me. Nevertheless, she held up her hand to indicate that I was to wait in the room until her conversation was finished.
My mother loved gossip, though she never would have called it that. She’d lived in Willow Falls all her life, and for her staying abreast of its citizens and their activities was like keeping up with the family. And between her job and her network of female friends, she had access to plenty of information, as well as the means to move it along. This proclivity of hers didn’t bother me much. She put in long hours on her feet at work and then came home to cook, clean, and pinch pennies. I understood that she took her pleasures where she could. Besides, I often picked up a few juicy rumors about our town’s mostly respectable citizens, some of them parents of my schoolmates.
She said good-bye and handed the receiver to me so I could walk it back to the cradle.
“Sadie?” I asked. It was a good bet. My mother usually concluded her day talking with Sadie Pruitt, even if the two of them had just worked the evening shift together at Palmer’s.
“Doris Greiner.”
“What did Doris have to say?”
“Mrs. Greiner,” my mother corrected. “She said a young woman got herself shot today. But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
“They brought her to Dr. Dunbar.”
“Saved her life, did he?”
“I don’t know about that, but she’s going to live.”
She nodded and crossed her legs in order to massage an aching foot. But she’d be back on her feet at Palmer’s the following day. The hair curlers told me that. My mother was a homely woman, but she tried to look her best at work. She’d wear a little rouge to add color to her sallow cheeks, and lipstick to help define her narrow mouth’s tight line. Mascara and eyeliner would make her eyes seem less small and close-set. The curlers would put a little
