Deathwatch - Final Page 3

  A greenish drool poured slowly from between her lips, there was no time to worry about a basin, I held her head and shoulders as best I could. Her stomach heaved—a welcome sight—and then she was merely sick, retching weakly over the side of the bed.

  “Abby,” she moaned. Her voice was a sob. I soothed her. Her sister was still asleep, Saunders had gone directly to her bed and was standing by.

  Abby was blinking now; her hands swam around her head, but she showed no signs of throwing up. “Where am I?” she muttered a second before she opened her eyes. “Where’s Ellie?”

  “Lost,” Ellie said, and at the time I thought she was still disoriented from the anesthesia or from her near crisis. I didn’t know it was the true beginning of the change I’d half sensed earlier, or that it was the antithesis—a rotting corpse—to the vibrant new life I’d imagined.

  “I’m lost,” Ellie mewled again.

  Then they both faded out, drifting into the regular rhythms of deep, undrugged sleep.

  - 5 -

  Looking back, I suppose the change—Regina’s ability to come through— was nearly immediate. I saw it, I’m not sure if Ruth did then. It was the second day the twins were post-op, and Ruth had gone in to give them sponge baths. They were still loggy, and I was waiting for her to finish in order to check their incisions. I was only half aware of the slosh of her washcloth dipping into the basin, the soft slur of the sheet as she slid out a languid arm or leg to clean it—

  “I’m finished, Doctor,” Ruth said. I felt a slight quickening—no one had ever called me doctor before—but I supposed I’d earned it, and I meant to play out the role by changing the girls’ dressings with all the efficiency I could.

  I went to Abby first, saw Ruth had dressed both her and Ellie in a pair of clean white nightgowns. The sides had been left unstitched to just below the level of the ribs—both to accommodate the bulky bandages and to make changing their drains and tubes easier.

  I peeled the cotton nightdress upwards and, for a brief second, saw the swell of a woman’s breast. Then it disappeared under the white folds of cloth. I felt my chest tighten, made myself go on with the examination. I began cutting through the thick wad of bandages, but my eyes were dragged again and again to the sight of the girl’s pubes: a reddish fuzz glowed high between her thighs, as if she’d been shaved for the surgery, and the curly hairs were beginning to grow back.

  Iodine, I told myself, swabbing the area with an alcohol dampened cotton ball, all the while I felt Ruth’s eyes watching me. I began carefully going over the hip and abdomen area, tossing the used cotton balls into a tray Ruth held. I was looking for any signs of puffiness or infection around the long snaking incision, the angry-looking crosshatch of the sutures, but my heart was thudding at the sight of the dark V between Abby’s pale legs.

  I swallowed uneasily, but told myself I had to know. Ruth was standing just alongside me, and I bent over the girl, putting my back squarely in the older woman’s line of vision. I lifted the neat folds of the nightgown, made my voice as casual as I could. “We just want to make sure there’s no edema up along your side, Abby.”

  Her eyes fluttered, she took a deep breath. I saw the firm round of her right breast, a nipple as thick and brown as a cough lozenge and, just beyond the swell, a patch of long red tendrils of hair under her arm. With my left hand, I kept the sheet covering her; with my right, I probed her underarm, as if I were palpating the lymph nodes.

  My fingers touched the silky hair, and I was suddenly, shockingly fully erect. I withdrew my hand so quickly it grazed the swell of her breast. I felt my lips part—heard the sound of a soft moan—but it was Abby.

  “Did I hurt you?” My throat was tight.

  Her eyes opened at the sound of my voice, she shook her head, no. “It itches—”

  “Healing,” I coughed into my hand, trying to get control. “All wounds itch when they’re healing.”

  “No,” she pointed, waving her finger in a slow sweep across her lower abdomen.

  “Here?” I asked gently pressing a spot just south of her navel.

  “No, lower.” Her right hand lighted on the small thin rubber tube of the catheter.

  “Perhaps it’s loose,” I said, my mind turning to medical details; if it were dribbling, the uric acid would make her uncomfortable.

  I bent closer. My fingers closed on the flexible rubber, I was aware of the warmth of her skin, I smelled the lingering scent of the alcohol, and I tried to re-insert the narrow red catheter gently—there was a faint smell of violets, as if she’d bathed in a warm tub. I pressed the tube upward…..Violets. Regina…Regina….

  Her hips switched rapidly, and my fingers slid lower so that the pads touched the damp glistening vulva, the folds falling over my knuckles.

  I jerked my hand away, the catheter suddenly popped out, and a small warm spray of urine spurted out. Abby groaned softly. Even with her eyes closed, her face looked narrower. It had the clean lines of an older woman’s with none of the smudginess of youth we call puppy fat—

  “She’s wet herself. I’ll clean it,” I heard Ruth say. “There, there, it’s all right.” She moved forward, her hand smoothing the girl’s cheek.

  “The tubing’s tricky,” I said, lying. “Especially on young girls—they’re so—” The words died in the paste of saliva in my mouth. Abby (was it Abby?) was looking at me with a sharp intelligence, her eyes sparkling with a dreadful mirth. My heart was thudding in my chest. Abby’s lower lip was caught between her teeth, and I knew, I knew she’d come. It could not be Abby, no. I felt myself blanch, fought to control my voice. “I’ll send Doctor Saunders in to check Ellie,” I said, turning to the older woman.

  “All right,” Ruth said, nodding.

  When I looked back, Abby seemed to have fallen asleep, and her face was round again, her skin had taken on the clear translucence of childhood. The smell of violets was gone.

  I stared at the small brass circlet of the housekeeping keys at Ruth’s waist, they jingled softly while she moved around Abby and the noise sent wave after wave of vertigo through me. I left quickly, shaking.

  Gabriel Wickstrom had told me if I wanted a drink I should hunt him up. I wanted one quite badly—certainly more than I’d ever wanted one in my drinking days at school.

  - 6 -

  “It’s the clothes,” Ellie giggled. “Her clothes. It makes it easier for her to come through.”

  Abby nodded. She plucked at the frill of cotton lace disappearing in a froth under the quilt.

  The twins were in the nursery, lying side by side and propped on their canopied bed. Now of course, they were no longer one, no longer joined. It was a week after the surgery, they were still bedridden, and Ruth had dressed them—once again—in clean nightgowns that had been worn by Regina.

  “Not just worn—owned,” Abby said, and I wondered if she read my mind.

  “Can you tell us apart,” Ellie added, and they both began to laugh.

  “I only looked in to say goodnight,” I said, still standing in the doorway, one hand resting on the jamb. I was aware that my palm was wet, the painted wood a little slick where I touched it. I took my hand away, folded my arms. I would not go in.

  “Scaredy cat,” Ellie said. Her eyes, even in the fireglow, were very bright.

  I swallowed nervously. I’d avoided doctoring either of them since that day, but now in the semi-dark of the room, the image of Abby’s churning hips floated on the edges of my brain, the sound of her cries were ringing in my ears. Not Abby, I told myself, Regina, Regina, Regina!

  It was Saunders who rescued me. I heard his step, then a second later he was at my side.

  “Go to sleep now,” he told the girls, leaning inside the room. “Big day tomorrow, we’re going to get you up and walking. I want you to get your rest.”

  The lamp was already out. He shut their door abruptly, and I felt relief wash over me as I moved down the hallway toward my own bed.

  ***

  “I can’t, I
can’t, it hurts!”

  Tears streamed down Ellie’s cheeks. Her small hands were firmly clasped inside her father’s blocky palms. He was trying to lead her step by step across the nursery. Abby had just made the same trip successfully. I’d noticed her balance was slightly off, but then, she’d spent 12 years walking in tandem with her sister. She was seated now on the low hassock, her legs straight, her bare feet peeping out from under the hem of Regina’s old nightdress.

  “Do it, Ellie,” she urged her sister.

  Ellie closed her eyes, shook her head. Her face was a study in misery. Her left leg was drawn inwards, the foot lagging behind her right heel.

  “I think she’s more frightened than anything,” I said to Saunders.

  “No,” she wailed, “it hurts.” She dropped one hand, rubbing it gingerly alongside her flank, and with the motion, she swayed, her knees buckled and she was one faltering step away from collapsing onto the floor.

  Saunders leaped forward and caught her.

  Ellie shrieked, and this time, her left knee did give way. Saunders managed to get his arms under her slight body, and he laid her gently on the bed.

  In an instant, he had her nightgown lifted and he was examining her. I took a step toward the bed, but hung back, half afraid to look at the child’s body.

  “Perhaps it’s just a temporary weakness in the adductors,” I said, closing my eyes, reciting from memory. “I’ve seen scissor gait treated with leg braces, passive exercises—then when she’s strong enough and the muscles have been built up, she can move to a series of active—”

  “Are you really that dense?” Saunders turned, hissing at me. “Look at this—”

  I took a step nearer, and followed the line of his gaze. It was what the old timers called “hot flesh.” Ellie had an infection brewing underneath the incision. The skin had gone red, there was swelling. There was no suppuration yet, no smell, no yellowish dribble of pus where Saunders gently pressed the girl’s hip. We’d caught it in the early stages. “Wound gangrene,” I began—

  “It’s osteomyelitis, you jackass,” he snapped at me. “An infection in her bone.”

  “I know what it is,” I said.

  Saunders gave a snort. “Then you know what we have to do,” he said.

  “Surgery,” I nodded uneasily, because I also knew what the treatment of choice was for clearing up infections in bone and bone marrow, and it wasn’t something Abby or Ellie should even guess at. My eyes met Saunders’s grey ones, and I knew he’d read my unease.

  “I’m going to try and inject gentian violet first, and mercurochrome,” he said softly.

  The gaudy colors of both solutions—brilliant purple and sunset red—swirled in my mind. Both worked sometimes, I knew, but it was that other treatment, the one Ellie would wake to, that made me faintly queasy.

  “No more operations,” Ellie said. “Please.” I saw she was not only frightened, but her eyes were dilated with fever as well. “I’m afraid by myself,” she whispered.

  “I’ll stay with you,” Abby soothed. “I’ll be there when you wake up—”

  “No!” Saunders and I shouted at the same time.

  Both girls’ eyes had gone round, they knew something was amiss, but they didn’t know what. We did.

  “Let’s get her prepped.” Saunders’s voice was dead, dry.

  I nodded, not wanting to picture what would come next: The treatment of choice for bone infections was simple and chilling. You inserted maggots deep inside the dark red marrow…and you let them eat.

  - 7 -

  If it had been high summer I suppose we might have kept the secret from the girls. Gabriel or myself could’ve scouted the nearby fields for a rotting woodchuck or raided the local butcher’s garbage tin for guts and offal. But it was mid-February, and although every ten years or so there’ll be a wild extravaganza of nearly hot, sunny days before winter returns, it was still cold, with a thin snow-cover crusting the lawns and roadsides.

  I don’t know how she found out; but every day saw Abby more mobile, so perhaps she read the text of the Western Union Saunders sent to the Medical Supply House in New York City asking for meat maggots. Or maybe she was watching when Gabriel left empty-handed for the train station and returned with the large brown-wrapped package, his nose wrinkling at the thin smell coming up from inside the layers of paper and glass.

  Or maybe she was peering through the keyhole when Saunders barked orders at me to hurry and I clawed at the layers of paper insulation to expose the large bell-shaped bottle. Inside was a huge greenish lump of rotting flesh shot through with holes like aged cheese. Winding and burrowing through the narrow tunnels—covering it in places like clots of moving string—were the pale bloodless maggots.

  I know my stomach heaved at the sight. And it was a thousand times worse when I uncorked the wide mouth of the jar and placed the foul meat on a white enamel tray, then watched as Saunders picked the worms up one by one with a forceps and inserted them deep in the bony pocket where Ellie’s hip and thigh joined.

  I watched them dive, wriggling, beneath her soft skin that was a bruise of nacreous flesh and mottled trails of gentian violet, mercurochrome; and even if I knew that now we were fighting to save her life, that whether she walked without a limp was not the issue, I looked at the squirming mass and the gorge rose in my throat.

  Perhaps Abby heard the sound of my running feet when I dashed for the sink, or the thick ragged noises I made when I bent, vomiting, over and over and over again.

  In any case Abby knew, and she told her sister.

  ***

  “Please. You’ve got to take them out.” Ellie’s eyes—normally china blue—had gone the dark of a starless night with fear. “I can feel them gnawing at me,” she whispered. “I close my eyes and I hear it….” She swallowed, and now I saw thin tears spilling over the crest of her cheek.

  “Do you want to lose your leg?” Andrew said. “If that infection spreads, it means an amputation.”

  “I don’t care, I don’t care,” she moaned. “I’m not dead, I’m not dead, yet!” Her neck muscles strained, she tried to sit up. Andrew eased her back down, no one spoke for a moment. Then Ellie said softly: “Every time I shut my eyes I hear that hideous song, ‘The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, in your nostrils and out your mouth….’” Her voice, high and sweet, suddenly trailed off.

  I stared at her, her face tight and hollow with terror, her small freckled hands clenching and unclenching the hem of the white sheet, and I thought, it’s not a healing, it’s torture. We’re going to drive this poor child mad—

  “It’s so dark in my head,” Ellie said. “Just as if I were dead.”

  Andrew went to his medical cabinet. I watched him upend a vial of sodium veronal, plunge the needle inside the stopper and draw the liquid down into the glass syrette. “This will make you sleep, Ellie.” He went to her side, took her arm lightly.

  She pulled away. “I don’t want to sleep. Take them out or let me die,” she wailed.

  “Hold her,” he said to me.

  Then he pushed the sleeve of her nightgown up, quickly swabbed the skin. I saw the needle sink into the thin flesh of her arm, and she cried out briefly.

  A few seconds later, she was asleep.

  “I’ll stay with her a while,” Saunders said, rubbing his brow. “You go,” he paused. “Go and talk to Abby, find out what she said to her sister. She—” He stopped, his gray eyes met mine. “She won’t tell me—she won’t even look at me,” he finished.

  He sat heavily in a narrow straight chair next to his daughter’s bed, his face tight with anxiety.

  I was nearly at the door when I heard him ask softly, “Stuart, do you think we can still save her leg?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “The cut,” he said, his eyes going far away. “We would have to cut so high up.” He rolled the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. “It will be worse for her than if I’d never attempted the s
eparation. She’ll never walk. She might die. Oh, Ellie,” he said, and his eyes went to her sleeping form, the soft rise and fall of her narrow chest. “Ellie. Never. I never meant it to be like this.” Then he sank forward, lowering his face into both hands, and behind the veil of his palms and fingers, I heard him weep.

  There was nothing I could say to ease him; I knew that. I left the office, the sound of his soft crying—as haunting as the ceaseless rush of a dark millrace—in my head.

  - 8 -

  The nursery was empty, the room itself heavily shadowed between the dark velveteen drapes and the waning light outside. I’d expected to find Abby reading or playing quietly and now I stood on the threshold, briefly puzzled.

  Where was she?

  I peered, squinting, into the dim recesses; at the same time I heard a low humming. It came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It was like the sound I imagined the old sailors described when they spoke of singing sands.

  Aaaahhhhhhaaahhhh—

  It was thin, rising and falling, a thready tune that drew one along its length, now dipping now falling—

  Aaahhhhhhahahhhh—

  There was such a beach I’d read about in Massachusetts in an old whaling village on Cape Ann. I thought of ships wrecked on jagged rocks, of siren songs and the smell of salt….

  I strained, listening. The humming grew louder, and now in and around the vibrating note I heard soft music. I smelled brine—the sharp tang of sweat and body fluids.

  I felt mesmerized, and I blinked to clear my mind, my head pivoting in a slow circle. I opened my eyes, and now in the semi-dark of the room, I saw a woman seated before the banked fire, brushing her long auburn hair, the sound a crackling whisper as she stroked and stroked. She was humming the strains of some ancient ballad. I smelled salt. And violets.

  She broke off suddenly and turned to me, smiling. She stood up, and I saw she was a tall woman. I guessed the crown of her head would fit neatly just below the cup of my chin.

  I felt my heart skip a beat. There was nothing—nothing at all—of Abby in Regina Cahill.

  ***

  “Where’s Abby?” I asked, stupidly.