"And a plastic tube like the kind you use to siphon gas. "
"Got thet, too."
"Good. And finally, I'm going to need a rubber glove from the first-aid kit." He groaned. "Darn it, never mind. I took the gloves out and put them in my backpack. Listen, for what I want to put together, a condom would be even better. You know, a rubber. Can one of you hurry into town and get me a pack of three:1"
There was a momentary silence, then Lyle said simply, "I got a couple here."
Matt looked from brother to brother as Lyle went to their bedroom and returned with two Trojans. If the Slocumbs thought there was anything unusual about the revelation, their bland expressions hid it well. Smiling toothlessly, proudly, Lyle handed over the two condoms. The foil wrappers were crumpled but intact.
"I don't want to know," Matt said to no one in particular. "I don't want to know."
While Matt waited, he allowed Kyle to swab goo on his back.
"Ouch, that stuff stings!"
"Looks lak ya may be needin' ta get ya a new razor, Doc," Kyle said.
As soon as the upstairs room was ready, Lewis was moved there. His breathing was more labored now, and his color was clearly duskier. Matt had read about the emergency chest tube insertion in a manual of field emergency measures that he kept on the tank in his bathroom. Most of the methods described by the former Vietnam corpsman were imaginative. Some, like the emergency thoracotomy tube insertion he was about to perform, were downright spectacular. The key to the procedure was the condom. Once it was unraveled and the tip was cut off, he would use tape to attach the base of it to the end of the siphon tube that protruded from the chest. The collapsed latex tube would then function as a perfect one-way valve, allowing air to escape from the lung cavity without allowing any to get in. Cutting the fingers off a rubber glove might have worked, but probably not as well, and not nearly as colorfully.
The sheets on the upstairs bed — a faded floral print — were surprisingly clean and smelled that way. Ten minutes of boiling had removed the gasoline and any other contaminants from the six-foot-long, quarter-inch-wide siphon tube and the needle-nose pliers. The first-aid kit was a comprehensive one that included a magnifying visor, suture material, powerful injectable antibiotics, and the local anesthetic Xylocaine. Matt cleansed the bullet holes, packed them with antibiotic cream, and dressed them. Then he used Xylocaine to numb a spot just below and lateral to the exit wound.
"Lewis," he said, "I'm going to numb this the best I can, but it's still going to hurt."
"More er less then bein' shot?"
"Good point."
Matt used a scalpel blade to stab a hole in the numbed skin, then he cut the tip of the siphon tube to a point.
"Deep breath, Lewis, then hold it and get ready for me to push," he said. "Okay, now!"
Clamping the pointed end of the tube as tightly as he could in the needle-nose pliers, he jammed the pliers in until he felt them hit rib. Then he slid them beneath the rib, through the intercostal muscle, and drove them into the space created when the lung collapsed. Lewis, sweat dripping from his forehead, briefly cried out in pain, then lay still. Matt withdrew the pliers, leaving the tube in place. For several seconds all was quiet, then the condom began to flutter as air under some force rushed through it.
Eyes closed, Lewis lay there, breathing evenly, utterly exhausted. Matt waited several silent minutes, then listened to his chest. The lung wasn't fully reinflated yet, but there were breath sounds where none had been a short while ago. He wondered how many others had ever actually used one of the techniques from the field manual. Someday, provided Lewis and he made it through this ordeal alive, he was going to write a letter to the author.
Once he had threaded ten inches of tubing into Lewis's chest, Matt sutured the tube in place and dressed the opening. He listened again. More breath sounds, more expanded lung.
"Well?" Frank asked.
Matt gave Lewis a high-dose injection of antibiotic.
"Well," he replied, aware of the tinge of astonishment in his own voice, "the doggone thing appears to have worked, at least for the moment. I'll sneak some oxygen and other stuff that I need out of the hospital and come back as soon as I can."
"Ya done good, Doc," Frank said.
Lewis's color improved almost instantly. He opened his eyes.
"Ah knowed we 'uz smart ta give ya thet money when ya come knockin' on our door fer yer baseball team."
"We get you shot, we fix you up," Matt said. "That's our motto."
He was still overwhelmed that a technique he learned reading in the John had quite possibly saved a man's life. What would the gang at Harvard have to say about this one?
"Hey, Doc?" Lyle said.
"Yes?"
"If'n you ain't gonna be usin' thet other rubber, kin I have it back?"
Lynette Marquand prided herself on being, as she phrased it, precise, punctual, and predictable. In the appropriate company, she would, with a wink, add passionate to the mix. Five days a week, when not on vacation, she was up at 4:30 A.M. and in her East Wing office at five. On Saturday, she slept until six, and on Sunday until seven unless her husband had need of her affection before breakfast and church. This predawn Wednesday morning, a rainy one in D.C., she had only one name written in her appointment book, Dr. Lara Bolton.
Lynette had, at best, lukewarm feelings toward almost every one of her husband's cabinet appointments, but Bolton was an exception. Six-foot-one and black, the Secretary of Health and Human Services had been depicted by more than one political cartoonist as a stork, and with her clipped Boston accent was an easy mark for the Saturday Night Live impressionists. But her brilliant mind and political savvy made her a frequent visitor to both Lynette's office and the Oval Office in the West Wing.
Bolton, as usual dressed in a crisp navy suit, knocked and entered Lynette's office at precisely five-fifteen.
"Well, Lara," Lynette said after the Secretary had poured a cup of decaf from a carafe, "my staff is lighter by one."
"You did the right thing. Janine Brady has been in this game for a long time. She knows better than to assure you a vote will be unanimous without checking and rechecking."
"So, where do we stand now?"
"Well, it appears Ellen Kroft does have serious misgivings about Omnivax."
"Damn."
"She's the consumer representative on the panel, so there's no way any of the pharmaceutical grant providers can put any pressure on her."
"Was one of my people consulted before she was appointed?"
"I hate to say it, but it was Janine Brady. Wait, though, I was consulted, too, Lynette. Kroft seemed absolutely harmless — a token offered up by the people at PAVE. If she was more militant, we never would have approved her appointment. No one expected anything like this."
"So?"
"Our man Poulos on the committee tells me he's dealing with the problem. He's optimistic something can be worked out."
"Is it worth my meeting with her?"
"You can try, but I've learned that she contributed fifty dollars to Harrison's campaign last election and upped it to seventy-five this time."
"Oh, that's just terrific. We're three points down in the latest polls. Jim is counting heavily on Omnivax to eliminate that. And here is a Harrison supporter threatening to screw up the whole thing."
"If Kroft remains on this path, we're getting prepared to make the whole thing look political, being as she is a known Harrison backer."
"That isn't going to give us back those three points."
"I know."
"What about our plans for the first inoculation?"
"I think we're there, Lynette. We have two women here in D.C. due to deliver at the right time, so that their babies will be four days old when we're ready. Both attend the neighborhood health center in Anacostia, both are anxious to have their kids be the first to receive Omnivax."