"The way you were when you put on the uniform again?"
"Oui. Certainement. Just like that," O'Doull said. "And I damn well was dumb, too. Calisse! Was I ever!"
"How many lives did you save?" Quigley asked.
"A good many. But any other doc could have done the same. Hell, Granny McDougald could have saved most of them. An experienced medic gets to where he's just about as good as an M.D. He makes up in experience what he's missing in education."
"That's something we'd want to know. Can you write it down, along with anything else you can think of?"
"Why are you picking me? Why are you picking on me?" O'Doull asked. "You've got lots of doctors down in the USA and CSA who still belong to the Army. Let them crank out the recommendations."
"Some of them will." If anything fazed Quigley, he didn't let on. "But we want you, too, exactly because you're an outsider. You don't have a military career to care about. You don't need to worry about stepping on toes."
"Who's 'we'?" O'Doull inquired. "You and your tapeworm? We've got some new medicines for that, too."
He couldn't get a rise out of his not especially welcome guest. "Come on, Doctor. don't be silly. You know I still have connections."
"Sure you do. You're the guy the USA uses to tell the Republic which way to jump," O'Doull said. "But I'm not the Republic, and you're not in Quebec City. So you can play nice or you can get lost."
"I am playing nice," Quigley said. "I could be much less pleasant than I am. But if I browbeat you, you wouldn't do a good job. You really would be helping here, if you'd take the time to do it."
How nasty could Jedediah Quigley be if he set his mind to it? O'Doull wasn't sure he wanted to find out. The thought reshaped itself. He was sure he didn't want to find out. Yes, that was a lot more accurate.
"You talked me into it," he said. Quigley didn't even look smug. He knew he was a power in the land, all right. Grumpily, O'Doull went on, "You know, you'll be making me remember some things I'd rather forget."
People here didn't understand what this war was like. They didn't understand how lucky they were to be ignorant, either. O'Doull would have been happy to let his memories slide down into oblivion, too. But Quigley, damn him, was going to make sure that didn't happen. Once you started putting things down on paper, they were yours forever-more.
All Quigley said was, "This is for your country's good."
O'Doull wasn't having that. "Guys get their balls blown off for their country's good. You think that makes them feel any better about it?"
"No, of course not," Quigley said. "I doubt this will hurt quite so much, though."
He was right, dammit. Sighing, O'Doull asked, "When do you want this report?"
"Two weeks?"
With another sigh, the doctor nodded. "You'll have it." And stay out of my hair after that.
"Thank you kindly." By the way Quigley said it, O'Doull was taking care of something he wanted to do, not something he'd been browbeaten into taking on. The older man rose, nodded, and went on his way.
Outside, snow would lie at least ankle deep. This was Riviиre-du-Loup, all right. O'Doull had grown up in Massachusetts. He was used to rugged weather. Riviиre-du-Loup outdid everything he'd ever known back in the States. It wasn't even close.
Half an hour later, he had a patient. "Hello, Doctor," said Martin Lacroix, a plump, prosperous baker whose shop lay down the street from O'Doull's new office.
"Bonjour," O'Doull replied. "What seems to be your trouble, Monsieur?"
"Well, I have this rash." Lacroix pulled up his shirt sleeve to display his left biceps. "I've tried home remedies on it, but they don't do much good."
"I'm not surprised-that's ringworm," O'Doull said. "You should keep it covered as much as you can, because it can spread. I'll give you a prescription to take to the pharmacy. Put it on twice a day, and it should clear things up in a month or so."
"A month?" the baker said in dismay. "Why not sooner? If you give me a shot or some pills, can't I get rid of it in a few days?"
People knew there were new medicines that could cure some ailments quickly and easily. Naturally, people thought the new medicines could cure any ailment quickly and easily. But things didn't work that way. O'Doull spent a while explaining the difference between microbes and fungi. He wasn't sure Lacroix got it. The baker left carrying the prescription but shaking his head.
After a case like that, writing about the work O'Doull had done during the war didn't seem so bad. That, at least, had mattered. This? While he was sewing and splinting and cutting, he'd looked forward to this with a fierce and simple longing. Now that he had it again, he discovered the danger of getting exactly what you thought you wanted. It could prove as unfortunate in real life as in fairy tales.
He was home with Nicole. That was as good as it always had been. But his practice…After you'd spent time as a battlefield surgeon, prescribing ringworm salve didn't seem the same.
Another patient came in. Franзoise Boulanger had arthritis. And well she might-she was seventy-seven, and she'd worked hard all her life. She hurt, and she had trouble moving. O'Doull didn't have much to offer her: aspirin to take the edge from pain and inflammation, heating pads and warm baths to soothe a little. He would have given her the same advice before the Great War. If he'd been practicing before the War of Secession, he would have substituted laudanum for aspirin. Franзoise might have got hooked on the opiated brandy, but it would have done as much for her pain as the little white pills did, maybe more.
Leaning on her cane, she shuffled out of the office. Is this what I've got to look forward to for the rest of my professional life? God! If he could have brought Nicole with him, he would have run for Alabama and a military hospital.
A little boy with strep throat made him feel happier. Penicillin would take care of that, and would make sure the kid didn't come down with rheumatic fever or endocarditis. O'Doull felt he'd earned his fee there and done some real good. All the same, he wasn't used to taking it easy any more. He wondered if he ever would be.
A corporal waited on the platform when Abner Dowling got off the train at the Broad Street station. Saluting, the noncom said, "I'll take you to the War Department, sir."
"Obliged," Dowling said. The corporal grabbed his suitcase, too. It wasn't heavy, but Dowling didn't complain. Ten years earlier, he knew he would have. He still wasn't as old as George Custer had been when the Great War broke out, but he needed only another six years.
Philadelphia looked better than it had the last time he was there. More craters were filled in. More ruined buildings were torn down. Of course, the superbomb hadn't gone off right here.
"How are things on the other side of the river?" he asked.
"Sir, they're still pretty, uh, fouled up." The corporal would have said something strong talking with one of his buddies. As he braked for a red light, he added, "That's such a big mess, God knows when they'll set it to rights."
"I suppose," Dowling said.
"Believe it, sir. It's the truth." The corporal sounded missionary in his zeal to convince.
Dowling already believed. He'd spent too much time talking with Henderson V. FitzBelmont to do anything else. FitzBelmont wasn't the most exciting man ever born-an understatement. But he'd put a superbomb together while the United States was doing their goddamnedest to blow Lexington off the map. Dowling didn't like him, but did respect his professional competence. So did the U.S. physicists who'd interrogated him. They were impressed he'd done as much as he had under the conditions in which he had to work.
The War Department looked a lot better than it had when the Confederates tried their best to knock it flat. Now repairmen could do their job without fighting constant new damage. The concrete barriers around the massive structure remained in place. No C.S. diehards or Mormon fanatics or stubborn Canucks-rebellion still flared north of the border-could grab an easy chance to auto-bomb the place.