“Get out here, Ernest,” he said, still banging the door. “Get out here and doctor your boy.”
20
It must have been something Doc had imagined many times before, the moment when they came to the door and it was his own son hurt. When he pulled the door away from Rafael’s banging he didn’t say a word to us; he came out and picked Mando up off the stretcher and carried him through the kitchen into the hospital without a glance or a question.
We followed him. In the hospital he laid Mando on the second bed, a small one, and pulled it out from the wall. At the scraping Tom snorted, rolled over. One of his closed eyes opened a crack, and when he caught sight of us he sat up, ground his knuckles in his eyes, surveyed the scene wordlessly. Doc used scissors to cut off Mando’s coat and shirt, gesturing for Gabby to pull off his pants. Gabby squinted as they peeled away the bloody cloth of the shirt. Mando coughed, gargled, breathed fast and shallow. Under the bright lamps Rafael carried in from the kitchen his body looked pale and mottled. Below his armpit was that little tear, surrounded by a bruise. Rafael nearly tripped over me walking in and out. I sat on my heels against the wall, knees in my armpits, arms wrapped around my legs, looking away from Tom. Doc looked at no one but Mando. “Get Kathryn here,” he said. Gabby glanced at me, hurried out.
Tom said, “How is he?”
Doc felt Mando’s ribs carefully, tapped his chest, took his pulse at wrist and neck. He muttered, more to himself than Tom, “Middle caliber nicked the lung. Pneumothorax… hemothorax…” Like a spell. He cleaned the blood from Mando’s ribs with a wet cloth. Mando choked and Doc adjusted his head, reached in his mouth and pulled his tongue around. A plastic thing from the supply shelf behind Doc served to clamp the tongue in place. Plastic vise on the side of Mando’s face, stretching his mouth open… my spine rolled up and down the oil drum behind me. The wind picked up, wheeeeee, wheeeeeee.
“Where’s Nicolin?” Tom asked me.
I kept my eyes on the floor. Rafael answered from the kitchen:
“He stayed north to fire some rounds at the scavengers.”
Tom was shifting around against his back wall, and he coughed. “Quit moving,” Doc said. A flying branch knocked the house sharply. Mando’s breathing was rapid, harsh, shallow. Doc tilted his face to the side and wiped bright blood from his mouth. Doc’s own mouth was a tight lipless line. Bright blood on cloth. Under me the floor, the grainy smooth boards of the floor. Knots raised above the worn surface, cracks, splinters all shiny and distinct in the lamplight, scrubbing sand in the corners against the walls. The bedpost closest to me was shimmied. The sheets were so old that each thread of the fabric stood out; needlework in the patches. I stared at that floor and never raised my eyes. My breath hurt so it might have been me shot. But it wasn’t. Kathryn’s legs walked into the room, bending down the floorboards a bit. Gabby’s legs followed.
“I need help,” Doc said.
“I’m ready,” said Kathryn calmly.
“We need to get a tube between these ribs and drain the blood and air in the chest cavity. Get a clean jar from the kitchen and put a couple inches of water in it.” She left, came back. Their feet faced each other under Mando’s bed. “I’m afraid air’s getting in and not getting out. Tension pneumothorax. Here, put down the tube and tape, and hold him steady. I’m going to make the incision here.”
Muffled coughs from the old man. A quick glance up: Kathryn’s back, in sweatshirt and string-tie pants; the old man, watching them with an unflinching gaze. Down on the floor went the jar, clear plastic tube stuck in the water at the bottom of it. Suddenly the water bubbled. Blood ran down the sides of the tube and stained the water. More bubbles. The old man’s steady gaze: I wrapped my arms over my stomach and looked up. Kathryn’s broad back blocked my view of Mando. Shudders rattled me. Broad shoulders, broad butt, thick thighs, slim ankles. Elbows busy as she pulled tape from a roll and applied it to Mando, where I couldn’t see.
She looked at me over her shoulder. “Where’s Steve?”
“Up north.”
She grimaced, turned to the work at hand.
Tom coughed again, lightly but several times. Doc looked at him. “You lie back down,” he said harshly.
“I’m okay, Ernest. Don’t mind me.”
Doc was already back at it. He leaned over Mando with a desperate look in his eye, as if the skills his father had taught him so long ago were not enough for this one. “We need oxygen.” He tapped Mando’s chest and the sound was flat. Mando’s breathing was faster. “Got to stop the bleeding,” Doc said. The wind gusted till I couldn’t make out their voices over the house whistling. “Use the wound to put in another tube…” Tom asked Gabby what had happened, and Gab explained in a sentence or two. Tom didn’t comment on it. The wind dropped again and I could hear the snip of Doc’s scissors. He wiped sweat from his forehead.
“Hold it. Okay, get the other end in the jar, and give me the tape quick.”
“Tape.”
Something in the way she said it made Doc wince, and look at Tom with a bitter smile. Tom smiled back but then he looked away, eyes filling with tears. I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to see Rafael.
“Come on out to the kitchen like Gabby is now, Henry. You can’t do anything in here.”
I shook my head.
“Come on, Henry.”
I shrugged off his hand and buried my face in the crook of my arm. When Rafael was gone I looked up again. Tom was chewing on a curl of his hair, watching them intently. Kathryn put her head to Mando’s chest. “His heart sounds distant.”
Mando jerked on the bed. His feet were blue. “And his veins,” Doc said, voice dry as the wind. “Tamponade, ohhh…” He drew back, his fist clenched up by his neck. “I can’t help that. I haven’t got the needles.”
Mando stopped breathing. “No,” Doc said, and with Kathryn’s help he shifted Mando from his side to his back. “Hold the tubes,” he said, and put his mouth and hands to Mando’s mouth. He breathed in, holding Mando’s nostrils shut, then straightened up and pressed hard on Mando’s chest. Mando’s body spasmed. “Henry, come hold his legs,” Kathryn said sharply. I got up stiffly and held Mando by the shins, felt them twitch, struggle, tense up, slacken. Go slack. Doc breathed into him, breathed into him, pushed his chest till the pushes were nearly blows. Blood ran down the tubes. Doc stopped. We stared at him: eyes closed, mouth open. No breath. Kathryn held his wrist, feeling for a pulse. Gabby and Rafael were in the doorway. Finally Kathryn reached across Mando and put her hand on Doc’s arm; we had all been standing there a long time. Doc put his elbows on the bed, lowered his ear onto Mando’s chest. His head rolled till it was his forehead resting on Mando. “He’s dead,” he whispered. Mando’s calves were still in my hands, the very muscles that had just been twitching. I let go, scared to be touching him. But it was Mando, it was Armando Costa. His face was white; it looked like the pinched face of a sick brother of Mando’s.
Kathryn got out a sheet from the cupboard against the wall and spread it over him, pushing Doc gently away so she could do it. Her sweatshirt was sweaty, bloodstained. She covered Mando’s face. I recalled the expression his face had had when I was carrying him through San Clemente. Even that was preferable to this. Kathryn rounded the bed and pulled Doc to the door.