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Chapter 11

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It was a busy day. Mostly, people were coming by to meet her. What surprised her was that a half-dozen people came who were clearly neurotic, either hypochondriacs or hypochondriacs by proxy about their children, or hoping to hear they had some dramatic ailment when all they had was hunger or a hangnail. Coral dispensed no medicines, gave little advice, and took her cues from Edith on how to treat each person. She tried to act like every doctor she’d ever seen as a patient.

Edith had been right about what to do. Mostly, she listened. And over the course of the day, she felt more and more impatient with the whining ones. What she wanted to say was, “Have you looked outside lately? Do you not see that people have far bigger problems than imaginary mold allergies?” As the day wore on and she became hungrier and weaker, it was harder to control her impulse to snap at them, and she deferred to Edith more and more. The other woman seemed to have unlimited patience for the nonsense.

Toward the end of the day, she saw a pair of six-year-old twins for minor scrapes, and that was fun. One had fallen hard enough to scrape his knee through his jeans and the other had purposefully scraped himself in solidarity with his twin. Coral tried to be serious when she explained that they didn’t have many bandages left, and there were other ways to be a good brother. It was a good moment, near to what she’d always dreamed of when she had imagined being in family practice one day.

She smiled at the mother as she was bundling the twins up to leave. “They’re adorable.”

“Adorable to visit, maybe,” said the mother. Then she glanced at Edith, and a guilty look came over her face. Her children had survived, and others had not.

When she was gone, Coral asked Edith, “Is it hard for you? Dealing with the children?”

“No, not at all. With this few of us left, it feels a little like the children are communal property, in a way. We’re all pitching in together to get them through it. So it’s like being an aunt to them all.” She gave a sad smile. “I miss my kids something awful. But the world is what it is. We have to make the best of it.”

At the end of the day, when she thought she could summon not one more smile, the bell rang again. Edith went to greet the patient, and she brought back Benjamin.

“You hurt?” Coral said.

“Not in any new way. Parnell told me to get my arm checked out before the clinic closed. I’m just following orders.”

Coral realized she’d barely spared a thought for him all day. Being busy was no excuse. She had to remember what was important. Playing doctor for a bunch of strangers was not. Benjamin—he was what mattered.

“Is it bad?” she asked. She meant Parnell, and his orders, not the arm.

His eyes darted to Edith. “No, not bad. I’m used to doing what I want, when I want.”

“Except when I boss you around.”

He gave her his half-grin. “Except for that.”

“At least I have a chance to treat this in decent conditions, now. Take your shirt off, please.”

He took his jacket off and his new shirt, and when he tried to untie the bandage, she stopped him.

“Let me,” she said. She worked out the knot in the strip of shirt she’d put around the wound, and then carefully tugged off the gauze pads, taking care not to tear the scabs off with them. Both wounds looked better. She blew out a sigh of relief.

“Gonna live, am I?” said Benjamin.

“Yeah. You are.” She pressed at the edge of the exit wound. The excess heat was gone. She tested his skin down at his elbow for a comparison. Hardly any difference at all in temperature. It wasn’t as puffy now, and it wasn’t as red. The wound was still an ugly thing, but the scabs that had formed were doing their jobs now, and she would leave them alone.

To Edith, she said, “What do you think about using mercurochrome on this?” The stuff hadn’t been used in American medicine for a long while, and she knew little about it, except her grandmother still had some in her medicine cabinet.

“Hasn’t hurt anyone yet.”

“But because of the depth of the wound, I’m wondering if that’s best, or....?”

Edith stepped closer. “It seems to be healing on its own. I’d be sparing with the use of anything we have, as we don’t have much.”

“At least I have clean bandages now.” Coral dabbed a bit of the mercurochrome at the edge of one of the scabs, where it looked slightly redder than the rest, and padded each side with a square of clean cotton, then tied another strip of clean cotton around it. “In a couple days, if it’s still healing, and if you’re someplace warm inside, like the kitchen, or Levi’s office, or here, leave it open to the air.”

“My arm hardly knows what air is any more.”

She washed her hands in soap and water, then turned back to him. Edith had put the trash into a can kept on the box of kindling. Anything burnable—and the old gauze bandages were—got burned for heat in their stove. Edith had quit feeding the fire an hour ago and had banked the stove, preparing for the end of the day.

When Coral turned back to Benjamin, he was easing on his jacket again.

“I wish that jacket wasn’t so dirty.”

“The shirt is clean,” he said.

“Maybe you can borrow another coat for a couple of days while this one gets laundered and dries out. That’d be good.”

“What about yours?”

“Mine too. And our sleeping bags and blankets, if they’ll do those. I assume they have heat in the laundry so things dry quicker?” she asked Edith.

The woman nodded.

“Show me how to close the clinic up for the day.”

“I can do it.”

“No, I need to learn, so you can take your days off soon. You’ve done more than your share today. You kept me from screaming at that Gloria person, for one thing.”

“She can be a trial,” said Edith. “It’s easy to tidy up and close. Shouldn’t take us five minutes.”

Benjamin leant a hand, and Edith was right. In five minutes, they had everything put away, the floor was swept, and the chairs in the waiting area straightened out. Someone, probably Edith, had left a couple books in there, like magazines left in a regular doctor’s office. One Coral glanced at had pictures of African animals, so you could entertain a kid with it while you were waiting. As she put it down, it struck her than none of these children would ever again see a zoo or get a chance to look at a giraffe or zebra in real life.

Edith had a key for the clinic door, and she locked it. “One of the few places we do lock,” she said. “Along with the kitchen and food stores.”

They didn’t entirely trust each other, then. That made Coral feel marginally better about staying in Boise. Otherwise, it was a little too Stepford Wives for her. The Stepford Survivors. That they understood there would be theft among the small community made them seem more human to her.

Edith walked with them for a few minutes then split off to go home.

When she was out of earshot, Benjamin looked around to make sure they were alone and said, “Let me tell you about my day.”