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Her pride continued to feel good until a few hours later. She had grabbed dinner for herself and Julie, and they had finished eating when Benjamin tapped on the door and came in.
“Hi, Julie. How are you doing?” he said.
“Good, thanks to your wife.”
“I’m going to borrow her for a second, if that’s okay with you both,” he said, his eyes drifting to Coral.
He led her into the waiting room. In the empty room, he said, “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“What? Forever?” Her heart was in her throat. Surely he wouldn’t leave her. Did he think she wanted to stay here instead of with him?
“No, Coral,” he said with exaggerated patience. “I’m being sent on a scavenging mission.”
“Shit,” she said. “This is my fault. I pissed off Levi. That’s why.” Levi was punishing her for standing up to him.
“Or it could simply be my turn,” said Benjamin.
Coral didn’t believe that, not for a second. “Do you at least get your rifle back?”
“I asked about that. They said yes, once we’re beyond the town limits, it’ll be handed to me.”
“And then? Do you get to keep it?”
“I’ll do my damnedest to.”
“I swore I’d never let anyone separate us again. Now it seems I hardly see you. I don’t know what happened this past few days, how I’ve gotten swept up into the life of this town so completely.”
“You’ve been taking care of Julie.”
“But—”
“And learning something by it, right? You’ll be a better doctor for your time here in this clinic.”
He was right about that. It was like the world’s hardest practicum in medicine. “I don’t care about these people.”
“Bull,” he said. “Obviously, you do.”
“Not like I care about you. I’m worried.”
“Don’t be. You know I can take care of myself.”
“It’s not you I don’t trust.”
“I’m going out with Kathy and Martin.”
“That makes me feel a little better.”
“It makes me feel a lot better. I’ve worked with both of them on perimeter duty. I think they’re okay.”
“So only the three of you?”
“Parnell too. Probably to keep an eye on me.”
“You watch him. At least as carefully as he’s watching you.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry if I got you into this by mouthing off to Levi this morning.”
“It would have happened eventually if we stayed much longer. So don’t stress over it.”
She could see almost nothing, and she wanted to see his face. “You’re sure it’s okay?” She wasn’t. The thought of letting him walk away—that far away—made her heart race in fear.
“I’ll be okay.”
“Anytime you want to leave Boise, you tell me. If you want to leave now, great. I can be ready to go in an hour.”
“You wouldn’t leave Julie right now.” He sounded amused.
It was true, someone was depending on her. Abigail was waiting for something from her too. All these human connections were like ropes that had slithered around her and were tying her down. She had to remember they were imaginary. In reality, she could walk out—or at least sneak out—of Boise any time she chose. “Edith is around,” she said. “I could go get her and tell her I’m not feeling well. We could go tonight. Should we? Do you think we should leave?”
“Not yet. I think we’re both safe for the moment. If I had any doubt, I wouldn’t be leaving you.” He cleared his throat. “Do you want me to stay here tonight?”
Coral forced her thoughts away from selfish ones. “No, go back to the apartment and get a good night’s rest, so you’ll be alert tomorrow. I don’t want anyone taking you unaware because you’re sleepy.”
“Okay, if you’re sure you don’t need me here.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Can you lock the door from the inside?”
“There’s a deadbolt, yeah.”
“Then lock it.”
“I think I’m safe here.” The townspeople might seem naive to her in how they hung on to the old world as they did, but that also meant there was respect for the clinic and doctor. “No one is going to come and hurt me.”
“Maybe, maybe not. There might still be a drug addict out there, craving drugs. While there are pain pills in here, I’d rather you kept it locked.”
Coral thought that if anyone wanted the handful of opiates that bad, the clinic would have been broken into already. There were glass windows to break, after all, an easy enough means of accessing the drugs. “By the way,” she said. “Did Parnell or someone give you a couple of condoms a few days back?”
She heard his breath stop. He held it for a few seconds before letting it ease out. “Uh, yeah?” Without being able to see him, she still knew he was blushing. He was oddly old-fashioned in certain ways.
“I could have used that information earlier today. But don’t worry. It’s okay.”
“Okay,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Do you need anything before I leave? I probably won’t see you tomorrow. They say we leave at dawn.”
“Just a hug.” She groped for him in the dark and they stood a moment in each other’s arms, their jackets squeaking against each other. “Take care.”
“You too. Don’t let your guard down here.”
“I won’t. And you don’t either.”
He patted her on the back, let her go, and walked to the door. “We’ll see each other in a couple days,” he said.
“Yes, we will,” she said, hoping that they were both right.
* * *
IF SHE HADN’T HAD JULIE to worry over the next two days, she would have been obsessed with anxiety about Benjamin. But just before dawn, that same night, Julie’s temperature began to rise. Coral wasn’t entirely sure at first, but then Julie grew fretful in her sleep, and Coral’s worry increased as she felt her patient grow warmer.
She wished for Edith’s experience, for a second opinion from her, but she wouldn’t be here until after breakfast. When Julie woke, she asked her how she felt.
“Fine, I think. Worn out.”
“Okay.” She managed a smile, though she was worried. “I’m going to change the bandage again, all right?”
Julie yawned and nodded.
Coral carefully untied the cotton bandage that covered Julie’s foot and checked the wound. The stitches were dark lines across the smooth place where the two toes had been. The swelling had gone down. The tissue was dark with what Coral hoped was only bruising, and she could detect a bit of redness around each stitch, but it didn’t look worse than last night. She knew her eye wasn’t expert, but there was no discharge, no bad odor. She wondered if she had not cut far enough, if there were some necrotic tissue, turning into a systemic infection and spiking Julie’s temperature.
She rested her hand on Julie’s ankle. Yes, she was definitely running a fever. Not bad yet, but enough to worry Coral. She replaced the bandage and arranged the blanket over Julie’s foot.
“Something wrong?” Julie asked.
“No, you’re healing fine.”
“You look worried.”
“It’s nothing.” She had to work on her poker face. Levi could read her, and Julie, and probably everybody left in the world too. Months spent alone in the wilderness with only Benjamin had stripped her of normal social skills. “I think your temp might be up a degree, is all. I’m going to increase the antibiotic dose this morning.”
Julie moaned. “God, I hate these shots. They hurt worse than the toes.”
A smaller-bore needle could have easily survived, being stainless steel, but how would you stumble upon one when the snow was as high as your head out there? Even Benjamin would have a hard time spotting one on the bare ground.
He’d be leaving about now, with Parnell and Kathy and Martin. She had to force her mind away from him and back on the task at hand.
She upped the antibiotic dose by about a quarter, wishing again she had some better way to gauge the dose. Julie flinched as she gave her the injection. Coral helped her use a bed pan, emptied it, and came back to find Edith already there.
“You’re early.”
“I grabbed breakfast for Julie and myself and came early. Anything you need from me?”
“No, but thanks.” Coral watched her fuss over Julie’s blankets. Edith was a natural at nursing. Coral said, “I had an idea about organizing supplies in the other room, Edith. Let me show you what I was thinking.”
She went into the other treatment room, gloomy and dark this early and, when Edith came in, Coral said, “I’m afraid her temp is up. Maybe I should stay with her today.”
“You need to sleep too.”
“I could stand a nap. Maybe I should sleep here, in Julie’s room.”
“You wouldn’t get any rest. She’ll be awake, and you’d hear everyone else in the clinic. Go home and sleep. I’ll come get you if her fever gets worse. Or I’ll send someone for you, because I wouldn’t leave her.”
“Come get me for anything, okay? If there’s any change at all, let me know.”
“Of course,” said Edith. “Now go get your breakfast and get some rest. You look tired.”
“I was reading all night, some veterinary medicine books from the library. I found a couple bits of information to share with you. Remind me another day, all right?” She’d dog-eared pages that might be useful.
“Okay. Get along, now.”
Coral left, blinking against the glare outside. Funny, it wasn’t that bright, as ash still hung suspended in the air, but after a night reading under lamplight, the morning outside seemed like too much light. If she could be lifted somehow above the suspended ash, and into direct sunlight, it’d probably blind her, after so many months without seeing the sun.
The dining room was noisy. Someone else at the table asked about when she’d be in the clinic for regular hours again. “Three days, I guess,” she told him, knowing that news would spread through the town before midday.
She told Doug about her request to Levi for a researcher for medical information. “I suggested you, if that’s okay.”
“Sure. I’d rather do that than what I am doing now.” He tapped his spoon on his bowl. “Maybe I’ll go tell him that.”
Abigail said, “Don’t, Doug.”
“Why not?”
“You know he doesn’t like it when you push.”
“I’d be volunteering. How is that pushing?”
“I don’t want you to cross him again.” Abigail glanced around the room furtively and whispered to Doug, “Please.”
Coral wondered what had happened between Doug and Levi, and why Abigail seemed frightened of him. Had Doug suffered some sort of punishment too? She’d ask him when she could get him alone.
Benjamin’s assignment out of town was surely retaliation for her high-handed manner with Levi. He could make her life difficult in many ways. Perhaps that’s how he controlled the town, by assigning dangerous work for the crime of disagreeing with him. It’d keep people under his thumb, all right.
Coral didn’t like Levi and she didn’t trust him.
He had power, and a militia to back it up, and she shouldn’t have been so cavalier about making an enemy of him. They might want her as their doctor, but they’d survived without a doctor before just fine. And they could survive without Benjamin.
She could not.
* * *
SOMEONE WAS SHAKING her out of a dreamless sleep. She swam up slowly to consciousness.
“Doctor?”
The word brought her fully awake. She opened her eyes and found herself looking at a teenage girl, not anyone whose name she knew. “Yeah?” Coral struggled to sit up.
“Edith at the clinic says she’d like to talk with you.”
Had Julie taken a turn for the worse? Coral swung her legs over and felt around for her shoes. She walked fast to the clinic and pushed through into the treatment room.
Coral looked to Edith, about to say “What’s wrong?” when Julie lurched up and vomited into an emesis basin and answered the question for her. “Is she feverish?”
“No. Just this,” said Edith.
“Reaction to the antibiotic dose, do you think?”
Edith shook her head. “In my line of work, I only saw reactions to local anesthetics. Or to the epi in them. So I don’t know.”
“Could just be a mild reaction.” Or it might be that she was going septic. I am so out of my depth here. “Do we have anything at all to treat the nausea with?”
“Not a thing.”
“Damn.” She went to Julie’s side and took the basin from her, setting it on the counter. “I’m so sorry, Julie.”
“Not your fault.”
“But it might be. I might have given you too much antibiotic.”
“Am I going to die, then?”
“Are you having any trouble breathing?”
“No. I mean, when I puke, of course, but not otherwise. Can I have some water?”
“Sure.” Coral poured some for her.
“I wish there were gum or mints,” said Julie.
“Or white soda,” said Edith.
“Nothing like that in town?” Coral said, looking over Julie’s bed to Edith.
“Not that I’ve ever heard of. Could be someone is hoarding a package of Tic-Tacs, but I don’t know how we’d find that out.”
“I’ll talk about it if Levi ever gets me that town hall meeting like I want.” She would too. She’d encourage anyone to donate whatever they might have been hoarding at home that could help a sick person. She wondered if the average person would give up their last piece of spearmint gum. She’d have to think how to guilt them out of it.
Problem for another day. Today, there was Julie, looking sallow. Coral rested her hand on Julie’s forehead, then her neck. “At least the fever seems to be down.”
“I felt better,” said Julie. “Until I felt a lot worse.”
“Open your gown and let me see your chest,” Coral said. She was in a cotton house dress with buttons up the front. Julie unbuttoned her top buttons and Coral pushed aside the material to check her for a rash. There was none. That exhausted what Coral knew about allergies to penicillin, which might be similar to allergies to this sheep-cillin. “I’m sorry you’re sick. But I don’t think it’s serious.” She looked to Edith. “What time is it?”
“About ten.”
So it had been a couple hours since Julie had gotten the shot. A life-threatening reaction would surely have happened sooner. Coral thought she’d probably overdosed the poor women, but not fatally. Still, she wasn’t going to leave Julie’s side any time soon. “I’ll stay here. Edith, you can see the other patients, if you like.” Coral had passed a few in the waiting room, not registering who they were.
“Let me know if you need me,” Edith said, and left the room, carrying the full emesis basin to empty outside.
“I’m sorry you had to wake up and come back,” said Julie.
“Don’t worry about it. How are you feeling otherwise?”
“My foot is about the same. Hurts, but not terrible. Sometimes I stretch my foot, you know, like you’d do after being in bed too long, and I forget I shouldn’t and then—like really ow, then. Otherwise, it’s not bad.”
“Good. You know the old joke, ‘Doc, it hurts when I do this?’”
“Yeah. ‘Then don’t do that.’ My Granddad loved that one.”
“And my Grandmother,” said Coral.
“You miss her?”
“Like—” Coral almost said, “like I’d miss an arm,” but caught herself in time. Way to go, Ms. Bedside Manner, making amputation jokes to the amputee. “Like you wouldn’t believe,” she finished.
Edith came back in to return a clean emesis basin. Julie reached for it and clutched it.
“Still nauseated?” Coral asked.
“It comes in waves. There’s not much left in my stomach at this point.”
“How many times?”
“That was number four.”
“I wonder if something like a cracker—or that flatbread they make in the kitchen—would help or hurt.”
Julie shook her head. “No, I don’t feel like eating.”
“I’m sorry.” And Coral was. She felt guilty for making Julie sick.
As Julie settled back down with a magazine, Coral thought about this. She was dealing with the downstream effects of her half-assed doctoring. But even if she had more training, the problem was, everything she did to a patient—every drug, every procedure—had possible consequences. And then she’d be treating the consequences.
In the old world, that wasn’t awful. Well, no, of course it could be awful. But if you gave a patient nausea with your initial treatment, you simply gave them an anti-nausea drug. If your treatment thickened the blood, you’d give them a blood thinner. This pill gave them edema? A diuretic fixed that. Diuretic lower the blood pressure too much? There’s a drug for that, plus IV fluids.
This was not that world. She didn’t have a fully stocked pharmacy. The drugs she did have, she had to conserve. She couldn’t go giving patients side-effects willy-nilly. Willy-nilly: another of her grandmother’s terms. Whenever she thought of her grandmother, she seemed to channel her for the next hour or two. She missed her.
Back to doctoring. Never before had the admonition to “first, do no harm” seemed more important. Any harm she did, she had to fix. And she didn’t have the tools to fix any of it. So she had to do as little as possible in the first place.
Julie’s toes had been gangrenous. Could she have let them fall off and hoped that Julie didn’t die of a systemic infection?
No. She was sure that surgery was the right choice. Deciding it all over again now made her feel better. She’d made a mistake by upping the antibiotic dose. So maybe she should get her off the antibiotics sooner and hope Julie’s own body could find a way to fight off any remaining infection. Maybe the principle of doing no harm now meant “do as little as you possibly can,” and then let nature take its course.
Even if nature’s course was death?
Coral breathed out an exasperated breath. There was no good answer to any of these problems. She was looking for an overarching philosophy, and maybe there wasn’t one. There was only every moment to live, this one decision to be made, and no way to take it back. Today, there was Julie, squirming a bit in the bed.
“Feeling bad?” Coral said.
Julie nodded, miserably, and then sat up, leaned over, and vomited again. “Any idea when this will stop?”
“It should be soon now.” That was a white lie. Actually, Coral had no idea. Maybe it’d last for six or eight hours. But could it hurt to be optimistic? Maybe there was some placebo effect in play here. “Not long at all,” she said, putting as much confidence as she could into her voice.
Two more times she had to carry a basin of vomit outside. Finally, Julie’s nausea passed. Coral did something no doctor would have done in the old days. She talked about their options openly, with Edith, right in front of Julie. Coral wanted to hear everyone’s opinion and, for once, not lie about her own control over the situation. Screw the rules of the old world that said doctors could not say “I’m not sure.”
In the end, they decided to skip the evening’s dose of antibiotic and go back in the morning to the dose that hadn’t bothered her. If her fever came back, they’d figure out what to do then. If it didn’t, they’d stop the antibiotics three days after the surgery, send Julie home, and see what happened. Coral or Edith would stop by every day, morning and evening, to change her bandage and check on her.
“We’ll stay flexible,” Coral said. “And take the best care of you we can.”
“I trust you,” said Julie.
“Thank you,” said Coral, more guilty than ever that she was living a lie. She might be giving better medical care than anyone else in the town could give, but she wasn’t a doctor. And she was weary of the responsibility that came with the role.
In mid-afternoon, she left to scrounge some food in the kitchen. The chef was alone, working at chopping something with a cleaver, and humming a song. Coral walked toward him, said “Hey,” and he jumped.
“Geez. You startled me,” he said, tossing a clean towel over the food. “What can I do for you?”
“I hate it when people sneak up on me too,” she said. “I’m hoping I can get something for Julie and I to eat tonight. It doesn’t have to be hot now. We have the stove, so we can warm something there.”
“Sure. Will MREs do?”
“They’re fine.” Preferable, even, with the variety of tastes they offered.
“They’re over here, in this storage room.” He grabbed a lamp and led her to a large closet, not the one she’d taken her bath in the first day here, but a similar space. This had a whole shelf of military meals on it, packaged in that ugly khaki color.
As she hadn’t known there’d be a choice, she had no idea what Julie might want. She picked a chicken-tomato meal and pork chow mein. “Where did these come from?” She had been told but had forgotten.
“A military depot, across the river. They found these in basement storage. They’re old, and some of the baked goods in there have turned, but the main meals seem okay.”
She did a quick estimate. There might be 500 meals in the closet, maybe as many as 600. At two a day, that would support 250 person-days of scavenging. Four person teams went out on three-day trips. These wouldn’t last long—maybe a month. The food on hand for the regular citizens might not last that long. They had a week or two to find a cache of food. “This is the last of them?” she asked.
“I think so, yes.”
She and Benjamin had to leave soon, before the food crisis got any worse. “I appreciate your letting us have the MREs.”
“Anyway. I’m busy,” he said, “and my staff will be here soon, so if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. Sorry to bother you.” She left the kitchen with the two packaged meals and returned to the clinic.
Edith stayed until Coral kicked her out to make the communal meal, and she asked her to drop by her own assigned table and mention to Doug and Abigail where she was. “I don’t want them to worry,” she said. She knew Abigail would be wanting to quiz her about the abortion, but Coral didn’t have anything new to tell her.
Julie’s nausea passed, and the two of them ate the meals together, splitting both and rating the food. The chocolate-covered cookie was inedible, but everything else was okay to really quite good. “Not bad for something nearly as old as us,” said Julie.
Coral fell asleep soon thereafter, in a chair, undisturbed by any small noises Julie was making. She woke with a sore neck. Julie was happily reading a magazine in the lamplight. Coral stretched and said, “Sorry.”
“You need to sleep too.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Okay. Not sick. The food’s staying down.”
Coral checked her face for fever, decided she was no hotter than she had been a few hours ago, and then changed the bandage again. The toes looked better still. The skin around the stitches was getting lighter, and Coral felt more confident about them healing. Maybe Julie’s vomiting hadn’t been too high a price to pay, if the extra antibiotic was speeding the healing process. Easy for me to say.
“How is it?”
“Better!” Coral was glad to be able to give her patient a real smile. “I’ll check again in the morning, but I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine now.”
Julie said, “Do you think I’ll have much trouble walking?”
“It’d be worse had it been your big toe—or all of them. I think you’ll adjust pretty quickly.” She grew stern. “But don’t try to walk until I give the okay. I want this nice and healed before you try.”
“I’m getting tired of using the bed pan.”
“I’m sure you are.” It wasn’t particularly fun for any of them.
Julie looked at the ceiling for a minute and, still looking up there, said, “I could have died, huh?”
“Yeah. The infection could have spread.”
“I guess it had to be done.”
“In my estimation, yes.”
She sighed. “Okay.”
Coral wondered if Julie was going through some normal emotional swing. She might get resentful next, blame her medical workers, regret letting them amputate. Coral knew she had to be resolved in her own mind to deal with such a phase from Julie, should it arrive. Tissue killed by the cold would not magically regenerate. She would have lost the toes anyway, and the infection could have killed her.
After Julie fell asleep, Coral spent another night reading. She made it through all the books she had borrowed, and she had made a pretty good dent in the medical books on hand. A number of the pages of those were purely reference. She didn’t bother to study anatomy diagrams of animals, but she made sure that she knew where the diagrams of people were if she needed to consult them.
When the morning came, Julie was neither fevered nor nauseated. Her foot looked better still. Coral gave her a light dose of the antibiotics and was relieved to hand the nursing duties over to Edith. She looked forward to getting a long day’s sleep.
It was not to be. Jamie waylaid her as she walked out of the clinic, and she had to follow him to the library.
