Marvin’s surgeon was a tall, red-faced man named Dr. Torrance. He had a boyish, unkempt shock of gray hair and had been kind enough to drop by Vale’s room to fill them in on Marvin’s progress—Casper was pulling double duty after Vale’s seizure in the parking lot.
“Dr. Torrance,” the doctor said—he said this every time he’d spoken to them—and everyone shook hands. Vale had an IV loaded with a saline solution for dehydration and they’d given him, according to the doctor, a round of Xanax and an anti-seizure medication. Vale would have been embarrassed about it all, or afraid, or something, but just couldn’t seem to drum much up by way of the negative. He felt better than he had in weeks. He felt awesome, actually.
“He’s a little out of it, still,” the doctor said, smiling at Vale.
“I am,” Vale agreed, grinning.
And then he frowned. Dr. Torrance telegraphed everything with his face. You’d never need to worry about what Dr. Torrance thought about your health. “You know, alcohol withdrawal is a serious matter, Mr. Vale.”
“I just drink beer,” Vale said. “I don’t even get what the . . .” He gestured and then spent a few moments watching his own hands gesturing while the doctor and Casper waited. Finally they understood he wouldn’t be finishing his sentence and the doctor cleared his throat and examined his clipboard.
“You’re both friends of Mr. Deitz.”
Casper nodded. “We all came down here from Oregon together.”
“We’ve done what we can for him in surgery. He’s stable at this point. It’s a question now of monitoring, of waiting and seeing.”
“So you got the bullets out?” Casper asked.
Dr. Torrance nodded vigorously. “We did. One entered his shoulder and shattered his clavicle. But that one exited, which is good. With the other wound, the prognosis really isn’t ideal, I’m afraid. As much as any gunshot can be, I mean. There’s a high risk of complications in a situation like this.”
“Why’s that?” Vale managed to ask.
Dr. Torrance shrugged. “Like I said, we got the bullet out. Issues of concern now are hemopnuemothorax and hemostatic shock. He’s suffering from peritonitis as well.”
Casper said, “We don’t have a clue what that means.”
Dr. Torrance held his pen up and traced the flight path of the bullet in front of his own chest. “The bullet entered in the left side of Mr. Deitz’s chest at an angle, okay? Like this. It missed the heart—amazingly—and glanced off the spine, where it also missed severing his spinal cord. In that regard, he’s incredibly lucky. But then the bullet traveled down and hit the left lung. That’s what hemopnuemothorax is: blood and air in the chest cavity from a pierced lung.”
“Jesus,” Casper said.
“Right. Hemostatic shock is, simply put, when there’s severe concussive force received by organs within the body as the bullet passes through. The body puts itself in a kind of lockdown.” He held a hand up in front of his chest and squeezed it into a fist. “The bullet ran down the length of the lung, opening it, hit the wall of the lower abdomen and ricocheted off of his left hipbone, which is where it exited. Peritonitis means that wall, the abdominal wall, has become inflamed.”
Vale flung his hands up. “Jesus Christ. Is he dead? He sounds like he should be fucking dead.”
Casper frowned at him, turned to the doctor. “So what does that all mean? Where does that leave him?”
Dr. Torrance looked at his watch. “At this point? It’s anyone’s guess. He was intubated but now he’s breathing on his own. He’s got a fever. There seems to be an infection that might be taking root. We’re trying to stem that before it gets a foothold. Mr. Deitz’s age and physical health aren’t necessarily in his favor.” He seemed to read their looks then, and said, “Still, he’s relatively stable right now. And you never know about these things. The body is an incredible machine capable of salvaging itself, of repairing itself after a lot of trauma. Right now, we’re waiting and monitoring.”
Vale pulled at Casper’s shirtsleeve. “Doctor-speak,” he said behind his hand.
Dr. Torrance smiled. “I’ll keep you both posted.” And here he bowed down slightly and raised his voice, as if Vale was slightly hard of hearing or possibly in another room. “Mr. Vale, we’re going to need this room in a few hours, but in the meantime, you just rest. And I’d like to have one of our clinicians come and speak to you about your issues with alcohol. Would you be willing to talk to someone?”