American Boy - Larry Watson [10]
If we were being tested, Johnny might have received a lower score. He gasped when Louisa Lindahl’s breasts were first revealed, though it wasn’t much as gasps go, just a quick intake of breath, closer to a pain-induced wince than it was to any sound associated with pleasure. I’m not even sure his father heard it. A look might have passed between them, but I couldn’t be certain. I was unpracticed in the subtle communications between fathers and sons.
A bullet wound was uncommon in Willow Falls, of course, but I had already learned from being around Dr. Dunbar that doctors—and, for that matter, those interested in becoming doctors—differ from other people in a fundamental way: they generally want to get closer to the sights that most people want to turn away from. And when Dr. Dunbar directed us to the wound traversing Louisa Lindahl’s midsection—a foot-wide gash sewn shut with fourteen sutures and painted amber with betadine—the eyes closest to her torso were the doctor’s and mine.
“Do you see why I call her lucky?” Dr. Dunbar said, tracing the wound in the air just inches above her abdomen. “Her assailant was plainly trying to end her life. He wasn’t aiming at an arm or a leg. She probably turned to the side just when he fired at her, and the bullet tunneled under a couple layers of skin and then from one side of her to the other. An inch or two deeper in and who knows what kind of damage it might have done.”
“But an inch the other way and it would have missed her completely,” said Johnny.
Even without the benefit of Dr. Dunbar’s peeved look, I knew that Johnny’s suggestion was not consistent with the lessons his father was trying to teach. “If the bullet had gone in an inch deeper,” I asked, “wouldn’t it have passed through her liver?”
He cocked his head as if he needed that alteration of perspective to note the arrangement of her organs. “Liver? Maybe so.... It could have even hit a rib, and when a projectile hits bone, you generally have serious trouble. Then you can get fragments—of bullet or bone—flying off in any direction.”
Dr. Dunbar stepped back from Louisa Lindahl, and while Johnny must have understood that we were to do the same, I missed the message. I remained bent over the wound, my face less than a foot from Louisa Lindahl’s flesh. I could smell the antiseptic, and under that, faintly, something else.... Blood perhaps, maybe nicotine, and then something deeper, muskier, a smell belonging to Louisa Lindahl’s essence. The black knots of the sutures looked like flies lined up along her pale abdomen. I had to touch her—how could I come this close and not?—and yet I couldn’t decide where. I paused, my hand hovering over her.
That hesitation provided enough time for the doctor to speak my name—“Matthew!”—and step toward me.
But by then it was too late. I placed my palm lightly on Louisa Lindahl’s belly, just below the furrow of flesh that Dr. Dunbar’s stitches had closed. The tip of my little finger slipped into her navel with such ease it seemed to have found its natural place.
My hand rested there for no longer than Louisa Lindahl’s breasts had been bared, but it was long enough for the feeling of her cool soft skin to stamp itself into my memory indelibly.
I jerked my hand back and stood up just in time to escape Dr. Dunbar’s attempt to swat me away.
“Matthew! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I just wanted to see if she felt... cold.”
“You never touch, Matthew. Not without the patient’s permission. I invited you in here because it’s a unique learning situation. It’s not an opportunity for you to indulge your personal curiosity.”
“Sorry.”
He stared sternly at me for a long moment. “Did I make a mistake inviting you in here?” To make clear that the question was meant for both of us, he shifted his gaze to Johnny and then back to me.
“No sir,” I said, intending to answer for both