American Boy - Larry Watson [73]
“You could have appendicitis,” I suggested.
“Nah,” Barney said. “The army already took my appendix out. For free.”
“Okay, okay. Let me think. Pain in the lower right abdomen. Guarding. Fever. Chills.”
“Fuckin-A he’s got chills,” the big Indian said. “What’s the goddamn temperature? Ten?” He stamped up and down and flapped his arms. “I got chills. Hell, we all got chills.”
“This is different,” I said. “Barney, will you do something ? Will you lie down across the front seat?”
“He lays down,” the other man said, “he ain’t going to want to get up.”
But Barney complied. He stretched out across the seat, a shudder coursing through him as if he’d just tossed back a shot of whiskey.
“Okay, Barney—” When Dr. Dunbar treated a patient gripped hard by illness or injury, he made a point of saying the patient’s name as often as possible. It was a way, the doctor used to say, “of keeping the patient in the world.”
“Here’s what I want you to do,” I said to Barney. “I know your stomach hurts, but I want you to put your hand, okay, both your hands, right over the spot that hurts the worst.”
Barney did as I asked.
“All right, Barney. Now press down right there. Right on the spot. Okay, good. Keep pressing. A little harder. Now, when I tell you, take your hands away. Fast. Okay—now!”
Barney was an obedient patient, even when everything I asked him to do caused him pain. And the last step was agonizing.
He jerked his hands away on command and instantly cried out. “Oooh! Goddamn!”
His knees jerked upward and he twisted so hard to the side he almost toppled off the car seat.
Just as I’d expected. Blumberg’s sign. Dr. Dunbar had told us about it as a test for peritonitis when a perforated bowel almost killed Harley Platt, the owner of a butcher shop in Willow Falls. Then Dr. Dunbar made Johnny and me lie down, each in turn, while he pressed on our abdomens and showed us how to check for rebound tenderness.
I reached into the car and grabbed Barney’s ankle, bare above his oxford, its cracked worn leather his only protection against snow and cold. I wasn’t trying to control him; I was trying to comfort him, though I had no idea whether I had that power.
In a voice as gentle as I owned, I said, “How are you doing, Barney? Okay?”
Through his pain, Barney managed a smile. He was too polite to say anything about the stupidity of my question. “Okay,” he said, and struggled to sit up again.
I motioned for Barney’s friend to join me behind the car. There, both of us eerily illuminated by the car’s taillights, I said, “Your friend’s in bad shape. He’s got an infection that’s making him really sick. He has to go to a hospital.”
He nodded, his smile dimming for the first time. “I’ll see how he’s doing tomorrow. If he ain’t better I’ll take him to the VA hospital.”
“No,” I said firmly. “Tomorrow’s no good. It will be too late. Your friend’s got peritonitis. He’s only going to get worse. This is an emergency. You have to go to the hospital in Bellamy. And you have to drive like hell to get there.”
Barney was out of the car now and limping toward us. I don’t know if he’d heard the word “peritonitis,” but he knew we were talking about his condition.
“Hey,” Barney said, “are you a doctor or something?”
The wind seemed to die as the snowy plains around us waited for my answer.
“No,” I said. “But my father was.”
20.
I DIDN’T RUSH BACK TO WILLOW FALLS, and not just because I was shaken after spinning out and sliding off the road. I couldn’t handle any more suspense. If Dr. Dunbar was speeding after me and his wife’s car, I was ready to be overtaken. If law enforcement was on my trail, I was ready to be caught.
But I saw just two other cars on the drive back to Willow Falls, and neither driver displayed any interest in me. The streets of my hometown were snow packed and drifted over, but completely quiet, and I drove the Valiant back to where it belonged.
Lights burned in a few windows of the Dunbar home. Was Mrs. Dunbar waiting up? Didn’t she know that neither her husband, nor her son, nor Louisa Lindahl was likely to return