Conquistadora - Esmeralda Santiago [102]
“Fuentes went to ask don Luis if we can bring him there for treatment.”
Dr. Vieira spun around and looked skeptically at the steep terrain leading to San Bernabé, then turned to the rocky dirt road curving and disappearing into the green.
“We thought it would save time to bring him toward you,” Leonor said.
“Moving him was probably not the best decision,” Dr. Vieira answered, speaking to Eugenio. “He’s lost much blood. His breathing is shallow from broken ribs. He also has serious fractures made worse by the jostling in the cart. I can stabilize the leg, but there’s always the danger of infection.”
Leonor collapsed and Siña Damita drew her away. Once she was out of hearing, Eugenio took the doctor’s elbow and walked a few paces.
“I’ve been a soldier all my life and have seen men with worse injuries who recovered. You make sure that my son comes out of this alive.”
“But, Colonel, I can’t guarantee—”
“Do you see my wife? That woman has more backbone than most men, but she has already lost one son. If she loses Ramón because of her own poor judgment—” Eugenio’s voice broke, and he pulled himself up straighter, wiped his hand from his forehead to the tip of his beard, and took a deep breath. “Whatever it takes, Dr. Vieira, to save him.”
Luis and Faustina received them in their batey, their normal cheer suppressed.
“Our boys are visiting relatives in Mayagüez,” Faustina explained. “We’ve put Ramón in Luisito’s room, where he’ll be most comfortable. Ciriaca and Bombón can nurse him once the doctor and his assistant fix the leg.”
Leonor felt comfort in Faustina’s gentility and in her confidence in Dr. Vieira and in Ramón’s recovery.
“The doctor has earned the esteem of everyone around here,” Faustina assured her. “I’ve ordered that dinner be served under the trees by the pond,” she said as she left Leonor. “As soon as you’ve freshened up, Ciriaca will bring you there.”
An open tent was raised near a stream far enough from the house that as Dr. Vieira worked on Ramón, his screams were masked, if not entirely silenced, by a gurgling cascade.
Luis, Eugenio, Faustina, and Leonor sat uneasily at the linen-draped table, unable to eat but trying to be polite for one another’s sake. How could she possibly eat, Leonor thought, while her son’s broken leg was being painfully manipulated in a bedroom decorated with the toys, books, and drawings of a schoolboy? Did the doctor have the right equipment? How could he operate with two fingers missing? Was Luis’s homemade rum strong enough to dull Ramón’s pain? The Moraleses tried their best to make conversation, but none of them could take their eyes off the path to the house and the comings and goings of the servants, who looked at Leonor pityingly, the only ones, it seemed, who didn’t pretend they couldn’t hear the screams coming from Luisito’s room.
Leonor sat by her son’s bed, counting Ave Marias on her rosary’s silver beads. Ramón slept—if sleep could be possible through so much whimpering and groaning. There was certainly no rest in it.
He smelled like the drunks that she avoided in the streets of the city, a stench of liquor and urine and sweat and, in her son’s case, the bitter scent of blood. Ciriaca and Bombón had wiped away much of the blood, but each fresh bandage around Ramón’s leg quickly became red. Leonor had volunteered in enough military hospitals to know just how bad a sign this was. Dr. Vieira set the leg in a fashion similar to what Ana and Damita had managed, but tighter and straighter. He hoped, he said, that he wouldn’t have to amputate.
Leonor wondered if Dr. Vieira was a trained surgeon, or if his missing fingers made him reluctant to inflict a similar injury on his patients. She didn’t dare question him because, whatever the answer,