Killing Lincoln - Bill O'Reilly [84]
“Oh, Doctor,” sobs Mary Lincoln as Leale slowly removes her from her husband’s body. “Can he recover? Will you take charge of him?”
“I will do what I can,” Dr. Leale says calmly. With a nod to the crowd of men who have followed him into the box, the young doctor makes it clear that Mary must be removed. She is ushered to a couch on the other side of the box, next to Clara Harris, who begins stroking her hand.
Leale asks for a lamp and orders that no one else be admitted to the state box except for physicians. Then he stands in front of the rocking chair, facing Lincoln’s slumped head. He pushes the body upright, the head lolling back against the rocker. He can feel the slightest breath from Lincoln’s nose and mouth, but Leale is reluctant to touch the body without making a preliminary observation. One thing, however, is quite clear: Lincoln is not dead.
Dr. Leale can’t find any sign of injury. Onlookers light matches so that he can see better, and the call goes out for a lamp. The front of Lincoln’s body shows no sign of physical violence, and the forward slumping indicates that the attack must have come from behind. Yet there’s no visible entry wound or exit wound. If Dr. Leale didn’t know better, he would swear that Lincoln simply dozed off and will awaken any minute.
“Put him on the floor,” the doctor orders. Gently, ever so gently, Lincoln’s long torso is lifted by men standing on both sides of the rocking chair and then lowered to the carpet.
Based on Major Rathbone’s wounds, and the fact that he didn’t hear any gunshot during the performance, Leale deduces that Lincoln was stabbed. He rolls the president on one side and carefully searches for a puncture wound, his fingers slipping along the skin, probing for a telltale oozing of blood. But he feels nothing, and when he pulls his hands away, they’re completely clean.
He strips Lincoln to the waist and continues the search, cutting off the president’s white shirt with a pocketknife. But his skin is milky white and smooth, with no sign of any harm. Leale lifts Lincoln’s eyelids and examines the pupils. Finding clear evidence that the right eye’s optic nerve has somehow been cut, he decides to reexamine. Perhaps Lincoln was stabbed in the back of the skull. Head wounds are notorious bleeders, so such a wound is unlikely, but there has to be some explanation.
Dr. Leale, more befuddled by the mystery with each passing moment, runs his hands through Lincoln’s hair. This time they come back blood-red.
Alarmed, Leale examines the president’s head a second time. Beneath the thick hair, just above and behind the left ear, hides a small blood clot. It’s no bigger than the doctor’s pinkie, but when he pulls his finger away, the sensation is like a cork being removed from a bottle. Blood flows freely from the wound, and Lincoln’s chest suddenly rises and falls as pressure is taken from his brain.
Dr. Leale has been a practicing physician for all of two months, having just graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College. He wears an army uniform, as befitting a doctor who currently works in the Wounded Commissioned Officers’ Ward at the U.S. Army’s General Hospital in nearby Armory Square. The bulk of his medical education took place during the Civil War, so despite his short time as a practicing physician, he has seen more gunshot wounds than most doctors see in a lifetime. Yet he encountered those wounds in hospitals far removed from the battlefield, when the patients were in advanced stages of recovery. He has never performed the sort of critical life-saving procedures that take place immediately after an injury.
But now Dr. Leale somehow knows just what to do—and he does it well.
Working quickly, Leale straddles Lincoln’s chest and begins resuscitating the president,