The World Made Straight. Ron Rash

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СКАЧАТЬ to care much when he turned the ankle and Travis winced. You’ll be going home tomorrow morning, he told Travis, but that was nothing to get excited about. It just meant being stuck in his own bed instead of the hospital’s. Besides, at home the old man wouldn’t have to wait for visiting hours to light into him. Probably lay a pallet on my floor just so he can bad-mouth me last thing at night and first thing come morning, Travis figured.

      The clock hands moved as if coated with tobacco resin. But it wasn’t just boredom that made time crawl. He was waiting for Lori. To help pass the time, he rummaged through his mind as he might a woodshed, searching for something long ago put away. Travis remembered one thing, something that happened in homeroom their sophomore year. It had been the Friday before Christmas break. During the last period students went to their homerooms for a “party,” though it was nothing but soft drinks and stale cookies. Slick Abernathy, the principal, had shown up at the door and handed Lori a full grocery bag. Soon as it was in her hands she’d sat back down while everyone else milled around the room. There was one detail more though, just at the edge of memory. Then it came to him. Lori had used only her right hand to eat and drink. The left gripped the grocery bag so no one could look inside.

      He ate his lunch and had two more thermometers shoved in his mouth before Lori appeared. She brought not just her watering can but also a backpack.

      “I went to the library to get you something to read, but I wasn’t certain what you’d like.”

      She lifted three books from the backpack, let him see the titles: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, Call of the Wild by Jack London, and The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. He’d read the first two, so he took The Last of the Mohicans, though he had serious doubts if someone with the middle name Fenimore could write anything he’d much care for.

      “The doctor says I’ll be going home in the morning,” Travis said. “How will I get it back to you?”

      “Give the book to the nurse and I’ll get it from her.”

      This time he made sure Lori stayed awhile, filling silences with questions he’d stacked in his mind like square bales in a barn loft. He learned more about her plans to get a CNA and found out she worked mornings and evenings at Carter’s Café. She had an older sister and a younger brother, and her mother worked at the yarn mill in Marshall. When he asked about her father, she said he’d left three years ago. She didn’t offer the where to and why.

      “What are you going to do when you get out of high school?” she asked when he struggled for more words to keep her in the room.

      Travis wanted to sidle around the question, but Lori wouldn’t allow it.

      “I’m not sure,” he finally said, not mentioning he’d quit school three weeks before last year’s term ended.

      “You could probably do a lot of different things,” Lori said. She picked up the backpack. “I guess I better get to the other rooms.”

      “Too bad you won’t be here in the morning. I like talking to you.”

      “I’ll see you at school in a few weeks,” Lori said. “Maybe we’ll be in homeroom again, like in tenth grade.”

      “Maybe we could do something before then.” Travis spoke the words quickly, afraid if he didn’t they would hang on his tongue and he’d swallow them.

      “I’d like that,” Lori said.

      “Can I have your phone number?”

      She blushed slightly but kept her eyes steady on his.

      “We don’t have a phone.”

      “Can I call you at work?”

      “Yes,” Lori said, and took a blue pen from her apron. She looked for a piece of paper but there was only the ivory colored hospital chart.

      “Write it on my hand,” Travis said.

      He laid his open palm on the aluminum rail. Lori’s left hand gripped his wrist, the firmness surprising him. The pen tickled as she wrote the numbers.

      “Don’t forget and wash it off,” she said, a playfulness in her voice he hadn’t heard before.

      “I’ll not do that,” Travis said, making a fist as though afraid the numbers might slip away.

      When the nurse came in later he asked her to write the number on a card and put it in his billfold. That night as he drifted toward sleep he remembered Lori’s fingers and thumb as they enclosed his wrist, how good that felt. Travis wondered if her fingers had measured how much her touch speeded up his heart.

      July 14, 1857

       A.M.

      Nail Hinson, age 6.

      Complaint: Copperhead bite.

      Diagnosis: Non-envenomed snakebite. Corn snake? No fang marks or noxious swelling.

      Treatment: Moistened tobacco applied to soothe pain.

      Fee: One dollar. To be paid with two peck of apples at harvest.

      Georgina Singleton, age 10.

      Return in regard to July 11 complaint of puniness and diagnosis of whipworms.

      Treatment: Two drams tobacco seed, whiskey, turpentine at bedtime for three nights.

      Wool rag soaked in heated turpentine on stomach each morning.

      Response: Voided fifty-seven worms. Continue treatment two more nights.

      Fee: None.

      Levi Peek, age 35.

      Complaint: Vomiting blood.

      Diagnosis: Hematemesis.

      Treatment: Alum and yellow root tonic before meals. No drinking of any spirits for month.

      Fee: One dollar. Paid with four pecks of chestnuts.

       P.M.

      James Shelton, age 28.

      Return in regard to broken leg set on June 20.

      Wear splint ten more days.

      Fee: No charge.

       Ten P.M.

      Summoned to Winchester Farm.

      Ellie Winchester, age 19.

      Complaint: Remittent fever three days. Abdominal pain.

      Shivering. Fifth day after childbirth.

      Diagnosis: Puerperal fever due to rupture and infection of fundus uteri. Lochia excessive.

      Treatment: СКАЧАТЬ