Buck smiled at her. “Let’s take a look.”
The two-inch laceration angled across his forehead just above his right eyebrow. Dried blood surrounded it.
“How’d this happen?” Buck asked.
“It was an accident.” Matthew looked up. Tears glistened in his eyes.
“They were sword fighting,” Joyce said. “That’s what they call it anyway. It’s an excuse to whack each other with sticks.”
“Boys are fun, aren’t they?”
Joyce rolled her eyes. “You have no idea.”
“I was raised with two brothers. And a sister. They were all older. I got the short end of the stick—no pun intended—more often than not.”
“Is it bad?” Matthew asked.
“I’ve seen worse.” Buck tugged on a pair of surgical gloves. He gently touched the tissues around the wound. Matthew flinched.
“Don’t touch it,” Matthew said.
“That might make it hard to stitch it up, don’t you think?”
The tears now welled in his eyes. “Can’t you just put those little tape things on it? My friend Willie got those when he cut his arm.”
“Not sure that’s the right answer here. Don’t want a big old scar on your face, do you?”
“Maybe. I’d look bad then.”
“In a Frankenstein kind of way.” That got a half-smile from Matthew. “Might scare the girls away.”
Matthew sniffed. “I don’t like girls anyway. They’re too bossy.”
Buck smiled. “Well, you sure figured that out at a young age.” He winked at Joyce. “But girls are pretty nice, too.”
“No, they’re not.”
“You’re what? Eight?”
“Eight and a half.”
“Just wait a couple of years and you’ll feel differently.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Want to bet?” Buck asked.
“Yeah. Like a gazillion dollars.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have that much. Maybe a pizza?”
“Or a cheeseburger? With fries?”
“You’re on.”
Joanie Campbell, one of the RNs appeared with a plastic wrapped suture tray and began setting it up on the bedside stand.
Now a tear rolled down Matthew’s cheek. “Mom, I don’t want stitches.”
Joyce took her son’s hand. “Matthew, what did I tell you? We have to do what the doctor says.”
“But I want those tape things. Stitches hurt.” He looked up at Buck. “It’ll hurt, won’t it?”
“A little. But only at first. After I put it all to sleep you won’t feel a thing.”
Matthew’s face screwed down as he tried his best not to let the dam break.
“Look, I’ll tell you everything I’m doing. I’ll tell you when it’ll pinch. No surprises. Okay?”
“I don’t want to.”
“I know,” Buck said. “But you don’t want to go to school tomorrow and tell everyone you cried, do you? Wouldn’t you rather say that you weren’t afraid? That you were a tough guy?”
He glanced at his mom, who nodded, and then he said, “I suppose.”
Matthew was a real trooper. He panted and moaned a little but held still and in less than a minute the local anesthetic had been delivered. Buck then sutured the wound, leaving only a very fine line where the laceration had been.
“That’s it. All done.”
“Really?” Matthew asked.
“Really.”
“That wasn’t so bad.” Matthew laughed, now almost giddy. Tension release will do that. He rambled on about how he couldn’t wait to tell everyone how brave he was.
“Told you,” Buck said. “The better news is that there are no stitches to remove. They’re all inside and will disappear.”
“That’s so cool,” Matthew said.
“I think so.” Buck ruffled the boy’s hair. “And you were very brave.”
While Joanie applied a loose bandage over the wound, Buck and Joyce walked to the nurse’s station.
“Keep it clean and dry,” Buck said. “The bandage can come off tomorrow morning and you can leave it uncovered after that. Bring him back in three or four days and I’ll make sure it’s healing well.”
She nodded. “You were very good with him.”
Joanie walked up. “Dr. Buck is great with children.”
“You just have to treat them like adults,” Buck said. “Tamp down the fear and they do fine.”
“Do you have a practice?” Joyce asked. “I’d like to bring my whole family to you.”
“No. I only work here at the ER. And only for a few months. Then I’ll be off somewhere else.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Joyce said.
“I’m doing what we call locum tenens. That’s a fancy phrase for temporary hired help. Dr. Sally Wilkins is out on maternity leave so I’m here filling in until she returns.”
“That’s too bad,” Joyce said. “We need doctors like you around here.”
“I appreciate that. But that’s not in the cards.”
“You’re an excellent surgeon,” Joyce said, “I could barely see the cut after you finished.”
“That’s the path I was on. I did two years of surgical residency but decided ER work was more to my taste, so I switched. Then I decided I’d do this gypsy thing for a while.”
Joyce smiled. “Well, when you finish your rambling maybe you’ll come back to us.”
“I guess anything’s possible.”
After Matthew and Joyce left, Joanie said, “We have one of our frequent fliers in. She’s in cubicle 3. Looks like an infected injection site.”
“Drug user, I take?” Buck said.
“Marla Jackson. A local girl. She was a beauty in high school. Cheerleader, homecoming queen, destined to be a model, or a movie star, something like that.” Joanie sighed. “Then drugs strangled her into submission. Been on the streets for a while.”
Buck had heard that story often enough. Good kids sliding down a drug-paved slope.
That Marla Jackson, in her earlier iteration, had been beautiful was evident. Large, round, blues eyes, great cheek bones, and blonde hair. That drugs had done their damage was also apparent. Thin, painfully so, sallow skin, her shoulder-length hair resembling dirty straw. Not to mention the lesions on her face and her teeth beginning to go south, each a gift from crystal meth.
“Hello. I’m Dr. Buckner. But folks call me Buck.”
“Marla,” she said. She held up her arm. “I think I have an infection.”
She indeed had a nasty injection site infection. It was red, angry, swollen, and pus-filled.
“How long has it been like this?” Buck asked.
“A week. I could squeeze the pus out at first but now it’s too painful.”
“I bet that’s true.” He tugged on a pair of gloves and examined the area. “I’ll have to open it up, drain it, clean it
