She said, 'He's had his hand crushed at the works.'
The doctor offered a new frown. He was a marvel of frowns. This one was canted, rakish.
The doctor said, 'Someone over there has had his leg half torn off. The surgery rooms are full. We are doing all we can.'
'He is a child.'
'There are others here before him.'
'He is a child who supports his parents, who does work much too hard for him, and he has had his hand crushed. His brother died less than a week ago. You must attend to him.'
'We will attend to him presently.' 'You must do it now.'
The doctor made his face darker. He retracted his eyes, made them smaller but brighter in his darkened face. 'What did you say, miss?'
'I beg your pardon, sir,' Catherine answered. 'I don't mean to be rude. But please, please attend to this boy. As you can see, we're beside ourselves.'
The doctor made a decision. It was easier, the doctor decided, to comply. Others were here before Lucas, but they would wait, as they'd learned to do.
'Come with me,' the doctor said.
Dan helped Lucas to stand. He put his arm around Lucas's back and helped him walk, as Lucas had helped his mother back to bed once. When had that been? The doctor led them, though it seemed it should be Catherine who led.
They passed through the door. It opened onto a corridor that was full of other people. Like those in the waiting room they sat or lay upon the floor. They left a narrow aisle through which the not sick could pass. Lucas wondered if the hospital was like the works, if it was room after room, each different and each the same, leading on and on like a series of caverns until at some length they reached what? Healing itself. A living jewel, a ball of green-gold fire.
Dan helped Lucas along the path the afflicted had left for them. They had to step over a leg and then an extended arm that was strangely colored, bluish-white, like cheese. Lucas wondered if they were going toward the final room, where the healing was kept.
The room they entered was near the end of the corridor. It was an ordinary room, though nothing here was ordinary. It was small and dingily white. There were cabinets with glass fronts, and a chair and a cot. A sister sat upon the chair, bent over a man who was on the cot. The man, about Father's age but smaller, with longer hair, muttered to the sister.
The doctor said, 'All right. Let's see.'
It took Lucas a moment to know that the doctor wanted to see his hand. He'd thought the doctor meant something more general, something larger, though he could not have said what it was. He preferred his hand. Blood from the soaked rags dripped onto the floor. Lucas looked at the red drops. He thought, I'm hurt.
The doctor unwrapped the bandage. He didn't seem to mind about the blood. As the rag came away, the pain changed. It gathered in Lucas's hand. It had been all over him like a sickness, but now it was here; it followed the course of the bandages as they were pulled away, like sparks that were caught in his flesh, exquisite and excruciating. Lucas whimpered, though he hadn't wanted to. It seemed as if the bandage had joined him, as if the doctor without realizing his mistake were peeling Lucas's very skin away.
Then the bandage was gone. Here was his hand, revealed. It wasn't big anymore, as it had been at the works. It was small and curled in upon itself, like a chicken's foot. It was thickly red, as if it were made of blood. It looked like something dreadful, newly born.
He glanced nervously at Catherine. Would she be repulsed?
She merely said to him, 'It's all right. It's going to be all right.'
The doctor put the bandage into a can on the floor. The can contained other things as well. The doctor took Lucas's mangled hand in his palm, held it with sharp but weary attention. His new frown was broad and sternly beatific.
Catherine said, 'What can you do for him?'
The doctor answered, 'Remove the hand. Right away.'
'No,' she said. She seemed to possess a power not of knowledge but of divine refusal. It seemed possible it did not seem impossible that Catherine could restore his hand by insisting it be restored.
'Would you rather we wait and remove the whole arm?' the doctor said.
'It can't be as bad as that.'
'Where did you receive your medical training, miss?'
'It's broken,' she said. 'It's badly broken but only that. Can't you set it?'
'Not here.' 'Elsewhere, then.'
'There is no elsewhere. Not for him.'
Lucas had never been talked about so, as if he were present and not present. It was like being in the works. There was something good there was something not bad about giving himself over.
'We'll find somewhere to take him,' Catherine said. 'With what money? Do you have money?' 'Of course not.'
'Let me tell you what will happen, then. You'll take him to New York Hospital or St. Vincent's. It will take time, perhaps considerable time, for you to see someone there, and that person will most likely send you back here. By the time you get back here it will be gangrenous, and we'll have to remove the arm, at the elbow if we're lucky and at the shoulder if we're not. Do you understand?'
Catherine hesitated. She looked to Dan. Lucas became visible then. Catherine saw him.
She said, 'Lucas, I think we'd better let them do it.'
He nodded. He soared above all feeling save for the pain and Catherine. Lucas was strangely excited. She regarded him with such concern, such deep and abiding love.
'Can you be brave?' she asked. He nodded again. He could be brave. 'All right, then,' she said to the doctor. 'Wise girl,' he answered.
'Can you get him to a bed now? Can you give him something for his pain?'
'We have no empty beds.' 'Surely one can be found.'
'Should I evict the woman dying in the room next to this one? Should I put out the man whose heart is failing?'
'This is monstrous.'
'A surgery room will be free in an hour or two. He will have to wait here until then.'
'Some medicine, then. He doesn't show his pain. He wouldn't.'
'We have very little medicine.' 'How can that be?'
'What we have, we must reserve for the gravest cases.'
'This is a grave case.'
'This is a boy about to lose his hand. When you compelled me to look at this boy, I had just left a man with a length of pipe driven through his skull. It entered here' the doctor indicated a place above his left ear 'and came out here.' He pointed to a spot just behind his right ear. 'He is still alive, somehow. We have morphine for him.'
Catherine hesitated. She looked around the room (where the man lay whispering on the cot under the sister's ministrations, where the jars stood behind the glass) as if she thought she might find an answer there. Finding none, she said to the doctor in a lowered voice, 'Surely some provision can be made. As you can see, he is not quite right.'
'Miss, this is a charity hospital. Half the people who come here are not quite right.'
Catherine paused again. Lucas saw her make a decision.
She said to the doctor, 'Could I speak to you privately?'
The doctor said, 'Aren't we private enough here?'
She moved to the doorway, and the doctor followed. She spoke to him in a low tone. He nodded gravely.
Dan didn't speak. Lucas could feel him not speaking. The doctor listened to Catherine and produced yet another frown.
Lucas said, 'The nine months' gone is in the parturition chamber, her faintness and pains are advancing.'
