9
The sky was still dark when Jane crossed the line from Pennsylvania into Ohio, but by the time she was on the outskirts of Youngstown, whole blocks of street lamps were turning themselves off. Jane pulled into a gas station, filled the tank, and walked to the little building to pay for the gas. When she returned, Dahlman was still asleep.
She found a motel, checked in, then came back to the car and shook Dahlman. “Wake up, open your eyes, but don’t sit up just yet.”
Dahlman blinked up at the ceiling of the car. “Where are we?”
“Youngstown, Ohio. A motel. I’m going to take you inside in a second, when I’m sure there’s nobody watching.” She took a long look in each direction, then said, “Now.”
She quickly walked him into the building and down the hall to their room. She hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob outside and closed the door. “Make yourself comfortable. Don’t answer the door, don’t answer the phone, don’t open the curtains. I’ll be back.”
Jane drove out of the lot, along Bridge Street to Coitsville Center Road, north to King Graves Road, and west to the airport. She turned in the car she had rented in Buffalo and went to a second agency to get a new one under the name Kathy Sirini. On the way back to the motel she stopped at a big discount chain store and took a shopping cart.
She bought pairs of sunglasses for men and women, two kinds of hair dye, makeup, baseball caps, a big roll of gauze, a bag of sterile cotton balls, a roll of adhesive tape. She bought a bottle of peroxide, some Mercurochrome, Neosporin ointment, a bottle of alcohol. Before she returned to the motel she stopped on Route 224 at a take-out restaurant and bought four breakfast specials that came in foot-wide Styrofoam boxes.
She entered the room and looked around. Dahlman was invisible. “Anybody home?”
“I’m in here.”
She walked into the bathroom to find Dahlman lying in the bathtub naked. “Oh. Sorry,” she mumbled, and stepped out.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” said Dahlman. “Come in here.”
Jane entered again. Dahlman glared at her. “You are a grown woman. You have definitely seen enough by now so that the sight of an aged person of the opposite sex can bring no surprises.”
“I was being considerate,” said Jane.
“Thank you,” said Dahlman. “Now look at this wound, and you can be more considerate.” He pointed to the hole in his left shoulder. “This is the entrance wound. Very neat and clean. A high-velocity bullet passed through intact. It was sutured expertly by a fine young surgeon. Come around to the back.” He leaned forward. “What do you see?”
It was big and angry looking, and the white of his skin had a redness around the sutures. “Not so neat,” she said. “The stitches haven’t completely come apart, but they look … like they’re unraveling. It doesn’t seem to be bleeding.”
“That’s the lesion I’m most concerned about. When a bullet enters the body, it’s still only nine millimeters wide with a rounded tip. After it’s hit bone and burrowed through muscle tissue, it mushrooms and splays out, and the exit wound is worse. This one was closed as it should be. But last night’s violent fall off the car seat undid that, and the swim in polluted water will have introduced contamination. What color is the tissue around it?”
“Red. I’m sorry.”
He brushed her words away with his hand. “That was your job, and this is my job. If I get a raging infection, your job will have been a waste of time.”
“What do we do?”
“Well, I think we should start by washing the wound with antiseptic. Any drugstore should have what we need.”
“I bought peroxide, alcohol, Mercurochrome, and Neosporin.”
He stared at her a moment, but she couldn’t tell whether he was considering praise or a reprimand. “Yes. Well, help me dry off and we can get started.”
Jane took his arm over her shoulder and let him lean his weight on her while he stepped out of the tub. Jane worked to dry his bony legs and feet while he dried the places he could reach. She finished with his back.
“Now let’s lay out what you’ve got,” he said. She brought in the shopping bag and he arranged the bottles and wound dressings. He looked at her again and conceded, “Very thoughtful of you.”
“I had noticed that you had a hole in you,” she said.
“Oh, yes. Well. You can wash up and we’ll get started.”
Jane scrubbed her hands until he said, “Let’s start by washing the surface area around the wound with alcohol.”
Jane took some cotton balls, soaked them with alcohol, and gently dabbed around the front of his shoulder. He watched her and frowned. “Here.” He took a few cotton balls, soaked them, and roughly sloshed alcohol on the wound at the back of his shoulder.
Jane waited. It was only a couple of seconds before the pain clawed him. Every muscle in his body tensed, then quivered. His eyes squeezed tight, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. His breaths were shaky hisses moving in and out through clenched teeth.
He leaned forward, gripping the counter for a moment, as though he were about to faint. When the wave had passed, his voice was rough and croaky. “Now, let’s use the peroxide the same way.”
“I’d like it if we could do this someplace where if you faint you won’t crack your skull.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I was being foolish.”
He walked into the bedroom and sat on the bed. “The alcohol is dry. Now the peroxide.”
Jane slopped the peroxide on the entrance wound and watched him suffer. “That’s better,” he gasped. “It hurts like hell, but it ends. An infection would feel like that until I died. Just remember that. You’re not causing someone pain. It’s not you.”
“What next?”
“Neosporin, then tape a sterile gauze pad over it.”
Jane did as he directed. He looked down at her work, nodded, then lay on the bed on his stomach. “Now comes the hard part,” he said. “This wound, the exit wound, is open. I can tell by the feel that infection has begun. It needs a bit more attention. Are you a good seamstress?”
“No,” said Jane. She shook her head slowly as he looked up at her.
“Do you mean, ‘No, I’m not a good seamstress,’ or ‘No, I won’t do any sewing’?”
“A little bit of each,” she said.
“Will you do it, or not?” He glared at her from the pillow.
“If you think it’s necessary, I’ll do it. But I don’t have anything to sew with. I’ll have to get something.”
“There’s a kit in the bathroom for sewing buttons on. Compliments of the inn. These are battlefield conditions, so you use what you’ve got.”
Jane sighed. “All right. Tell me what to do.”
Dahlman waited while Jane went into the bathroom and returned with the little paper packet. He didn’t watch her, just began to talk. “We’ll use white thread, because it’s been bleached rather than dyed, and the dye is probably more poisonous. Soak the needle and thread in alcohol for a few minutes while we repeat the procedure we used on the entry wound to disinfect. When you’re finished, take as many stitches as you can fit with the thread we have. Work outside the sutures that are there, by at least a quarter inch on each side, in a pattern that looks like shoelaces.”
“How do I tie it off?”
“Take it in and out of the earlier laces a few times and then tie it in a square knot.”
Jane went about preparing the needle and thread. When she poured the alcohol on his wound, he gripped the mattress so hard that she heard a sound like the sheet ripping, then went limp. But in a few seconds she heard him say, “Next the peroxide, please.”
