Mud Vein(57)

“I have to operate,” he says. Is it my imagination or are there beads of sweat on his forehead? The light is so vague it could be a trick of the eyes.

He screws the cap off of a bottle of clear liquid and before I can open my mouth to stop him, he uncovers the gauze and pours it over my wound. I brace myself to scream, but the pain isn’t as terrible as I thought it would be.

“You could have warned me!” I hiss at him, rearing up.

“Hush,” he says. “It’s just saline. I need to clear away the dead tissue … irrigate the wound.”

“And then…?”

“Set the bone. It’s been too long already … the risk of infection … your soft tissue…” He’s mumbling things. Words I don’t hold the meaning to: debridement … osteomyelitis. He reaches up and wipes his forehead with his shirtsleeve. I’m going to have to set your bone. I’m not an orthopedic surgeon, Senna. We don’t have the equipment…”

I stare at him as he leans back on his haunches. He has a face full of scruff, and a head of hair that is standing every which way. He looks so different from the doctor that operated on me last time. The cuts around his mouth deepen as he stares into my wound. He’s more scared than I am, I think. This is his job, his profession—saving lives. He is an expert at saving lives. Yet, this is out of his area of expertise. There is no one to consult with. Isaac Asterholder is positioned at a keyboard instead of the drums, and he doesn’t quite know where to put his hands.

“It’s okay.” I sound peculiarly calm. Detached. “Do what you can.”

He reaches for the flashlight, holds it right above the gash.

“The tissue is red, that’s good,” he says. I nod though I don’t know what he’s talking about. The room has started to spin and I just want him to get on with it.

“It’s going to hurt like hell, Senna.”

“Fuck you,” I say. “Just do it.” I sob on the last word. Such a tough guy.

Isaac gets to work. He washes his hands in the bucket using an amber colored soap. Then he douses his hands and arms in alcohol. He pulls on a pair of gloves. He must have found them down the well with the other supplies. So the zookeeper left us gloves. For what? Surgery? For when we decided to spring clean? Maybe we were supposed to fill them with air and draw faces on them with markers. Our captor though of everything. Except morphine, of course. Somehow I know that one was on purpose. No pain, no gain. This guy likes us to suffer.

Isaac does it. Without warning. While I’m thinking about the zookeeper. This time I don’t scream. I pass out.

When I come to, my leg is throbbing and I’m wasted. That’s what you get when you pour half a bottle of tequila in your starving stomach. He is sitting a few feet away with his back resting against the wall. His head droops down like he’s sleeping. I crane my neck trying to get a look at my leg. Isaac cleaned up most of the mess, but I can see dark spots on the floor around my body—blood. My leg is propped on a pillow, the area where the bone broke through my skin is wrapped in gauze. He’s splinted the leg between what looks like slabs of wood. I feel good about the scar it’ll leave. It’ll be long and jagged.

Isaac wakes up. Once again I notice how terrible he looks. Last night I thought he was dead, and now here he is fixing me. This wasn’t right. I want to do something to make him better, but I’m lying on my back, drunk. He gets up and comes to me. He half scoots, half crawls.

“You were lucky. The bone only broke in one part. It was a clean break so you didn’t have any fragments floating around. But since it tore through the skin there could be nerve and tissue damage. There was no internal bleeding that I could see.”

“What about infection?” I ask.

Isaac nods. “You could develop an infection in the bone. I found a bottle of penicillin. We will do what we can. The greater the damage is to the bone, soft tissues, nerves, and blood vessels, the higher the risk for infection. And since you were dragging yourself all over the house…”

I lean my head back because the room is spinning. I wonder if I’ll remember any of this when the effects of the tequila clear.

“It’s the best I could do,” he says. I know it is.

He hands me a mug with a spoon sticking out of it. I take it, peering inside. He picks up his own mug.

“What is it?” there is a lumpy looking yellow fluid in the cup. It looks disgusting, but my stomach clenches in anticipation anyway.

“Creamed corn.” He sticks the spoon in his mouth, sucks it dry. I follow suit. It’s not nearly as bad as it looks. I have hazy memories of grabbing the can the night before, the way it dug into my hip as I climbed the ladder.

“Take it slow,” Isaac warns. I have to force myself not to down the whole mug in one gulp. My hunger pain subsides ever so slightly, and I am able to focus solely on the other pain my body is feeling. He hands me four large white pills.

“It’ll just dim it, Senna.”

“Okay,” I whisper, letting him drop them in my hand. He hands me a cup of water and I drop all four pills into my mouth.

“Isaac,” I say. “Please rest.”

He kisses my forehead.

“Hush.”

When I wake up the room is warm. I’ve noticed that the highlight of most of my days here are waking up and going to sleep. It’s what I remember most about The Caging of Senna and Isaac: wake up; go to sleep; wake up; go to sleep. There is little in between to make a difference; we wander … we eat … but mostly we sleep. And if we’re lucky it’s warm when we wake. Now there is a new sensation—pain. I look around the room. Isaac is asleep on the floor a few feet away. He has a single blanket covering him. It’s not even long enough to cover his feet. I want to give him my blanket, but I don’t know how to stand up. I groan and lean back against the pillows. The painkillers have worn off. I am hungry again. I wonder if he’s eaten, if he’s okay.