David Nickle - Eutopia

Jason nodded. “I thank the Lord every day. I just wish she’d stopped Dr. Bergstrom.”

“All right, this is the last one.” And he pierced the skin at the very inner edge of the cut. Jason flinched more this time—as though he’d been holding it in until now.

“Can—can I have that bit of that whiskey now?”

“Sure you can.” Andrew wheeled back to the cabinet and got the little whiskey bottle. He poured a capful and handed it to Jason, who slugged it down and coughed.

“This supposed to help?” he finally managed.

“Get enough whiskey into a man, you can saw his leg off.”

“Don’t get any ideas.”

Andrew chuckled at that. “Don’t worry, Jason.” He wrapped the wound in gauze. “I’m done for tonight.”

Now that he was done stitching and bandaging, Andrew got a good look at the boy, assessing him as something other than a patient. He was most of the way to being a man, tall and lean with none of the awkwardness that came on a lot of boys at that time of life. His eyes were pale in the light, but they had a cast to them that Andrew had not often seen, like they looked right through a fellow. Overall, Jason Thistledown just looked strong, and Andrew thought he must be.

This boy, if he were to be believed, had survived an outbreak of something worse than cholera, worse than yellow fever, maybe as bad as Black Plague… Some sickness that had killed everybody in a town this past winter. Not a third or a half, but everybody. Everybody but one.

What kind of fever did that?

“Jason,” he asked, “can you tell me what the symptoms of the fever were?”

Jason handed back the cap, and Andrew screwed it back onto the whiskey.

“I only know what happened to my mama.”

“Tell me that.”

Jason nodded. He was quiet for a moment, looking down at his re-bandaged hand. Then he drew a breath, and started talking.

“She started getting sick a day after we got back home from Cracked Wheel. It was a clear day, all right for travel we figured. We were laying in some more supplies, was all. First thing she complained about was a headache. Then she had trouble with the runs, you know what I mean? Then she got all hot with fever, and she said ‘Why, Jason I think I shall lie down a moment.’ She had a hard time getting up after that, so I saw to her.”

“You feel anything during this part?”

“Not symptoms if that’s what you mean.”

“That is what I mean.”

“After that, things took a bad turn. She told me her stomach hurt, and she was sweating something terrible, and when I went to clean her off I saw that she was bleeding.”

“Bleeding? Where?”

“From her nose for a bit, and also—also from the skin around her fingernails.”

“And then—”

“Well,” said Jason, “she got worse and worse, until she seized up—and died.”

“Were you able to take her temperature? With a thermometer?”

“No.”

“Was she bleeding from anywhere else?”

“I don’t know. I think there was some around her toenails, and her eyes were awfully red.”

Andrew sat back and thought about what he’d told him. It was nothing he’d ever encountered—not clinically, certainly, and not even in the case studies that he’d read in Paris.

“And you didn’t have any symptoms.”

“Like my aunt says—I’m immune.”

“And you haven’t had symptoms—for how long?”

“About two months.”

“During which time, you got on a train, and on another train, then made your way up here to Eliada. Meeting all sorts of people at every stop.”

“That is right.”

“So why, I wonder, did Dr. Bergstrom order you into quarantine tonight? It seems as though your aunt’s right—you’re immune. You’re not carrying it either or others would have surely come down with it. So why lock you up now?”

“That is what I want to know.”

Andrew was about to ask his next question when he heard a gentle rapping at the door.

“Dr. Bergstrom?”

“Annie?” He turned his chair around to face the door. “Come on in.”

“Dr. Waggoner.” Annie Rowe stepped in. “What are you doing up? Oh,” she said, looking at Jason. She blushed and averted her eyes. “Hello, young sir.”

“Nurse Rowe, meet Jason Thistledown. Jason, cover yourself, would you?”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” said Jason, pulling the sheet over himself.

Annie Rowe raised her eyes and got a better look at the blood-slick sheet. “What happened here?”

“It is not as bad as it looks,” said Andrew. “The boy cut himself. I saw to it.”

“You should’ve called someone,” she scolded. But it was not heartfelt. She peered at the boy. “He doesn’t look well.”

Andrew cleared his throat. “You know what you might do? Could you find Jason a robe or some clothes—something to cover him up better?”

Annie stood straight. “All right,” she said, “as you please, Doctor.” She spared Andrew a tight smile. “Good to see you back practising so soon.”

When she’d left, Jason finally did it, and asked Andrew the question he’d been dreading.

“What were you doing out there tonight? And who’s Mister Juke?”

“Mister—”

“Yes, sir. You thought I might be him, when I came out of the quarantine. Remember? Well, I’m not. So who is he?”

Now Andrew found himself brought up short. It was a simple question but a difficult one. Who was Mister Juke? He’d seen him, on the hillside waiting for the hangman’s noose—a creature with two faces or so it seemed—one congenitally distorted; one, beautiful. He’d seen Mister Juke hanged, by the neck. And Mister Juke had lived. So who was he?

“That,” said Andrew, “is the question I have been trying to answer. He was with me at… at…”

“The lynching?” Jason pulled the sheet tighter around himself. “Sam Green told what happened.”

“All right. He was with me at the lynching. They hung him first—they seemed to think he was a rapist, although I doubt that. They pulled him out of that quarantine building. And they hung him. They tried to anyway.”

“Because they thought he was a rapist. Who they think he raped?”

“Sweet girl,” said Andrew. “Her name was Maryanne Leonard. She died, this past Sunday. Right here in hospital. Complications from her pregnancy.”

Jason didn’t ask another question right away. He just sat there and looked at Andrew, and as Andrew looked back, he thought: The boy is dancing around this topic. Just like I am. Because the boy has seen something in there—Devils up from Hell, he called them—that he cannot explain any more than I can explain anything I have seen. And neither of us will be able to figure it out, until one of us takes that step—openly, into that place.

Jason finally asked his question.

“How big is Mister Juke? Is he skinny and tall with a strange bend to his face, like he’s been whacked? Or is he just little? Like a baby, or maybe a bit smaller than a baby? But with… teeth?”

They sat quiet again, as Andrew took that in. Andrew’s answer, when it came, had no words. He nodded.

“So both,” said Jason, and Andrew said: “Yes. Both.”

Annie Rowe returned with a hospital gown for Jason, and once he’d changed took the sheet and stuffed it into a sack for washing. As she folded it and stuffed it in the bag, she nagged Andrew a bit about getting back to his room, but Andrew put her off. “Just seeing to my patient,” he said.

“You are the patient,” she huffed. “And a terrible patient at that. Why is that truer with doctors than anyone else?”

“Annie, I promise to return to bed once I’ve seen to a few things.”

“Why don’t you let me see to them? I am on duty tonight.”