David Nickle - Eutopia

There was morphine and alcohol in a row of phials, packed alongside several thick rolls of gauze. There were other things as one might expect: a flexible stethoscope and a hammer; a small concave mirror and scissors; a roll of suture thread and steel needles. At the bottom of the case was a mahogany box containing a surgical kit that Andrew thought might have dated back to the Civil War, given the rust-specked bone-saw and the ebony-handled trepan tucked among the scalpels and clamps. Andrew would have liked more gynaecological equipment—all he could find was an antique speculum tube that’d been carved from ivory and might be adaptable for vaginal examination. But given that he was not precisely aborting or giving birth to a child—given that he was not entirely sure what he was going to find inside poor Loo—he thought he might make do.

The circumstance was more troubling. His bad hand was only a part of it. In the relative darkness of the dawn, the cabin where Loo rested was nearly pitch black. And it was filthy. The risk of sepsis was enormous in the confines of this place. He asked the woman who was staying with Loo to throw open all the windows, but it was not enough to resolve either difficulty.

There was nothing to do about his hand, either—other than enlist Norma, who had some experience with midwifery, to assist where she could.

As to the cabin?

“We will have to perform this procedure outdoors,” Andrew finally declared, and Norma agreed.

“I’ll find a table,” she said.

“And clean bedclothes.”

“Clean bedclothes. Anythin’ else?”

By mid-morning, Andrew counted a dozen people helping set up the outdoor surgery. He supervised for part of it, but it soon became apparent that Norma was a quick study, and he wasn’t needed. So at her urging, he took his bag and went back inside to look in on his patient.

She was awake and more alert than the night before. The two of them were alone in the cabin, and it seemed to Andrew that she was smiling at him.

“Hello, Loo,” he said. “Do you remember me?”

She mumbled at him, in a slow, damp drawl. She was definitely smiling. He could see her teeth—short, plaque-covered stumps that peeked out under glistening lips. She mumbled again, and grunted.

“I’m Dr. Waggoner,” he said, and pulled up a stool beside her. “Going to try and make you better. Do you understand?”

Loo made that grunting sound again, and her eyes squinted as though she were trying to pass stool, and Andrew shocked himself by flinching, a sliver of disgust and horror pricking his middle. The girl was enfeebled through no fault of her own; and she had been raped by—by some inhuman thing—and here he was, trained to heal all infirmity, turning away in what? Disgust?

Horror?

He bent forward. “I am going to check you,” he said. “Can you lie still for me?”

Then he set about her second examination.

Loo was still running a low fever, her heart sounded fine, and there wasn’t much congestion in her breathing.

“Good girl,” said Andrew, and Loo mumbled back. “Now,” he said, “I am going to look at your belly.”

The sheets and blankets were stiff and stank from days of stale sweat. He had to literally peel away the tattered bottom sheet.

Andrew gasped. Even in the dim light, he could see the mottled discolouration across her, dark bruising from beneath her breasts to her pelvic bone. He traced with a finger one of the two thick scars that Nils Bergstrom had left. With his other hand laid flat, he felt for movement—anything, any sign of the thing in her uterus. He felt nothing but the girl’s breathing.

So he took the stethoscope, and after warming it first in his hand, set the chest-piece against the flesh above her navel. And he listened.

The two things missing from the physician’s bag that Jason Thistledown had stolen for him were the two things that Andrew dearly wished he had: a pencil and a proper notebook. With those two things, Andrew might have written down a proper clinical description of the thing he heard twisting and gnawing inside the belly of the poor idiot hill girl.

As it was, Andrew Waggoner took the stethoscope away, looped the rubber tubing and put it back in the bag. He returned to Loo’s bedside. He felt her forehead for fever, checked her eye movement with a finger, and even tapped her knee to see if it might jolt, which it did.

Then he sat by her, and waited, until Hank opened up the door and told him they’d finished everything he’d asked and there was no more reason to tarry.

“So ’s time,” said Hank. “Get doctoring.”

It was just past noon when Andrew Waggoner cut into Lou-Ellen Tavish. They had laid her out on a clean sheet on the table, pots of steaming boiled water next to her and Andrew’s surgical kit laid out on a stool beside her. He had set his mirror between her legs, which had been strapped apart, one to each table-leg. Her breathing was slow and steady, as a result of the morphine he’d given her. Next to the mirror was the ivory speculum, fresh out of the boiling water. He lifted it, because he did not intend to cut yet, and brought it to her vagina. The speculum had two pieces: a conical wedge, which fit perfectly inside the cylinder. If things were as they should be, the first step of this operation would be to insert that between the patient’s labia, gently forcing it open. Then he would remove the wedge, and have a two-inch diameter tube through which to operate.

But Andrew set the speculum back down as fast as he’d lifted it. He bent forward, positioning the mirror to get a better look.

“What’s a matter?” asked Hank, who was standing with his brothers and sisters and cousins at the agreed-upon distance of ten feet. “Your arm hurtin’?”

Norma, the only one allowed close, leaned in closer to look herself. “What’s it?”

Andrew touched the labia with finger and thumb. “Look,” he said, drawing them apart. Between the pink flesh was a yellowish membrane, stretching the length of Lou-Ellen Tavish’s vagina. “There’s no opening. Or rather—there’s an opening, but something is covering it.” Andrew prodded it. It made a crackling noise, as though it were part calcified. “It’s as though her hymen regenerated somehow.”

“Hymen?”

“Maidenhead.”

Norma nodded. “Ah. The child skin. That don’t come back once you’ve lain with a—”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Andrew. “I’m going to need a scalpel.”

Norma didn’t know what that was, so Andrew took it and showed her: “Scalpel,” he said. “For next time I ask. Now I need you to get around there and spread the—” he was about to say labia , but again, just showed her: “These.”

Norma leaned over and did as she was told. Lou-Ellen made a soft whimpering noise, as Andrew leaned in, positioned the mirror, and set the blade of his scalpel against the tissue.

“Need somethin’ else?” asked Norma finally.

“No,” said Andrew, “I’m fine.”

Which finally was true enough. His hand did not shake at all as he pressed the tip of the blade into the strange yellow tissue.

Although the scalpel was keen, it took surprising force to break through the membrane. It became fibrous once the scalpel breached the brittle surface, and Andrew had to saw at it.

But once that pierced, Andrew did not have to complete the incision. It was like breaking a seal on an overturned jug; once the scalpel pierced all the way through, the pressure from a thick flow of brownish liquid tore it the rest of the way open. It splashed up Andrew’s arm, stained the sheet to the edge of the table, and filled the dish of the mirror with a foul broth.