Thomas Perry - The Face-Changers

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.”

She used the peroxide, then waited until he said, “Now begin.”

Jane forced her mind to stop thinking of his back as living flesh. She told herself it was the soft, buttery leather they used for couches and car seats. She sewed it as she would have repaired a piece of furniture, except that it bled. She had to catch the blood with cotton. When she had finished, she tied off the thread as he had told her to.

“Next, douse the whole area with peroxide again,” said Dahlman. His voice was hoarse, all air and no vibration. “Then Neosporin and a full dressing of gauze and adhesive tape.”

When Jane had finished she stepped back and waited. Dahlman lay still. Finally she detected from the sound of his breathing that he was asleep, so she covered him with the blanket and went to the table by the window. She opened a Styrofoam container, looked at the food she had bought, then closed it and sat down in the chair with her hands over her eyes.

Dahlman awoke an hour later, sat up, threw off the blanket, and walked to the bathroom, still as unaware of his nakedness as ever. He used the shaving mirror in front of him to look over his shoulder into the big mirror. He lifted the gauze and studied the wound. “I don’t like the look of that. It’s inflamed.”

“What do we do?”

“An antibiotic. I’m afraid I can’t just write a prescription, can I?”

Jane shook her head. “We’ll have to do it another way.”

“I’ve heard there’s a black market for medicines,” he said. “Is it true?”

“Of course it’s true. There’s a black market for everything. But they’re not people we want to deal with right now. They’re just like any other drug dealers. Antibiotics aren’t their usual merchandise, so they’d have to make a special trip. That makes them curious. We’ll just cut out the middle man and get it ourselves.”

“How?”

“The way they do. What’s the antibiotic?”

“I’d prefer Cipro. It’s effective against the widest spectrum of bacteria, and I have no idea what was in that water.”

“Spell it.”

“C-I-P-R-O. But if that isn’t available, any of the penicillins or cephalosporins would be worth having.”

She picked up her purse and walked toward the door. “Get some rest, and try to eat something. I won’t be back for a few hours.”

Jane selected a gynecologist by talking to a woman at the hotel desk, who had a list of doctors for sick guests. She called and made an appointment for that afternoon. When she reached the office she told the nurse that she was on vacation and had forgotten her birth-control pills. The doctor took her right away, checked her blood pressure and heart rate, and wrote her a prescription for Orthocept pills. As she left the office, she slipped his pen into her purse.