Through Phantom Eyes: Volume Five - Christine

by Theodora Bruns

  He first felt my head and wrist, but, when he heard me struggling to breathe, my lungs then got his attention. His face showed the degree of his concentration when he placed his stethoscope on my chest and back. Then he looked sternly at me.

  “Why didn’t you come back, Erik?”

  I couldn’t answer, so I closed my eyes and turned my face away, but he promptly turned my face back.

  “I have to remove your mask, Erik.”

  I didn’t answer. I felt too bad to care.

  His fingers started searching my face, and, when he reached the left side of my jaw, I pulled away in pain. He moved my face back where he wanted it and continued his search. He was frowning the entire time, and, periodically, his eyes glanced at mine.

  “You look as though you’ve been in a horrible fight, Erik.”

  I closed my eyes without answering, and he turned my head and parted my hair, looking through it like a monkey grooming another monkey in a tree.

  “That’s a nasty gash you have there. I’ll have to stitch that up.”

  Again, I didn’t answer as he continued to probe me. When he began applying pressure to my right shoulder, I once more moaned and pulled away, but that only made him examine it closer. Once he had my shirt laid open and saw the bruising around my shoulder and across my ribs, he looked me in the eyes and shook his head.

  “I certainly hope you got at least one good punch in, Erik.”

  I once more closed my eyes and turned my face away, not wanting to tell him that I’d done it to myself.

  He sighed and said, “You have a high fever, and I’m almost afraid to look at your leg.”

  But he did anyway, and, as my trousers came down, the concern in his eyes increased a hundredfold. When he gently pulled the bandage off, he took a deep breath and actually coughed because of the stench. His nurse had to turn away, and she gladly left the room when he told her to get certain items for him.

  “Erik, I can’t believe this. What have you done to yourself? Why didn’t you come back?”

  “It’s a very long story, Doctor Leglise, and I don’t wish to bother you with it.”

  “Well, you’re going to be here for quite a while, Erik, so you might as well start talking.”

  I narrowed my eyes and frowned at him. “What do you mean—quite a while?”

  “This is very serious and I mean very serious,” he responded while giving me a sideways glare.

  Not certain I wanted to know the answer, I asked almost under my breath, “How serious?”

  “Well, to put it in a few words, your leg is rotting off.”

  Over the last few weeks of working with him on my nose, I knew he had a good sense of humor, but, as I searched his eyes for it, it was nowhere to be found. He was dead serious. The nurse came back in with a tray of medical supplies, but she didn’t come too close, and she didn’t look at my leg or me.

  He began probing around in my wound, and I gripped the table and clamped my teeth together. He took a deep breath, laid the instrument down, and backed against the wall, staring at my leg. He rubbed his jaw and took another deep breath. Then he looked me in the eyes. His nurse, while holding her hand over her nose and mouth, asked if she could be excused, and he granted her that request with a hand gesture.

  I became impatient and almost snarled at him. “Well, are you going to stand there holding up the wall or do you intend to help me out here?”

  Looking at the wound and rubbing his jaw one more time, he sighed. “Well, Erik, we have two choices. I’ll assume you know you have a serious wound here. You may not have a nose but you still have the sense of smell and that alone should tell you the serious situation we’re facing.

  “I can operate and take out a section of your leg, hoping I can reach all the decay. But, if I do, there’s a chance I’ll have to go too deep, and there could be nerve damage and you could lose some mobility in that leg. That’s if I’m able to get all the dead tissue out, and, if not, it will continue to spread and we’ll be back at square one.”

  I frowned at that prospect, knowing he wasn’t joking with me. “Is it really that serious?”

  “Yes, Erik. That muscle is actually rotting away, and, if it isn’t stopped, you won’t last much longer, neither you nor your leg. The infection has obviously started to spread through your body, that’s why you have the fever. So, whatever you decide you want me to do, we have to do it quickly.”

  I thought a moment and then asked, “You said there were two options. What’s the other one?”

  “It’s rather unconventional, but I’ve had good success with it before. Instead of cutting out the dead tissue, I could implant a colony of live maggots into the wound.”

  “What!” I couldn’t help exclaiming, while trying to rise up.

  “I know it sounds repulsive,” he started to explain, “but they do a good job. That’s their sole purpose in life, to eat rotting tissue, but it’s usually that of a dead animal. Although they don’t know the difference between the dead tissue in your leg and a dead squirrel lying in the forest. It doesn’t make any difference to them.

  “And the advantage of using maggots is that they’ll usually only eat the rotting tissue and will leave the healthy tissue alone. They can get into spaces and clean out your wound in a way that I can’t. Unless there’s a nerve that’s had its covering infected, they won’t eat it and it won’t be damaged.”

  I pictured maggots crawling inside me, and I closed my eyes tightly and shivered.

  “What are you thinking, Erik?”

  I shook my head slowly. “I’m not usually squeamish about such things. I’ve had occasions to witness their work during my travels, but the thought of them performing their skills within me I . . . . My stomach has been sick for days, but, right now, that thought I simply can’t fathom.”

  I shivered again, and while he laid a blanket over me, he said, “Let me tell you a true story. There was a miner who got trapped when the mine collapsed. He had a beam across his legs and couldn’t move. He was alone with only one water canteen. He was in pain, but he had no idea what was happening to one of his legs as he lay there.

  “It was almost two weeks before he was dug out. After being taken to the hospital, the doctors found a large wound on his leg, perhaps like yours, but there was no sign of any infection and it was partially healed. He was badly dehydrated, but he didn’t have any sign of infection, which he should have had. When they examined his leg closely, they found, along with the healthy pink tissue, maggots—lots of them.

  “I can imagine they were just as repulsed as you are, but, when he walked out of the hospital two days later, they attributed the saving of his leg and his life to those hard-working, repulsive workers.” He laid his hand on my shoulder. “If it were my leg, Erik, I’d go with the maggots.”

  While that story was interesting, I wasn’t ready to consent to such a procedure just yet, so I questioned him further. “Are those my only choices?”

  He rubbed his jaw again and looked under the blanket at the wound again. Then he looked into my eyes before he gave me an answer.

  “Well, we could amputate the entire leg. That’s always an option.”

  “What!” I again exclaimed.

  “It’s your choice, Erik, but we shouldn’t wait too long.”

  “What’s too long?” I sighed, thinking of all I needed to do for Christine.

  He looked at his watch and then back at me. “Oh, about two minutes.”

  I turned my face toward the wall and thought over my options. “How long would the . . . they take?”

  “They’re pretty fast, but it depends on how much of your leg is diseased. If I were to take a guess, I would say probably no more than three or four days—five days tops.”

  The thought was absolutely revolting, but it was better than losing the use of my leg. It was at that time, when I thought about the possibility of losing the use or even the partial use of one of them, that I realized how much I depended on them. How would I get u
p and down all those stairs or ride a horse?

  With those thoughts in my mind, I answered, “Very well, what do I need to do?”

  He patted my arm. “You don’t have to do anything other than stay here and rest. I’ll do what’s needed. Well, the maggots and I, that is.”

  I watched him as he started to cross the room. “You expect me to stay here? For how long?”

  Then I saw the sense of humor I was used to start to return. “Until they’re finished with their meal. It would be impolite to disturb them before that time.”

  The thought of lying there for up to five days was impossible, so I shook my head slowly, “I can’t do that. Why do I have to stay here? Will they refuse to eat unless they’re in your company?”

  He squeezed my arm and chuckled. “No, Erik, it’s not that. You need to be immobile and the wound needs to stay open. In addition, I would need to monitor their progress closely. You can’t be wandering around with the little critters crawling in and out of your leg. They might escape or get lost.”

  His sense of humor might have been up and working, but I wasn’t in the mood. The thought of it taking that long was worse news than the seriousness of the wound and the medical procedure combined.

  “I can’t stay here that long. There has to be another way.”

  His humor walked out of the door instantly. “Erik! You’re in this serious situation because you refused to listen to my advice. You said you didn’t have time to take care of yourself properly, and look what happened. Well, you only have one place to go from here. If this isn’t taken care of right now, your next stop will be a pine box, and I dare say you’ll have plenty of time then. Do you want that?

  “You need to listen to my recommendations and respect them for what they are. You came to me for some reason, and I can only presume it’s because you felt you needed my help. Well, I’m trying to give it to you. You can’t expect me to create miracles or work with my hands tied behind my back. You have to listen to me. You need to stay here and let me take care of you.”

  I took a deep breath and started to get up, causing him to push against my chest with his palm. Not wanting to break the wrist of the man I expected to help me, I gave into him.

  “What’s so important on the other side of that door that can’t wait for three, or even four days?”

  I pushed my head back against the pillow and rubbed my fingertips against my forehead. I think I even whined. I looked out of the window at the tree and the pink blossoms falling with the gentlest touch of the breeze. Another season was beginning with new life as its prospect, just as it did every year. The decision I made right then would mean the beginning of a new life for me or the end of it. Could I take a chance of waiting any longer to capture Christine’s heart?

  I turned my sight back to his waiting eyes. “I respect you, Doctor Leglise, and that’s the only reason I came back to you. You’re one of the few people in my life that I’ve allowed to see the reason for my mask. My mask,” I repeated with a slight sigh. “You know, I can’t remember being without one. As far back as I can remember, a mask was an essential part of my wardrobe. And, believe me, my memory goes way back. I put it on with regularity, just as I would my shirt or any other piece of clothing. Even when I was a small child, I wore the mask.”

  I took a deep breath and looked again at the pink tree. “I left my home when I was ten. Then I spent the next fifteen years trying to avoid those who either wanted to make a profit off of what was under my mask or wanted to end my life because of it. Then, at the age of twenty-five, something happen to me that I never dreamt would happen. I found a wonderful girl who didn’t care what was behind my mask. She looked in my eyes with the same love, whether I had the mask on or off.”

  I nodded to the gold band on his finger. “You know what it’s like to have someone look in your eyes with that special look of love. It’s the most wonderful feeling, don’t you agree?”

  He nodded and I asked, “Do you have children?”

  “Yes. Three boys and one girl,” he replied softly.

  I nodded and went on. “For the first time in my life I had a hope of having children. I don’t expect you to understand how that made me feel. You, more than likely, always knew that someday you’d marry and have children, but I never did. I’d reconciled myself to the prospect of never marrying or having children of my own. Then that special girl appeared without warning and changed my world completely.

  “But then someone with good intentions talked me into waiting just four days. He said, that’s not long, only four days before I could take her for my wife and start a life that I’d never dreamt possible. I respected that man very much and, because of that, I agreed to wait the four days.”

  With another sigh, I closed my eyes and then looked at the ceiling. “Another man who I dearly respected once told me that you never know what tomorrow will bring, and, in that case, he was so right. Because I never suspected what awaited me at the end of those four days. By then, she was gone from me, she was stolen, I was robbed, and my world was turned upside down. That event changed me into something unimaginable, something I hated.

  “That was twenty years ago, and I gave up. No, it wasn’t that I gave up because I never gave another thought to ever finding anyone else like her again. For me, the chance of ever finding even one person who could look behind my mask without repulsion was almost impossible, so the chance of ever finding another one would be completely impossible, as far as I was concerned.”

  I returned my sight to his eyes that were fixed on mine. “Then almost three months ago, there she was. I began to think maybe—just maybe—I might have another chance at love. I’ve been working with that goal in mind since then. I’m only one step away from finding out if she could be the one. And I’ve been one step away for several weeks now, while I put that day off for one reason or another.

  “I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I could get hit by a runaway brougham, I could fall down a flight of stairs and break my neck, or the next person who wants to end my life could be a better marksman.”

  I placed my hand over the scar from my knife wound. “I’ve escaped death more times than I care to remember, and, from what you say, there’s a chance I may not outrun it this time.” I took another deep breath, closed my eyes, swallowed hard, and then I looked him directly in his eyes again.

  “Doctor Leglise, I’m a forty-five year old man who has never been kissed, not even on the cheek by my mother. Never, Doctor, never. I don’t even know what it feels like. I don’t know where I’ll be tomorrow, and I don’t know where I’ll be in four days. I realize your words are well intended, and so were my friend’s twenty years ago, but I can’t wait four days. I can’t put this off any longer.”

  His eyes were telling me how much he felt for my plight, so I put the life I wanted with Christine in his hands with my next plea and a smile.

  “There has to be a way for me to let your little creatures work, while I continue with my plans to find someone to love me. I’ll be nice to them, I promise. I won’t hurt them. You have to help me find a way.”

  He was silently watching me by the time I finished my desperate dissertation. Then he slowly removed his hand from my chest, where it had been lying the entire time, and then sat in the chair next to my bed. After a few seconds of thought, he nodded and told me his ideas.

  “You have to agree to stay here at least for the rest of this day. I’ll need that time to begin the procedure. I’ll see to it that you get home today. But I’ll need you to come back every day so I can monitor your progress, or, should I say, their progress. Other than that, I only ask that you keep your leg dry and stay off your feet as much possible.”

  He opened an armoire and took out an ebony walking stick. “Before you leave, I’ll show you how to make the best use of this.” He paused a moment and looked at the row of medical books on his bookshelf. “I can’t treat the area with as strong a medicine as I normally would. It might kill our hungry friends, s
o you need to take it under your tongue. It’s bitter and might sting, but a small amount of wine will take care of that. Will you agree to that?”

  I nodded. “Yes, but one other thing.” I started, even though I was afraid to. “My lungs—how did they sound to you?”

  He came back to me and listened again. “They’re tight, but I don’t hear any fluid in them. I might have something for them in the other room.”

  “I already have something for them. I just wanted to know how bad they were.”

  “Then you’ve had this problem before?”

  Again I nodded. “The first time was when I was five. I nearly died then. I’ve had recurrences since then—again almost dying.”

  He shook his head. “It’s a wonder you’re still alive.” I halfway chuckled, and he asked, “Do you do something special when you get a lung infection?”

  I told him what I normally did, and he had his secretary go out and buy what I needed, including the hard-to-find shark liver oil, while he began the procedure on my leg. When she returned, she made enough tea to keep me going for a few days. He’d never heard of that particular treatment for lung infections, and he was glad to have the information for future use.

  He really did everything he could to help me with my unusual dilemma, not only with the wound but more importantly with my timeline to find someone to love me. He gave me morphine for the pain and instructed me in how to administer it to myself. He wanted me to get proper rest, and the morphine would help in that regard as well as with the pain. I thanked him, without telling him I was an expert in the use of morphine.

  I took the drug from him, knowing I would use it in the right way that time, not only to help me sleep, as he suggested, but as insurance against any further harm I could cause others. I would use it to end my life if I felt I was getting out of control and was a threat to anyone else. I would use the morphine instead of a knife across my wrist or a bullet in my brain. Just like my lassos, it would be silent and spill no blood.