The captain cut him off. “Don't get Jesuitical with me, Assistant Surgeon William Beaumont! I can call on His Holiness Father Didier if I so desire that. I'm a soldier charged with policing this garrison so that peace reigns and thus commerce thrives. That's peacetime in a democracy for you.”
The captain curled his lip. “This is your private affair. Just like your devotion to that drunken Gumbo with the hole in his side.” He shook his head slowly. “Like a dog to his vomit, so a fool returns to his folly. There's something to be learned from this, I'd reckon, but I'm not a clergyman. I thought you all had some sort of ethic about doing no harm, but you, sir, have a queer sort of ethic, near poisoning a soldier, then exhausting your charity and reputation on some useless fur trapper with a bunghole in his side. But I'll leave such inquiries with the likes of our good Reverend James, or Father Didier when he comes to wet the brown babies' heads, but there is something to be learned.” The captain chuckled. “Good day to you, Doctor.” He gestured with the gun to the door to his office.
THAT EVENING, AFTER ALEXIS had gone out, while Sarah slept in her cradle, Beaumont and Deborah sat together at the kitchen table. She set down her sewing. “What's wrong? You've been quiet all evening.”
He sighed. “Have you heard the latest news of the Griswold matter?”
She shook her head.
When he finished the story, she stammered, then rose to hug her husband. “William, this is terrible. Terrible.”
He tried to soothe her.
“I debated even telling you, but it's better that you hear this from me than from the gossips of the island. I know how word gets about.”
“The president of the United States,” she said.
“Deborah, please don't upset yourself. It's all a misunderstanding. Clearly lieutenants Russell and Morris made a case out of this. Now I understand why they insisted on being transferred to Detroit. I was neither advised nor consulted about the appeal. Had the president consulted me or any other like-minded medical man, he'd have understood that this is a medical matter and that I comported myself with the utmost professional judgment. Deborah, please, my love, don't weep.”
“It's so awful. What did he say? A mind warped, not sensitive to your duties? What will this do to your prospects for promotion to surgeon?”
“Warped by ill will. It's just rhetoric to make a case, but plainly it's not a case well made. Now please, sit. You mustn't strain yourself.”
He eased her to her seat.
“Your promotion?”
He stroked her hair. “I will solve this. It's all my doing. My mistake. I should have simply let the man wallow in his melancholy. I was too much possessed to do what was right, too disturbed at how he was using me to excuse his sloth, too moved by Hardage's appeal to me for help. And now it has cost me my friendship with Hardage. That I do regret.”
“Why not just say that then?”
“Say what?”
“To Hardage, to the president. Say that you were too much possessed by your high moral principles. Not to argue, but to ask for their mercy.”
He stared at her. “I can't do that now, Debbie. I can't. I must fight back, to maintain my reputation. I've already begun composing a letter petitioning for a court of inquiry into the matter, composed of my peers and fair judges. In time, this'll all be rectified and my name cleared. All of this will be forgotten as so many misunderstandings are forgotten. Time's a queer thing, Deborah. There's the truth, and then there's the memory of the truth.”
He held her closer.
“You know, that play we read this summer. The Midsummer Night's Dream, the one with people transformed into animals. I think about the play and us on this island and wonder if we're not being taunted by fairies spinning fortune's wheel and playing with our dreams, showing us for the fools we are.”
“And Alexis is Puck?” She smiled. “Here to make us mad.”
“But we're not fools, Deborah.”
“We think we can control what we want, work for it, but fate overrules us and drives us mad. After Nathaniel betrayed me and I returned in shame to my father's house, I learned that the best we can do is to steady ourselves, live simply and hope for God's mercy.”
“And then I appeared.”
“That is my point. My mercy and trust were rewarded.”
“Don't worry, Deborah. In time, we'll be gone from this place, living in a fine home, in a civilized town. I know what I must do: finish the case report and submit it to Surgeon General Lovell. I'll ask his guidance on publishing it. With a case worthy of the Medical Recorder, I'll surely have his support, as well as the support of the surgeon general's corps. When Lovell sees that case, I'm certain he will support my promotion. That case shall more than counterbalance whatever stain the Griswold affair leaves upon my reputation.”
He did not work on the case report and the letter to Lovell. Instead, he wrote and rewrote his petition for an appeal of the president's judgment upon his professional character. He saved the drafts in chronological order. The document ran to five neatly scripted pages. After he posted it in the mail pack to Detroit, he rose each and every morning anticipating a reply. When that reply finally came, it was only a single sentence.
“The petition by Assistant Surgeon William Beaumont on behalf of Assistant Surgeon William Beaumont has neither standing nor merit and is thus denied.”
BEAUMONT GREW DESPONDENT.
Deborah was soon to deliver. Alexis returned later and later in the evenings, always intoxicated. Hardage Thompson would no longer speak with him, his wife, Sally, avoided him, and the Reverend James, his wife, and Emilie Crooks treated him with cold civility. Captain Pearce regarded him with mocking disdain. Deborah's pregnancy soon became a convenient excuse for them to decline invitations to dinner, to leave a sociable early. Only Ramsay Crooks seemed unchanged. He found the whole set of events amusing.
“The ladies' reading experiment seems to have been a bit of a bust,” he announced one afternoon when he encountered Beaumont as Beaumont was leaving the company store with a boxful of supplies.
The nightmares of Beaumont's youth returned. The barn door was left open, and the cows were lost. His father was in a simmering square-jawed rage. Some nights he didn't sleep, and on those when he did, he often awoke in confusion and terror; the pale light of the bedroom window was not where it should be, and the dresser beside the bed he shared with his brothers had vanished, and then he recovered his wits and calmed himself that he was not in Lebanon, Connecticut, with his brothers beside him snoring and dreaming, but beside his wife in their modest house on Mackinac Island.
Twice, Beaumont nearly ordered Alexis out of the house, but both times he changed his mind. He looked again at the table he had made of reasons for and against Alexis's departure. He took up his pencil and scribbled out the words “Alexis leaves” in great jagged, sweeping strokes, like the kind his daughter Sarah made at play with a carbon pencil, then circled “Alexis stays.”
He was not only convinced it was essential to keep Alexis, but he had also begun to believe it was better that the wound remained open. He tried to banish this thought as soon as it arose, but it came again, like lust, and each time it returned it was more demanding and powerful and undeniable. He could not banish what he had learned over the last year: Alexis was a living laboratory, and he was his. As he considered the observations and experiments he might perform on him, he was suspended between the poles of enthusiasm and despair. He had not the slightest experience or skill to perform experiments. The more he observed Alexis's stomach, the less he understood.
He decided he needed Surgeon General Lovell's support to continue with his experiments. That support would not only cover the stain of the Griswold affair, but also give him time to conduct the experiments while he still earned his forty dollars a month income as an assistant surgeon.
November 1823.
Dear Doctor Lovell,
I write to you with news of a most interesting case for your consideration
. Since, June of 1822, I have cared for a lad, a fur trapper, who was accidentally shot by the unlucky discharge of a gun. The whole charge, consisting of powder and duck shot, was received in the left side at no more than 2 or 3 feet distance from the muzzle of the piece, carrying away by its force the integuments more than the size of the palm of a man's hand. Accompanying this letter is a thorough summary of my successful efforts with the case that I humbly suggest may be worthy for publication in the Medical Reporter.
Within nine months, the lad had recovered perfect health and a hardy, robust constitution, able to perform any kind of labor from the whittling of a stick to the chopping of logs, but the wound still remains with an aperture to the man's stomach. When he lies on the opposite side I can look directly into the cavity, and almost see the process of digestion. I can pour in water with a funnel, or put food in with a spoon, and draw them out again with a siphon. I have frequently suspended flesh, raw and wasted, and other substances, into the perforation to ascertain the length of time required to digest each; and at one time used a tent of raw beef, instead of lint, to stop the orifice, and found that in less than five hours it was completely digested off, as smooth and even as if it had been cut with a knife.
The case affords an excellent opportunity for experimenting upon the gastric fluids and process of digestion. It would give no pain, nor cause the least uneasiness, to extract a gill of fluid every two or three days, for it frequently flows out spontaneously in considerable quantities. Various kinds of digestible substances might be introduced into the stomach, and then easily examined during the whole process of digestion. I may therefore be able hereafter to give some interesting experiments on these subjects.
Sincerely,
Wm. Beaumont
Assistant Surgeon, US Army
EIGHTEEN
BY THE END OF NOVEMBER, the population of the beach had dwindled to just a few tents and lean-tos as the voyageurs and Indians broke camp and packed their possessions into bateaux and canoe. They rose at daybreak and gathered at the shoreline to survey the horizon, the clouds and wind to judge whether to depart for the mainland. Small waves chattered at their feet.
Deborah was confined to bed. Her legs had swollen so that Beaumont could pit his thumb into the soft white flesh about her ankles as if it were dough. Mrs. Farnham had charge of Sarah. When she and the child left the house on errands, Alexis remained in case Deborah began her labor. Beaumont kept at his work. He had to. The sick rolls were steady with an intermittent fever, and Emilie Crooks had a new set of pains. One week, he called on her almost daily.
In mid-December, the first of the winter storms came around noon. It began as flakes floating like soft feathers and settling upon men's caps and shoulders, then increased to a steady snow that became sheets of pelting needles that pricked the raw skin of a man's cheek. The snow continued for hours, overnight and through the second day. On the third day, when Alexis tried the door to the house, it gave way only a few inches before it met a dead weight like pushing against sacks of grain.
The storm and the winds that followed the storm kept them winter-locked for days. Deborah read Rousseau's Julie, a gift from Emilie Crooks. In the evening, William read aloud the poems of Burns. Sarah traced her small fingers over the woodcut prints that illustrated the poems and asked her father for stories about the lambs and the farmers and the fish. Alexis kept to his small room or squatted upon a stool before the kitchen fire, smoking a short clay pipe and whittling as he listened to the stories. Beaumont cooked a venison stew that lasted them for three days. Some nights were so cold that the bowls of their spoons steamed like living beings.
ONE EVENING, AFTER SUPPER, as Beaumont was dressing Alexis's wound, Deborah called to him from the bedroom. “William, can you come?”
He looked at Alexis, hesitating.
“William, I need you,” she yelled.
In haste, he rose up, telling Alexis to just lie there. He found Deborah in their bedroom, squatting, breathing fast, panting, her dress and the floor about soaked as if she had pissed herself.
“Deborah,” he cried.
She moaned. “This is the only position.” She pressed her head against her crossed arms upon the wall and resumed panting.
He stood behind her with his hands on her shoulders. “Alexis,” he shouted.
“William,” she moaned. “It hurts like a fire in my bowels will explode. Get Helen Farnham.”
“Let's get you in to bed.”
“Now, William. Now!”
He shouted again for Alexis. The lad did not appear.
“Where in God's name are you, boy?”
He turned, and there was Alexis at the doorway, shirtless as Beaumont had left him. The violaceous pucker of his wound was visible like some errantly placed anus. His expression that of a spooked deer.
“Fetch Mrs. Farnham. Double time. Use my snowshoes if you require them. Go. Go quickly!”
Three hours later, Deborah delivered her second child. A boy they named William.
The next evening, the two men sat alone at the kitchen table eating dinner. The low fire and the lantern cast their faces in shadows.
“Will she live?” Alexis asked.
Beaumont slowed his chewing as he studied his plate.
“My mother, she died after she delivered my third sister, Emiline. I was just a boy. It was the winter like now. Blood and everything. It was horrible.” Alexis's voice trailed off.
Beaumont set down his utensils. He reached for the pitcher of water and began filling his glass. “They always bleed. They need to. It's Nature's manner of restoring the body to its equilibrium. Mrs. Beaumont will live.”
“Good.” Alexis drummed the tabletop with his fingers. “You know, Doctor, when you called me I was not able to come right away because I was without my dressings and I'd eaten. I feared that if I stood, food would spill out. But when you called again, I got up and I came. I heard how much you needed me.”
“You don't have to apologize, Alexis. It was frightening.”
“Thank you, Doctor. Nothing at all was left. All of the sudden it was all gone like that.” He snapped his fingers.
Beaumont regarded Alexis. “Nothing came out? Out of the hole?”
Alexis nodded, and then he shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing at all. It was all gone. Incredible.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Only when you put in that tube to drain the fluid does it hurt.”
“No, when you got up. Did your stomach hurt? The wound?”
Alexis shook his head.
Beaumont stood up and took up the lamp.
“Let's go to your room and have a look.”
Beaumont gestured to the door. The lamplight cast his shadow large and shimmering behind him.
Alexis lay back, and Beaumont cut away the dressing and lifted off the compress. The hole was as it always was. In the last few weeks, a small fold or doubling of the gastric coats, the size of a silver dollar, pink and moist as a dog's tongue, had appeared and begun to cover the hole. It yielded to gentle digital pressure and did not at all intrude on Beaumont's inspection of the gastric contents. There it was again. Beaumont pressed the forefinger of his right hand against this tissue, and it gave way to expose the cavity and the scent of the evening's meal. He withdrew the finger, and the fold of tissue reappeared. Beaumont asked Alexis to sit up.
“Now?”
“Yes, up here now, on the edge of the bed. Here.” Beaumont patted the edge of the bed.
Alexis slowly eased himself upward, and as he did a spurt of brown liquid shot out from the hole like ejaculate. Alexis cursed, but Beaumont put his hand squarely against the small of his back to keep him from lying back on the bed in the customary posture for inspection of his wound. Alexis whimpered like a child and cupped his hands over the hole as if to catch the egress of his meal. He held his hands before the wound, and then he slowly raised them outward and upward in a vague gesture as if to fly.
The hole was sealed.
“Stay like that,” Beaumont commanded.
He reached for the lamp and leaned in closely to inspect the hole. The space was filled by a protrusion of pink flesh now acting as a kind of valve. He pushed his finger into that flesh. It was tense, surely holding in the contents of the evening's meal.
Beaumont studied the wound. “Lie back,” he commanded.
Alexis did as he was ordered.
Beaumont pushed with his finger and the pink flap gave way again. His forefinger freely entered the cavity as far as his second knuckle. The inside felt warm and wet with the evening meal. He drew his finger out and wiped it with a cloth.
“Now up again. Up.”
This time Alexis rose slowly. The fold of gastric tissue had settled into place and covered the hole, a kind of natural lid.
Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont Page 13
