by BJ Hoff
Clearly, Jakob Gunther’s hands were those of a highly skilled surgeon, his mind nothing less than brilliant. All the same, he was only a man, subject to a man’s inherent weaknesses and limitations. The great surgeon was still mortal. Thus it was both a comfort and a source of encouragement to Sandemon to sense that during these critical hours, that finite ability, albeit considerable, was being overseen and directed by a Divine Power.
The clattering sound of metal against metal caused Sandemon to jerk and whip around.
The physician glanced up from his work long enough to meet Sandemon’s eyes. For the first time since they had entered the operating room, Gunther acknowledged his presence. “The bullet,” he said brusquely.
Hope soared in Sandemon’s chest, but it faltered when the surgeon sharply warned him against any expectations. “The only thing we know at this moment is that his spine is free of the bullet. It is much too soon for optimism.”
Sandemon knew the physician was right. Still, the bullet had been removed, and the Seanchai was alive. That was enough to bolster his hope, at least for now.
The surgeon and his assistant were working feverishly over the Seanchai, Gunther’s hands quick and deft beyond imagining. The assistant seemed to have more than he could do just to keep up with his mentor.
Gunther’s face and neck were drenched with perspiration. Sandemon saw that even the man’s surgical coat was damp. Obviously the physician was struggling not to contaminate the incision with his own perspiration, for every few seconds he wiped an arm across his forehead to blot it.
Sandemon hesitated only a moment before picking up a clean cloth from the instrument table. Quietly he moved in next to the surgeon, who glanced up with an angry frown.
Gunther’s gaze darted from Sandemon to the cloth, and understanding dawned. His expression cleared as he stilled his hands and turned his face, waiting for Sandemon to blot it with the cloth.
They worked that way, the three of them, for the duration of the surgery: Gunther plying his skills with a seemingly fevered concentration, his young assistant struggling to meet the doctor’s sharp demands, and Sandemon wiping the surgeon’s brow, all the while maintaining his own silent vigil of prayer.
When Finola heard the sound of footsteps approaching from the corridor, she caught her breath, waiting. She had been disappointed numerous times throughout the day, thinking word about Morgan was on the way, only to have the messenger walk past.
But this time the footsteps slowed just outside the door. Her heart racing, Finola stood, waiting.
When she saw Sandemon standing in the doorway, her first thought was that something had gone wrong and the surgeon had sent him with the sorry news. Then the black man’s eyes found hers, and he entered the room, coming to stand directly in front of her.
With her pulse thundering almost painfully in her ears, she searched Sandemon’s face. She could not speak, could not even voice the question that had been churning in her heart since the surgery began early that morning.
And then he smiled. A slight, wan smile, but a smile all the same.
“The Seanchai has survived the surgery well, Mistress Finola,” he said quietly. “The bullet has been removed, and he is resting now. Although the surgeon cautions that he will not speculate on anything beyond this hour, he is quite satisfied with the procedure and with the Seanchai’s condition.”
The tears Finola had been fighting back for hours now escaped in a violent rush. “Thanks be to God!” she choked out.
Her words were echoed time and again as the others in the vestibule came to encircle her and the weary Sandemon.
44
For the Helpless and the Hopeless
He did not wring his hands, as do
Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope
In the cave of black Despair….
OSCAR WILDE (1854–1900)
Through the rest of October and all of November, Morgan lay housed in the plaster cast designed by Jakob Gunther. As if the state of almost total helplessness, spasmodic cramps, lower back pain, and murderously itchy skin were not torture enough, the surgeon—whom Morgan by now had qualified as demented—had contrived with Sandemon a relentless daily schedule of therapy and traction.
Morgan was thoroughly miserable. He only managed to endure it at all because his thankfulness at being alive outweighed his discomfort. At least, that was the case on his better days.
Despite the excellent care he received from his wife and Sandemon, however—as well as the unflagging attentions from the rest of the house-hold—his physical distress seemed to worsen as time went on. The cast—his cocoon—had been thoughtfully conceived for his comfort, was even lined with soft fleece. Even so, body sores were an ongoing problem, inactivity his personal demon.
He sometimes imagined that his body might be fossilizing inside the cast. More than once he dreamed of emerging from the cocoon only to have his brittle bones break apart and go scattering across the room. The restricted freedom of movement brought on aches in places previously undiscovered, and also made it difficult to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.
But if he did indeed go mad, as he often believed he would, it would not be the pain or the boredom that drove him to the edge: it would be the infernal itching! Day and night, awake or asleep, it would not abate. After the first few days he had devised a number of ingenious mind games to get his thoughts off this particular plague, but none of them had been greatly effective. By now, they were all but useless.
But as bad as the physical torment was, the mental distress was even worse. He had always valued his independence. For years a solitary wanderer with virtually no ties, possessed of extraordinarily good health and energy, he had come to the wheelchair with great difficulty and an enormous burden of bitterness. Even after he had managed to accept the reality of the paralysis and learned to live with its imposed restrictions, he continued to suffer an ongoing battle with restlessness and melancholy. Yet through it all, Morgan had had the grim satisfaction of knowing he had faced and survived one of the worst calamities—so he had thought—that could occur to an ordinary mortal.
Only now did he realize how naive he had been in assuming things could not get much worse. His imprisonment in this plaster cocoon was worse than anything he had ever envisioned. Hope had become increasingly elusive. He did not know how much longer he could endure without succumbing to total despair.
He had never been a grumbler, at least not that he was aware. But these days he was finding it well-nigh impossible to brace up and not complain about his lot.
In truth, he had a horror of becoming so abrasive in his present discomfort that he would make everyone else as miserable as himself. With that fear ever in mind, he went to great lengths to paste on a cheerful face when anyone came into the room. Even when Sandemon set his legs in and out of the hated traction pulleys, he managed not to curse or roar, though he was sorely tempted.
Everyone was trying to help, that was the thing. Morgan almost wished they would stop trying, at least for a time. He had more visitors than the Queen, he was certain. No doubt they all feared he would give in to encroaching madness if they did not go out of their way to assuage his boredom.
And they were all so exasperatingly pleasant. So cheerful and sanguine. Even Michael, who Morgan suspected could still be every bit as annoying as he had been when they were lads back in Mayo, was never anything but lightness itself when he visited.
Daniel John came, and for the first few weeks the lad’s company had been most welcome. But by now they had fairly well exhausted the subject of his plans for the university and medical college in the spring, in addition to exploring most of the chess strategy known to the modern world.
Annie, God bless her, continued to make a brave effort to amuse him. Upon demand, he had recited every legend and every tale of the faeries he had ever known, had continued to hear her recitations in Latin and the Irish so she wouldn’t fall behind
—all the while trying to figure some discreet way to break her of that grating Belfast accent for once and for all.
Ah, the lass! She was both angel and imp, with enough pepper to season them both.
Gabriel, of course, could not fathom why his da should be abed so long, much less encased from neck to knee. In this condition, Morgan was no amusement for the boy at all, and so it was only natural the tyke would grow restless after the first few minutes of his visit.
But Finola presented him with his greatest challenge when it came to concealing his distress. He fought an ongoing struggle with wanting her with him, while at the same time feeling more and more impatient with himself for being such a poor excuse of a husband.
Her very presence served to remind him of the great frozen lump he had become. His lovely young wife, in all her radiance and vitality, was chained to a man as useless as a tree stump.
He detested his present circumstances. He detested the loss of his already limited mobility—and his sense of virility. He detested in particular his total dependence on others—which was almost certainly beginning to wear on them as much as it did on him.
He worried that Michael and his family were growing tired of their live-in guests by now. He worried that Finola was growing impatient with being tied to a worthless slab of plaster rather than a whole man.
Above all, he worried that he would go through this torment and, at the end of it, would still not be able to walk a step.
At least once a day he considered ordering Sandemon to take a sledgehammer to the hated cast and break him free. Not that Sandemon would respond to such a wild-eyed demand, of course. These days even the venerable West Indies Wonder seemed cautious to the extreme in Morgan’s presence—a behavior that was anything but typical of the man.
What Morgan found himself hankering for, today at least, was the company of someone as crotchety as himself—someone who would not cater to his incapacity or his melancholy. Someone so mean-spirited and disagreeable there would be no need for forced cheerfulness or pretenses on his part.
Only then did it occur to him, with an accompanying degree of perverse pleasure, that today was Friday: routinely the day when Jakob Gunther, esteemed surgeon, made his call.
“When exactly will I be released from this torture chamber?” Morgan demanded as the surgeon performed his usual examination.
It did not seem to him that Gunther could possibly detect any change in his condition, given the perfunctory nature of his assessment.
“You have asked me the same question twice since I arrived,” replied the surgeon with maddening calm.
“And you have not answered as yet,” Morgan snapped.
Gunther arched an indulgent eyebrow, then made a clicking sound with his teeth. “Testy today, are we?”
Morgan glared at him but made no reply. The truth was, he had come to rather enjoy the distant, enigmatic surgeon, actually looked forward to his Friday calls. For all his acerbity and brusqueness, Gunther intrigued Morgan. Not only was he a formidable chess opponent, but he had an incisive wit and a brilliant grasp of literature and philosophy.
It was true that Gunther was entirely without religion; he would unfailingly level a stony eye on Morgan at even the slightest mention of matters of faith. Morgan had tried all manner of ploys to circumvent the man’s resistance, but had as yet found no way to breach the wall.
In any event, he was immensely grateful for a visitor who would not patronize him or attempt to cheer his spirits. The surgeon’s personality simply did not lend itself to superficial niceties. Morgan could be himself, could even vent a measure of his churlishness without risking Gunther’s taking offense. The man seemed altogether unaware of rudeness, in himself as well as in others.
In light of Morgan’s expectations, it was small wonder that Gunther’s next remark set him back. “This is all very difficult for you, I’m sure.”
The surgeon was still bent over Morgan, tapping the cast as if expecting it to reply, his intelligent brow furrowed in what would appear to be genuine understanding.
Morgan eyed him with suspicion. “Since when do you take note of a patient’s difficulty?”
Gunther cracked the quick, tight-lipped smile that Morgan always found oddly arresting, perhaps because the man seemed so ill at ease with even the smallest hint of human emotion. And then he did a most incredible thing: he laughed. A tight croak of a laugh, to be sure, but an audible sound of amusement nevertheless. “You are much too large to ignore, Fitzgerald,” he said, straightening. “Besides, having encountered the Irish temperament on numerous occasions, I know how you must prize your independence.”
“I see. And what, pray, makes up this ‘Irish temperament’ on which you are apparently so knowledgeable?”
Gunther crossed his arms over his chest, regarding Morgan with the clinical detachment that was his common expression. “Melancholic, given to too much introspection. Fiercely independent. Argumentative. And highly explosive.”
“You are to be commended for not mentioning our more unsavory traits,” Morgan said through clenched teeth. “Now, then, if you are quite finished insulting me, Gunther, I would like an answer to my question. When, I repeat, do I shed my cocoon?”
The surgeon seemed determined to sidestep the subject. “Let me ask you a question first, if you will, simply to satisfy my curiosity. How is it that a man who has been paralyzed all this time is so fit, in body and—in spite of your present testiness—seemingly in mind? You are in remarkable condition, you know.”
“Sandemon,” Morgan said without hesitation. “The man is a martinet. He started on me his first day in my employ and has never let up. I was actually a very poor specimen when he came to me,” Morgan went on, smiling at the memory of his friend’s arrival. “I had grown despondent, was steeped in self-pity as well as pain, and had lost a great deal of weight. He devised an exercise regimen specifically for me, and it wasn’t long after adhering to it that I began to see improvement.”
The surgeon, his arms still crossed over his chest, regarded Morgan with a studying look. “You are quite fortunate. Anything less than total fitness would have worked against you more than you might imagine.” He paused. “Even so, as I’ve told you, time is your enemy. Are you prepared to deal with the disappointment if you never walk again?”
Morgan frowned at him. Gunther seemed to have not the slightest warmth about him to diminish the chill of his character. Yet he could not actively dislike the man, could only puzzle over what sort of factors might account for such a disposition.
He feigned surprise. “Have you so little faith in your own ability, Doctor? I cannot believe that magnificent ego of yours would allow for even the possibility of failure.”
Gunther shrugged, a mannerism he seemed to have refined to a gesture of elegant indifference. “You knew the odds before you went into this. I was quite direct with you, was I not?”
“Brutally so,” Morgan said dryly. “Nevertheless, I thought the risk worthwhile.”
Gunther’s eyes glinted with something Morgan could not read. “And do you still?” the surgeon said quietly. “Think the risk worthwhile, that is?”
Morgan hesitated, his own choleric thoughts of the morning stabbing at him like needles. He found himself suddenly ashamed of his earlier descent into self-pity. Gunther’s question, which no doubt was meant as a challenge, had instead reminded him just how much was at stake in all this. And it had also renewed his awareness that he had made a commitment before God to accept the outcome—to make the best of it, and live with whatever transpired.
He attempted to explain as much to Gunther, but when he reached the part about going on as best he could and remaining faithful, no matter the aftermath of the surgery, he could see the drawbridge begin to raise.
“I know you do not understand,” Morgan finished lamely. “How does one explain one’s faith?”
“One does not try. Not to a heathen like myself,” Gunther said caustically. “But I do not begrudge you yo
ur illusions, Fitzgerald. If they are of any help to you in all this, then guard them well.”
With one brisk movement, he picked up his medical case and took a step toward the door. “Ah—” He turned to look at Morgan. “About the cast—”
Morgan clenched his hands.
“Monday,” said the surgeon in his offhanded way. “We will remove the cast on Monday.”
Morgan watched Gunther leave the room, banging the door behind him as was his way. A torrent of relief washed over him.
Monday. On Monday he would be liberated from this plaster prison. Although he knew that days, even weeks, of the most rigorous physical training still awaited him, for the moment he refused to think of anything but the fact that on Monday, he would have a proper wash. Turn over in bed as often as he liked. Enjoy the blessed absence of the itching and burning. On Monday, he would hold his wife in his arms. Hug his children. Scratch wherever it itched. Repeatedly.
Then the fear set in. A certain dread of the therapy to come was natural, Morgan supposed; Gunther had already warned it would be painful and relentless, enough to try even the most stalwart will.
And then there was the ongoing fear about what might come after the therapy—or, more to the point, what might not come.
Although, at this moment, Monday and the weeks thereafter seemed almost a lifetime away, Morgan was realist enough to know that the time was fast approaching when the question that had nagged at him for months would be answered: would he walk? When all the pain and struggle had finally come to an end—would he walk?
He dared not allow himself even to speculate on what might lie ahead. But there was one thing he could not ignore. He had not spoken of it to Gunther—had not told anyone, even Sandemon—for he was not yet prepared to give any credence to what might be merely a trick of his imagination.
During the past two weeks, mostly in the late night hours, he had thought he felt a stinging sensation in his legs. The first time it happened, he allowed it might have been a dream. But it had occurred since then, more than once.
