Full Spectrum 3 - [Anthology]

by Ed By Lou Aronica et. el.

  “What?”

  “That was about oh, nineteen, twenty years ago, I think. A pregnant woman fell through some rotted flooring in one of the warehouses on Sailmaker Street. The fall started her labor, and by the time someone heard her screams, she was so near her time that they didn’t even have a chance to dig her out. Someone got Gremekke, and they lowered him headfirst through the hole and held on to his legs while he delivered the babies. Two of them.”

  “It wasn’t entirely upside down,” Gremekke corrected. “More like a forty-five-degree angle. Good thing, too—I would have blacked out, otherwise.”

  “You should have seen him, Mateo, with his scissors tied to him, dangling from his wrist so that he wouldn’t lose them if he dropped them. He handed up the babies, and then they were able to pry the mother loose.”

  “My God.”

  “How many babies would you say you’ve delivered, Gremekke?” Teah asked.

  “I don’t know. Thousands.” He laughed.

  “And it hasn’t all been babies, either,” Teah went on. “This city has seen a couple of serious epidemics.”

  Gremekke sighed. “The last one—it was a spring after a lot of flooding. Roads were impossible. A virus. One hundred and fifty died in a month.”

  “You forget,” said Teah softly. “How many more would have died, if you had taken to the hills along with so many others?” She turned to Matthew. “I know. He set up a makeshift hospital compound extending out from his clinic and pooled his resources with Hev’rae Lenor and Hev’rae Mavo. He went without sleep for seventy-two hours.”

  Gremekke was silent, staring at his ale.

  “You’ve been a good hev’rae, Gremekke.”

  There was a little pause. Then Gremekke said slowly, “You’ve been a lot of places, Teah, but I don’t believe that I’ve ever seen you in The River’s Edge before.”

  “No, Gremekke. But you were here.”

  Gremekke raised his eyes slowly to her, his face white. “This is it, then, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Gremekke. This is it.”

  “Gremekke?” Matthew asked, puzzled. “What’s going on? Gremekke!” Gremekke made a convulsive movement, upsetting his ale, which spread in a brown pool, soaking into the mat. Matthew sat up straight in alarm as heads turned in their direction. Teah didn’t move.

  “Felt… felt something… pop,” Gremekke forced out, his voice mildly surprised. “Lord, I’m so weak…” He slumped back against the wall. “What is it? It’s not a stroke?”

  “It’s the tube beneath the heart, leading to the lower body,” Teah said calmly.

  Matthew gasped. “An abdominal aneurism? The lower aorta burst? But he’ll bleed to death in minutes—” He scrambled up to his knees and shoved the drinking cups aside with a sweep of his arm. “Help me lift him. I’ve got to get him back to the clinic.”

  But as he reached out to hoist Gremekke’s limp form, Teah’s hand on his wrist stopped him. “Wait—think, Mateo,” she said urgently. “I will not say that he dies because you fail to operate, or because you do. I can only tell you that whatever action you choose to take, his time has come. Given that, how will you choose to let Gremekke meet his end—under the knife? Or here, where he wants to be, with his friends?”

  He stared at her in anguish. “I can’t do nothing!”

  “Life comes to an end, Mateo. It must.” She withdrew her hand. “You must choose.”

  He turned to Gremekke and gently put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. Gremekke’s eyes glazed over with pain and then closed, and in that instant Matthew made up his mind. “I’m not going to sit back and let a man die. Not this time.”

  “Mateo—”

  “Save it. I’m taking him back to the clinic.” Lifting the healer over his shoulder, Matthew struggled to his feet. The other patrons had gathered around, and he glared at them, wondering if anyone would try to stop him. “Somebody help me carry him.”

  No one moved, although a few looked uncomfortably at Teah. She rose slowly, her gaze steadily meeting his. He wheeled and started for the door. “All right, then. Get out of my way.” He didn’t wait to see Teah follow.

  The streets were still slick from the night’s early rain, and Gremekke got heavier with every step. Matthew’s mind raced as he tottered on: even if he had his kit with him, it wouldn’t do any good. Only immediate surgery could save Gremekke now. It was more than a kilometer to the clinic, and the gravity making it seem even longer, and besides, there wasn’t enough blood in stock to replace what he must have lost by now; there wasn’t enough time, not enough time, not enough time…

  When he had gone about half of the distance, Matthew staggered and half fell against the corner of the building, his breath burning in his chest. He collapsed to the cobblestones, lowering Gremekke across his lap. Teah appeared silently at his side like a shadow and knelt beside them. Matthew raised Gremekke’s head, pushing the gray fringe of hair back. In the pale glow from a nearby unshuttered window, he could see how ashen the old man’s face looked. “Goddammit. Goddammit, Gremekke.”

  The old hev’rae heard the plea in his voice and opened his eyes. “That’s… all right, boy… there isn’t enough time to get me back home. Teah promised long ago… she’d make sure… I’d… I’d be ready. She promised a good death for me.” He was having trouble breathing. “Rhyena’v’rae, please… take me into your arms.”

  Teah put her arms around Gremekke and pulled him toward her, to lay his head in her lap as Matthew hastened to shift the healer’s feet. They settled him as comfortably as they could, and then Teah leaned over him. “Gremekke, what do you to need to say before you go?”

  “Thank you… for telling me what it was… I always did… have a morbid curiosity to know… what would carry me off in the end. Impossible to do an autopsy on yourself.” His eyes looked over to Matthew. “And… thank you, boy. For everything.”

  Teah waited and then said, “Is that all, Gremekke? Is there anything else?”

  He sighed and closed his eyes. “Nnnno…”

  Teah laid her hand on his forehead. “Then rest. You will soon know the answer to the question you have pondered for all these years. When you could not save your patients, and they died with their eyes open to something which only they saw, you always wondered, what was there on the other side? Now, Death is coming, but it won’t frighten you. It will be like all the times you have delivered children. A cord will be cut, but it will not hurt. It is the beginning of something new.”

  She fell silent and remained with her eyes closed and her hand on Gremekke’s forehead, unmoving. Two minutes crawled by, and then four, as Matthew watched them, his eyes stinging.

  Finally, Teah whispered, “There it is; do you see it? Death raises the Cloak to enfold you, and it will feel cool, like the shadows that comfort you in the heat of the noonday sun. Don’t be afraid… I am with you.”

  Gremekke’s breath eased out once more as Teah leaned forward and kissed his forehead—and then it stopped. Matthew laid his head on the old man’s chest but heard nothing. He buried his face in the roughspun shirt. Just as he was wondering whether he would be able to control the sobs that struggled in his throat, he felt Teah’s hand, placed on his head like a benediction, and he gave way to his grief.

  * * * *

  In accordance with the instructions of his testament, Gremekke’s body was cremated and the ashes scattered at sea. An old friend of Gremekke’s, Hev’rae Lenor, delivered the eulogy at the memorial service. Matthew spoke briefly, too, trying to describe what their work together had meant to him. Somehow, the words didn’t seem enough.

  Afterwards he greeted many of the people who had attended the service. The various hev’raien spoke kindly to him and asked him about his plans. Others who had been Gremekke’s patients over the years shook Matthew’s hand and told him little stories, of something Gremekke had said or done for them once, of a bill discreetly overlooked, a baby’s life saved. He felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of all the pe
ople who had known Gremekke, who wanted to come to honor his passing.

  The evening after the service Matthew spent going through the papers in Gremekke’s desk. Many of them having to do with the running of the clinic were already familiar to him. But there were others: correspondence, research notes, lists, and legal documents, including a copy of his testament which Teah had brought over earlier in the day. Matthew read over it carefully.

  The first section dealt with the estate. Gremekke had left the clinic to Matthew, contingent upon Matthew’s decision to stay on Calypso and assume the practice. If Matthew decided not to stay, the assets of the clinic were to be sold, with part of the profit going to Matthew, part to a few other friends and colleagues, and the rest to charity. Teah’s fee was included, too.

  He sat back and thought about it. Taking the practice over formally would mean leaving the Peace Corps, of course. After all, he had taken the assignment on Calypso with the understanding that it was only temporary. But things were different now, and he had to alter his preconceptions to match the change in his situation. Could he be happy making this world his permanent home?

  He picked up the testament and read on through the second section, the contract between Gremekke and Teah: … to come to him when his time of death draws near, using the art of the rhyena’v’raien to ease and comfort… Matthew stopped and thoughtfully chewed a thumbnail. Teah had not come for any of his patients since that workman died two years ago. He realized now that he had been relieved that he hadn’t had to face the issue again, almost as if it allowed him to pretend that the whole thing didn’t matter.

  And yet Gremekke had hired her himself. Why? Gremekke had devoted his life as a hev’rae to fighting off entropy in every way possible and yet—Matthew remembered the trust in Gremekke’s eyes when he finally turned to Teah at the very end. For all his faith in medicine, Gremekke had needed something from her that Matthew couldn’t give him.

  His gaze fell on the modestly framed copy of the Hippocratic Oath that hung on the wall beside the desk. … I will follow that method of treatment, which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous… Into whatever houses I enter I will go into them for the benefit of the sick… And what of the dying, he wondered. What of the dead? What is my responsibility toward them? Does her work benefit them, even more than medicine can? Gremekke must have thought so. Is it possible that Teah is fulfilling this oath better than I am?

  * * * *

  Someone was knocking. Matthew tried to ignore it because Gremekke was the hev’rae on call and should have been the one to get up and answer it. Then he remembered that Gremekke was dead.

  He raised his head. He had fallen asleep at Gremekke’s desk, with his head resting on the piles of papers, because he hadn’t wanted to go to bed. How foolish. He got up and went to answer the door. It was Teah.

  “Mateo?” She blinked in the light, pulling her cloak close against the rain.

  “Teah,” he said, surprised. “I’d planned to come see you tomorrow, to thank you for all your help with the service and everything.” He held the door open for her, but she stayed where she was, shivering. Something about the way she looked at him seemed strange to Matthew, and another thought struck him: it was rather late at night for a sympathy call.

  “What is it, Teah?” he asked, wondering if he was wrong.

  He wasn’t. She looked at her feet. “It’s my nephew, Rano,” she said, her voice low.

  “I’ll get my cloak.”

  * * * *

  She led him to Briena’s house and told him to knock. He did so, and when he turned to speak to her again, she was gone. Before he could step away from the doorstep to go look for her, the door opened and a woman peered out at him.

  “Yes?” she said suspiciously. She was probably Teah’s younger sister, he thought, but while Teah was slim and fine boned, this woman was gaunt, with hard lines around her mouth and rough, calloused hands.

  “You are Briena?”

  “Who wants to know?” she demanded coldly.

  “Forgive me, I’m Hev’rae Mateo. Your sister Teah sent me to you, since your little boy is sick.”

  “Teah did? She was here earlier—” She opened the door wider to allow him to step inside. He removed his shoes and followed her to one of the two small sleeping rooms.

  Rano lay on a pallet, flushed and bright-eyed with fever and breathing hoarsely. He turned his head to look as Matthew sat down on the small chair at the side of the bed.

  “Hello, Rano. I don’t know if you remember me, but I’m a friend of your Amo Teah. I’m here to see if we can’t make you feel a bit more comfortable.” He pulled the light closer and examined the gray patches on the boy’s throat. It was catchthroat, similar to the old Terran diphtheria—and a bad case, from the looks of it.

  “Has a hev’rae been to see him before now?”

  Briena’s face twisted into a scowl and then crumpled into tears. “No— thought I could take care of it myself—couldn’t afford one anyway.”

  “When did the patches first appear?”

  “Yesterday night. It’s catchthroat, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” He bit back an angry comment about her negligence. Accusing her wouldn’t do any good now. “Start boiling some water,” he ordered. “I’m going to rig a steam tent. He opened his kit and pulled out the antitoxin and a scalpel to break the seal.

  They labored over Rano for hours, swabbing his throat every half hour and keeping the steam kettle boiling. Rano fought the treatments weakly at first. But as the night wore on, he stopped resisting, instead focusing his failing strength on fighting for the next breath through the strangling membranes. The steam-filled room grew oppressively hot. To Matthew’s tired brain, the shadows seemed alive, looming over the bed menacingly, watching and drawing nearer as each breath that Rano desperately sucked in grew weaker.

  Matthew and Briena jumped at the knock at the outer door.

  Their eyes met.

  “Teah,” Matthew said in a low voice.

  Briena stared at him in wild fear. “No,” she whispered, “No.”

  He wearily got to his feet to let Teah in, understanding now that she had sent him because she had hoped against vain hope that he could prevent the inevitable.

  He ushered her silently to the bedside. Briena retreated and pressed herself against a wall, staring at Teah with huge, horrified eyes. Teah, who kept her head averted from her sister, sat down on the bed, her face white and still. Matthew opened the sides of the makeshift steam tent and removed the kettle, and a pillar of steam rose, curling against the ceiling and mingling with the shadows.

  “Rano?”

  The boy plucked feebly at his covering, and Teah pressed her hand over his. “Rano? It’s Amo Teah.” He opened his eyes.

  “Would you like me to cuddle with you, Rano?” He nodded faintly, and she pulled off the cover and took him into her arms, drawing him into her lap. He was arching his body, sucking painfully, and she shifted her hold on him slightly so that he could expand his rib cage and placed her hand on his brow. Matthew knew that children in the last stages of catchthroat convulsed in their panicked attempts to get air, and he was awed as Rano relaxed at Teah’s touch and lay quietly as she murmured in his ear. He knew, suddenly, that here was something that she could do for the boy that he couldn’t, in spite of all his training.

  “Remember your turtle, Rano? He swam into the basin, where you picked him up. When you put him back, he was able to swim out when the tide came back in.”

  She was rocking him gently, her cheek resting against his wet head. “I want you to close your eyes and pretend with me now, Rano. We’ll go down to the beach together, see? I’m holding your hand. Do you see all the shells that you love to collect, lying on the sand? You found a special one for me once, and I always keep it on my windowsill, so that I can see the sun shining on its pink insides.

  “Now we’re clim
bing on the big rocks. It’s hard to get up there, but we boost each other over the difficult places. We’re going to go swim in the tidal pool.

  “We get into the water, oh, so carefully, but it’s not too cold, because the sun has been warming the rocks all day. So we swim a little, floating on our bellies, and then we roll over onto our backs and look at the sky.

  “The sun is setting low, and it’s time for the tide to go out. Can you feel it, pulling you? I’m still right here with you. The water pulls us away from the shore, away from the rocks, out to the deep, deep sea as the moon rises and the stars come out. The shore looks beautiful in the moonlight because we can see all the lights twinkling over the waves, but still the tide pulls us farther and farther out—out to where the fish jump and dance over the waves and where the turtles go.”

  She paused, and Matthew saw a tear drop from her bowed head to fall on Rano’s sweat-streaked hair. She lifted a hand to brush at the place, but when she spoke again, her voice was as even and soothing as before. “I can’t go with you any farther now, Rano, but that’s all right. There is a friend coming toward you now who knows all the secret places under the sea that you’ve always wanted to explore. The friend is reaching out a hand for you, see? Let go of my hand now, Rano. Let go of my hand and go with your friend.”