Healers (14 page)

“So, we should be
friends
!” she said impishly.

“But… Sam and…”

“What about Sam?” Lizeth asked.

“How does… how does Sam figure in to all this?”

“Sam’s my friend too,” Lizeth said cheerfully. “We’re
all
friends.” She winked, “And someday… maybe some of us will be more than friends.
Not
ones who act like jerks though, so
you’d
better stop ignoring me!”

“But! You and Sam have been kissing!”

Lizeth’s eyes narrowed, “How do you know that? Have you been sneaking around and
spying
on us?”

“No! But…” Tarc blushed.

“You
have
!” Lizeth said, her eyes flashing. “There’s
no
way you’d know if you hadn’t!

Tarc tried to figure out how he could explain knowing about the kissing without telling about his ghost. For a second he thought about explaining his ghost to Lizeth, but then realized she’d probably consider using his ghost to be sneaking around and spying too. And, really, it was. “Sorry,” he said shamefacedly.

“You should be, that
also
falls under, ‘acting like a jerk.’ You’d better not be doing any more of it. Besides,” she gave him a little grin, “You can have a kiss too.”

“I can?” Tarc said, hoping he didn’t sound
too
eager. He stopped in his tracks as he realized he’d reached the corner where he turned off toward the grocer.

“Sure!” Lizeth said, leaning up on to her tiptoes and giving him a peck on the cheek. She did it so quickly he hadn’t even realized it was coming. “See you back in camp,” she said cheerfully as she swung around and continued on down the main avenue.

Tarc watched hungrily until she turned the corner. When he turned his eyes back down the street to the grocery, he saw Sam coming his way.

Crap!

Sam didn’t look happy.

Tarc didn’t feel like he’d done anything wrong, nonetheless, he felt guilty as Sam strode up. Leading the black horse and doing his best to act like nothing unusual was going on, Tarc kept moving at the same pace, but gave Sam a little wave. Though it had never happened before, Tarc tried to imagine he was waving at Sam like he would have waved at any other Norton guard he’d encountered in Realth.

He needn’t have bothered. Though Tarc shifted his course slightly to make plenty of room for Sam to walk by, Sam shifted his path to plant himself directly in front of Tarc. He stopped well inside Tarc’s personal space, his nose only about twelve inches from Tarc’s.

Tarc stopped and leaned back, trying to lean back like he imagined he would have if he had no idea Sam might be upset. Doing his best to keep a puzzled, but not fearful expression on his face, Tarc said, “Hey Sam, what’s up?”

“I’ll tell you what’s up, you little shit. You’re gonna stay the hell away from Lizeth… or you’re gonna get your ass kicked.”

“Huh?” Tarc said, doing his absolute best to maintain his expression of puzzled innocence.

“
Don’t
try to pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen you sniffing around my girl!”

“Lizeth?!”

Sam’s eyes narrowed dangerously, “Yeah…! Lizeth!”

Tarc blinked a couple of times, “
She
said you guys were just friends.”

Sam leaned even closer, forcing Tarc to take a small step back. Sounding like he was grinding stones, Sam said, “The fact you asked her about it, tells me you know better! I don’t care what
she
told you, she’s mine and
you’d
better stay the hell away!”

White faced with anger, but still surprised he could bring himself to talk back to the bigger, stronger guard, Tarc said, “I don’t think she can be yours, unless
she
thinks she’s yours. Besides, you shouldn’t talk about
anybody
like they’re your property.”

Sam took a step forward and leaned in farther, “Okay, I
was
just gonna kick your ass
if
I found you hanging around my girl again.
Now
, I’m gonna kick your ass in any case.” He glanced around, “I ain’t gonna do it here, ‘cause I don’t fancy gettin’ arrested by the guardia and doin’ a day or two pickin’ up garbage.” He leaned back and looked Tarc up and down, “Besides, beatin’ the shit outta you is gonna be less of a challenge than wipin’ my ass, which makes me feel a little sorry for you. So I’m gonna give you a couple of days to practice. Maybe you can find someone to give you a few pointers, so’s you can protect yourself a little bit. Then, I’ll let you pick the time and place, and even what kind of fight you want it to be.” He sneered, “Boxing, wrestling, staves, practice swords, it doesn’t matter… You choose it—I’ll bust your ass at it.”

Tarc thought,
Throwing knives?
Then chided himself for even joking to himself about breaking his promise.
Wrestling,
he thought.
I’ll lose, but I’ll bet it won’t be as easy as he thinks it will. It moves slow enough that if he starts to hurt me too bad, I’ll have time to slow the flow in his carotid a little bit.
Tarc felt a little guilty because that seemed like it would be cheating. He resolved not to do it unless he got desperate.
I’ll put up just enough of a fight so it doesn’t seem like I’m a wimp, then cry him the winner.
After working through all that in his mind, all Tarc said was, “Okay.” He stepped around Sam and continued toward the grocers, shaking with reaction.

Tarc sliced cheese for pizzas. Day after day, the pizzas were a huge hit in the market. The Hyllises sold some beans, plain bread, vegetable soups, and large amounts of tea, but the pizzas were the big sellers. They now sold sausage pizzas, olive pizzas and tomato pizzas. Even though the sausage pizzas cost more, they sold faster than anything else.

For variety, they’d tried selling sandwiches instead of pizza yesterday, but the crowds had complained and sales had dropped. So, it looked like they were going to be selling pizza
every
day until they were sick of them.
Oh well, it makes my shopping excursions simpler,
he thought.

Tarc noticed the annoying sound of a crying child approaching. He hoped the kid’s parent was on her way to another shop, but the kid got louder and louder until Tarc could tell it was right outside their stand. It wasn’t fading away! He turned and saw the woman with the kidney stones standing at the front of their stall. She was with a younger woman and the squalling girl.

Tarc couldn’t imagine what the woman was doing back. Daussie had removed the big stones from the collecting system of the woman’s kidneys and new stones
couldn’t
have reformed already. After sensing the woman’s stones, reading about the kidneys and the ureters draining them had taught him a lot about that part of human anatomy. The gratitude he’d felt for the lessons the woman had provided was fading rapidly though.

Eva went out and spoke a few words to the woman. Tarc hoped she was telling the woman to take the child away before the kid’s screaming drove away all their food business. Instead, to Tarc’s dismay, Eva led the woman, her friend and the screaming child back into their little booth. The canvas walls and covering seemed to reflect all the sound directly back at Tarc.

With another irritated glance at the child, Tarc picked up two small pieces of cheese and tamped them into his ear canals. He started slicing sausage.

Someone tapped his shoulder. He turned to find Eva frowning at him, evidently she’d been speaking to him, but he hadn’t heard through his blocked ears, especially over the screaming child. Hoping to keep Eva from noticing he’d plugged his ears to avoid listening to the kid, Tarc reached up with his ghost to loosen the little plug of cheese in his right ear. “Yes?”

Eva gave him a look halfway between bemused and irritated. “Come examine this child.”

Surprised to realize the child was a patient Tarc felt embarrassed. He’d thought the girl was screaming because, in his experience, kids sometimes screamed. Often for no good reason. He’d never seen or treated a sick child before, only the boy with the broken arm. He hadn’t considered how they might react to a painful illness. Nonetheless, Tarc said, “I thought we weren’t treating patients.”

Eva looked disappointedly at him, “That child’s
suffering
!”

As Tarc approached, he thought the child must be somewhere between three and five years old. He didn’t have much experience at judging children’s ages, so he wasn’t sure. Olive skin, splotchy from crying and curly dark hair, matted and moist with sweat. Looking more carefully, now it seemed obvious the child was ill.

Still wiping his hands to get the sausage off of them, Tarc sent his ghost through the child. Nose, throat, lungs, heart, liver, spleen, kidneys, pancreas, stomach, intestines, bladder. Everything seemed normal! Thinking he must have missed something, Tarc went back and sent his ghost into the child’s brain and spinal cord, then he ran it down the child’s arms and legs. All normal there as well. Finally, feeling weird about it, he checked the little girl’s ovaries, uterus, and vagina.

Nothing!

Frowning in puzzlement, Tarc turned to look at Eva, questions writ large on his face.

Seeing he hadn’t found the problem, Eva reached up and tugged on her ear.

Tarc felt embarrassed, he’d read ear infections were a common affliction in children. Sure enough, as soon as his ghost compared the child’s ears, he found a collection of thick fluid behind the eardrum in the right ear. The membranes around it were swollen with inflammation. He turned back to his mother, “An ear infection?”

She nodded.

“But… We can’t treat that,” he said, puzzled. “Unless,” he grinned, “you have some moldy bread around here somewhere I don’t know about.”

Eva produced a single rueful laugh. “No, I
haven’t
figured out how to make antibiotics while you weren’t looking. But, she’s got a collection of pus and we
can
drain pus. In the old days, in addition to antibiotics, they often put a small tube through the eardrum to let pus drain out. Maybe we could do that even if we can’t provide antibiotics?”

Tarc frowned, “What would we use for a tube? It would have to be tiny.”

Eva shrugged, “I don’t know. Got any ideas?”

Tarc always felt the ground shift beneath his feet when his mother didn’t know what to do for a medical problem. “No!” he said, with a mixture of frustration and dismay.

“Well, why don’t you go to the wagon and do a little reading, trying to get a little inspiration. Read the pediatric book and check out the anatomy of the ear too. I’ll give the child a little poppy, then once Daussie’s seen the child I’ll send her in to read with you.” She glanced over at where Tarc had been working, “And, I’ll slice the sausage for you.”

By the time Daussie arrived, Tarc had finished reading the otitis media section of their book on pediatrics. He handed that book to her and gingerly picked up their ancient anatomy book. Hundreds of years old, it was amazing the book still held together. He carefully turned to the pictures of the ear. As he studied the pictures, he sent his ghost into his own head to explore the structures in three dimensions. A tiny tap by his ghost on his eardrum sounded like an enormous boom. His eyes widened as he tugged on his own Eustachian tube. Pulling on it certainly changed his ability to hear. He realized that, when he pulled, it created little vacuum inside the ear. The suction pulled on the eardrum so it didn’t move as well. As he traced the tube it became clear to Tarc that the tube connected the ear to the throat. He wondered if he could pull the fluid out of the girl’s ear and force it down her Eustachian tube, avoiding the need for a hole in the eardrum.

Though, as he examined the situation, he realized Daussie could easily punch a tiny hole in the eardrum. That would probably hurt, but it might hurt pushing the pus down the girl’s inflamed Eustachian tube too. They put tubes in the holes in the eardrum because otherwise the hole closed up trapping the pus again. So if Daussie punched a hole, a child would have to come back and have it opened again. On the other hand, even if Tarc could push the pus down the Eustachian tube to drain the ear, it would probably have to be drained at least once a day.

As Tarc mused on these thoughts his ghost explored the other structures of the ear. The semicircular canals were filled with fluid, but it wasn’t thick like pus. Evidently there was
supposed
to be fluid in the canals as both of his and Daussie’s ears had fluid in all of their semicircular canals. Thinking about pushing fluid down the Eustachian tubes, Tarc tried pushing the fluid around the circle of one of his canals…

Tarc’s entire world flopped around and he fell over onto the floor of the wagon.
Is this an earthquake?! Did something knock the wagon over?!
He felt sick to his stomach and the world continued to swing wildly around him for another few moments.

When the world settled down, he found himself lying in the bottom of the wagon, legs spread wide to stabilize himself. He was holding on with both hands as if he were on a bucking horse. Daussie knelt over him, her eyes wide with concern. “Tarc! What’s happened?!”

“Um,” he said with some embarrassment. “I tried moving the fluid in my semicircular canals with my ghost.”

Daussie leaned up away from him. Her look of worry morphed into the pitying look one might give an imbecile. “Were you
trying
to give yourself vertigo? Or didn’t you pay attention when you read about what they do?”

“Um…”

Daussie gave an exasperated sigh, “You
didn’t
, did you? You’re such an idiot sometimes!”

Feeling queasy, Tarc continued to lay completely still. “What’s verta… vertig… whatever you said?”

“The semicircular canals keep you balanced. When you move your head, the fluid flows through them telling your system of balance how your head moved. Remember when we were kids and we spun around until we got dizzy and fell down? That’s because we’d get the fluid moving with us when we spun. Then when we stopped and the fluid
kept
moving, the rotating fluid would throw us off our balance.”

“Oh,” Tarc said aloud.
Oh!
Tarc thought silently as he considered how he might use
this
phenomenon.

“That was really stupid!” Daussie said. “I can’t believe you just play with things inside of yourself when you don’t even know what they do!”

Daussie had taken a breath to continue her tirade, but Tarc interrupted her. “Okay, okay. It was stupid and I’ve learned my lesson. If you keep rubbing it in, I might be tempted to give
your
canals a spin.”

Daussie reflexively put her hands over her ears to protect them, even though she knew it wouldn’t stop Tarc’s ghost. Then she put them out palms forward as if fending him off, saying, “Sorry!
Don’t
do it! I’ll back off.”

Startled by Daussie’s apparent fearfulness, Tarc said, “Hey Dauss, I know I used to be kind of mean to you and I’m sorry. I wouldn’t do something like that anymore.”

Daussie smiled tentatively, “I guess I didn’t think you would. After all, you’ve been taking
care
of me instead of picking on me. But I didn’t want you to just give them a little swirl as a tease, vertigo’s supposed to be pretty awful.”

Tarc raised an eyebrow, “
You’re
telling me!
I
just went through it. I’m still lying here ‘cause I’m afraid to move my head.”

“Well sit back up, you should be fine by now and I’m sure Mom’s wondering if we have any ideas.”

“I’m thinking you could remove a tiny piece of eardrum to let the pus drain out. I could push the pus down the kid’s Eustachian tube, but it would probably have to be done every day.”

Daussie shrugged, “Any hole I punch will tend to heal unless I make it so big it’ll permanently mess up the kid’s hearing.”

“Better to have a hole punched every few days than to have to see me
every
day to push the pus down the tube.”

“Maybe,” Daussie said dubiously as she climbed out of the wagon. “I’m afraid punching the hole will hurt.”

Tarc climbed down behind her, “Kid already hurts, probably won’t hurt much more.”

Daussie and Tarc quietly talked to Eva about what they had learned while they all pitched in to catch up with cutting up tomatoes and olives for the pizzas. Eva glanced at the child who had fallen asleep after her second dose of poppy. “
I
think the best thing would be to do both.”

Daussie looked startled, “Both?!”

“Yeah, in the old days they could only make an opening to let some of the pus drain out and lower the painful pressure. They couldn’t actually push
all
the pus out like Tarc can, but I’ll bet they wished they could have. However, having Tarc get all the pus out won’t be that great if it just reaccumulates. Having you put a hole in the eardrum might keep that from happening.”

“I think making the hole will hurt!”

“Daussie,” Eva said sadly, “sometimes we
have
to hurt people to help them.”

“Can’t Tarc block the nerves?”

“I don’t know which nerve he’d block,” Eva said. “Did you guys look that up?”

Daussie shook her head, but Tarc said, “I tried to find it, but it isn’t in the books we have, unless I completely missed it.”

Eva said, “I’ve been following my facial nerve, and it goes right by the ear. I suppose there’s a pretty good chance it supplies sensation to the eardrum. Tarc could try cooling it down.” She shrugged, “Let’s go talk to the girl’s mom. If she wants us to try to treat her, then Tarc will cool the nerve. Once he gives you the signal, you go ahead and open the eardrum.” She turned to Tarc, “Then you push the pus out, either through the hole in the eardrum or down the Eustachian tube.”

Daussie said, “Oh! What if we get some of our sterile saline? I could move it into the ear, and Tarc could slosh it around to wash some of the pus out.”

Eva’s eyes widened, “That’s a great idea! You go get the saline while I’m talking to the mother.”

The child’s mother was very happy to have them try something that “might work.” Her daughter had been crying hysterically for more than a day now and she’d been very hopeful when Mrs. Lee told her about the healers out on the merchants’ plain. Eva tried to present both sides of the treatment. The possibility that what they hoped to do might not work or possibly could do some harm versus the fact that ear infections tended to make children go deaf if they weren’t treated. Tarc didn’t think the mother really understood the issues; she was simply desperate to help her child.