Healers (17 page)

“Maybe,” Eva said dubiously. “I’ll tell the family we’ll do what we can, but that there isn’t a whole lot we can do for this condition.” She turned and stepped towards Mr. Spencer and Mrs. Lee. Tarc could only hear a few words like, “pneumonia,” and, “not much we can do.”

Daussie arrived behind him. He whispered to her, “This guy’s got pneumonia. We’re hoping to figure out a way to get some of the fluid out of his lungs so he can breathe better.”

Daussie jerked a nod and dropped to her knees beside the young man.

After a few moments, she stood back up and leaned towards Tarc’s ear. Sounding frightened, she said, “This is really bad! I tried transporting the fluid out of a few alveoli, and I can do it, but there must be millions of them. I could never do enough to make a difference!”

“What if I squeezed the fluid up into the bigger bronchi?”

Daussie’s eyes widened, “You’re thinking you’d just squish a section of the lung? What if it never reinflated?!”

Tarc shrugged, “Then we wouldn’t squish any other sections. You got any better ideas?”

Eva stepped up at that point, “The father wants us to try whatever we can. He at least
says
he understands we’re not likely to be successful.” She turned to her daughter, “Do you think you can move some of the fluid out?”

Daussie turned her eyes on her mother, then explained the issue with the millions of alveoli. She continued, “Tarc thinks he can just squeeze little segments of the lung to push the fluid into the bigger bronchi.” She looked back up at their patient, “But even transporting it in bigger chunks, it would be a
lot
for me to transport.”

Eva said, “Once he gets it into the bronchi, maybe the patient will cough it out himself.”

Sounding a little excited, Tarc said, “Oh, once it’s in the bronchi, I can push it along with my ghost to help him cough it out!”

Eva said, “If we raise the foot of the litter, gravity will help the fluid flow from those lower lobes up towards his throat.” She looked thoughtful for a minute, then said, “You guys find something to prop the foot of the litter up on. I’m going to go explain to them that what we’re going to do will make him cough a lot. Otherwise they’ll think we’re just killing him outright.”

Daum helped them move the litter so the foot of it was propped up on the tongue of their little wagon. Tarc knelt on the patient’s left and Daussie on the right. They had decided Daussie should transport any big globs she could so the patient didn’t have to cough it
all
out. She held a little jar to transport it into. She would also gently pat the young man’s chest so Mr. Spencer, the father, and Mrs. Lee would see some reason for the patient’s coughing episodes.

Eva knelt at the patient’s head with some rags for the patient cough into. They didn’t want him spraying infectious sputum everywhere.

Daussie started patting and, with trepidation, Tarc chose a small segment of lung and squeezed it. The fluid poured from the alveoli, to the tiny bronchioles, to the larger and larger bronchi. From tiny droplets it consolidated into a steady flow in the bigger tubes.

Paul, the patient, immediately began coughing, but Tarc mercilessly kept pushing the fluid along into bigger bronchi. He felt small segments of it disappear as Daussie transported it away. Eventually the patient’s own systems began helping move the fluid as he coughed it out.

Eva carefully caught the disgusting phlegm Paul coughed out. She dropped the rag she’d kept over his face into a shallow pan of Daum’s moonshine. She used a second, moonshine-soaked rag to wipe his face and her own hands.

They all sat, waiting to see what would happen to the segment of lung Tarc had squeezed. To their immense relief, after a few moments areas of it seemed to pop back open, pulling air back into alveoli which had formerly been filled with fluid.

Tarc blinked a couple of times on a sudden realization that his ghost should be able to help re-expand the segment of lung. He gave a few tentative tugs on areas that hadn’t really expanded by themselves and was gratified to feel them fill with air.

They gave Paul a minute or two to rest from his paroxysm of coughing, then Tarc squeezed out a much bigger section.

They decided the second segment had been too large. It took so long for the fluid to flow out of the bigger section that Paul coughed until he was exhausted. Eva said, “I think you should do intermediate sized segments from here on out. He’s going to need to rest a long time after that one.”

The evening passed slowly as Tarc milked segment after segment of Paul’s lungs free of fluid. Paul’s mother showed up and hung about on tenterhooks, alternating between depression over her mother’s death and fear for her son.

Eventually, it became obvious Paul was breathing better, however, he seemed to be getting really tired. Eventually, he begged to be allowed to sleep. The Hyllises were ready to go to sleep themselves, though Tarc was glad the breaks they’d taken to let Paul rest had been long enough that Tarc had only developed mild headaches despite the extended use of his ghost.

In the morning, Paul looked quite a bit better and his father was pleased. However, Tarc was dismayed to find fluid reaccumulating in areas of lung he’d cleared the night before.

Paul begged not to have to go through any more of the paroxysms of coughing he’d gone through the night before. Tarc caught Eva to one side, “What do we do when a patient refuses treatment that would save his life?”

Eva shrugged sadly, “Let him die. Suppose you were in such pain you would rather die than live? Would you want someone to force you to stay alive?”

“But… but Paul will get better if we just get him through this! I think… won’t he?”

“Maybe, maybe not. We can explain it to him, but, in the end, it has to be
his
decision.”

Eva sat beside their patient and explained to him it was the coughing episodes that were making him better. “Those fluids you’re coughing out? It’s like they’re drowning you from the inside. I know the coughing episodes are terrible, and they might
not
keep you alive, but you’ve
got
to get rid of that fluid and I think coughing it up is your best chance.”

Eventually Paul decided he was ready to live through a few more episodes, though he wanted the right to refuse them if he felt too exhausted.

This time they had him turn over to lay face down so the stuff would drain out of his mouth better. A few minutes later, Paul was coughing violently.

Paul’s father had been sleeping, he woke and came over. “What’re you doing?!” he barked, looking terribly frightened.

Eva looked up, and spoke calmly “Another treatment, trying to get the fluid out of his lungs.”

“No! It’s too much, you’re
killing
him!”

Tarc’s heart sank. If the boy’s father was blaming his death on them
now
, and Paul did actually die, which seemed pretty likely, there would be hell to pay.

Eva, however, serenely said, “No problem, we’ll stop. We don’t want to do anything you don’t ask us to do.”

Tarc and Daussie stood up, stepping away and looking back and forth from their patient, to his father, and then back to their own mother. Eva wiped Paul’s mouth with the rag she’d been holding under his face, then, rather than dropping it immediately into the moonshine, she laid it out where the large quantities of slimy mucus Paul had coughed up were readily visible. She picked up another moonshine soaked rag and used it to wipe her hands and Paul’s face.

Tarc saw Paul’s father staring at the rag full of disgusting material his son had just spewed from his lungs. The man stepped closer to his son and said, “Paul, son, how’re you feeling?”

“Terrible! God-awful! Yet… better than I did yesterday. I can breathe better than I did before, at least when they’re not making me suffer through these horrible coughing spells.”

The older man knelt beside his son, concern all over his face. “Shall I tell them to stop? Or… do you want to continue with these… treatments?”

“I think… continue,” he said weakly. “But
not
right now! I can only take so much at a time!”

After a moment of what appeared to be agonizing indecision, Mr. Spencer said quietly, “Okay son. Whatever you want, we’ll do it.” A tear trickled down his cheek and he swallowed to clear the frog in his throat.

They made a plan to come back and perform treatments intermittently through the day when business was slow at their booth in the market. For right now they started cooking breakfast for the caravan.

The day went by in a relatively routine fashion, serving breakfast at the caravan, treating Paul before going to the booth, getting everything set up for the pizza rush around noon and performing another treatment on Paul before the rush actually started.

When the afternoon pizza rush slowed, Eva, Tarc, and Daussie went back to see if Paul was up to another treatment. On the way they were stopped by Mr. Miller, the man whose ears had been plugged with earwax. He thanked Eva effusively, and asked her if she would look at a friend of his.

While Miller spoke, another man slowly limped up next to them. He was overweight and had a florid face. Tarc suspected he knew what was wrong before the man even told Eva it was his great toe that hurt. Eva turned to smile at Tarc. “What do you think?”

“Well, it’s
probably
gout, but we should get him to take off his shoes so we can look at it.”

Eva thumped Tarc on the shoulder as they walked the man to their wagon so he could sit down and take off his shoe. “I
told
you that once you’d seen gout, you’d recognize it the next time!”

Tarc rolled his eyes. While the man was getting settled and working on taking the shoe off of his painful foot, the Hyllises went to check on Paul. To their dismay, the young man looked significantly worse. Pale, with sweat popped out on his brow, he seemed to be gasping to breathe again. All three of them immediately sent their ghosts in. They found the lower lobes of the right lung had accumulated some fluid again. Much more concerning however, fluid had now accumulated in the upper lobe of his left lung!

“Oh gods!” Daussie quietly breathed in her mother’s ear. “It’s spreading! Do you think all the coughing we’ve been making him do has spread it around?”

Eva stepped back away from their patient, shrugging. Once they all had a little distance, she said, “I don’t know.”

“What are we going to do?!”

Eva sighed, “In the olden days, when they didn’t have an antibiotic to kill the germs, all they could do was what they called ‘supportive care.’ That could mean giving a patient IV fluids and other medicines to help the patient breathe. Sometimes they actually used a machine to breathe for the patient. Supportive care’s what I feel like we’ve been doing. We’re helping clear the fluid out of Paul’s lungs so he can breathe for himself while we’re waiting for his body to make antibodies and kill the germs itself.”

“How much longer will that take?!”

“I’m not sure. Days to weeks, I think.”

Upset, Daussie said, “It’s already
been
days! And if it’s going to take weeks, I don’t think we can support him that long!”

From right behind them, they heard Paul’s father speak, “I don’t think you’ve been supporting him at all! I just see you thumping his ribs and making him cough! To me it seems like he’s only getting sicker!”

They turned. Daussie felt horrified to realize the patient’s father had walked quietly up behind them while they were arguing. His drawn face showed his exhausted anger.

Eva turned a calmly sad countenance on Paul’s father. “You’re right of course, he
is
sicker.” She shrugged, “I believe he isn’t as sick as he would have been without our treatments, but I can’t prove that to you. As I promised you before, if you don’t want the treatments, we certainly won’t continue them.”

“You’re damned right we don’t want your quackery! Stay away from him! I’ll be back as soon as I can find someone to carry the other end of the litter so I can take him home.”

Sounding heartbroken, Eva said, “I’m sorry we’ve let you down. Tarc can help you carry the other end of the litter if you want to take Paul home right now.”

Daussie darted a glance at Tarc. He looked just as dismayed as Daussie would have expected. Carrying one end of the litter of a dying man back to the home of his father who hated you… With a start, she realized that treating constipation might not be the
worst
of a healer’s tasks.

The offer of Tarc’s assistance didn’t soften the father’s attitude. “Okay, let’s go!”

They turned back toward Paul. While they’d been talking, Paul’s mother had appeared at his side. She was sponging his face with a moist cloth and looked up with concern on her face. Quietly she said, “I think Paul’s feeling a little worse.”

Mr. Spencer, Paul’s father, growled, “You’re damned right he’s feeling worse. That’s because he
is
worse! We’re taking him home… Now!”

Mrs. Lee’s eyes widened, first in dismay, then in anger. “Stephen! What have you done!”