Marshlands (6 page)

There were orderlies about, weather-beaten women from the marshes who went about their business preparing the examination rooms as if he didn't exist.

A young marshman with unusually dark skin folded a newspaper and rose from one of the wicker chairs. He offered his hand, saying it had been a long time since there was a real doctor in residence. He'd been doing the best he could, but his training was cursory, and really only in the area of emergency response. Sadly, he was all the doctor there was for this underserved population. Also, he added, if anyone overheard a marshman calling him
Doctor
, it was only an honorific. He had no interest in passing himself off in any way above his station.

He asked the marshman to direct him to the restroom.

“Of course,” he said, “how thoughtless of me.”

The restroom was bright and clean. There was a vase by the sink with fresh flowers, and a stack of worn but neatly ironed hand towels in a grass basket. After washing his hands, he ran the water a while longer, as if he were inspecting the plumbing of a new home.

The marshman was waiting for him just outside the door. “Satisfactory? Good,” he said, tucking his newspaper under his arm. “To breakfast, then.”

A buffet had been set up in the waiting area. There was warm flatbread, yogurt, and an assortment of fruit—some fresh, some canned, but all of it indigenous to the marshes.

He loaded his plate, cleaned it, and went back for an even larger helping. It was more than he could eat. This was the second instance of waste—the first being the profligate use of water in the restroom—and the day was less than an hour old. It was amazing what was coming back to him, now that he was fed and rested.

Presently the marshman asked if he was ready to start seeing patients. Just as they were about to enter one of the examining rooms, a boy with tiny gray teeth ran up and announced that there was an urgent case with a baby.

“Go on,” the marshman said. “I'll join you when I can.”

At that, the youngster darted off, shouting for everyone to make way. Perhaps he'd been born in the capital, but his joyful warning was reminiscent of the naked boys who careened through villages announcing strangers. They were obnoxious, those boys, but one forgave them. By sounding the alarm, they were proving their usefulness, and were thus harbingers not just of visitors, but also of their own manhood.

He knocked before entering the room. The mother was sprawled on the examining table, resting her head on an outstretched arm, while the baby soughed quietly in a reed basket on the floor. Her face was uncovered. Her long black hair was pinned up, revealing a graceful neck stippled with goose bumps. Aside from a bruised eye, she was a picture of marsh womanhood. The careless way she flaunted her beauty reminded him of his prettiest tent girl, the one who called herself Betty.

She looked him slowly up and down. She seemed surprised by the color of his skin, but not terribly surprised. She sat up, nodding in the way of someone who knows a thing or two about the world. A new man had come onto the scene, supplanting the old one. She shifted the basket with her foot, drawing it nearer to signal that whatever else might be negotiable, the child was not.

He slung a stethoscope around his neck and picked up a clipboard, hoping that the medical props would bolster his nerves. Then he asked if she was well.

Well enough
, she said.

May I examine you?

Her answer was to lean back against the wall and start to lift her dress.

He gently intercepted her wrist to take her pulse.

She shrugged, sat up, and started rocking the basket with the side of her foot.

Her vitals were fine. She didn't want to talk about the bruised eye. She said she was there for her son, who was refusing food, which worried her because he'd always been a regular trencherman.

He made a show of warming the metal part of the stethoscope and testing it on his own forearm, the way he'd seen mothers testing the temperature of baby bottles. The business with the stethoscope relaxed her a bit. Then he asked if he could have a look at the little fellow.

The child was small for his age and very thin. The heart and lungs were healthy, but palpating the swollen belly made him wail.

She said the boy had been breast-fed, but in the last few weeks she'd been weaning him. She mentioned a particular solid food she'd been trying.

When he said he hadn't heard of it, she repeated the name slowly, pantomiming the opening of a small jar. He recognized the characteristic consonant changes that occurred when a marshman was trying to pronounce a difficult word in the language of the homeland. He guessed it was a brand of baby food.

When he asked if it came from a store, she shook her head and said she got it from a cousin who sold jars the stores didn't want anymore. She said that breast-feeding was what people did in the marshes. They were in the capital now, where babies ate proper food.

He played with the boy's index finger, which was papery and limp.
Sister
, he said,
do you want your son to be healthy?

She nodded.

Then listen to him. He's telling you what he thinks of store-bought food.

She nodded again, slower.

Then, in a confidential aside, he told her that his own mother had insisted on breast-feeding him long after other children his age were eating solid food.

Her eyes widened.
Is that true?
she asked.

Actually, it wasn't. His mother had disdained breast-feeding; she'd always referred to it with a wrinkle of the nose as “that procedure.” But he felt justified in telling a little lie. It made him angry to think about the money the woman was spending in the name of modernity, while her baby wasted away.

*   *   *

In the next room, a marshman with an oily baseball cap pulled low over his eyes sat on the edge of the examining table, sunk in thought. Before any words could be exchanged, the marshman sat bolt upright, staring straight ahead as if this were a military inspection, not a medical one.

The cause for the visit was obvious. His left hand was wadded with stained gauze. The bandage was filthy and held in place with clear packing tape.

He surprised the man by starting his examination not with the wound, but with a few mundane questions.
Are you eating well? Are you having any trouble with your digestion?
And then, leaning in, he asked whether everything was all right in the sack.

This brought a wry grin. The marshman confided that, ever since the accident, he hadn't really had an appetite for women.

He played along, clucking his tongue. He said there'd been a period in his own life, after a fall from a horse, when he couldn't perform his marital duties. His wife had packed her bags and moved to her mother's house for three months.

None of this was true, except for the part about the fall from the horse, which had been quite serious. The marshman perked up at the mention of riding. He asked if the doctor really rode.

Yes, of course
, he said,
although not as much as I used to
.

The marshman commiserated. Back home, his uncle had been a horse trader. One of his chores as a youth had been to take his uncle's new horses for a ride in the dunes in order to gauge their desert-worthiness. He remembered riding for hours across trackless sand. Sometimes, if the horse was strong, he'd dig in his spurs, close his eyes, and gallop blind. He said it was like being lifted up in a whirlwind.

You must miss riding very much
.

The marshman shook his head. His flight of fancy was over. He said that he worked in a noodle shop. Sometimes the machine that cut the noodles jammed. Clearing jams was part of his job. Someone had turned it on while his hand was involved with the blade. The machine had taken his fingers, but luckily just the tip of his thumb.

Here
, he said, hastily unwinding the bandage.

There's no rush
.

The marshman smiled mirthlessly.
It's all right
, he said,
there's no pain until the end.
Before tearing off the last of the gauze, he paused for a moment to remove his cap, which was dark with sweat, and set it aside. When he ripped the last of the bandage free, his whole body convulsed. A croak came from his gaping mouth, but he didn't cry out.

The odor of the crusted stumps was nauseating, but the cap was hiding something worse: a ring of scars around the head, like the impression of a thorny crown.

He knew how a marshman got scars like that. He'd watched his own soldiers wrap the razor wire and pull it tight.

He went to the sink and ran the water until the dizziness passed. The mere sound of it was soothing. He splashed some on the back of his neck, then turned to the marshman and apologized.
My heart is old and weak
, he said.

He readied a bowl of warm water and a heap of loose cotton and began to clean the stumps. The crust was stubborn, so he had the marshman soak his hand. He changed the water several times to keep it warm.

When the suturing was finally exposed, he saw that the stitches were tight and regular, the work of a skilled amateur. Ordinary sewing thread had been used. He asked who'd done the stitching. The marshman said he'd done it himself. One of his coworkers had helped—a man, he added pointedly, who didn't faint at the sight of blood.

He ignored the insult and told the marshman he'd done a fine job. The wound was healing well except for one stump that had gotten infected. There was a risk the infection would spread if he didn't do a better job of dressing it.

He salved the stumps with antibiotic ointment and bound them. When he was done, the bandage looked like a boxer's hand-wrapping. It pleased the marshman, although he was loath to show it.

Is it comfortable?
he asked.
Did I wrap it well?

Well enough
, the marshman said.

Do you mind if I ask about the scars on your head?

The marshman shrugged.
When they wanted something, your people were very thorough.

8

There was a surge of patients at lunchtime. It was good to see so many marshmen in one place. He understood a roomful of marshmen in a way he couldn't hope to understand his own people. They were practical above all else. Factory workers who'd spent their lunch hours patiently waiting made way for a child with a painful ear infection. He admired their selflessness. It would have been easy to raise a fuss, or try to slip the doctor a few carefully folded bills.

He saw patient after patient. Most of the cases were straightforward: pink eye, pubic lice, shingles. Treatment was limited to what was on hand in the clinic. Often, the best he could suggest was an herbal remedy.

He'd made quite a study of folk healing in the marshes. There was a lot he could do for the children and elderly, who were open to traditional ways. The middle generation, however, was skeptical. A prescription of herb tea upset them. What did they need him for, if all he had to offer was a remedy they could have gotten from any street peddler?

He tried to explain that the old ways were often the best, but in fact there were plenty of cases beyond his ability to treat. The elegant woman, for instance, with several grandchildren in tow, who presented very serious neck tumors. He sent the children off to play, then waited in silence as she unwrapped her long headscarf. The tumors were advanced. All he could do was give her aspirin to try to ease the pain.

By the end of the day, he was exhausted. Standing in place took a greater toll on his legs than a day of drifting. Being sociable was tiring, too; listening for hours on end, making himself quiet. What he really wanted was to slink back to his room, kick off his shoes, rub his swollen feet for a minute or two, and fall asleep under the rough blanket.

The orderlies were leaving for the night. He heard distant bolts ramming home.

He went to the buffet table, but the food had long been cleared away and the tabletop scoured clean. All of the trash had been taken out. The trash cans in each examining room had been lined with fresh bags. The supply carts had been restocked and were parked neatly in a row.

He collapsed into one of the easy chairs and drank a juice box he'd found in a cabinet, perhaps stashed there to pacify a child. The juice was sickly sweet, but he gulped it down.

He started to drift off but the juice went right through him. The restroom was locked. He had no idea where to begin looking for the key. His need was urgent, so he filched a bedpan from one of the supply carts and took it back to his room.

Just as he was finishing, he heard a faint “Hello?” It was Thali. He tried to hide the bedpan, but she burst in before he found a place for it.

The color was back in her cheeks. Her arms were full of grocery bags. She told him how pleased she was to hear the good report about his work that day. Apparently, he was a big hit with the patients. Perhaps not so much with the orderlies, but they were a famously difficult bunch.

She apologized for being so late, but she'd been held up at work. She'd met with a powerful woman on the museum's board of directors who agreed with her views on the marsh exhibit. With an ally like that, perhaps she stood a chance of reversing the director's decision. At any rate, it had been a long and productive day, and she was in a mood to walk. Would he mind if they walked rather than took the bus?

He nodded and said, “Yes—I mean, no.” He'd spent the day talking to marshmen of every stripe; now he was having trouble stringing two words together in his own tongue.

“First things first,” she said. She went to a closet and came out with the key to the restroom.

“Here,” she said, “I thought you might want to freshen up.”

He went to the restroom and emptied the bedpan into a toilet, then leaned against the stall for a few moments and closed his eyes. Water was dripping somewhere, perhaps in one of the huge old porcelain sinks. The way it echoed put him in mind of a cave. He pictured wet formations, spires and stalactites.