Lucas said to Toms mouth, Please, sir. Send for Catherine Fitzhugh, at the Mannahatta Company. Tell her Ive been hurt.
In the hospital, a man stood crying. He was dressed for his work, in a butchers apron smeared with animals blood. His affliction was uncertain. He appeared to be whole. He stood with grave formality, as a singer might stand on a stage.
Around him were the others. They sat in what chairs there were. They sat or lay on the floor. There were men, some old and some not yet old, wounded in ways that could be seen (one bled extravagantly from a gash in his forehead, another tenderly stroked his mangled leg) and in ways that could not. There were women who sat quietly, as if whatever sickness had brought them here were as ordinary as sitting in their parlors; one of them, in a tobacco-colored kerchief, coughed demurely, a sound like paper tearing, and leaned forward now and again to spit on the floor between her feet. A man and a woman and a child huddled together on the floor, rocking and moaning as if they shared an injury among them. There was the smell of sweat and other humors mixed with ammonia, as if humanness itself had been made into medicine.
Sisters in black habits and a doctor in white no, there were two doctors hurried among those who waited. Sometimes a name was called, and one of the people rose and went away. The man went on standing in the rooms center, crying with a low, unwavering insistence. He was the waiting rooms host, as Mr. Cain was the host of Lucass block, its wounded and inspired angel.
Lucas sat on the floor with his back against the wall. Dan stood over him. Pain was a hot, brilliant whiteness that suffused Lucass body and bled into the air around him. Lucas held in his lap the bundle that was his hand, wrapped in rags soaked through with blood. Pain originated in his hand but filled him as fire fills a room with heat and light. He made no sound. He had gone too far away to speak or cry. Pain was in him like the book or the works. He had always been here, waiting in this room.
He leaned his shoulder against Dans leg. Dan reached down and stroked his hair with the fingers he had left.
Lucas couldnt tell how much time had passed. Time in the waiting room was like time in his parents bedroom and time at the works. It passed in its own way; it couldnt be measured. After a span of time had passed, Catherine came. She walked into the room in her blue dress, alive and unharmed. She stood at the entrance, searching.
Lucass heart banged hotly against his ribs. It hurt him, as if his heart were an ember, harmless when it hung in the bell of his chest but painful when it touched bone. He said, Catherine, but couldnt be sure if he had actually spoken. He made to rise but couldnt.
She saw him. She came and knelt before him. She said, Are you all right?
He nodded. Tears sprang unbidden to his eyes. He had an urge to conceal his hand from her, as if he had done something shameful; as if, seeing his hand, she would know some final secret about him.
Catherine looked up at Dan. She said, Why is he still out here?
They told us to wait, Dan answered. Well see about that.
Catherine rose. Lucas could hear the rustle of her dress. She went among the others, stepping around them. She stood near the crying man until a sister passed, carrying something on a tray, something that had made a red stain on the cloth that covered it. Catherine spoke to the sister. Lucas couldnt hear what she said. The sister replied and walked away.
Catherine returned. She bent over, put her face close to Lucass. She said, Are you in much pain?
He shook his head. It was true and not true. He had entered pain. He had become it.
She said to Dan, Hes still bleeding. Dan nodded. It would be foolish to deny it. How long have you been here? she asked. I dont know, Dan said.
Catherine made her stern face. For a moment, Lucas felt as if he had come home, as if the hospital were where he lived.
A doctor, one of the doctors, came out of the door through which they took the people whose names were called. The doctor was thin (there was another who was not thin) and grave. Lucas thought briefly that the doctor was one of the men in the cages at the works, the men who scowled over papers and counted out the pay. One of them was a doctor, too. No. The doctor was someone else. Catherine went to the doctor with dispatch (she moved so quickly among the prone bodies of the ill) and spoke to him. The doctor frowned. He looked at Lucas, frowning. Lucas understood. There is always someone poorer than you. There is always someone sicker, more grievously harmed.
Catherine took the doctors arm. They might have been lovers meeting. Catherine might have been the doctors fiancee, taking his arm and insisting as a woman could that he accompany her on an errand she knew to be necessary. Lucas wondered if she and the doctor had met before.
The doctor frowned differently he had a language of frowns at Catherines hand on his white-sleeved elbow. But, like a lover, he came with her. She led him among the bodies to where Lucas sat.
She said, Hes had his hand crushed at the works.
The doctor offered a new frown. He was a marvel of frowns. This one was canted, rakish.
The doctor said, Someone over there has had his leg half torn off. The surgery rooms are full. We are doing all we can.
He is a child.
There are others here before him.
He is a child who supports his parents, who does work much too hard for him, and he has had his hand crushed. His brother died less than a week ago. You must attend to him.
We will attend to him presently.
You must do it now.
The doctor made his face darker. He retracted his eyes, made them smaller but brighter in his darkened face. What did you say, miss?
You must do it now.
The doctor made his face darker. He retracted his eyes, made them smaller but brighter in his darkened face. What did you say, miss?
I beg your pardon, sir, Catherine answered. I dont mean to be rude. But please, please attend to this boy. As you can see, were beside ourselves.
The doctor made a decision. It was easier, the doctor decided, to comply. Others were here before Lucas, but they would wait, as theyd learned to do.
Come with me, the doctor said.
Dan helped Lucas to stand. He put his arm around Lucass back and helped him walk, as Lucas had helped his mother back to bed once. When had that been? The doctor led them, though it seemed it should be Catherine who led.
They passed through the door. It opened onto a corridor that was full of other people. Like those in the waiting room they sat or lay upon the floor. They left a narrow aisle through which the not sick could pass. Lucas wondered if the hospital was like the works, if it was room after room, each different and each the same, leading on and on like a series of caverns until at some length they reached what? Healing itself. A living jewel, a ball of green-gold fire.
Dan helped Lucas along the path the afflicted had left for them. They had to step over a leg and then an extended arm that was strangely colored, bluish-white, like cheese. Lucas wondered if they were going toward the final room, where the healing was kept.
The room they entered was near the end of the corridor. It was an ordinary room, though nothing here was ordinary. It was small and dingily white. There were cabinets with glass fronts, and a chair and a cot. A sister sat upon the chair, bent over a man who was on the cot. The man, about Fathers age but smaller, with longer hair, muttered to the sister.
The doctor said, All right. Lets see.
It took Lucas a moment to know that the doctor wanted to see his hand. Hed thought the doctor meant something more general, something larger, though he could not have said what it was. He preferred his hand. Blood from the soaked rags dripped onto the floor. Lucas looked at the red drops. He thought, Im hurt.
The doctor unwrapped the bandage. He didnt seem to mind about the blood. As the rag came away, the pain changed. It gathered in Lucass hand. It had been all over him like a sickness, but now it was here; it followed the course of the bandages as they were pulled away, like sparks that were caught in his flesh, exquisite and excruciating. Lucas whimpered, though he hadnt wanted to. It seemed as if the bandage had joined him, as if the doctor without realizing his mistake were peeling Lucass very skin away.
Then the bandage was gone. Here was his hand, revealed. It wasnt big anymore, as it had been at the works. It was small and curled in upon itself, like a chickens foot. It was thickly red, as if it were made of blood. It looked like something dreadful, newly born.
He glanced nervously at Catherine. Would she be repulsed?
She merely said to him, Its all right. Its going to be all right.
The doctor put the bandage into a can on the floor. The can contained other things as well. The doctor took Lucass mangled hand in his palm, held it with sharp but weary attention. His new frown was broad and sternly beatific.
Catherine said, What can you do for him?
The doctor answered, Remove the hand. Right away.
No, she said. She seemed to possess a power not of knowledge but of divine refusal. It seemed possible it did not seem impossible that Catherine could restore his hand by insisting it be restored.
Would you rather we wait and remove the whole arm? the doctor said.
It cant be as bad as that.
Where did you receive your medical training, miss?
Its broken, she said. Its badly broken but only that. Cant you set it?
Not here.
Elsewhere, then.
There is no elsewhere. Not for him.
Lucas had never been talked about so, as if he were present and not present. It was like being in the works. There was something good there was something not bad about giving himself over.
Well find somewhere to take him, Catherine said. With what money? Do you have money?
Of course not.
Let me tell you what will happen, then. Youll take him to New York Hospital or St. Vincents. It will take time, perhaps considerable time, for you to see someone there, and that person will most likely send you back here. By the time you get back here it will be gangrenous, and well have to remove the arm, at the elbow if were lucky and at the shoulder if were not. Do you understand?