American Boy. Larry Watson

could possibly match the salient facts of this day: Tarpaper shack. Lester Huston. Gunshot wound.

      Dr. Dunbar led the way into the room, and we arranged ourselves at the examination table, the doctor on one side, Johnny and I on the other, and the unconscious Louisa Lindahl between us.

      “This young lady,” Dr. Dunbar said, “should be rechristened. A more appropriate name for her would be Lucky Lindahl. She was shot in the torso with a small-caliber pistol, probably a .22, and if you think that gun’s smaller slug and slower velocity would constitute a reduced threat to her, you’d be sorely mistaken. At close range a .22 can do plenty of damage. But in this case her assailant could not have injured her any less severely if he had been trying. Look here—”

      Slowly, as if his main concern was not to wake the patient, Dr. Dunbar pulled the blanket down to her knees. Only a sheet covered her now, and beneath it the contours of her naked body were apparent.

      Dr. Dunbar next took hold of the top of the sheet, but then he left it in place. “Matt, there’s another sheet in that cabinet behind you. Would you get it for me, please?”

      I tugged open a drawer, and was greeted by the smell of bleached linens. I handed a folded sheet to the doctor, and he looked Louisa Lindahl up and down. “How shall we do this?”

      He partially unfolded the sheet I gave him, and draped it across her upper body, right on top of the other sheet. Then he pulled the lower sheet down below her navel. For an instant, however, this maneuver left her breasts uncovered, an error he hastily corrected by pulling down the top sheet.

      The glimpse I had of Louisa Lindahl’s breasts can’t have lasted much more than a second. But it was enough time to take in breasts perfect in their symmetry, pale and faintly blue-veined. The rose-colored aureoles were the size of silver dollars, and there was a tiny slit in each nipple. The breasts were large enough to sag slightly to the side from their own weight.

      The doctor didn’t acknowledge the accident with the sheets—no oops, no embarrassed laugh, no humorous remark. In fact, he whisked that sheet back in place so swiftly, so dexterously, that I wondered if he had been testing us, the way he did when he asked us if a boy who cut his foot on a brick at a construction site should be given a tetanus shot. Perhaps he wanted to know if we were mature enough, if we were serious enough about the profession we said we were interested in, to be shown a young woman’s breasts without making a wisecrack to conceal our titillation or discomfort?

      If we were being tested, Johnny might have received a lower score. He gasped when Louisa Lindahl’s breasts were first revealed, though it wasn’t much as gasps go, just a quick intake of breath, closer to a pain-induced wince than it was to any sound associated with pleasure. I’m not even sure his father heard it. A look might have passed between them, but I couldn’t be certain. I was unpracticed in the subtle communications between fathers and sons.

      A bullet wound was uncommon in Willow Falls, of course, but I had already learned from being around Dr. Dunbar that doctors—and, for that matter, those interested in becoming doctors—differ from other people in a fundamental way: they generally want to get closer to the sights that most people want to turn away from. And when Dr. Dunbar directed us to the wound traversing Louisa Lindahl’s midsection—a foot-wide gash sewn shut with fourteen sutures and painted amber with betadine—the eyes closest to her torso were the doctor’s and mine.

      “Do you see why I call her lucky?” Dr. Dunbar said, tracing the wound in the air just inches above her abdomen. “Her assailant was plainly trying to end her life. He wasn’t aiming at an arm or a leg. She probably turned to the side just when he fired at her, and the bullet tunneled under a couple layers of skin and then from one side of her to the other. An inch or two deeper in and who knows what kind of damage it might have done.”

      “But an inch the other way and it would have missed her completely,” said Johnny.

      Even without the benefit of Dr. Dunbar’s peeved look, I knew that Johnny’s suggestion was not consistent with the lessons his father was trying to teach. “If the bullet had gone in an inch deeper,” I asked, “wouldn’t it have passed through her liver?”

      He cocked his head as if he needed that alteration of perspective to note the arrangement of her organs. “Liver? Maybe so.... It could have even hit a rib, and when a projectile hits bone, you generally have serious trouble. Then you can get fragments—of bullet or bone—flying off in any direction.”

      Dr. Dunbar stepped back from Louisa Lindahl, and while Johnny must have understood that we were to do the same, I missed the message. I remained bent over the wound, my face less than a foot from Louisa Lindahl’s flesh. I could smell the antiseptic, and under that, faintly, something else.... Blood perhaps, maybe nicotine, and then something deeper, muskier, a smell belonging to Louisa Lindahl’s essence. The black knots of the sutures looked like flies lined up along her pale abdomen. I had to touch her—how could I come this close and not?—and yet I couldn’t decide where. I paused, my hand hovering over her.

      That hesitation provided enough time for the doctor to speak my name—“Matthew!”—and step toward me.

      But by then it was too late. I placed my palm lightly on Louisa Lindahl’s belly, just below the furrow of flesh that Dr. Dunbar’s stitches had closed. The tip of my little finger slipped into her navel with such ease it seemed to have found its natural place.

      My hand rested there for no longer than Louisa Lindahl’s breasts had been bared, but it was long enough for the feeling of her cool soft skin to stamp itself into my memory indelibly.

      I jerked my hand back and stood up just in time to escape Dr. Dunbar’s attempt to swat me away.

      “Matthew! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

      “I just wanted to see if she felt... cold.”

      “You never touch, Matthew. Not without the patient’s permission. I invited you in here because it’s a unique learning situation. It’s not an opportunity for you to indulge your personal curiosity.”

      “Sorry.”

      He stared sternly at me for a long moment. “Did I make a mistake inviting you in here?” To make clear that the question was meant for both of us, he shifted his gaze to Johnny and then back to me.

      “No sir,” I said, intending to answer for both of us.

      “You’re still interested in learning something?”

      I nodded eagerly.

      “Johnny?”

      “Sure.”

      Once he was assured that he had our attention again, Dr. Dunbar proceeded to lecture us on primary and secondary wounds, temporary and permanent cavities, and the stretching and displacement of tissue. Dr. Dunbar got no closer to combat than a New Jersey Army hospital during the Second World War, and I couldn’t help but wonder if this part of the lesson was intended not only to educate us, but to impress us with his knowledge of ballistics.

      And knowing what we had seen of Miss Lindahl, perhaps he wanted to stress the clinical nature of the situation as well. After all, the girl lying there before us was not to be looked at for her naked beauty, but rather as a patient in need of a physician’s help. She was her wound, and the purpose of Dr. Dunbar’s lecture was to remind us of that.

      But I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to know so much more than debridement techniques and the dangers of sepsis. “Why’d you knock her out?” I asked.

      Dr. Dunbar’s reply came in tones as icy as his earlier glare. “Knock her out? I didn’t knock her out. I anesthetized her. When she came in she was in pain, in shock, and bleeding. I wasn’t sure of the extent of her injuries, or what she’d require in the way of treatment.”

      The tension that had developed in the room seemed to make Johnny uneasy, and he rushed to ask an easily answered question: “So there’s no chance she will die?”

      “She will not die.”

      “Will