Specimen Days

Lucas couldn't 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 couldn't 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.

Lucas's 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 couldn't be sure if he had actually spoken. He made to rise but couldn't.

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. "We'll 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 couldn't hear what she said. The sister replied and walked away.

Catherine returned. She bent over, put her face close to Lucas's. 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, "He's still bleeding." Dan nodded. It would be foolish to deny it. "How long have you been here?" she asked. "I don't 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 doctor's arm. They might have been lovers meeting. Catherine might have been the doctor's 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 Catherine's 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, "He's 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?"

"I beg your pardon, sir," Catherine answered. "I don't mean to be rude. But please, please attend to this boy. As you can see, we're 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 they'd learned to do.

"Come with me," the doctor said.

Dan helped Lucas to stand. He put his arm around Lucas's 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.