City of Dreams

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Authors: Beverly Swerling
Tags: General Fiction
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emaciation. There was a protrusion almost the size of his fist on her neck. Lucas palpated the tumor. It was cold and hard as rock. He used both hands to finger the throat on either side of the growth. The flesh was of a normal temperature and yielded to his touch. Finally he looked again at the woman’s face. This time, despite the disfigurement of illness, he recognized her. “The Widow Kulik. Lives near the fort. Not the sort usually to be found in this place. How long has she been here?”
    “Couldn’t say.” Van der Vries had ignored Lucas’s uninvited examination of the patient. He was preoccupied with pawing through the contents of his satchel. “Don’t know what I did with my cupping tool. I’m sure it was in here …”
    “Your cupping tool,” Lucas said quietly. “You mean to blister her, then?”
    Van der Vries was still pawing through his bag. “The thought had occurred to me, yes.”
    Lucas looked around. Sally was usually at the hospital, but not today. Since the siege began they’d been living in the one-room barber shop. His sister hated it. Sally spent all her time trying to get the place as clean as she kept the cabin. It was a battle she’d never win, but she refused to give in.
    The siege had not, however, made Anna Stuyvesant desert her nursing duties. The governor’s sister was standing at the opposite end of the little ward watching them. If it had been Sally, Lucas would have summoned her. As it was, he walked the few steps. “I see the Widow Kulik has been brought to your care, mevrouw. May I ask why? And how long she has been here?”
    “Since yesterday. Neighbors brought her. There was no one at home to attend her dying. Her last surviving son was killed two days past.”
    “Savages?”
    “Of course. What greater plague do we know in this place?”
    Lucas nodded. “I seem to recall there were children.”
    “Three. Babies still. The Widow Kulik was caring for them since their mother died last year in childbirth. The good folk who lived nearby have taken the children. They could not be expected to take the dying grandmother as well.”
    “So now she’s Van der Vries’s patient,” Lucas said quietly. “And he means to bleed and blister her. Is that his usual way, mevrouw?”
    “How could I know? He’s been here less than a fortnight.”
    “Long enough for one with your astuteness to make a judgment.” Anna Stuyvesant didn’t meet his eyes.
    “He’s a practicing physician, barber. He learned his art with men who served the most fashionable society. It is fitting that he be put in charge of the hospital.”
    And earn the twenty-guilder-a-year stipend that went with the appointment. “You’ve seen the lump on Widow Kulik’s neck?”
    “It would be difficult not to see it.”
    “Indeed.” Lucas’s voice was soft but insistent. “The entire medical world recognizes such goiters, mevrouw. They must be surgically removed. Raising a blister with the cup is sure to do nothing but add to the patient’s misery. As for bleeding, in these cases it is of no value whatever.”
    “And if the Widow Kulik had come to you, you’d have cut away this goiter?”
    “Yes. I could not guarantee— Sweet bloody Jesus!” Lucas turned and dashed back to the woman in the bed. Jacob Van der Vries had given up on finding his cupping tool. Instead he had removed the cork stopper from the wide-mouthed glass jar and upended it above the woman’s head. “Are you insane! You can’t apply leeches in that fashion. For the love of God, you’ll kill her!”
    “That’s a strange philosophy for a barber, isn’t it? Thought bleeding was your answer to everything.” Van der Vries watched the leeches tumble from the jar. A number fell on the bedding, but many more landed on the woman’s face. And at least six attached themselves to her neck. “Good,” the Dutchman whispered. “Excellent. Do your work, little friends. Suck the poison out of the swelling.”
    Lucas was nearly sputtering

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