City of Dreams (13 page)

Lucas stumbled half asleep to the door. “Yes, what is it?” He flung open the top half of the door but could see nothing. “Who’s there, what’s—”

“It’s me, barber, Stuyvesant’s Micah. The governor sent me.”

Lucas blinked, looked again. It was a night of heavy cloud, without stars or moon. Only the whites of the black slave’s eyes showed in the dark. “What’s wrong?”

“The governor wants you, barber. He says you’re to come right away. He’s waiting.”

Lucas did not need to be told to bring his instruments. There was no other reason for Peter Stuyvesant to summon him.

Judith Bayard’s bedroom was across the hall from the room where Lucas had operated on her husband. She lay in a traditional Dutch bed, built into the wall, framed by the paneled doors of many cupboards. There was a small log fire, and a single candle stood on the table beside the door: light enough for Lucas to see her pale blond hair spread across her pillow, and to see how flushed she was. He put his hand on her forehead. The skin was exceptionally dry and hot to his touch. “She’s burning up with fever.”

“I know.” Stuyvesant used his silver-topped stick to support his weight while he lowered himself to the edge of the bed. He reached for his wife’s hand. Her fingers lay unmoving in his. “She cannot seem to hear me. I talk to her, we all do, but she makes no reply.”

Every breath first rattled in her chest, then came harsh and whistling from her nose. Lucas had heard such breathing before, always from patients near the end. “How long has she been like this?”

“Two days. The sickness came on so suddenly. … She was well, a hoarse throat, nothing more.”

“I see. And what’s been done for her?”

“Anna has been at my dear wife’s side all the hours of the day and night. She has tried to get Judith to take some nourishing broths, but she will not.”

“Listen to her breathing. Her lungs are full of fluid. You must not force her to drink broth or anything else in such a condition, mijnheer. She could choke to death.”

Stuyvesant nodded. “I know. Anna knows, as well. But we are at a loss. I thought perhaps you …”

Lucas bent over the woman a second time. Then straightened. “I presume you have consulted Van der Vries. What’s his opinion?”

“I have not called on Van der Vries.”

Lucas folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Ah, how interesting. A physician specially dispatched by your employers, but the governor of the colony does not summon him to treat his wife’s terrible fever?”

“Stand up straight, man. And stop your baiting. It doesn’t matter what you think of me. Or of Van der Vries, for that matter. My wife has grave need of your skills. As a Christian you have no choice but to lend her what assistance you can.”

Lucas shrugged. “I would not refuse to help your wife if help were in my power. It’s not.”

The Dutchman used his stick for leverage to stand, and took a few paces toward the fireplace. Each move was accompanied by the double tapping made by the stick and the peg leg strapped to his right knee. A man of few vanities, they said. Only his unshakable belief that he was always right, and the elaborately worked silver that topped his cane and formed his peg. In the taverns and the slop shops there were endless jokes about Peter Stuyvesant tapping a jig in hell while the devil piped the tune on a silver flute. Lucas had heard them all.

Apparently so had Stuyvesant. “I’m not popular,” he said softly, his back to the Englishman. “I know that. But I try to serve my God and my employers with all the loyalty and wit at my command. I know no way to do things except my own way. Few women could live happily with such a man. I am blessed with two. My sister and my wife. Are you telling me, barber, that I am to lose one?”

“I did not say that. Only that I cannot help her. I know of no surgical treatment for what ails the mevrouw Bayard.”

Stuyvesant turned around. Bathed in the red glow from the fire he looked like a demon summoned from the nether world. “Tell me only this,” he whispered. “Is it scarlatina?”

Lucas lifted the candle and carried it closer to the bed. Judith Bayard’s mouth hung slack, half open. Lucas put his fingers below her chin and turned her face to his. He bent forward, studying her in the light of the candle flame. Finally he put two fingers in her mouth and pried her jaw wider apart. Her fevered breath was hot on his hand. “Not scarlatina,” he said. “Her tongue is neither red nor pimpled.”

“Anna says the same. She says strawberry tongue is the only reliable sign of scarlatina.” Stuyvesant sounded more despairing, then relieved. “I can but pray you are both correct.”

“Calm yourself, Governor. The mevrouw Anna is correct. Your wife does not have scarlatina.” Lucas carried the candle back to the table beside the door, put it down next to his instrument case. “I think perhaps it is a distemper of the throat.”

“What can you do for it?”

“Nothing.” Lucas did not meet the governor’s glance. “I can do nothing.”

“She’s dying.” Stuyvesant’s voice was harsh with pain. “I summoned you because you’re my last hope. My wife is dying and you—”

“Keep her warm,” Lucas said. “Make sure there is always someone with her, and—” He didn’t have a chance to say they must wait for the breaking of the fever and pray she survived it. Judith Bayard’s labored and hollow breathing turned to a loud wheeze, almost a whistle. A terrible sound. Both men hurried to the bed. “Judith,” Stuyvesant called. He sounded impatient with her, even angry. “Judith!”

The wheezing was louder and at the same time more shallow as she struggled for breath. Lucas put his hand behind the woman’s shoulders and lifted her forward. “For God’s sake, stop shouting. Here, help me raise her head. More pillows. Hurry.”

Stuyvesant piled pillows behind his wife’s back. They didn’t seem to help. Her face, a moment ago so hot and dry, poured sweat. The fever was breaking, but that hardly mattered if she could not breathe. More wheezing, faster, louder, and at the same time more gasping and ineffective.

The governor took a backward step. “Do something,” he whispered. “Do something.”

Lucas continued to hold the dying woman. “I can do nothing for distemper of the throat,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, I know no surgery for—”

“Don’t tell me that! I won’t listen. You’re a man of exceptional skill. You can save her, Englishman. For the love of Jesus Christ, do it!”

“I tell you, there’s nothing …” Lucas stopped.

Nothing. Except for one thing. It had been in the back of his mind from the moment he’d walked into the sickroom and heard those struggling breaths. In London, years before, at the very beginning of his apprenticeship, the surgeons had spoken of a man named Severino, a surgeon in Naples. During an epidemic of the throat sickness he had saved countless lives by opening the trachea, creating a temporary airway.

They talked about the successes. God alone knew how many had died under Severino’s knife. And Lucas had never seen it done, had never even seen a drawing of it in a book. He had only heard the story at age sixteen from surgeons he wasn’t supposed to be listening to, since he was an apprentice barber.

“Dear God, Turner,” Stuyvesant’s voice was a harsh whisper, “I’m begging you. Don’t let her die.”

Lucas still had his arm behind Judith Bayard’s frail shoulders. He could feel her agony as if it were his own. Her fight to draw breath was becoming a death throe: her face was turning blue. There were only moments left.

Lucas flung the pillows aside and lowered her head. “My instrument case! Over there by the door!”

Seconds later the small lancet was in his hand.

Stuyvesant had thought to bring the candle as well. He held it above his wife’s head. Lucas used his free hand to draw the skin of her throat taut. He heard yet another of the woman’s high-pitched, wavering attempts to breathe. His blade hovered over the depression between the throat and the clavicle. For the first time ever he could remember, his hand trembled.

Nonetheless, he cut.

The blood oozed. He had not, thank God, severed any of the major arteries that lay so dangerously close to the trachea. The wheezing stopped. Lucas dropped the knife on the bedclothes and used both hands to spread the wound. Four air bubbles, one right after another in rapid succession, then more, in a slow but steady rhythm.

“What’s happening?” Stuyvesant’s voice was weak. “Judith,” he whispered. “My dear … Englishman, is she gone?”

“Your wife is alive, Governor. And a little more comfortable.” The light of the candle grew brighter as the other man leaned forward. “Look right there,” Lucas said. “Between my fingers. Those air bubbles. They are caused by her lungs taking in air directly through the windpipe.”

“God in heaven. It’s a miracle.”

“No, Governor. Distemper of the throat chokes the patient to death. I have bypassed the throat and opened another airway. The lungs are designed to take in and expel air. They will do so by whatever passage it arrives.”

“Then,” Stuyvesant said softly, “I repeat: the design is a miracle. A gift from Almighty God.” He put a hand on his wife’s forehead. “She is much cooler.”

“Indeed. It was the breaking of the fever that caused the crisis.”

“Barber, this opening in her throat … Must she always breathe so?”

“No, of course not. We will close the wound in a few days. When the distemper has passed and the mevrouw is fully recovered. For now I must find some way to keep the passage open. Severino, the Italian who devised this technique”—Lucas was speaking more to himself than to the Dutchman—“they say he designed as well an ivory tube to insert … Governor, send someone to fetch me some of the tall reeds that grow over by the waterfront. The ones with hollow centers.”

It was Anna Stuyvesant who saw Lucas to the door. “We are once more in your debt, Englishman,” she said quietly. “On behalf of my brother and my sister-in-law, I thank you.”

“I am glad I was able to help, mevrouw.”

“So am I. Now you must tell me the fee for your services. That way we can have it ready when you return tomorrow to attend my sister-in-law.”

He thought of asking for sixty guilders. But he knew he wouldn’t get it. The most he’d ever been paid for an operation was two. “There is no fee.”

Anna Stuyvesant raised her eyebrows. “Yes, there is.” A suggestion of a smile, but she didn’t allow it to form. “We have experience of your ‘free’ services, barber. Will you tell me what you wish to have, or will you wait and discuss it with my brother?”

“I’d as leave tell you, mevrouw. If you promise to pass on the request.”

“Of course.”

“The hospital. I wish to—”

“The governor will not put the hospital under your charge, barber. To be frank, I suggested it earlier. After the leeches ki— After the Widow Kulik died. The governor believes in tradition as a guide to behavior. Physicians are above surgeons. Certainly above barbers.”

“I know. But will you ask him?”

“If you wish.”

“I do. Remind him what he said about my skills. And that his wife is breathing.”

Anna Stuyvesant was waiting for Lucas when he returned to the house later that same day. “Your patient is doing remarkably well. The fever is gone. And she breathes with ease through the reed.”