Dree shook her head. “Even in the poorest parts of New Mexico, at least some people have trucks. If you don’t have a vehicle, at least your neighbor can drive you into town for medical emergencies like this one. He should see a plastic surgeon, not a nurse practitioner.”
“He can’t. Can you treat him competently, if not at the level of a plastic surgeon?”
“I can pull those muscles and skin together and sew a few stitches into him. I’m worried about him being able to chew. All those big muscles up the sides of your head are there to move your jaw.”
“If we hadn’t come along, he wouldn’t have even that.”
“So, he would have been like that until spring when they could get to town?”
Max paused for a moment. “No, he would’ve been like that until he got an infection, and then he would’ve died.”
“Okay,” she said, staring at her neatly packed gauze and other supplies. “At least I can suture him up so that won’t happen.”
“You’re giving him a second chance at life.”
“Don’t they have doctors who ride a circuit and come out to see these communities?”
“Some areas do, and sometimes they come in the spring through the fall.”
She swallowed hard. “Oh.”
“Just one more question. Is there a reason you’re wearing the veil of the Little Sisters of Charity?”
“Sister Mariam said that people would respect a woman who had taken religious vows more and told me to wear it.”
“And, did you take vows?”
She blinked for a moment, and then the question in her blue eyes turned into anger. Her voice had a cold, steel edge when she said, “No, Deacon Father Maxence.I’mnot the one who took religious vows.”
“I apologize for that, and for everything. Let’s go back to how I can help you.”
Dree shook her head. “Let’s find a place out of the wind where I can lay out my instruments. You can hold his head still while I give him a shot of local anesthetic, and then I’ll suture him up.”
They commandeered one of the larger houses to use as a makeshift clinic. Dree set out her supplies on a wooden table that had been scoured perfectly clean before they’d arrived. With Maxence standing behind the man’s chair and holding him still, Dree numbed the area, disinfected the wound, sewed him up, and then dressed the wound properly.
She turned to the man’s wife, who was hovering while Dree treated him. She handed over some supplies and began to explain to Batsa what to tell the woman.
Maxence leaned down and whispered, “Give his wife what he needs, but not any extra. We need to conserve supplies because we’re going to be out here for a while. There’re going to be a lot more people who need your help.”
Dree’s jaw set, but she nodded and continued detailing wound care instructions to Batsa.
As soon as Dree was done treating the man’s head wound, a woman carried a little girl up to Dree and said something in Nepali.
Batsa translated, “My girl has a demon in her ear.”
Dree examined the child and told Max, “She has an abscess inside her auditory canal. Can you hold her? I can numb the area as much as I can, but this little girlneedstreatment. Batsa, I’m going to need you to translate to the mom how to give her a course of antibiotics.”
Dree continued to treat people young and old, working efficiently and continuously to help them, moving from one to the nextto the nextwithout so much as a breath.
Maxence sent Isaak and Alfonso out to the edge of town under the guidance of Father Booker to set up their camp for the night. He heard Alfonso chattering about what he was going to cook out of the supplies they had brought with them in the backpacks.
After a few hours, Dree’s hands and speech were slowing. She strained to lift kids onto the kitchen table that served as an examination table.
Maxence pulled Batsa aside. “Can we get her something to eat?”
Batsa fluttered around and arranged for a late lunch for Dree and them, which was a savory lentil stew and thick naan-like flatbread.
Dree sopped up the stew with the bread and shoved bites into her mouth between patients.
