The Wounded Land Read Free

involved in the lives of my patients that I can’t seem to make objective decisions anymore. Or maybe I’m just out of date—don’t have enough medical knowledge. Seems to me that what I need is a second opinion.”
    “About what?” she asked, striving to sound noncommittal. But she was groaning inwardly. She already knew that she would attempt to provide whatever he asked of her. He was appealing to a part of her that had never learned how to refuse.
    He frowned sourly. “Unfortunately I can’t tell you. It’s in confidence.”
    “Oh, come on.” She was in no mood for guessing games. “I took the same oath you did.”
    “I know.” He raised his hands as if to ward off her vexation. “I know. But it isn’t exactly that kind of confidence.”
    She stared at him, momentarily nonplussed. Wasn’t he talking about a medical problem? “This sounds like it’s going to be quite a favor.”
    “Could be. That’s up to you.” Before she could muster the words to ask him what he was talking about, Dr. Berenford said abruptly, “Have you ever heard of Thomas Covenant? He writes novels.”
    She felt him watching her while she groped mentally. But she had no way of following his line of thought. She had not read a novel since she had finished her literature requirement in college. She had had so little time. Striving for detachment, she shook her head.
    “He lives around here,” the doctor said. “Has a house outside town on an old property called Haven Farm. You turn right on Main.” He gestured vaguely toward the intersection. “Go through the middle of town, and about two miles later you’ll come to it. On the right. He’s a leper.”
    At the word
leper
, her mind bifurcated. This was the result of her training—dedication which had made her a physician without resolving her attitude toward herself. She murmured inwardly, Hansen’s disease, and began reviewing information.
    Mycobacterium lepra
. Leprosy. It progressed by killing nerve tissue, typically in the extremities and in the cornea of the eye. In most cases, the disease could be arrested by means of a comprehensive treatment program pivoting around DDS: diamino-diphenyl-sulfone. If not arrested, the degeneration could produce muscular atrophy and deformation, changes in skin pigmentation, blindness. It also left the victim subject to a host of secondary afflictions, the most common of which was infection that destroyed other tissues, leaving the victim with the appearance—and consequences—of having been eaten alive. Incidence was extremely rare; leprosy was not contagious in any usual sense. Perhaps the only statistically significant way to contract it was to suffer prolonged exposure as a child in the tropics under crowded and unsanitary living conditions.
    But while one part of her brain unwound its skein of knowledge, another was tangled in questions and emotions. A leper? Here? Why tell me? She was torn between visceral distaste and empathy. The disease itself attracted and repelled her because it was incurable—as immedicable as death. She had to take a deep breath before she could ask, “What do you want me to do about it?”
    “Well—” He was studying her as if he thought there were indeed something she could do about it. “Nothing. That isn’t why I brought it up.” Abruptly he got to his feet, began measuring out his unease on the chipped floorboards. Though he was not heavy, they squeaked vaguely under him. “He was diagnosed early enough—only lost two fingers. One of our better lab technicians caught it, right here at County Hospital. He’s been stable for more than nine years now. The only reason I told you is to find out if you’re—squeamish. About lepers.” He spoke with a twisted expression. “I used to be. But I’ve had time to get over it.”
    He did not give her a chance to reply. He went on as if he were confessing. “I’ve reached the point now where I don’t think of him as leprosy personified. But I