Back at the clinic Diller worked through the night with Mauro in attendance. He wished that Antonio were there to help but Antonio had disappeared for the usual spurious reasons. Diller was more than a bit mystified by his patient. Under the flashlight he had assumed that he had yet another sorry, battered victim of the drug wars that raged beneath the border. Such refugees provided Diller with some of his most interesting cases, alternating the routine of the aged cancer victims whom he dosed with the potent Dilaudid to ease their way heavenward. The naked man proved to be pure gringo when the blood was washed off: his hair was finely barbered, expensive gold fillings in his teeth, trimmed nails, a strong tan demarcation, a well-conditioned body, all qualities that made him an unlikely smuggler.
Near dawn Diller smiled at the improved pulse rate, and the response to the intravenous liquids. He probed gingerly at the shattered jawbone that later would require plastic surgery if the man wished. Mauro bathed the sunburn with vinegar and applied hot compresses to the swollen testicles, joking in his fatigue that it was a much better job for Antonio. The doctor laughed in spite of himself—it was impossible to remain prissy in such matters. The doctor sang "La Paloma" as he wrapped the ribs with Mauro filling in on the difficult trilling bars of the wonderful song.
Mauro and the doctor moved the man to the only private room in the clinic and then went out to the porch where Mauro's daughter served them coffee in the first light of dawn. Diller winked at Mauro, gave him a Dexamyl and took one himself. Mauro smiled at this little secret they indulged in during emergencies when sleep was impossible, though he would have much preferred the bottle of mescal hidden under his bed, having publicly in the chapel sworn against alcohol. The doctor's thoughts were synchronous: only once in his adult life had he tasted alcohol. Long ago in his second year at the mission his wife had left forever, explaining in hysterics that she could not endure life in Mexico and that she no longer loved him. Diller had sat in the dirt of the courtyard all night and wept while the nervous help had watched from the porch and hacienda. In the middle of that pathetic night Mauro brought Diller a whole liter of mescal which Diller drank hungrily. Diller slept throughout the hot day in the dirt with everyone taking turns shading his face and keeping away the flies. Diller smiled at the remembrance of the pain.
Now the first rays of the sun were hitting in the fawn-colored side of the mountain top. The peculiar blurred brownness of scree always reminded him of the flank of a deer and this morning the flank of the deer reminded him of venison chops. The pork and sauerkraut had not set well, and he decided to give it up and go completely native. The rooster crowed and he thought of roast chicken. The cook called out and Mauro and Diller went into the kitchen where they ate huge bowls of menudo and corn tortillas. The doctor believed along with the Mexicans that this tripe stew was a restorative though he wouldn't have believed so had he not loved the dish. He was a man of certain tastes. And he was mindful that his tastes were killing him slowly as he eased up toward three-hundred pounds despite his huge frame and heavy musculature. The Dexamyl made the blood drum in his ears; adopting the doom that pervaded the countryside, he enjoyed his flirtation with death. After breakfast, he sang little ditties of love and death as he made his rounds. He remarked to himself that the patient would need a strong stomach to endure the pain when he emerged from the coma.
That evening Hector, the captain of the regional Federales, stopped by to make a report on the wounded man. When he received the radio report at midday he became happy and ordered his assistant to ready the jeep for an overnight trip. A visit to the doctor meant a fine dinner and a long evening of chess, discussions on gardening, politics, the raising of animals for food, and a chance to talk at length about his health, for Hector was somewhat of a hypochondriac in his mid-fifties and worried about his waning potency. He respected the doctor's deeply religious nature so he approached the medical aspects of potency very subtly, which amused the doctor who advised that he reduce his use of alcohol and tobacco and take plenty of exercise. As a final teasing thrust he suggested that Hector might forget his conchitas in favor of more spiritual concerns. The doctor had only recently felt the rare terror of lust when he had treated an attractive mountain girl for a scorpion bite on her upper thigh. He prayed mightily but it didn't seem to help much, casting his thoughts back to his first year of marriage in North Dakota when he and his young wife had exhausted themselves with lovemaking.
When Hector and the assistant arrived they went immediately to view the wounded man in order to rid themselves of the irksome detail so the evening could be enjoyed. The doctor forbade fingerprints at the time saying that he would send them along when the injuries mended somewhat. In this case he would merely send his own fingerprints, not wanting to cause problems for anyone. Mennonites never go to the law over each other and the doctor applied this principle to his practice. He cared for souls and bodies and believed that civil authorities had the equipment to conduct their business without his aid. Hector was happy enough to make a return trip for his interrogation at which point the doctor would advise the patient to feign amnesia if he so chose, anything to escape the red tape and the severity of the Mexican penal code. The assistant made out a perfunctory report with Mauro's scanty information and then went off to a country tavern down the valley to impress the locals. Hector and the doctor sat down to an elaborate dinner, Hector with the air of a man who had done a long day's work he has no intention of remembering.
On the third day after finding the wounded man Diller became a little doubtful. The man had a mild touch of pneumonia and did not respond quickly to penicillin and the doctor prayed he wasn't allergic. Diller didn't want to lose the man to the superior facility of Hermosillo via helicopter. Two more days and the fever passed but not the coma. Now Diller decided he would give the coma two more days before calling Hector on the radio. He liked the symmetry of working in twos and his curiosity about the wounded man was so great that he longed for excuses to keep him. The night before the morning of the deadline he noticed that Mauro had hung a necklace of coyote teeth over the post of the bed. The necklace was no doubt from Mauro's mother who fed the animals and who the other help tended to avoid for her reputation as a herbalist and witch. Diller lectured often on the dangers of these old superstitions but now he smiled at her good intentions which he recognized as a form of love. As Diller turned out the light and left he did not realize that the wounded man watched through the slit of his one unbruised eyelid.
It is not necessary to know too much about the wounded man squinting up at the darkness and the soft whirr of the oak-paddled ceiling fan. His name is Cochran and he hears the chugging of the diesel generator, the whine of a single mosquito in the room, and farther off and faintly, the music from the doctor's radio, so heartlessly sad and romantic it seems to make the night as bruised as his body. But all his tears were shed in the past few semiwakeful days when, as any animal that plays dead, he tried to learn the nature of his immediate threat. And now that he knew there was no immediate threat, rather than relief he felt a suspension, as if he were dangling in some private dark while outside the universe continued on rules he had no part in making.