Sweetland all the time watching the nurse, the ashtray in the palm of her hand like a waitress’s drink tray. Her head turned to one side while the sheet was lowered, out of respect for Sweetland’s modesty. The bearded doctor took a pen from his breast pocket to point out a particular feature of the slash and burn in Sweetland’s lap and all the young men leaned in closer to see it.
We left a small area at the dorsum penis uncovered — here — as we opted to wait for healing by second intention. It all appears to be progressing satisfactorily. We expect recovery of normal sexual function within three to six months.
Sweetland looked away from the nurse, staring up at the acoustic ceiling tiles.
The extensive damage to the testes and the vas deferens, however, make recovery of fertility unlikely. Now—
Where is it you belongs to? Sweetland interrupted.
Sweetland had never spoken a word to the man or to any of the doctors in his entourage. They might have thought he was deaf and dumb, for all he knew. The doctor leaned away from the bed and glanced across at the nurse. She offered the ashtray and the doctor took up the cigarette. He said, I beg your pardon?
You’re not from around here, Sweetland said. Where do you belong?
Austria, the doctor said. I am from Austria.
I don’t know it, Sweetland said.
Near Germany.
Sweetland nodded. I knows Germany.
The doctor motioned at the sheets and the nurse set the ashtray and files down to cover Sweetland up to his chest.
Sweetland cleared his throat. Does the nurse need to be here?
The nurse?
I wanted to ask after something, he said.
I’ll just be outside, the nurse said, and she held the ashtray out long enough for the doctor to stub the butt of his cigarette. The doctor folded his hands behind his back when she was gone and rose up an inch on his toes. Now then, he said.
What you said just now, Sweetland said. And he glanced toward his waist, pointing with his eyes.
Yes.
I don’t know what any of that means.
Well, the doctor said. All indications are, you will be perfectly capable of having sexual intercourse. Once you have healed, of course. We don’t recommend it at the moment.
He turned to the young men, to allow them a moment to acknowledge the humour.
We attempted a surgical reconstruction that would allow you to produce and ejaculate sperm in a normal manner, he said. But we have not been as successful as we would have hoped.
Meaning what exactly?
Are you a father, Mr …?
Sweetland, he said.
Mr. Sweetland. Do you have children?
He shook his head. I was thinking, he said, maybe someday.
I’m afraid, the doctor said, this will not be possible. He looked steadily at Sweetland.
How long before I can batter the hell out of here?
There is one more surgery for the face and neck.
No more surgeries, he said.
Mr. Sweetland.
I’m fine the way I am. I feels fine.
The doctor rose up on his toes a second time. He turned to the assembly and said he would meet them outside. He patted his pockets, looking for his cigarettes as he waited for the last of them to file out.
This final surgery I speak of, he said.
No more surgeries.
It is not necessary, the doctor said. Strictly speaking. It is largely for cosmetic purposes. To deal with the scarring and discolouration. It will help make the injury less apparent. Your face, he said and he gestured toward it. Of course, it’s up to you, he said.
How long before I can leave?
If everything goes well, if there are no secondary infections or other complications, I would say four to six weeks.
A month, then, Sweetland said.
A month, the doctor said. He opened the cigarette pack, offered it toward the bed. Sweetland took one, leaning forward as the doctor struck a match. You are anxious to get home to someone, he said. Someone is waiting for you?
Sweetland shook his head. Not really, he said, no. He blew smoke up at the ceiling. There’s no one waiting, he said.
7
HE WOKE TO A GALE OF WIND and sleet and high winds that brought waves overtop of the breakwater. The house creaking on its foundation, the windowpanes bowing like sails in each gust. The tide turning and on the rise. He felt oddly glassy and disoriented and thought to keep the dog inside out of the weather until he remembered it dead and buried up in the new cemetery.
He had a hard time travelling down to the beach, leaning into the teeth of the gale. His hat torn off his head and sailing away. Salt stinging his eyes as wind whipped the spume up the hill. The tarp over the dory was long gone and the boat swung wildly at the end of its painter, tipping on its side and over onto its belly as the sea muscled in. Sweetland waded up to his knees as the waves receded, trying to get a handle on the line to drag the boat to safety. The suck of water sieving rocks and sand from beneath his boots. Another wave flipped the dory a full rotation in the air and took Sweetland off his feet altogether, both hands on the rope to keep from being hauled body and bones into the wilderness of the cove. He scrambled up, hauling all he was worth to bring the boat close. Dragging it as far off the landwash as the length of rope allowed, the sea rising high enough around him to set it afloat. He worked to untie the painter, his hands almost too numb to manage. He leaned back on the bow when it was free, nudging the boat inches at a time, until he wedged it into a sheltered nook above the beach where he guessed it might be safe. Loaded its belly with beach rocks and rusted lengths of iron scrap and anything else he thought might weigh the dory enough to hold it against the wind.
He stripped out of his soaking clothes when he reached the kitchen, wrapped himself in a quilt. From the kitchen table he watched the breakwater disappear in surge after surge of white, thinking each time the entire thing might disappear. He trawled through the radio dial looking for a forecast, to see how bad things might get, but couldn’t make out more than a few words over the storm’s static. Moderate winds, he thought he heard. Flurries. Minus one.
The massive stones placed at the mouth of the cove were shifting as he watched, the breakwater settling and coming apart like ice dissolving in a bowl of water. The ocean pouring raw into the cove for the first time in a generation, the waves lipping up over the government wharf, pounding onto the beach. The salt of the water’s spray blowing against his windows, riming the glass. If his stage hadn’t been burned, he knew, the storm would have taken it down and floated every stick out into the Atlantic.
The feeling slowly came back to his hands as he sat there, a burning sensation in the palms that was almost pleasurable. He looked down to see the red scars of the rope where he’d grabbed and held on while the ocean tried to take him under.
By suppertime he was burning up with a fever, too sick to move much beyond the kitchen. He was on his feet long enough to light a kindling fire to boil the kettle and to drag himself up the stairs to the bathroom so he could sit. Shivering so violently he had trouble staying on the seat. Downstairs he made himself a mug of pap, crumbling stale crackers into sweet tea, and he crawled back into the daybed before he could finish even that. The weather in a rage outside.
The fever broke two days later, but he was still too weak and unsteady to leave the house. He sat at the kitchen window, listening to the forecasts and trying to match them to the conditions outside, though there wasn’t a single reliable detail in the announcements. As if the island had drifted into its own latitude, beyond the reach of the CBC’s meteorologists.