Chapter 61
Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 1880
Dr. Wallace Joplin was up to his elbows in entrails, and James stood at the ready, surgical utensils spread before him. As soon as his father asked for a particular tool, the younger Joplin would hand it over as quickly as possible. Under the circumstances, it could mean life or death for poor Ross Johnson, who’d been hit by a trolley on his way home from school. While James didn’t know the boy, the victim couldn’t be too much older than his twelve years, and he was praying that his father was able to patch him up quickly before he lost too much blood.
“Hand me those artery forceps, James. The smaller ones,” Dr. Joplin shouted over his shoulder. Despite the brevity of the situation, James marveled at how calm and collected his father was. He handed over the correct tool, but in the act of using it to clamp off the particular artery Dr. Joplin was aiming for, his fingers must have slipped as a bright red stream of blood came shooting forth from the patient, hitting James directly in the face. He staggered backward, wiping at his eye, but he wouldn’t let it make him miss what his father was doing.
“Perhaps you should lean back a bit, Son,” the doctor mentioned, working the forceps into place. A nurse standing nearby grabbed a towel and began to wipe James’s face, but since he was not a baby and didn’t need to be treated like one, he took it from her and wiped it himself, not caring if he had blood in his hair.
“There we are,” Dr. Joplin said, looking carefully at the young man’s innards. Thanks to a new method of anesthesia Dr. Joplin had pioneered, the boy was out and would be for some time. His father promised to tell him exactly what he used as soon as he graduated with his medical degree from Harvard, but that would be a few more years off.
“All right, I’ll just patch him up now, and hopefully he will be fine.” Dr. Joplin turned to his tray of utensils, but James continued to peer into the boy’s gullet. Something didn’t quite seem right. Even though his father had sewn up the severed intestine, it still appeared as if the cavity was filling slowly with blood.
“Father—I mean, Dr. Joplin,” James said, correcting himself. He preferred to call his father by the same title everyone else did while he was with him at the hospital or his office. “I believe we may have missed something.”
“What’s that?” Dr. Joplin asked, rechecking his work. “I’ve gone over everything. I don’t see any more lacerations.”
James didn’t either, and yet it still didn’t look like he thought it should, as it had on the healthy intestines he’d seen in previous patients. James was leaning over, trying to see past his father, who was also peering intently. “May I?” he asked, looking up at his senior and waiting for permission.
Dr. Joplin said nothing but raised his eyebrows and stepped out of the way. The nurse, a nice young woman by the name of Annie, still stood at the end of the bed, and James could feel her and his father exchanging glances above his head, but at this point he didn’t care. He knew something was wrong, and he needed to see if he could fix it.
Carefully, James picked up the bit of intestine that was in question. It had been lacerated so severely in two places that it was nearly severed. His father’s fine stitching was holding, and this didn’t appear to be where the blood was from. James set it aside and continued to make his inspection. He carefully traced the length of the boy’s exposed intestines and still saw nothing. In frustration, he stepped back a bit. It was quite clear, still, that blood was continuing to pool.
“That excess blood could be from before,” Dr. Joplin said. “Perhaps it only looks like more now because of the way you are moving the organs.”
“Perhaps,” James said, although he certainly didn’t think so. Carefully, he felt the rest of the young man’s abdomen. Despite the other lacerations and bruising on his skin, everything seemed normal, until he got to his upper left side. “Here!” James practically shouted. He cautiously moved the large intestine aside so that his father could better access the boy’s spleen. “His spleen is ruptured, isn’t it Father? I mean, Dr. Joplin.”
James stepped out of the way so his father could feel what he was talking about. Only a split second later, Dr. Joplin said, “Yes, it is. Good catch, Jamie, my boy! We’ll have to take it out.”
Beaming with pride, James backed out of the way so that his father could remove the damaged organ before poor Ross Johnson lost more blood than he could handle. He watched intently as his father used a scalpel to access the spleen and then detach it, using the forceps to keep the patient from losing more blood. Once it was out, he closed up all of the arteries and veins.
“There now! Does everything look correct to my assistant?” Dr. Joplin was clearly proud of his son for catching a problem he hadn’t even seen himself, and James couldn’t help but be a bit overwhelmed at his father’s praise.
After carefully looking around Mr. Johnson’s insides, James nodded. “It looks splendid to me, Dr. Joplin.”
“Very good then. I will close.” He looked up at the clock before he extended his hand for James to slip the correct tools into is. “Son, it’s getting late. It’s nearly dinner time. You should’ve been home an hour ago. Run along home and let your mother know I’ll be there directly.”
As much as James wanted to stay and watch his father sew the lad up, he knew his mother might be worried if neither of them came home in time. “Yes, Dr. Joplin,” James said.
“Stop and wash up, of course. Oh, and do be careful of the trolleys.” He said the last part with much disdain. It seemed the more trolleys there were on the streets, the more people there were being injured by them, and James knew how much his father hated patching up people such as this young boy. Carriages could hurt but nothing like the larger piece of projectile metal a trolley could become if one were to accidentally step in front of it.
