The Key by N. Barry Carver (best e reader for epub TXT) 📕

is a Doctor!”

To hear me tell this, you might think that I’m recalling a charge on Gettysburg or some angle of Appomattox. Trust me it was nothing of the sort. It is an unnamed killing of otherwise useful people in a forest glen too small to be given a name. The total number of boots on that field could never have been more than fifty and had there been a third army – with only a number of unarmed civilians equal to the number of cards in a poker deck – they would have been the ones to win the day.

The feeling came back in my hand after just a few minutes in a sling.

When it did, I wished it had remained numb a mite longer. I directed the care for the Toms and judged that the wounded Union boy was not long for this world. Before midday he proved me right. Mr. Night’s wound was a clean shot through his leg, and his wrist was broken when he fell. Mr. Jon’s wound was a bit more serious, as he was shot through the belly and was losing blood and another fluid I could not then identify.

It is at this moment that I began to understand the nature of the battle, the nature of our real dangers and why there was more at stake for Mr. Night than any of us. Knowing his wound was the less severe; I chose to treat him first anyway.

When I did, several of the men in gray uniforms looked at me askance, informing me without speaking, that this war was about something more than me being able to put M.D. behind my name. With grudging assistance I bound Thomas’ wound, set his wrist and called for him a horse. Now the hostile looks turned to words and, for the first time, Mr. Night perceived his danger... this is the exact moment when I realized there was more than rock salt in my head.

I spun around on the grumbling men and gave them a look like acid. I explained that Mr. Jons was dying from a tumorous lesion and that a medicament only available in the nearest large town to the North could help him.

Pleading in an angry voice for the four children Jon’s would orphan by dying, I commanded again that Mr. Night be given a horse. None of this was true in the least, but there was no one who could question my medical judgment. Breaking the tension at an unexpected angle, a young man stepped forward and offered to run that errand, as he was strong, uninjured and had the fastest mount. With my bloodied left hand I pushed the young man down and motioned for Thomas to take his horse. As he did I screamed at the Confederates mobbing toward me:

“How far north did any one of them think they would get? Yankee troops would massacre anyone who tried to head in that direction... but a supposed escaping slave could ride through the northern lines without a care or permission. Even though the North claimed to be fighting for the rights of the blacks, they certainly paid little attention to their desires – or activities for that matter. The only one who could get through the lines and safely return was this friend of the dying man, who had the good fortune at this moment to be a Negro.”

Thomas Night rode out that day, and I did not see him until five years later on a trip to Pittsburgh – where he had a job as a coach driver. I kept in touch with him until he died last year from some sort of sickness. His wife and sons miss him dearly.

Tom Jons, on the other hand, died only a day later... not from his belly shot, but from an infection in a cut on his inner thigh that I never saw until his last day.
Had I known of it, I might have treated him differently... but, knowing the increased severity of the situation, would I have knowingly sacrificed the life of one Tom for the other? Gratefully, that is a question I shall never have to answer.

I, as you know, have been a Doctor ever since and have slowly learned the practice of medicine. Through no fault of my own, I have never lost another patient, have been honored with many degrees and titles and retire today with even this last bit of possible folly off my chest.

The thing I learned that day is a skill you’d be well advised to cultivate in yourself. It is the basic rule of triage: the patient in the most immediate danger of losing their life must be treated first.

I would also caution you to consider that, sometimes, the most visible wound is not the most threatening.
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Text: © 2011 NBC
Publication Date: 10-29-2011

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