Breathing Water: A Bangkok Thriller

34

This is for teeth,” Dr. Pumchang says. From the speaker in the corner of the room, the Carpenters are singing “Rainy Days and Mondays,” a song Rafferty had hoped never to hear again.

“It’ll do,” Rafferty says, between jaws tight enough to have been wired together. “I just need to know whether it’s broken.”

He sits with his left hand throbbing in a steel bowl of ice water while his dentist, with doubt animating every muscle in her face, lines up small pieces of dental X-ray film to create a rectangular area a little bigger than Rafferty’s hand. Out in the waiting room are the pumpkin-colored chairs where he and Elora Weecherat had talked.

“The machine can only photograph a small area at a time,” Dr. Pumchang says. “I’m going to have to take a dozen pictures. Why can’t you be like everyone else and go see a real doctor?”

“It’s not like I play the piano,” Rafferty says, and then grabs a breath and holds it as the nerves in his arm stand up and do the wave to pass a burst of pain along to the part of his brain that keeps track of such things. When he can talk, he says, “I use this hand mainly to comb my hair.”

“How did this happen?” Dr. Pumchang puts the last piece of film in place and studies the quiltlike rectangle she has created. With a long, meticulously lacquered fingernail, she pushes one edge piece half a millimeter toward the center. The picture painted on the nail is Hokusai’s famous ocean wave.

“I closed a car door on it.”

Dr. Pumchang makes a noise Rafferty’s mother would have called a raspberry. “Single point of impact,” she says. “Not a straight line of force, like a car door. No abrasions, no broken skin. If you’re not going to tell me the truth, don’t tell me anything.”

“Fine,” Rafferty says. “Don’t ask me questions.”

“What it looks like,” she says, “is that someone slammed it with something small and heavy.”

“That’s what it looks like, huh?”

“Dry your hand,” she says. Her lips are drawn so tight that they’ve practically disappeared.

He takes the towel and very gently pats the hand dry.

“Flap it around. Let the air get to it. Get it dry.”

“The film gets wet in my mouth. How come it can’t get wet now?”

“Just listen to the nice music and do what I say. Or go see a hand doctor.”

“Nobody listens to the Carpenters anymore.”

“I do.”

“Probably cheaper than anesthetic.”

Dr. Pumchang pulls the X-ray unit toward him. “Put the hand down carefully, fingers as close together as you can get them, palm flat, if you can do it, and don’t mess up my film. If you move the pieces around, I’ll have to do the whole thing over again, and I’ll probably think better of it.”

“So much for bedside manner,” Rafferty says, lowering his palm carefully onto the pieces of film and hoping she doesn’t notice how they spread out beneath his hand.

“Just be quiet and hold still.” She positions the lens over the center of his wrist, leaves the room, and Rafferty hears a short buzz. Then she comes back in and moves the lens a couple of inches. “I really don’t know why I’m doing this.”

“Because you’re a good Buddhist.”

“Don’t push it.” She leaves again, and Rafferty hears the buzz again. “By the time we finish this,” she says, coming back into the room, “you’ll probably be sterile.”

“Okay,” Dr. Pumchang says, “what you’ve got is two fractures. Second and third metacarpals.” She is peering at the pieces of film, which she’s joined together with transparent tape and clipped onto a light box. “They’re pressure breaks, like you’d get if you bit down too hard on a chicken bone. Can you visualize that?”

This was exactly what Rafferty hadn’t wanted to hear. “All too vividly.”

“The good news is that almost all the pieces are in place. In other words, the splinters are right where they should be. More or less. Properly cared for, the bones should knit without any real lasting damage.”

“And what constitutes ‘properly cared for’?”

“A splint, then a cast, a month or so of not using it.” She looks over at him. “Say something so I know you’re listening to me.”

“Okay. I’m listening to you. Here’s what I want you to do: I want you to take the case this awful Carpenters CD came in, and I’ll put my palm on it with my fingers jammed together, and you just tape the hell out of it. That way I’ll be back on the street in about ten minutes.”

“This is your hand,” Dr. Pumchang says. “You’ve only got two of them. You’re risking severely impaired function. How would you like not to be able to bend your fingers?”

“For how long?”

“For the rest of your life.”

“Oh.”

“In the best prognosis, you might be able to use it as a Ping-Pong paddle.”

“Well, then,” Rafferty says, “you’d better tape it really well.”

Down on the street, it takes him three one-handed tries to bring up “recent calls” on his cell phone and press the “connect” button to dial Arthit. He puts the phone to his ear, looking down at the white adhesive-taped rectangle of his left hand, and waits.

“Hello,” says someone who is not Arthit.

The hair on the back of Rafferty’s neck stands on end. The tone is recognizable the world around. “Is Arthit there?”

Not-Arthit says, “Who is this?”

“I’ll call him back.” Rafferty folds the phone one-handed and puts it into his shirt pocket. There’s no question in his mind that Arthit’s phone has just been answered by a police officer. Immediately his phone starts to ring. He doesn’t even have to look at the readout to know it’s the cops, calling him back.