voice full of fear. “It — it really hurts.”
“I’ll be careful,” said Hamish, leaning in to pry Ned’s fingers away from his chest so he could examine the palm of his hand.
Lanny pounced, forcing his arm between doctor and patient. “He told you — don’t touch it.”
Hamish recoiled and stood perfectly still. He felt like a sapper disarming a time bomb.
“I’m serious,” Ned said. “Please . . .” He sniffed, tears spilling onto his cheeks. “Don’t touch it. Nowheres.”
Hamish had seen this before with flesh-eating disease. The pain, beyond excruciating, reduced tough men to tearful waifs and their families to Rottweilers. He made a show of withdrawing his hands. “Okay. Sorry. Okay, I won’t touch.”
Lanny fired a warning glare and withdrew his arm.
Hamish eased forward again, his hands by his sides. “I’ll just look.”
Ned’s right upper limb had swollen to twice its normal size. Every crimson slash and puncture pouted with pus. The bloated fingers were the size of sausages.
“Quite a mess, eh?” said Hamish, hoping to break the ice by stating the obvious.
The three men nodded. Ned pleaded with his eyes.
“Now, Ned,” Hamish said, speaking slowly and with as much reassurance in his voice as he could muster. “I want you to roll your hand forward like this.” He inverted his own palm, like a panhandler on a street corner. “I need to see your palm.”
Ned grimaced. “Can’t. Hurts too much.”
“You can do it. Just take it slowly.”
Bit by bit, holding his tongue between his teeth, Ned rolled his palm away from his chest and exposed the fleshy underbelly of his forearm.
Hamish leaned in. There it was: a telling strip of purple-grey flesh, partially hidden on the inner surface of the forearm. It was time to get the detailed history, the nuts and bolts that would assemble this ugly picture into a complete diagnosis. “When was the attack?”
Lanny did the answering. “Tuesday.”
Good God. They had let this arm fester for more than a week. “You mean a week ago?”
Lanny glowered. “Yeah, and don’t you gimme a hard time about it. Heard enough from that nurse.” He jabbed his thumb in the direction of the nurses’ station on the other side of the curtain.
Hamish put up his hands. He tried to clear his throat with a couple of coughs. “All right, no problem,” he said, his voice croaky. He tried to see into the injured man’s face, but Ned kept his head down. “Tell me, Ned,” he asked, “have you been bitten like this before?”
“Never,” Lanny replied. “Not in twenty years o’ mink farming.” Lanny scanned the cubicle as if to confirm they were still alone. “The mink that done this was acting strange. Restless, eh? Funny look in its eyes for a couple o’ days.”
A wave of apprehension filled Hamish’s chest. “Did it have rabies?”
“Impossible. All them mink are vaccinated. Besides, I keep ’em in sheds, eh? Locked in cages.”
Despite Lanny’s assertion, rabies was lethal and potentially contagious. It would have to be ruled out for certain. “We should send the animal to the federal lab in Ottawa. They can test the brain for rabies virus. Just to be sure.”
“It’s already dead,” Lanny said. He folded his arms. “We burned it.” His eyes dared Hamish to make a federal case of it.
“Okay,” said Hamish. “No problem.” The real issue wasn’t rabies, anyway. It was the terrible state of this arm. “How long has Ned been in this much pain?”
Lanny shifted on his feet and wiped his mouth with his palm. “We thought it was just scratched and bruised, eh? Until the fever started. A couple o’ days ago.”
Hamish asked a few more questions about Ned’s general health. He was forty-one, had never had a serious illness, didn’t take any medications, and smoked cigarettes and the occasional joint of marijuana.
Hamish pulled off his gloves and planted his feet in preparation for conveying his diagnosis. The cubicle