Free Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz

the while she'd been hiding craziness. She had shown herself to him as one thing, and now she turned out to be another. He cranked the car and got in, slamming the door hard behind him. Well, she wasn't going to get him to feel sorry for her this way.
    He sat for a moment, listening to the soothing rumble of the engine. After all, it must have been hard for her. All those deaths, the parents, then the sister. Anyone might crack.
Amanda
    I see I haven't said enough. I thought I might omit this part, let it settle silently into the muck where it belongs, but it seems that isn't possible. People want to hear everything, don't they? Spy every strap and pin and hem. It's not enough for them to run a finger along the scar or even to see the knife slice the skin, they must hear the blade purring against the whetstone. All right, then, if that's the way it has to be.
    We met because Private Buckle was delirious. Poor Private Buckle—he'd not even got over there yet, had only reached Camp Grant when the Army discovered a limp and shipped him home. But a fever had stopped him before he'd gone a hundred miles. So here he was at the hospital, delirious, thrashing his arms and kicking his legs, whipping his head back and forth against the pillow and saying terrible things.
    I was having an awful time with him. I'd get a compress on his forehead and he'd tear it off. I'd get his arms settled, and his legs would start up.
    Obviously, I was busy, so I didn't see the man until he wasstanding on the other side of Private Buckle's bed, holding the patient's feet quiet, while I struggled with his head. The man's skin had a red cast to it, almost as if he had more blood than his body could hold, and his hands around Private Buckle's ankles were very large and steady. He smiled at me reassuringly and somehow, working his way slowly up from the feet, moving his hands in little circles and talking softly, he managed to soothe Private Buckle, almost to hypnotize him.
    “There we go,” he said when the private lay barely twitching beneath the sheet, the compress firmly on his forehead, his breathing calm and his heart rate steady.
    “Are you a new doctor?” I asked.
    “A doctor? Oh, no.” He laughed. Just then Dr. Nichols came onto the ward.
    Seeing the director made me nervous. We'd never explicitly been told not to let strangers handle patients, but I was pretty sure the hospital wouldn't encourage it. Dr. Nichols was smiling, however. He clapped the man on the back.
    “What brings you here today, Owens?” he asked, and they shook hands and went off together.
    Later that afternoon, while I was drinking my coffee and eating an anise cookie in the cafeteria, the man appeared again.
    “This,” he announced, setting a brown box on my table, “will revolutionize medicine.” He pulled a chair out and swung it around, so he could sit on it backward, resting his elbows on the cane back.
    “What is it?” Clearly I was supposed to ask.
    “It's a vacuum box. You put your instruments in here, your scalpels and scissors and needles and what have you.” He dropped my spoon into the box. “Then seal it up like this.” He worked a lever that looked like the latch on a pickle jar. “And then activate the vacuum for thirty seconds.” He flipped a switch and a tiny red light on the top lit up. “That's how you know it's on. Andthen, when you take your instruments out again, they're perfectly sterilized.”
    “Wouldn't a good scrub or some alcohol work just as well?” I took my spoon back and wiped it with my napkin.
    “You have to understand the science. You see, when the air molecules are removed, the germs just can't stick to the metal. The effect lasts much longer than if they'd been wiped off with alcohol—we've proven it—and there's no danger of recontamination with a dirty cloth.” He was so certain, so enthusiastic, he seemed almost like a child.
    “So are we going to start using those here?”
    “Oh, you know, they have to do all