Liner

by James Barlow

  Once the chair was dragged away from her by the force of the sea and the slope of the deck, and she would have lost it if she hadn’t carried the flashlight. It meant dragging the thing over the same ground, and Miss Wearne was tiring. It was now her total and only desire – to get the girl to the surgery. She herself was cold and wet, without her wig and dressed only in nightdress, but her concern was so total that she hadn’t even considered this indignity.

  She had to hold the chair against sideways forces, and when she had gone about fifty feet these broke the chair, quite slowly, so that Debbie was hurt no worse.

  Miss Wearne was now in pain herself – a malaise that had no centre, but caused her breathing to rasp, her heart to accelerate and her eyes to fail in their functions at intervals. But so far her body hadn’t lost strength and she marvelled at its capacities as she perforce dragged Debbie, ignoring the pressures inflicted by the sea and gravity.

  She then found that the watertight steel door had been closed. It was so frustrating that tears of rage trickled out of her eyes. She collapsed to her knees and then, unable to stop it, sagged onto her ribs, twitching and gasping. Lancinating agonies flickering like electrical shocks in her chest and head. All in vain, a pointless love, she thought bitterly. A failure, as usual.

  Some lights came on and after a few moments the watertight door opened. She saw that the girl was in a terrible mess she stood up and again dragged her, heavier now that she had gone slack into unconsciousness.

  Around the corner and sixty feet athwartships she arrived in hell. Many injured people, most of them men almost naked, lay about, groaning, stinking of oil and blood. She could not get into the surgery because of this overflow. No one would take any notice. They rushed about frantically, nurses and some women Miss Wearne recognized as passengers.

  Behind Miss Wearne other injured arrived, having crawled or been dragged or carried.

  She heard a man’s voice say with irritation, ‘This one is dead.’

  Miss Wearne became callous: she dragged Debbie over the legs of these smashed seamen and collapsed by the surgery entrance. A cat meowed and the same man’s voice ordered brusquely, ‘Get that damn cat out of here.’ And Debbie said slowly but quite coherently, ‘Not a cat, Daniel.’ The man’s locution became discomposed. ‘My God! You!’ he cried, and Miss Wearne knew that she had succeeded. This man was a doctor, the friend whom Debbie loved.

  No one took any notice of her, wigless and absurd and in pain. And as soon as the tenacity of purpose was no longer needed, Miss Wearne’s body succumbed. Pain ripped her to pieces very briefly and in a few seconds she was dead.

  But it was as she had wished; better in fact.

  She had desired a small obituary, to be known as a tiny news item. Now, instead, she was part of a headline a thousand times wilder than she could have anticipated. Countries which she, as a geography teacher, retired, had never heard of, through agencies and syndicates, would print and announce the words about a liner in a storm and collision far away . . . All around the world in places – some in darkness and some at noon - people would tell of the irony of a woman (now dead) who had won a ticket for a cruise . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘This one is dead,’ said Dempsey brusquely.

  He was frustrated already, and sick with shame, inexplicable self-disgust. There was great relief in the return of light, feeble and flickering though it was. It had been a nightmare attending to Captain Vafiadis. The nurses – Anna and Sophia – had run straight on duty, untidy, no doubt, their hair in disorder (he’d felt Sophia’s hair tickling his nostrils as she’d held the flashlight for him to get at the master). Sister Eleni and Dr Zafiropoulos turned up soon after. It was ironic. His first casualty, the master, who had fractured face bones. His pulse was up and his blood pressure down – it was something to worry about, the captain should be on shore, and all Dempsey could do was treat him for shock. Ridiculous! And ominous. Dempsey presumed that others would be coming . . .

  The light revealed the dreadful mess – sailors lying there covered in oil, naked or half naked, groaning, brutally gashed, bloody. And passengers beginning to crawl in or e dragged. An old woman in nightdress, wig lost, straining; she’d be blasted by shock presently, get pneumonia . . .

  A cat meowed.

  ‘Get that blasted cat out of here,’ Dempsey demanded.

  A faint child’s voice said, quite humorously, but tired, fading, coming through pain: ‘Not a cat, Daniel.’

  ‘My God! You!’ he acknowledged desperately, the shame like a physical weariness weakening him. If. That awful word. If he had considered her, attended to her at this ludicrous fancy dress nonsense instead of – doing what he had done – she wouldn’t be here . . .

  ‘How do you know?’ he asked automatically, but saw the prone steward, saturated and bloody, grinning, and understood.

  ‘They have oil in their stomachs. Make them vomit,’ he ordered Pauline. ‘Fingers down the throat. I’ll buy you a new pair of shoes,’ he promised frivolously. There was at present enough energy and perspective in him for surplus breath. Soon there would be nothing . . .

  He was already swamped. He had proposed to Zafiropoulos that the seriously injured should be brought into the surgery and waiting room and the walking injured should go to his cabin and an ironing room, both of which were warm. But already he was overcrowded and these men lay at the junction of a corridor which ran athwartships. He had to leave organization to others. Volunteers were coming. Miss Reidy, who was trained, and a doctor from Adelaide, had already arrived. Of the other two doctors, one had disembarked at Singapore and the other at Hong Kong.

  He said to Zafiropoulos, ‘Let me deal with hit one, Pan . . . A lot of these men have swallowed or inhaled fuel oil. We’ll just have to wait until the effects have worn off, and then we can see if they really do have intra-abdominal or intra-thoracic injuries. They might not.’

  ‘I’ll sedate them,’ said Zafiropoulos, ‘When your friend has made them vomit.’

  Some of the men were restless in pain. Others were so exhausted they were already asleep.

  He phoned the bridge and explained his position to Tomazos.

  The operating table was small and narrow, with the general appearance of an enlarged ironing board. It was a fixture, which was good in a situation in which everything movable or loose could be thrown about. But it spared the patient none of the motions inflicted by the storm. Three times patients fell off. The operating table was a right angles to the fore-and-aft structure of the hull. When the ship pitched, then, it was bad, but Dempsey could hold his posture with braced and stiffened legs, and opposite, whoever was helping him could do likewise and, in addition, could brace her buttocks against a cupboard. However, the massive sea was on the starboard side, but unfortunately not with consistency. It did unexpected things. Rolling was far worse than pitching, and it lifted Dempsey whole feet above his patient, or caused the liner to hover where he was tensed to expect a dropping sensation. Or the ship shook itself like a wet dog, so that his hand, doing delicate things, was liable to be thrust aside by a great force. To counter all these powerful centrifugal and gravitational forces with his brain and muscles was terribly exhausting, and he had already tired his body in making love to Pauline this night . . . In addition he was human enough to be frightened, although working overcame this to a large extent.

  One patient slid forward and fell of the table like a sack of coal before either Dempsey or Anna could save him. Indeed, they were themselves sent sprawling. Another fell off sideways but was prevented from falling heavily by Dempsey. Nevertheless, for a patient with his injuries to fall at all was fatal, and the only excuse Dempsey had for his conscience was the certainty that this patient would have died anyway.

  After that, where the injuries permitted, he strapped the patient to the table.

  Other
s were administering the anaesthetics without the time to even consult Dempsey. This means that if the other’s diagnoses were different, appalling errors might be made. But the symptoms and injuries made it all too clear what was the matter with each patient.

  Debbie had a ruptured spleen. Her pulse was up, but thin and weak, too rapid. She was groaning quietly and he pleaded, ‘Not long now, Debbie. Nothing too serious. I’ll operate on you myself.’ He was very anxious about her, conscience-stricken, and administered the anaesthetic himself.

  ‘Help me get her onto the table,’ he instructed the two Greek nurses.

  He cut into her left side under the ribs. It was very difficult to hold himself steady. She could do without the spleen. It only stored blood. He was hopeful for her. It was bloody heroic of that old woman to drag the girl here. He’d go in a while and see -

  He saw that the girl’s right hand was stained green. It was not important, but caution made him look. And her fingers were tenaciously clutching the small green jade ‘Three-legged’ ship he’d bought. It was, he recognized bitterly, like himself, a phoney. Dyed.

  They were brought into him fast now, already anaesthetized and slack. Men and women with broken ribs sticking out, or jabbing into their own lungs and causing haemorrhages and suffocation. If blood had got into the lungs he reduced the pressure by draining with a needle. A few ribs had punctured the patients’ hearts and these were dead.

  Another had a ruptured liver and he could not do much. A plasma drip and leave it alone . . . If Guam was more than 1,500 miles away, what did it mean in terms of time? Four days at normal speed. How log in an injured ship? Too long and too far. She wouldn’t survive. A helicopter? No. They didn’t have that kind of range. Oh, God. How useless I am. Do you best, man. Get on with it and stop snivelling.

  Sometimes Eleni was opposite him, sometimes Pauline, or Anna, or Zafiropoulos took his place and he did other things. Once Pauline came, white in the face. ‘Oh, Daniel, it’s awful.’

  He was so concentrated that he was ready to strike her if she became hysterical; he’d believed that she had guts.

  ‘No.’ She cried, identifying his mind’s content. ‘I mean I can smell burning paint.’

  Dempsey knew instantly to what she referred – the fortune-teller in Hong Kong. ‘Then we’ll survive,’ he said harshly, ‘because she had other things in store for you.’

  ‘Of course,’ agreed Pauline simply. ‘Sorry, Daniel . . . I’m glad to be here to help.’

  He understood this, too, and had time to smile grimly to here: here was an end to trivialities, and to phoney despair and to foolishness: here was something real . . .

  Some faces he recognized and naturally he wanted these to live . . . Here was one now, pale as a lily, a sad, beautiful, tired Greek face. It was the mother whose little daughter he and Eleni had fought for. Now he must fight for the child in the womb and for the mother herself. She had been hurt by a blow in the abdomen and the general shaking of the Areopagus and was weary because of seasickness. He gave her ergotmetrine to shrink the womb, and packed the bleeding vagina with yards of gauze. He did not know where to put her, for he did not wish her to die of shock at what she saw . . .

  Here was a red-haired girl he’d noticed before, when she’d been cheeky and strutted about wiggling her buttocks and pleased to be stared at . . . Now she had a broken hip and right arm and was screaming and terrified of pain and the quantities of blood. He was already running short of splints, but there remained a few inflatable ones. He treated her with pain killer, plasma and for shock . . .

  He stretched himself, still after crouching and cutting at flesh, and straining his muscles to keep reasonably still while the Areopagus slopped about, dropped sixty feet, went on surviving . . . He went to see how Debbie was and to search for the old lady who had dragged her in. The old woman was dead . . .

  Mr. Ballantyne staggered into the surgery, carrying across his shoulders the immense burden of Pybus, who was by no means slack. Pybus must have weight 225 pounds and Ballantyne had carried him – how far?

  ‘Him Doc,’ greeted Ballantyne breathlessly, indifferent to the blood and chaos. ‘He fell down two lots of stairs. Sober at that.’

  ‘Put him down . . . Easy does it.’

  ‘He looks a bloody mess.’ Said Ballantyne frankly – and it was true: Pybus’ clothes were stained with blood.

  ‘A broken bone or two,’ deduced Dempsey. ‘Pretty frightening for the patient though.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ whispered Pybus, white-faced but full of interest in his own situation. ‘Hey, Doc. Remember that bet? Do you reckon you stand a chance of winning it now?’

  ‘Yes, I’m going to win it,’ claimed Dempsey. ‘Now shut up while I jab you and do nasty things.’

  He was too busy to thank Ballantyne. He could hear him talking to Sister Eleni. ‘Hey, Sister. You want muscle? Someone to fetch them? Someone to shift the poor bastards?’

  Sister Eleni acknowledged with grim humour: ‘Yes. Thank you. Would you move those corpses out of the way?’

  Now came the men from the engine room, carried by others, or by the entertainers, or young men who had appeared and were anxious to help.

  These were grim because they were scalded and burned by oil. He needed blood and telephoned Tomazos again: ‘I’ve got to have it now’ – ‘Any particular sort?’ – ‘Group identification is not vitally necessary. I just want to bung it in. Blood Group O universal donors, if you want it to sound good. And I need it in a hurry. Nikolaos.’

  He could hear the announcement over the public address system in the distance at once.

  The severity of blistering depended on the loss of plasma in the total skin area. It was usually referred to in percentage terms. And these poor devils and been scalded by steam and burned by flaming oil, and their percentages were often high. He had to leave the burns open and powder with antibiotic, in this case he was fortunate enough to have a fair amount of cicarin. He couldn’t suspend them, which would have been ideal. They could not be protected from shock with blankets. Some of them couldn’t even be turned over . . . He gave them half a grain of morphine intravenously start with, and plasma . . . None had the mild red skin of first-degree burns. They had blistering, which was second degree, and two of them were raw, which was third degree.

  Here was a face he recognized, one of these two. He identified a scar he had stitched a mere ten days ago. The boy who’d gone crazy with jealousy and belted that steward. Had he merited this? The boy died as Dempsey’s hands approached sympathetically. It was perhaps a mercy for him, but Dempsey wanted, suddenly, to weep . . .

  He was conscious of eyes staring at him, eyes in a dark face, full of terror and appeal.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ he assured the other boy. ‘It’ll hurt though, like hell.’

  The boy’s eyes followed him about.

  ‘My friend?’ he breathed.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Dempsey.

  He couldn’t hide it at such a moment.

  Tears watered the dark boy’s eyes. He made no noises of protest or pain as Dempsey removed bits of clothing which were sticking, burned, to his body.

  There were many minor injuries to attend to while Dempsey waited for major cases or Zafiropoulos did surgery. People with smashed fingers, scalded arms or legs, shocked people.

  Sister Eleni said, ‘The old man has died.’

  ‘Which old man?’

  ‘The whiskey man with the bad heart.’

  Pybus. ‘Ah!’ was all Dempsey’s acknowledgement. What was there to say6? He now owed somebody $100. An unknown daughter.

  Things were getting a little better inasmuch as they were organized. Towels, blankets blood, sandwiches . . . People to carry stretchers, although these, thank God, were no longer needed. He presumably had all the badly injured now. They’d g
one around the cabins – youths and dancers, stewards and volunteers – with stretchers, but had wasted time by first going around the starboard half of the ship . . . Dempsey heard announcement, meant to e encouraging, but grimly funny, and sometimes broken off because of the failure of the public address system.

  And then the girl began to scream.

  Dempsey was attending to someone and he knew which girl it was and he deduced why. He hesitated. Sister Eleni rushed up and beseeched earnestly, ‘Daniel, I know you’re busy . . . I can do that . . . She’s disturbing people . . . I can’t comfort her.’

  ‘I understand.’

  The girl was lying on blankets on the deck, screaming. She had been unconscious when brought here. It was his fault, inexcusable. He knew what she had woken to . . . She stopped howling now, but the sound of terror still came shuddering through her teeth as if she was shivering and her teeth, even clenched, chattered. Dempsey thought that he had never seen anyone so frightened, and he pitied her because it was nearly as bad as she thought it was . . .

  ‘Stop it, girlie,’ he ordered.

  The wild eyes looked into his and there was faint recognition, and even a respect for medicine, doctors, authority.

  She swallowed and gulped and said shakily with effort, ‘I’ve lost my legs. There’s nothing there.’

  She was so frightened it even lashed him a little and he wasn’t certain what to do. But he stroked her face gently with a hand spotted with blood.

  ‘You poor girl. But it’s not that bad. Your legs are still there. Touch them, girlie.’

  She believed him without doing this.

  ‘Bu they won’t work.’

  Dempsey looked into the attractive eyes above the hawked nose. ‘It’s tough, girlie. Your nerves are crushed, I think.’ He lied. She couldn’t at present take what he had to tell her. ‘If it’d been higher up your lungs wouldn’t have worked and we don’t have an iron lung here so you’d have been a goner. What’s your name?’