Swearing Allegiance (The Carmody Saga Book 1)

by Jana Petken

  The hospital that had admitted Jenny was, in peace time, a treatment centre for infectious diseases. In the previous year, however, it was requisitioned by the military to treat injured soldiers. Having increased its bed capacity to one thousand, it serviced the eastern boroughs south of the River Thames and was brimming with men wounded on the Western Front.

  At a nurses’ station, a matron told Danny where to find the injured from the recent air attack. Jenny was in the triage area, which was situated at the other end of the hospital, beside the ambulance bays.

  After picking his way through a labyrinth of corridors, he reached the north entrance. He was about to ask a nurse if she knew where the injured people from the Zeppelin attack were, but just then a piercing scream filled the corridor and shocked him to the core. For a brief moment, he was glued to where he stood. His ears exploded with the agonising, wretched sound. He didn’t have to see the woman belonging to the voice or learn her name. It was his Jenny.

  He stood in the doorway of a busy cubicle with four beds, all occupied. Fighting the urge to be sick again, he wrapped his arms around his belly and leaned against a passageway wall. He couldn’t see Jenny. She was shielded from view by a doctor and two nurses hovering over her. Obscuring his sight further was a tall trolley filled with bandages, lotions, and basins, and beside it on the floor were bloody rags. There was so much blood.

  Finding courage, he stepped into the room. “Excuse me, is that Jenny Carmody?” he asked.

  The doctor, with his back to the door, said in a grated voice, “Get him out of here!”

  A nurse of mature age went to Danny’s side and ushered him into the corridor. Danny’s eyes pleaded with the woman for information. Looking more closely at her face, he was surprised to see unguarded sorrow. As a member of the medical staff, she had probably witnessed the most dreadful wounds imaginable, Danny thought briefly. But she seemed to be badly affected by Jenny’s condition.

  “Oh, Christ, tell me it’s not fatal,” Danny blurted out. “Tell me she’ll survive.”

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Danny Carmody. That’s my sister, Jenny, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know her family name, but the ambulance man did tell us her name was Jenny,” she said.

  “Oh God,” Danny said, trying to catch a glimpse of his sister.

  “The doctor will speak to you shortly. Come with me to the waiting area down the hall.”

  Speaking in an accelerated voice, Danny asked, “Will she live? Her friend told me she was burnt. How much of her body has been affected? What are they doing in there?” And finally, after losing what was left of his restraint, he demanded that he be allowed to see her immediately.

  “Keep your voice down. This is a hospital,” the nurse rebuked him. “The doctor will tell you everything you need to know when he comes out, but you have to be patient.”

  Danny’s eyes shone with tears.

  The nurse gently touched his arm and said, “Your sister is in good hands.”

  An hour later, the doctor stood in front of Danny with a somewhat pensive expression on his tired face. “Your family name is Carmody?” he asked.

  “Yes, it is,” Danny said defensively.

  “I thought that was what the nurse said. Was Robert Carmody your father?”

  Surprised by the question, Danny felt his body relax. For a minute, he’d thought the doctor’s interest was of a more sinister nature. “He was. He was a surgeon.”

  “I know that. My name is Dr Thackery. I knew your father well. He was my professor for two terms at Kings College, and I studied neurosurgery under him in Dublin for a year.”

  Surprised again, Danny said, “He was well thought of, my dad, and widely known.”

  “Yes, he was. There’s not a doctor in London unfamiliar with his research and methods. He was a visionary when it came to the function of the brain. I was very upset to hear of his passing. The futility of his death was shocking. He still had so much to give the world of medicine.”

  “Thank you.” Danny didn’t want to talk about his father. It was too painful. “How is my sister? Can I see her?”

  Walking into the room, Danny’s nostrils were assaulted by the smell of oils and burning flesh. Hesitating at the door, he asked. “What’s that stinking smell?”

  “Paraffin oil and picric acid to treat her burns. The acid has shown to have reasonable healing effects on the battlefield. I will remove that dressing before it dries and then apply a further dressing of olive oil and eucalyptus. We’re doing all we can.”

  “And that burning … Is that my sister’s skin?” Reluctant to take another step towards the bed, he looked across the room at Jenny. She was semi-conscious and seemed delirious. Lying on her back, arms akimbo and with most of her face covered, she was barely recognisable. A bandage was wrapped around her head. It was already soiled with red, black, and pus-coloured stains, and it was wet, making it slightly see-through. Extending down the left hand side of her face, it hid her eye and ear, and it was knotted under her chin like a hat strap. Her left arm was also wrapped in wet strips of cotton, and she appeared to be wearing a mitten on her hand.

  “Why is she shivering?”

  “Her body has gone into shock. She’s in a lot of pain and has suffered a severe trauma from her burns. I won’t lie to you, Mr Carmody …”

  “Danny.”

  “Danny, it’s bad, I’m afraid,” Thackery said in a whisper. “I’ve given her enough morphine to knock out a horse, and when she starts to come round, I will give her some more. She should sleep for a few hours.”

  “She doesn’t look as though she’s sleeping. She’s looks as though she’s having the most terrible nightmare.”

  “It’s not pleasant to watch, but she’s better off like that than fully awake.

  “And when she wakes up?”

  “She will face excruciating pain for quite some time.”

  Danny felt his eyes welling up. He couldn’t help himself. “I can’t see her face – her poor face!” Questioning the doctor with tears dripping from his eyes, he asked, “What kind of fire could do that, and why her head and arm and not the other parts of her?” To him, it was a reasonable question.

  “I imagine the burns were caused by the flash of high explosives in a confined space. The heavy coat she was wearing may have saved the greater part of her body. It’s a miracle, really. She must have been pulled away from the flames before they caught hold of her entirely. I have seen much more serious burn casualties but never victims from a Zeppelin air attack. We’re still coming to terms with those monsters and what they can do. I suspect we will see many more of them.”

  “Her eye is covered – why?”

  “The eyelid has been burnt, but it will heal. The eye socket and ball appear to be intact, but we won’t know if she still has her sight until she is fully awake. Unfortunately, we could do nothing about her left ear. It was completely burnt off.”

  “Oh, holy God,” Danny groaned.

  Thackery continued. “The burns are concentrated on the left hand side of her head and hairline, but terrible as it all is, she did not sustain any other injuries of note, apart from a bad laceration to her leg.”

  Incapable of listening to any more of Thackery’s words, Danny stared at Jenny’s mummified head with morbid fascination. She was going to suffer agonising pain, and that, for her, would not be as bad as the humiliation she would feel because of her deformities. Jenny would rather be dead, he thought, than live with the face of a monster.

  “Will she heal eventually? Can you give my family hope?” he asked in a pleading tone of voice.

  “As I said, she might be blind in one eye. There may be a possible hearing impairment …”

  “And the burns – will she be scarred?”

  “It’s too soon to say. I don’t know how deep the burn is on her head. I am worried about swelling to her brain.”

  “Her brain … Jesus feckin’ hellfire.”

  Usher
ing an emotional Danny out into the passageway, Thackery said, “You must understand, Danny, that there is no guarantee of success in these cases. Imagine a fire when it goes out. There is still smouldering in the pyre for a time afterwards. It’s the same with skin. It burns, and sometimes so does the flesh and bone underneath. We will know exactly how serious it is in a week or two. Perhaps you should go home to your family. Your mother may come to see her for a few minutes. When your sister wakes up, she’ll be frightened. I’m sure she’ll be happy to see a loving face sitting beside her.”

  “There’s so much I still need to know,” Danny said in a pitiful voice.

  “I’ll speak to your family when you come back,” Thackery said, giving Danny’s shoulder a sympathetic pat. “Your father was a great man. She will have the best care available. I give you my word.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Patrick gave verbal encouragement to a wounded man lying on a stretcher and then walked back to the top of the lines. The jetty looked like an outdoor hospital ward. He had overseen the disembarkation of 220 stretchers and seven hundred walking wounded, and he had watched more coffins disembark the ship than he’d been prepared even to contemplate. The sight of the crude wooden boxes was a heartbreaking reminder that not all wounded men who made it off the battlefield alive survived to see home. The stark reality was that even the greatest medically skilled hands and most heartfelt desire to save could not always revive a seriously injured man.

  Shielding his eyes from the midday sun, he watched a long queue of trucks and ambulances move slowly down the length of the jetty to the pickup point. Southampton, his home base, had been designated as England’s number one military embarkation port, and from what Patrick had seen on rare runs ashore, the town and its common had been completely taken over by the military. Since the beginning of 1916, hundreds of thousands of troops and their equipment had departed for mainland Europe through the port, and in the opposite direction, a steady flow of refugees, prisoners of war, and wounded came back using the same jetties. And the year was not yet over.

  Since joining the Britannic, Patrick had been constantly reminded of her sister ship, the Titanic. A remembrance plaque to the dead sat on a wall at the gates to the port. Previously unbeknown to him, most of the Titanic’s crew came from Southampton; 549 Sotonians died in the sinking. He wondered what those merchant sailors would think about this present tragedy had they lived. The world and its leaders had gone mad. Kings were fighting kings, blood related yet willing to devour each other’s nations because of their own narcissistic ambitions and pride. And luxury cruise liners, meant to sail the oceans for pleasure, were no longer crewed by pristine white-uniformed waiters and porters. Instead, tough war-ready sailors, medical corps, and volunteers mopped up bucketloads of blood from the ship’s new wooden decks and listened to cries of pain, which had replaced the gentle music of the ship’s orchestra.

  As the trucks filled with the wounded, Patrick ordered his subordinates to issue the transport drivers with predesignated priority tickets. Allotted to each wounded man, they ensured that when the trains arrived in London, the most seriously injured were loaded onto the first of the waiting trucks. The wounded were also tagged with instructions for future attending medical staff. Written on paper attached to string and either tied to the men’s uniform jacket buttons or wrapped around their ankles or their wrists were the patients’ diagnoses and prognoses. Information and speed were essential, or at least that was the thinking behind the procedures.

  Only after he had been ordered to visit the front lines and, later, a major casualty clearing station in France did Patrick fully understand the complexities of evacuating and repatriating the wounded. Between the front lines and the hospital ships at the embarkation ports was a quagmire of hurdles and delays, bureaucratic measures, and decisions made hastily and at times without due process. As part of his training, he had observed that a wounded man first received medical attention at aid posts situated in or closely behind the front-line position, and having spent a night in one such redoubt, his perception of trauma procedures had changed drastically. No university or operating theatre in London or Dublin could capture or impersonate the dire conditions and situations in which the front-line medical officers, orderlies, and trained first-aiders operated. Nor could the civilian population fully understand the dangers posed to the field ambulances and relays of stretcher-bearers journeying to and from a series of bearer posts along the route of evacuation from the trenches. Having gone on an ambulance run, he could attest that all routes were well within the firing zone and that not all ambulances and their crews made it back to the aid station in one piece. On that one night, two trucks had been blown up and six men had died. He’d also come to the conclusion that dirt, mud, and unsterile equipment posed just as big a threat to patients as blood loss. Infection was the devil.

  Although he would never admit to anyone that he’d been terrified during every minute of every day he’d spent on land, in France he was honest enough to acknowledge that he was luckier than most men. Serving on a fairly protected ship and not facing the hell he had witnessed in the eyes of soldiers had made the navy an excellent choice.

  After seeing off the last of the trucks carrying the wounded, Patrick returned to his cabin to write a report. The ship was remaining alongside the jetty in Southampton for a further twenty-four hours for coaling, water refuelling, resupplying, and routine maintenance; and Captain Bartlett, its commanding officer, had granted shore leave. Patrick had already decided that he would take advantage of that rare treat.

  “Enter!” Patrick shouted upon hearing a knock on his cabin’s door.

  “You have a visitor, sir. A Captain Jackson,” a sickbay orderly said. “He’s up on deck.”

  Dropping his pen onto a document, Patrick grinned widely and followed the orderly to the stairs. Feeling benevolent, he suggested to the man that he start his shore leave as soon as his cleaning duties had been completed.

  “Have a grand night. Don’t get drunk, but have a couple of beers. You deserve them.” Then he dismissed the orderly and took to the stairs that led onto the top deck.

  Patrick saw Kevin standing with his back against the railings. He was a welcome surprise. Kevin had written only two weeks previously, but he hadn’t mentioned coming to Southampton.

  “What the hell are you doing down here, man? Have you come all this way to visit me?” Patrick asked, heartily shaking Kevin’s hand. “Have you missed me that much?”

  “Every waking moment … and in my dreams,” Kevin answered with a sardonic laugh. “But I didn’t come to Southampton just to see you. I’m shipping out at twenty-two hundred hours.”

  Patrick was stunned. “Damn it, they got you. I thought you’d be safe in London, what with all the casualties going in there.”

  “I did too, but apparently they need young blood on the front. They’re replacing a lot of the old volunteers. It would seem that some of them don’t even have a licence to practice medicine.”

  “Well, would you believe that? I’m sorry, Kevin.”

  “Don’t be daft. I’m a soldier, and it’s my duty to serve at the government’s pleasure. To be honest, I never believed I’d be lucky enough to sit out the war in Britain.”

  Patrick looked at his pocket watch. He suggested that they go to the nearest pub outside the dockyard, for he was now officially off duty. The last dogwatch, starting at 1800 hours and lasting until 2000 hours, had just begun, and his opposite number was already on duty. His watches also included first watch, which began at 2000 hours and went until midnight.

  “I hope you’ve got time for a bite to eat,” Patrick said. “There’s a place not far from here that serves beef and Guinness pie. It’s as good as the best I’ve ever eaten in Dublin.”

  “I’ve got just over an hour until I have to embark,” Kevin said. “I’m sorry, Patrick, but this is not exactly a social visit. I had to see you because I have news from London.”

  As they wal
ked towards the dockyard gates, Patrick noticed a change in Kevin’s mood. Rarely serious for any length of time, he’d barely said two words. Patrick swallowed painfully. There was bad news coming.

  Kevin had refused to say what the news was, preferring to wait until they got to the restaurant. Now sitting opposite Patrick in an establishment which was situated in the street facing the dockyard gates, he described the previous night’s events, starting with his account of Danny and John’s surprising appearance at Minnie’s house. The shocking news about Jenny was, of course, the most important, but right or wrong, he felt he should ease Patrick into that part by softening the blow with some good news first.

  “Danny looks well, considering the stories we’ve heard about the prisoners being starved of food. Your mam was the happiest I’ve seen her for a long time.”

  Laughing, Patrick asked, “Did she welcome John or get on her high horse with him.”

  “The latter. She wasn’t even going to let him in the house,” Kevin continued, telling Patrick about the dinner his mother had planned, Danny’s high spirits, John’s unctuous compliments directed at Susan, and his drooling attempts to ingratiate himself with Minnie. “He’s slimy scum, that one,” he couldn’t help but say.

  “Aw, for God’s sake, man, do not tell me that you’re still hankering after my sister? What did she have to say about John’s arrival? Was she fawning all over him and trying to get him to set a wedding date?”

  Kevin frowned. Patrick punched him mockingly on the arm and then sat back, clicking his tongue. “I know you. You’re not going to give up, are you? Sure, you’ll be sitting there at my sister’s wedding, still biting your tongue and wishing you had said something years ago.”