by Peter Albano
A woman spoke. “This one, Colonel, the flyer?”
“First-, second-, and third-degree burns and a gunshot wound, poor chap. And he’s lost blood. I’m afraid he’s bought it, nurse.”
They’re talking about me, Randolph thought. About me! He drifted off again.
XI
The room was large, white, and there were other men with him. Randolph could hear them groaning. He could smell alcohol and ointments, and strangely, his feet were too high and someone had built a framework over his bed—a latticework that kept the blankets from touching his body. “Where am I?” he said, turning his head from side to side. “Where am I?”
“The Queen Victoria Hospital for Officers at Hyde Park, Major,” a soft but firm voice answered from behind him. He turned his head and immediately a white-clad beauty was leaning over him. The face was diffused; perhaps by the light, perhaps by his dragged state, but without a doubt, it was lovely, white, and delicate like a doll. Her dark hair of burnt umber was swept up beneath the white cap and her forehead was smooth and intelligent. Sad eyes were a mysterious blend of blue and green, cheekbones high and vaulted in a classic way, her full lips chiseled in graceful sweeps like the wings of a gull. “I’m Kimberly Piper, your QA,” she said, leaning close to his face. He could smell a unique jasmine and hyacinth perfume that struck like a spring breeze after the foul stench of burned flesh and rotting wounds.
“How long have I been in London?”
“Three days, Major.”
“This is the burn ward.”
“Quite right, Major.”
He felt pain in his left leg and then his entire right side. He gasped, “I’ve bought it. I heard the nurse and doctor on the train. They said. . .”
Her cool hand on his forehead interrupted him. “You didn’t buy the farm, Major. Just a ticket to blighty.”
Running his hand down and up onto the cradle, he said ruefully, “Those Krauts fried me.”
She nodded and he saw a sad glint in the remarkable eyes. “You have first-, second-, and third-degree burns over most of the right side of your body and chest from your neck to your knee and a gunshot wound in the upper thigh of your left leg.”
“My mouth feels like the Kraut army marched through it.”
“You bit yourself when you crashed and you probably won’t have any hair growing on the right side of your chest, but with time and care you will recover.”
“I’ll be scarred.”
“Yes, I’m afraid so, Major.”
He was suddenly possessed by a new horrifying thought. “Did anything else burn off?” He ran a hand down the cradle to a point over his groin.
A mischievous smile twisted the perfect lips. “No, Major, your, ah—social life remains intact.”
A new shot of pain made him writhe and groan. He heard another man two beds away shout incoherently. Kimberly turned her head and then quickly reached for a hypodermic needle.
“For me? Lotus land again?”
“Yes, Major.”
He felt the needle puncture his arm. “My mother, my father,” he anguished. “I want to see them.”
“They’ve been here and they’ve seen you,” she said, straightening and returning the hypodermic to its alcohol bath.
“My mother. She’s so. . .”
“Your mother was happy to see you. The first reports were that you were dead.” She smiled wryly. “Your present condition is an improvement over that.”
“I crashed in no-man’s-land.”
She nodded. “Quite right. No-man’s-land.”
Randolph was seized by a great sadness. “Those Tommies. Those poor bloody blokes risked their lives for me. I’ll never even know their names. . .”
Brenda, Rebecca, and Bernice were at the hospital every day, sitting in the waiting room, waiting for a chance to see Randolph. Walter, Reginald, Hugh, and Lloyd were in and out, whenever their schedules permitted. It was hideous. Even Randolph’s neck was burned and he was always drugged. And the entire third floor of the huge building was filled with burned young men. Many were aviators, others officers from the new tank corps, and still others had been burned by flammenwerfers. The staff was overwhelmed. Not until the fourth day did the women talk to a doctor.
Doctor Oliver Henniker was a tall, thin, middle-aged man with a tired, harried look. He directed his words at Rebecca while Bernice and Brenda stood at her sides. “He came in with first-, second-, and third-degree burns over forty percent of his body, with a gunshot wound in his left leg, and suffering from shock. The gunshot wound had been well served at the field hospital and on the ship, but burns are hard to treat and he was suffering from shock. Shock must be treated first. We use the latest medications—morphia, atropine, strychnine, camphorated oil, and caffeine and at first we surrounded him with hot water bottles.”
“Hot water bottles?” Rebecca said.
“Of course.”
“But his burns?”
Henniker sighed. “He’s out of shock and I ordered bicarbonate of soda baths three times daily beginning yesterday. And, of course, the burned areas are left undressed and daily I cut away all necrotic and sloughing material. Then we bathe him in a peroxide solution and dust with stearate of zinc and thymol iodide and soon we will expose him to the direct rays of the sun. . .”
“Please, Doctor,” Rebecca interrupted him. “Will my boy recover? That’s what I want to know.”
Henniker recoiled with the pique of a college professor whose lecture had been interrupted by an unruly student. “Why yes, madam. It’s a matter of how complete.”
“How complete?”
Henniker cleared his throat. “Quite. There will be heavy scarring and a loss of mobility in his right leg, which suffered most of the third-degree burns.”
Rebecca’s eyes narrowed and her face twisted strangely. “He won’t return to the front?”
“No, madam. Not unless there’s a miracle.”
Slowly, a smile spread across Rebecca’s face.
When not at the hospital or caring for Rodney and Nathan, Brenda sought time to be with Reginald. Despite a left arm that was weak and slightly bent, he was up for a fourth stripe. Something was afoot at Whitehall and the commander often worked long hours into the night. “My pet project may go,” he said, laughing one evening over dinner at the Savoy. “But we keep our secrets. We don’t have big mouths like Nivelle.”
“But you can’t see active duty,” Brenda said hesitantly. “You haven’t recovered.”
Brenda saw a rare glimpse of Reginald’s temper. “Me! A bloody C-three. Never!”
“C-three?”
“The lowest grade of malingerer—a wounded hero looking for a cushy post.”
Brenda felt her patience thinning. “My God, Reginald. Everyone knows you were wounded—severely wounded.” She nodded at his arm and his hand, which still showed a thumb and first finger that were bent and stiff.
“I’m as good as the next man,” he said deep in his throat.
“Of course you are,” she agreed, conciliation in her voice. She reached across the table and took his hand. “I can’t bear the thought of losing you, Reggie. And if you’re not one hundred percent fit, you could endanger others.”
“I know. I know,” he said, his brow wrinkling in long lines of frustration. Then he raised his arm and flexed the thumb and fingers of his injured hand. “It’ll be ship-shape soon—you’ll see.”
“Of course.” She felt her dinner churn in her stomach and she averted her eyes.
Once or twice a week, the impatient lovers would drive to Reginald’s house—a sanctum that became an island in the storm. Here for a few frantic moments they were in another world of their own, isolated from the horror and losing themselves in each other.
Brenda wondered at the change in herself. After Geoffry’s death she had been seized by an inexpl
icable aversion to love—especially the thought of physical love. She remembered how she had put off Reginald, not really understanding the strange confusion of emotions and forces dueling within her. Not until he was wounded and she sensed he had feelings that he was less of a man than he had been, had Brenda been able to accept him. Certainly, there was a drive to love him because he was a man and she needed him, but there had been something else—a strange feeling she had known when Rodney or Nathan had been ill. It was the compulsion every mother knows to hold her sick baby close—to even hope, somehow, the closeness would transfer the fevers and pain from the baby to herself. To see the baby healthy and smiling and bright. Did she feel this with Reginald? Doubtless, she had brought him joy and restored confidence in himself. And, strangely, she began to find solace in his wounds. They kept him off the bridge of a ship where she was sure he would return if he could, wounds be damned.
Reginald was the ultimate lover, worshiping at Brenda’s body. Always careful to caress and manipulate those secret places that pushed her to the brink of hysteria, he insisted that the young American always disrobe in front of him and then he would stare at her body, his eyes moving over her with so much hunger she felt a tingling wherever they fell. One evening, pushed beyond the limits, she tumbled him backward onto the bed and clawed at his buttons. Laughing, he disrobed and then Brenda said, “Now, it’s my turn.” She pointed to the foot of the bed. “You perform.”
Scars and injured arm forgotten, a laughing Reginald stood and then posed and pirouetted in a parody of a music hall entertainer. Finally, Brenda shouted, “Enough!” and Reginald leapt into her arms.
The days passed slowly for Randolph and he grew well acquainted with burns and their painful treatment. Kimberly Piper was in constant attendance and Doctor Oliver Henniker made daily visits. Randolph soon discovered most of the other men in the room were even more badly burned than he. In fact, the patient next to him, a South African captain of the Tank Corps, had third-degree burns over most of his torso, chest, and face. It seemed impossible that he could still be alive. His lips, nose, eyebrows, eyelids, ears, and most of the flesh of his chin and one cheek had been burned off and he lay motionless on his back day after day staring at the ceiling sightlessly through eyes with pupils and corneas burned away. Even through thick layers of salves his flesh appeared black and rough like charcoal forgotten in a dirty fireplace. With no lips and his skin charred away, most of the blackened teeth on one side were visible almost to the back of his jaw and he seemed to have a perpetual grin on his face like an exhumed body of one long dead. His breathing, clogged by mucus, popped and bubbled like a thick stew boiling on a stove top.
He was kept heavily sedated; however, each afternoon it was allowed to wear off and liquids were forced down his throat by Nurse Piper and two orderlies. This was done until the tanker began to gag and vomit. As his senses returned the man began to scream in a high falsetto shriek like the Royal Scot approaching a crossing. Then he was given morphia and more liquids were forced into him subcutaneously and by a rectal tube.
One night Randolph was awakened by rustling sounds like dry leaves blown by the wind. They were coming from the South African’s bed. At first the major thought he was suffering more drug-induced hallucinations. Then he decided the sounds were definitely coming from the burned tanker, but they were incoherent. Turning as much as his painful burns and leg wound would allow, Randolph could see minute movements of the charred mouth in the dim glow of the night lights. Listening carefully and straining toward the captain, he heard words hissed through the ruined mouth and burned-through cheeks. “Mate. Mate. Kill me. Please kill me. Kill me, mate. . .” The voice trailed off and Randolph remained awake for a long time despite the effects of the morphia.
The next morning Randolph gestured at the inert captain and said to Kimberly Piper, “He wants to die.”
“How do you know?”
“He told me.”
“Impossible. He can’t speak.”
Randolph felt anger. “Do him a favor, nurse. Be a human being!”
“Why do you think I’m here, Major,” she said sharply. Carrying a tray loaded with empty vials and medication bottles, she turned and left.
That night Doctor Henniker instead of Kimberly administered morphia to the captain. It was an unusually large injection. Within an hour, the captain stopped breathing and by midnight his body had been wheeled away. Randolph felt the same hollow feeling of loss he had known when one of his men had been shot down, yet there was a deep sense of relief in knowing the South African would suffer no more. His suspicion that Henniker had killed the captain grew, especially in the following days when both the doctor and Kimberly seemed preoccupied and never mentioned the death of the captain.
Randolph learned much about medical treatment and terminology. At the end of the second week at a rare moment when his head felt fully cleared, Doctor Henniker entered with Kimberly and stood staring down at the aviator. The doctor gestured at a hypodermic.
“No, Doctor. Please. Not this time,” Randolph pleaded. “I’ve been adrift since I came in here.”
“But I’m going to examine you. It may be very painful.”
“Please, Doctor, let me try.” He nodded at the needle in Nurse Piper’s hand. “I’m becoming dependent.”
Henniker grimaced. “Very well, Major.” He pulled the bed covers back off the cradle and leaned over the aviator’s body with a torch in one hand and an instrument in the other. Kimberly Piper stood by with a clipboard and pencil. Randolph felt the instrument probing but choked back the pain.
“Heavy eschars, granulations, and blebs on the right leg.” He glanced up at Randolph. “Your leg suffered the most—third-degree burns. When third-degree burns heal, they heal with a degree of scar tissue which is greater than any other healing process in the body.”
“I won’t lose it?”
“No, Major Higgins. But you will lose mobility.”
“Work a rudder bar?”
The doctor snorted. “I wouldn’t lay my bit on it. We will
splint it to avoid contracture.”
“If that doesn’t work?”
“Skin grafts, but I’m afraid you’ll have a stiff leg for the rest of your life.” Henniker turned to the nurse. “There will be heavy scarring of the neck, chest, and torso, but not as severe as the leg. Now we should be able to dress his chest, torso, and upper leg with sterile gauze soaked in picric acid. Change daily and moisten with a saline solution when you remove the dressings.”
“Continue with the sodium bicarbonate baths, Doctor?”
“Yes. Once daily.” Randolph felt the instrument probe his abdomen and hip. “Heavy granulation here, nurse.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“Apply nitrate of silver solution as strong as the patient can tolerate.”
“Balsam of Peru?”
“No, nurse. And I don’t believe in scarlet salve. You know that.” The timbre of the voice was curt.
“Yes, Doctor.”
“He’s showing heavy vesication. Have you been puncturing the blebs?”
“Yes, Doctor Henniker. But they reappear.”
Randolph interrupted. “What are you talking about?”
“Blisters, my good man,” Henniker said impatiently. He turned back to Kimberly. “Of course they reappear. Continue puncturing the vesicles with a sterile needle and allow the serum to flow out, but don’t remove the pellicles and apply a five percent solution of picric acid ointment after puncturing. This should relieve some of his pain, prevent suppuration, and perhaps we can cut down on the frequency of the dressings.”
Randolph heard the nurse writing furiously and finally she said, “I have it, Doctor.”
Henniker stood erect and fingered his chin. “His urine? Any signs of nephritis?”
“No, Doctor. It’s clear.”
“Good. Good.” He s
poke to Randolph. “Your kidneys are holding up.” Back to the nurse, he said, “Continue with the potassium citrate, twenty grains, with spirit of nitrous ether in plenty of water. Administer four liters of normal saline solution daily subcutaneously.”
“Good Lord,” Randolph said. “I can’t take that much.”
The doctor’s smile was evil. “Then we have ways to see to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“We insert a tube up the rectum and. . .”
“I can take the lot, Doctor,” Randolph assured the doctor hastily.
Henniker turned back to Kimberly. “His bowels must be kept free and open. Nephritis is always a threat and he must eliminate actively.”
Nurse Piper continued writing and finally Doctor Henniker asked, “You have my instructions?”
“I do, sir. Do you wish me to read them back?”
“Not necessary. I’m overdue in the next ward.” Henniker whirled and was gone.
For the first time in nearly two weeks, Randolph had been clearheaded when examined. The medical jargon had been confusing but at the same time sobering. He had a stiff leg and would probably never fly again. He pushed back the depression philosophically and stared at Kimberly Piper’s lovely face and trim body. The view raised his spirits. He felt a sudden flush of embarrassment. “Ah—” he began. “You know me pretty well.”
Looking up from her notes, the nurse smiled slyly and pulled the blankets back up to his chin. “As well as your mother.” She put a cool hand on his forehead and leaned close.
Her flesh was as clear and perfect as satin and he could smell the perfume again. He realized it had been a long time since he had bedded a woman. Not since Cynthia Boswell. Suddenly, without warning, he felt an intense arousal and a stiffening. The major was happy there was a cradle to hold up the bed clothes.
