Complete Works of Nevil Shute
Page 414
The professional detachment of the doctor communicated itself to her, as he intended that it should, and robbed the business of all horror. She saw no sympathy and no emotion in his work upon the injured man, only a great technical care and skill, that noted impersonally every sign of feeling, every change in respiration and pulse as the work went on, and made adjustment for it. He took the leg off about eight inches below the knee with a local anæsthetic injected in several places around the leg, waited ten minutes for this to take effect, and then did the job. From the time they knelt down together by the rubber blanket till the bandaging was complete, about twenty-five minutes elapsed, and in that time Jennifer was completely oblivious of what was going on around her, concentrated only on the work in hand.
Carl Zlinter sat back on his heels. “So,” he said. “Now we must get him to the utility.” He raised his head. “The mattress, please. Bring it and lay it down here.”
He got to his feet and Jennifer got up stiffly with him from her knees; she felt exhausted, drained of all energy. She was surprised to see Jack Dorman there among the men, and to see the utility parked immediately behind the bulldozer; she had not seen or heard it arrive. Carl Zlinter spoke to her. “It was very well done, the help that you gave me,” he said. “You have been a nurse at some time?”
She shook her head. “No,” she said. “I’ve never done anything like that before.”
He raised his eyebrows. “So?” he exclaimed softly. “It was well done, very well. You have a gift for this.” He glanced at her kindly. “And now you are very tired.”
She forced a smile. “I don’t know why one should be.”
“It is the close attending,” he said. “I also, I get tired, every time. It would be wrong if one did not grow tired, I think, for that would mean I had not done the best I could.”
She smiled at him. “I suppose that’s right. I suppose that’s what it is.” And then somebody said, “Where will they put the mattress, Splinter?”
He moved aside. “Here. Lay it down here, like this.” She turned towards the utility, and Jack Dorman was there. “Good show, Jenny,” he said with genuine respect. “How’re you feeling? Get into the car and sit a bit.”
“I’m all right,” she said. “It takes it out of you, though.” She got into the car and sat with the door open, talking to him.
“I brought up a bottle of whisky from the store, ‘case it was needed,” he said. He produced it. “Let me pour you out a nip.”
“I don’t want that,” she said. “I’m all right.”
“Sure?”
“Honestly.” He slipped the bottle back into the door pocket of the car. “I couldn’t have done what you did,” he said. “I’d have turned sick.” That wasn’t true, because when it comes to the point men and women are far stronger than they think, but he thought that it was true. He had seen death and wounds in plenty thirty years before, but time had wiped the details from his mind, and this had come as a fresh shock to him. He was genuinely surprised at the strength of this girl from London.
Under the direction of the Czech the men lifted the unconscious man carefully on to the mattress and carried it to the utility, and laid it in the back, assisted by Jack Dorman and the manager. Jennifer got out while this was going on and stood and watched, but there was nothing she could do to help. The evening sun was now sinking to the tops of the gum trees, flooding the glade with golden light; in the midst of her fatigue and these strange happenings she could wonder at the beauty and the fragrance of the place.
Carl Zlinter came to her by the car. “We have now to put the other man on the mattress,” he said. “Do you feel able to help me? It is more delicate, because of the head injuries.”
“Of course,” she said. “What do you want me to do?”
She crossed with him to the other man while the mattress was brought and laid adjacent to him. They knelt down while Zlinter carefully examined the head again, and felt the pulse, and tested the degree of unconsciousness. He made her fetch a triangular bandage and he raised the injured head while she slipped the bandage beneath it. Then very carefully they manœuvred the rubber sheet beneath the body and head, Zlinter and Forrest lifting each part an inch or so from the ground while the girl slipped the sheet under, straightening the folds as she progressed; in ten minutes the man was lying on the sheet. With three men lifting the sheet on each side of the body and Zlinter tending the head at the same time, they slipped the mattress under and carried it to the utility, and laid it in the back beside the other. Then they were ready to go.
Jack Dorman got into the utility with Zlinter and Jennifer; Forrest followed on behind them with the truck full of men, leaving the bulldozer to be sorted out and put upon its feet in the morning. Dorman drove the utility over the rough ground of the glade at no more than a walking pace, with Zlinter continually observing the effect of the motion on the wounded men through the back window; once or twice he stopped the car and got out to examine them more closely. Presently the truck drew up beside them, and it was arranged that Forrest should go on ahead and telephone the doctor at Woods Point.
The utility moved very slowly up the track towards the road. Jennifer sat silent between the men, Dorman giving the whole of his attention to getting the car over the rough road with as little motion as possible, Zlinter silent and preoccupied with the condition of the head injury. But presently he roused himself, and said, “Please, Mr. Dorman. This young lady that has been of so great help — I do not know her name. Will you make an introduction please?”
The Australian said, “Why — sure. Jennifer Morton, my wife’s niece or something.”
The girl laughed. “Jennifer’s the name,” she said. “Jenny, if you like.” She hesitated. “You might as well complete it,” she observed. “Your name isn’t really Splinter, is it?”
“Zlinter,” he said. “Carl Zlinter, Miss Jennifer.” He achieved as near to a bow as he could manage in the cab of the utility, pressed up against the girl. “They call me Splinter when it is not something ruder. I am from Czechoslovakia. You are Australian, of course?”
“I’m nothing of the sort,” the girl said. “I’m a Pommie, from London. I’ve only been in the country a few days.”
“So? A few days only? I have been here for fifteen months.”
“Do you like it?”
He nodded. “It is ver’ beautiful, almost like my own country, in Bohemia, in the mountains. I would rather live there, in my own country, but I do not like Communists. If I may not live there, then I would rather live here, I think, than any other place in the world.”
“You like it so much as that?”
He smiled. “I have been happy since coming here from Germany. I like the country, and the working in the trees.”
The utility emerged on to the made road with a lurch. Zlinter made Jack Dorman stop the car and got out to inspect his patients; what he saw was evidently not very satisfactory, because he got up on to the mattresses and crouched over the man with the fractured skull. He got down presently on to the road, and came to the window at the driver’s side.
“I will ride in the back,” he said. “The motion is not good, but if I kneel down there I can keep the head still, I think. Go very, very carefully. Very slow.”
Jennifer said, “Can I help if I get in behind, Doctor?”
“You must not call me ‘Doctor’,” he said. “Not in Australia.” She did not understand that. “There is not room for more than one person,” he said. “I can manage alone, but please, go very, very slow. I am afraid for splinters of the bone.”
He got back into the rear portion and knelt down between his patients; Jack Dorman let the clutch in and the car moved off at walking pace. It took them half an hour to cover the three miles down to the lumber camp in the valley; they stopped twice upon the way for Zlinter to adjust the folded blanket that served as a pillow. It was sunset when the utility crept up to the office building.
Jim Forrest came out into the road to meet th
em. “The doctor’s still at Woods Point,” he said. “I got through to the hotel but he’s not there; the place he’s operating in isn’t on the telephone. I left a message asking him to ring us here, soon as he could. I rang the hospital and asked if they could send a nurse out here. They can’t do that; they’ve got one nurse sick and another off on holiday. As far as I can make out they’ve only got the sister and a couple of Ukrainian ward-maids there. The sister said we’d have to bring them into Banbury.”
There was a silence. Everybody seemed to be expecting Zlinter to say something, and Carl Zlinter apparently had nothing to say. At last he got down from the back of the utility. “Please,” he said, “may I come into your office, Mr. Forrest?”
“Sure.” The manager led the way inside.
In the bare, rather squalid room that was the office of the lumber camp the Czech turned and faced the manager. “This man is now very bad,” he said quietly. “This man with the fractured skull. Mr. Dorman, he drives very carefully and very slow, but I have not been able to prevent the head from moving. There are broken bones, you understand, pieces of the skull that are broken, like the shell of an egg. With every movement of the car there is a — a movement of these pieces of the skull against each other, and a rubbing on the matter of the brain.”
Jim Forrest made a grimace.
“The pulse is now worse,” Zlinter said dispassionately, “and the colour of the face is worse also. The total condition is now seriously worse than when you saw him in the woods, by the accident. I do not think it is wise to take him into Banbury, another twelve miles, till he has had some attention.”
“You’ll think he’ll die upon the way?”
Zlinter shrugged his shoulders. “I do not know. It is seventeen miles and the road is not good until the last part, so we must go very slow. It will take two hours; if we go faster there may be much damage to the brain. I cannot say if he will die or not if he is treated so. I can tell you only that I would not advise for him to go further than here till he has had attention.”
“What sort of attention, Zlinter?”
“I think the head should be examined carefully, in clean and antiseptic surroundings, with good light. I think that we shall find a portion of the bone is pressing on the brain. If that is so, that portion must be lifted or removed entirely to relieve the pressure — the operation that we call trephine. When that is done, if it needs to be done, the matter is less urgent; he must then be put into some cast or splint for the movement of the head, and taken to a hospital.”
“Could you do that — lift that bit of bone you think wants lifting?”
“I have done that operation many times. In this country, I am not allowed to practise because I am not qualified. If the man should die in the end, there would be trouble, perhaps. I think it is for you to say what is to be done.”
“If I said, ‘Have a go at it’, would you be willing?”
“I would be willing to do what I can for him,” the Czech said.
“Even though it might mean trouble if the thing goes wrong?”
Zlinter smiled. “I have crossed that river already,” he said. “I am in trouble now with the other man if things go wrong, for I have taken off his leg, and that I am not allowed to do, I think. I am in one trouble now already, and another of the same kind will not matter much.”
Jim Forrest nodded. “May as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.” He stood in silence for a minute, looking out of the dirty window at the golden lights outside as the sun went down. It would be dark before they could get this man to Banbury, which would not make the journey any easier for him. There was no guarantee that when they got him there he would receive attention before morning; the matron certainly would not undertake an operation for trephine herself, and she would almost certainly prevent Carl Zlinter from doing anything of the sort in her hospital, even though the patient were in a dying state. Until he could get some news of when the doctor was expected back at Banbury, it might be adverse to this man in every way to take him there.
Too few doctors in the bloody country, he thought, and they tried to stop you using the ones you’d got. He was Australian to the core, bred in the country with only a few years of school in town, an individualist to the bone, a foe of all regimentation and control. He turned suddenly from the window. “My bloody oath,” he said. “We’ve got to do something, and it’s no good taking him to Banbury unless the bloody doctor’s going to be there. You tell me what’s the best to do, Splinter, and I’ll tell you to do it.”
The dark foreigner laughed. “I think we take them to Hut Five,” he said; that was a new hut, recently constructed and so reasonably clean, and there were empty rooms. “Two rooms we shall want, one for the amputation to lie in bed. The other with a bed and a long table from the mess-room, very clean, on which I can lay this man with the injured head while I examine him. When I have done that, I will tell you if I should go further with trephine, or if we can wait till the doctor comes. In that room I shall need a very bright light, with a long cord of flex from the lamp fitting.” The camp was lit by electricity from a Diesel generator.
“Right,” said Forrest. “We’ll get on with that, and give the bloody hospital away.” He stepped briskly out of the office to the utility and started giving orders to the men. Carl Zlinter went to the door of the utility and spoke to Jennifer.
“Mr. Forrest has decided to make here a little hospital for the night,” he said. “We shall clear two rooms, and make all as sterile as we can. I am to make an examination of the man with the broken head, and then we will decide what is the best thing to be done.” He hesitated. “Will you be able to stay and help me?”
She said, “Of course I’ll stay if I can help at all.” She turned to Jack Dorman. “That’s all right, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” he said. “Stay as long as you like. I’ll probably go back and tell Jane, and then come back here. If you’re going to work long you’d better have some tea.”
Zlinter said, “It will be a help if Miss Jennifer can stay while I examine the head. She understands more quickly than the men, the things I want. I will see she gets a meal if it is necessary to work long.”
Jennifer got out of the car. “What have we got to do?”
Two hours later, in a little hot room that was roughly hung with sheets and that stank of carbolic, Zlinter straightened up above the patient on the table. It had taken them most of that time to rig up their little hospital and make the surroundings roughly sterile. For the last half-hour Jennifer had held the electric light bulb in the positions that he told her, and had handed him the swabs and bowls and scissors that he needed from the office table behind her. It was airless and stuffy in the little room, for they had closed the window to keep out the dust and the bugs that flew in the Australian night. The girl from London was sweating freely and her clothes were clinging to her body; she was growing very tired.
“It is not good,” said Zlinter. “No, it is not good at all.” She could see that much, even with the untrained eye; now that the hair was cut away the huge, unnatural depression in the skull was an appalling sight.
“It is ver’ hot,” the man said. “Hang the lamp upon that nail, and we will go outside where it is cool. Perhaps there is now some news of the doctor.”
It was fresh outside the hut, and she felt better in the velvety black night. Zlinter asked the darkness if Jim Forrest was there, and from the darkness somebody said that he would go and get him. Another voice asked, “How’s he going on, Miss?”
She strained her eyes, but they were still dazzled by the light she had been holding and she could only see a dark blur of a figure. She could not give a reassuring report; she temporised, and asked, “Which one?”
“Harry Peters,” the voice said. “The one what got his head cracked.”
“He’s going on all right,” she said. It was all that she could say.
“Bert Hanson, he’s awake,” another voice said. “I just been talking to him.”
“Awake?” He turned back to the hut, and she followed him in. In the little room next to the head case the light was shaded with a towel roughly draped across the fixture. In the half light the man lay on his back as they had left him, but the eyes were open now, and looked at them with recognition.
“So,” said Zlinter, “how are we now?” He took the hand and laid his finger on the pulse, and stood counting, looking at his wrist-watch.
The man’s lips moved, and he said feebly, “Good old Splinter. Mucking German bastard.”
The Czech stood silent, smiling a little as he watched the second hand move round. Then he laid the hand down. “Do you feel any pain?” he asked.
“Kind of numb all up my leg,” the man muttered.
“No sharp pain anywhere?”
The man said something that they could not hear; Zlinter bent to him and made him repeat it. Then he straightened up. “He’s thirsty,” he said to Jennifer. “Fetch a glass of water. There is a glass in the wash-room.” From the darkness outside a voice said audibly, “That’ll be the first time Bert’s tasted bloody water in ten years.”
“Tomorrow,” Zlinter said, “the ambulance will come to take you into hospital at Banbury, but for tonight you will stay here. Lie very quiet now, and sleep again. If there is pain, call out; I shall be in the next room and I will come at once and give you something that will stop the pain, but I do not think you will have pain again tonight.” Behind him Jennifer came with the water; he knelt and raised the head and gave the man a drink, but he took only a few sips. “Now rest, and go to sleep again,” he said. “It is all right now.”