For King and Country (8 page)

She rose to her feet. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Yes, sir. Although this wound is perfectly capable of healing, if the patient had sustained it before the days of antisepsis and asepsis, he’d certainly have died of septicaemia.
That’s blood-poisoning to you, Nurse. Do you know why we don’t change dressings every day here, or even every week?

‘No, sir.’

‘Explain to her, Dr Campbell.’

‘Because the job’s done properly in the first place,’ said Dr Campbell. ‘All infected matter is removed, then the wounds are covered with antiseptic paste. And as nurses
tend to be less careful about aseptic technique once a wound starts to heal, especially a dirty wound, they sometimes introduce more infection.’

The chief gave her a stern look. ‘So be very careful how you do your dressings, Nurse. Everything sterile, and a strict no touch technique. Always, always always!’

‘Yes, sir.’

Debridement. Sequestrum. Debridement. Sequestrum. She liked the words, savoured them, and as soon as she got the chance she’d look them up and know what they meant. Little by little
she’d make this closed, mysterious world of medicine open up some of its secrets to her. The chief led his party back to the middle of the ward to expand on his views on the management of
wounds, but too far away for her to hear properly.

‘I wish I’d asked him about the pain I’m getting in my jaw, and my back and legs,’ her patient murmured. ‘And I wonder if I got gas gangrene antitoxin? I
can’t remember.’

‘You should have asked him,’ said Sally.

He gave her a disparaging look. ‘Now that would be frightfully bad form, wouldn’t it, Nurse? One doesn’t want to make a nuisance of oneself.’

‘Well? Did you learn anything?’ Dr Campbell stood leaning against the door of the linen room the following day, while Sally was pulling clean sheets and pillowslips
off the shelves.

‘Yes.’ Her arms full of linen, she turned to go back to the ward, but he blocked her way.

‘What, then?’

‘The pale streaks on the X-ray were gas, caused by bacilli that multiply in dirty wounds and destroy muscle and cause blood poisoning as well. Sequestrum is dead bone, and debridement
means cutting all the dead stuff away. Oh, and crepitus is a sort of crackling. I remembered that as well. I’ll have to get back with these, Dr Campbell. Staff Nurse is waiting.’

‘Well, you seem to have the initiative to find things out. Very well done, Nurse.’

She gave him a brief smile as she edged past him.

‘And after enduring all that, all our patient seemed to care about was his bally moustache! Incredible, isn’t it? He wouldn’t let Nurse Dunkley shave it off before his
operation, and he was still hanging onto it when we wheeled him into theatre. Isn’t that right, Staff Nurse?’

Nurse Dunkley had materialized beside them, with a reproachful look for Dr Campbell and a frosty frown for Sally. ‘Isn’t what right?’

‘Second Lieutenant Maxfield. He’s very attached to his moustache. Of course, we indulged him in his little eccentricity, and let him keep it. What else could we do? He’s a
hero.’

‘I’m sorry, Dr Campbell, but Nurse Wilde has too much to do to waste time talking about moustaches. Go and start making that empty bed, Nurse Wilde. I’ll be with you in a
moment.’

It sounded like a threat. Sally turned to go, but Dr Campbell caught her eye. ‘He was right, you will make an excellent nurse.’

‘Who was right?’ Sally and Dunkley chorused, but their only answer was a smile. A smile with a hint of mockery in it – though whether for her or for Nurse Dunkley, Sally
couldn’t tell.

She left them, resolving to put Dr Campbell and his comments out of her mind and concentrate on what she was supposed to be doing – re-making that empty bed. If only she’d remembered
to tell Dr Campbell that Lieutenant Raynor had been complaining of pains in his neck and back. She hesitated, and almost turned back, but the thought of Dunkley’s face deterred her. Never
mind, Raynor’s pains were probably from being stuck in bed a lot of the time, and having to support that sling. She’d tell him to mention it himself during the next doctor’s
round.

She was at the far end of the ward when Dunkley caught up with her and loomed so close and with such violence in her eyes that Sally recoiled. ‘Don’t you know there’s a rule
against familiarity with the doctors, Nurse Wilde?’ she almost spat. ‘See that it doesn’t happen again, or Matron will get to know, and you’ll be down the drive, with your
suitcase.’

She flounced towards the stripped bed, and after a stunned moment Sally followed with the bedding.

T
he ward was understaffed as usual, and as usual there was no shortage of work to be done. Sally went to the sluice and quickly set up a bathing
trolley. She’d been a bit apprehensive about bed baths, and had been relieved on finding them a thoroughly decent business. Let a man wash his own face, neck and arms, then wash chest, back
and legs for him, and then cheerily hand the flannel back to him and hold the sheet up like a tent over him, concealing him from your view while he did ‘round the Middle East’ himself.
Everything neatly accomplished, and both parties spared any embarrassment, but then, she hadn’t yet had to bath anyone with injuries like Lieutenant Raynor’s.

With the other probationer to help, she should have at least a couple of patients bathed before the theatre list started at ten o’clock. They set to with a will and got further than they
anticipated, abandoning the bathing trolley by David Jones’ bed after the first patient had been taken to theatre and the orderly had wheeled in the mid-morning drinks. Sally went to get a
cup of cocoa for Jones.

‘Wake up, Lieutenant Jones.’

He drowsily reached up a hand for the monkey bar and pulled, but to no purpose. ‘I’ve no strength today, angel,’ he sighed.

‘Nurse, not angel,’ Sally whispered, and caught Crump’s eye. ‘Come and help me, Nurse.’ Second Lieutenant Jones gave a feeble laugh as they joined hands under his
thighs and hoisted him into a sitting position, and then he broke out into a cold sweat. The colour drained from his cheeks, and he began to gasp for air.

‘All right? All right, David?’ Whether he heard her Sally couldn’t tell, but he didn’t answer. ‘Fetch Sister. Quick,’ she ordered, and Nurse Crump bolted for
the office. Sally curled her fingers round David’s wrist and pressed in the tips in the hollow above his thumb. His pulse was rapid, and she tried to count it while watching his struggles for
breath.

Sister arrived, took one look at him, and went to telephone the houseman. Sally pulled the screens across the bed space, and she and the probationer stood helplessly by as their patient lost all
awareness of his surroundings.

‘I’ve sent for the porter, as well,’ Sister told them, on her return. ‘We’ll get him moved into the room next to my office.’

As soon as they’d transferred him Sally helped Sister Davies to prop him with pillows to sit him up, as far as could be managed with his leg attached to the weights. All afternoon,
whenever she was in his room or near it, Sally listened with dread to a strange alteration in the rhythm of his breathing: noisy, deep and rapid for a minute or two, then slower and more shallow,
until it stopped altogether for what seemed an age. Then he seemed to suck all the air in the room into his lungs in a deep and noisy draught, and the cycle repeated itself – as if he kept
forgetting to breathe until death almost claimed him, and then he suddenly remembered, and evaded it.

She was in David’s room with Sister when Dr Campbell walked wearily onto the ward after the list was finished, and stood in the doorway. ‘He’s Cheyne-Stoking; you can hear it
halfway down the corridor. Ten days after a three-hour operation! Ye gods, he might have had enough consideration to last a bit longer, after all that bally work! Don’t look so shocked, Nurse
Wilde. Dying’s a poor return for all the work we did on him, and it looks very much as if that’s what he’s going to do.’ He turned to Sister Davies. ‘Very little to be
done, I’m afraid, except keep him sitting up. Send for me when you want the death certificate signed. It can’t be long.’

The words were barely out of his mouth when David’s breathing stopped. Sally stood hardly breathing herself, waiting for it to begin again, but in vain. Dr Campbell applied a stethoscope
to his chest, and gave Sister Davies a brief nod. She pulled out the pillows to lay him flat and closed his eyes, then covered his face with the sheet.

Sally dried the young face that Dunkley had just washed as gently and carefully as a mother might have. His eyelids had lifted, and his mop of black hair, black brows and dark,
empty eyes stood out against the yellowing flesh. Now Dunkley handed her an arm, wet, limp and lifeless. The sheet they’d folded back across his hips preserved his dignity until they’d
washed his trunk and, as if he’d been alive, they moved it just enough to expose and wash each leg in turn. The break in his thigh distorted the shape of one leg, made his knee and his foot
lie at odd angles. Dunkley picked up lumps of tow with forceps and packed them into his throat to prevent any leakage from his stomach and then pulled him onto his side, to wash his back, and take
more lumps of tow to pack his rear before allowing him gently to fall onto his back.

Now the sheet was off, and for the first time in her life Sally saw a fully-grown man entirely naked. Dunkley washed the last part of him that awaited washing, and while Sally dried him she cut
off a length of narrow bandage, for the tying of that member whose virility was gone forever. She tied it tight, and finished the knot with a neat bow.

Hard to preserve any dignity now. His body looked faintly ridiculous, and unutterably pathetic. They slipped on the white shroud, combed his hair, and closed his staring eyes, and he reminded
Sally of nothing so much as a big, broken doll. Dunkley put pennies on his lids to keep them closed, crossed his hands on his chest, and then put a pillow under his chin to prevent his jaw from
dropping.

Sally took one last, lingering look at him as she wheeled the trolley away from the darkened room. His poor parents, to lose such a lovely son. And he would have made a loving husband, and a
father. Such a waste. All that promise of future generations, all that youth and love and laughter, that vibrant life, all were stilled, soon to be as cold as the clay that would swallow him. How
pathetic, how helpless, how vulnerable he seemed. As are we all at the last, she thought, feeling that she, too, stank of death.

Ah! There came the porter, rumbling along the corridor with the mortuary trolley.

Odd that it should come as a shock, the following morning, to go on duty and see his bed empty and made up with clean linen ready for the next patient. It bore testimony to an
enormous void, the lack of Lieutenant David Jones on the ward, and the sight of that emptiness cut her in a way that laying out his body had failed to do. Her hand pressed against the ache in her
chest and met the crisp stiffness of a starched apron bib.

No time to mourn him. Better get a move on and get the washing bowls out for those men who were confined to bed, and get the junior to help the ones who couldn’t manage to wash themselves.
Then breakfasts, and the bedmaking and ward cleaning to be done, and then temperatures. Dunkley would do the blood pressures and the medicine round and it would be time for the mid-morning drinks.
By that time the dust would have settled, Sister would start on the dressing round, and with a bit of luck she’d choose Sally to help her. There was no theatre list today, but some patients
were moving on, and they were expecting a couple of new admissions.

‘You’re going to the convalescent hospital today, aren’t you, Lieutenant Hogan?’ she asked, for nothing more than to make a little polite conversation whilst she stripped
the bed he’d occupied.

‘The military convalescent hospital, yes,’ he said, in that broad Australian accent she found a little hard to follow. ‘Run along the lines of a prison, I’m told. Make
sure none of us escape.’

Sally heard a snort, and turned to see Major Knox’s mouth turned down in an expression of derision. ‘Vewy necessawy, when they’re dealing with Austwalians. I don’t say it
of the officers, but the lower wanks have a nasty habit of wunning off.’

‘What did you say?’

Knox’s sneer became more pronounced. ‘I said the Austwalians have a nasty habit of wunning off,’ he barked. ‘They’re the most undisciplined wabble in Fwance, and
they’ve no weason to be otherwise, wet nursed by their government as they are.’

‘My bloody oath, mate, you’re lucky you’re lying in that bed, or I’d . . .’

Knox gave him a look of contempt. ‘Start a barwoom bwawl? Another thing our antipodeans are good at. But before you do, wemember that stwiking a senior officer cawies a severe penalty,
even for an Austwalian.

Sally looked from one to the other, despairing of them. Did they never, never learn? Hadn’t they seen enough of death? Were they so fond of war that they had to start another one, in the
middle of the ward?

Hogan leaned over Knox, and raised his fist, then changed his mind. ‘Ah, you’re not worth it. Just let me get out of here; I’ll be glad to get back to Australia. Australians
treat their men like men, and not like tin soldiers who’ve got nothing better to do than stand around waiting to be sent to the slaughter by some idiot Englishman. The Australian troops began
to see the light about the British officer class with Gallipoli, and what happened at Fromelles – and Pozieres and Bullecourt and Poelcapelle – destroyed any illusions they had left.
It’s not the Hun that the Anzacs are sick of,
mate
, it’s British staff, British methods, and British bungling.’

‘
Gallipoli
!’ Knox exploded. ‘Gallipoli was a minor sideshow! And we lost four times as many men as you. And at Pozieres the Austwalians were weckless enough to
diswegard German firepower and they paid the pwice. At Bullecourt they were incompetent. We’re at war, and in war orders have to be given, and obedience
enforced
, and the death
penalty concentwates men’s minds on the task in hand. An offence that gets our men shot wins an Austwalian a fwee passage home to Mother, and that’s bad for mowale among our twoops. A
few exemplawy executions among your men would be a
jolly good thing.
’