The Far Country (24 page)

“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 messroom, 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.”

In their preoccupation with the head injury they had rather forgotten the amputation lying in the next room where they had laid him in bed with blankets and hot bottles an hour before. Jennifer plucked Zlinter by the arm. “Did you hear that, Mr. Zlinter? They say the other man’s awake!”

“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.”

There was a knock at the door, and Zlinter went out into the corridor with Jennifer; Jim Forrest was there. “This one is doing well,” he said softly, “—the amputation. He is now conscious and resting. The other one, the head case, is not good. Will the doctor come tonight?”

The manager said, “His appendicitis case has turned out bad, Zlinter. Peritonitis, or something. I told him what you said about not taking the head case any further before examining him, and he said to do the best you can. I asked if I should get you to ring him, but he’s going back to his appendicitis. He’ll be back at the hotel about ten or eleven. He said to do the best you can, and he’ll be out here in the morning.”

“Did you tell him I may have to lift the bone to ease the pressure on the brain?”

“I told him that you thought an operation might be necessary tonight.”

“What did he answer, when you told him that?”

“He said, he couldn’t be in two places at once, and you’d have to do the best you could. It was a crook line, and I had to make him repeat a good many times, but that’s what it amounted to.”

The Czech stood silent for a minute. Then he said, “I would like you to come in and look at him, with me. You do not mind the sight of a bad wound?”

“That’ll be right.” They went into the room and Jennifer followed. The manager, in spite of his assurance, drew his breath in sharply when he saw the extent of the injury. Zlinter moved his hand above the great depression. “The bone here is much depressed, as you will see,” he said. “There is hæmorrhage in the brain cavity, also.” He motioned to Jennifer to move the light; she held it above the face, putty coloured and with a bluish tinge. “He is a bad colour,” said Zlinter softly, “and the breathing is bad also, and the pulse is weak. I do not think this man will live until the morning in his present state. What do you think, Mr. Forrest?”

The manager said, “I don’t know. I’ve never seen a thing like this before, Splinter. I should think you’re right. He’s dying now, isn’t he?”

The Czech said, “I think he will be much improved if we can lift the bone and ease the pressure on the brain.” He motioned Jennifer to put the light back on the nail, and took them out into the corridor. When the door was shut, he said, “I have wanted you to see him now, Mr. Forrest, so that if he should not recover from the operation you can say how he was.”

“You’re going to operate, Splinter?”

The Czech nodded. “I am going to lift the bone, and perhaps take some of it away completely.”

“Right. What do you want?”

Carl Zlinter turned to Jennifer. “Are you too tired to go on again?”

She said, “I’m all right.”

“It will be long, perhaps two hours.”

“I’ll be all right,” she said again.

He smiled at her. “That is good.” He turned to the manager. “We must eat before we start again,” he said, “especially this lady. We shall need a small meal, very quickly now, because we must not wait. Some tea, and boiled eggs, perhaps—something that will be ready soon, in a few minutes. After that we will begin the work. We shall need much boiling water.”

They went into the little room again at about a quarter to nine, freshened by a meal in the canteen and a cigarette. Heat, and not horror, was the enemy that Jennifer had to battle against in the next two hours. There was no fly-screen on the window and it was impossible to open it because of the moths and the flying beetles that crashed against the pane, attracted by the light. It was impossible to have the door open without sacrificing sterility. Both worked in a steady drip of sweat, made more intense by the heat from the high-power lamp that Jennifer held most of the time in the positions that the surgeon told her. From time to time they rested and drank lukewarm water from a pitcher before going on.

Thinking it over afterwards, Jennifer came to the conclusion that the heat made the experience easy for her. She was so miserably hot and uncomfortable that it was all that she could do to keep her wits about her, to keep on handing him the things he wanted at the time he wanted them; she had no nervous energy left with which to be upset at what she saw. She needed all her energy for what she had to do.

It was a quarter past eleven by the time the head was finally bandaged. Zlinter went out into the corridor to get some help and with Forrest and Dorman and two other men they lifted the patient in a sheet from the operating table to the bed, and laid him there. The men stood looking on while Zlinter felt the pulse.

Forrest said, “Looking better, isn’t he, Splinter?”

The Czech said, “I think so too. It is now a question of the operation shock. If he can live through that, I think he will recover and be a well man.”

He turned to the door. “We will leave him for a little now. I shall come back later.” He moved them out of the room and shut the door carefully behind them, and leaned for a moment limply against the wall. He said to Jennifer, “You must be very tired.”

She was drenched with sweat, her clothes sticking to her body at every movement. “It was so hot in there,” she said. She felt now as though she might be going to faint. “Let’s get out into the air.”

Jack Dorman took her arm, and they moved towards the door of the hut. Zlinter stopped at the room of the other man, and went in softly to look at his amputation case. The man was lying on his back and breathing deeply, sound asleep; he did not seem to have moved since Zlinter had seen him last. He lifted the sheet and glanced at the bandaged leg, and lowered the sheet again. “Good,” he said softly to Forrest. “This one is all right.” He moved to the door, and then stopped for a moment. “Do you smell anything?”

“Carbolic,” said the manager.

“I thought I could smell whisky.”

Jim Forrest laughed. “Too right, Splinter. Jack Dorman’s got a bottle in his car—it’s me you’re smelling. Come on and have one.”

It was cool and fresh out in the forest night after the close stuffiness of the small room, and the air smelt wonderful after the stenches of the operating table. Jennifer felt better when they got outside; Jim Forrest fetched glasses from the canteen and she drank a small, weak whisky and water with the men, and felt better still. They stood smoking together and relaxing in the cool night air, letting the freshness cool and dry their bodies and their clothes, talking in short, desultory sentences about the operation.