For King and Country (7 page)

‘Screens, Nurse.’

The probationer ran and set screens across the bed, but too late to prevent the other patients from watching Jones’ face turn livid, or from seeing the blood stained phlegm he coughed into
the receptacle Sally had snatched off his locker. Sister went to telephone the houseman, but not before Sally had felt the edge of her tongue. In future, she was to address the patients by their
titles, and
never
their Christian names.

Maxfield was out of bed when she went to take his four-hourly temperature. She found him sitting on the verandah absorbed in watching a spider, trembling like an aspen leaf on
a thread of its own spinning between the bars of the balustrade. He attempted a smile, and pointed to it.

She watched it for a moment. Its jerky movements reminded her of a patient she’d seen in the clonic stage of epilepsy. ‘Maybe’s it’s having a fit,’ she smiled.

He shook his head and frowning, mouthed: ‘Shell-shocked!’ and before she had time to protest he reached out and, looking straight at her, crushed it between his finger and thumb.

‘What for did you do that?’ she protested. ‘It wasn’t hurting you.’

‘Coward!’ His lips shaped the word.

She stiffened. Horrible man. For two pins she could have told him that he might have the DCM, but it didn’t entitle him to destroy God’s creatures for nothing. ‘You’re
not supposed to be out of bed at this time. Come and I’ll take your temperature inside, before we both get wrong from Sister,’ Nanny-like, she shooed him back towards his bed and shook
the thermometer down as he eased himself onto it. Before she placed it under his arm he snatched a pencil from the top of his locker and slowly and painstakingly wrote on the edge of his newspaper:
‘How is he?’

For an officer, his writing was poor, no better than a five-year-old’s, and she could hardly decipher it. ‘Lieutenant Jones? As well as can be expected.’

He took up his pencil for another effort. ‘Hopeless,’ he wrote and, after a moment’s hesitation, he handed her his letter and nodded, his expression telling her to read it.

Sally skimmed it over, and blushed slightly as she replaced it in its envelope and handed it back, without comment. But his eye was on her as she read his thermometer, seeming to want a
reaction.

She marked his temperature chart, and joined the dots. It was coming down nicely, and he was still looking at her.

‘It’s terrible.’ She could think of nothing better to say, but no matter. She had no time for idle chatter with the patients, and was bound to cop it from Sister if she
didn’t get a move on. She raced away, to do as all the others did and save a bit of time by putting half a dozen thermometers to cook in their four-hourly armpits, before coming back to the
first one to start reading and recording them all.

‘Why, what do
you
think?’ she demanded, after supper that evening, as she sat with her stockinged feet tucked under her in the sitting room and sipped her
tea. ‘He never should have shown me something as private as that. I didn’t know where to put myself.’

‘Maybe he wants you to know he’s footloose and fancy-free. Maybe he’s on the lookout for a new wife and he thinks you’ll fit the bill,’ Armstrong said.

‘Well, I don’t. For one thing, I don’t think he even remembered he had a wife before he got that letter. For another, he’s Australian, and if he’s not sent back to
France, he’ll be going back there, if he can remember where he lives. Dunkley said he didn’t seem to remember anything when she booked him in, but she hadn’t time to get to the
bottom of it, because he’s lost his voice and had to write everything down. And he’s
thirty years old.
’

‘That’s only ten years older than you.’

It was, but then, and she didn’t like to say it, then there was his
face.
It was cruel, when men had fought battles to protect them that women should recoil at the wounds
they’d received; but it was so, and she couldn’t help it. If you’d loved a man before his looks were destroyed it would be different; if you’d sworn for better, for worse
and till death do you part, you’d do it, if you’d ever had any real feelings for him at all. But to feel any attraction for somebody with a face like Maxfield’s if you
hadn’t known him before, well! It would be impossible. And the way he’d crushed that poor, harmless spider – it showed there was an ugly side to his nature as well as to his face.
Even so, far away from the ward, among her friends in the comfort of the probationers’ sitting room, it was as much as she could do to prevent herself from shuddering at the thought of
him.

Had Edna known about her husband’s broken face before she wrote that letter? Terrible if she had. Either way, Edna would never have to look at it now. She’d certainly had some
‘go’ in her, and she’d gone. But Maxfield should never have embarrassed her by making her a party to his private business. Why had he done it? Perhaps it was all part of the
injury to his head, like his memory. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to expect anything from a man who couldn’t remember his own wife, couldn’t even remember who he was

What a horrible predicament to be in, and the one person who should have been there to help him gone off with somebody else. She felt a sudden pang of pity, and of fear.

The chief was ready to make his entrance into the ward, flanked by Dr Campbell, a couple of respectful junior doctors, Sister Davies and Staff Nurse Dunkley. Sally tacked on
behind them, to pick up the patients’ notes and X-rays as they were finished with, and to speak only when she was spoken to, which was not at all. Dr Campbell’s blue eyes twinkled in
her direction as she jumped forward to open the ward door for the entourage, and Dunkley stared at her with compressed lips as she sailed past. Sally closed the door and trailed in her wake.

They went in a clockwise direction, stopping at every bed to discuss the fractures, amputations, gunshot and shrapnel wounds and facial injuries inflicted on their ‘cases’, along
with the treatment planned or already given, and the patients’ progress. Nurse Dunkley carefully avoided Dr Campbell’s eyes, Sally noticed. The chief was polite to all the patients,
listening to their comments and giving serious answers to their questions.

Maxfield still looked pale and gaunt, but apart from his moustache, he was now clean-shaven. The chief inspected the dressing on his face, and returned to the end of the bed to talk to his
students. ‘Abundant discharge, I see, and a rather oppressive odour. But his temperature’s down, which tells us there’s no more septic absorption. What can we expect him to tell
us now that’s ceased?’ The chief addressed his question to the junior housemen.

‘That his pain’s relieved, and he feels generally much better, sir,’ said the braver of the two.

‘Quite right. How are you, Lieutenant?’

‘All right, sir,’ was Maxfield’s soundless reply.

‘Of course, the eye’s gone, old fellow, as I expect you realize.’ The consultant’s tone was kindly, and Maxfield nodded, keeping his moustachioed upper lip very
stiff.

‘But there’s every hope you’ll keep the arm. We’ll take the dressing off once more and have a good look at it and if everything’s satisfactory the next one can stay
on for a couple of weeks, so you won’t be troubled with any more painful changes.’

Maxfield nodded.

‘How’s your appetite?’

Sister answered for him. ‘Not very good, sir. He hardly eats anything.’

‘That won’t do. Give him some of the mixture, Sister, to take whenever he likes.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The entourage passed onto the next bed. ‘Very difficult trying to converse with a patient who’s lost the power of speech,’ the chief remarked, and addressed himself to the
shyest of the housemen. ‘What’s your opinion, Doctor?’

‘I can find no damage to the larynx, sir. It may be connected to his head injury, or it may be purely functional. Perhaps brought on by shock.’

The chief gave a grim smile. ‘Well, lucky for him he’s an officer, and safe from the electric shock cure for mutism. That gets men back to the Front in short order.’

With David Jones, the chief’s tone was almost paternal. ‘Let’s see, a week after your operation, isn’t it? And how are you getting on, young man?’

David gave the great man a shy smile. ‘Tired. But a bit better, thank you Doctor.’

‘How is he, Sister?’

‘A slight fever still, sir, but he’s improving. He’s eating a bit better.’

‘Good, good. Well, you’re bound to be tired. And how’s that pain you had in your chest? Any better?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said David, ‘And Doctor, thank you for saving my leg.’

A kindly nod and a ‘plenty of rest, young man’, and then the chief led his followers towards the fireplace in the middle of the ward, which served for both heating and ventilation.
Sister went to answer the telephone, and Nurse Dunkley answered a call from a patient further up the ward.

‘Are you really better, Lieutenant Jones?’ Sally whispered.

‘All the better for seeing you, my angel.’

‘Shush,’ she laughed, ‘if Sister heard you . . .’

He nodded towards the group round the fire, intent on listening to the professor’s teaching session. ‘She won’t. She’s gone, so I’ll tell you. Do you know, Nurse,
we all look forward to seeing you come on duty every day, because you’re the nicest of the lot. You
are
an angel, but I’ve told them all hands off, you’re
mine.’

Sally laughed, and brushed off the compliment. ‘What’s the Welsh for blarney? A lot of Celtic flannel?’

Eyes wide, David insisted, ‘No, it’s right, Nurse. They all call you “Smiler”.’

‘Get away,’ she said, and scooped up his notes with the rest to take them into the office, a glow of pleasure burning inside her. He was such a bonny lad, with his dark wavy hair and
his big dark eyes with their thick lashes – eyes that could have you mesmerized – and his smile, and his lovely, deep, sing-song Welsh voice . . . He was nice, not stuck-up like some of
the other officers. But then, he came from the same sort of home that she did, she was sure of it. She hoped he’d really meant it, what he said.

‘Nurse Wilde!’ She turned at the sound of Dr Campbell’s voice and seeing him coming towards her, went to meet him. ‘The chief wants the notes and X-rays. We’re to
have one of his famous fireside tutorials on the interesting cases, including the fellow who made you dash to the sluice to be sick. If you find something to do nearby and listen hard, you might
learn something.’

Lieutenant Raynor had lost his left arm and his right one was immobilized in a splint. Sally sat by his bed giving him his late morning cocoa through a feeder cup and trying
not to make him feel like the helpless cripple he was, when the chief led his acolytes over to the long sash window on the other side of the bed. He held an X-ray up to the light, so that Sally had
a perfect view.

‘This was taken at the base hospital in France, before they put our patient on the ambulance train. What do you see?’ the chief asked one of the housemen.

‘Comminuted fracture of the radius, sir.’

‘Obviously, and caused by a shell fragment that picked up a quantity of battlefield mud before tearing through his clothing and embedding itself in his arm. What else?’

‘Lighter streaks, sir, and the arm looks swollen.’

The chief laughed aloud. ‘Well spotted. Very faint and very few, but “lighter streaks” indeed. And what might they be, bearing in mind the condition of the soil on the Western
Front?’

Sally’s patient turned his head away from the cup and leaned forward to try and glimpse the X-ray.

The other houseman couldn’t contain himself. ‘Gas, sir!’

‘Yes, gas, sir! Those lighter streaks are gas. Caused by?’

‘Clostridium . . .’

‘Clostridium perfringens, more often than not. Symptoms?’

‘Pain, swelling, fever, rapid pulse, sweating, sir, and anxiety,’ one of the housemen volunteered.

‘Vesicle formation, foul-smelling discharge, progressing to a drop in blood pressure, renal failure, coma and death, if not treated,’ Dr Campbell chimed in.

‘Excellent. Now describe the onset.’

‘Sudden and dramatic . . .’

‘Not you, Dr Campbell. Let one of the juniors speak.’

The keenest young houseman volunteered. ‘Inflammation begins at the site of infection, sir, and painful tissue swelling, brownish red discolouration . . .’

‘Yes. And you, your turn now. What do you find on palpation?’

The shyer of the two answered. ‘Crepitus – on palpating the swollen area, sir.’

‘Excellent. And the affected area expands so quickly one can see the increase within a very few minutes, and the tissue is rapidly destroyed.’ He paused for a dramatic moment, and
then rounded on his eager student, with an eye like a hawk. ‘So why do you suppose it wasn’t?’

Taken aback, the houseman stuttered, ‘I . . . I don’t know, sir.’

The chief smiled. ‘I’ll enlighten you. The radiographer at the base hospital spotted it on this X-ray; the bacteriologist saw the bacilli microscopically on a wound smear –
Gram-positive, of course – and so our man was one of the lucky few to get the new French gas gangrene antitoxin, along with his tetanus antiserum. Had it been his leg, they might simply have
amputated, but to lose an arm is more disabling. So the surgeon did a thorough debridement of the wounds and immobilized the arm and then the nurses started four-hourly irrigations that were
continued throughout his journey by hospital ship and hospital train to us. Quite a feat of organization.’

Debridement? What was that? She’d have to look it up in her nurse’s dictionary. But the chief was still in full spate. ‘Motor function appears to be intact, as are the radial
and ulnar pulses, and they’re equal to the contralateral side. We have also excised the wounds to remove decaying muscle and sequestrum and we’ve bipped them, which is to say
we’ve irrigated them thoroughly with 1 in 40 carbolic acid, dried them with methylated spirit, smeared them with bismuth and iodoform paraffin paste, and packed them. The arm you’ve
seen on X-ray is now resting comfortably in a sling. Luckily for our patient it’s his right one, and we can be fairly confident he’ll keep it. As I never tire of impressing on you
gentlemen, dirty wounds must be thoroughly explored and cleaned, or they
will not heal.
’ He looked at Sally. ‘Did you hear that, Nurse?’