The Far Country (23 page)

“I have done such operations many times,” the man said. “But not since the war ended.”

“Where did you do them?”

“In the war with Russia,” the man said. “I was surgeon in the army. In France also, at the battle of Falaise. Many times I have done emergency trephine. It is not difficult, if you are very careful, and very, very clean. The danger will lie in moving him to where an operation can be done. I could not do that here.”

The manager stood in silence for a minute. “Jack Dorman will be back in a few minutes,” he said at last. “He’s bringing bed-frames and mattresses. They’ll ride softer in that utility than in the truck.”

He walked a little way away from the men, deep in thought. He knew that he was in a delicate position here, and he wanted a few moments to think it over. Zlinter had no qualifications as a doctor in the State of Victoria, but he was probably competent to do a trephine operation and it seemed logical that he should be allowed to do it. Indeed, he was the only man within reach who could attempt it; without his ministrations the man might well die. The obvious place to do the operation was in Banbury hospital, but would the matron agree to a lumberman who claimed to be an unregistered practitioner doing such an operation in her hospital? Almost certainly she would not. It might well be that while everyone was arguing the man would die. He might die anyway, upon the road to Banbury.

He went back to Carl Zlinter, “What will you do, Zlinter?” he asked. “Will you take them into Banbury? What’s the best thing to do?”

“Will the doctor come to Banbury tonight?”

“He’s operating at Woods Point on the appendicitis case this evening. If he comes back, it will be very late. We can get him on the telephone at the hotel at about six o’clock.”

“He will not be back at Banbury before ten or eleven?”

“I don’t think so.”

Carl Zlinter stood in silence for a minute. He was very well aware of his position; if he operated on this fractured skull and the man died, there would be trouble and he might end up in prison, a bad start to his new life in Australia. He said at last, “I will take off the foot of the man at the dozer now—we cannot save that foot. For the other one, we must take him very carefully down to Lamirra as he is, and you must telephone again from there. I will decide then what is best to do.”

“Okay, Zlinter. What help do you want?”

“Somebody who knows, to hand me things from the case, and to keep clean and sterile as possible. The young lady was good just now.” He looked round, and saw Jennifer standing a little aside. “Please,” he said. “Come here.” She came towards him. “I am going to take off that man’s foot,” he said. “Have you ever seen an operation?”

She shook her head. “Never.”

He looked her in the eyes. “Would you be afraid to help me? If you cannot do it, you must say so now. Can you help this man, and not faint or do any foolish thing?”

“I shouldn’t faint,” she replied. “I might do something stupid, because I’ve never done anything like this before. But I’ll do my best.”

He smiled at her, and she was suddenly confident. “It will be nothing difficult,” he said. “Just to keep giving me the things I shall want. I will show you the things before we begin. Just to do what I shall tell you quietly, and to keep a calm head.”

He took her to the utility, and began rummaging through his cartons for the dishes and appliances that he would need. He picked up a white rubber sheet and carried it over to the bulldozer, and laid it on the ground beside the trapped man, immediately beneath the menace of the hanging log. She helped him to arrange it neatly on the fragrant, leaf-covered ground beside the man. “Now, come with me,” he said.

She became oblivious of the men who stood around and watched them. Her whole attention became concentrated on the job she had to do, and on this foreigner in dirty clothes who wielded so much power. He made her swab her hands and arms in disinfectant at the tailboard of the utility, and then she helped him put the instruments into the bowl and to arrange the ligatures, the dressings and the bandages neatly on the white rubber sheet. Then she went with him and knelt down beside the man, and for a time she listened while he instructed her, naming each article after him. Both became utterly immersed in the work that lay ahead.

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 anaesthetic 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 on 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 them. “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.”