“I don’t know. Daniel said he has been trying to locate him through some of his European sources. He hasn’t said anything to you because so far he’s been unsuccessful. But I hope he’s not in Russia, Mama. With everything that is going on here now, he’d be certain to be in the middle of it.”
Their conversation was cut short by the ringing telephone. John went to answer it. He returned with a grim expression.
“That was Aunt Katya’s grandmother,” he said. “She is sending a car here. There is an emergency with Aunt Katya, and you both are needed.”
They arrived in time for Mariana to deliver Katya’s baby. There was no doctor present, and most likely none would get there. But it probably wouldn’t have mattered. The child died ten minutes after it took its first labored breath. It simply had not been strong enough or mature enough to survive. It was a boy.
Katya was despondent, but when the priest—thankfully not Rasputin—arrived and asked for a name with which to baptize the child, she did manage to tearfully give the name she and Yuri had decided upon should they have a boy—Sergei Yuriovich.
Anna, Mariana, Teddie and Countess Zhenechka sat by Katya’s bedside the rest of the day, though Katya offered no acknowledgment at all of their presence. But the four women prayed over her nonetheless. They prayed out loud together, and they prayed silently.
All Katya could say was, “How will I tell Yuri?”
52
The artillery fire was close. Closer than it had been an hour ago—so close it made the ground under Yuri’s feet tremble. The sound of the incessant explosions was making his head throb, too, but he had to ignore it and concentrate on the frantic activity in the dressing station compound. People were scurrying around everywhere, not a soul was standing still. Supplies were being hurriedly packed into cartons, tents taken down. Men bearing stretchers were moving patients from the tents still standing. All this with a freezing wind howling through the compound. Chaos appeared to reign, but Yuri understood the order to it all—well, at least to most of it. The army was in retreat, and the dressing station had to retreat with it.
However, as Yuri paused for a brief moment in the compound, he sensed something had gone wrong. The artillery was closer than it should be. He could even hear rifle fire. The army was being pushed back too fast. The dressing station had not been given the order to evacuate soon enough. In less than an hour, the ground where he now stood could well be overrun by Germans.
Yuri grabbed the arm of a passing feldsher whose arms were loaded with cartons. “Forget the supplies,” Yuri said. “We have to get the patients out.”
“But, sir, we can’t leave all this to the Germans.”
“Listen, Corporal.” Yuri paused. “That’s German artillery. We don’t have enough shells to be firing that often. We haven’t time for supplies.”
“I’ll do as you say, but it won’t matter much if the trucks can’t get through.”
He was right, of course. So far only two trucks had arrived to assist in the evacuation, and they were now nearly full. They would need ten more trucks to complete the move and accommodate all the patients. As a matter of course, they expected only five trucks to be allotted to the hospital. Yuri would be happy if three arrived. And to make matters worse, new wounded were constantly pouring in. He began to wish he’d learned German in school instead of French.
Yuri returned to one of the two hospital tents left standing. He’d just been to the supply depot to see if, by some miracle, more morphine was available. He had already sent two orderlies who had returned empty-handed. Deeming it was time to throw around his weight as an officer, even a prince if he had to, he had marched to the depot to confront the supply sergeant himself. Even in the Russian medical corps there had to be some morphine, and he’d heard a rumor that the sergeant was hoarding it to sell on the black market.
Yuri was still shaking over the scene he had created in the supply tent.
“I want a case of morphine,” Yuri had demanded.
The sergeant laughed. “I’ve got a little laudanum, that’s all.”
“I’ve got men with their guts spilling out, with arms and legs missing! I may as well give them aspirin. I know you have morphine, and I want it.”
“I don’t know how you know that . . . sir. You can come in and look for yourself—”
Yuri grabbed the man’s shirt and shoved him harshly against the flimsy tent wall, nearly knocking it over. He didn’t realize until then that he had such nerve, such strength.
“I don’t have time to fool around!” Yuri yelled into the sergeant’s face. “In less than an hour, I have to move a hundred wounded men over rocky, rutted terrain. They’re going to be sedated first, do you hear?” But he suddenly realized he wasn’t much of a threat. How could he make this burly, hardened soldier obey him?
While the man was completely distracted by Yuri’s uncharacteristic violence, Yuri took the sergeant’s service revolver from its holster. It was a crazy act, and from the look of shock on the man’s face, he would agree. Yuri aimed the gun at the sergeant’s head.
“Morphine,” Yuri said, his voice discordantly calm and matter-of-fact.
“I tell you—”
The revolver shook in Yuri’s hand as he pressed it into the man’s temple. “Now!”
“I’ll take one more look.”
“That’s more like it,” said Yuri. He followed the sergeant into the tent.
The place was a maze of cartons and crates. The sergeant had been busy packing up. Yuri prayed he could find what he wanted quickly. The man made a show of searching through several crates, then said at last, “I found it!”
Yuri wasn’t surprised. But when the sergeant handed him only three boxes of medication, Yuri raised the revolver once again. “I want the rest.”
“What do you mean? This is all there is.”
Yuri cocked the revolver.
“All right! All right! I’ll look again.”
“Make it fast. We’re running out of time.”
Yuri left the tent with a day’s supply of morphine in a box tucked under his arm. There was probably more but he had lost his patience, and since he had no intention of shooting the sergeant, he couldn’t really force the issue further. He still couldn’t believe the man could be so heartless. But it was common knowledge that handling supplies in the army was a lucrative business. The sergeant was just doing what others before him had been doing for generations.
As Yuri entered the hospital tent, he had already forgotten the unsavory incident. There was too much to do to dwell long on moral issues.
He got his two feldshers busy administering the morphine while he circulated among the patients, seeing that they were secured for transport. He was nearly shaken from his feet as a shell exploded dangerously close to the compound. Then someone came to the tent.
“We’ve got new wounded!” the man yelled.
Yuri rushed into the compound where carts were arriving. He wasn’t on triage duty, but the other two doctors didn’t seem to be around. Nevertheless, there would be no surgery until the station moved, so he might as well do what he could in the compound. One of the doctors joined him, but the third, Grekov, was nowhere to be seen. “Where’s Grekov?”
“Killed, less than a half hour ago. Didn’t you hear?”
“No . . .” Yuri shook his head, but instead of feeling grief over his colleague’s death he only thought, How are we going to manage with just two doctors?
But what choice was there?
He began examining the new wounded.
A shoulder wound . . . the man could wait. Didn’t need morphine either, though the patient was crying in pain.
A shattered fibula. He’d lose the leg. A quarter grain of morphine until the camp was relocated and surgery could be performed.
Shrapnel in the abdomen. He’d make it if he received immediate surgery. A half grain of morphine.
A crushed chest. Bleeding profusely. He’d never make it. No morphine. Ignore his
screams of pain.
Frostbite. He’d lose half his toes, but he could wait.
Head injury. Part of cerebrum visible. Pupils fixed and dilated. No hope.
And on it went. Yuri pronounced men’s fates with all the detachment of a machine. Earlier, he had thought of Mariana’s experiences as a nurse in the last war and how she had once saved a man’s life who had been pronounced hopeless. But for once in Yuri’s life he could not moralize over his actions. There wasn’t time; there wasn’t enough personnel. He could not waste time in a possibly futile effort to save a single life when three more had a better chance of survival in his place. He had to be a machine. It was the only way to survive the mental ordeal himself—that and not making eye contact with a patient during triage duty. Think of the man only by the nature of his wounds, not as a person.
More wounded arrived. This must be the bloodiest retreat in history, Yuri mused to himself. He lost track of time and place. He forgot how cold it was; he forgot to be afraid of the barrage of explosions. Germans could have marched right into the compound and he wouldn’t have noticed—or cared. Even the artillery fire seemed to diminish. But that was only his imagination, for they were as close as before, if not closer. Then one sound did penetrate his senses.
Trucks!
As he was trying to stop a hemorrhage, Yuri looked up to see four trucks rumble into the compound. He wanted to cheer, but if he moved his hand, his patient would bleed to death. The man had a damaged femoral artery, but the wound itself wasn’t too severe, and the man could be saved if only the bleeding could be stopped. Acting by pure instinct, Yuri had pressed his hand to the artery before assessing that the patient might be beyond help, at least, considering the backup of other wounded. Even a machine breaks down occasionally. And now he was committed to the task, because by removing his hand too soon he would be actively dooming the patient to death. It was a fine distinction, he knew, but one that for the moment gripped him.
Then someone shouted from across the compound, “Doc! We need you!”
A man on a stretcher was writhing about convulsively while two feldshers were attempting to hold him down. Yuri glanced around for the other doctor, but he, of course, was busy also. Yuri gave the feldshers a helpless shrug.
A nurse hurried past. “Sister,” he called. “I need a dressing tray.”
“Yes, Doctor,” she said, as if she didn’t have a hundred other things to do at the same time.
To his surprise, she returned rather quickly but with only a few bandages. “This is all I could find. Most of the supplies are being loaded into the trucks.”
Yuri took the bandages. Maybe in the Russian army supplies were more precious than men. Why else would they be using the trucks for those instead of for the wounded?
Lifting his hand from the artery, he was gratified to see the hemorrhage had slowed. A pressure bandage should take care of further bleeding, though if this man did get loaded up into a truck, the ride over rough terrain would probably start the bleeding all over again. But if Yuri learned nothing else during this war, he at least knew for certain that he was only human, and there was a limit to what a man could do. The rest he had to leave in the hands of God.
Then, without warning, the dressing station became a target for enemy artillery. Several blasts hit the compound—one a direct hit on the supply tent. By then, most of the supplies had been removed, but the supply sergeant wasn’t so lucky. He was found in the rubble and Yuri attended him.
“I guess I got what I deserved, Doc,” the man said.
“Shut up!” Yuri snapped as he worked desperately over him. “Save your strength.”
“I’m a goner—”
“Not yet, Sergeant.”
But a piece of shrapnel had practically eviscerated the man, and his intestines were peppered with fragments. Those needed surgical removal. There were at least a dozen other pieces of metal imbedded in his skin. Frantically Yuri removed what he could, but, with bombs blasting in his ears, men running everywhere and yelling, his hands weren’t steady enough for such delicate work. He needed an operating room, instruments, disinfectant. . . .
Suddenly another shell hit the demolished supply tent. As it impacted, debris flew in all directions, and Yuri threw himself bodily over his patient to protect the man. He felt something hard strike his back, then deflect away. Then there was silence. Complete silence.
“You okay, Sergeant?” he asked as he lifted himself away from the man.
“Yeah. Thanks, Doc.”
“Doctor Fedorcenko.” A feldsher came up behind Yuri. “You’re bleeding on your back.”
Yuri hadn’t felt a thing, but when he reached behind him, his back was soaked. The feldsher taped him up while he continued to work on the sergeant. When Yuri had done as much as he could for the sergeant, he gave him an injection of morphine and instructed the feldsher to get the patient onto a truck.
“Hey, Doc,” said the sergeant as Yuri turned to go, “I’m sorry, you know, about before. If I make it, I won’t do . . . that again. I promise.”
“Good, Sergeant.” Yuri didn’t have the energy to muster more enthusiasm than that.
Somehow the dressing station completed its move to a location about five miles down the road. It took the rest of the day to get everything set up again. At least the bombardment had stopped and all was quiet on the Front. But the only benefit Yuri gained was that he now had an operating room—or rather, an operating tent—to work in. There was no chance to sleep. He and the other doctor were in surgery through the night. In the morning a new doctor arrived, and Yuri got a couple hours of rest before the battle resumed three miles away and wounded started coming in again.
Around three in the afternoon, there was a short lull in the flow of wounded. When Yuri finished his current operation, there was no new patient waiting. He looked around, rather dazed, and the nurse said there would be about fifteen minutes before the next batch of wounded were prepped for surgery. Yuri stripped off his rubber gloves and his blood-smeared smock, then stepped outside the O.R. for a breath of fresh air. He didn’t care about the wind and cold—anything was preferable to where he had been. A feldsher was standing nearby having a cigarette.
“Want a smoke, Doc?” he asked, handing Yuri a pack of cigarettes.
“No, thanks.” Yuri took a deep breath. The air was filled with dust and the reek of gunpowder, but at least that sickening odor of blood was gone. They never mentioned in medical school that blood had an odor, and under normal circumstances it wasn’t noticeable. But when there was so much of it, it became pungent and cloying. He’d never get used to it, and he prayed he would never have to.
“Doc,” said the feldsher whose name Yuri now remembered was George, “I heard a rumor that we were finally pushing back the Germans. What do you think?”
“I hope so. I don’t want to move again.” But the sounds of artillery in the not-so-far distance didn’t offer much hope of that.
“Yeah, that move was a real nightmare, wasn’t it? You ever get any sleep?”
“I tried this morning. Closed my eyes, but I couldn’t sleep.”
George held out the pack of cigarettes again. “Take a couple, Doc. They’ll relax you.”
“Yeah, but what do I do when I have to have one and there aren’t any?”
“Two things the Russian army has in plentiful supply is cigarettes and vodka. There’d be mutiny if those ever ran out.”
“I’m afraid not even that’s helping . . .” Yuri’s words were followed by a brief silence. Neither man wanted to comment further on the distressing state of the army, with desertions and mutiny occurring daily. Officers were taking leaves whenever they wanted, going home for extended periods, some not returning to the Front at all. For a brief moment Yuri cursed his wretched sense of honor.
“When was the last time you were home, Doc?” asked the feldsher, almost as if he had been reading Yuri’s thoughts—but that wouldn’t have been too difficult, since home was what everyone thought
of most around here.
“Last spring. My wife is expecting a baby soon, but I doubt I’ll get back for that.”
“Well, congratulations. I’ve got four children myself. I miss them terribly.”
“This’ll be my first.”
The man laughed and slapped Yuri on the back. “Well, if I was giving out leaves, you’d be at the top of my list. A man ought to be present that first time, at least. You should do what everyone else is doing. Take a French leave.” He laughed.
Yuri shrugged and managed a half-hearted chuckle. He knew it wouldn’t happen. His sense of responsibility was too strong. And Daniel couldn’t be expected to procure leaves at will. For now, Yuri was stuck where he was. Pregnant women were a low priority during wartime. But there was always the vague hope that the war would be over by the time the baby was due. However, if that were to happen, it would be a sure bet that the Germans would be the victors.
Then a nurse poked her head outside and said, “Dr. Fedorcenko, we’re ready.”
“All right, Sister,” said Yuri. When the feldsher also moved to follow, Yuri added to him, “Finish your smoke, George. You probably won’t get another for a while.”
“Thanks, I’ll do that.”
Yuri turned and walked back into the tent. As he did so, he vaguely heard a familiar sound. He was trying to place it as he stepped toward the nurse, who was holding out a clean operating gown for him. Suddenly it came to him.
The whistle of an incoming bomb!
But the realization came too late. The explosion struck in the very spot where he had only moments before been talking to the feldsher.
“George!” he screamed. Then the force of the explosion propelled Yuri several feet into the air before he fell in a heap on the floor. In another instant, something landed on top of him. It took a moment in the dust and mayhem before he identified it as a stretcher with a wounded man on it. He tried to move out of its way, but an excruciating pain shot through his body. Screams and cries went up all around him, but he couldn’t see what was happening, and every time he tried to move, the pain only got worse. Then the surrounding noise grew dimmer and dimmer, and Yuri sank into a numb, black silence.
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