by Luke Duffy
Even from the doorway, Stu could see the beads sweat on Sandra's brow. It glistened and he could see how pale she had become. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her hands clutched at the area of her stomach. A cold shiver ran the length of Stu's spine and he prayed it was not what he suspected. A pregnancy was the last thing they needed at that time.
He moved closer and lit the camping lamps that were placed around the room. "Sini, start heating me some water, lots of it. And bring me my med bag."
"Roger that," Sini replied, and he disappeared out of the room only to return a minute later with a large plastic bowl, a couple of camping stoves with a number of metal pots to heat the water in and the medical kit.
Stu began taking Sandra's blood pressure and heart rate. He checked her pulse in a number of different places in order to gauge the strength and health of her arteries and heart. When he tried to take the pulse in the femoral artery on the inner thigh, Sandra let out a long loud grown. It was obviously agony for her to straighten, even open her legs slightly.
Without letting Sini see what he was doing, Stu quickly checked the sheets of the bed around where Sandra lay. He then checked the seat of her clothing, expecting to see signs of haemorrhaging. There was no sign of any blood. Stu had begun to fear a miscarriage, but it was normally accompanied with bleeding.
"Sandra, can you hear me?" Stu spoke gently in her ear, stroking her forehead at the same time.
Her eyes opened and she turned her head to face him. Her face was pale and contorted with the pain. "Yes," she nodded, "I can hear you. It really hurts, Stu." She let out a whimper as another bout of pain hit her.
"What hurts, where is the pain? Can you show me exactly where it is?"
With great difficulty, she slowly attempted to straighten her legs. Her teeth were gritted and she fought hard not to allow her legs to spring back up towards her chest. "It is here," she said, stroking the area of where the pain emanated.
Stu looked at her hand. "Here, this is where the most pain is?" he asked placing his own hand in the same area.
Sini had set the water to heat and had now joined Stu at the side of the bed. He took Sandra's free hand in his own. "What is it, Stu? What is wrong with her?"
"Give me a minute, Sini. Sandra, you are going to have to let me examine you for a moment. Can you hang on just long enough for me to feel your stomach?"
Sandra nodded, her eyes shut tightly and she slowly began to straighten her legs. She groaned and squeezed hard on Sini's hand as the agony tore at her.
Stu began feeling both sides of her stomach simultaneously with both hands. If he felt something on one side with one hand, and nothing with the other hand on the opposite side, then he would know that there was something in that particular area.
Sandra clenched her teeth hard and whimpered as Stu continued to push on her stomach. Up the sides and along the front, he gently pressed down with his hands systematically. A minute later, and he pulled his hands back and helped to make her comfortable again.
"Okay, Sandra, try and rest now." He motioned for Sini to leave the room with him.
Outside, Sini looked anxious. He was as pale and sweaty as Sandra was. "What is it, Stu?"
Stu was staring at the wall and rubbing the bristles on his chin. "It's her appendix. I think they're about to burst."
"What is, 'appendix'?"
"It's something we don't need right now, in every sense of the word."
Sini gripped him by the arm. "Stu, is she going to be okay? Can you help her?"
"In theory, I can. I mean, I know all about it, even how to treat it but I have never done it, and these aren't the best conditions. Even if I managed to take it out, there's the risk of infection afterward."
"Take it out?" Sini looked more concerned than he had just a moment before.
"The appendix is an organ in our body which isn't used anymore. In Sandra, it has become inflamed and needs to be removed. I know where it is, and how to get there and take it out, but the aftercare is just as important."
Marcus was still trying to work out how to use the radio when Stu walked in to inform him of the situation.
"I think I have it, but now I need to work out what type and length of antenna to use. Fuck me it was complicated enough fifteen years ago when I did the course." Marcus was running his hands through his hair and sighing a lot as his brain refused to relinquish the information that had been stored there all those years ago.
Stu leaned over the table and informed him of Sandra's condition and what needed doing to help her.
"Shit, Marcus," Jim stated from the wall by the window where he sat with a number of antenna laid out in front of him, "that's not good. I had a friend back home who died from that. You think you can fix her, Stu?"
Stu nodded. He was not one hundred percent confident, but he knew he had to try.
Marcus sat blinking at him. "Anything we can do?"
"Not really, but we will have to stay here a little longer than planned to give her a chance to start recovering. Sini can help me with the procedure while you work on the comms."
"No problem. We'll stay here for as long as we need to." Marcus smiled at Stu, nodding his approval. "You hear that, Hussein?" he asked over his shoulder. "We're staying a while, so put those dirty magazines down for now and get the kettle on. High time you learned how to make an English brew, mate. I don't mind saying it now that we're in Blighty, but that stuff you used to give us in Iraq was worse than piss."
Hussein grinned. "Marcus, it probably was piss."
Sandra was lying on the two tables that Sini and Stu had put together and set up as an operating table. The room was brightly lit and as much care as possible was taken to keep the conditions sterile. It had taken a few hours of preparation, but Stu now felt that they were as ready as they would ever be.
Sandra had been given a cocktail of painkillers, including morphine. She was pretty much out cold but without the aid of an ECG, it was Sini's job to continually check her pulse rate and breathing, giving Stu updated readings on both as well as acting as the Theatre Nurse.
Stu stood at the side of the makeshift operating table. His face was covered with a surgical mask that restricted his breathing, and the rubber gloves on his hands made his palms sweat. His heart rate had increased dramatically and beads of perspiration trickled down his forehead.
Even though he had treated many injuries, from burns and broken bones, to gunshot wounds and even drowning once, he had never performed any kind of surgery more complicated than stitching somebody up or removing fragments of shrapnel and bullets.
He struggled to control his breathing through the mask. He squinted at the lamps hanging from the ceiling above him and exhaled loudly. "Okay, Sini, let's get on with it."
Taking the scalpel, he began to make the incision. He felt the iodine-swabbed skin gently pop under the sharp blade and the flesh opened up easily as he drew the knife along towards him, creating a cut roughly ten centimetres in length. There was little blood and he cautiously dabbed at the opening with a ball of cotton wool soaked in iodine and clutched between the forceps to give him a better view of the next cut he would need to make.
There were two more layers to the abdomen that he needed to get through, but he had to be careful. Rather than cutting at just any point, Stu needed to slice through carefully selected points, following the fibres of the inner abdomen walls.
"Okay, Sini, I'm in. Hold it open for me. Don't be afraid to stretch it. Skin is a lot tougher than you think and I need to be able to see exactly what I'm looking at."
Sini did as he was asked, reaching for the soft, warm flesh at either side of the incision. He grimaced and turned his head away as he placed his hands into the open wound in his girlfriend's stomach as Stu began to make the cuts.
Stu concentrated hard on every movement he made. He could feel the heat raining down upon him from the bright lamps above. It seemed to sear his neck and pools of sweat ran the length of his back between his shoulder
blades.
"Right, keep your hands exactly where they are, but lean back so I can see."
Stu leaned over and with a set of forceps, began to look for the inflamed organ. A moment later, he announced that he had found it. "Sini, go back to monitoring her, I can do the rest from here."
Her pulse and blood pressure had increased, but it was nowhere near a dangerous level. Stu was confident that there was no excess bleeding and he now needed to go through the tricky procedure of dividing the appendix. After that, it would be back to what he knew best; sewing up and dressing the wound, at least that was the theory of it.
Nothing was ever that simple. The inflamed organ looked nothing like he expected; he could not tell where the appendix ended and the large intestine began. Every little move or cut had to be thought and re-thought through. He hesitated continuously and he began to fear that the drugs would wear off before the operation was complete and Sandra would wake with him still routing around inside her.
Time seemed to drag. In truth, it had only been twenty minutes since he had given her stomach the final swab of iodine before making the first incision, but it felt like hours.
Finally, he was happy that the swollen appendix was completely removed. He checked around for any more sign of the organ, something he may have missed, as well as for his own piece of mind in case he had left any swabs or instruments inside. Too many times, he had heard or read horror stories about surgeons leaving equipment and soiled dressings inside a patient then stitching them back up. An incident like that now, under the conditions and circumstances, would be fatal for Sandra.
Confident that all was okay, Stu began the process of sewing her back up.
It took him a lot longer than he knew it would take a surgeon, but he was convinced that Sandra would not die from his unsophisticated surgery. However, he could not be sure about secondary infection. That was his biggest worry.
The conditions were less than ideal and the medicines they had were as good as they could get. It would be a case of sitting tight and keeping her on painkillers, antibiotics and regular cleaning of the wound. Stu guessed that if there was no sign of infection after the first three days, then Sandra should be in the clear.
It was dark by the time he and Sini had finished working on Sandra. Stu set up the intravenous fluids then added antibiotics and more painkillers to the mix. Removing the gloves from his hands, he left Sini to watch over her while he went to inform Marcus and find out how things were with the radio.
Marcus and Jim looked worried. They turned to him as he entered the room. Stu was touched at the apparent concern for Sandra he saw etched on to their faces.
"It's okay; I think she's going to be alright."
Jim was standing by the window. "That's good to know, Stu, but we have a bigger problem going on right now."
Stu raised an eyebrow. "Is the radio working?"
Marcus shook his head. "Never mind that, have you looked out of the window lately?"
Stu looked over to the curtain beside Jim, and then he heard it. The sound of dozens of hands thumping against the doors and windows on the ground floor below them registered in his ears. The moans of the dead echoed along the corridors like wind through an open window.
Stu had been so busy and concerned with Sandra, he had not noticed them. Now, the noise sounded deafening in his ears.
"Shit, how many?"
Marcus looked up at him from his chair. "Uh, lots."
The door suddenly opened behind them. Without thinking, Stu spun, snatching the pistol up from his belt, ready to confront whatever was about to attack him, the barrel pointed straight at the intruder's forehead.
Hussein threw his hands up in front of him, his eyes bulging and alarm in his voice. "No, no it is me, Stu."
Stu released his finger from the trigger but kept the pistol in his hand by his side. The sound of the thumping at the doors and windows had unnerved him. He rushed across to the window and peered down into the darkness below.
Dozens of figures swayed and staggered around, close to the walls of the accommodation block. More could be seen in the distance, illuminated by the faint moonlight as they made their way closer to the building.
"What's going on out there? Could you see much, Hussein?" Marcus asked.
"There are many of them at each entrance. More than we can fight. I think they saw the lights from the room where Stu was helping Sandra." Hussein's eyes were wide and the beads of sweat on his forehead betrayed his fear.
"Why didn't someone say something?" Stu exclaimed in annoyance as he walked back to where Marcus was sitting.
"It doesn't matter, Stu. Sandra needed help and that meant having the lights blazing in there. They can't get in, not yet anyway, so she was the priority." Marcus was back to his cool and calm self.
"What are we going to do, boss?" Jim asked as he sneaked another peek out from behind the curtain at the crowd outside.
"Nothing we can do. Not till daylight anyway. How's Sandra?"
Stu looked at him but continued to glance at the window as he spoke. "I think she'll be okay. She needs rest and she'll be in a little pain, even with the drugs. It's the risk of infection that bothers me most."
"Well, you're the doc, Stu, so we will go with your suggestion. If we have to, we'll barricade ourselves in here until she's okay to move."
Stu blew out a long sigh. "You think that's wise? Maybe we should make a run for it at first light. We can't risk the whole team for the sake of one person."
Marcus jumped from his chair, his eyes burning with fury. With lightning speed, he reached out and gripped Stu by the collar, slamming his back onto the wall.
"For a start, she is one of us," he growled, the veins in his neck pulsing and standing out from the skin. "We would all be dead now, including you, if it wasn't for what Sini, Yan and Sandra did for us back in Serbia. She fought just as bravely as you did in France and she is the other half to Sini. Or did you forget that little lot?"
Stu hung his head in shame and immediately regretted what he had said. Marcus sighed and released his grip.
"I'm sorry, Marcus. I didn't mean it that way, and fuck me, I'm well aware of how Sandra has been a big part in our survival."
Marcus sighed as he looked down at the hand he had just used in aggression against his friend. "I know, mate."
Marcus, too, was feeling ashamed. He and Stu had known each other for a long time and never once had he felt the need to use violence towards him. In fact, there had never been a time where he disagreed with him in anything other than what they were to watch on television.
"Sorry, Stu, I didn't mean to lose my temper there. I'm just protective over my team. It is still my team, isn't it?" He glanced about the room, looking for the approval of his leadership from the others.
"Hell, shit boss, you're welcome to this rag-tag bunch of cowboys." Jim was trying to calm the atmosphere. He understood where both men were coming from but he did not want to see them fight over their differing views.
"It isn't a question of leadership, Marcus," Stu began. "You know we would follow you anywhere. For Christ's sake, we've followed you all the way across the Middle East and Europe. That is half the fucking world. I just meant that I didn't like the idea of us being trapped here."
Stu spoke and Marcus nodded, not replying and allowing his second in command to state his point.
"Sandra needs rest and care, but all that would be for nothing if we can't get out of here when the time comes. Even worse, if those things manage to get in."
Marcus rubbed his forehead, nodding and grunting. "Okay, this is what we do...."
6
Simon, carrying his pack in one hand and slowly lifting the manhole cover with the other, balanced himself on the rungs of the ladder. He still feared a fall that would leave him paralysed but there was no other way of doing it. He could not throw the bulky pack over his shoulder because of the narrow confines of the shaft. He had no other choice but to have both hands free of the ladder.
He scanned in a three hundred and sixty degree arc, checking for any sight or sound of the dead in the immediate area of his exit point. The area still looked clear. Heaving the steel plate to one side, he strained, gritting his teeth as he tried to make as little noise as possible. With a gentle clunk, the cover rested to one side of the opening. With a final cursory check as he swivelled his head, he was happy that the coast was still clear.
He paused for a moment, breathing deeply and allowing his lungs to fill with the cool, clean air. He stared up at the green leaves above him as they fluttering in the gentle breeze. The birds twittered as they hopped from branch to branch, unaffected by the changed world around them.
Simon brought his concentration back to the matters at hand and heaved himself up out of the entrance to the bunker. Carefully, he raised himself to a crouch, facing his body in the direction of the entrance where the dead had accumulated and screened by the gentle swaying of the thick foliage of the shrubs. Remaining crouched, he slowly sidestepped to his left, never taking his eyes away from the direction of the threat. He stopped and crouched in the bushes, taking a moment to adjust to his new surroundings and gain his bearings.
The air had never tasted so good. Though it was summer, it felt cold as he breathed and his chest inflated with the fresh air.
He almost coughed.
With his hand covering his mouth and his chest in mini convulsions, he peered around the bushes he was crouched behind. He could see the creatures now, just metres away from him at the main entrance.
Though obscured by the dozens of bushes between them, he saw the unmistakable shape of human heads as they clambered at the heavy steel door. Some were pale and pasty looking, their hair dishevelled and features gaunt, while others were almost black with decay. A cool breeze blew toward him and carried with it the fetid odour of the dead. His eyes twitched and he stifled yet another cough into the palms of his hands.