Wuhan

by John Fletcher

  His voice had become soft and gentle and full of feeling.

  ’Twas the sound of his horn

  Brought me from my bed

  And the cry of his hounds

  Has me ofttimes led

  For Peel’s view holloa

  Would awaken the dead

  Or a fox from his lair

  In the morning.

  Do ye ken that hound

  Whose voice is death?

  Do ye ken her sons

  Of peerless faith

  Do ye ken that a fox

  With his last last breath

  Cursed them all as he died

  In the morning?

  Yes, I ken John Peel

  And auld Ruby, too

  Ranter and Royal

  And Bellman so true

  From the drag to the chase,

  From the chase to the view

  From the view to the death

  In the morning.

  There was total silence all about him. The bombing had ended. His patients were all alive and were all calm.

  Every window was broken, splinters were embedded in the walls and pillars. The end wall of one ward was split wide open. The plaster had all come down from the ceiling, landing indiscriminately upon floor and patient. In the middle of the room stood Donald. He had plaster on his head and on his shoulders, even a couple of specks of it on his bow tie. And, although Donald spoke awful Chinese, he was chatting to the patients, and the patients, speaking no English, were happily chatting back to him. Not one patient had moved or torn themselves free. There had not been a single dislocation or rupture among any of them.

  From that day on Donald was known among the Chinese as ‘Noble Soul’.15

  *

  Hu was hurrying to the air-raid shelter as the first bombs started to fall. Usually the most level-headed and unflappable of human souls, Hu was terrified by bombs. They just fell. At random. Out of nowhere, into your midst. By and large Hu could face with equanimity living in a war zone, sharing risks with everyone else, dealing with disaster when it occurred, even if it occurred to her. But bombs! Bombs were chaotic, bombs came from nowhere, bombs blew you unknowing into nothingness.

  So as the bombs started falling Hu panicked and ran straight to the shelter, forgetting she should have called in at the apartment to check that Spider Girl and The Drab were coming. As soon as she entered the shelter she remembered what she should have done and would have returned, bombs or no bombs, but the warden would not allow her to leave. Besides, the entrance was being blocked by a farmer trying to drive his cows into the shelter for safety. Hu looked all around in the darkness for Spider Girl and The Drab but could see nothing.

  The shelter was packed. Hundreds and hundreds of people jammed together in close damp darkness. Some were moaning, others coughing. Tuberculosis was rife in the city and the disease was easily passed on in these fetid conditions. Hu decided not to think about such depressing things.

  The bombs increased. The earth shook.

  Then even more fell. The whole earth was shaking and heaving.

  A deep fatalistic despair fell in the shelter. The darkest, most deadly depression. Like cattle awaiting slaughter. Like the prisoner awaiting the executioner’s sword upon his neck.

  There was a thunderous crunch, like a punch which knocks out your breath, great sucking sounds as the explosion snatched all the air and structure from surrounding buildings, the crashes as they fell to the ground, all but the building above the shelter. There was no movement from it.

  All instinctively looked upward. Hu, crushed and cramped, close to the steps to the entrance, after a moment of outright panic, started to realize the building above was not moving, a moment of pure rapture seized her – I am alive! It is over and I have survived! Then there was a creak, a groan, and suddenly the building above them sagged, started to topple, cave in, fear flooded all over her, her mouth and throat were full of dust, bodies squirmed all around her, threshing about in darkness as earth and masonry vomited down. Hu fought to keep some inner reason, some sense of goodness, Christian peace, of God. They were all drowning in a sea of their fellow men. There was no air.

  In the remains of the street above there were frantic attempts by the emergency services to locate the shelter, but so much rubble had been thrown about and so many surrounding buildings collapsed that they were completely unable to identify it. People were digging frantically here and there. Teams of men and women and children everywhere tore away the stones and bricks. But no one knew where to look, where to dig.

  It was like being gripped hard in some great squirming, agonized beast, hundreds of bodies twisting and turning and crying and slowly suffocating through lack of oxygen. The remaining oxygen was filled with the stench of panicked urine and faeces. Children screamed bewildered. Adults cried out for loved ones, lost in the charnel tomb. Hu, modest as ever, prepared herself for death. Asked Jesus to guard her family, the people of Wuhan, especially those doing good like the medical corps, and China itself. Her brain started to fail. She asked for God’s mercy. Perhaps she was here, perhaps she was there. Hallucinations, dreams entered her brain, she started to relax as all those around her, dying, started to relax, floated in calmness, peace. No more terrors.

  Suddenly there was a bang. A sudden rush of coldness. Was this death? Her soul being transported? Something grabbed her wrists. Hands grabbed her wrists. As though in a dream she was dragged from comfort and darkness like a baby pulled from the womb into sudden light. Left lying helpless, new-formed upon the earth. Her lungs exploded as she started to breathe again. All around her there was busynesse, frantic endeavour. Dumped on the ground half-conscious, from clear black air she voraciously sucked in oxygen to her lungs. All around her other bodies – some alive, most dead – were being dragged out from the shelter, and then slowly, her eyes gradually refocusing, she saw leaning over her, staring at her with a look of deep concern, Spider Girl.

  ‘Am I in heaven? Were you killed too – because of me?’

  ‘No,’ said Spider Girl prosaically, ‘you are alive.’

  Hu was still struggling for reason.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Your shelter collapsed. No one could find the entrance among all the new rubble. So I, who’d come out to look for you, told them where it was.’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Rickets. Each step I take is painful. So, on any new journey, I count my footsteps so the next time I make that journey I will know how many steps I still have to take. The steps from our apartment to the shelter entrance are exactly 141. I paced out the steps and they dug you out.’

  Hu, lying on her back, stared up at Spider Girl. In the past Spider Girl had been an acquaintance, a friend. Nothing special. Sometimes irritating, sometimes funny. You took what you got. But now Hu saw Spider Girl as she was. Her gentleness. Beneath all the roughness and bluster she saw the kindness and concern. In her still semi-conscious state she watched Spider Girl’s face shape-shift from the unwashed physical to the luminous spiritual and back to hairy upper-lipped physical. Where before there’d only been something temporal, now she saw the eternal. She was about to say something, probably something completely meaningless, when there was a commotion behind Spider Girl. Agnes Smedley’s white, shocked face appeared over Spider Girl’s shoulder.

  ‘Spider Girl,’ she said urgently, ‘you must come with me to the hospital. Now. Something has happened.’

  Spider Girl did not move.

  ‘Now,’ commanded Agnes, with a harshness in her voice. ‘It’s most important.’

  Spider Girl sighed, touched Hu’s arm, raised herself with difficulty to her feet, and she and Agnes disappeared. Hu continued to lie pleasantly on the ground. Then the word ‘hospital’ ground into her. Hospital! Duties!! Responsibilities!!! Somehow she got to her feet. In a landscape bereft of any familiar buildings or landmarks she was momentarily lost, but a fireman pointed her in the right direction. She staggered off, dreaming, following a w
inding procession of stretcher bearers and grieving relatives. All the time around her she saw not only the living, but also the souls of the dead and dying arising from their bodies, from out of the rubble piled above the air-raid shelter.

  *

  As she regained focus and concentration Hu walked faster and faster, though her consciousness of the intermingling of physical and spiritual did not leave her. It seemed such a calm, natural process.

  Because Agnes and Spider Girl could only walk at Spider Girl’s pace, in the end Hu arrived in the still largely intact hospital only moments behind them.

  Covered in white dust and ashes, looking like a ghost, Hu was hurrying down the main corridor when she heard an almighty cawing ahead of her, a clamouring, like a great bird in pain. She hastened into the main operating theatre and there, Donald and Agnes watching, stood Spider Girl, almost clawing at a soldier lying on his back on the operating table, groaning and croaking above him.

  ‘Father,’ she was crying, ‘Father! You are alive! You are alive!’

  Wei lay on his back on the table, a great wound open in his chest. He was barely conscious, staring up at his daughter in confusion and wonderment.

  ‘Donald,’ cried Spider Girl with great force, turning to Donald, who was standing there ready to operate, ‘Donald,’ she cried, advancing on him and grabbing him, ‘this is my father, my father, you must save him,’ she cried desperately, ‘you must!!!’

  Agnes moved in to separate them and simultaneously translate for them.

  ‘Donald, he is alive, alive, you must save him!’

  Agnes separated them but Donald moved back, close to Spider Girl, putting his hands gently on her shoulders, looking intently into her eyes.

  ‘Spider Girl,’ he said, ‘I will do everything I can to save your father, because I can see how much you love him. But…’ he added.

  Agnes indicated he should soften what he said, but Donald ignored her. Donald understood Spider Girl.

  ‘But,’ Donald continued, ‘I must tell you now that his chances of recovery are slim and, as you can see’ – the room around them and the corridor outside were crammed with those wounded in the air raid – ‘we have many other patients it is my duty to help. Now if you go and stand by that wall over there and wait, I will examine your father and tell you what I find.’

  Spider Girl controlled herself. She looked at Donald.

  ‘Donald,’ she said, ‘I know you will do your best.’

  With that she softly brushed the dust from his bow tie and she and Agnes and Hu retreated to the wall. Donald checked Hu.

  ‘Hu,’ he said, ‘I need you. Go and wash and scrub up.’

  ‘Of course, Donald,’ said Hu, immediately recollecting herself and hurrying off.

  Donald looked at Hu. Dirt and dust all over her.

  ‘Wish I had my camera,’ he joked before turning to Wei’s wounds.

  He still had plaster sticking out of his hair.

  ‘How did you find my father?’ Spider Girl asked Agnes.

  ‘I was dressing wounds on the Bund. He was lifted on the table and I recognized him immediately. From the time he sold you as a slave.’

  *

  This being wartime, Donald’s inspection was quick but thorough.

  Such was the number of badly wounded patients presenting that a second table had been set up alongside Donald’s and Maninda and Dick were operating on it.

  Donald asked Hu to cleanse Wei’s wound with some chloride solution and then bind it. Meanwhile he walked over to Spider Girl and Agnes to show them some of the fragments he’d removed from Wei’s body and report on his condition. Ahsan took Donald’s place at the table and started on the next patient.

  Agnes translated as Donald spoke to Spider Girl.

  ‘Your father was hit by a Japanese rifle round.’ He showed Spider Girl the bullet. ‘Lucky it was a Japanese bullet and not a Chinese one, as Japanese bullets have steel cases and are far cleaner.’ He dropped the bullet in a bucket. ‘It also luckily hit a rib bone. The bone fragmented but it slowed the bullet’s path and it did not penetrate the chest much further. There were fragments of bone deeper in the chest which I removed.’ He showed a couple of fragments and threw them in the bucket. ‘Normally, with a chest wound such as this, infection, sepsis sets in within the vital organs in hours and the patient is very soon dead. But something else simultaneously entered with the bullet. A miracle, I’d say.’

  Donald held up a couple of small china shards.

  ‘What are they?’ asked Spider Girl.

  ‘Pottery fragments. Apparently your father was carrying a small jar in his top pocket where the bullet entered. The bullet smashed through the jar and its contents entered the wound simultaneously with the bullet.’

  ‘What was in the jar?’ asked Agnes.

  Donald took a small jar out of his pocket. He showed it to them.

  ‘We also found this in another pocket. An identical jar. It is almost empty.’

  Spider Girl snatched it and smelt it.

  ‘Honey?’

  ‘Yes, honey. It has well known antiseptic qualities,’ continued Donald in a rather technical tone. ‘It attacks and kills bacteria. So the tissue that was torn open by the bullet and bone fragments was simultaneously cleansed and disinfected by the honey.’

  It was the honey, the two small jars of honey the old man on the battlefield of Taierzhuang had presented Wei with when he had kindly returned the old man’s swarm.

  But Spider Girl was thinking of another exchange. Remembering the day when the family, in panic, had been leaving their farm, their home. And her father had ordered her to kill the bees so she could get their honey quicker. But Spider Girl had not done this and had undergone the pain of their stings because she admired bees and they were powerful in the spiritual world. She had helped them; now they had helped her. Her father’s life for their lives. She thanked them with quick fervent prayer.

  Hu had returned from the corridor.

  Donald continued:

  ‘Most of the honey from the second jar has been used, so I presume the patient, sorry, your father, has been cleansing his wound with it since then, keeping the infection at bay.’

  Spider Girl looked directly at Donald.

  ‘Then you mean my father might…?’

  Donald reached out immediately and held her wrists. He spoke to her gently but strongly.

  ‘No, Spider Girl, I’m afraid your father will not grow better. The condition is known as osteomyelitis.’ Agnes had some difficulty translating this. ‘Despite the honey an inflammation has set in within your father’s bones and their marrows caused by pus-forming bacteria and mycobacteria. That is spreading. Honey is only slowing down its progress. Your father only has a few weeks to live.’

  Hu watched Spider Girl’s body convulse as for a second her soul was seized with a condition she’d never known before. Despair. Black, black despair. She sent out a great howl. But then Hu watched as Spider Girl’s extraordinary self-control reasserted itself. Her ability to deal with what was in front of her.

  Donald was in front of her. She looked at him. She saw a man of kindness and great gentleness. A man with extraordinary gifts that he devoted entirely to helping others, saving the lives of many, many men. Spider Girl greatly admired him for this. Donald looked out for everybody – except for Donald. That was Spider Girl’s job. Spider Girl looked out for Donald. She washed and patched and ironed his often ragged clothes. She always gave him the best of the food, the most nutritious parts. Some she cooked for him specially, mixing in herbs and other beneficial ingredients to give him strength and intelligence. Sometimes, indeed, she even added certain love potions, though in her heart she knew Donald would never be interested in women – or men, for that matter. Donald’s sole interests were surgery, bicycle parts, and taking photos of random objects.

  The wonderful arrival of her father, however short his remaining life, now meant she had two good men to love and look after and, if necessary, murder fo
r. She thanked her gods for their generosity.

  She looked directly and formally at Donald.

  ‘Thank you, Donald, for telling me what will happen. For fighting for my father, but also telling me the truth. Every single extra second I have with my father I will value. Thank you for your gift. In return, is there any service I can do for you?’

  ‘Golly,’ said Donald. And thought for a moment. ‘Well, actually, I’m feeling a tad peckish. But first, Spider Girl, I want to show you something which will help your father live longer and which you have played a very big part in acquiring. Come here.’

  He led her to the operating table. By now Hu had finished dressing and binding the wound, but a hole, a tiny entrance in the flesh remained. Hu stood beside the patient, holding the sterilizing tray. On it lay a tiny rubber valve used to inflate bicycle tyres. Spider Girl had bought it only this morning on the Bund. Donald picked up this sliver of sterilized rubber and neatly inserted it into the hole in the flesh, then plugged it.

  He looked at her.

  ‘It will seal your father’s wound off from outside infection. It will also be used every few hours to drain the poison from your father’s wound and to feed chloride solution in to sterilize it. By your own actions you have made your father live a bit longer.’

  Spider Girl felt very emotional again. Then stopped herself.

  ‘What is it you want me to do for you, Donald?’

  ‘Cripes,’ he said, thinking. ‘Love a Spam sandwich, if poss, and a cup of jolly old char.’

  Donald had brought several mysterious tins of ‘Spam’ with him from England. Spider Girl had tasted it once and thought it pointless, without any taste or texture whatsoever. But that was none of her business. So she waddled back to the apartment to fetch Donald his Spam sandwich and tea. Wei had meanwhile been given opium and was sleeping like a baby on a mattress on the floor of a hospital corridor.