Blood and Ice

by Robert Masello

  On the morning after finding Frenchie among the wounded, for instance, Eleanor had known enough to rise an hour early and creep, as quietly as she could, out of the staff quarters. The stairs were still dark, and she nearly tripped twice as she made her way down out of the tower and back to the ward where Lieutenant Le Maitre lay. But in addition to a clean shirt, she had in the pocket of her smock a sheet of folded paper and the stub of a pencil.

  Although some of the men were still asleep, many others lay rocking in their beds, sick with fever or racked with pain, their eyes glazed and lips parched. Two or three of them reached out to her as she hurried by, but she had to neglect their entreaties and keep to her mission. She would have to be back at her regular post in less than an hour.

  As she approached the ward, she passed one of the surgical carts being set up for the day's bloody business. Two orderlies-one with jug ears and a cowlick standing straight up-said, “Morning, Missus. You're up bright and early.” The other, a burly fellow with a badly pitted face, said, “Care to join us for a cup of tea?” He lifted a battered kettle from the cart. “Still hot.”

  Eleanor declined, then swiftly crossed to the far corner, where she found Le Maitre wide-awake and staring up through the broken window at the early dawn. She crouched down beside his bed, and it was only when she said, “I've come back,” that he seemed to take any notice of her. “And look what I've got,” she said, displaying the paper and pencil.

  He licked his lips, and nodded at her. “And this, too,” she said, holding up the clean shirt. “We'll get that old one off of you, and this new one on, just as soon as I've found some water for a wash.” He looked at her as if he barely understood what language she was speaking. The night, she realized, had taken its toll on him.

  “Frenchie,” she said, in a low voice, “I'm ashamed to admit that I don't even know your true first name.”

  And for the first time, he smiled. “Few do.”

  She was so glad to see even this spark of life in him.

  “It's Alphonse.” He coughed, dryly, then added, “Now you know why.”

  She perched on the side of his bed, careful not to touch his damaged legs, and flattened the paper on her lap. “Is this letter to your family?”

  He nodded, and recited an address in West Sussex. She took it down and waited.

  “Chers Pere et Mere, Je vous ecris depuis I'hopital en Turquie. Je dois vous dire que fed eu un accident-une chute de cheval-qui m'a bksse plutot gravement.”

  Eleanor's pencil hung in the air. It had never crossed her mind that Le Maitre's family might actually speak in French. “Oh, dear,” she said, “I cannot write in French.” She looked up and saw that he had closed his eyes to focus his thoughts better. “Can you say it in English?”

  There was a rattling of wheels at the door of the ward, and several voices engaged in discussion. The hospital was waking up.

  “Of course.” His voice was barely a croak. “How silly of me. It's just that, at home…” He stopped talking, then started again. “My dear mother and father, I am sending you these words from the hospital in Turkey. A friend is writing them down.”

  The rattling got louder.

  “I'm afraid I was injured… in a fall from my horse.”

  Eleanor, scrawling the words down, looked up to see the jug-eared orderly pushing the surgery cart like a flower wagon toward their corner. The other one was carrying a white screen, furled like a sail, under his arm. There was no mistaking their intentions.

  “Oh, can't you wait just a little while?” Eleanor said, rising to her feet.

  “Doctor's orders,” the first one said, as the second dropped the base of the screen onto the floor and quickly spread it out to shield the bed from view. Until Miss Nightingale's arrival, all amputations had been done in clear view of the other patients. But Miss Nightingale, not only to ensure some measure of privacy for the amputee but to spare the others the full grisly spectacle of what might await them next, had insisted upon the use of these screens.

  “The lieutenant has just begun dictating a letter to his family- surely you can attend to someone else first?”

  “Eleanor?” Frenchie said, clutching at her sleeve. “Eleanor!”

  She turned back to him, and saw that he had drawn a silver cigarette case out from under his mattress.

  “Take this!”

  It was the same case she had once seen at the Longchamps Club, after the day at the races. It bore the regiment's grim insignia-a Death's Head-and its motto, “Or Glory.”

  “See that my family gets it-please!”

  “But one day you'll be able to give it to them yourself,” she said, as he pressed it into her hand.

  “Missus, we have our work to do,” the burly orderly said.

  She let the cigarette case fall into the pocket of her smock, as the white-haired surgeon strode toward the cot. “What's the obstruction here?” he bellowed, throwing a murderous glance at Eleanor. “We haven't got all day.” He whipped the sheet away from Frenchie's mangled leg, inspected the damage for no more than a few seconds, then said, “Taylor, place the block.”

  The jug-eared orderly took a wooden chopping block, encrusted with dried blood, and began to wedge it under the leg to be amputated. Frenchie howled in agony.

  “Smith, bind his arms.”

  “As for you,” the surgeon said to Eleanor, “I do not recall giving permission for Miss Nightingale's protegees to interfere on my wards.”

  “But doctor, I was only-”

  “You'll address me as the Reverend Dr. Gaines, if you must address me at all.”

  A cleric and a physician? Even in the short time Eleanor had served at the Barrack Hospital, she had come to dread the devoutly Christian doctors more than any others. While chloroform was, undeniably, in short supply, there was usually some to be found for the amputations, but the more pious surgeons were often opposed to its use. For them, anesthesia of any kind was a novelty, a recent invention that only served to lessen the noble and purifying pain that the Lord had ordained. She turned to look at Frenchie, whose face, now that his leg had been raised, was flushed with blood. His arms had been bound to his sides by ropes passed under the iron bedstead. Taylor was holding a glass of whiskey to his lips, but most of it was dribbling down Frenchie's quivering chin.

  “Give him the mouth guard,” the doctor ordered, as he tied the strings of his white apron behind him, and Taylor took a worn chunk of leather and stuck it between Frenchie's teeth. “Mind you bite down on that,” Taylor advised, “or you could lose your tongue.” He patted him on the shoulder in an amiable way, then left his hands there, one on each side, as he stood at the head of the bed.

  “All right, Smith,” the doctor said, pressing a hand to the raised knee, “hold the other leg, please.”

  Smith leaned his weight on the right leg, with one hand on the thigh and one on the shin, while the left leg, like a turkey's neck, was stretched across the chopping block. Eleanor was standing at the foot of the bed, speechless with horror, as Dr. Gaines took a bone saw with a wooden handle from the cart. Glancing over at Eleanor, he said, “Stay if you like-you can clean up after.”

  But Eleanor had already decided that she could not leave. Frenchie was staring at her as if his very life hung in the balance and she could not have abandoned him at such a time. Dr. Gaines roughly adjusted the leg, making sure that a spot a few inches above the knee was positioned in the center of the block, and while he held the leg in place with one large hand, he laid the jagged blade of the saw against the green and empurpled skin-Eleanor thought, disconcertingly, of a bow being placed to the strings of a violin-then, taking a deep breath, drove the saw across and down.

  A fountain of blood erupted into the air and Frenchie screamed, the mouth guard flying. His body buckled, but the doctor bore down, and before the first scream had even ended, he had drawn the blade back across, bearing down hard, and the bone had cracked, then splintered. Frenchie tried to scream again, but his agony was so grea
t no sound came out. The leg was nearly severed from his trunk, only a few shreds of flesh and bone still connecting it, but Dr. Gaines made quick work of those, too. He ran the saw back and forth-it made a wet whistling sound-and the leg suddenly tumbled against his blood-spattered apron and onto his shoes. He paid no attention to it, but simply dropped the saw on the bed, and grabbing a tourniquet from the cart, tied it tightly around the geysering stump. Frenchie had passed out. The doctor tore away the ragged ends of skin with his fingers, then took a threaded needle from the pocket of his apron, and proceeded to sew the wound closed with coarse black stitches. When that was done, he poured a liberal dose of grain alcohol over the madly twitching stump and said to Eleanor, “I see you're still standing.”

  Her legs were trembling, but yes, she had remained upright- if only to deny him the satisfaction of seeing her faint.

  “We'll leave him then to your ministrations,” he said, wiping his hands down the front of his apron. “And get rid of that,” he said, nudging the severed leg with the toe of his boot. He turned and left the ward. It had all taken no more than ten minutes.

  Taylor and Smith remained to gather the utensils and fold up the screen, then, touching a finger to their foreheads in farewell, the caravan moved on. “Next one's a hand,” she overheard Taylor say, and Smith replied, “Short work that'll be.”

  The bed was soaked in blood, the floor was slick with it, but Eleanor's first order of business was to dispose of the limb. She pulled the sheet, which was already halfway off the bed, completely free, then used it to wrap the leg. Then she dropped the whole bundle in a refuse bin, fetched a bucket of water and a mop, and came back to clean the floor. The sun was up now, and the light coming through the window was a buttery yellow; it would be a fine day. When that was done, she remembered the clean shirt she had brought, and though she didn't want to wake him for anything in the world, she wanted desperately to remove the lice-covered shirt, wash him, and put on the clean linen. He should not wake up from his terrible ordeal in such filth. As gently as she could, she lifted his shoulders from the mattress. His head lolled back listlessly, and his skin was cold. His lips were a pale blue.

  “Excuse me, Missus?” a soldier in a nearby bed said.

  She looked up, while still holding Frenchie.

  “I do believe the man is dead.”

  She laid him down again, and put a hand to his heart. She felt nothing. She put her ear to his chest, and heard no sound. She fell back against the wall. A bird alighted on the windowsill behind her head, singing gaily. The tower bell rang the hour, and she knew Miss Nightingale would soon be looking for her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  December 16, 5 p.m.

  Michael knew that if Charlotte's door was closed at that hour, the poor woman was probably trying to grab a much-needed nap, but he really didn't have a choice.

  He knocked, and when there was no immediate answer, he knocked again, louder.

  “Hang on, hang on,” he heard, as her slippers shuffled toward the door. She opened it, wearing her reindeer sweater and a baggy pair of purple Northwestern University sweatpants. When she saw it was Michael, she said, “I've got to warn you-I just took a Xanax.”

  From her drowsy look, he believed it. “We need you to look at someone.”

  “Who?”

  How could he say this, without her thinking he was playing some stupid prank? “You know that woman? The one who was frozen in the ice?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said, stifling a yawn. “You find her again?”

  “We did,” Michael said. “And well, the thing is, we've brought her back.”

  “To the base?”

  “To life.”

  Charlotte just stood there, idly scratching the side of her face with the back of her fingernails. “What'd you just say?”

  “She's alive. Sleeping Beauty is awake, and she's alive.”

  From the look on her face, Michael guessed that she did think it was a joke, and a bad one, to boot.

  “You woke me up for this?” she said. “Because I've just had a very rough day and-”

  “-I'm telling you the truth. It's for real.” He stared her straight in the eye, so that she could see not only that he was sincere, but that he also wasn't suffering from the Big Eye. That this was the real deal.

  “I don't know what you're up to,” Charlotte said, dropping her resistance, “but you've got me up now. Where is this phenomenon?”

  “Next door-in the infirmary.”

  Michael got out of her way as she went next door, rolling from side to side, still a bit groggy. Lawson, standing around in the waiting area like an expectant father in a maternity ward, said nothing as Charlotte entered the examining room with Michael close behind.

  Eleanor was laid out on the table, like a body on a bier, her hands folded across her bosom. The orange down coat was thrown on a chair. She was wearing a long, old-fashioned gown, dark blue, with a white brooch fastened on her breast. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn't asleep. She was breathing weakly through her open mouth.

  And Michael could see that Charlotte was-quite suddenly- waking up.

  Get a grip, was the first thing Charlotte told herself.

  This young woman-whoever she was-sure as hell did look like that woman Charlotte had been allowed to glimpse in the ice.

  “She collapsed an hour ago,” Michael was saying, “when we tried to get her to leave the old church at the whaling station.”

  The whaling station? The old, abandoned whaling station? This girl-what was she, maybe nineteen or twenty years old? — lying here in the antique clothes? None of it was making any sense at all. Charlotte swore to think twice before ever taking Xanax again. She took the woman's wrist and felt for a pulse. It was steady but feeble, though her fingers felt like frozen fish sticks.

  “Her name, by the way, is Eleanor Ames.”

  Charlotte looked down at her face-a beautiful face that reminded her of nineteenth-century portraits she'd seen hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago. The features were delicate and refined, the eyebrows thin and arched, but the overall effect was oddly ethereal and unreal, as if she was in fact looking at a portrait, or a lovingly created waxwork. Something that wasn't quite real.

  Focus, Charlotte thought. Just focus on doing your job. Don't get distracted by all the other stuff you can't make sense of yet. It was a lesson she'd learned, over and over again, in the ER.

  “Eleanor,” she said, leaning close, “can you hear me?”

  The eyelids fluttered.

  “I'm Dr. Barnes. Charlotte Barnes.” She glanced over at Michael. “She speaks English?”

  Michael nodded vigorously. “She is English.”

  Charlotte took a second to absorb this, too. “Can you open your eyes for me?”

  Eleanor's head turned slightly on the headrest, and her eyes opened. She looked up at Charlotte with a confused expression, her gaze fluttering to the reindeer prancing across the sweater, then back to her broad face.

  “That's good,” Charlotte said, encouragingly. “That's very good.” She patted Eleanor on the back of her hand. But if she isn't the woman from the ice, if she isn't Sleeping Beauty, who else could she be? And how else could she have gotten here-to the South Pole? Charlotte chased the thoughts away. Focus. “We're going to get your body temperature up, and you'll be feeling a whole lot better in no time.”

  Charlotte used her stethoscope to listen to her heart and lungs. The woman's dress, done in a Victorian style, gave off a briny, icy odor. Almost as if she's been underwater. Charlotte asked Michael to go to the commons and get “something nice and hot, maybe hot chocolate,” while she completed the cursory examination. She proceeded with caution, so as not to do anything that might shock a patient with an antique sensibility. Whoever she really was, and wherever she'd come from, she obviously lived, even if it was only in her own head, in another century. Charlotte had once seen a patient who thought he was the Pope, and she had always been careful to address him as Your
Holiness. As might have been expected, Eleanor appeared mystified by the blood-pressure cuff, and the pen-light, used to peer into her eyes, also occasioned astonishment. The whole time, she was watching Charlotte with a gradually increasing awareness, shaded with perplexity. What, Charlotte wondered, would she be making of her-a big, black woman in a boldly patterned sweater, purple pants, and braided, streaked hair piled up in a messy knot on top of her head?

  “You are… a nurse?” she finally whispered.

  Oh well, it could have been worse, Charlotte thought. “No, I'm a doctor.” She did have an English accent.

  “I too am a nurse,” she said, one pale hand lifting toward her bosom.

  “Is that right?” Charlotte said, glad to hear her talking, as she readied a syringe for a blood sample.

  “With Miss Nightingale.”

  “How about that?” Charlotte said, before the words had really sunk in. Eleanor had said them as if she hoped they might make an impression. And of course they did. Holding the needle up to the light, Charlotte paused and said, “Wait-as in what? Are you talking about Florence Nightingale?”

  “Yes,” Eleanor replied, apparently happy to hear that this name was still familiar. “In the Harley Street Hospital… and then the Crimea.”