CHAPTER 16
The medic’s tent differed little from the diggers’ save for size. Cream canvas, squared with four corner poles then peaked in the center with two more, could have been a tent for a traveling circus except that tickets were limbs and not a soul was begging to get in, just out.
Ghan hobbled to the tent, pulled back the heavy curtain door that flapped half-opened. The smell of ammonia, alcohol and lye, a three-ringed antiseptic nightmare, hit as a wall and he nearly turned back, but his wooden peg leg was stuck an inch in the mud.
“For the love a Jesus!” he cursed. The ground sucked like a wet kiss as he pulled the end free. He scanned the mud for its source, looked at the pitched roof for a leak, then asked to no one, “Where the ’ell all the water come from?”
“They sprayed the tables off,” said a man smoking in the corner on a small wooden chair. A wool blanket hung from one shoulder and crossed his chest.
“Yeh, Bianchi?” Ghan asked. The man nodded, his face dripping with sweat.
“Crikey, yeh must be roastin’ like a pig in that blanket.”
The man’s eyes were all pupils as he took another drag of the cigarette. His hand quaked violently. But it was cold terror that wet his face, not heat. Poor bastard. Ghan’s stomach turned queasy. The canvas held in the humidity, suffocated the fresh air and reeked with sweet, rancid blood. He wanted to vomit.
Ghan’s wooden leg picked blindly over the wet spots and clopped on the dry until he could safely sit down next to the man. Ash spilled from the stuttering cigarette onto the blanket, but the bloke was too lost in pain and fear to notice.
“Yer arm?” Ghan asked. No need to mince words.
The man nodded, glanced at the blanket’s raised bump.
“Took my leg ’bout a month ago,” confided Ghan.
Bianchi looked at the wooden leg and swallowed. He took a hard inhale of tobacco smoke, sucking his cheeks all the way in, and then threw the stub into the mud where it simmered. “I can’t do it,” the man said, defiant.
“Yeh gotta choice?”
“Maybe.”
“Whot happened?”
“Burned,” he said, paling further. “Nearly all the way through.”
“Then ain’t much left, is there?”
The man shot him a look of anger, then helplessness, his face gaunt with pain.
“Yeh got no choice,” Ghan explained. “If yeh want that pain t’stop, yeh got no choice. Can’t walk round wiv that arm sizzlin’.” Bianchi smelled like a half-cooked chicken on an old fire pit. Ghan held his breath from the stink, couldn’t look at the table or the tools. Damn that doc for leaving them out on display like that.
“The doc is good. It’ll be quick,” Ghan lied. “ ’Fore yeh know it, the sizzlin’ stop an’ yeh’ll be good as rain again.”
“But it’s my arm. My arm!” The black pupils widened and Bianchi leaned in with panic. “Gawd damn it, a man’s gotta have his arms. I got kids! How’m I gonna feed ’em?” He looked at Ghan’s wooden leg with disdain. “One leg ain’t stoppin’ nobody. Yeh can still move; yeh can still work. Just gotta piece a wood ’stead of bone there now. But a man needs his hands, gawd damn it!”
Ghan narrowed his eyes. “Yeh done whinin’, yeh pussy?” The man drew back with the verbal slap. “Got news for yeh, Bianchi. Yeh ain’t got no arm. Know whot yeh got? Yeh got a stub of a match left hangin’ there, so stop cryin’ for somepin yeh ain’t got anyway!” The young man’s lips parted and drooped, the corners stuck with dried saliva.
“Yeh’ll still work, Bianchi.” Ghan tempered his tone. “Those kids of yers still get fed. Morrison’s already got a place for yeh in the pickin’ line. Not so bad, that pickin’. Done it m’self. Borin’ as all ’ell, but safe. Won’t need t’worry ’bout no more burns.” The man was listening intently and Ghan continued, “They’ll give yeh a hook or somepin. Won’t be pretty, but yeh won’t be crippled. One hand’s all yeh need for pickin’ anyway.”
Bianchi’s fingers rose to his mouth before he realized he didn’t hold the cigarette any longer. He drew his hand into a fist and dropped it back to the blanket. “Does it hurt?”
“Naw.” Ghan shrugged. “Not so bad.” Blood ran from his face and he worried he might vomit all over the wool blanket. The sound of saw against bone ground in his ears.
Strange thing about pain, he thought. Always worse when you know it’s coming. Ghan knew pain like a lifelong foe, but this kind of pain was different. He’d lost parts to explosions, to brawls with hard right hooks, but you never saw it coming, didn’t even feel anything when it was happening, only felt it after the surprise wore off. But when a man plans for pain, waits for it and watches for it, sees the person who’s going to give it and the tools he’s going to use, the pain starts before anything even happens.
Ghan wasn’t going to show this man his pain before it happened. Bianchi would see it soon enough. Any luck, the man would faint before the cutting started. “Doc has morphine,” Ghan lied again. “Yeh’ll hardly feel it.”
Morphine. That’s what the doc said it was. Won’t feel a thing. Last thing the butcher said before he rammed a bullet between Ghan’s teeth. Morphine, my arse! Gave him something that made him feel drunk but didn’t numb the pain, just made him feel drunk and out of control, out of his mind with pain but too drunk or stupid to do anything about it.
The memories and the pain came back too quickly and his stomach cramped and kicked. Ghan rose stiffly. “I’ll get the doc. Be over ’fore yeh know it.” He fled the tent in jagged steps, galloped to the nearest tree and vomited.