Chapter Twenty-Four
Twenty-four
There was dirt under my fingernails, but it wasn’t dirt, it was shit.
I could smell it. But it didn’t smell like ordinary shit; I was used to ordinary shit.
It smelled like rotten shit. Even though I’d washed my hands and scrubbed them raw, I could still smell it and I was retching. There was nothing left to vomit.
I lifted a bandage, mud brown, shit brown.
Iso might have described it as carmine brown.
I wiped at the dirt that still clung around the wound but it wasn’t dirt.
The skin and muscle were gone and his guts were exposed.
They spilled their contents – the waste, infected and even more putrid.
He groaned and I looked at his face. It was Bill.
I wiped his cheeks to remove the dirt and reveal his freckles.
I spat on my fingers and wiped some more.
He groaned and I kept wiping, his cheeks, his forehead, his chin.
‘Bill,’ I said. ‘It’s me.’ I wiped and wiped.
I cupped his face and kissed his eyelids.
‘Bill,’ I choked because the groaning had stopped.
I let him go and his cheek was pink where I’d wiped and wiped.
I’ve wiped all the freckles away, I thought.
I checked his tags and sobbed with relief.
Dafydd was his name, not Bill. Welsh not English. Someone else’s brother.
I don’t remember other cases after him, but there must have been.
When I finished the shift I showered and scrubbed and walked to the German ward.
There was the sister, eager to leave. I wondered if she could smell it.
Did she do a handover? She must have; some details are easy to fill in, even when they don’t exist in memory or on the pages of the journal.
The sister left and I remember doing a round.
I tried not to touch them, the Germans in their beds, I was worried I’d give them the infection, pass on the stench.
I went to the storeroom and scrubbed my hands until the skin was raw and bleeding, then I cut my nails to the quick.
I put my fingertips to my nose and retched.
Then there was someone calling, a boy in distress, but I was unmoved.
It was not the sound of unbearable pain – the strained and shivering vocal cords that could easily go unheard.
This boy’s call was loud, steady and insistent.
‘Wait your turn,’ I shouted. But I was forgetting where I was.
I was on the German ward, not among the stretchers coming in from the Somme.
He called again and I hurried to his bed.
‘Morphia,’ he said, and I remembered he was an addict. There were so many. ‘Bitte,’ he said then began to cry.
I shook my head and he grabbed my arm. The back of his hand was fair and freckled and I covered it with mine.
I rubbed his skin with my thumb and the freckles remained.
I checked his face but it wasn’t Bill’s.
Of course it wasn’t Bill’s. He was in the mud, someone had said.
There were thousands in the mud, just left there.
Dead and alive, someone had said, you could sometimes hear them screaming for days.
I remember taking the key from the desk drawer and going to the drugs cupboard.
I remember opening it. I remember the box of morphia ampoules and I remember counting them, but I don’t remember how many there were.
Sixteen milligrams was the usual dose, Alison had told me, when she’d shown me how to give an injection.
One ampoule, though sometimes the pain required more.
I took two. I remember that.
But that is all. I have no memory of taking a syringe and drawing up the drug. No memory of tying the rubber tubing around my arm, pulling it tight with my teeth. No memory of waiting for a vein to bulge. I must have done all these things but I remember none of it.
Hugo, though, is clear. His face so close, his mouth moving, calling me back.
Or maybe it was a dream or something I have constructed from the small note in the journal.
I was asleep and Hugo woke me, just in time or too soon, I haven’t decided.
He smoothed the hair from my face and stroked my cheek and his hands travelled over my body, checking for injury.
He found none but my fingers were raw and blood had dried in the cracks where I’d cut my nails too short.
He gently wiped each finger with antiseptic and I wanted it to sting, but it didn’t.
He began to cry. Then he held my face and kissed my forehead, my eyelids, my cheeks, my lips.
When I woke up I was in bed four and Iso was there, drawing. For a while she didn’t notice me watching her.