Hannah stared at the surgeon’s saw, and pressed her hands to the sailor’s chest as themanclawedather shirt, popping the buttons. The sawscraped on the bone.
“Tighten it again!”heordered, his voice louder now, more urgent.
She did as he said, and he finished his swift work, dropped the shattered forearm in a brimming bucket and quickly tied off the artery.
The sailor was silent, his eyes closed. The surgeon looked up at her then, as if remembering some social indiscretion. He smiled apologetically, and extended his bloody hand to her acrosable.
“Oh, do forgive my manners, Miss Whittier. Welcome to hell.”
Chapter Eight
Hannah wasn’t aware when the guns stopped, because there was no silence on the orlop deck where the wounded had been taken. She blotted all thoughts from her mind except the ordeal before her and did as Andrew Lease said. She only hesitated once, at the very beginning, when the surgeon took her hand and forced it against an artery that was cascading like a fountain to the deck above.
She had looked at him in terror as the droplets rained down, then did as he said.
“Excellent, MissWhittier. Just jam it tight against the bone for another minute,”the surgeon murmured as he continued his work.“Tell me, do you have brothers and sisters? I suspect you are the youngest.”
She looked at him in amazement, then understood.“I have four older brothers, and yes, I am the youngest,”she replied with scarcely a quaver in her voice. I will match you calm for calm, she thought, as she pressed against the artery.“Do you think I am the youngest because the captain contends I am arascal, sir?”
Lease smiled as he sawed.“Yes, actually. You seem a bit used to your own way. Another moment, MissWhittier.”
“Perhaps I just resist bullying,”she said as Lease took the artery in his hand and tied it off.“It is an American trait, I think.”She gulped,too afraid to look down at what he was doing.
“He means well. Here, grab this fellow under the armpits. I think wecan ease himto the deck.”
Whatever his deficienciesinordinary conversation, Lease knew his business. He worked his way through the wounded and the dying, moving so deliberately at times that she wanted toscream.“Hastenever healed a wound,”he commented mildly at onepoint.“Do quit gritting your teeth,my dear MissWhittier. You might ruin an otherwise excellent facial structure.”
The hours wore by, and then she realized that the last two men the Marines had brought below were French. She looked at the doctor.“Is it over?”
“You didn’t hear the guns stop?”Lease asked as he surveyed the latest ruin on his operating table.“Why do they bring these wrecks below?”he asked no one in particular.“Am I God, to ordain a miracle? Just hold his hand, Miss Whittier. He will soon quit this life, lucky man.Bon chance,”he told the sailor in French, bending over him and straightening his legs.
She took the French sailor’s hand and held it tight until he died. Lease slumped against the bulkhead andsankto the deck, his face etched with exhaustion like acid on copper. He patted the deck beside him and she joined him, feeling oddly boneless as soon as she sat down.
“You are right,you know,”he said at last when her eyes were closing.
“Right?”
“A husband should put his wife’s welfare above his own.”
If she had not already endured an afternoon and evening of strange commentary on fashion,customs,weather,and scientific discovery, delivered across an operating table, Hannah would have beenamazed.As it was, she regardedthe surgeon’s comment in the same calm in which it was delivered.
“My dratted list has already been a source of some embarrassment to me,”she said.“I did notwishto cause you pain, sir.”
Lease smiled, but there was no mirth.“I know you did not, and I was rude to walk out likethat,particularly before Cookie’s plum duff. Look far and wide, mydear, for a man who will not desert you when the sky falls in. Let me be your bad example.”He closed his eyes and seemed to be reaching for a memory not usually touched.“My wife and baby would be alive today if I had possessed less pride in my skills to save them.”
“Oh, sir,”she said and tried to take his hand. He shifted away from her.
“I assured her that I could handle any situation, even as she pleaded with me to call in another surgeon,”he continued, his voice dull, but with a wistfulness that went straight to her heart.“Iwas more concerned with my reputation than her welfare.”
He said no more, but stared at the table with the dead man on it. In another moment, two sailors came onto the deck.“Captain Spark sent us, sir,”said one, his face covered with black powder from the guns.“Can we help?”
Lease sighed and pulled himself to his feet.“Indeed you can. And I release you, Miss Whittier, from the underworld. These fellows and I willtidy up this littlecornerof Hades.”
She left the orlop deck and climbed wearily to the gun deck, where the battle lanterns still glowed weirdly. She gasped the carnage there that had never even reached the surgery. She thought she saw Mr. Lansing, pale beyond belief, pulled into a corner, but she had not the heart to investigate. She continued her climb to the main deck,amazed at the effort it took to put one foot in front of the other.
There was no other ship on theocean. Night had come and with it a certain tidiness as the darkness cloaked whatever still floated on the water from theBergeron.She slumped onto the afterhatch, noting idly that the bag of oakum she had picked that morning was still there. She looked at the chaos about her, thebloody sand, the slanting deck,the ruined sails, the mizzenmast shattered at a height of ten feet from the deck,with the yards and sails drooping dangerously over the side.
As she watched, sailors and Marines chopped through the mast and ropes and heaved it overboard. The ship righted itself, and the remaining sails filled as the sailors in the yardarms unreefed them. Order was replacing catastrophe as she watched,her eyes weary.
