“Now go and find some bandages. I’ll wash her.”
He was more than willing to go into the other room to escape the horror of the blood and he rummaged vigorously through cupboards. She fetched a bowl of water from the basin in the sick bay and began mopping up McPrince’s back.
“Oh, you poor dear,” she murmured as McPrince groaned in her coma. Fresh tears dripped into the welling cuts. “And that poor broken arm! What shall we do with that?”
Bellini came back with an armful of assorted bandages, cotton squares, and an antiseptic spray. He dumped them alongside McPrince’s nude body and then retreated a step. His face looked sullen with revulsion and he averted his eyes as Miriam began spraying the back and fresh blood welled out of the cuts.
“Get some ointment,” said Miriam looking up suddenly.
“Don’t just stand there, Tony! She’ll die if we don’t help her. Get some ointment to put on her back to stop the bandages sticking.”
His face set into dark rebellion and momentarily he hesitated.
“Oh, let me!” snapped Miriam, and before he could retract his rebellion she had run into the surgery and began throwing open cabinet doors and rummaging through their contents. He turned his head and looked down coldly at the body on the bed.
What the hell could they do about that broken arm? The only thing to do was to hammer on the door until somebody outside heard and broke the door in and fetched Nurse Julie. She could mend the arm. He looked round for something weighty to use on the door.
What Bellini could not know, and this was most unfortunate, was that McPrince had planned with Nurse Julie and Captain Able to get Miriam in a situation of stress whereby McPrince would fake an accident to herself inside the surgery at the time of the Perseid explosions and Miriam would find herself in a locked surgery with an unconscious body. Nobody was to answer any calls for help and Miriam would have to fend for herself and a strangely ill McPrince over a period of two or three days without food or heat and with the surgery air pressure reduced over that time to simulate leakage into space. It was hoped Miriam would emerge sturdier in character from this ordeal, Accordingly, a second surgery had been set up elsewhere in the ship with Nurse Julie in charge, and all noise from the old surgery ignored.
Miriam hurried back with a jar of some white cream she had found just as Bellini had concluded his abortive search of the ward for a hammer and was about to move into the surgery itself.
“Where are you going?” she demanded frantically. “Don’t go now.” Her hair was wild, her face ugly with tears and fear.
“Got to make someone hear,” he blurted and pushed past her. “Must find something heavy.”
“But what about her?”
“You do it,” he called. He was already inspecting the mobile lamp standard to see whether part of it unscrewed.
“Oh…, muttered Miriam, then began clumsily spreading cream on one of the squares of cloth Bellini had brought. She laid it gingerly on the bare back feeling the pain that McPrince could not. Then she took one of the big rolls of bandage and after one helpless look in the direction of Bellini began passing the strip under and over McPrince’s body. From the surgery began a tremendous banging as Bellini attacked the door with a peculiar steel bar he had found in a cupboard.
After ten minutes Miriam had finished concealing those terrible cuts and rolled McPrince over, and outside the banging had diminished in frequency and amplitude.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” bawled Bellini, “Are you all deaf?” He hammered a few more strokes and then threw his ‘hammer’ down. He glared at the door, thinking: nobody passing along the corridor could have failed to hear the banging; even if it wasn’t on the usual passenger route it was certainly within the crews’ orbit and in these ‘accident’ exercises there was a lot of traffic along the corridor to build up the atmosphere of anxious activity and also conveying hysterical and bruised women to the surgery.
So why had no one come to the surgery? Surely, someone had fainted as the air pressure was pulled down. Could it be…? No. It would be too much of a coincidence if the ship had actually suffered holing by a meteor just at the time of the exercise and everybody was dead.
Bellini pressed his ear to the door. All he could hear was the sound of Miriam sniveling over her precious ‘mother’ in the other room.
“Shut up” he shouted. “I can’t hear anything.”
Miriam gave one last sniff and was silent. She quietly found her clothes and dressed then came to the ward door and watched him. He listened with maximum intensity, mouth open, eyes shut, but he could hear nothing outside.
“The engines are still going,” he announced. “But the funny thing is, there doesn’t seem to be anyone about.” They stared at each other.
“What does it mean?” asked Miriam “What does it mean?” asked Miriam.
“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Could be there’s been an accident.”
She gave a hysterical, over-sarcastic laugh. “I know all about accidents! Now they’ve got a real one, have they?” She began to titter and would have gone on to scream only that a gasp and moan came from behind her. She ran back to the bed. McPrince stared up at her with a face transfixed in pain, afraid to move, almost white as the sheets she lay on.
“Don’t move!” cried Miriam, “You’re hurt.”
“I know,” breathed McPrince. Her eyes turned towards her broken arm but she did not move her head. “My arm. What happened?” Her voice was little more than a sigh as if she hardly dared fill her lungs. “Oh…my back!”
“There was an explosion,” said Miriam, her voice was very high-pitched, squeaky. Her hands came up to her throat and clenched there as she stared down at McPrince. “What can we do for you? Oh, mother, your arm is broken!” She broke into more tears.
McPrince closed her eyes and then said: “You can stop calling me mother, for a start.” She rested and then whispered: “I can’t hear very well.” Another pause. “You said ‘we’…is there…?”
“The steward — Tony Bellini — was here when it happened,” said Miriam.
McPrince opened her eyes and looked blankly at Miriam. “I’m cold. Cover me. Shock.” She closed her eyes again. “Thirsty.”
Miriam whirled away into the surgery, Bellini looked up from where he was sitting with his back to the corridor door,
“Find some blankets quickly; she’s cold. It’s shock.” She, herself, ran to the white sink and filled a beaker with water. He rose slowly and she screamed at him: “Move, Tony, move! She may be dying!”
Grumbling under his breath he rose and began searching in the cupboards lining the room. Bloody woman: Why did she have to be standing there at that moment? Why didn’t she stay on watch in the surgery as she was supposed to do? Viciously he slid doors open and shut.
“No damned blankets here. Ask her where they are,” he shouted.
Miriam appeared at the door as if there had been a fresh explosion. “Quiet!” she commanded in a voice as thin and keen as a scalpel. “Find them! And hurry!’ She turned to go.
“Find them yourself,” snarled Bellini.
She refaced him with teeth bared. Before he could move she lashed him across the face with her slightly clawed hand. The nails left four parallel scratches from ear to mouth. She raised her hand the second time and he flinched.
“Don’t speak to me like that again!” Her eyes seemed twice their normal size, her lips nothing like the soft bows he had kissed so ardently; she seemed to have grown taller, too. Bellini backed off.
“No need to…,” he muttered, “I’m sorry.” He began rubbing his face with one hand and gesturing at the open cupboards with the other, “But I can’t find them. I have looked.”