“Ahem,” began the man, who was lying on his belly, wincing as he turned. “Not exactly. I told you there was a process, a slow process of variation and natural selection—”
“Yes, of course, Professor. A monkey, Doctor, can you imagine? Anyway, he was shot by Cossacks. In the rear. Next to his tail.”
They moved on. “Corporal Sloboda, of a Czech bicycle infantry, another frostbite amputee. Tarnowski: left arm. Oh, dear, careful, Corporal, keep it elevated—that’s why God gave us slings. This one is Sattler, an Austrian, prays constantly, too often really, it is its own disease. Oh, yes: chest wound; he also used to be among the dying, until the Holy Spirit intervened.”
At the end of the aisle, they stopped. “And this one…” She knelt. “Our Sergeant Czernowitzski, another Pole, though of this I’m not so proud. Amputations of the leg and arm. Show the doctor, Sergeant. See how they are healing nicely? But we have helped him not only with his physical wounds, Pan Doctor, but spiritual ones as well. See, Sergeant Czernowitzski had some trouble when he arrived in knowing the proper way that one is to address a nursing sister. But we learned! We learned that a nursing sister is not a tavern girl, with whom one can enjoy insinuations. Isn’t that correct, Sergeant?”
“Indeed, Sister,” said the man, looking down.
“Tell the doctor. ‘Do you need anything, soldier?’ is an innocent question, isn’t it, Sergeant?”
“That is correct, Sister. It is a medical question.”
Standing next to her, Zmudowski was doing his best to look severe behind his beard.
“That’s right, a medical question,” said Margarete. “And what do we say when we are asked this medical question, soldier?”
“We are gracious, Sister. We recognize the gift God has given us to be alive, and we honor Him by our decorum and good deeds.”
She turned with a satisfied smile on her face. “See, Doctor, he’s so polite.”
When they were out of earshot, Lucius said, in a low voice, “He seems chastened. If I may ask…”
Her eyes flickered. “As I said earlier, Doctor, God has given his children morphine. But He has also given the discretion to withhold it, too.”
She smiled briskly, and for the first time he saw her little teeth. A memory came to him, of a soldier in Kraków, screaming during a shortage of narcotics.
Then she must have recognized his unease. “I am alone, Pan Doctor. It is either morphine or the Mannlicher.” There was a long pause. Then she looked to Zmudowski and the two began to laugh. “It is a joke, Pan Doctor Lieutenant. I haven’t shot any of them, yet.” Another pause. “Well, at least not in Lemnowice. Oh, Doctor, that was also just a joke. Don’t look so frightened. Ever since we’ve started, you’ve looked like a condemned man waiting to be hanged.”
They pressed on. Up one row, down the second. They were lucky, she told him: often on rounds there were one or two amputations that had begun to sour, but that night it looked as if they had been spared. “Yes,” he answered. They were lucky, he thought, still wondering if now was his moment to confess. They all were lucky, lest he be asked to intercede.
But he didn’t confess. Down the second row and up the third, now into Medical, with its fevers, coughs, and dysenteries, kept behind a small partition in a pathetic effort against contagion. Puschmann, Mlakar, both with pneumonia. Nadler: terrible abscesses of the tonsils. Kulik, Doctor, poor Kulik: chronic diarrhea since his mama deliberately poisoned him at his going-away dinner, hoping to defer his deployment to the front.
And on… Yes, Poor Kulik, thought Lucius. But your mother was trying to keep you from the war.
Now Heads, the chancel. The first two cases were both comatose, with drains leaking pale fluid into bedside pans. At the third, Margarete stopped and turned.
“No name. An Austrian by his uniform,” she said. “But we couldn’t find any papers. He came two days ago, discovered on the road. There were at least three fractures in his skull, though the membrane was intact. Szőkefalvi said there is great disagreement of when one should proceed with decompression. That some say it should be done quickly, at any sign of increased pressure inside the skull, while others believe any surgery only worsens matters. For now, I’ve waited. But since yesterday, he hasn’t woken up. I’m not certain what to do.”
She had turned back to look at the soldier. She wants me to answer, Lucius thought. Again his heart began to beat faster. It was like being back in school, called up before the lecture hall. But he had stood before legendary members of the professoriate and didn’t feel as afraid as he did before this nurse. He recalled the old Italian whom he’d examined long ago as Praktikant. A week later, the man had his skull drilled to remove the pressure on his brain caused by the tumor. Even then, it seemed barbaric. Now he couldn’t bear to think of the kind of tools Margarete was using.
He knelt at the man’s side. The soldier’s face was gaunt, his cheeks covered by a thin beard. His breath soft and shallow. The gauze around his head was yellow, like the yoke of an egg.
For a long time, Lucius just looked at him, frozen, afraid not only that he didn’t know what he was doing, but that he would cause the man more harm.
“You can examine him, Doctor.”
Still he waited.
“Pan Doctor Lieutenant?”
But he was now trying to remember the basic neurological exam. He could recall the pages in his textbook, but the order of the exam had fled. Assess orientation… then cranial nerves, then muscle tone, then…
At his side Margarete spoke again, softly. “Szőkefalvi usually checked his eyes.”
Grateful that the darkness hid his blushing, Lucius leaned closer and asked the man to open his eyes. There was no answer. Again he paused.
“When I said examine, I meant you can touch him, Doctor.” Now something else had crept into her voice, a worry, inlaid with irritation or impatience. “Perhaps back in Vienna, you are more cautious. But out here, if we are going to drill a hole in his skull, we can’t be afraid of touching his eyelids. Unless Pan Doctor Lieutenant is used to doing things differently?”
“No… no…,” said Lucius, flustered. He gently parted the man’s eyelids with thumb and forefinger. Margarete handed him a candle before he could even ask. He wanted to snap at her, to tell her that he knew about pupillary reflexes. Swelling of the brain caused it to push the brainstem down, compressing the third cranial nerve, with its fibers controlling pupillary constriction. He had read this, dissected it in human and pig cadavers. He swung the light back and forth and said, as formally as he could, “The nervus oculomotorius seems intact.”
She didn’t answer.
“The nervus oculomotorius seems intact,” he repeated. “That argues against advanced herniation.”
“Yes, Pan Doctor,” answered Margarete tentatively. “The oc-u-lo-motorius. What a lovely word. Now, would you drill, or wait?”
A cold wind whistled across the patched-up shell-hole in the roof. Glinting snowflakes drifted down.
She leaned toward him and whispered, so the others couldn’t hear: “Szőkefalvi, Doctor, would wait.”