"Have you ever assisted at an operation before?"
"No, Doctor."
Babcott smiled, his face and manner genial, his hands moving swiftly, undressing the half-conscious Malcolm Struan as easily as if he were a child. "Well, soon you will have, good experience for you. I need help and I'm the only one here today. You'll be back in Yokohama by suppertime."
"I'll... I'll try."
"You'll probably be sick--it's the smell mostly, but not to worry. If you are, do it in the basin and not over the patient." Again Babcott glanced at him, gauging him, asking himself how reliable this young man might be, reading his bottled terror, then went back to work. "We'll give him ether next and then, off we go. You said you were in Peking?"
"Yes, sir, for four months--I came here by way of Shanghai and arrived a few days ago." Tyrer was glad to be able to talk to help keep his mind off the horrors. "The Foreign Office thought a short stay in Peking learning Chinese characters would help us with Japanish."
"Waste of time. If you want to speak it--by the way, most of us out here call it Japanese, like Chinese--if you want to read and write it properly, Chinese characters won't help, hardly at all." He shifted the inert man to a more comfortable position. "How much Japanese do you know?"
Tyrer's unhappiness increased.
"Practically none, sir. Just a few words.
We were told there would be Japanish, I mean Japanese grammars and books in Peking but there weren't any."
In spite of his enormous concern over this whole incident, Babcott stopped for a moment and laughed. "Grammars are as rare as a dragon's dingle and there're no Japanese dictionaries that I know of, except Father Alvito's of 1601 and that's in Portuguese--which I've never even seen and only heard about--and the one Reverend Priny's been working on for years." He eased off Struan's white silk shirt, wet with blood. "Do you speak Dutch?"
"Again just a few words. All student interpreters for Japan are supposed to have a six months course but the F.o. sent us off on the first available steamer. Why is Dutch the official foreign language used by the Japanese bureaucracy?"
"It isn't. The F.o. are wrong, and wrong about a lot of things. But it is the only European language presently spoken by a few Bakufu--I'm going to lift him slightly, you pull off his boots then his trousers, but do it gently."
Awkwardly Tyrer obeyed, using his good left hand.
Now Struan was quite naked on the surgical table. Beyond were the surgical instruments and salves and bottles. Babcott turned away and put on a heavy, waterproofed apron.
Instantly Tyrer saw only a butcher. His stomach heaved and he just made the basin in time.
Babcott sighed. How many hundred times have I vomited my heart out and then some more? But I need help so this child has to grow up. "Come here, we have to work quickly."
"I can't, I just can't..."
At once the doctor roughened his voice. "You come over here right smartly and help or Struan will die and before that I'll thump the hell out of you!"
Tyrer stumbled over to his side.
"Not here, for God's sake, opposite me!
Hold his hands!"
Struan opened his eyes briefly at Tyrer's touch and went back again into his nightmare, mouthing incoherently.
"It's me," Tyrer muttered, not knowing what else to say.
On the other side of the table Babcott had uncorked the small, unlabeled bottle and now he poured some of the yellowish oily liquid onto a thick linen pad. "Hold him firmly," he said, and pressed the pad over Struan's nose and mouth.
At once Struan felt himself being suffocated and grabbed at the pad, almost tearing it away with surprising strength. "For Christ sake, get hold of him," Babcott snarled. Again Tyrer grabbed Struan's wrists, forgetting his bad arm, and cried out but managed to hold on, the ether fumes revolting him. Still Struan struggled, twisting his head to escape, feeling himself dragged down into this never-ending cesspool. Gradually his strength waned, and vanished.
"Excellent," Babcott said. "Astonishing how strong patients are sometimes." He turned Struan onto his stomach, making his head comfortable, revealing the true extent of the wound that began in his back and came around just under the rib cage to end near his navel. "Keep a close watch on him and tell me if he stirs--when I tell you give him more ether..." But Tyrer was again at the basin. "Hurry up!"
Babcott did not wait, letting his hands flow, used to operating in far worse circumstances. Crimea with tens of thousands of soldiers dying--cholera, dysentery, smallpox mostly--and then all the wounded, the howls in the night and in the day, and then in the night the Lady of the Lamp who brought order out of chaos in military hospitals. Nurse Nightingale who ordered, cajoled, threatened, demanded, begged but somehow instituted her new ideas and cleansed that which was filthy, cast out hopelessness and useless death, yet still had time to visit the sick and the needy all hours of the night, her oil or candle lamp held high, lighting her passage from bed to bed.
"Don't know how she did it," he muttered.
"Sir?"
Momentarily he looked up and saw Tyrer, white-faced, staring at him. He had quite forgotten him. "I was just thinking about the Lady of the Lamp," he said, allowing his mouth to talk, to calm himself-- without letting this disturb his concentration on the sliced muscles and damaged veins. "Florence Nightingale. She went out to the Crimea with just thirty-eight nurses and in four months cut the death rate from forty in every hundred to about two--in every hundred."
Tyrer knew the statistic as every Englishman knew proudly that she had really founded the modern profession of nursing. "What was she like--personally?"
"Terrible, if you didn't keep everything clean and as she wanted it. Otherwise she was Godlike --in its most Christian way. She was born in Florence, in Italy, hence her name--though she was English through and through."
"Yes." Tyrer felt the doctor's warmth.
"Wonderful. So wonderful. Did you know her well?"
Babcott's eyes did not waver from the wound, or from his wise fingers as they probed and found, as he had feared, the severed part of the intestine. He swore without noticing it. Delicately he began seeking the other end. The stench increased.
"You were talking about Dutch. You know why some of the Japanners speak Dutch?"
With a violent effort, Tyrer tore his gaze away from the fingers and tried to close his nostrils.
He felt his stomach twist. "No sir."
Struan stirred. At once Babcott said, "Give him more of the ether... that's right, don't press too firmly... good. Well done.
How do you feel?"
"Dreadful."
"Never mind." The fingers began again, almost outside the doctor's will, then stopped.
Gently they exposed the other part of the severed intestine. "Wash your hands then give me the needle that's already threaded--there, on the table."
Tyrer obeyed.
"Good. Thanks." Babcott began the repair. Very accurately. "His liver's not hurt, bruised a little but not cut. His kidney's all right too. Ichiban--that's Japanese for "very good." I have a few Japanner patients.
In return for my work I make them give me words and phrases. I'll help you learn if you like."
"I'd... that would be wonderful--ichiban.
Sorry I'm so useless."