Bohemian Girl, The (32 page)

‘Not as tough as two .45-calibre bullets.’

‘We had to collapse your lung, but it reinflated when the sepsis ended. You have a small incision in your chest; the surgeon took the ball out that way and put the tubing in. The other injuries are healing.’

‘My leg?’

‘One step at a time.’

‘Have I lost the use of my leg?’

‘You talk nonsense. Your nerves are bruised, yes. There is wounding, yes. But you are tough. Also strong. You will walk.’

‘I’m as weak as water.’

‘Temporary only. Five weeks in a hospital bed, the great Ajax would be being weak. Soon, you get out of bed, you get stronger.’

‘When?’

‘Soon. Also, I want you to see Mrs Striker.’

‘No.’

‘You are being very cruel to her. You think you protect her but you make her life unhappy. I want you to see her.’

Denton cowered under his bedclothes. ‘I don’t want her to know me like this.’

‘That is vanity. It is wrong to put vanity ahead of the people who love us.’

He told them to let her visit. They said she was coming every day as it was and sitting outside his room. Now she sat by him, either reading silently or reading to him.

‘So you remember it was Struther Jarrold now?’ she said.

‘I’d been at Ruth Castle’s, looking for you. Then - all I remember are the dreams. Nightmares of doing the same things, over and over. And riding, a horse that made my back hurt—’

‘They moved you once, from one hospital to another. The ambulance was very rough.’

‘You were there by then?’

‘I told you I’d come back.’

‘Ruth Castle said you would. I don’t remember anything after I went down her steps.’

He tried to recall the shooting, but he couldn’t bring it back. He started to tell her about going to France with Heseltine.

‘Don’t concern yourself with it.’

‘It matters to me. Anyway, I was going to see Munro. Munro needs to be told what we found.’

‘Not yet. You’re not to be “agitated” - Bernat’s orders.’

‘Janet, good God—’

‘Shut up.’

He sighed. ‘I feel ashamed.’

‘Because somebody shot you in the back? You could hardly have prevented it.’

‘I should have. I should have seen it coming.’

‘How?’

‘I need to talk to Munro.’

‘Not yet.’ She opened her magazine. ‘Soon.’

‘You sound like Bernat. “Soon.”’

Next day, they got him out of bed. Two nursing sisters and the doctor helped him to try to stand; he swayed for a few seconds, and they put him back down.

‘You must make an effort, Mr Denton. Doctor’s orders.’

‘Go away, sister.’

‘Get up.’

‘Leave me alone.’

‘Mr Denton, get up! Oh, why are you so stubborn?’

‘Because I can’t move my leg! Because I’m a cripple, you stupid bitch!’

The surgeon who had removed the piece of bullet from near his spine was named Gallichan, a black-bearded, handsome man in his forties with the sort of good belly that announced success and appetite. Presumably Irish, he was in fact as English as the new king, whom he slightly resembled. He wore fawn trousers, a broadcloth morning coat in blue-black, a waistcoat that was daring in that it didn’t match and was silk, not wool - in fact an anachronism, pale grey with embroidered floral designs.

‘I’m told you had trouble standing,’ he said genially.

‘I’d have collapsed if they hadn’t held me up.’

‘Of course you would.’ Gallichan smiled as if this was the best news in the world. ‘Let’s have a look at this leg of yours.’ The sister pulled back the sheet. Denton didn’t want to look at it, forced himself to: the leg looked pasty-white, inert, like something made from dough. Gallichan said ‘Mmm-hmmm’ several times, very low, and hummed something unidentifiable. ‘Does that hurt?’

‘What?’

‘Mmm.’ He pushed the leg this way and that. ‘Raise your foot, please.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Raise your knee.’

He couldn’t do that, either.

Gallichan took a tool from his bag and drew it up the sole of Denton’s foot. Denton felt something like the weakest of electric currents.

‘Feel that?’

‘A little.’

‘Aha!’

Gallichan sent the sister away and then moved the sheet aside to reveal Denton’s groin. ‘Feel that?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did I do?’

‘You felt my, you know - parts.’

‘We say testicles; I’d understand “nuts” or “balls”, too, if Latin bothers you. Feel that? And that? Mmm-hmm.’ He pulled the sheet back and arranged it over the leg.

‘Well? I want to know the worst.’

Gallichan pulled a white metal chair away from a wall and placed it near the foot of the bed. He sat, crossed his legs and leaned back with one arm over the back of the chair. He looked like a man about to light up a cigar, perhaps order a small brandy. He hooked his left thumb into the armhole of his waistcoat. ‘I was called in again because I am what is called a nerve specialist. Some think me a nervy specialist.’ He laughed. Denton didn’t. ‘I did the surgery to remove the bit of lead that had given up the ghost near your spine. It’s a tricky place. Rather like Piccadilly Circus - traffic coming in from all directions and rushing about and going out all over the shop.’ He looked into his satchel, found a piece of paper and a patent fountain pen and put the paper down on the bedsheet. After a moment, he cleared the tray on the bedside table of its water pitcher and glass and put the paper on it and began to draw. ‘The lower vertebrae look like something with wings, in profile - not important; I’m not Michelangelo - at any rate, there are holes along the side through which blood vessels and the nerves pass. Your bit of bullet lodged like so - close to the nerves and vessels but not
in
them, do you see? If it had gone into them, we’d have had the devil of a time, but as it was, we were able to get in and out - seventeen minutes, quickly done - and not have to do any cutting in nerve tissue. So the problem is bruising, not cutting. You follow me?’

Denton nodded. The drawing nauseated him.

‘Bruising, not cutting. Tissue is elastic, you see. The piece of bullet struck, as it were, a net of India rubber, which absorbed its velocity by stretching and yielding to it, then returning to its shape. But the yielding bruised the nearby tissues, eh? The nerves and vessels coming out on the right side of the vertebrae.’ He blacked in the nerves and vessels on the drawing. He looked at Denton for a response and, getting none, put the pen down and sat back again and resumed his old position. ‘The nerves there go to the right leg and to areas of the groin.’

‘Get to it. Is it permanent?’

Gallichan frowned, the kind of man who despite his jollity was vain and didn’t like to be denied his accustomed veneration. ‘I don’t give snap judgements.’

‘How bad is it?’

‘You can’t stand; you can’t move the leg. You have feeling in the sole of the foot, the testes and the glans penis. With time, I think, the leg can be made to function.’

‘
Function?
’

‘I believe it will bear weight again. Some degree of movement, we might hope.’

Denton stared at him.

The doctor said, ‘You’re a good healer. I expect good results, if you work at it.’

‘Will I walk?’

‘I don’t predict the future, Mr Denton. I don’t plant false hopes. I think -
think
- you will recover some use of the leg, but I can’t promise it. And the rest, as well.’

‘What
rest
?’

‘Mmm, well—The, mmm, rectum and the anal sphincter could be implicated - nerves run close to the path of the bullet - and they are so far somewhat affected, are they not? We shall see about them. The penis, the, mmm, let us say the
mechanism
, although it’s far from a machine; it’s most wonderfully organic - but that system that causes the tumescence of the organ is perhaps implicated. You see, there are muscles that are meant to shut down the flow of blood—’ He had picked up his pen and bent over the paper again.

‘You’re saying I’m impotent.’

‘We don’t know yet. Time will tell.’

‘My God, what else are you keeping from me? Tell me!’ He had forced himself up on his elbows; his upper arms shuddered from the effort.

The doctor flinched back and turned the movement into one of standing, as if he had meant to do that instead of recoiling. ‘You mustn’t excite yourself.’

Denton fell back. ‘You bastard.’

‘My dear sir—’

‘Don’t dear sir me, you sonofabitch. Tell me the worst!’

Gallichan took hold of the lapels of his coat with both hands. He drew himself up, then settled himself, shot his chin out and pulled it back. ‘I have told you the worst,’ he said.

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘You are in a disturbed mental state, sir. It has been a constant worry to us. Are you aware that twice you fought with the sisters - that male attendants had to be called? You pulled out your tubing! This was early on, I grant you; you were feverish. But you are a violent man, Mr Denton, and you do violent things and make violent statements. Now, I am telling you - your mental condition is abnormal and you are not seeing things clearly. I have told you the truth and you should believe me!’

‘Go away.’

‘I am here to help you. I will not go away.’

‘Go to hell.’

Gallichan looked at him. His face showed disgust. He cleared it almost feature by feature, settling it into the somewhat cautious physician’s face - a kind of cheerful blandness, ready at any moment to be sombre - that he usually wore. He sat again in the metal chair, put his right ankle on his left knee, and hooked his thumbs again into the armholes of his waistcoat. ‘My work on the nerves has led me to an interest in the mind.’

Denton, consumed with his helplessness, said nothing.

‘The mind drives the body. The healthy mind enables the healthy body. I want you to begin a course of exercises to repair your leg. I quite understand that what I told you about your bowels and your erectile tissue has disturbed you, but those things will, I hope, take care of themselves. It’s the leg I want to work on.’

Denton was looking at the ceiling. ‘So if I fill my pants or can’t get it up, it isn’t your province. Thank you.’

‘You’re trying to drive me away by being deliberately offensive, but you won’t. I’m the one who can make you better. Whether I can make you the man you were is up to you. Oh, yes, to you - you have to do the real work. I’m just a jolly fat man who studied medicine. You’re the one living in that body. As for damage other than the leg, yes, I’ve suggested indignity and horror to you. They may lie in your future. I don’t want them to be your future; I want you to be the man you were before you were shot. But you won’t be if you shout vulgarities at me and try to send me away. If your mind won’t help me to cure your body, Mr Denton, you will lie in that bed until you rot.’

Denton raised his head. ‘That’s a hell of a thing to say.’

‘I meant it to be. Get hold of yourself, man. I’m not your problem. ’

Denton’s head dropped back. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ ‘First, I want you to apologize to sister. You hurt and upset her.’

‘She was trying to force me to do things.’

‘On Bernat’s orders and with your good health in mind. I want you to apologize to her and then I want you to do as she asks.’

‘To hell with both of you.’

‘Mr Denton, I want you out of that bed. For one thing, you’ve bedsores on your buttocks. You don’t feel them because you’re full of morphine, but they’re getting worse and they’re going to go septic. Then I want you on your feet and getting about so you can get out of this nursing home and into familiar surroundings. It isn’t good for you here. Your mental state is made worse by isolation - if you don’t see it, I do. Now, will you apologize to sister?’

‘Why not?’

‘Then you’ll begin a course of exercises. I also want somebody from your household to learn them so you can do them when you leave here.’

The doctor tapped a finger on his lower lip. His eyes narrowed. ‘Will you talk with me - frankly, honestly - another time?’

‘About what?’

‘I shall tell you then. About your mind.’

‘My mind is my business.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you think so. Will you talk with me?’

Denton said nothing for several seconds. ‘I can’t keep you from coming.’

‘Good. I want you to start having visitors, as well. Seeing people will be good for you.’

‘I don’t want to see anybody.’

Gallichan sighed. ‘Mmmm.’ He stood, lifted his satchel to the bed next to Denton’s leg, and put his pen and the paper into it. He replaced the tray and the pitcher and glass. He said, ‘I’ve told you the worst. This is the bottom - the abyss of illness. Now we climb out.’ He snapped the satchel with a click. ‘Do apologize to sister.’

‘I had dreams. They’re gone now.’

Dr Gallichan nodded. ‘Fever and morphine. They’ll do that. What do you remember?’

‘Nothing.’ He frowned.

‘You were violent, as I told you. You pulled out your catheter. You also shouted in your sleep, enough that you disturbed other patients on the ward.’

‘What about?’

Gallichan hesitated. ‘I think you were afraid of someone.’

‘There was somebody—With a shotgun. He shot me in the back. I died.’ He said it with wonder.

‘In the dreams, you mean.’ When Denton said nothing, the doctor went on. ‘You
were
shot in the back, after all. Was it the same man?’

Denton shook his head. ‘I don’t remember being shot. It’s - I’m not sure it was a man—’ He croaked out a laugh. ‘It’s like a dream.’

‘Well, the dreams. You were under a long time. What else?’

‘I don’t—I did the same things. That’s what I remember, the sense of doing things again and again. Over and over.’