Robert Masello - Blood and Ice

“Give him the mouth guard,” the doctor ordered, as he tied the strings of his white apron behind him, and Taylor took a worn chunk of leather and stuck it between Frenchie's teeth. “Mind you bite down on that,” Taylor advised, “or you could lose your tongue.” He patted him on the shoulder in an amiable way, then left his hands there, one on each side, as he stood at the head of the bed.

“All right, Smith,” the doctor said, pressing a hand to the raised knee, “hold the other leg, please.”

Smith leaned his weight on the right leg, with one hand on the thigh and one on the shin, while the left leg, like a turkey's neck, was stretched across the chopping block. Eleanor was standing at the foot of the bed, speechless with horror, as Dr. Gaines took a bone saw with a wooden handle from the cart. Glancing over at Eleanor, he said, “Stay if you like-you can clean up after.”

But Eleanor had already decided that she could not leave. Frenchie was staring at her as if his very life hung in the balance and she could not have abandoned him at such a time. Dr. Gaines roughly adjusted the leg, making sure that a spot a few inches above the knee was positioned in the center of the block, and while he held the leg in place with one large hand, he laid the jagged blade of the saw against the green and empurpled skin-Eleanor thought, disconcertingly, of a bow being placed to the strings of a violin-then, taking a deep breath, drove the saw across and down.

A fountain of blood erupted into the air and Frenchie screamed, the mouth guard flying. His body buckled, but the doctor bore down, and before the first scream had even ended, he had drawn the blade back across, bearing down hard, and the bone had cracked, then splintered. Frenchie tried to scream again, but his agony was so great no sound came out. The leg was nearly severed from his trunk, only a few shreds of flesh and bone still connecting it, but Dr. Gaines made quick work of those, too. He ran the saw back and forth-it made a wet whistling sound-and the leg suddenly tumbled against his blood-spattered apron and onto his shoes. He paid no attention to it, but simply dropped the saw on the bed, and grabbing a tourniquet from the cart, tied it tightly around the geysering stump. Frenchie had passed out. The doctor tore away the ragged ends of skin with his fingers, then took a threaded needle from the pocket of his apron, and proceeded to sew the wound closed with coarse black stitches. When that was done, he poured a liberal dose of grain alcohol over the madly twitching stump and said to Eleanor, “I see you're still standing.”

Her legs were trembling, but yes, she had remained upright- if only to deny him the satisfaction of seeing her faint.

“We'll leave him then to your ministrations,” he said, wiping his hands down the front of his apron. “And get rid of that,” he said, nudging the severed leg with the toe of his boot. He turned and left the ward. It had all taken no more than ten minutes.

Taylor and Smith remained to gather the utensils and fold up the screen, then, touching a finger to their foreheads in farewell, the caravan moved on. “Next one's a hand,” she overheard Taylor say, and Smith replied, “Short work that'll be.”

The bed was soaked in blood, the floor was slick with it, but Eleanor's first order of business was to dispose of the limb. She pulled the sheet, which was already halfway off the bed, completely free, then used it to wrap the leg. Then she dropped the whole bundle in a refuse bin, fetched a bucket of water and a mop, and came back to clean the floor. The sun was up now, and the light coming through the window was a buttery yellow; it would be a fine day. When that was done, she remembered the clean shirt she had brought, and though she didn't want to wake him for anything in the world, she wanted desperately to remove the lice-covered shirt, wash him, and put on the clean linen. He should not wake up from his terrible ordeal in such filth. As gently as she could, she lifted his shoulders from the mattress. His head lolled back listlessly, and his skin was cold. His lips were a pale blue.

“Excuse me, Missus?” a soldier in a nearby bed said.

She looked up, while still holding Frenchie.

“I do believe the man is dead.”

She laid him down again, and put a hand to his heart. She felt nothing. She put her ear to his chest, and heard no sound. She fell back against the wall. A bird alighted on the windowsill behind her head, singing gaily. The tower bell rang the hour, and she knew Miss Nightingale would soon be looking for her.

December 16, 5 p.m.

Michael knew that if Charlotte's door was closed at that hour, the poor woman was probably trying to grab a much-needed nap, but he really didn't have a choice.

He knocked, and when there was no immediate answer, he knocked again, louder.

“Hang on, hang on,” he heard, as her slippers shuffled toward the door. She opened it, wearing her reindeer sweater and a baggy pair of purple Northwestern University sweatpants. When she saw it was Michael, she said, “I've got to warn you-I just took a Xanax.”

From her drowsy look, he believed it. “We need you to look at someone.”

“Who?”

How could he say this, without her thinking he was playing some stupid prank? “You know that woman? The one who was frozen in the ice?”

“Yes,” Charlotte said, stifling a yawn. “You find her again?”

“We did,” Michael said. “And well, the thing is, we've brought her back.”

“To the base?”

“To life.”

Charlotte just stood there, idly scratching the side of her face with the back of her fingernails. “What'd you just say?”

“She's alive. Sleeping Beauty is awake, and she's alive.”

From the look on her face, Michael guessed that she did think it was a joke, and a bad one, to boot.

“You woke me up for this?” she said. “Because I've just had a very rough day and-”

“-I'm telling you the truth. It's for real.” He stared her straight in the eye, so that she could see not only that he was sincere, but that he also wasn't suffering from the Big Eye. That this was the real deal.

“I don't know what you're up to,” Charlotte said, dropping her resistance, “but you've got me up now. Where is this phenomenon?”

“Next door-in the infirmary.”

Michael got out of her way as she went next door, rolling from side to side, still a bit groggy. Lawson, standing around in the waiting area like an expectant father in a maternity ward, said nothing as Charlotte entered the examining room with Michael close behind.

Eleanor was laid out on the table, like a body on a bier, her hands folded across her bosom. The orange down coat was thrown on a chair. She was wearing a long, old-fashioned gown, dark blue, with a white brooch fastened on her breast. Her eyes were closed, but she wasn't asleep. She was breathing weakly through her open mouth.

And Michael could see that Charlotte was-quite suddenly- waking up.

Get a grip, was the first thing Charlotte told herself.

This young woman-whoever she was-sure as hell did look like that woman Charlotte had been allowed to glimpse in the ice.

“She collapsed an hour ago,” Michael was saying, “when we tried to get her to leave the old church at the whaling station.”

The whaling station? The old, abandoned whaling station? This girl-what was she, maybe nineteen or twenty years old? — lying here in the antique clothes? None of it was making any sense at all. Charlotte swore to think twice before ever taking Xanax again. She took the woman's wrist and felt for a pulse. It was steady but feeble, though her fingers felt like frozen fish sticks.

“Her name, by the way, is Eleanor Ames.”