Alistair MacLean - The Golden Rendezvous

“Don’t you touch my leg,” I yelled. “Not until I get an anaesthetic.”

“He’s probably right,” Marston murmured. He peered closely. “Not much blood now you’ve been lucky, John. If the main artery had been severed — well, you’d have been gone.” He looked at Carreras, his face doubtful. “He could be moved, I think, but with a fractured thighbone the pain will be excruciating.”

“Mr. Carter is very tough,” Carreras said unsympathetically. It wasn’t his thighbone; he’d been a Good Samaritan for a whole minute now and the strain had proved too much for him. “Mr. Carter will survive.”

I survived all right, but no credit for that was due to the handling I received on the way down to the sick bay. The sick bay was on the port side, two decks below the drawing room; on the second companionway one of the two men who were carrying me slipped and fell and I was aware of nothing more until I woke up in bed.

Like every compartment on the Campari, the sick bay was fitted out regardless of cost. A large room, twenty feet by sixteen, it had the usual wall-to-wall Persian carpeting and pastel walls decorated with murals depicting water skiing, skin-diving, swimming, and other such sporting activities symbolic of fitness and good health, craftily designed to encourage to get on their feet and out of there with all possible speed any patient unfortunate enough to be confined to any of the three beds. The beds themselves, with their heads close up to the windows in the ship’s side, struck a jarring note: they were just plain standard iron hospital beds, the only concession to taste being that they were painted in the same pastel tints as the bulkheads. In the far corner of the room, remote from the door, was old Marston’s consulting desk, with a couple of chairs; further along the inner bulkhead, nearer the door, was a flat-topped couch that could be raised for examinations or, if need be, the carrying out of minor operations. Between couch and desk a door led to two smaller compartments, a dispensary and a dentist’s surgery. I knew that because I had recently spent three quarters of an hour in that dentist’s chair, with Marston attending to a broken tooth; the memory of the experience would stay with me the rest of my days.

The three beds were occupied. Captain Bullen was in the one nearest to the door, the bo’sun next to him, and myself in the corner, opposite Marston’s desk, all of us lying on rubber sheets placed over the beds. Marston was bent over the middle bed, examining the bo’sun’s knee; beside him, holding a metal tray with bowls, sponges, instruments, and bottles containing some unidentifiable liquids, was Susan Beresford. She looked very pale. I wondered vaguely what she was doing here. Seated on the couch was a young man, badly in need of a shave: he was wearing green trousers, a green sweat-stained Epauletted shirt, and green beret. He had his eyes half-closed against the smoke spiralling up from the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth and carried an automatic carbine in his hand. I wondered how many men with how many automatic carbines were posted all over the Campari. Detailing a man to guard three broken-down crocks like Macdonald, Bullen, and myself showed that Carreras had plenty of men to spare or was excessively cautious. Or maybe both.

“What are you doing here, Miss Beresford?” I asked. She looked up, startled, and the instruments rattled metallically on the tray in her hands.

“Oh, I am glad,” she said. She sounded almost as if she meant it.

“I thought how do you feel?”

“The way I look. Why are you here?” “Because I needed her.” Doc Marston straightened slowly and rubbed his back. “Dealing with wounds like these — well, I must have a helper. Nurses, John, are usually young and female and there are only two on the Campari in that category. Miss Beresford and Miss Harcourt.”

“I don’t see any signs of Miss Harcourt.” I tried to visualise the glamorous young actress in the real-life role of Florence Nightingale, but my imagination was in no shape to cope with absurdities like that. I couldn’t even see her playing it on the screen. “She was here,” he said curtly. “She fainted.”

“That helps. How’s the bo’sun?”

“I must ask you not to talk, John,” he said severely. “You’ve lost a great deal of blood and you’re very weak. Please conserve your strength.”

“How’s the bo’sun?” I repeated. Dr. Marston sighed.

“He’ll be all right. That is, he’s in no danger. Abnormally thick skull, I should say; that saved him. Concussion, yes, but not fractured, I think. Hard to say without an X-ray. Respiration, pulse, temperature, blood pressure — none of them shows any signs pointing to extensive brain injury. It’s his leg I’m worried about.”

“His leg?”

“Patella. Kneecap to you. Completely shattered, beyond repair. Tendons sliced, tibia fractured. Leg sawn in half. Must have been hit several times. The damned murderers!”

“Amputation? you don’t think — "

“No amputation.” he shook his head irritably. “I’ve removed all the broken pieces I can find. Bones will either have to be fused, so shortening the leg, or a metal plate. Too soon to say. But this I can say: he’ll never bend that knee again.”

“You’re telling me he’s crippled? for life?”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re very friendly.”

“So he’s finished with the sea?”

“I’m sorry,” Marston repeated. Medical incompetence apart, he was really a pretty decent old buffer. “Your turn now, John.”

“Yes.” I wasn’t looking forward to my turn. I looked at the guard. “Hey, you! Yes, you. Where’s Carreras?”

“Senor Carreras.” The young man dropped his cigarette on the Persian carpet and ground it out with his heel. Lord Dexter would have gone off his rocker. “It is not my business to know where Senor Carreras is.” That settled that. He spoke English. I couldn’t have cared less at the moment where Carreras was. Marston had his big scissors out, was preparing to slit up my trouser leg.

“Captain Bullen?” I asked. “What chance?”

“I don’t know. He’s unconscious now.” He hesitated. “He was wounded twice. One bullet passed clean through below the shoulder, tearing the pectoral muscle. The other entered the right chest a little lower, breaking a rib, then must have gone through the lung near the apex. The bullet is still lodged inside the body, almost certainly in the vicinity of the shoulder blade. I may decide to operate later to remove it.”

“Operate.” The thought of old Marston hacking round inside an unconscious Bullen made me feel even paler than I looked. I choked down the next few words I thought of and said, “Operate? You would take the grave chance, you would be willing to risk your lifetime’s professional reputation.”

“A man’s life is at stake, John,” he said solemnly.

“But you might have to penetrate the chest wall. A major operation, Dr. Marston. Without assistant surgeons, without skilled nurses, without a competent anaesthetist, no X-rays, and you might be removing a bullet that’s plugging a vital gap in the lung or pleura, or whatever you call it. Besides, the bullet might have been deflected anywhere.” I took a deep breath. “Dr. Marston, I cannot say how much I respect and admire you for even thinking of operating in such impossible conditions. But you will not run the risk. Doctor, as long as the captain is incapacitated I am in command of the Campari in nominal command, anyway,” I added bitterly. “I absolutely forbid you to incur the very heavy responsibility of operating in such adverse conditions. Miss Beresford, you are a witness to that.”