The Rasputin Dagger by Theresa Breslin

Author:Theresa Breslin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RHCP
Published: 2017-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

At the beginning of November Dr K and I were doing double shifts in the City Hospital, but as we slid into December the pressure eased. An official communiqué from the Ministry of War informed us that the practicalities of warfare meant that major engagements did not take place during the winter. The field marshals and generals planned their offensives for the spring.

When Dr K read this out at a staff meeting, one of the senior orderlies commented, ‘That’s not what our patients are saying. They tell us that the reason there are fewer wounded is because there is a shortage of stretcher-bearers, nurses and doctors. The ambulance service is so badly organized that if soldiers fall on the battlefield there is no hope of them being rescued. The wounded lie forgotten in no-man’s-land.’

‘There is a truth in their remarks,’ a junior doctor agreed. ‘The men tell us that at the Front they bless the colder weather. They believe that freezing to death is an easier way of dying. They prefer it to bleeding out, or lying with infected flesh festering for days, going mad for lack of water.’

But the surgical wards of the City Hospital continued to be busy and we were working long days to deal with the number of operations.

Nine days before Christmas, Dr K and I, having finished a session in theatre, were discussing the fact that patients who we thought were recovering had relapsed, requiring further surgery. We’d spent a day cutting off limbs – whole legs and arms – from soldiers who’d had a foot or a hand amputated at the Front.

‘Gangrene is tracking up the muscle.’ Dr K paused outside the door of his office. ‘I want to prepare a report to be sent to the War Ministry. The army doctors need to be aware of the consequences of their actions upon their patients. Their methods of dealing with shattered limb bones by guillotine-style amputation and suture seals in bacteria and encourages infection to spread. With gangrene it delivers a death sentence, for it spreads into the body, and by the time we see the patient it’s too late. We need someone at the battlefield instructing the medics there how to perform a more efficient amputation.’

There was a burst of laughter from behind us. ‘Oh, that’s funny, that is.’ A grizzled soldier, a double amputee, was sitting on a pallet in the corridor. The rough bandages on the stumps of his legs above his knees were suppurating brownish pus. ‘Honourable Doctor, sir,’ he said, ‘there are no medics to perform amputations on the ordinary soldiers of the Front Line. We do it ourselves with kitchen knives or rusty bayonets.’

Dr K wiped his hand across his face. ‘Nevertheless,’ he replied, ‘I will personally deliver the report I write and make sure that someone in authority reads it. Even if I have to take it to Tsar Nicholas himself.’

‘Then, Honourable Doctor, please oblige me, and every other conscript, by ramming it down the Tsar’s throat until he chokes upon it.

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