The Narrow Road to the Deep North (29 page)

Dorrigo Evans made his way between the platforms, as chatty as if it were a country pub on a Saturday afternoon and he was meeting old mates, but his good spirits fled and he felt his stomach cramp when he saw two orderlies carry Jack Rainbow in. One orderly was holding some filthy rags, trying to staunch the blood that was seeping out of the little stump that was all that was left of Jack Rainbow’s right leg. Dorrigo Evans had operated on him twice before, the first time amputating the leg below the knee when the ulcer there had eaten through to his shin and anklebone. The second time gangrene had set in around the stump and he had had to amputate high up the thigh. And that had been three weeks ago, and here he was again. The orderlies placed him on a bamboo table used for patients when their ulcers were cleaned out with sharpened spoons. Dorrigo Evans came across to inspect the leg.

But before he looked, he smelt.

It was all he could do not to vomit.

The same thing had happened again, and where there should have been healing there was just black rot and infection, and blood pulsing out of the little stick-like stump. Dorrigo Evans realised the stitches he had used on the femoral artery must have sloughed off.

Gangrene, he said to no one in particular, because everyone with a nose already knew. Tourniquet.

Nobody responded.

Tourniquet? Oh, Christ, no, said Dorrigo Evans, realising he was in the ulcer tent and there were no tourniquets or any such equipment. He hastily unbuckled his belt, drew it out of his shorts and wrapped it around what remained of Jack Rainbow’s thigh, a thin thing not much thicker than a drainpipe. It looked like a paper cup made of foul bitumen. He gently cinched the belt tight. Jack Rainbow gave a low moan. The bleeding slowed.

Get him up.

The orderlies pulled Jack Rainbow up to a sitting position in their arms. One of them offered him water in a tin can but he could not catch the rim of it with his shaking mouth and the water spilt.

We’re taking you to the operating theatre, Corporal Rainbow, said Dorrigo Evans. And when one of the orderlies halted momentarily to scratch his nose, Dorrigo Evans said quietly, Quickly.

The orderlies knew the more quietly he spoke, the more pressing and urgent the order. They hurried away with the stretcher, as Evans turned to another orderly.

Find Major Taylor. Say I need him now in the operating theatre. And can you get me some string or rope or something for my shorts?

Together the colonel and his orderly ran to the operating theatre, Jimmy Bigelow doing his best to keep up with the colonel, whose speed seemed unaffected by having to use one hand to hold up his shorts as his long legs loped through the mud.

The operating theatre was a small hut. Its chief virtue was its situation: halfway between the hospital hut and ulcer ward, and thus separate from the sick and the near insuperable problems of hygiene that went with them. It had an attap rather than a canvas roof, which meant it was more or less dry. Such equipment it possessed resembled a child’s idea of an operating theatre. Contrived out of bamboo, empty food and kerosene tins, and bric-a-brac stolen from the Japanese—bottles, knives and tubes out of trucks—it was a triumph of magical thinking. There were candles set in reflectors made out of shaped tin cans, a steriliser made out of kerosene tins, a bamboo operating table, surgical instruments made out of honed steel stolen from engines and kept in a suitcase that sat on a table so the rats and mice and whatever else couldn’t crawl over them.

What could he do? wondered Dorrigo, as he began readying his instruments for sterilising. He had no idea. What on earth comes into your head? Squizzy Taylor had asked him after Dorrigo once played cards for a prisoner whom Nakamura wanted to punish. My only idea ever, Dorrigo had confessed, is to advance forward and charge the windmill. Taylor had laughed, but Dorrigo had meant it. It’s only our faith in illusions that makes life possible, Squizzy, he had explained, in as close to an explanation of himself as he ever offered. It’s believing in reality that does us in every time.

He made life up every day, and the more he trusted in his fancy, the more it seemed to work. But how now to advance forward? At the far end of the hut, away from the operating table, he began scrubbing his hands, washing the greasy blood off under the steady stream of water that ran out of a bamboo pipe, another makeshift piece of plumbing the men had rigged up to bring water from a nearby stream, which he now suspected might carry cholera. Everything seemed poisoned, and sometimes every effort seemed to do nothing other than worsen the situation, to lead to ever more deaths. Dorrigo Evans called Jimmy Bigelow over to the table with a kerosene tin of precious distilled water and had him slowly pour it over his hands.

As he rinsed, Dorrigo Evans tried to steady himself, to compose his mind and body.

He was panicking. He knew it, and he steadied himself, trying to settle into his pre-op routine of cleaning. Make sure each finger is thoroughly clean. He could do this, he told himself. Nails—make sure nothing is under the nails. He had no belief he could do it, but others believed he could do it. And if he believed in them believing in him, maybe he could hold on to himself. Wrists—don’t forget wrists. It was all ridiculous, and yet to live, he told himself, demanded above all else a ridiculous belief that you could live.

The orderlies arrived with Jack Rainbow, who was now quiet. As they laid him on the operating table, Squizzy Taylor came in. The orderly who had found him had procured some pieces of coloured rag that were knotted together into a crude rope. He proffered them to the colonel.

That’s my belt?

Saris. Apparently. Some time ago.

The colonel smiled.

It’s good that they help keep my pants on for a change. Here, he said, indicating his shorts with his elbows as he kept washing his hands.

The orderly ran the makeshift rope around his shorts and knotted it on one side, giving the tall surgeon’s narrow hips a buccaneering dash.

Named after the noted Melbourne gangster, because of both his surname and a dark charm—emphasised by damp marsupial eyes, at once alert and vulnerable, and underlined by a pencil moustache—the once sleek Squizzy Taylor was now very thin, a form that lent him a villainous look he had never before had, further adding to the aptness of his nickname. His background as a suburban doctor in Adelaide was as plain as his looks were exotic. Other than what he had learnt assisting Evans, he knew surgery only from his medical training and anecdote.

Colonel?

Amputate, Dorrigo Evans said without looking up from his hands. Again.

Dorrigo, Squizzy Taylor said. You’ve looked at the stump?

I know.

There’s nothing left to cut off.

Dorrigo felt his hands crushing each other. They had to be clean.

I know. You can—Dorrigo Evans began, and then hesitated.

He wrung his hands harder. Could he?

For Christ’s sake, Jimmy, he snapped, this fucking water’s more precious than single malt. It’s not for irrigation. Go slowly with it, I said.

He’ll die from the shock, Dorrigo.

He’ll die if we don’t. It’s gangrene. There’s . . . There is a chance if we amputate at the hip.

Is there? Squizzy Taylor said. Even in the most modern hospitals hip disarticulation only kills people. You’re just cutting through too much of the body. Out here, it’s pointless.

How much anaesthetic have we got?

Enough.

I assisted on a hip disarticulation once, Dorrigo said. In Sydney, back in thirty-six. Old Angus MacNamee did the job. The best.

Did he live?

She. An Aboriginal woman. For a day. Maybe two. I can’t recall exactly.

Why don’t you just go for a very high thigh amputation? There’s a chance then.

The gangrene is too high.

I am not a surgeon. But it’s not that high. Take the leg off where the tourniquet is.

Either way, high up on the thigh or at the hip, there’s nowhere left to put any tourniquet and he bleeds to death. There’s no fucking leg left, Squizzy. That’s the problem.

If I can push down hard with something round and flat about here, said Taylor, prodding around his own groin with his fingers, feeling the arteries, the flesh, the span of the dilemma. Here, he said, pushing two fingers into his groin.
Here
—on the femoral artery, that might stop the blood enough.

It might not.

It might not.

Maybe something like a spoon with the handle bent around? That might.

Might.

Might.

That’d do the job. And hopefully staunch the flow enough that you can work. He’ll still bleed. But you get the stump off, clamp the arteries and then sew up. He’ll still be bleeding but not so badly he’ll die.

I’ll have to go quickly.

You were never a man to dawdle.

Jack Rainbow’s wasted body was trembling slightly. A low hiss pulsed in and out of his mouth.

Okay, said Dorrigo Evans, shaking his hands dry. He sent Jimmy Bigelow for a tablespoon and went back to the bamboo table.

We’re just going to whittle that leg back a bit more, Jack, cut that stinking gangrene away and—

I’m cold, said Jack Rainbow.

DORRIGO EVANS LOOKED
at the gaunt face, grey as beef dripping, with white stubble stiff as fuse wire, the large possum eyes, the snub nose and dirty freckles.

Get a blanket, Dorrigo Evans said.

You got a Pall Mall, doc?

I’m afraid not, Jack. But after, I’ll make sure you get a good smoke.

Nothing like a Pall Mall to warm you up, doc.

And Jack laughed and coughed and shook once more.

Van Der Woude arrived with his homemade anaesthetic. Jimmy Bigelow returned with a tablespoon from the kitchen and a soup ladle as backup. The candles and two kerosene lamps were lit, but the mass of them only seemed to accentuate the darkness of the hut. An orderly switched on a torch.

Not yet, Dorrigo Evans said. We’ve got no spare batteries. Wait till I ask.

He motioned Jimmy Bigelow and Squizzy Taylor to stand with him alongside the table and slide their hands under Jack Rainbow.

On the count of three, gentlemen.

They rolled Jack Rainbow over. When Squizzy Taylor slid the needle into Jack’s spine, Jack made a plunging noise like a drain being suddenly emptied. They began drip-feeding him the anaesthetic. Wat Cooney, a cook of impossibly small proportions with ears that looked as if stolen from a bag of brussel sprouts, arrived with the meat saw from the kitchen.

Van Der Woude’s concoction was good but variable in strength. Jack Rainbow lost feeling quickly and they prepared for the amputation, boiling the kitchen saw and the few surgical instruments they had. When all was finally ready, Dorrigo Evans gave the signal they were about to begin. The drip was removed and Jack Rainbow was rolled back around.

We will be as quick as we can, Dorrigo Evans said. copyright procedure. The key here is to keep bleeding to an absolute minimum. Hold him, he said, turning to Jimmy Bigelow and Wat Cooney. Spoon ready? he asked Squizzy Taylor. Taylor raised the now bent spoon in a mock salute.

Charge the windmill, Dorrigo Evans said.

He took a deep breath. Taylor pushed the spoon head gently but with growing firmness into the base of Jack Rainbow’s wasted belly.

Torch, Dorrigo Evans said. Jimmy Bigelow came forward and shone the torch on the stump.

There was noise from the general hospital huts but it was almost immediately drowned out by Jack’s screaming as Dorrigo Evans began cutting away his leg stump. The stench of the dead flesh was so powerful it was all he could do not to vomit. But Jack Rainbow’s screams confirmed to Dorrigo Evans that he was doing what he had to do: cut into living flesh.

An orderly came running into the operating hut.

What do you want? Dorrigo Evans asked, not looking up.

The Goanna’s taken Darky Gardiner out of the hospital.

What?

We couldn’t stop him. They dragged him out by his arms. Something about men missing up on the Line. There’s a tenko happening now. They’re going to punish him.

Later, Dorrigo Evans said, his face down almost at the level of Jack Rainbow’s stinking remnant of leg, concentrating on the job at hand.

Major Menadue said only you can stop them.

Later.

When he severed the femoral artery it bled badly, but not wildly.

Clamps, Dorrigo Evans said. Nothing I can do about it at the moment. Fucking yellow bastards. Clamps? Bastards. Clamps!

He clamped the femoral artery but the tissue just broke away and the fleshy tube spat blood out over the table and then continued pumping blood.

Push harder, he said to Taylor. He was thinking how he should have been there to stop such an outrage. He thought also of the broken still, the need to buy more anaesthetic from the Thai traders, and how in future he must always make the first amputation as low as possible to allow for such future horrors as this.

He clamped the femoral artery a second time, and for a second time it fell away, and he had to push up into the stinking dead flesh and clamp again. He stopped, waited. This time it held.

Okay, he said, okay.

He cut away more flesh. Within a minute he had cut off the rest of the rotting meat. There was bleeding, but Taylor was right, it was not too much, there had been enough leg left, just enough to amputate. For the first time in an hour he relaxed a little.

Spoon away? Taylor asked.

Not yet, Dorrigo Evans said. Pointing to the rotting meat on the table, he said to Jimmy Bigelow, Get rid of it, for Christ’s sake.

Next Evans flensed enough skin to form a flap to cover the final wound. Then he neatly filleted the living leg muscles back from the bone, so that he could remove the bone higher up and the flesh could in time heal below and around it to form a tolerable stump.

Saw, he said.

An orderly handed him the kitchen meat saw. It was hard to get the traction he needed, so he worked with gentle small strokes, scoring the upper thighbone, seeking to avoid splinters and any further damage to the flesh. And soon enough a piece of bone the length of a finger dropped away.