Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [55]
Jane drank from the flask and began to speak. “A few minutes after you left, they brought in a boy of eighteen with a very bad thigh wound.” She took another sip. She was ignoring Anatoly, and Jean-Pierre realized she was so concerned about the medical emergency that she had hardly noticed the other man. “He was hurt in the fighting near Rokha, and his father had carried him all the way up the Valley—it took him two days. The wound was badly gangrenous by the time they arrived. I gave him six hundred milligrams of crystalline penicillin, injected into the buttock. Then I cleaned out the wound.”
“Exactly correct,” said Jean-Pierre.
“A few minutes later he broke out in a cold sweat and became confused. I took his pulse: it was rapid but weak.”
“Did he go pale or gray, and have difficulty breathing?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“I treated him for shock—raised his feet, covered him with a blanket and gave him tea—then I came after you.” She was close to tears. “His father carried him for two days—I can’t let him die.”
“He needn’t,” said Jean-Pierre. “Allergic shock is a rare but quite well-known reaction to penicillin injections. The treatment is half a milliliter of adrenaline, injected into a muscle, followed by an antihistamine—say, six milliliters of diphenhydramine. Would you like me to come back with you?” As he made the offer he glanced at Anatoly, but the Russian showed no reaction.
Jane sighed. “No,” she said. “There will be someone else dying on the far side of the hill. You go to Cobak.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Yes.”
A match flared as Anatoly lit a cigarette. Jane glanced at him, then looked at Jean-Pierre again. “Half a milliliter of adrenaline and then six milliliters of diphenhydramine.” She stood up.
“Yes.” Jean-Pierre stood up with her and kissed her. “Are you sure you can manage?”
“Of course.”
“You must hurry.”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to take Maggie?”
Jane considered. “I don’t think so. On that path, walking is faster.”
“Whatever you think best.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Jane.”
Jean-Pierre watched her go out. He stood still for a while. Neither he nor Anatoly said anything. After a minute or two he went to the doorway and looked out. He could see Jane, two or three hundred yards away, a small, slight figure in a thin cotton dress, striding determinedly up the Valley, alone in the dusty brown landscape. He watched her until she disappeared into a fold in the hills.
He came back inside and sat down with his back to the wall. He and Anatoly looked at one another. “Jesus Christ Almighty,” said Jean-Pierre. “That was close.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The boy died.
He had been dead almost an hour when Jane arrived, hot and dusty and exhausted to the point of collapse. The father was waiting for her at the mouth of the cave, looking numb and reproachful. She could tell from his resigned posture and his calm brown eyes that it was all over. He said nothing. She went into the cave and looked at the boy. Too tired to feel angry, she was overwhelmed by disappointment. Jean-Pierre was away and Zahara was deep in mourning, so she had no one with whom to share her grief.
She wept later as she lay in her bed on the roof of the shopkeeper’s house, with Chantal, on a tiny mattress beside her, murmuring from time to time in a sleep of contented ignorance. She wept for the father as much as for the dead boy. Like her, he had driven himself beyond ordinary exhaustion in trying to save the boy. How much greater his