Slaves of Obsession - Anne Perry [60]
“It’ll be all right.” She meant to say it strongly, reassuringly, soothe away his fear, but her voice was wobbly, as if she herself were terrified. Her hands worked automatically. They had done it so many times before, probing delicately with tweezers, trying not to hurt and knowing that it was agony, searching to find the little piece of metal that had caused such damage to living tissue, trying to be certain she had it all. Some of them fragmented, leaving behind poisonous shards. She had to work quickly, for pain, or shock which could kill, and before too much blood was lost. But equally she had to be sure.
And while she was working her mind was caught in a web of nightmare memory until she could hear the rats’ feet as if they were around her again, scuttering on the floor, their fat bodies plopping off the walls, their squeaking to each other. She could smell the human waste, feel its texture under her feet on the boards overrun with it, from men too weak to move, bodies emaciated from starvation and dysentery or cholera. She could see their faces, hollow-eyed, knowing they were dying, hear their voices as they spoke of what they loved, tried to tell each other it was worth it, joked about the tomorrows they knew would never come, denied the rage they had so much cause, so much right, to feel at their betrayal by ignorance and stupidity.
She could remember some of them individually: a fair-haired lieutenant who had lost a leg and died of gangrene, a Welsh boy who had loved his home and his dog, and talked of them until others told him to be quiet and teased him about it. He had died of cholera.
There were others, countless men who had perished one way or another. Most of them had been brave, hiding their horror and their fear. Some had been shamed into silence; to others it came naturally. She had felt for all of them.
She had thought that the present, her love for Monk, all the causes and the issues there were to fight now, the puzzles, the people who filled her life, had healed the past over in forgetting.
But the dust, the blood, the smell of canvas and wine and vinegar, the knowledge of pain, had brought it back again with a vividness that left her shaking, bewildered, more drenched with horror than those new to it, like Merrit, who had barely guessed at what was to come. The sweat was running down Hester’s body inside her clothes and turning cold, even in the suffocating, airless heat.
She was terrified. She could not cope, not again. She had done her share of this, seen too much already!
She found the shot and drew it out; it came followed by a gush of blood. For an instant she froze. She could not bear to watch one more person die! This was not her war. It was all monumentally stupid, a terrible madness risen from the darkness of hell. It must be stopped. She should rush outside, now, and scream at them until they put away the guns and saw the humanity in all their faces, every one, the sameness, not the difference, saw their own reflections in the enemy’s eyes and knew themselves in it all!
But as her mind was racing, her fingers were stitching the wound, reaching for bandages, pads, binding it up, testing that the dressing was not too tight, calling for a little wine to mix with the water. She heard herself comforting the man, telling him what to do now, how to look after the wound, and to get it dressed again when he reached Alexandria, or wherever he would be shipped.
She heard his voice replying, steadier than before, stronger. She watched him climb to his feet and stagger away, supported by an orderly, turning to smile before he left the tent.
More wounded were brought in. She helped fetch, roll bandages, hold instruments and bottles, carry things, lift