The Debacle - Emile Zola [153]
When she saw Captain Beaudoin Gilberte had shuddered. Oh God, how pale he looked as he lay on that mattress, with his face quite white under the dirt that soiled it! The thought that only a few hours ago he had held her in his arms and was so full of life and smelt so sweet, froze her with horror. She knelt down.
‘How dreadful, my dear! But it isn’t anything, is it?’
She automatically took out her handkerchief and dabbed his face, finding him unbearable in that state, filthy with sweat, earth and powder. She felt she was relieving his pain by cleaning him up a little.
‘It isn’t anything, is it? It’s only your leg!’
The captain, who was in a sort of drowsy sleep, opened his eyes with difficulty. He recognized his friends and was trying to smile at them.
‘Yes, only my leg… I didn’t even feel it happen, I thought I had stumbled and was falling…’
But he was finding it difficult to speak.
‘Oh I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty.’
Then Madame Delaherche, who had been leaning over the other side of the mattress, got busy. She ran off for a glass and a flask of water with a few drops of brandy in it. When the captain had greedily drunk off a glass she had to share out the rest between the other wounded near-by – every hand was stretched out and urgent voices were imploring. A Zouave, for whom there was none left, burst into tears.
Meanwhile Delaherche was trying to speak to the major so as to get some favourable treatment for the captain. Bouroche had just come into the shed with his bloodstained apron and heavy face sweating, looking as if it was on fire under his leonine mane, and as he went by men raised themselves up and tried to stop him, all anxious to be seen to at once, to be helped and to know: ‘Come to me, doctor, me!’ He was pursued by incoherent prayers and clutching fingers touched his clothes. But he was entirely wrapped up in his job, puffing wearily as he went on organizing the work without listening to anybody. He talked aloud to himself, counted the cases on his fingers, giving them numbers and classifications: this one, that one, then the other, one, two, three, a jaw, an arm, a leg, while the assistant with him listened hard so as to try to remember.
‘Major,’ said Delaherche, ‘there’s a captain here, Captain Beaudoin…’
Bouroche cut him short.
‘What! Beaudoin here? Oh, poor bugger!’
He went and stood in front of the wounded man. But he must have seen at a glance how serious the case was, for he went straight on, without even stooping to examine the injured leg.
‘All right, they’ll bring him to me straight away, as soon as I have done the operation now being got ready.’
He went back to the operating shed, followed by Delaherche, determined not to let him go for fear he might forget his promise.
This time it was the disarticulation of a shoulder by the Lisfranc method, what surgeons call a nice operation, a neat and quick job, scarcely forty seconds in all. They were already chloroforming the patient, and an assistant seized his shoulder with both hands, four fingers of each under the armpit and the thumb on top. Then Bouroche, armed with his long knife, shouted: ‘Sit him up,’ grasped the deltoid, cut into the arm and through the muscle; then stepping back he detached the joint in one go and the arm was off, amputated in three movements. The assistant had moved his thumbs along to stop the blood from the humeral artery. ‘Lay him down again!’ Bouroche couldn’t help