'Please help me with him,' she pleaded, the lamplight catching the glistening of tears on her cheeks.
Stern was almost on the other side of the double bed, pushing himself away as if to escape her caring hands. She knelt on the mattress and tried to pull him onto his back, but her efforts were too cautious, too gentle. The German shouted something in his own language and his hand thrashed out, striking Cissie on the shoulder. I quickly joined her and, forgetting about dirtying my hands, grabbed his arm and turned him. I winced when I saw the sheets were drenched with his blood.
Take it easy,' I told him uselessly as I pinned him to the bed with as little force as possible. But he twisted again and for the first time I clearly saw the blood bubbling from the wound in the back of his neck. It ran through puckered skin and livid burn scars that spread downwards from his hairline, across his shoulders and towards the halfway point of his spine. These were old markings though, and my attention returned to the fresh wound: I thought I noticed something embedded there, a slight, blackish protrusion under the slick coat of discharging blood. I touched my hand to it to confirm my suspicion and felt a hard lump that I knew wasn't bone.
'The bullet's almost worked its way out,' I said, more to myself than the girl. 'At least it'll make things easier.'
Next I examined the wound in his arm, close to the shoulder, and grunted when I realized there were two punctures, front and back. The bullet had passed clean through, taking tissue and muscle with it but, s'far as I could make out, without touching bone. Straightening up, I noticed the blood-soaked rag Cissie was holding in one hand.
'His shirt,' she said.
'Christ Okay, I'll find you something else.' I remembered the mildewed towels and sheets in a cupboard across the room; they weren't ideal, but they'd have to do. 'Keep him on his side, as he is. Well deal with the arm wound first, try to stop the bleeding, then I'll get the bullet out of his neck.'
'The pain's too much. Don't you have anything to give him?'
'Pills'd be no good, even if he could swallow them. Tomorrow I'll get to a hospital, find some morphine.'
It was something I should have done a long while ago, in case of accidents to myself, but I guess I'd been afraid of having easy access to any powerful opiates; heck, booze was a big enough problem for me. There was something else, also: I hated those kind of places - hospitals and churches - because they were nothing more than huge burial vaults, crammed with the bodies of Blood Death victims who'd fled to them to be saved, either by medics or the Lord Himself. No, I stayed clear of those kind of charnel houses.
'I'll get some proper dressings and bandages as well as the morphine, but tonight we'll have to use what we got'
'We need something to soak up the blood now, then something to keep pressed against the wound.'
'Gimme a minute. Just hold on to him, okay?'
I went to the cupboard set into the opposite wall and the musty smell was strong when I opened its creaking door (although the coppery reek of fresh blood coming from the direction of the bed was stronger). Reaching in, I pulled out all the linen and cloth towels I could find - not many, at that - then took a thin pile of bedsheets from a higher shelf. I carried them back to the bed.
'Do what you can with these while I get the water,' I said, already heading for the door again.
The water was just beginning to come to the boil so I took time to rummage in the kitchen cabinet for a suitable instrument for some on-the-hoof surgery. The best I could find was a long, thin-bladed carving knife; it was a little big for the job, but the only one with a point strong and sharp enough to dig into flesh.
Taking it over to the range, I lifted the saucepan and put the knife's blade into the small but fierce flames, slowly turning it over so that both sides and edges were sterilized without becoming blackened. I kept it in the heat for about two minutes, then replaced the saucepan with the knife's blade inside so that the water quickly came to the boil again.
I filled another saucepan and exchanged it for the one on the gas cooker and then, leaving the blade in the bubbling water, I carried the first saucepan upstairs.
Stern held out for some time before he started screaming. I'd had to probe deeper than I'd thought to get the knife's tip beneath the lump of lead, Cissie holding the lamp as close as she could while endeavouring to keep the German down with her other hand. Once, he rolled out of her grasp onto his back and I had to withdraw the blade quickly. When we got him on his side again, I went to work more ruthlessly, ignoring his screams and sliding the blade down through spurting blood and along hard metal while Cissie used her whole weight to pin him there. Twisting the knife and levering sharply and forcefully, I felt the bullet move. Stern's scream filled the room and probably echoed up the street as the bloodied lump fell out onto the stained bedsheet I went limp thinking I'd killed him until I saw his chest still rising and falling.
I saw there was blood on his lips.
Cissie finished up, cleaning and dressing both wounds while I went back downstairs to fetch more hot water. I brought it up and helped her change the bedsheets for new, if not fresh, ones, rolling the unconscious German to one side and covering the blood-sodden mattress with double layers of towels. I left her there to watch over him, wearily treading downstairs again to the jumbled front room, my bloody hands shaking so much it was impossible to light the cigarette I took from one of the cartons I kept on the mantelshelf; in the end I had to lean close to the camp cooker and light it from the blue flame. I sank into the armchair, rusted springs groaning under my weight, and rested my head back. I closed my eyes and filled my throat and lungs with smoke.
There was whisky in the kitchen cabinet, but I was too dog-tired to get it.
It was still dark when moans from over my head awoke me. I sat there and listened to Stern's agony, feeling pity, anger and helplessness. The pity was for Stern, something I never thought I'd feel for a German; the anger was against those bastards who'd done this to him; and the helplessness was because there was nothing more Cissie and I could do.
There were footsteps on the stairs - the whole house warned of any movement inside its walls with creaks and grumbles and even sighs - and then dread took a slow dive into the pit of my stomach when the shadowy form of Cissie appeared in the open doorway. I already knew what she was gonna ask me to do.
'Hoke, he needs medication now, something to kill the pain. Antiseptic, too, and fresh dressings and bandages to keep the wound clean. He won't last the night otherwise.'
Oh shit, I thought. Goddamn bloody shit. I hauled myself out of the armchair.
The enormous, Gothic-grim hospital was a mile or so away, along Whitechapel, its edifice forbiddingly bleak in the moonlight I'd taken time only to wash away some of the blood and to pull on a grey sweatshirt, its sleeves cut away at the elbows, to protect me from the slight chill that had come with the early hours. Taking the pistol - I noted for the first time it was a Browning .22 - from the table, I tucked it back into the waistband of my pants and left the house. I ducked into the pitch-black alleyway, a hand running along the rough brick wall for guidance, and returned to the Austin open-top that had brought us here. The drive hadn't taken long, but I stayed in the car on the ramp outside the hospital's main entrance for a while, steeling myself to go inside. Only the thought that Wilhelm Stern had saved my life twice and the more I delayed the worse it was for him made me open the car door and mount the steps to the open entrance (those doors were open because old bones had jammed them that way).
Holding the lantern I'd brought with me shoulder-high, I went inside.