“Sheila,” he said. “You sit at that end of the couch. We’ll lay him down on the couch, put his head in your lap. I can kneel beside the couch and sew him up. That way the damned ear won’t flop around.”
“Gimme ‘nother drink,” Booth said. Flanagan filled the glass half full of rum and handed it to Booth, who drank it down in three long swallows. Sheila sat down at the end of the couch, and Nuthall and Wilson helped lay Booth on the couch with his head in the girl’s lap. She curled one arm over the back of his head and pressed his face into her bosom. Wharton knelt on the floor and turned to Flanagan.
“Drape that clean towel over his face. I’m gonna start sewing at the bottom part of the ear and go up and around the top. One of you other guys get some ice out of the icebox in the kitchen. You’ll find an icepick in the drawer. Wrap the ice in a towel and maybe we can slow down this damned blood a little. Bastard bleeds good. Monk, if you’ll get some of that gauze out of my kit, give it to me so’s I can keep the work area clean.”
He bent to his work, his whole being intent on what he was doing as his rubber-gloved fingers gently inserted the needle through the skin of the ear and then through the scalp skin, pulling the edges together. He tied off the knot expertly, clipped the suture with a pair of small scissors, and began the second stitch. He finished the third and fourth stitches, and Sheila began to moan.
“What the hell’s eatin’ you?” Wharton grumbled. “He’s the one gettin’ hurt, not you.” He stitched expertly, working his way up around the curve of Booth’s ear. Sheila moaned again and suddenly crossed her legs, moving Booth’s head.
“Damn it, woman!” Wharton snapped. “Don’t move his head sudden like that. I might put this damned needle in his eye, for Christ’s sake! And stop moaning.” He stopped his suturing and stared, and then he yanked the towel. He rocked back on his heels.
“Why you damn woman!” he roared. Wilson and Nuthall, standing at the end of the couch, began to laugh.
Sheila’s head was thrown back against the couch, her eyes closed, her shoulders quivering. A low moan escaped her lips. Flanagan moved so he could see what had upset Wharton and he grinned. Under the cover of the towel draped over his face Booth had unbuttoned the girl’s blouse and had fastened his mouth on the nipple on her breast.
“Don’t get mad, Doc,” Flanagan said. “Rum or a tit, no difference, so long as the bastard keeps his head still and doesn’t holler.”
“I keep telling this broad she should wear a brassiere,” Wharton said. “I never ran into anything like this before, damn it.” He ground his teeth and went back to work, pulling the needle through the flesh with little regard for the pain he was giving to Booth. Finally he stood up and reached for a wad of fresh gauze. He smeared Vaseline on the gauze and then sprinkled a heavy layer of sulfa powder on the Vaseline. He fastened the gauze over the damaged ear and strapped it down with adhesive tape.
“Uncouple from that tit, you bastard,” Wharton said. “Sheila, you bitch, get that man’s mouth off’n you. Jesus Christ! I never seen the like of this in all my life!”
Booth sat up on the couch, his eyes squinting shut. “Man, you are sure some kind of doctor,” he said. “And who’s this lovely creature who held my poor old Alabama head?”
“Never mind who the hell she is,” Wharton snapped. “What the hell kind of thanks is that? I sew you up and you go to sucking on my girl’s tit?”
“Is that what I was doing?” Booth said. He touched the gauze over his ear tentatively. “Well, I don’t rightly remember doing that, but if you say I did then I must have done it. My pappy would tan my ass he caught me doing that to your girl. But my pappy ain’t here, he’s on the farm in Alabama. You know where is Alabama, honey?” he turned to the girl.
“No, she don’t know where Alabama is and she don’t have to know,” Wharton said. “Just get your ass out of here.” He turned to Flanagan.
“Take him to the hotel and keep him there. I’ll come by tomorrow morning if I can get a doctor on the tender to come out with me.” He took some pills out of his kit and gave them to Flanagan. “Give him two of these soon’s you get him back to the hotel. Two more in four hours. Should knock him for a loop, loaded with codeine.” He stripped off the rubber gloves and looked at Wilson and Nuthall.
“Appreciate your help but don’t go talking about this damned caper or I’ll wind up with my ass in the brig.”
“Us, too,” Wilson said with a grin. “We’ll take the patient back to the hotel, Doc.”
Flanagan was waiting in the lobby of the hotel the next morning when Wharton came in with another man. He was short, not over five feet three, and he walked briskly, the small gray goatee on his chin leading the way with a belligerent firmness.
“Doctor Silver,” Wharton said to Flanagan. “Doctor, this is the Chief of the Boat, Chief Torpedoman Flanagan.”
“If you haven’t eaten breakfast yet, sir,” Flanagan said to the small Commander. “They serve a mighty fine meal in this hotel.”
“I haven’t eaten and I might as well,” the doctor said. “All this tsimmes because of this Navy’s stupid rules. A man is sick or hurt I make him well if I can. That’s what I am, a doctor, not a robot with rule books in my eyes and cotton in my ears. I am a healer. So I risk a court-martial. Maybe they’ll throw me out and I can go back to civilian life.
“This man here, my friend, you know he was a dancer in civilian life? So they make him an assistant to a doctor, me. The Navy is crazy. We’ll eat and then see if this man I call friend learned anything from me before he got the itch in his ass to go to sea on a submarine.” He looked at Flanagan shrewdly.
“ ‘Ah, you are the one who hit the other man in his testes. I treated him, you know. They brought him in to me yesterday. You hit him very hard. Had cause, I am told. Hitting a man in the testes is a good thing to do to put him out of combat. Makes him reflect on his lost youth.” He sat down at a table with the two Chiefs and helped himself to some slices of chilled mango.
“This friend of mine, here,” the small doctor continued, “he tells me a story of how effective a woman’s breast, her nipple, is as an anesthetic. He should write an article for the New England Journal of Medicine.” He shook his bald head. “You never know what will work. If the patient had been a homosexual you might have put him into shock.”
In Booth’s hotel room Dr. Silver stripped off the adhesive tape with a gentle touch and removed the dressing. He looked at the suturing Wharton had done with a critical eye.
“For a goy, not bad,” he said. “Now I want you to go downstairs and do something for me.
“When we came in through the hotel garden I saw some very big aloe vera plants. You know what is an aloe vera, dancer? No. You would not know that.
“The aloe vera is a sort of big cactus but it has no spines. It has very wide, very thick leaves filled with a healing gel. Ask the hotel gardener to cut off one large leaf for me and bring it here. Cut it off at the base of the leaf.” Wharton left and the doctor busied himself taking Booth’s pulse. Wharton returned with the thick leaf of the aloe vera plant, holding it away from him so the thick, sticky gel dripping out of the cut area of the leaf wouldn’t soil his uniform.
“This plant is called the medicine plant down in the tropics,” Dr. Silver said. “You can find reference to it in the Bible, Old Testament, of course. You can find reference to this plant in the old Egyptian writings.
“Now, you cut off an inch or so from the bottom of this cut end of the leaf.” He sliced through the fleshy leaf and a thick, sticky, colorless gel oozed out. “You spread this on the wound. It heals. If you burn yourself and spread this on, it will stop the pain almost at once, and the burn will heal without scarring or blistering.” His gentle fingers spread the sticky gel over the entire wounded area.