“Does he think he can get it done in time?”
Hearing that question made Potter feel better. It showed the President still had a feel for the essential. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows. It depends on how far along the United States are with their own project.”
“Screw the United States,” the President said. “Question is, can we keep our heads above water any which way till the professors come through?” That showed a feel for the essential, too. All things considered, Clarence Potter wished it didn’t.
Dr. Leonard O’Doull had been with a retreating army. Now he served with an advancing one. From things he’d heard, most people’s morale was sky high these days. His wasn’t. At an aid station, you saw just as much misery going forward as you did going back. The only difference was, he didn’t suppose the Confederates were so likely to overrun the tent while he was operating.
“It doesn’t seem like enough,” he said, looking up from a resection of a kid’s ripped-up lower intestine.
Granville McDougald looked at him over his surgical mask. “Yeah, well, you take what you can get, Doc,” the veteran noncom said. “Only thing worse than fighting a war and winning is fighting a war and losing.”
“Is that really worse?” O’Doull put in another suture, and another, and another. Sometimes he felt more like a sewing machine than anything else. “This poor bastard’s going to be left with a semicolon instead of a colon any which way.”
“A semi-?” McDougald sent him a reproachful stare. “That’s awful, Doc. Period.”
Did he really say awful? Or was it offal? He was right either way. But once you started making puns, you also started hearing them whether they were there or not. And wasn’t that one short step from hearing the little voices that weren’t there?
“Is it better to get shot in a war your side wins than in one where you lose?” O’Doull persisted.
“Better not to get shot at all,” McDougald said, a great and obvious truth to which too many people who went down in history as statesmen were blind. But he went on, “If you have to get shot, better to do it so not so many people on your side will get shot after you. Do you really want to see Featherston’s fuckers opening up with machine guns whenever they feel like target practice all over the USA?”
“Well, no,” O’Doull admitted. He dusted the wounded soldier’s entrails with sulfa powder. Maybe the kid would escape the wound infection that surely would have killed him in any earlier war. Maybe. O’Doull started closing. If the soldier did live, he would have an amazing scar. “Still and all, though, Granny, I wonder if I should have come back from Quebec.”
“So you were thinking about French leave, were you?” McDougald said, and O’Doull winced. Undeterred, McDougald went on, “Can’t say as I blame you.”
“I was tempted,” O’Doull admitted. “I don’t think Quebec would have let the USA extradite me. But I put the uniform on, and I can’t very well take it off again till things are done.” Nicole had a different opinion, but he didn’t mention that.
“Hey, Doc!” That shout from outside the aid tent warned another casualty was coming in. This time, though, Eddie added, “Can you work on a civilian?”
The tent wasn’t far south of Sparta, Tennessee. Not all the Confederate civilians had fled fast enough. O’Doull had already patched up several. Chances were they wouldn’t be grateful, but he figured C.S. surgeons had done the same up in Ohio for equally ungrateful U.S. citizens. So he answered, “Sure, Eddie, bring him in. I’ll do what I can for the miserable bastard.” He paused and turned to McDougald. “Or do you want me to pass gas while you do the honors?”
“Sure. Why not? Thanks, Doc,” McDougald answered.
But when Eddie and the other corpsmen brought in the casualty, it turned out not to be a him but a her. She was about thirty, groaning the way anyone else with a blood-soaked bandage on the belly would have. “Aw, shit,” O’Doull said softly. Most of the time, he didn’t get reminded that whole countries were at war, not just armies. When he did, it was like a slap in the face.
“You take the case, Doc,” Granny McDougald said. “All I know about female plumbing stops about nine inches deep.”
“God, what a braggart you are,” O’Doull said. Eddie snorted. The wounded woman, fortunately, was too far gone to pay any attention to the byplay. “Get her up on the table,” O’Doull told the corpsmen. “I’ll do what I can for her.”
She feebly tried to fight when McDougald put the ether cone over her mouth and nose. How many soldiers had done the same thing? More than O’Doull could count. He and Eddie held her hands till she went limp.
“Get a plasma line into her,” O’Doull said. “She’s lost a lot of blood.”
“Already doing it,” McDougald said, and he was. “I’ll put a cuff on her, too, so we can see what we’ve got.” With unhurried speed, he also did that. “Pressure is…100 over 70-a little low, but not too bad. Pulse is…85. A little thready, maybe, but I think she’s got a chance.”
“Let’s see what’s in there.” O’Doull opened her up-actually, he extended the wound she already had. “Shrapnel, sure as hell,” he said, and then, “I’m going to have to do a hysterectomy.”
“Your case, all right,” McDougald said. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“I haven’t done all that many myself,” O’Doull said. He reached for a scalpel, and then, after he felt the womb, for forceps. “Here’s what did it, all right.” He held up a jagged piece of metal about the size of a half-dollar. “Must have been nearly spent, or it would’ve torn her up worse than this.”
“Happy day. I’m sure she’s real glad of that,” McDougald said.
“Yeah, I know,” O’Doull agreed. “She’s got a tear in her bladder, too, but I can fix it. Guts don’t seem bad. With any luck at all, she’ll make it.”
“That’d be good,” McDougald said. “She’s harmless now. She can’t have any kids to shoot at U.S. soldiers when we try this again in 1971.”
“Christ!” O’Doull’s hand almost jerked. “There’s a cheery thought.”
“It’ll happen unless we really knock ’em flat and sit on ’em,” McDougald said. “You hope we will, but what are the odds?”
“Beats me,” O’Doull said. “But we’d have to be crazy to give them a third chance to cream our corn for us.”
“Yeah? And your point is…?”
O’Doull winced again, but went on suturing. “What are we supposed to do? We can’t occupy the whole CSA. They’ll shoot at us from behind trees and throw Featherston Fizzes at us forever if we try. But how do we hold ’em down without occupying them?”
“Kill ’em all,” McDougald said. “Resettle the place from the USA.”
“Congratulations,” O’Doull told him. “You get an A in Jake Featherston lessons.”
“Them’s fightin’ words,” McDougald said. “Put up your dukes.”
“Later,” O’Doull said. “Let me finish sewing this gal up first.”
“This is a funny business, isn’t it?” McDougald said. “She’s not bad-looking, and there are you messing with her private parts, but she’s not a broad or anything. She’s just a patient.”
“Yeah, that crossed my mind, too.” O’Doull paused for a moment to make sure a suture was good and tight. “Once upon a time, between the wars, I went to a medical conference in Montreal, and I got to talking with this hotshot gynecologist. I asked him if he ever got tired of looking at pussy all day. He kind of rolled his eyes and said, ‘Oh, Jesus, do I ever!’”
The medic laughed. “Well, all right. I guess I believe that. Of course, a lot of what he’s looking at belongs to little old ladies. The young, healthy, pretty gals mostly don’t bother coming to him.”
“I wasn’t finished yet.” O’Doull put in another stitch, then went on, “A couple of years later, this guy’s wife divorced him. Not easy to do in Quebec-it’s a Catholic country. She had to prove infidelity, and she did-with three different patients of his. So not all the young, pretty ones stayed away.”