“Quick,” she commanded. “Come.”
It was still dark as they crossed the courtyard.
A fire was burning in the quarantine, its light flickering through the swirling snow. Beyond the gate, men carried shrouded litters out of an ambulance. It was a small vehicle, scarcely longer than a man and not quite as tall, but its supply of casualties seemed almost inexhaustible. Lucius turned to Margarete, seeking some instructions, but she had vanished, leaving him alone. From around him came shouting, the crunch of footsteps, the clattering of doors, but all was muted by the falling snow. A pair of search dogs circled, as if someone had forgotten to tell them that their job was done. Polish ogars, hounds familiar from his father’s hunts. They were almost otherworldly, like eels in their constant gliding, smooth coats glistening, noses cutting shallow tracks across the powdery snow.
At last, one of the ambulance men, with a vulgarity that suggested ignorance of Lucius’s rank, shouted for him to help. He hurried into the lorry, nearly slipping from the snowy gangplank, lurched, and struck his head against a lantern hanging over the entrance. Thankfully, no one had seen him. He ducked inside, recoiling instantly at the smell. Two men remained, on litters that were stacked on racks. He hesitated. A face appeared at the entrance, shouting for Lucius to grab his end of the litter. He obeyed, realizing only as it left its bracket that he had forgotten about his wrist. Pain bolted up his arm, and he faltered, the body almost slipping off.
No one even acknowledged his incompetence. Another man climbed in, pushed him aside and took the body, and then the final litter was brought outside. He descended. Then the ambulance was empty, moving. Snow sloughed off in the vortices of lantern light. He saw his shadow swing against the wall of the church, and they were gone.
Inside the quarantine, Margarete hung her greatcoats by the door. He saw Zmudowski already at work, and two others that he hadn’t met. A pot of broth was steaming on a stove in the corner. The air was heavy, rank and damp. The wounded had been arranged on straw beds around the fire, and Margarete moved swiftly between them, asking questions while checking for a pulse.
Of the fourteen, eight were already dead and rigid. One had frozen in a seated position, his clothes in tatters, his mouth wide open in a scream. Lucius couldn’t tear his eyes away. He had never seen such a scream, teeth glittering in the crimson mouth…
“Oh, my God.”
“Doctor.”
“That man…”
“Please, Doctor, don’t stare, come.” Margarete pulled him on.
“That man, he lost his jaw, it’s—”
“He’s dead. He’s God’s. Not ours. Now, hurry, come.”
By then the living had been separated off. Three gunshot injuries to limbs; two head wounds and an abdominal wound. Almost all had frostbite. Margarete covered them with blankets and ordered soup for those who could drink. “Shouldn’t we bring them to the surgery?” Lucius asked. She shook her head. “Not yet. Not until they are warm and deloused. Unless they are heavily bleeding, Doctor, we clean them first. No one goes into the church until they are deloused. The last patient to bring a louse into the church killed fourteen soldiers and three nurses. I won’t let that ever happen again.”
Zmudowski had begun to strip the soldiers one by one, scrub them from a foamy bucket, and then send them shivering into a smaller, second room, where the others quickly swaddled them in clean clothing, powdery with lime.
Crouching by the moaning soldier with the abdominal wound, Margarete called Lucius over.
“See?” she said, lifting up the man’s fingers, his nails clotted with skin. “He’s been scratching. This, Pan Doctor, is the Beast.”
His tunic bore the insignia of a sapper unit. Beneath it someone had packed the wound with a sock, dinner linens, and photos, and as Margarete removed them, Lucius saw the lice, cupfuls of them, sloughing off in grainy clumps. There was a shout from the other side of the room, and Lucius turned to see that the patient with the head wound had risen and was heading toward the door. Margarete leapt for him, leaving Lucius alone. On the body before him, Lucius saw a last layer, a woman’s shawl that had adhered to the soldier’s abdomen by dried blood. He began to pull it off and found his hands full of intestines. Then Margarete was at his side. “What did you do? Oh! Mother of God! Never! Never remove the final layer until you have a new dressing ready. On the abdomen, no!” He tried to keep the intestines off the floor, but they continued to slip out in hot wet rolls. The sapper began to gasp. Lucius felt he was witness to a metamorphosis, a man turning inside out.
“Move, Doctor!”
Lucius fell back, sleeves wet with peritoneal fluid. Margarete grabbed a clean dressing and swaddled the man’s guts in one swoop and pushed them back inside, dirty with debris. She unrolled more dressings. With her free hand, she wrapped his belly.
She faced Lucius. “Wash your hands. Come with me. Now we operate. We’ll start with the head wounds, then amputate this foot, this leg, that elbow, this forearm; that arm we can let be.” She paused. “With Pan Doctor’s permission.”
“And this soldier?” Lucius asked, still looking at the sapper.
“Smelling like that?” She shook her head. “He’ll be dead by morning. Don’t worry. You didn’t do it; he was on his way. We keep him warm. If he wakes up we tell him he’s home; if he calls you his father, you call him son. Perhaps it is different in Vienna, but this is how we do it here.”
To the orderlies, who had whispered something Lucius couldn’t hear, Margarete said, “The doctor broke his hand. Soon it will heal. Until then, we will continue as before. Come, Doctor.”
But Lucius couldn’t turn his eyes. The soldier expelled something from his mouth and began to cough, his face twisted in pain. All around them the light seemed to have changed. The smells filled his nostrils, his head felt hot and damp…
“Come, Doctor.”
Then, to Zmudowski, she said, “Get that soldier morphine, now. See, Doctor, he will feel better. He doesn’t know what’s happening. I know it’s hard, but you’ll get used to it. Come.”
They burst into a cold blue light. Dawn was breaking. A glittering of snowflakes drifted from the beech. In the church, she grabbed a jug of amber liquid from the foot of the operating table, took a swig and splashed it over her hands, then passed it to Lucius. He sniffed, eyes smarting. “Horilka, Doctor,” she said. “Village specialty. Szőkefalvi called it Surgeon’s Courage. Keeps the hands sterile and the belly warm. Perhaps the only thing that’s not in shortage yet.”
A crate had been set out so she could reach the body on the table. Once more she washed her hands, this time in carbolic acid, its tarry odor lingering as she slipped on her gloves. She began with the soldiers with head wounds. The first was a young man, unconscious, a crush fracture extending from the top of the ear to the center of the forehead. It had been packed in the field, and when she removed the new dressing, she exposed an abscess extending deep into the brain. She whistled, “Our Mother in heaven. This is days old.” Slowly, she picked away the looser skull fragments, cleaned out the pus, and irrigated the wound, stopping to inspect the grey-pink tissue with a candle. “To think that’s where the thinking is!” she marveled, but she didn’t explore further. Instead she placed a rubber drain and secured it with packing. The orderlies gave him anti-tetanus serum and brought him away. She washed her gloves in carbolic and horilka as the second patient was brought to the table. This one had a simple fracture that did not extend past the dural membrane, and she only cleaned and dressed the scalp. Then she called for the amputations.