“All right, all right,” Ransom relented. “Perhaps your medical man has as much intellect as he has names! Obviously we are wasting time. Take us to your Ship’s Surgeon then, please!”
Ransom felt his patience at an end. He looked on the verge of striking the two younger men, regardless of his need for their good will. As Murdoch and Lightoller had them follow deeper into the belly of the ship, they found yet another lift. Behind the officers’ backs, Declan had slipped Ransom a small bottle taken from his bag. Ransom serendipitously took the laudanum which would help steady his nerves and calm his ire. Thomas, seeing this, asked, “Is there a chance we might have a brandy or shot of whiskey from the bar, Officer Lightoller?”
“Whiskey?” Murdoch spun on his heels. “Aren’t you two a bit young for spirits?”
“We are of age, sir,” promised Declan.
“In Belfast, everyone’s of age,” countered Lightoller with a smile which made them all laugh save Murdoch, who stepped onto the lift with Lightoller behind him.
Murdoch said to Lightoller, “I knew they were primitive but—”
“Twas but a joke, Will; ease up. How’ll you make it to New York at this rate, sir?”
“Ah, I see… I knew it was a joke.” Murdoch valiantly tried to make up for his lack of mirth.
The lift took them to D–deck and stopped, the brass filigree doors partimg from one another at the center. The lift opened onto a massive corridor through which they walked far too slowly for Ransom and the young surgeons. The ship had indeed pulled away from France for Queenstown—its final stop before going westward into the sun for New York and America.
“Funny how while on this humongous contraption that you hardly feel a thing in the way of movement,” said Ransom to the others. “But while on that damn French raft with all that cargo, we were so certain of doom below our feet.”
“It is rather like being on terra firma, isn’t it?” agreed Declan.
Although Lightoller started to reply, Murdoch grunted instead. Neither Titanic officer made any coherent comment on the subject as if they knew a secret they didn’t wish to share.
“They’re wound a bit tight,” Thomas characterized the officers in a whisper.
“Especially Murdoch,” agreed Ransom.
Arriving at the ship’s expansive twelve-bed hospital, the likes of which many a small hamlet across the Irish-English-Scottish and Wales countryside would each cherish. Declan thought of a certain village back in Wales that had so little. He half-joked,“More beds than lifeboats, eh?”
“We have an additional six-bed infectious ward, and a four-bed clinic and surgery room on C, not to mention a treatment room on the aft side of Hatch #6 right here.”
“Remarkable,” said Declan, eyes going everywhere around the hospital.
“We’ve well over two thousand people on board counting maids, crewmen, and officers,” Lightoller added.
“The doctors mostly handle seasick passengers,” added Murdoch, deflating the focus on the extensive medical facilities aboard, “but the crewmen can be careless, accidents happen. The nurses are already seeing to a few minor cases. Children with measles or sniffles, ladies with headaches, that sort of thing.”
They stood now before a row of pharmaceutical chests with an adjacent doctor’s office where a huge placard over the door read: Dr. William Francis Norman O’Laughlin.
“This is where your pill-dispenser spends all his time, eh?” asked Ransom, looking around.
On seeing their arrival, a young doctor with dark features started toward them, but Murdoch unceremoniously waved the assistant surgeon off even as Lightoller introduced him to the trio who’d boarded without tickets. “Gentlemen, this is our Assistant Surgeon, Dr. John Simpson.” He then addressed the doctor directly, “Dr. Simpson, we need Dr. O’s attention on this matter.”
Simpson nodded appreciably, replying, “Don’t let him hear ya callin’ him Dr. O, Charles! As for me, my hands’re full with the aches and pains of the rich and famous.”
Just then Dr. O’Laughlin, a tall, commanding man with sandy hair and dull brown eyes, got up from some paperwork at his desk in his windowed office, and he came out to meet Murdoch, assuming there was some medical emergency. Ransom guessed his age at mid-forties, but he moved somewhat shakily, like an older man, and he wondered if the doctor was perhaps hung over. Still the man appeared eager to be of service, introducing himself to his would-be patient or patients, rolling out all four of his names like a duke and this his realm. Once quick introductions were made, Officer Lightoller politely but firmly explained the situation, ending with the suggestion from their guests that Titanic be quarantined once they made port in Queenstown.
“Quarantine Titanic? Haw! Haw-haw.” O’Laughlin shook his head as he laughed. “Do you know what is riding on this trip? The record, man, the record! To beat Olympic’s time to New York. Lots of bets’ve been placed.”
“Of course, we know that, sir. We are officers,” replied Murdoch, his mustache twitching at the suggestion otherwise. “We know very well, Doctor, what we’re about, and rules don’t allow us to gamble, sir.”
“Oh, pity that. Stuff the rules, I say.”
“By now everyone aboard understands that, sir,” Lightoller’s tone became patronizing. “Look for a taste of your stashed rum, we can all have a seat and discuss the matter in more detail… get to the bottom of Constable Ransom’s concerns, and move on.”
“Show him the photos, Declan—the autopsy photos,” said Ransom.
“I can assure you, gentlemen,” began O’Laughlin, “There’s no sickness aboard Titanic that I’m aware of—”
“On a ship of this size? Four New York blocks long? How can you be sure. This is like… like a floating city, and every city has its underbelly.” While Ransom and the boys were amazed at what their eyes took in at every juncture of the Titanic, their mission allowed for little chance to wonder at the marvel they walked upon.
“He’s correct, Dr. O’Laughlin,” said Lightoller. “Fact is there is everything from dysentery to consumption just among the Black Gang alone. I mean they fake not having their various disorders, but there’s no signing on 900 crewmen and women that I know of that is without a good share of illness. You may as well suggest there’re no rats aboard!”
“The Black Gang?” asked Thomas. “Who would they be?”
“Stokers—the men feeding the boilers, Tommie,” said Declan.
Lightoller added, “The fellas who see to it the boilers are hot and turning those giant turbines and propellers below.”
“How else do you think we churn out 22knots,” replied O’Laughlin. “Black as coal miners they are from shovelin’ the stuff… mountains of it each day. They’ll be carrying ’em up from time to time with heat stroke, I assure you, but unlikely anything else save a case of consumption now and again.”
“I saw no one terribly disturbing come aboard.” Murdoch said of the Black Gang. “But you can bet there’re a number who’re carrying one sort of pestilence or another.”
“And some as soon slit your throat as not?” asked Ransom.
“Aye, that too.” Murdoch met Ransom’s glare.
“They seem a good bunch to me,” defended Lightoller. “Certainly know how to throw a party.”
“Are you saying they have rum, whiskey, rye?” asked Ransom.
“That and more.” The doctor laughed but it was cut short when his eyes fell on the photos Declan held out for his perusal.
Everyone fell silent. O’Laughlin with Murdoch and Lightoller looking over each shoulder studied each of eight photographs of three separate bodies, twenty-four in all.