The Story of Dr. Wassell Read online

  “There’s one thing all of us want, Doc, and that’s to get home.”

  Nobody laughed at that, or even echoed it, but it was as if their very silence were an echo. The doctor felt this with an odd sensitivity he could not have explained. Of course the men wanted to go home, it was natural; however kind and efficient the Dutch were, everyone would rather be on the other side of the ocean. But there was nothing he could do about it. He took a few paces along the alley between the line of cots, and said: “I understand, son. You don’t have to tell me things like that. But you see—it’s out of my province. I’ve got the job of looking after you here—Navy orders—you know what that means. Maybe there’ll be different orders later, it’s quite on the cards…But in the meantime, you’re pretty lucky—this is a good place, all you’ve got to do is to hurry up and get well…Matter of fact, I wouldn’t worry about the future if I were you—our number’s on top.” After that it was a blessed relief to turn back to McGuffey, even if the boy was fresh. “Now then…is there anything else anybody would like—something practical—something I can do? Thought of anything yet, McGuffey?”

  McGuffey answered, half-derisively: “Aw, don’t you worry about me, Doc. But I wouldn’t say no to a chocolate malt.”

  The same halfhearted laughter flickered again along the length of the ward as the doctor walked away.

  Across the corridor there was a small room that the Dutch authorities had allotted, on account of his rank but against his protests, to an officer named Wilson. He was very badly burned, and the doctor did not think he would be conscious after the ordeal of the dressings; but when he entered the room through the open doorway a gruff voice came through the bandages.

  “Morning, Doctor.”

  “Good morning. How do you feel?”

  “Just like a truckload of scorched earth. I overheard most of your little speech to the men, by the way. Heartily approve. I mean—no standing on ceremony or anything like that. No salutes if we happen to meet on the way to the—er—”

  “You won’t do that yet for a while,” interrupted the doctor drily. He knew that Wilson’s brusque facetiousness was something of a pose. Every man had his own way of fighting agony. “You’ll be flat on your back for a month at least.” He took out his notebook. “How about supplying me with a few of the necessary derails?”

  “Necessary or nauseating?”

  “Both are part of my job.”

  “Mine as well. Filing everything in triplicate.”

  “That’s okay. We’ll lick the Japs in triplicate one of these days. Now—just answer these questions.”

  “All right but before you ask ‘em, answer me a few. Tell me about the men—how are they—I don’t even know who they are—are they all going to be all right? And shut that door so you can speak the truth.”

  The doctor shut the door, then came back to the bed and gave the names of the men, and a rough summary of their injuries.

  “But they’re going to recover all of them?”

  “Hope so, but burns are nasty things—it’s the shock that kills, not the injuries themselves. The crisis’ll come a few days from now—most of ‘em won’t know how bad they are till then. Bailey’s pretty bad, and I’m a bit worried about Edmunds. He’s already lost an eye and he may have to lose a leg as well—Dr. Voorhuys wanted to amputate tonight, but I begged him to give it a chance. Not that he isn’t a thundering good doctor—it’s just that I’d have taken a chance myself and I believe Edmunds would. Goode’s also lost an eye, and Muller’s arm is smashed up—I don’t quite like the look of that either…But the rest might be a whole lot worse.”

  “What about me? Nothing but the truth, mind!”

  The doctor did not tell Wilson the truth, because his burns were among the severest, and he honestly thought he was among those who would die in a few days. He said with a smile: “You’ll be all right if you keep quiet…Now just these few questions and I’ll let you sleep.”

  He made his notes, and was about to leave when Wilson called him back with a gruff: “Say, what d’you know about the general situation?”

  “Not much,” answered the doctor truthfully. “There was an air raid on Surabaya yesterday while I was there.”

  “Oh, was there? And how d’you like air raids?”

  “Not much,” repeated the doctor, again truthfully.

  From that moment on, the doctor and Wilson knew they could be friends.

  The doctor took the Ford car and Javanese chauffeur that had been assigned to him and searched the town for ice cream. He didn’t see why he shouldn’t; he couldn’t remember ice cream as having been listed as either good or bad for men suffering from burns, but McGuffey’s condition wasn’t serious, anyway; it certainly couldn’t do him any harm. And if he wanted it…well, it had always been one of the doctor’s ideas that it did people good (within limits) to give them what they wanted.

  So he found a likely looking shop in the main street and made his purchases. The ice cream came in a little cardboard cup—it certainly wasn’t anything like a chocolate malt, but the doctor didn’t think it was so bad for the middle of Java in wartime. Somehow he hadn’t expected Java to be quite as modern, so that you could walk along a main street and buy pretty well anything you wanted, almost as you could in Little Rock or San Francisco. Of course people were a bit jittery; you saw knots of people talking urgently at street corners, and the roads were full of Army trucks scurrying about, and there were freshly painted signs pointing to improvised air-raid shelters at strategic points; but there was still a good deal of impetus left in a civilized machine that had only partly broken down. After Surabaya, which would naturally attract air raids on account of its being a naval base, the inland town seemed almost safe. All its inhabitants were assuring themselves and each other that there was no real danger except from casual bombs (one said “casual bombs” as casually as possible), and that no Jap would ever set foot on Javanese soil. The doctor wasn’t quite so confident. He thought’ Japs might succeed in landing on a few beaches if they were ready (as apparently they were) to commit suicide. Of course he hadn’t the slightest doubt that Java would be held at all costs.

  “It’ll last for at least an hour,” said the woman in the shop, referring, of course, to the ice cream.

  The doctor carried it carefully back to the hospital and (because it would probably not last more than an hour) woke up McGuffey to have it. The boy blinked and stared, and a little Javanese nurse whose name (in Javanese) sounded like Three Martini began to giggle.

  “Well, for the love of Mike…” began McGuffey. “Did you really think I was serious?”

  “Eat it,” answered the doctor. “It’s very good ice cream. I had some myself.”

  McGuffey sat up in bed and smacked his lips appreciatively after the first swallow. Some of the men along the ward were watching the scene with amusement, and one of them called out: “Hi, Doc, where do we come in?”

  The doctor smiled. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, with sudden expansiveness. “As soon as you’re all well enough, I’ll get ice cream for the whole bunch of you…and you too,” he added, nodding to Three Martini.

  Then he went out and wondered what the auditors would think—Navy money spent on ice cream. He had drawn a thousand guilders in Surabaya when they assigned him to the job—just a round sum to spend any way he chose on looking after the men, but of course the authorities would expect medical items, transportation expenses, almost anything, in fact, except ice cream. And he wasn’t good at concocting a swindle sheet. He made up his mind that if Nilson passed the crisis he would ask his advice about it.

  So the days went by during which the British were falling back on Singapore and Chiang Kai-shek was visiting India and the Japs were already landing in Borneo. To the men from the Marblehead in the hospital none of these things mattered much, because at the extremity of human suffering one is really always alone, islanded from disaster as much as from companionship. There was little the doctor could do for the
majority of the patients except watch their fluctuating condition and make his daily reports. There was little that even the nurses could do except wait for the tannic-acid jelly to wage a long slow battle against shock and poison.

  Bailey’s case seemed the worst; he had shrapnel wounds and one could hear the air going in and out of a hole in his back. Of all the sufferers, too, he was most inclined to he introspective and to speculate unhopefully on his own chances of recovery. He was very friendly with Renny in the next bed, and both men would try to wake at the same time so as to exchange a few words, even amidst pain. Bailey had made an effort to appear detached and clear-minded when the doctor spoke to him first; he wanted to discuss his own injuries, and when the doctor would have none of that, he tried to interest him in a dream he had had. Fie said he had dreamed he was standing in an enormous bookshop when suddenly he noticed, sitting quietly reading, a person whom he half-recognized but whose identity was so terrifying that he wanted to shriek and shriek and yet somehow couldn’t. “I guess that must mean something, Doc,” he said.

  The doctor smiled not very encouragingly, for he didn’t want the boy to talk much. “Perhaps it just means you like books.”

  “Yes, I do. Don’t you? Especially modern writers. What do you think of Steinbeck?”

  The doctor answered, after a difficult pause: “To tell you the truth, son, I don’t advance my knowledge by reading near as much as I should—and that’s more shame to me, I know that, because my mother did her best to give me a spanking good education, bless her…”

  So instead of talking about books the doctor talked about his mother, and soon, a little happier in mind, the boy fell asleep from the drug that was given him whenever he woke to pain and consciousness. That night he began crying out in his sleep and the doctor vas sent for; he touched the boy’s hand and forehead, gently calming him; then he sat with him while he went on sleeping.

  When Bailey woke he found the doctor still with hind, and beyond the doctor, separating them both from the outside world, there were high screens and a curious little lizard that hopped about between the top of the screens and the window ledge.

  “Hello, Doc,” he said, almost cheerfully. “I had that dream again—you know, about the bookshop. Only this time I did shriek out…Hope I didn’t disturb anybody.”

  “That’s all right,” answered the doctor. “No harm done.”

  And as the same thing could have been said of Bailey’s entire life (he was eighteen), perhaps this was why he lay still and comforted, after that, until he died.

  Javanese workmen dug the grave in the local cemetery, and the doctor attended a service conducted by a Dutch padre. There were no Navy men to make up a firing squad, but an Air Force detachment came over from the neighboring airfield. Everything was sunny and bright-colored, and the doctor took a photograph afterwards of the grave covered with the flowers that the local people had sent. He thought he would send this photograph later to Bailey’s mother.

  The time of crisis came for most of the men, and they faced it as well as they might, enduring the pain of dressings and redressings, while the smell of scorched flesh hung about the ward continually. The doctor had expected other deaths, but none took place, and there came a day when the crisis seemed to pass almost simultaneously for several of the doubtful cases, so that when he entered the ward with his usual cheery “Morning, boys” he was greeted with a chorus of answers in a new key. “Well, you’re certainly looking a whole lot worse today!” he cried, striding between the beds and taking in the new situation. “Anybody want any wooden boxes?”…Laughter…“All right, then, but go easy—don’t overdo things.” He took their temperatures, joking with them all in turn. When he came to Sun he made his jokes in Chinese, laughing at them himself, while Sun remained respectfully impassive. “One of these days,” he said, turning to Sun’s neighbor, “I’ll make this fellow smile if I have to stand on my head to do it.”

  Then he put on a deliberately thick Arkansas dialect for Hanrahan’s benefit, asking the boy how he’d like a dish of sourbelly and cornbread.

  Hanrahan said he would, but McGuffey, always ready to bait the doctor, shouted across the ward: “I’ll settle for a pack of Camels, Doc. Why can’t you get us some smokes?”

  McGuffey had bothered him about that before, and he had had to fall back On familiar defenses…“Now look here, boys, there’s things I can do for you and things I can’t—this isn’t an American hospital, you understand—the Dutch have this rule, they’ve always had it, no smoking in the wards—very strict…You notice I don’t smoke any more in here myself—I didn’t know the rule when I came. I can’t go against rules, especially when the people here are good to us in other ways…”

  But now he felt so exultant because the men had turned the corner and were recovering that he exclaimed: “By golly, I don’t really sec why you shouldn’t smoke! I’ll ask the boss about it today.”

  He caught Dr. Voorhuys after lunch. Voorhuys was a very big man, with steel-blue eyes and apple-red cheeks; a fine surgeon and one with the right kind of personality to run a hospital. He had been educated in England, and was very proud of his English idiom and accent, which he believed perfect. At this moment he looked rather worried, as well he might be by the course of events, but he found time to welcome his American colleague in a few stiffly cordial sentences and to offer him a tot of Bols gin, which was gratefully accepted.

  “Your men are getting along very nicely,” said Dr. Voorhuys, lifting his glass ceremoniously.

  “Very nicely indeed, sir, thanks to you. There’s only one thing they ask for—”

  “Some of them have made wonderful recoveries.”

  “Wonderful, I agree, and now that the period of convalescence—”

  “But they still have far to go. They must not think they are well yet. New skin has to form—”

  “Of course, and in the meantime, while they’re waiting, there’s just one thing as a special favor—”

  “You need not ask, my dear sir. They are our honored guests—everything we do for our own countrymen we will do for yours.”

  “That’s just it—very generous of you, sir, and I’m afraid my men are wrong to want more than that, but they do—just one little thing more.”

  “I’m afraid ‘I don’t quite understand, sir. What is it?”

  “Will you relax the rule about letting them smoke?”

  “Smoke? ” Dr. Voorhuys echoed the word as if it were something incredible, almost incomprehensible. “That’s it, sir. They just want to smoke.”

  “I am afraid that is impossible. A most strict rule of the hospital.” He added, Englishly: “Sorry, old chap.”

  “You don’t object on moral grounds?”

  “Moral? Oh dear me, no—I smoke myself, but not here. A question of fire insurance, that’s all.”

  “Fire insurance? “

  Dr. Voorhuys nodded. The doctor from Arkansas took a deep breath, then began to speak with the slow drawl that was not, as it gathered momentum, unimpressive. “Dr. Voorhuys…I understand how you feel about a strict rule, but there’s just this in my mind. A billion dollars’ worth of oil wells and rubber trees are burning like hell’s delight this very minute. And yesterday there was another air raid on Surabaya—the Japs are in Borneo, and the Dutch Government’s in London and Queen Wilhelmina’s in Canada and the Repulse and the Prince of Wales are at the bottom of the sea…I sure hope that your fire-insurance policy is a good one.”

  Dr. Voorhuys gulped down another glass of Bols. Then he answered: “I get your point, sir. The men may smoke.”

  The next day the doctor had to go to Surabaya to present his official reports to the Navy authorities, but before beginning the journey he bought a quantity of American cigarettes in the town and left them at the hospital for the men. He had so little time to catch his train that he could not stay to receive their thanks; or perhaps that was partly an excuse, for he always felt embarrassed to be thanked for things. And actually he was eag
er to get the Surabaya trip over and done with. He hated going into offices and meeting his superiors on official matters; it was not so bad afterwards if and when (and they usually did) they asked him into some neighboring place (and there usually was a neighboring place) for a drink. But he could never quite escape the initial feeling that he was a schoolboy again, facing an unpleasant half hour with the headmaster.

  The Surabaya trip turned out pretty well, as it happened; at any rate, no fault was found with his reports. The Navy, doubtless, had very much else to do besides bother with him, and during his short stay in the dockyard town he picked up a good many rumors which he tried to think were alarmist rather than alarming. There had been several severe air raids on the town and harbor, and others were expected at any time; and despite all the hero stuff that got into the newspapers he did not find one person, whether Dutch or American or British or Javanese, who really disagreed with him about the fundamental unpleasantness of air raids. He was quite glad to make the journey back to a place where people still undressed to go to bed at night.

  Of course Singapore would probably stand a long siege, and Java was doubtless invulnerable to full-scale attack (unless the Japs were crazy); but still, one could not deny the fact that the war was coming closer, and it might be uncomfortable even in the interior of the island till the crisis had passed.

  He traveled by night, reaching his destination in the early morning, and as he walked through the tree shaded streets, thinking about the men from the Marblehead and their problems, he could not help feeling pleased with himself for having secured permission for them to smoke. There seemed so little he could do, now that his reports were made, and with the Dutch doctors all so efficient; it was good to have found something. But then, as he pondered over it, the thought occurred to him that cigarette smoking could not be very easy for all of them; some had bandaged hands, or oily bandages that would catch fire easily, and others had been burned on the lips, so that the paper from the cigarette would stick to the skin. Perhaps long holders—the kind he used himself—were the solution. He went into a shop and bought some ruefully aware that cigarette holders would look no better than ice cream on a Navy expense sheet. But it was a soundly practical idea, he thought, if only the men would take it seriously.