That’s my belt?
Saris. Apparently. Some time ago.
The colonel smiled.
It’s good that they help keep my pants on for a change. Here, he said, indicating his shorts with his elbows as he kept washing his hands.
The orderly ran the makeshift rope around his shorts and knotted it on one side, giving the tall surgeon’s narrow hips a buccaneering dash.
Named after the noted Melbourne gangster, because of both his surname and a dark charm—emphasised by damp marsupial eyes, at once alert and vulnerable, and underlined by a pencil moustache—the once sleek Squizzy Taylor was now very thin, a form that lent him a villainous look he had never before had, further adding to the aptness of his nickname. His background as a suburban doctor in Adelaide was as plain as his looks were exotic. Other than what he had learnt assisting Evans, he knew surgery only from his medical training and anecdote.
Colonel?
Amputate, Dorrigo Evans said without looking up from his hands. Again.
Dorrigo, Squizzy Taylor said. You’ve looked at the stump?
I know.
There’s nothing left to cut off.
Dorrigo felt his hands crushing each other. They had to be clean.
I know. You can—Dorrigo Evans began, and then hesitated.
He wrung his hands harder. Could he?
For Christ’s sake, Jimmy, he snapped, this fucking water’s more precious than single malt. It’s not for irrigation. Go slowly with it, I said.
He’ll die from the shock, Dorrigo.
He’ll die if we don’t. It’s gangrene. There’s . . . There is a chance if we amputate at the hip.
Is there? Squizzy Taylor said. Even in the most modern hospitals hip disarticulation only kills people. You’re just cutting through too much of the body. Out here, it’s pointless.
How much anaesthetic have we got?
Enough.
I assisted on a hip disarticulation once, Dorrigo said. In Sydney, back in thirty-six. Old Angus MacNamee did the job. The best.
Did he live?
She. An Aboriginal woman. For a day. Maybe two. I can’t recall exactly.
Why don’t you just go for a very high thigh amputation? There’s a chance then.
The gangrene is too high.
I am not a surgeon. But it’s not that high. Take the leg off where the tourniquet is.
Either way, high up on the thigh or at the hip, there’s nowhere left to put any tourniquet and he bleeds to death. There’s no fucking leg left, Squizzy. That’s the problem.
If I can push down hard with something round and flat about here, said Taylor, prodding around his own groin with his fingers, feeling the arteries, the flesh, the span of the dilemma. Here, he said, pushing two fingers into his groin. Here—on the femoral artery, that might stop the blood enough.
It might not.
It might not.
Maybe something like a spoon with the handle bent around? That might.
Might.
Might.
That’d do the job. And hopefully staunch the flow enough that you can work. He’ll still bleed. But you get the stump off, clamp the arteries and then sew up. He’ll still be bleeding but not so badly he’ll die.
I’ll have to go quickly.
You were never a man to dawdle.
Jack Rainbow’s wasted body was trembling slightly. A low hiss pulsed in and out of his mouth.
Okay, said Dorrigo Evans, shaking his hands dry. He sent Jimmy Bigelow for a tablespoon and went back to the bamboo table.
We’re just going to whittle that leg back a bit more, Jack, cut that stinking gangrene away and—
I’m cold, said Jack Rainbow.
18
DORRIGO EVANS LOOKED at the gaunt face, grey as beef dripping, with white stubble stiff as fuse wire, the large possum eyes, the snub nose and dirty freckles.
Get a blanket, Dorrigo Evans said.
You got a Pall Mall, doc?
I’m afraid not, Jack. But after, I’ll make sure you get a good smoke.
Nothing like a Pall Mall to warm you up, doc.
And Jack laughed and coughed and shook once more.
Van Der Woude arrived with his homemade anaesthetic. Jimmy Bigelow returned with a tablespoon from the kitchen and a soup ladle as backup. The candles and two kerosene lamps were lit, but the mass of them only seemed to accentuate the darkness of the hut. An orderly switched on a torch.
Not yet, Dorrigo Evans said. We’ve got no spare batteries. Wait till I ask.
He motioned Jimmy Bigelow and Squizzy Taylor to stand with him alongside the table and slide their hands under Jack Rainbow.
On the count of three, gentlemen.
They rolled Jack Rainbow over. When Squizzy Taylor slid the needle into Jack’s spine, Jack made a plunging noise like a drain being suddenly emptied. They began drip-feeding him the anaesthetic. Wat Cooney, a cook of impossibly small proportions with ears that looked as if stolen from a bag of brussel sprouts, arrived with the meat saw from the kitchen.
Van Der Woude’s concoction was good but variable in strength. Jack Rainbow lost feeling quickly and they prepared for the amputation, boiling the kitchen saw and the few surgical instruments they had. When all was finally ready, Dorrigo Evans gave the signal they were about to begin. The drip was removed and Jack Rainbow was rolled back around.