Fic: Crossing the Bar (21/?)
Author: Honorat
Rating: R for blood and language
Characters: Norrington, Groves, the crew of the Dauntless
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria somewhat; Jack/Pearl definitely but not in this one
Warning: Primitive medical procedures described in detail
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: On board the Dauntless the hunt continues and a surgery takes place. Not for the faint of heart or stomach. Nota bene: The failure to utilize opiates is historically accurate for this time period. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield
16 A Kind of Alacrity in Sinking
17 A Fine-Baited Delay
18 To Watch the Night in Storms
19a The Natural Shocks That Flesh is Heir To, Part 1
19b The Natural Shocks That Flesh is Heir To, Part 2
20 To Disguise Fair Nature with Hard-Favour'd Rage
* * * * *
21 Valour's Show and Valour's Worth
Under Gillette’s capable command the Dauntless was making good time in her rather aimless search for the Black Pearl, her sails bellying in the wind, spray flinging from her cutwaters to join with the steady rain, by the time Samuels’ assistant, Bailey, deferentially ushered the two conscripted officers into the surgery. Commodore Norrington saw Lieutenant Groves freeze for a moment as his vision adjusted to the interior lighting sufficiently to show him their small victim. When last the lieutenant had set eyes upon Jip, he’d been as lively as a cricket, sputtering and threatening like a hand grenade on the decks of the Dauntless in spite of his injuries, tying the smooth lines of activity on a king’s ship into knots of confusion all by his pint-sized, piratey self. Now he lay motionless in the swaying hammock, eyes half-lidded and barely tracking the swirl of medical motion that eddied about him, his face ashen and glinting with perspiration, his breath no longer spitting defiance but rasping quick and shallow.
It had been less than twenty minutes since the commodore had last seen the boy and already the margins of the mortified flesh surrounding the wound had expanded noticeably, dusky and livid. The characteristic foul-smelling, rusty ichor drained from the swollen and blistered tissue.
Groves looked stricken. “Poor little chap,” he exclaimed softly. “What have we done to you?”
The eyelids snapped fully open, and blue lightning flashed. “I am not a poor little chap, you damned Navy bag-pudding!” Jip objected strenuously.
“Watch yourselves, gentlemen,” the doctor laughed. “He may be indisposed, but this young devil can still bite your fingers off at the elbow if you run afoul of his mouth.”
“Ungrateful brat!” Groves decided, grinning.
Jip subsided, apparently appeased by the uncomplimentary epithet.
“That officer to whom you were so very polite,” the doctor said pointedly to his patient, “is Lieutenant Groves, who has kindly consented to assist me in saving your wretched life. So you might do well to treat him as a fairly mild form of enemy rather than as the arch-fiend of darkness.”
The lieutenant stepped to Jip’s side and held out his hand. “I’m always happy to meet a member of Captain Sparrow’s crew,” he said sincerely. “Best pirate and navigator I’ve ever seen. If I promise that not one word of sympathy will pass my lips, can we have a truce?”
Jip’s eyes were the only alive-looking feature about him as they studied the young officer warily. Norrington realized that his lieutenant was being weighed in some critical balance in that busy, feverish little head.
“Did you really meet Captain Sparrow?” the boy asked finally.
“Gave him grog and salt horse with these two very hands after he piloted us to the Isla de Muerta,” Groves said holding up the hands in question. “Didn’t wash for a month!”
“That was a whisker.” Jip decided, scenting the lie.
“A regular bouncer,” the lieutenant agreed, shrugging. “I ran to the doctor for a flea dip the instant I left his company.”
Jip giggled. “I have fleas,” he offered.
Groves pulled a disgusted face. “I’m not surprised. The moment I saw you, I felt quite sure of it.”
Samuels, watching the boyish young man charm his suffering patient, growled for the commodore’s ear only, “That was one of your better ideas if I do say so myself, James, my lad.”
Norrington nodded. “That those two would get along famously was a foregone conclusion,” he said.
The boy was holding out his hand now. “Truce,” he agreed.
Groves looked at the grubby little fingers then at his own hand. Turning to Samuels he asked, “Have you any treatment for fleas about?”
“I keep a vat of vinegar just for you, Theodore,” the doctor replied. “No woman in port will come near you for a month.”
“Very well,” Groves sighed. “I think I can risk it.”
“If we’re very fast, perhaps they won’t jump across,” Jip said mischievously.
Their hands met in a quick clasp, and Groves snatched his away as though in terror of a mass flea migration. Carefully he scrutinized every surface of his hand. Looking up at Jip who was still giggling like a teakettle on the boil, he frowned. “I do believe I’ve escaped contamination. But if I am bitten by a flea tonight, I shall know whom to blame and my retribution will be extreme.”
“Children,” said the doctor patiently. “While I do hate to interrupt such a heartwarming exchange of vermin, I am afraid we have work to do. That leg is not improving while we speak.”
The tone of the room sobered. Life and death had entered the lists in this gently rocking chamber out on the high seas.
“Commodore, Lieutenant, if you could carry the boy to the table?” Samuels suggested, gesturing with the sharp knife that he then laid down next to the rest of his tools.
As the two men detached the hammock, Norrington reflected that the child in it scarcely weighed anything at all. Once again he wished this fragment of humanity had not been caught up in their grinding mill of law and lawlessness. Carefully, trying not to hurt him further, they set him on the unyielding wooden surface, but even such a light jar wrenched Jip’s face and wrung a hiss from his clenched teeth.
“Sorry,” Groves muttered.
They stood back as Samuels and Bailey positioned the boy on the table. Then the assistant busied himself with pouring sand on the decking under the injured leg. It would soak up the blood and make the deck less slippery and easier to clean.
“Do you understand what I am about to do?” Samuels asked gently, meeting Jip’s gaze.
Jip nodded and bit his lip. “You’re going to cut off my leg,” he said very quietly. “I’ve seen it done before. Three times.” Large, fevered eyes searched Samuels’ face. “They all died,” the boy added in a small voice.
Norrington felt his stomach twist. Jip was correct. If the amputation itself were not fatal, the subsequent inflammation usually was. However, the boy was dying now. The doctor really had no other option. The operation would give the child a 35 percent chance of surviving.
But Samuels spoke reassuringly. “They were all older sailors, weren’t they?” he asked. “Drank hard, wenched hard and lived hard, right?”
“Yes,” Jip said. “They always said Hugh was going to pickle himself with rum.”
“Then you need not worry.” The doctor smiled. “As long as you’ve not been drinking and whoring and carousing much lately?”
Groves snorted and Jip gave a shaky laugh and shook his head. “Captain Sparrow won’t let me. He says it’s a good way to end up with an empty head and an even emptier purse.”
“It sounds like your captain is a wise man,” Samuels approved.
“No,” Jip said firmly. “Just a very bad example, Anamaria says.”
“Who is Anamaria?” Norrington asked curiously.
The little pirate’s eyes went suspicious and his lips clammed shut.
Out of the boy’s sight, Samuels made tongue-amputating motions with his fingers and mouth and glared at the commodore. Then he glided smoothly into the awkward silence. “There, I told you you had no cause for concern.” He squeezed his patient’s shoulder comfortingly. “You’re young and strong and healthy except for this leg. And we don’t have to take much off. You’ll be fine.”
No doubt lurked in Samuel’s voice or in his open countenance. Norrington wondered if the doctor really believed what he was saying or if he had merely mastered the art of the charitable lie.
In the interests of bolstering the doctor’s reputation, Norrington added, “You could not be in better hands, Jip. Doctor Samuels is the man I would want to take off my leg if it had to be done.”
“Such an encomium, James!” the doctor said dryly. “It quite unmans me.”
Norrington smirked humourlessly at his old friend. A thought occurred to him. “Have you given the boy rum?” he asked.
Samuels raised an eyebrow. “Treating him like an officer, are you?”
“Doctor,” said Norrington. “He is a child.”
“I know that,” Samuels said. “I’m glad to see you do, too. Of course I’ve given him rum. And I’ll be giving him some more. Bailey?”
Taking the bottle from his stocky, mahogany-skinned assistant, the doctor propped Jip’s shoulders up with a strong arm. “Here you go, lad. Bottoms up. We want you thoroughly foxed before this little procedure. Rip roaring drunk, in fact.”
Jip eyed the bottle suspiciously. “Will that make my head empty?”
“I certainly hope so,” Samuels said with hearty cheer that sounded a bit forced to Norrington. “You can worry about getting sober after this is over.”
“But I want to watch what you’re doing,” Jip decided.
Norrington and Groves exchanged incredulous glances. Samuels looked stunned for a moment.
“Son,” the doctor said kindly, “you don’t know what you’re asking. Trust me. You really want to be as close to unconscious as possible for this.”
“I want to see,” the boy insisted stubbornly.
“You don’t understand,” Samuels explained less patiently. “This is not going to hurt just a little bit. This is going to hurt like the bloody blazes.”
“Already hurts like hell,” Jip said with pig-headed determination worthy of his mentor.
“Obstinate whelp,” Groves put in.
“Now why do you want to do such a chuckle-headed thing?” the doctor asked.
“Because I’m int’rested,” Jip explained, attempting to raise his head to look at the mangle of his lower leg.
“He’s got you there, Gil,” Norrington laughed. “How can you resist the entreaty of such a budding scientist? It would be professional discourtesy!”
“Fever’s sent him round the bend, that’s my diagnosis,” the doctor groused. “All right you damned young paperskull. You empty this bottle to here,” he indicated a mark on the bottle several inches down that would assure that Jip had consumed enough rum to float a small armada, “and I’ll get these fine gentlemen to prop you up so that you can watch this operation for as long as you have the intestinal fortitude to do so.”
At Jip’s confused expression, Groves interpreted, “Guts, he means as long as you have the guts to watch.”
“I have lots of guts,” Jip said.
“More bottom than sense, that’s what you have.” Groves shook his head at their patient. “Most of us have guts, but we prefer not to see ‘em.”
Jip gave him a pitying look. “How do you find out anything?” he asked.
“We look at other people’s guts,” Samuels cut in acerbically. “Now drink your rum like a good pirate.”
In short order Jip was ensconced in a semi-upright position on a pile of canvas shreds that were well on their way to becoming baggywrinkles. His eyes, hazed with rum and fever, followed the actions of his four attendants with determined concentration. Occasionally he would hiccough gently.
Samuels directed Norrington and Groves to either side of the table and indicated that they should take hold of the boy’s arms and legs. The two officers shed their coats, rolled up their sleeves and did as they were bid. As the commodore closed his hands around the fragile-seeming limbs, it struck him again how very young their patient was. His fingers could nearly wrap twice around the slender wrist. The boy’s pulse fluttered like a trapped wild thing against his hand and the skin was disturbingly hot to the touch.
When the doctor took up a leather strap with a buckle on the end, Jip asked, “What’s that for?”
“This,” said Samuels, “is called a tourniquet. I’m going to place this just above your knee and draw it tight.” He suited his actions to his words. “This will pinch off the arteries and veins in your leg so that you don’t bleed to death when I cut into them. Those are the tunnels the blood travels in.” As he buckled the device, he pointed out the increased flush of colour on the boy’s thigh. “See. All the blood will stay there until we’re ready for it again.”
“Now,” Samuels instructed Bailey, “get the lad the stick to gnaw on.”
His assistant turned to pick up the object when Groves interrupted. “Wait,” the lieutenant said. “I forgot something.” Leaving Jip unrestrained for a moment, he fished about in the deep pocket of his coat. “Here it is!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “One of the midshipmen whittled this for you, Jip.” He held up a clean white length of wood.
“That is what I call a thoughtful gift,” Norrington grinned. “What do you think, Jip? Now you won’t have to chew on Navy spittle.”
“Do I have to?” Jip eyed the gag with distaste.
“Much as I hate to say this,” the doctor teased, “you really don’t want to chew off your tongue. Not that the quality of language wouldn’t improve around here if you did, but I took an oath. So open wide and bite, young man.”
Jip seemed more disturbed by his inability to talk than he was by the impending surgery. “You’ll tell me everything?” he insisted. “I can’t ask, but I want to know.”
“I’ll explain everything I’m doing,” Samuels reassured him. “I promise.”
As soon as Jip had the gag situated, the doctor held out his palm and Bailey handed him the knife. “First, I’m going to have to cut through the flesh down to the bone,” he told the boy, with clinical detachment that Norrington could only admire. “I’ll be amputating about four inches below your knee in order to be sure of removing all the dead tissue so it can’t poison you more. Fortunately you’ll keep the joint. It’s all right if you want to yell. Sometimes making a lot of noise helps you bear it.”
At the first bite of the knife, Norrington felt the small arm and leg go rigid under his grip. He tensed for a struggle, but although the child cried out, he did not fight the restraint and his eyes opened again almost immediately to watch in fascination as the crimson blood welled against his pale skin.
Samuels worked with his usual swift sureness, making the incision through the muscle, down to bone, first from above, then from below, leaving a flap of skin on the inside of the boy’s leg. “That’s to cover the stump when I close you back up,” he informed Jip.
The instant the last bit of flesh parted, Bailey offered a selection of crooked needles to the surgeon. “I’m using these to tack the severed arteries away from the area I’m going to be working,” the doctor continued, accomplishing this feat with lightning speed. “Retractor,” he said to his assistant. Slipping the leather cuff around the incision, Samuels explained, “This will fit over the bone and pull back the muscle so I have room to saw.”
Norrington glanced away. He could feel the corners of his mouth twisting in a sympathetic grimace. There was something too disturbing in such a violation of a body, no matter how many times he witnessed it, even though he knew that the intent was to heal rather than to harm.
Jip’s shivering flesh felt cold and damp now, like the spokes of a ship’s wheel in a storm. His face had lost all colour so that the dense black lashes that bunched against his cheeks when the pain grew too unbearable stood out with the contrast of soot on snow. His breath rattled around the wooden gag in gasps that held overtones of whimpers. And yet the child refused to look away from the doctor’s work for long. Lieutenant Groves, the commodore noted, had shifted from holding the boy’s arm to letting Jip clutch his hand. The lieutenant met his commanding officer’s eyes and pulled a wry face. Nodding to where the small tendons and knuckles strained claw-like as they crushed his fingers, Groves murmured under his breath, “He’s stronger than he looks. The doc is going to have me as his next patient!”
When an adequate section of bone lay revealed, Samuels selected a light saw. “You’ve such bird bones, young rascal, that there’s no need for the large saw I use on the legs of great hulking men like the commodore there. Don’t worry. I’m very fast at this.”
The forty seconds it took the doctor to saw through the tibia and fibula seemed to take hours, the sound grating harshly against nerves. Finally, however, the deadened and toxic limb was completely separated. Samuels let it drop, unnoticed to the blood-stained floor, making a dull thunk. With a flick of his wrist, he released the retractor and allowed the muscle to surround the bared bones.
“All done,” he informed Jip. “That shouldn’t be bothering you any more. Now I’ll just be applying ligatures to those divided arteries and veins so you don’t lose too much blood when I remove the tourniquet.” He showed the boy the thread. “Finest silk,” he said impressively. “No mere cotton or horsehair for the guests of the Dauntless!”
At this point the amputation was nearly complete. Only the preparation of the stump remained. Samuels was an expert sawbones-from the first cut to the last ligature, scarcely two minutes had passed-but Norrington felt as though he had stood for hours, and he imagined Jip felt it had taken days. The boy was trembling and sweating, and unacknowledged tears had left glittering tracks along his cheeks, but he was still valiantly concentrating on his first lesson in amputation, where he was both pupil and subject. The commodore readily admitted that he himself would never have had the courage.
Exchanging thread for knife, Samuels ignored the boy’s tears and spoke to the fascination. “Now I’m going to scrape any ridges and sharp edges off the bone,” he explained. “You don’t want anything to irritate or work back through the skin covering the wound.”
There were few more horrifying sounds, Norrington decided, than the sound of steel scraping on bone. He noted that Groves was looking a little pale and was determinedly observing Jip’s face rather than the ongoing operation.
“There’s a reason I did not go in for Medicine,” Groves said fervently when he became aware of the commodore’s gaze. “If a shot ever gets me, I hope it gets me fair and square with none of this gradual removal of parts.” He smiled down at the young pirate’s startled blue eyes. “You’re a braver man than I am, Jip.”
Samuels gave a huff of amusement as he laid down his knife. “Brave or daft, it’s hard to say. Well, lad. It’s on to the last step-tucking all those loose blood vessels away and suturing that flap of skin back over the ends of the bone. It looks like you’re going to survive this day.”
With gentle skill the doctor completed the preparation of the boy’s stump, stitching it neatly except for a hole left for drainage. “There you are, Jip,” he said finally, setting down needle and thread and turning to scrub the blood off his hands in a basin of water. “As dandy an amputation as you could hope for. I told you not to worry. You can spit out that gag now.”
Jip did so with enthusiasm.
The commodore released the boy’s limbs, realizing his hands were cramping. Groves kept hold of Jip’s hand and patted it reassuringly. “You’ll be a grand peg-leg pirate now, won’t you whelp?”
Jip managed a shaky smile for the lieutenant. Then he turned to the doctor. “Can I see my leg you cut off?”
The doctor’s eyebrows lifted his hairline. “I’ve never had a patient with quite your level of insouciance, young man. That is not going to be a thing of beauty.”
When Jip showed no sign of repenting his desire, Samuels capitulated. “Very well. While Bailey here dresses your wound with egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine and puts on the lint and bandages, I’ll show you what makes up a leg.”
Norrington gave a strangled noise of protest. There were some things he’d rather not know about his insides. Samuels stared at him witheringly. “You lily-livered officers are free to go now,” he said. “Jip and I are going to have an anatomy lesson, and then I’m putting him to bed.”
With unseemly haste, the commodore and the lieutenant scrubbed their hands that had been spattered with Jip’s blood and donned their coats. Nevertheless, they did not escape before hearing Samuels begin, “Now feel the difference between your healthy flesh and this crackly swollen area. There’s poison gas in there . . .”
The two heads, one grizzled grey and the other gold, scarcely looked up from the object under scrutiny to acknowledge Norrington’s and Grove’s farewells. Then they were back to the intriguing world of arteries and tendons and bone marrow and diseases.
Once outside the surgery, Groves leaned back against the bulkhead and mopped his forehead. “James,” he said weakly. “I am a relatively strong man, am I not?”
“Theodore,” Norrington grinned, “I believe I can safely say that of you without fear of contradiction.”
“Then why,” the lieutenant lamented, “are my knees weak and my stomach revolting at what clearly does nothing but amuse that pestilential child?”
The commodore shrugged. “I have no idea, but I admit to a strong dislike for such procedures, myself. Apparently pirates grow them tougher than civilization does.”
“Mark my words,” said Groves grimly. “When that imp recovers, we are going to discover that half a pirate with half a leg is too much pirate for this entire ship.”
“Do you really think he’s going to wait until he recovers?” Norrington asked dubiously.
He should have known better than to make such a prophecy.
* * * * *
TBC
22 Between the Fell Incensed Points of Mighty Opposites
Rating: R for blood and language
Characters: Norrington, Groves, the crew of the Dauntless
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria somewhat; Jack/Pearl definitely but not in this one
Warning: Primitive medical procedures described in detail
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: On board the Dauntless the hunt continues and a surgery takes place. Not for the faint of heart or stomach. Nota bene: The failure to utilize opiates is historically accurate for this time period. Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield
16 A Kind of Alacrity in Sinking
17 A Fine-Baited Delay
18 To Watch the Night in Storms
19a The Natural Shocks That Flesh is Heir To, Part 1
19b The Natural Shocks That Flesh is Heir To, Part 2
20 To Disguise Fair Nature with Hard-Favour'd Rage
* * * * *
21 Valour's Show and Valour's Worth
Under Gillette’s capable command the Dauntless was making good time in her rather aimless search for the Black Pearl, her sails bellying in the wind, spray flinging from her cutwaters to join with the steady rain, by the time Samuels’ assistant, Bailey, deferentially ushered the two conscripted officers into the surgery. Commodore Norrington saw Lieutenant Groves freeze for a moment as his vision adjusted to the interior lighting sufficiently to show him their small victim. When last the lieutenant had set eyes upon Jip, he’d been as lively as a cricket, sputtering and threatening like a hand grenade on the decks of the Dauntless in spite of his injuries, tying the smooth lines of activity on a king’s ship into knots of confusion all by his pint-sized, piratey self. Now he lay motionless in the swaying hammock, eyes half-lidded and barely tracking the swirl of medical motion that eddied about him, his face ashen and glinting with perspiration, his breath no longer spitting defiance but rasping quick and shallow.
It had been less than twenty minutes since the commodore had last seen the boy and already the margins of the mortified flesh surrounding the wound had expanded noticeably, dusky and livid. The characteristic foul-smelling, rusty ichor drained from the swollen and blistered tissue.
Groves looked stricken. “Poor little chap,” he exclaimed softly. “What have we done to you?”
The eyelids snapped fully open, and blue lightning flashed. “I am not a poor little chap, you damned Navy bag-pudding!” Jip objected strenuously.
“Watch yourselves, gentlemen,” the doctor laughed. “He may be indisposed, but this young devil can still bite your fingers off at the elbow if you run afoul of his mouth.”
“Ungrateful brat!” Groves decided, grinning.
Jip subsided, apparently appeased by the uncomplimentary epithet.
“That officer to whom you were so very polite,” the doctor said pointedly to his patient, “is Lieutenant Groves, who has kindly consented to assist me in saving your wretched life. So you might do well to treat him as a fairly mild form of enemy rather than as the arch-fiend of darkness.”
The lieutenant stepped to Jip’s side and held out his hand. “I’m always happy to meet a member of Captain Sparrow’s crew,” he said sincerely. “Best pirate and navigator I’ve ever seen. If I promise that not one word of sympathy will pass my lips, can we have a truce?”
Jip’s eyes were the only alive-looking feature about him as they studied the young officer warily. Norrington realized that his lieutenant was being weighed in some critical balance in that busy, feverish little head.
“Did you really meet Captain Sparrow?” the boy asked finally.
“Gave him grog and salt horse with these two very hands after he piloted us to the Isla de Muerta,” Groves said holding up the hands in question. “Didn’t wash for a month!”
“That was a whisker.” Jip decided, scenting the lie.
“A regular bouncer,” the lieutenant agreed, shrugging. “I ran to the doctor for a flea dip the instant I left his company.”
Jip giggled. “I have fleas,” he offered.
Groves pulled a disgusted face. “I’m not surprised. The moment I saw you, I felt quite sure of it.”
Samuels, watching the boyish young man charm his suffering patient, growled for the commodore’s ear only, “That was one of your better ideas if I do say so myself, James, my lad.”
Norrington nodded. “That those two would get along famously was a foregone conclusion,” he said.
The boy was holding out his hand now. “Truce,” he agreed.
Groves looked at the grubby little fingers then at his own hand. Turning to Samuels he asked, “Have you any treatment for fleas about?”
“I keep a vat of vinegar just for you, Theodore,” the doctor replied. “No woman in port will come near you for a month.”
“Very well,” Groves sighed. “I think I can risk it.”
“If we’re very fast, perhaps they won’t jump across,” Jip said mischievously.
Their hands met in a quick clasp, and Groves snatched his away as though in terror of a mass flea migration. Carefully he scrutinized every surface of his hand. Looking up at Jip who was still giggling like a teakettle on the boil, he frowned. “I do believe I’ve escaped contamination. But if I am bitten by a flea tonight, I shall know whom to blame and my retribution will be extreme.”
“Children,” said the doctor patiently. “While I do hate to interrupt such a heartwarming exchange of vermin, I am afraid we have work to do. That leg is not improving while we speak.”
The tone of the room sobered. Life and death had entered the lists in this gently rocking chamber out on the high seas.
“Commodore, Lieutenant, if you could carry the boy to the table?” Samuels suggested, gesturing with the sharp knife that he then laid down next to the rest of his tools.
As the two men detached the hammock, Norrington reflected that the child in it scarcely weighed anything at all. Once again he wished this fragment of humanity had not been caught up in their grinding mill of law and lawlessness. Carefully, trying not to hurt him further, they set him on the unyielding wooden surface, but even such a light jar wrenched Jip’s face and wrung a hiss from his clenched teeth.
“Sorry,” Groves muttered.
They stood back as Samuels and Bailey positioned the boy on the table. Then the assistant busied himself with pouring sand on the decking under the injured leg. It would soak up the blood and make the deck less slippery and easier to clean.
“Do you understand what I am about to do?” Samuels asked gently, meeting Jip’s gaze.
Jip nodded and bit his lip. “You’re going to cut off my leg,” he said very quietly. “I’ve seen it done before. Three times.” Large, fevered eyes searched Samuels’ face. “They all died,” the boy added in a small voice.
Norrington felt his stomach twist. Jip was correct. If the amputation itself were not fatal, the subsequent inflammation usually was. However, the boy was dying now. The doctor really had no other option. The operation would give the child a 35 percent chance of surviving.
But Samuels spoke reassuringly. “They were all older sailors, weren’t they?” he asked. “Drank hard, wenched hard and lived hard, right?”
“Yes,” Jip said. “They always said Hugh was going to pickle himself with rum.”
“Then you need not worry.” The doctor smiled. “As long as you’ve not been drinking and whoring and carousing much lately?”
Groves snorted and Jip gave a shaky laugh and shook his head. “Captain Sparrow won’t let me. He says it’s a good way to end up with an empty head and an even emptier purse.”
“It sounds like your captain is a wise man,” Samuels approved.
“No,” Jip said firmly. “Just a very bad example, Anamaria says.”
“Who is Anamaria?” Norrington asked curiously.
The little pirate’s eyes went suspicious and his lips clammed shut.
Out of the boy’s sight, Samuels made tongue-amputating motions with his fingers and mouth and glared at the commodore. Then he glided smoothly into the awkward silence. “There, I told you you had no cause for concern.” He squeezed his patient’s shoulder comfortingly. “You’re young and strong and healthy except for this leg. And we don’t have to take much off. You’ll be fine.”
No doubt lurked in Samuel’s voice or in his open countenance. Norrington wondered if the doctor really believed what he was saying or if he had merely mastered the art of the charitable lie.
In the interests of bolstering the doctor’s reputation, Norrington added, “You could not be in better hands, Jip. Doctor Samuels is the man I would want to take off my leg if it had to be done.”
“Such an encomium, James!” the doctor said dryly. “It quite unmans me.”
Norrington smirked humourlessly at his old friend. A thought occurred to him. “Have you given the boy rum?” he asked.
Samuels raised an eyebrow. “Treating him like an officer, are you?”
“Doctor,” said Norrington. “He is a child.”
“I know that,” Samuels said. “I’m glad to see you do, too. Of course I’ve given him rum. And I’ll be giving him some more. Bailey?”
Taking the bottle from his stocky, mahogany-skinned assistant, the doctor propped Jip’s shoulders up with a strong arm. “Here you go, lad. Bottoms up. We want you thoroughly foxed before this little procedure. Rip roaring drunk, in fact.”
Jip eyed the bottle suspiciously. “Will that make my head empty?”
“I certainly hope so,” Samuels said with hearty cheer that sounded a bit forced to Norrington. “You can worry about getting sober after this is over.”
“But I want to watch what you’re doing,” Jip decided.
Norrington and Groves exchanged incredulous glances. Samuels looked stunned for a moment.
“Son,” the doctor said kindly, “you don’t know what you’re asking. Trust me. You really want to be as close to unconscious as possible for this.”
“I want to see,” the boy insisted stubbornly.
“You don’t understand,” Samuels explained less patiently. “This is not going to hurt just a little bit. This is going to hurt like the bloody blazes.”
“Already hurts like hell,” Jip said with pig-headed determination worthy of his mentor.
“Obstinate whelp,” Groves put in.
“Now why do you want to do such a chuckle-headed thing?” the doctor asked.
“Because I’m int’rested,” Jip explained, attempting to raise his head to look at the mangle of his lower leg.
“He’s got you there, Gil,” Norrington laughed. “How can you resist the entreaty of such a budding scientist? It would be professional discourtesy!”
“Fever’s sent him round the bend, that’s my diagnosis,” the doctor groused. “All right you damned young paperskull. You empty this bottle to here,” he indicated a mark on the bottle several inches down that would assure that Jip had consumed enough rum to float a small armada, “and I’ll get these fine gentlemen to prop you up so that you can watch this operation for as long as you have the intestinal fortitude to do so.”
At Jip’s confused expression, Groves interpreted, “Guts, he means as long as you have the guts to watch.”
“I have lots of guts,” Jip said.
“More bottom than sense, that’s what you have.” Groves shook his head at their patient. “Most of us have guts, but we prefer not to see ‘em.”
Jip gave him a pitying look. “How do you find out anything?” he asked.
“We look at other people’s guts,” Samuels cut in acerbically. “Now drink your rum like a good pirate.”
In short order Jip was ensconced in a semi-upright position on a pile of canvas shreds that were well on their way to becoming baggywrinkles. His eyes, hazed with rum and fever, followed the actions of his four attendants with determined concentration. Occasionally he would hiccough gently.
Samuels directed Norrington and Groves to either side of the table and indicated that they should take hold of the boy’s arms and legs. The two officers shed their coats, rolled up their sleeves and did as they were bid. As the commodore closed his hands around the fragile-seeming limbs, it struck him again how very young their patient was. His fingers could nearly wrap twice around the slender wrist. The boy’s pulse fluttered like a trapped wild thing against his hand and the skin was disturbingly hot to the touch.
When the doctor took up a leather strap with a buckle on the end, Jip asked, “What’s that for?”
“This,” said Samuels, “is called a tourniquet. I’m going to place this just above your knee and draw it tight.” He suited his actions to his words. “This will pinch off the arteries and veins in your leg so that you don’t bleed to death when I cut into them. Those are the tunnels the blood travels in.” As he buckled the device, he pointed out the increased flush of colour on the boy’s thigh. “See. All the blood will stay there until we’re ready for it again.”
“Now,” Samuels instructed Bailey, “get the lad the stick to gnaw on.”
His assistant turned to pick up the object when Groves interrupted. “Wait,” the lieutenant said. “I forgot something.” Leaving Jip unrestrained for a moment, he fished about in the deep pocket of his coat. “Here it is!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “One of the midshipmen whittled this for you, Jip.” He held up a clean white length of wood.
“That is what I call a thoughtful gift,” Norrington grinned. “What do you think, Jip? Now you won’t have to chew on Navy spittle.”
“Do I have to?” Jip eyed the gag with distaste.
“Much as I hate to say this,” the doctor teased, “you really don’t want to chew off your tongue. Not that the quality of language wouldn’t improve around here if you did, but I took an oath. So open wide and bite, young man.”
Jip seemed more disturbed by his inability to talk than he was by the impending surgery. “You’ll tell me everything?” he insisted. “I can’t ask, but I want to know.”
“I’ll explain everything I’m doing,” Samuels reassured him. “I promise.”
As soon as Jip had the gag situated, the doctor held out his palm and Bailey handed him the knife. “First, I’m going to have to cut through the flesh down to the bone,” he told the boy, with clinical detachment that Norrington could only admire. “I’ll be amputating about four inches below your knee in order to be sure of removing all the dead tissue so it can’t poison you more. Fortunately you’ll keep the joint. It’s all right if you want to yell. Sometimes making a lot of noise helps you bear it.”
At the first bite of the knife, Norrington felt the small arm and leg go rigid under his grip. He tensed for a struggle, but although the child cried out, he did not fight the restraint and his eyes opened again almost immediately to watch in fascination as the crimson blood welled against his pale skin.
Samuels worked with his usual swift sureness, making the incision through the muscle, down to bone, first from above, then from below, leaving a flap of skin on the inside of the boy’s leg. “That’s to cover the stump when I close you back up,” he informed Jip.
The instant the last bit of flesh parted, Bailey offered a selection of crooked needles to the surgeon. “I’m using these to tack the severed arteries away from the area I’m going to be working,” the doctor continued, accomplishing this feat with lightning speed. “Retractor,” he said to his assistant. Slipping the leather cuff around the incision, Samuels explained, “This will fit over the bone and pull back the muscle so I have room to saw.”
Norrington glanced away. He could feel the corners of his mouth twisting in a sympathetic grimace. There was something too disturbing in such a violation of a body, no matter how many times he witnessed it, even though he knew that the intent was to heal rather than to harm.
Jip’s shivering flesh felt cold and damp now, like the spokes of a ship’s wheel in a storm. His face had lost all colour so that the dense black lashes that bunched against his cheeks when the pain grew too unbearable stood out with the contrast of soot on snow. His breath rattled around the wooden gag in gasps that held overtones of whimpers. And yet the child refused to look away from the doctor’s work for long. Lieutenant Groves, the commodore noted, had shifted from holding the boy’s arm to letting Jip clutch his hand. The lieutenant met his commanding officer’s eyes and pulled a wry face. Nodding to where the small tendons and knuckles strained claw-like as they crushed his fingers, Groves murmured under his breath, “He’s stronger than he looks. The doc is going to have me as his next patient!”
When an adequate section of bone lay revealed, Samuels selected a light saw. “You’ve such bird bones, young rascal, that there’s no need for the large saw I use on the legs of great hulking men like the commodore there. Don’t worry. I’m very fast at this.”
The forty seconds it took the doctor to saw through the tibia and fibula seemed to take hours, the sound grating harshly against nerves. Finally, however, the deadened and toxic limb was completely separated. Samuels let it drop, unnoticed to the blood-stained floor, making a dull thunk. With a flick of his wrist, he released the retractor and allowed the muscle to surround the bared bones.
“All done,” he informed Jip. “That shouldn’t be bothering you any more. Now I’ll just be applying ligatures to those divided arteries and veins so you don’t lose too much blood when I remove the tourniquet.” He showed the boy the thread. “Finest silk,” he said impressively. “No mere cotton or horsehair for the guests of the Dauntless!”
At this point the amputation was nearly complete. Only the preparation of the stump remained. Samuels was an expert sawbones-from the first cut to the last ligature, scarcely two minutes had passed-but Norrington felt as though he had stood for hours, and he imagined Jip felt it had taken days. The boy was trembling and sweating, and unacknowledged tears had left glittering tracks along his cheeks, but he was still valiantly concentrating on his first lesson in amputation, where he was both pupil and subject. The commodore readily admitted that he himself would never have had the courage.
Exchanging thread for knife, Samuels ignored the boy’s tears and spoke to the fascination. “Now I’m going to scrape any ridges and sharp edges off the bone,” he explained. “You don’t want anything to irritate or work back through the skin covering the wound.”
There were few more horrifying sounds, Norrington decided, than the sound of steel scraping on bone. He noted that Groves was looking a little pale and was determinedly observing Jip’s face rather than the ongoing operation.
“There’s a reason I did not go in for Medicine,” Groves said fervently when he became aware of the commodore’s gaze. “If a shot ever gets me, I hope it gets me fair and square with none of this gradual removal of parts.” He smiled down at the young pirate’s startled blue eyes. “You’re a braver man than I am, Jip.”
Samuels gave a huff of amusement as he laid down his knife. “Brave or daft, it’s hard to say. Well, lad. It’s on to the last step-tucking all those loose blood vessels away and suturing that flap of skin back over the ends of the bone. It looks like you’re going to survive this day.”
With gentle skill the doctor completed the preparation of the boy’s stump, stitching it neatly except for a hole left for drainage. “There you are, Jip,” he said finally, setting down needle and thread and turning to scrub the blood off his hands in a basin of water. “As dandy an amputation as you could hope for. I told you not to worry. You can spit out that gag now.”
Jip did so with enthusiasm.
The commodore released the boy’s limbs, realizing his hands were cramping. Groves kept hold of Jip’s hand and patted it reassuringly. “You’ll be a grand peg-leg pirate now, won’t you whelp?”
Jip managed a shaky smile for the lieutenant. Then he turned to the doctor. “Can I see my leg you cut off?”
The doctor’s eyebrows lifted his hairline. “I’ve never had a patient with quite your level of insouciance, young man. That is not going to be a thing of beauty.”
When Jip showed no sign of repenting his desire, Samuels capitulated. “Very well. While Bailey here dresses your wound with egg yolk, oil of roses and turpentine and puts on the lint and bandages, I’ll show you what makes up a leg.”
Norrington gave a strangled noise of protest. There were some things he’d rather not know about his insides. Samuels stared at him witheringly. “You lily-livered officers are free to go now,” he said. “Jip and I are going to have an anatomy lesson, and then I’m putting him to bed.”
With unseemly haste, the commodore and the lieutenant scrubbed their hands that had been spattered with Jip’s blood and donned their coats. Nevertheless, they did not escape before hearing Samuels begin, “Now feel the difference between your healthy flesh and this crackly swollen area. There’s poison gas in there . . .”
The two heads, one grizzled grey and the other gold, scarcely looked up from the object under scrutiny to acknowledge Norrington’s and Grove’s farewells. Then they were back to the intriguing world of arteries and tendons and bone marrow and diseases.
Once outside the surgery, Groves leaned back against the bulkhead and mopped his forehead. “James,” he said weakly. “I am a relatively strong man, am I not?”
“Theodore,” Norrington grinned, “I believe I can safely say that of you without fear of contradiction.”
“Then why,” the lieutenant lamented, “are my knees weak and my stomach revolting at what clearly does nothing but amuse that pestilential child?”
The commodore shrugged. “I have no idea, but I admit to a strong dislike for such procedures, myself. Apparently pirates grow them tougher than civilization does.”
“Mark my words,” said Groves grimly. “When that imp recovers, we are going to discover that half a pirate with half a leg is too much pirate for this entire ship.”
“Do you really think he’s going to wait until he recovers?” Norrington asked dubiously.
He should have known better than to make such a prophecy.
* * * * *
TBC
22 Between the Fell Incensed Points of Mighty Opposites