The operating theatre was a small hut. Its chief virtue was its situation: halfway between the hospital hut and ulcer ward, and thus separate from the sick and the near insuperable problems of hygiene that went with them. It had an attap rather than a canvas roof, which meant it was more or less dry. Such equipment it possessed resembled a child’s idea of an operating theatre. Contrived out of bamboo, empty food and kerosene tins, and bric-a-brac stolen from the Japanese—bottles, knives and tubes out of trucks—it was a triumph of magical thinking. There were candles set in reflectors made out of shaped tin cans, a steriliser made out of kerosene tins, a bamboo operating table, surgical instruments made out of honed steel stolen from engines and kept in a suitcase that sat on a table so the rats and mice and whatever else couldn’t crawl over them.
What could he do? wondered Dorrigo, as he began readying his instruments for sterilising. He had no idea. What on earth comes into your head? Squizzy Taylor had asked him after Dorrigo once played cards for a prisoner whom Nakamura wanted to punish. My only idea ever, Dorrigo had confessed, is to advance forward and charge the windmill. Taylor had laughed, but Dorrigo had meant it. It’s only our faith in illusions that makes life possible, Squizzy, he had explained, in as close to an explanation of himself as he ever offered. It’s believing in reality that does us in every time.
He made life up every day, and the more he trusted in his fancy, the more it seemed to work. But how now to advance forward? At the far end of the hut, away from the operating table, he began scrubbing his hands, washing the greasy blood off under the steady stream of water that ran out of a bamboo pipe, another makeshift piece of plumbing the men had rigged up to bring water from a nearby stream, which he now suspected might carry cholera. Everything seemed poisoned, and sometimes every effort seemed to do nothing other than worsen the situation, to lead to ever more deaths. Dorrigo Evans called Jimmy Bigelow over to the table with a kerosene tin of precious distilled water and had him slowly pour it over his hands.
As he rinsed, Dorrigo Evans tried to steady himself, to compose his mind and body.
He was panicking. He knew it, and he steadied himself, trying to settle into his pre-op routine of cleaning. Make sure each finger is thoroughly clean. He could do this, he told himself. Nails—make sure nothing is under the nails. He had no belief he could do it, but others believed he could do it. And if he believed in them believing in him, maybe he could hold on to himself. Wrists—don’t forget wrists. It was all ridiculous, and yet to live, he told himself, demanded above all else a ridiculous belief that you could live.
The orderlies arrived with Jack Rainbow, who was now quiet. As they laid him on the operating table, Squizzy Taylor came in. The orderly who had found him had procured some pieces of coloured rag that were knotted together into a crude rope. He proffered them to the colonel.
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.