Whistle

Chapter 11


FOR THE FIRST FOUR days after his arrival Prell had done very little but sleep. Flat on his back and all trussed up again, there wasn’t that much he could do. And he was totally exhausted, physically and morally. In his little shaving mirror, the fragile, purple skin under his eyes seemed to have shrunk even farther back into his head. Occasionally he would wake up and drink some water or some soup. Kilrainey was well equipped for that kind of around-the-clock care. And fortunately, Prell had a night ward boy who worried about his charges. Also—somehow or other—the gossip that he was a potential Medal of Honor winner had preceded him, or at least come right along with him, and everybody on his ward including the nurse took a special interest in him.

Unfortunately Prell had not had such good luck in drawing a surgeon. Instead of the much-liked Curran, he had drawn the other chief surgeon, Colonel Baker. Prell’s troubles and his problems started there. And they started right away. As soon as Prell began to come around and be interested in things, he became aware of it. There was a sort of vibrant whisper about him everywhere around him on the ward that he could never quite come face to face with. Wherever he turned his head the whisper would cease there, and seemed to begin somewhere else behind him.

Col Baker was a tall spare older man, with gray-white grizzled hair, piercing eyes, and a seamed pouchy face that bespoke an irascible temper. It was reputed that he had been one of the two or three best orthopedic surgeons in America, just before the war. Baker looked like one of those men whose short temper was due to the shortness of time, and who could not be bothered to fool around with your sentiments and emotions if he was going to get your bones patched up, put back together and healed. In policy, he was much closer to the attitude of the administrator, Maj Hogan, which was to stick them back together and get them the hell out, willy-nilly—either back to duty if possible, or if not, then discharged and back to the farm—but get them out and open up the beds and make room for all the myriad others who, inevitably, would be coming along now with each new attack, each new offensive as the US began to move. Apparently, even at the first surgical conference on Prell, he had decided that the only thing to do with Prell was to amputate his right leg, which was not healing, and get him out of there and open up another bed.

Prell, who had been knocked out and only semiconscious at his first surgical conference, became aware of all this at the second conference, which was on his ninth day on the ward. Then he realized what the whisper about him on the ward was all about. But he had half suspected it already. He lay in the bed and watched and listened as the three officer doctors, Baker, Curran and Hogan, hovered over by the nurse, ward intern and enlisted ward boy, discussed his right leg as if it were some abstract problem in a chess game.

“I won’t give permission,” Prell said wearily when Baker put it up to him. It seemed to him he had been saying that same line all his life.

“We can do it anyway,” Baker said. “Without. If we decide it is to save your life, or is in your best interest.”

“Then I’ll sue the Army,” Prell said weakly. “I’ll sue the government. For every cent I can squeeze them for. And I’ll name you. For malfeasance.”

“A guardhouse lawyer,” Baker growled.

Prell nodded. “Yes, sir. When it’s my leg.” He had listened to them discussing it. He understood the mechanics. Because the splintered bone was at midthigh, it would mean sawing it off right up at the hip, so that there would be enough flesh left to make the protective flap to fold over. It made his spine go chilly.

“I don’t think you understand,” Baker said.

“I understand,” Prell said. “It’s my leg.”

Baker bulled right on. “The problem is your right leg is not healing. There is no infection—no serious infection—up to now. But we are keeping you pumped full of sulfa. To avoid that. But you can’t go on taking sulfa forever. In the meantime, you are getting weaker and weaker, slowly. If you do infect, you’re probably going to be dead. Do you understand that, soldier?”

Hogan was bobbing his head and grumbling his assent. Curran was looking off in the distance and doing and saying nothing. The nurse and intern and ward boy were all watching, their three sets of eyes like six vacuum cleaner nozzles sucking everything in.

Prell nodded. “I understand. The answer’s still no. Better dead than no leg.”

Baker’s eyebrows arched and his eyes narrowed. “I already told you we can do it without consent,” he said sharply. “It will take me a little longer that way, that’s all. I’ll have to send in a report and get clearance.” He peered at Prell, “Do you realize you are taking up attention and time and space that might save some other soldier’s life?”

“I don’t honestly give a shit about some other soldier’s life, sir,” Prell said. What a question to ask some man about to lose his leg. He noticed Curran had made a little movement, twisted his torso as if in protest.

The long-limbed Baker slapped both his big hands down on his knees. “Well, it is my professional opinion that we are going to have to take off that right leg of yours.” He got up. He looked at the other two doctors. “Unless there is some dissenting opinion with my colleagues here.” Hogan, already standing, shook his head vigorously no, and scowled. Curran, still seated, with an almost imperceptible movement, shook his head no, also.

Prell, looking at the three of them, could feel his heart beating in him with a slow, heavy ominous beat that was both exciting and doom-filled. It was exactly the way he had used to feel sometimes before an attack. And for a split moment he almost gave up and agreed. He had been fighting and fighting it until he had nothing left to fight with. Instead, he just looked at them and kept his mouth shut as, slowly, Curran got up too and they left. The worst thing was this awful feeling of being completely in their hands and totally helpless. There was absolutely nothing more he could do. Except maybe scream. He tried to get a hold on himself. But he was still so worn out, from the trip and all the rest of it, that after a few minutes, although his heart was still beating heavily, he turned his head to one side and went to sleep.

Hell, maybe the f*cking doctors were right.

His last waking thought was that he must get hold of Johnny Stranger, or some of the others from the company, and tell them. Maybe—just maybe—there was something they could do. Then as he dropped off he remembered that Corello had told him Strange was on convalescent furlough, and that was why he hadn’t been by to see him.

That was the way it hung for another week. Col Baker—or more often, Maj Hogan—would come by and read his charts and glower and shake his head. The right leg was not healing. Even the left was slow. On one of these visits Baker told him he had sent in the report and made the request to amputate. It didn’t seem to upset Baker much. Prell wanted to spit at him, or curse him, but he had neither the heart nor the will, nor the energy.

For one second Prell thought of telling him of his intention to shoot himself and knock himself off if he lost a leg, but then he didn’t. To do that would only bring a psychiatrist into it. And maybe get him put away in a lockup ward.

After a week of this anguish—on the same day, in fact, that Strange got back and came to see him—Prell had a surprise visit from the chief hospital administrator himself, a full bird colonel. The two surgeons were light colonels.

It was the first time within the memory of anyone on the ward that the chief administrator had visited a patient. In fact, it was the first time anyone, including the nurse and intern, had seen the chief administrator. Col Stevens was an elderly man and a West Pointer, with white hair, handsome features and a quiet manner. Prell knew when he saw him that screaming and threatening were not going to be any good, and that he’d have to try for something else. Rumor had it that Stevens was on the next promotions list to make brigadier. He sat by Prell’s bed for half an hour and talked to him in a kindly way. The upshot of his conversation was whether Prell was still adamant about refusing permission to amputate. Prell said that he was. Col Stevens said this posed a serious problem, not only for the hospital administration but for Prell himself. Prell was in danger. Col Baker had sent in a report that it was necessary to amputate Prell’s right leg in order to save his life. None of the other doctors had dissented. This was going to force a very difficult decision on the hospital administration, which in effect was himself. Col Stevens. Prell said again that he did not want to live without his legs, without one leg.

“Sir, it’s not as if this didn’t happen before,” he said. Prell was not at all above using his hollow, harrowed eyes on somebody, if he thought it might help him. “Back up the line they wanted to take off both my legs. But I talked them out of it, and I’m still here, and so are the legs. I’m sure that they’ll heal up, sir.”

“That doesn’t appear to be the case,” Stevens said.

“All it needs is a little time, sir.”

“Col Baker doesn’t seem to think so,” Stevens said, and drew a breath and let it out in a sigh. “You’re an old-timer, an old Regular, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir. I was just winding up my third hitch when the war started,” Prell said.

“Tell me, what would you do with your life?” Stevens said abruptly. “If you had your choice, that is.”

“I’d stay in the Army,” Prell said without hesitation. “Be a thirty-year man.”

“You would?” Stevens rubbed his handsome chin. “Anyway, it’s twenty years, nowadays. Not thirty.”

“I’d stay in thirty, anyway,” Prell said. “If they’d let me.”

“Well, were’s not much chance of that. Not the shape you’re in.”

“No, sir. I guess not. But it’s my dream.”

“You know, it’s written into your dossier that your Division commander recommended you for the Medal of Honor. Did you know that?”

“It’s the first I’ve heard of it, sir. I’d rather have the leg than the medal.”

“Yes,” Stevens said. He smiled.

“What are you going to decide about the leg, sir?” Prell asked. He couldn’t help it. As he spoke, he was remembering back to when not so long ago, even just on the boat, what Stevens had just told him about the Congressional Medal would have been the biggest thrill of his life. Not any more.

Stevens shook his head, and then got up. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know because I don’t know, myself.”

“I had the impression, myself,” Prell said, “that maybe Col Curran didn’t feel quite as strongly about it as Col Baker.”

Stevens’ eyes sharpened, then showed disapproval. “No. That’s not possible. Col Curran didn’t file any dissenting opinion.”

“But I’m not his patient. Am I? And doesn’t Col Baker outrank Col Curran?”

“That wouldn’t make any difference,” Stevens said, “Not in something this important.”

“It might make a little difference,” Prell said. “What they call professional ethics?”

“No, no,” Stevens said. “No, no.” He turned as if to go, then stopped.

“You know, sir, I’m not at all sure I deserve that Medal of Honor,” Prell said to his back, taking advantage of the pause. “In fact, I don’t think I do. Not really. But I deserve the leg.”

Stevens turned to look at him, and then after a moment nodded once, crisply. He left without saying more.

It was only an hour or so after Stevens’ visit that Johnny Stranger came in to see Prell. He’d heard the news from Corello.

Prell felt he had done pretty well with Stevens. But feeling so did not make him very happy. He did not feel he had established any basic change in the chief administrator. What did the lawyers call it? Establish a reasonable doubt. That cunt Baker had called him a “guardhouse lawyer.” He told the whole tale to Strange, pausing to rest between paragraphs when he was tired.

Strange, as he listened, felt a terrible guilt. Here he was, running around on a furlough he didn’t even need, trying to get back in with a wife and family he didn’t even seem to know any more, or understand. Loafing for four lousy days downtown in Luxor playing poker. And all the time Prell needed him, lying here trying to save his damned leg from those goddamned civilian doctors. Gone when, for once, somebody really needed him.

At least this Col Stevens was one of their own. A West Pointer and an old Army man. But you couldn’t even count on that any more, nowadays. And anyway when did being a West Pointer make a man dependable? Some were, some weren’t.

Strange was not at all sure that the doctors weren’t right. Prell looked terrible. His eyes were sunk so far back in his head, and the skin drawn so tight over his cheekbones, that he looked like a skull. A dead man. But at least the f*ckers could let him die decently, the way he wanted.

On the other hand what was there that Strange could do for him? Him, a low-life s/sgt of a mess/sgt? What colonels were going to listen to him? He told Prell that.

“I thought maybe if you went and talked to Curran,” Prell said. His purplish eyes were almost desperate. “Curran didn’t seem to be so strong for amputating it as the others.”

“I’ll certainly talk to him,” Strange said desperately. “But you know how much he’s going to pay any attention to me.”

“Maybe if you got all the guys together,” Prell said. “Get up a petition. Get them all to sign it.”

“A petition?” Strange said. “In the Army?”

“Well, times are changing. And those guys aren’t soldiers. They’re civilians,” Prell insisted. “Maybe a petition would impress them.”

“I can try it,” Strange said. “I can try it.” He paused a minute, then said, “But listen. Wait a minute. You’ve given me an idea.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ll get Landers to go and talk to Curran.”

“Why Landers?”

“Well, you know. He’s a college man and all that. He speaks their language. If he was to talk to them, I think it’d carry more weight than if I went.”

“That’s a good idea,” Prell said, his sunken eyes widening to grasp at any hope. “Try that.”

“I will. I will,” Strange said.

He did not waste time on any formal good-bys. He found Landers in the big recreation center, talking to the pretty girl with the walleye, she nervous and behind her athletic equipment counter as if it were some protective wall between them. Strange would have laughed, normally.

“But why me?” Landers said, after they had gotten off by themselves on one of the couches on the basketball floor. “I don’t know Curran any better than you do.”

Landers was having difficulty concentrating. Carol Firebaugh had just accepted his invitation, about his twentieth invitation, to have a date with him outside. But instead of being elated, he suddenly found himself full of the old despair again. Inexplicably, he found himself seeing again the picture that had been emblazoned on his retinas that day on the ridge when he sat with the wounded and stared at the clean, white streaks down all the dirty faces from weeping. The two things were so far apart that there was no way of reconnecting them at all. Grown men. All of them. Himself included. She had been so circumscribed in her acceptance that it was almost a refusal. And the picture kept coming back, to oppress him. Something somewhere had stopped for Landers there that day. How could you explain that to someone who hadn’t been there? How could you say it to her? It made that kind of wild rage come back up in him. Reckless. He had been just on the point of withdrawing the invitation when Strange arrived.

“Well, you’re a college man. And all that,” Strange said. “You talk their language.”

“I thought you were mad at me,” Landers said.

Strange stared at him. “What?” He couldn’t connect Landers’ comment with anything. “Mad at you? What do you mean, mad at you?”

“Well, you hardly even said hello, when I saw you in the corridor earlier,” Landers said. “You just sort of went right off. As if you were cutting me.”

“Oh.” Strange felt as if he had come up against some kind of unanticipated brick wall in the dark. Here was a whole new field, new outlook opening up that he had neither the time nor the inclination to poke into. “Well, I was worried about Prell, don’t you see? Will you do it? Will you go to Curran?”

“Of course I will. I’ll do anything for any of the guys from the company. Especially Prell.”

Landers had heard the bad news about Prell. All of the guys had heard it, from Corello. At the time Landers had shrugged inwardly, and counted it as one more inevitable loss to the jungle campaigns, the jungle war, one more casualty to New Georgia. A leg. It had never occurred to him there might be anything anybody could do about it. Now a kind of wild flame of loyalty licked up in him searing his trachea and heart. He would do any damn thing he could do, for any of them.

They would understand, if he told them about the men on the hilltop. They might laugh about it. Now. But they would understand.

“But I don’t think Curran’ll listen to me any more than he would you,” he said. “Less, probably.”

“But will you try? And tell him all of us guys from the old company are ready to get up a petition and sign it, if he wants?”

“Sure I’ll try.”

“Prell seems to feel Curran wasn’t as strongly for the amputation as the other two.”

“I’ll go right now. You want me to go now?”

“Fine. And tell him about the petition?”

Landers was off his crutches by now, and was using a cane and the walking iron. He was still nervous with them, and unsure of himself on them. It took him a long time to get from the recreation center to the area of the surgery theaters. He had to work hard and move carefully going up and down the various ramps designed for rolling surgery beds and wheelchairs. When he got to Curran’s tiny office, his knees felt shaky. Fortunately, Curran was in.

Curran’s head was down, over some papers. Landers paused to rest, and to pull himself all together. He was going to have to remember to be tactful and polite. He didn’t feel much like either.

“May I speak to. you a few minutes alone, Col Curran, sir? Off the record?”

Curran looked up, his eyes immediately growing remote. He nodded. “Sure. I guess so. Come in.”

“It’s not about me,” Landers said. “It’s about a friend of mine. Named Prell.”

“What about him?”

“There are seven of us here from his old company. The guys decided to sort of appoint me their spokesman. We’ve heard that his right leg may have to be amputated.”

Curran seemed to stare, Landers thought. But not quite. Abstractedly, with another part of his mind, Landers wondered where he was getting the nerve to do what he was doing. But that was easy enough to answer. All he had to do was think of those men he had sat with on the hill. None of these people knew the first thing of what it was like to be like that. And didn’t want to. Any more than we did, he thought.

“It’s a possibility,” Curran said. “A very likely possibility.”

“Well, he’s one of the best men our outfit ever had. I guess you know, he saved his whole patrol after he got shot up. He’s been recommended for a medal for it. And, well, we think it will probably kill him if he loses that leg. The guys wanted me to ask you if there wasn’t something you could do to save his leg.”

Curran’s eyes seemed to get larger, and deeper. “What the hell do you think I could do?”

“We thought something that might give him a chance. A fighting chance.”

“Like what? Anyway, he’s not my patient.” Curran looked down and moved the papers on his desk.

“He said he felt you weren’t as much in favor of the amputation as the others.”

Curran’s head snapped up. “He told you that?”

Landers nodded. “Well, he told one of us. Not me. He said it was a hunch he had.”

“The man is in a very bad way,” Curran said. “His one leg won’t heal. The other is not doing all that well. There’s something wrong with his system. With his chemistry. He’s getting weaker and weaker, and he just won’t heal.”

“Couldn’t you give him something?”

“We’re giving him everything we can. Sulfa. Plasma. Glucose. Besides, you seem to forget that he’s not my patient.”

“Well, what if you stopped giving him something? If it’s his body chemistry?”

Curran stared at him, his eyes narrowed. He looked down at the desk, then looked back up. “I don’t think you understand. That’s not the way it works. I can’t disagree with Col Baker’s statement. I think Col Baker is right. And he’s Col Baker’s patient.”

Landers nodded politely. It struck him suddenly that there was the possibility that Curran might be hedging on the truth the least little bit. That he wouldn’t admit that Prell was right in thinking Curran was less in favor of the amputation than the other two. He said nothing.

“It’s possible that Col Baker is pushing it a little,” Curran said. “But that’s not important, really. Col Stevens is not going to decide to amputate immediately, when it’s without Prell’s permission. Which Prell won’t give. Col Baker is just trying to be prepared for it. Ahead of time. As for stopping something that he’s getting, there’s very little that he’s getting that isn’t absolutely necessary. Don’t get the idea that some of us are ogres here, hoping for a chance to do a leg amputation.”

Landers had been nodding politely again. But somewhere inside his chest, or right behind his eyes, something seemed to be changing in him. Another personality that he did not know seemed to be taking over his muscles and his voice. It was almost like that day on the ship when he seemed to go out of himself. That kind of wild rage against everything, against life itself, seemed to flow all over him. “Nobody thinks that, Colonel. Anyway, the guys told me to tell you that we would all be willing to sign a petition amongst ourselves against the amputation and present it to you,” the new voice said. Harshly. “If you would want us to.”

Curran’s head snapped up again. He looked astonished. He said the same thing to Landers that Strange had said to Prell. “A petition? In the Army? Are you men out of your minds?” Then he stared at Landers a long moment. “You men think a lot of him, don’t you?”

“I guess we all admire him,” Landers’ new, harsh personality said. Landers was suddenly seeing his hilltop ridge and all the faces with their perpendicular white streaks running down them, beyond and through the clean sympathetic face of Curran. “But that’s not what it is. I don’t think you understand us. I don’t guess we any of us give much of a shit about anything, except each other. It’s not so much that we think a lot of Prell. It’s like we were investors. And each of us invested his tiny bit of capital in all the others. When we lose one of us, we all of us lose a little of our capital. And we none of us ever really had that much to invest, you see.”

“ ‘Do not ask for whom the bell tolls,’ ” Curran quoted.

“John Donne, sure,” Landers grinned wolfishly. “But that’s shit. And that’s not what it is with us. That’s abstract. And it’s poetry. That’s all of humanity. We’re not all of humanity. And we don’t give a shit about all of humanity. We probably don’t give much of a shit about each other, really. It’s just that that’s all the capital we have.

“So,” he said finally, “we’re perfectly willing to get up a petition and all of us sign it, and turn it over to whoever you say turn it over to, and to hell with the consequences. If it means going to the stockade, we’d all sign it cheerfully anyhow. If by doing it, it would help at all to save Prell’s leg.”

Curran’s face was white. And he got to his feet, stiffly. But he didn’t look angry. Landers wondered if he had gone too far somewhere, and forgotten to be tactful and polite.

“Do you realize it may very well kill him?” Curran said. “It’s getting that close. Do you want him dead?”

“I guess all of us would say let the poor son of a bitch die that way, if that’s the way he wants to die. Let him die the way he wants it. It’s about all he’s got left. Besides, he’s been nearly dead before. All of us have.”

“I can’t promise anything, Sgt Landers,” Curran said mildly. “But I can tell you that he’ll get every chance we can give him. Nobody here wants to take his leg off. But we may have to.”

“Then you don’t want us to get up the petition?”

“Get it up and sign it, if you want to. If it makes you feel any better. But I think it would serve absolutely no use with Col Stevens.”

Outside, Landers leaned against the wall of the corridor along the surgeries to collect his wits. The other personality was gone. For a while he had actively been another person in the little office. That had never happened to him before. He did not know whether what he had done was helpful or detrimental. Or whether it had no effect. After a while, he started hobbling back.

Back in the rec center he told Strange the whole story, with Curran’s responses. He left out only his metaphor of the investors, which now sounded high-toned and dumb to him, and he didn’t mention that feeling of another personality. Between them, he and Strange were unable to deduce whether the visit had helped at all.

“Maybe it’ll make him think about it a little,” Strange said sourly.

Across the basketball floor in the corner, the girl Carol Firebaugh motioned to Landers to come over, that she wanted to talk to him. Grimly Landers stared at her and slowly shook his head and turned away back to Strange.

“I just wish to hell Winch was here,” Strange said sorrowfully. “If only f*cking Winch was here.”

“I thought Winch hated Prell,” Landers said.

“He does. I mean, he doesn’t like him,” Strange said. “But that wouldn’t matter.”

When Strange asked him to come, Landers left and went with him to the snack bar to see the others from the company. Strange had decided they would make up the petition and sign it, anyway. Landers did not bother to say good-by to Carol Firebaugh, or even wave at her.

When the two of them went to report to Prell about the interview with Curran, Prell listened in silence until they were finished. Their inconclusive ending. Then still without a word he turned his head to the side and two tears squeezed out from under his closed lids. After a minute they decided to sneak away.

“I’m sorry, buddies,” Prell called after them in a frog’s croak. “I’m not quite myself. This thing’s got me all worn down.”

“Winch would know what to do,” Strange said softly as he closed the ward door.





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