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quigonejinnIn the mornings, it is cold. In the afternoons, it is stiflingly hot.
You learn this in patches, in fragments and the moments when you struggle awake. It is cold. It is hot. Someone is helping you to the chamberpot. There is a great deal of pain, but it is not clear whether you are the one in pain, or whether it is someone else. In a way, it seems that you have been in this infirmary for weeks. For a while, it is hot, and then, it is cold despite the fact that inside you, it is so warm that your lungs do not fill with air the way that you wish them to.
You are surprised when the Dago doctor communicates, through signs, that it has only been two days since the Sutherland surrendered.
...
All in all, you are with the Frogs at Rosas Bay for a little more than three weeks. The chills and fever ease, and your sleep becomes easier. Your appetite returns, even for abominably bad Dago sickroom gruel, and you recover enough to take interest in your surroundings. The orderly who comes by twice each day is, you discover, an English boy. From Dorset. He had been on the Blazer before it was reclaimed by the French, and he brings you the news and tells you the weather, because you are abominably far from a window or any sort of fresh air at all.
Because you are an officer, you have a space partitioned by sheets that hang from the ceiling. A few days after the last set of fevers, you are able to turn from side to side, to observe and see things. Soon after that, with assistance, you are able to sit up for periods of time before you become too dizzy and must lie back down again.
One night, you hear a distant roaring: you realize, after listening, that it is the sound of guns roaring far overhead, and for an instant, you feel almost unbearably sorry for yourself.
...
Of course you remember when your foot was amputated.
...
He is a small, dark man. There was an examination, previously, that did not hurt as much as you expected it would, and you are only guessing at the fact that he is a Spaniard because you understand none of what he is saying. He has limited English. You have limited whatever-it-is that he speaks, but he nevertheless directs your attention down to the mass on the end of your leg. He makes a slicing motion by turning hand onto its side and making a sawing motion somewhat below your knee.
You have spent your life at sea, and you know this is the invariable result of a cannonball striking flesh: if there is not a loss of blood causing immediate death, it is then only a a question of whether the surgeon carries off part of your flesh, or fever and gangrene carry away all of you.
There is a vague memory of being desperate and gesturing at the doctor, but you are not sure whether you actually agreed or not.
What is clear, though, is that at a certain point afterwards, attendants come into your partition, pick up your stretcher, and move you into another room. The motion makes you dizzy, nauseous. It forces you to close your eyes, and when the stretcher has been set down and when you open your eyes again, the doctor holds up a bottle at you. It is rum. Through signs, the doctor indicates that if you should like, you may drink from it.
...
You have spent all your adult life at sea; more than half of it has been at war, and you know what happens to officers who have been captured by the enemy -- you will stay here at Rosas until you are exchanged or the war ends or you die. Those are the possible options; even if you had not lost your foot, your career is over if you die or the war ends. And even if you had not lost your foot, if it takes any great period of time to be exchanged, your career will be over regardless, for you will likely be mustered out. If you are not mustered out, you will die a lieutenant.
Fortunately, you are spared the details of this. The knowledge to calculate it is certainly in your head, and you certainly have the ability, but it is not your temperament. Additionally, three weeks at Rosas Bay are occupied by matters of the body. Your appetite is returning. The pain is diminishing, though the most infernal itch in your foot has appeared.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-21 01:57 pm (UTC)and amputation, too!!!
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Date: 2007-02-21 09:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-02-22 01:12 am (UTC)*GG*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-21 03:18 pm (UTC)I love the part in the beginning with the chamberpot. Because. It was considered good medical practice after an amputation to keep the patient's bowels open for several days. With clysters. O.o
And yes. Itches infernally. XD
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-21 06:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-21 07:58 pm (UTC)And no Gerard fic could ever equal the sheer awesomeness of that one line. XD
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