herr_bookman (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
herr_bookman) wrote2015-01-03 01:36 pm
herr_bookman) wrote2015-01-03 01:36 pm
WWI - Hospital
We made it to the church that night, and were quickly loaded onto a horse-drawn cart to trek the rest of the journey to the field hospital. I fought for a place next to Dylan, and fought again so he could lay down rather than stand on a gunshot wound. I dozed--or swooned--for the majority of the trip. My blessed shot of morphia wore off halfway through, and I gasped every time the cart jostled my shoulder. By the time we arrived, my mouth was dry, and the skin around my eyes was tight from unshed tears. I fainted again.
When I woke up, I was on a cot in the field hospital, shirtless, with a tight, clean bandage around my shoulder and chest. I blindly searched for my glasses with my good hand. I found them on a nightstand, and was touched that someone had carefully cleaned the mud off of them.
The hospital was simply a large tent cordoned off in the middle by a curtain to divide the dying and not so dying. I greeted the news that I had a mild case of trench foot with neutrality, but was cheered by the knowledge that Dylan could walk again.
The doctors took the bullet out of my destroyed scapula, and I vomited for the entire day. They told me that my limb was useless, and it'd be years before I recovered function--if I did at all. The wound was also at risk for infection--which would kill me. I knew that infection mostly came from doctors digging around in there; bullets generally cauterize the meat with their heat. Many more surgeries were in my future, too.
The good news was that my busted nerve--which failed to work due to all the inflammation--earned me a medical discharge. I couldn't lift a gun anymore, so I didn't have to go back to the front.
Once my stomach settled, I shivered on my cot, emotionally numb. I'd lost the use of my arm. I'd lost it. Naturally I was happy I didn't have to return to the front again. But was it worth an arm? I'd never hold Rae or Oswin or Katya again, if I ever found the bar. I could still write, and feed myself, but I was functionally a cripple. I'd have to learn how to dress myself again. I'd slow everyone around me down. I didn't know what I'd do for a job. The inflammation of the nerves--pressed on by a bone--was almost worse than an amputation, since the arm was dead weight.
I lay there turned on my side because I didn't trust my shaky legs to hold me. My shoulder burned, and I felt naked without my boots on--it was the first time I'd taken them off in about two weeks, trench water and all. My feet were swollen and tingling and raw with blisters, but someone kind had bandaged them and applied warm compresses while I slept. The thin cotton trousers they'd dressed me in were luxurious, but cold. I felt naked in them, unprotected; they weren't as heavy as my uniform, or as comforting.
There were no doors at the field hospital, so I couldn’t hope to escape to Milliways. I knew that Bar was sometimes capricious and pulled people in wherever they stood, but I figured that wouldn’t happen to me.
The orderlies wanted me out of the field hospital by forty-eight hours and shipped by train to a real hospital in a civilian area of France--a town called Nancy--to convalesce. Before I left, I found Dylan, who would be sent to a different, closer place. We locked eyes and my lips parted on unspoken words. I leaned forward and reached out with my good hand, needing to know that this was real, that we were safe and--
"I'm not gonna kiss you, turd nugget," Dylan said, and I scoffed, turning away from his ugly mug. "But thanks for saving my life and all."
"I wouldn't kiss you to save mine," I said, wrinkling my nose. In a past life, I would have blushed and stammered, but now...
"I'm real proud of you, boot-licker. You hauling me out there saved both of us, y'know?" Dylan said, grinning weakly. “Don’t die out there, Autor.”
"I'll try," I said feebly, and waved. "You, too."
I rode in a Vista Liner--a wooden, open-air compartment packed with men--for the fourteen hour train trip from Neuve Chapelle to Nancy, France.
When I first arrived, I slept like the dead for full twenty-four hours. A clean, safe bed was a luxury untold, and I bawled like a baby about it when I woke up. The nurses were young and pretty and almost too clean, as was everything at the hospital. They were fresh faced with kind eyes, and I could barely speak to them. I often felt filthy in comparison with my lice--and when I first arrived, I hadn't washed in over a month, so I was covered in blood and gunpowder and trench dirt.
I also slept most of the first few days away; the nurses would come by with shots of morphia and knock me out. When I was more coherent, I spent as much time as I could barefoot, airing out my blisters. I ate, and played cards with the other patients one-handed, and discarded newspapers full of propaganda and talking of breakthroughs in the war. Ein Kampf um Rom was one of the only books they had available due to its nationalist tones. I didn't read it--I couldn't focus long enough to really read--and wondered what Teja would think.
I really appreciated the food--mostly turnips, but they were hot and prepared in creative ways--and the relative quiet. I spent a glorious six minutes in each shower, and took as many of them as I was allowed, letting the steaming hot water sluice down my bare back. Modern day shampoos like I used in the bar weren't slated to be invented until the 1920s; I was back to dissolving lye soap shavings in a basin of water and then applying that to my head.
One nurse I was very fond of named Amsel took the time to comb rubbing alcohol and apple cider vinegar into my hair to flush out the lice. She reminded me of Bonnie, and Amsel would regale us soldiers with stories about her late husband's welding business, or her many grandbabies. Sometimes she'd sing and tuck us in, and while she couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, the act brought tears to my eyes every time.
The hospital groaned at full capacity. Most of the beds were filled with amputee victims, and the beautiful orderlies flitted to one room after another like airy ballerinas, wheeling corpses out and fresh, bloodied warriors in. One death I saw--but by no means the worst--was from tetanus. The man's limbs stiffened and his eyes rolled back into his head. His name was Keller, and he was good at cards. He spasmed on his bed, whimpering and grunting through his locked jaw.
I called for help, and then turned my head and waited. I'd seen too many people die to shed tears over any one individual, or even be horrified anymore.
After a week, I could unbutton my uniform's shirt with my right hand. It was slow going--and frustrating at times. But I could do it. I was trying to look forward to learning how to make a bed--that was one of the first things they taught us in boot camp--and embraced the challenge rather than let it depress me.
I took walks around the grounds when my feet eventually felt up to walking, never tiring of seeing grass rather than muddy craters. I couldn't even hear the front anymore. It was unreal. What little I saw of the city of Nancy was gorgeous. The houses rested on the left bank of the river Meurthe, and the hospital was located in the center of the hustle and bustle. The Marne–Rhine Canal cut through the suburbs, and the city was surrounded by rolling, grassy hills.
We were technically within German borders here. Alsace-Lorraine, a region annexed by German forces after the Franco-Prussian war, clung to the Rhine for 120 miles north from Basle, and climbed the Vosges mountains. The regions were located in France's north-eastern corner, and shared borders with Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium.
Still, all the soldiers said they never felt like they were in Germany until they left Alsace-Lorraine. Despite a couple hundred years of forced Germanization, it was still too French--especially the cities of Nancy and Verdun. I loved it.
I carefully wrote letters home, talking about the food and the weather and anything funny I could eke out. I wrote letters to my friends from the bar with much the same content--happy truths rather than hard ones, and nothing about my useless arm in a sling to them, even though I had to tell my mother. Leaving that detail out in the letters I burned brought me some comfort.
I often thought about Dylan, wondering where he ended up, and if he was making progress towards walking again. I knew they'd send him back to the front. Provided he lived. Or didn't need an amputation. I could still hear his last words to me: "Don't die out there, Autor."
I straightened my shoulders, bolstered by an inner courage I didn’t know that I had. “To hell with that," I said aloud, startling the patient in the bed beside mine. "I’m going to live!” And I knew, somehow, that I could survive anything life could throw at me. That I could work with this damaged arm. I was a soldier, and by hook or by crook, I would live.
After that declaration, I was restless. I wanted to run--but I couldn't, so maybe another walk would suit. I squeezed my still-healing feet into the much-hated boots and opened the door to head outside.
When I woke up, I was on a cot in the field hospital, shirtless, with a tight, clean bandage around my shoulder and chest. I blindly searched for my glasses with my good hand. I found them on a nightstand, and was touched that someone had carefully cleaned the mud off of them.
The hospital was simply a large tent cordoned off in the middle by a curtain to divide the dying and not so dying. I greeted the news that I had a mild case of trench foot with neutrality, but was cheered by the knowledge that Dylan could walk again.
The doctors took the bullet out of my destroyed scapula, and I vomited for the entire day. They told me that my limb was useless, and it'd be years before I recovered function--if I did at all. The wound was also at risk for infection--which would kill me. I knew that infection mostly came from doctors digging around in there; bullets generally cauterize the meat with their heat. Many more surgeries were in my future, too.
The good news was that my busted nerve--which failed to work due to all the inflammation--earned me a medical discharge. I couldn't lift a gun anymore, so I didn't have to go back to the front.
Once my stomach settled, I shivered on my cot, emotionally numb. I'd lost the use of my arm. I'd lost it. Naturally I was happy I didn't have to return to the front again. But was it worth an arm? I'd never hold Rae or Oswin or Katya again, if I ever found the bar. I could still write, and feed myself, but I was functionally a cripple. I'd have to learn how to dress myself again. I'd slow everyone around me down. I didn't know what I'd do for a job. The inflammation of the nerves--pressed on by a bone--was almost worse than an amputation, since the arm was dead weight.
I lay there turned on my side because I didn't trust my shaky legs to hold me. My shoulder burned, and I felt naked without my boots on--it was the first time I'd taken them off in about two weeks, trench water and all. My feet were swollen and tingling and raw with blisters, but someone kind had bandaged them and applied warm compresses while I slept. The thin cotton trousers they'd dressed me in were luxurious, but cold. I felt naked in them, unprotected; they weren't as heavy as my uniform, or as comforting.
There were no doors at the field hospital, so I couldn’t hope to escape to Milliways. I knew that Bar was sometimes capricious and pulled people in wherever they stood, but I figured that wouldn’t happen to me.
The orderlies wanted me out of the field hospital by forty-eight hours and shipped by train to a real hospital in a civilian area of France--a town called Nancy--to convalesce. Before I left, I found Dylan, who would be sent to a different, closer place. We locked eyes and my lips parted on unspoken words. I leaned forward and reached out with my good hand, needing to know that this was real, that we were safe and--
"I'm not gonna kiss you, turd nugget," Dylan said, and I scoffed, turning away from his ugly mug. "But thanks for saving my life and all."
"I wouldn't kiss you to save mine," I said, wrinkling my nose. In a past life, I would have blushed and stammered, but now...
"I'm real proud of you, boot-licker. You hauling me out there saved both of us, y'know?" Dylan said, grinning weakly. “Don’t die out there, Autor.”
"I'll try," I said feebly, and waved. "You, too."
I rode in a Vista Liner--a wooden, open-air compartment packed with men--for the fourteen hour train trip from Neuve Chapelle to Nancy, France.
When I first arrived, I slept like the dead for full twenty-four hours. A clean, safe bed was a luxury untold, and I bawled like a baby about it when I woke up. The nurses were young and pretty and almost too clean, as was everything at the hospital. They were fresh faced with kind eyes, and I could barely speak to them. I often felt filthy in comparison with my lice--and when I first arrived, I hadn't washed in over a month, so I was covered in blood and gunpowder and trench dirt.
I also slept most of the first few days away; the nurses would come by with shots of morphia and knock me out. When I was more coherent, I spent as much time as I could barefoot, airing out my blisters. I ate, and played cards with the other patients one-handed, and discarded newspapers full of propaganda and talking of breakthroughs in the war. Ein Kampf um Rom was one of the only books they had available due to its nationalist tones. I didn't read it--I couldn't focus long enough to really read--and wondered what Teja would think.
I really appreciated the food--mostly turnips, but they were hot and prepared in creative ways--and the relative quiet. I spent a glorious six minutes in each shower, and took as many of them as I was allowed, letting the steaming hot water sluice down my bare back. Modern day shampoos like I used in the bar weren't slated to be invented until the 1920s; I was back to dissolving lye soap shavings in a basin of water and then applying that to my head.
One nurse I was very fond of named Amsel took the time to comb rubbing alcohol and apple cider vinegar into my hair to flush out the lice. She reminded me of Bonnie, and Amsel would regale us soldiers with stories about her late husband's welding business, or her many grandbabies. Sometimes she'd sing and tuck us in, and while she couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, the act brought tears to my eyes every time.
The hospital groaned at full capacity. Most of the beds were filled with amputee victims, and the beautiful orderlies flitted to one room after another like airy ballerinas, wheeling corpses out and fresh, bloodied warriors in. One death I saw--but by no means the worst--was from tetanus. The man's limbs stiffened and his eyes rolled back into his head. His name was Keller, and he was good at cards. He spasmed on his bed, whimpering and grunting through his locked jaw.
I called for help, and then turned my head and waited. I'd seen too many people die to shed tears over any one individual, or even be horrified anymore.
After a week, I could unbutton my uniform's shirt with my right hand. It was slow going--and frustrating at times. But I could do it. I was trying to look forward to learning how to make a bed--that was one of the first things they taught us in boot camp--and embraced the challenge rather than let it depress me.
I took walks around the grounds when my feet eventually felt up to walking, never tiring of seeing grass rather than muddy craters. I couldn't even hear the front anymore. It was unreal. What little I saw of the city of Nancy was gorgeous. The houses rested on the left bank of the river Meurthe, and the hospital was located in the center of the hustle and bustle. The Marne–Rhine Canal cut through the suburbs, and the city was surrounded by rolling, grassy hills.
We were technically within German borders here. Alsace-Lorraine, a region annexed by German forces after the Franco-Prussian war, clung to the Rhine for 120 miles north from Basle, and climbed the Vosges mountains. The regions were located in France's north-eastern corner, and shared borders with Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium.
Still, all the soldiers said they never felt like they were in Germany until they left Alsace-Lorraine. Despite a couple hundred years of forced Germanization, it was still too French--especially the cities of Nancy and Verdun. I loved it.
I carefully wrote letters home, talking about the food and the weather and anything funny I could eke out. I wrote letters to my friends from the bar with much the same content--happy truths rather than hard ones, and nothing about my useless arm in a sling to them, even though I had to tell my mother. Leaving that detail out in the letters I burned brought me some comfort.
I often thought about Dylan, wondering where he ended up, and if he was making progress towards walking again. I knew they'd send him back to the front. Provided he lived. Or didn't need an amputation. I could still hear his last words to me: "Don't die out there, Autor."
I straightened my shoulders, bolstered by an inner courage I didn’t know that I had. “To hell with that," I said aloud, startling the patient in the bed beside mine. "I’m going to live!” And I knew, somehow, that I could survive anything life could throw at me. That I could work with this damaged arm. I was a soldier, and by hook or by crook, I would live.
After that declaration, I was restless. I wanted to run--but I couldn't, so maybe another walk would suit. I squeezed my still-healing feet into the much-hated boots and opened the door to head outside.