waiting in the orchard.
The Bell touched down on the helipad at Hadassah Hospital and a medical
team was ready for him. One hour and fifty-three minutes after the
Mirage hit the irrigation canal David had passed through the sterile
lock into the special burns unit on the third floor of the hospital,
into a quiet and secluded little world where everybody wore masks and
long green sterile robes and the only contact with the outside world was
through the double-glazed windows and even the air he breathed was
scrubbed and cleaned and filtered.
However, David was enfolded in the soft dark clouds of morphine and he
did not hear the quiet voices of the masked figures as they worked over
him. It's third degree over the entire area - No attempt to clean it or
touch it, sister, not until it stabilizes. I am going to spray with
Epigard, and we'll go to intramuscular Tetracycline four-hourly against
infection, It will be two weeks before we dare touch it. 'Very well,
doctor. Oh, and sister, fifteen milligrams of morphine six hourly. We
are going to have a lot of pain with this one. Pain was infinity, an
endless ocean across which the wave-patterns marched relentlessly to
burst up the beaches of his soul. There were times when the surf of
pain ran high and each burst of it threatened to shatter his reason.
Again there were times when it was low, almost gentle in its throbbing
rhythm and he drifted far out upon the ocean of pain to where the
morphine mists enfolded him. Then the mists parted and a brazen sun
beat down upon his head, and he squirmed and writhed and cried out. His
skull seemed to bloat and swell until it must burst, and the open
nerve-ends screamed for surcease.
Then suddenly there was the sharply beloved sting of the needle in his
flesh, and the mists closed about him once more.
I don't like the look of this at all. Have we taken a culture, sister?
'Yes, doctor. 'What are we growing? 'I'm afraid it's strep. 'Yes. I
thought so. I think we'll change to Cloxacillin see if we get a better
response with that With the pain, David became aware of a smell. It was
the smell of carrion and f 3ings ong dead, the smell of vermin in dirty
blankets, of vomit and excreta, and the odour of wet garbage festering
in dark alleys, and at last he came to know that the smell was the
rotting of his own flesh as the bacteria of Streptococcus infection
attacked the expose tissue.
They fought it with the drugs, but now the pain was underlined with the
fevers of infection and the terrible burning thirsts which no amount of
liquids could slake.
With the fever came the nightmares and the fantasies to plague and goad
him even further beyond the limits of his endurance.
Joe - he cried out in his agony, try for the sun, Joe.
Break left now, Go! Go! And then he was sobbing from the ruined and
broken mouth. Oh, Joe! Oh God, no! Joe. Until the night-sister could
no longer bear it and she came hurrying with the syringe, and his
screams turned into babbling and then into the low whimper and moan of
the drug sleep. We'll start with the acriflavin dressings now, sister.
When they changed the dressings every forty-eight hours it was under
