Combat Doctor by Marc Dauphin

Author:Marc Dauphin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2013-10-08T04:00:00+00:00

A colourful picture with some Canadian nurses: Lieutenant (N) Julie Harvey, Captain Joëlle Beaudoin, and Captain Caroline Cameron.

A pen wasn’t much, but if he filched something else, it might be a problem. So I asked the nurses to pose and smile while I took another picture from the same spot as the day before. They were decked out in bright yellow, white, and vivid pink that day.

“Keep an eye on the kid while I take a picture of the girls, will you, Jimmy?” But the kid had made me, and didn’t lift a finger at the proffered bait. As soon as I finished taking the picture, however, he raised his hand and pointed at my camera, saying “Gnh, gnh.” Well, I suppose you can’t do any better if half your tongue has been shot away and the other half is a raw wound. So, thinking he wanted to see the picture I had just taken, I showed him the screen on the camera. He didn’t give a damn about the picture, though. He wanted the camera. When I recovered from my surprise and told him no, he just shrugged and went back to writing with my pen. If I couldn’t provide him with a camera, he wasn’t the least bit interested in me.

A few days later, he was operated on again. They put an external fixator on what was left of his jaw. That’s an external device that keeps broken bones in position better than a cast. Besides, you can’t put a cast on a jaw. Nor is it recommended to put one over an open wound. An ex-fix goes on like this: you drill long, metallic pins into the good bone on each side of a fracture, and let them stick out through the skin so that it looks like you’ve been to a very sadistic acupuncturist. Then, you slide some metallic joints on the pins and insert rods that will connect the pins together, paralleling the skin. You then bolt the whole thing together tight, and with just the right angle that you need. The result looks like a building game we used to have in the fifties called Tinker Toys. So this poor kid had this metallic scaffolding sticking out from his jaw. Must not have been very comfortable, but it probably beat the hell out of having all those bone pieces loose in there, grinding against your gums, your cheek, and what’s left of your tongue.

Many people come to visit in a military hospital. VIPs, not-so-VIPs, commanders, chaplains, journalists, Red Cross staff, volunteers, family members — there was always somebody. Well, the kid sure knew how to play them all. The bullet that had gotten him had also removed some of the skin, so the OMF surgeon had had to cheat a little when putting him back together. The result was that his lower eyelid on that side had been a bit pulled down, which increased his lopsidedness. But if he never complained, he quickly figured out that we Westerners had a soft spot for children, especially injured ones.

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