Chapter 211: Visiting The Wounded
While Doolittle and his pilots were fighting bloody battles in the skies, far behind in a hospital bed in the field hospital inside Wutaixian county town, Holder was enjoying a rare moment of leisure.
The ward was filled with the faint smell of disinfectant, sunlight filtering through the wooden lattice window pasted with window paper, sprinkling onto Holder’s bed covered with a clean white sheet, bringing a touch of warmth.
He was leaning against the headboard, his back supported by a soft pillow, holding an enamel bowl in his hand, filled with steaming lean meat porridge and a small dish of pickled vegetables.
These past few days, Holder’s mood had been unprecedentedly relaxed.
Ever since being sent to this field hospital run by the Shanxi militia and, under the careful care of the young female doctor named Song Mei, starting injections of that miraculous drug called “penicillin,” the severe pneumonia that had long tormented him, keeping him awake at night and making breathing difficult, had begun to improve at a visible speed.
Just this morning during rounds, the slender and beautiful female doctor had given him good news.
“Mr. Holder, your lung infection has been effectively controlled, and your temperature has returned to normal.”
Song Mei carefully listened to his lungs with a stethoscope while saying fluently in English, “From the X-ray, the inflammation is also receding. If all goes well, after about ten more days of consolidation treatment, your treatment can end. Then, with some more rest, you’ll soon be able to return to the unit.”
“Return to the unit.” These four words were undoubtedly the greatest gospel for a soldier eager for battle.
Holder was almost overjoyed, thanking her repeatedly, even wanting to give this Chinese female doctor who had saved his life a warm hug, but thinking of the identity of the beautiful and moving female doctor before him, he instantly calmed down.
He had no doubt that if he dared to do anything improper to this doctor, the boss would unhesitatingly cut off his two balls.
At this moment, he sipped the porridge in small mouthfuls while savoring Dr. Song Mei’s words, his mood so good that he almost wanted to hum a tune.
He even began planning that once he recovered, he must find a way to convince the boss to open a soldiers’ club next to the armored unit’s camp. Why could Jack, Tom, and those guys have fun in the pilots’ club while us tankers had to miserably live in tents with no fun at all.
However, just as he was planning how to convince the boss, waves of shrill, piercing, heart-wrenching alarm sounds came from the direction of the distant airport like ghosts! That sound was so familiar that it instantly made this battle-hardened veteran break out in goosebumps!
“Air raid! It’s the air raid alarm!” Holder immediately bounced up from the bed, wanting to rush out to see what was happening. But soon, nurses came in to soothe the patients, telling them not to panic, that the hospital had an air-raid shelter, and the air raid target was the airport, not the hospital.
Although soothed and calmed down, Holder could still clearly hear the distant, faint yet soul-shaking explosions and the unique, air-tearing screech of airplane engines!
“Shit, damn Japanese bastards!” Holder cursed viciously.
Although he very much wanted to go out and help, reason overcame impulse.
He knew very well that with his current physical condition, going would only cause trouble.
For the entire afternoon, he pricked up his ears, tensely listening to every faint sound from the distance, until the all-clear sounded and the sky returned to calm. But the worry in his heart had not diminished at all.
“Knock knock knock—”
In the evening, a light knock on the door interrupted Holder’s thoughts.
“Come in!” Holder called out.
The ward door was pushed open, and two familiar figures walked in: it was Fu’er and John.
Fu’er’s uniform still carried the distinctive oil smell of tankers, his face showing a trace of fatigue, but his eyes sparkled with irrepressible excitement.
John was relatively cleaner, but worry was hard to hide between his brows.
“Hey! Holder! You look pretty good, buddy!” Fu’er greeted loudly as soon as he entered, casually tossing a pack of cigarettes in his hand to Holder.
“Fu’er! John! How come you’re here?” Holder sat up straight in surprise, catching the cigarettes, “Sit! Sit!”
“To check on how our patient is recovering.” John pulled over a stool and sat down, then smiled faintly, “And… to tell you some things.”
Looking at their expressions, Holder’s heart sank, a bad premonition surging up: “Is it… today’s air raid… how did it go? Are the guys all okay?”
Fu’er and John exchanged a glance, Fu’er sighed, the excitement on his face fading quite a bit.
“Holder, don’t worry, it’s not as bad as you think.” Fu’er patted his shoulder, “At noon today, the little Japs went crazy, sending at least thirty or forty planes to bomb Jiuqu River!
Shit… those Japanese monkeys were like mad, deploying dozens of fighters, trying to bomb our airport to bits.
Luckily Doolittle and Jack came through, not only driving them off but also shooting down over twenty of their planes.”
Fu’er began vividly describing yesterday’s thrilling air battle to Holder with spittle flying.
He talked about how the P-47 formation, led by Doolittle, scrambled urgently, how they used BZ tactics to catch the Japanese off guard, how One-Eyed Jack and Tom engaged in desperate dogfights with the Japanese ace pilots, how the sky was covered with cannon fire and wreckage…
Holder listened with his heart pounding, fine beads of sweat seeping from his forehead.
Although he wasn’t a pilot, from Fu’er’s vivid description, he could fully imagine the ferocity of that air battle!
“…In the end, we took down over twenty of their planes! Roar shit… so satisfying!” Fu’er got excited again here, waving his fist, “But… we lost four ‘Thunderbolts’ ourselves… Tom and Jack got some minor injuries.”
………..
Meanwhile, in the rudimentary medical room at Jiuqu River Airport, the air was similarly filled with the strong smell of disinfectant and blood, but the atmosphere was completely different from the relative calm in Holder’s ward.
“Ow… easy! Easy! Susan! Damn it, this is flesh, not freaking airplane skin! It hurts!!
Can’t you give me some anesthetic before stitching?”
Exaggerated and somewhat comical cries of pain came from Tom’s mouth, as he sat shirtless on a wooden chair, grimacing.
On his bronze-colored arm, covered with small scars and muscle lines, there was a wound about three or four inches long, with flesh turned outward and still slightly oozing blood, looking particularly ferocious under the bright light.
This wound was from today’s dogfight with Colonel Yi E Che’er, grazed by fragments after the enemy’s machine gun bullets shattered the canopy.
Standing beside Tom, holding a curved needle already threaded with medical suture and a pair of hemostats, was the battlefield nurse named Susan.
Susan, in her early twenties, wore a white nurse uniform, her golden short hair neatly tied back, revealing a smooth forehead and a pair of calm, focused blue eyes.
Her features weren’t stunningly beautiful, but together they exuded a spirited and capable air. At this moment, she frowned slightly, ignoring Tom’s pig-like howls, her hands moving without pause, skillfully and precisely debriding and suturing the wound.
“Shut up! Tom! If you keep squealing like a girl, I’ll sew your mouth shut too!” Susan scolded coldly without looking up, but her needlework remained steady.
Her fingers danced nimbly, every pierce and pull precise and decisive, clearly the mark of an experienced nurse.
Tom, rebuked mercilessly by Susan, deflated like a punctured ball, his voice dropping to suppressed “hiss hiss” gasps.
He didn’t even dare look at Susan’s currently “fierce” pretty face, nor at the scalp-numbing suturing on his arm, only tightly closing his eyes and turning his head away hard, as if that could lessen the pain.
This wasn’t because Tom was timid or afraid of pain.
As a pilot brave enough to come to a foreign land to make his fortune, he had long grown indifferent to life and death; breaking a few bones or getting grazed by bullets was routine for him.
But the scene of a young woman threading a needle through his flesh like this was just too… too damn weird and creepy! Especially without anesthetic（or rather, the airport medical room’s anesthetic reserves were extremely limited, so this kind of “minor injury” usually wasn’t worth using）.
The clear sensation of the needle piercing skin, penetrating muscle, and the suture pulling through flesh, plus Susan’s close-up face, focused to the point of coldness, sent shivers from the depths of Tom’s soul.
He’d rather dogfight the Japanese “Hien” fighters for three hundred rounds than endure one more second of this “gentle” torture!
“Hiss… Susan… I mean… is this sewing skill from your grandma who patches clothes?” Tom tried to joke to ease his tension and pain, but his voice was distorted from holding back the agony.
Susan ignored his quips, and after finishing a stitch, clamped the suture with hemostats, then snipped the end with small scissors, clean and neat.
“Alright, stop yapping. Bear it, almost done.”
Susan finally spoke, her voice still cool, but upon close listening, a bit softer than before, “This cut isn’t deep, but it’s long and ragged at the edges. If not stitched properly, it’ll get infected, and then you’ll be keeping Holder company in the field hospital for months.”
Hearing “Holder” and “field hospital,” Tom shivered instantly.
He’d heard that kid Holder nearly croaked from pneumonia; he came to China for treatment. Tom didn’t want to end up there for a minor wound and risk catching whatever from Holder; he’d have nowhere to cry.
“No… no… I don’t want to go to that hellhole.” Tom said hurriedly, his tone softening, “Susan… good Susan… go easy… I promise not to yell…”
Susan’s lips seemed to twitch upward slightly, but she quickly composed herself. She took a cotton ball soaked in disinfectant alcohol and carefully wiped the blood around the sutured wound, the icy sting making Tom grimace again.
Just as Susan expertly tied the final surgical knot, meticulously cleaned the freshly “meticulously sewn,” now slightly swollen and red wound on Tom’s arm with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball, and was about to bandage it with gauze, the flimsy wooden door of the medical room creaked open again.
A young blonde woman also in nurse uniform, but with a small potion bottle badge on her chest, appearing more gentle and refined, huffed and puffed as she ran in hugging a half-person-high heavy wooden box. Fine sweat beaded on her nose tip, a few sweat-dampened golden strands stuck to her cheeks, her chest heaving from the hurried run, her ample curves faintly visible under the somewhat thin nurse uniform.
“Hey… Susan! Huff… huff…” This pharmacist named Margaret thumped the wooden box printed with a Red Cross and some English words onto the empty space in the center of the medical room, then bent over with hands on knees, gasping, “This… this is from the boss… just sent from the county town… the latest batch of disinfectants and… and anesthetics! I… I’ll leave it here, remember to inventory later.”
Margaret wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand while speaking, then straightened up, showing a slightly apologetic smile: “Sorry, Susan, got delayed on the road, the delivery truck broke down halfway, we had to get porters to carry these treasures back.”
Susan nodded upon hearing this, saying, “Thanks for the hard work, Margaret. These arrive just in time. I thought our supplies would dwindle bit by bit with no refill, didn’t expect the boss to be so thoughtful.” As she spoke, she walked over and unlatched the wooden box.
“Clatter—”
With the lid opened, a full box of colorful liquids in glass bottles, rolls of bandages, and small metal instruments wrapped in oil paper immediately came into view.
Among them, the most eye-catching were several neat rows of small ampoules labeled “morphine”（Morphine）or “novocain”（Novocain, a local anesthetic）.
Sunlight through the window gleamed on the crystal-clear glass bottles, reflecting points of light. In Tom’s pain-dulled eyes, these usually unremarkable vials now glowed with holy radiance!
Anesthetics!
A whole big box!
Tom’s eyes, glazed from pain, widened round as saucers upon seeing the familiar anesthetic labels in the box, like he’d seen a ghost! He blinked in disbelief, then whipped his head around, staring deathly at Susan who was about to bandage his wound with gauze and tape.
He got it!
He totally got it!
This prim and proper-looking woman who sewed with ruthless precision… she did it on purpose!
She must have known this batch of anesthetics was arriving soon, but insisted on sewing his arm full of holes without any numbing first!
This was outright revenge! Abuse! Cruel torment of a hero fresh from bloody sky battles!
An indescribable surge of rage and humiliation erupted from Tom’s chest like a volcano!
“Shit…”
A howl more shrill, more despairing, more tear-laden than any before burst from Tom’s mouth, echoing through the medical room, startling even the ground crew passing outside, who all turned to look.
“Su… san… you… you devil!! You cold-blooded… heartless… sadist!!” Tom pointed at Susan, his voice shrill and hoarse from extreme anger and grievance, tears welling in his eyes, “You knew there was anesthetic! You knew! But you… you… awoo… my arm… my flesh…”
He howled while clutching his freshly “tormented” arm with his good hand.
Susan was startled by Tom’s sudden outburst; she looked at him in astonishment, then at the full box of meds on the floor, especially the prominent anesthetic vials, her lips twitching involuntarily.
On her calm face, a rare flicker of… uh… guilt?
“Ahem…” Susan cleared her throat, trying to put on a stern face, but her eyes darted away, avoiding Tom’s “accusing” gaze, “Tom… you have to know, anesthetics are precious strategic supplies, can’t be wasted casually.
Your little wound… uh… actually not that little… but it’s superficial, just tough it out. Plus, a bit of pain helps keep you alert, reminds you of the lesson from this fight, so you won’t be so careless next time.”
This speech was righteous and high-sounding, but to Tom’s ears, it was like pouring oil on the fire!
“A bit of pain?!”
“Helps keep you alert?!”
“Reminds you of the lesson?!”
He was about to explode!
“Fuck shit… I… I’ll fight you!!” Tom lurched up from the chair, roaring to pounce at Susan, but as soon as he moved, a stabbing pain shot from the fresh wound, making him “ow” and flop back into the chair, tears nearly spilling.
Nearby Margaret, watching this dramatic scene, was first puzzled, but quickly caught on, seeing Susan’s unnatural expression and Tom’s furious grief; she couldn’t help but “pfft” with laughter.
But she soon realized the impropriety, hastily covering her mouth, stifling laughs, shoulders shaking as she struggled to hold it in.
Susan shot a fierce glare at the giggling Margaret, then took a deep breath, regaining her calm demeanor, walked to Tom, looked down at him imposingly, and said in an unquestionable tone:
“Enough howling! Wound’s stitched, now for bandaging. If you keep thrashing and it splits or infects, you’ll really end up in the field hospital with Holder. Then, forget anesthetics; even if you beg me to stitch you, I won’t have time!”
