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"I'll be goddamned," Tex said. "I ain't never seen something so clean before.
Why, it's almost blue it's so white."
Timsen spat and washed his hands carefully with a new cake of soap and
started to boil the hypodermic and forceps. Then he bent over Peter Marlowe
and slapped his face a little.
"Hey, cobber!"
"Yes," Peter Marlowe said, weakly.
"I'm going to clean the wound, right?"
Peter Marlowe had to concentrate. "What?"
"I'm going to give you the hantitoxin  "
"I've got to get up to the hospital," he said drunkenly. "It's time now  cut
it  I'm telling you  " His spirit left him once more.
"Just as well," Timsen said.
When the hypodermic was sterilized, Timsen gave an injection of morphine.
"You help," he said brusquely to the King. "Keep the bloody sweat out of me
eyes." Obediently the King got a towel.
Timsen waited until the injection reacted, then he ripped off the old bandage
and laid the wound bare. "Jesus!" The whole wound area was puffy and purple
and green. "I think it's too late."
"My God," the King said. "No wonder the poor son of a bitch was crazy."
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Gritting his teeth, Timsen carefully cut away the worst of the rotted, putrid
skin and probed deep and washed the wound as clean as he could. Then he
sprinkled sulfa powder over it and neatly rebandaged it. When this was done,
he straightened and sighed. "My bleedin' back!" He looked at the purity of the
bandage, then turned to the King. "Got a piece of shirt?"
The King grabbed a shirt from the wall and gave it to him.
Timsen ripped the arm out and tore it into a rough bandage and wrapped it on
top of the bandage.
"What the hell's that for?" the King asked Wearily.
"Camouflage," Timsen said. "I suppose you think he can walk around the camp
with a nice new bandage on him and not get stopped by curious docs and MP's
asking him where the hell he got it?"
"Oh, I see."
"Well now, that's something!"
The King let the crack pass. He was too qualmish with the memory of Peter
Marlowe's arm and the smell of it and the blood and the clotted mucused
bandage that lay on the floor. "Hey Tex, get rid of that stinking thing."
"Who, me? Why  "
"Get rid of it."
Tex reluctantly picked up the bandage and went outside. He kicked the soft
earth away and buried it, and was sick. When he came back he said, "Thank God
I don't have to do this every day."
Timsen shakily filled the hypodermic and bent over Peter Marlowe's arm. "You
got to watch. Watch for Christ's sake," he growled as he saw the King turn
away. "If Steven doesn't come, maybe you'll have to do it. The injection's got
to be intravenous, right? You find the vein. Then you just stick the needle in
and inch out a little until you can pull some blood into the syringe. See?
Then you're sure the needle's in the vein. Once you're sure, you just squirt
the hantitoxin in. But not fast. Take about three minutes for the cc."
The King watched, revolted, until the needle was jerked out and Timsen
pressed a little piece of cotton wool over the puncture.
"Goddammit," the King said. "I'll never be able to do that."
"You want to let him die, okay." Timsen was sweating and nauseated too. "An'
my old man wanted me to be a doctor!" He pushed the King out of the way and
put his head out of the window and was violently sick. "Get me some coffee for
God's sake."
Peter Marlowe stirred and became half awake.
"You're going to be all right, cobber. You understand me?" Timsen bent over
him, gentle.
Peter Marlowe nodded myopically and lifted his arm. For a moment he stared at
it unbelievingly, then he muttered, "What happened? It's still on  it's still
on!"
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"Of course it's on," the King said proudly. "We just fixed you up. Antitoxin,
the lot. Me and Timsen!"
But Peter Marlowe only looked at him, his mouth working and no words coming
out. Then at length, he said in a whisper, "It's still on." He used his right [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]