The Return of the Indian (6 page)

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Most unwise.”

Omri’s heart sank. “Couldn’t—couldn’t
you
do it?”

The Matron started violently. “I—? Perform the task of a surgeon? Such a thing would be unthinkable. The etiquette of the medical profession absolutely forbids it.”

“But if it didn’t?” “What do you mean?”

“I mean—
could
you do it, if you were allowed to?”

“‘Allowed to’! It is not a matter of permission.”

“Well, then?—You see,” Omri said, and now the same imploring note crept into his voice as had been in Bright Stars’ eyes, “there’s no one else.”

Matron turned and stared down at Little Bear for a long moment.

“But I have no equipment,” she said at last.

Patrick threw back his head with a groan. “That’s true
… Of course! No one can operate without instruments! Why didn’t we think of that?”

“I did think of it,” said Omri. “We’ve got instruments. Sort of.”

Patrick turned to gape at him. “Where?”

For answer, Omri reached again for the plastic figure which had once been Tommy. Silently he put him back into the cupboard and turned the key. When he opened the door, there once again was the neat pile of clothes, the boots—and the bag with the red cross on it.

“You’re
brilliant
,” breathed Patrick as Omri delicately picked up the tiny object. With his free hand he overturned one of the boxes in which the plastic figures had been stored, spread Kleenex on it, and set the bag in the middle.

Matron bustled over with a swish of starched apron. She started a little at the sight of the battered old bag, but not half as much as she did when she opened it. She fairly reeled back.

“Are you seriously suggesting that I pull bullets out of a man’s back with this antiquated collection of museum pieces!” she almost shrieked.

“Are they so very different from what you use today?” asked Omri desperately.

Matron gingerly plucked a tiny hypodermic syringe from the bag and held it up like a dead rat between finger and thumb.

“Look at it! Just look! I ask you!”

“Matron,” Omri said earnestly. “You don’t seem to understand.
That’s all there is.
It’s the best we can manage. If you can’t do it, he’ll die. Our friend. Please! All we ask is that you try.”

Matron gave Omri an enigmatic look. Then she took hold of Tommy’s bag and briskly emptied it on the padded table. All sorts of microscopic things came out. The boys could just make out the rolls of bandages, dressings, dark bottles, and instruments packed in flat cases. She examined these very minutely and then straightened up and said, “Of course this is some kind of nightmare. But even in nightmares, it is my policy to do my best.”

Omri and Patrick clutched each other.

“You mean, you’ll do it?”

“If you can provide me with an operating table, a bright light, some disinfectant, and a strong cup of tea.”

Omri could, and did, provide all those things. By this time it was one o’clock in the morning and the whole household was fast asleep, but he tiptoed downstairs and fetched disinfectant, cotton, some clean handkerchiefs, and an electric kettleful of boiling water. He also detached the cap from a tube of toothpaste and washed it out. That was for a mug. Then he made some strong tea with a tea bag and added milk and sugar. He hoped she
took sugar. He carried all this on a tray up the stairs very quietly.

When he returned to his room, Patrick had fixed up the box as an operating table. Omri’s bedside lamp, which had a flexible neck and a 100-watt bulb—his mother had a thing about reading in a bad light—had been moved onto the chest. The light shone straight down onto the table, making no shadows. There was Kleenex spread everywhere. It looked very hygienic. Little Bear had already been laid on the table, and Matron, armed with a tiny pair of scissors, was soon cutting up a handkerchief to make a surgical gown for herself and an operating sheet for Little Bear.

“I shall need an assistant,” she said briskly. “What about the Indian girl?”

“She doesn’t speak much English.”

“We’ll see. She looks bright enough.” She beckoned Bright Stars, who was already at her elbow. “How!” she said in a loud voice. Bright Stars looked puzzled. “When I point—you give,” Matron went on. Bright Stars nodded intently.

“You say. I do.”

Omri was directed to pour a drop of disinfectant and some of the boiling water into a small tin lid Patrick had prized off a box of candy-drops. The water turned white. Matron dropped the instruments in, and after some moments, poured off the liquid into another lid. Meanwhile, Omri was dipping up a few drops of tea into the tooth-paste cap.

“Ah! Thank you, clear,” she said when she saw it. She seemed quite cheerful now. She picked up the cap in both hands. It was, to her, almost the size of a bucket, but she drank most of it at one go, and smacked her lips. “That’s more like it! What spinach is to Popeye, tea is to me! Now then, let’s get on with it.”

The boys saw very little of the operation itself. The light shone straight down on the white-covered table. Matron stood with her back to them, working silently. Every now and then she would point at something on the tray. Bright Stars would swiftly pick it up and hand it to her. Only once or twice did she fumble, and then Matron would snap her fingers impatiently. For a long time there was not a sound except the occasional stamp of the pony’s foot or the clink of metal.

Then Matron said, “I do believe we’re in luck.”

The boys, who had been afraid to come too close, though Matron had made them both tie handkerchiefs around their faces, leaned forward.

“One—er—ball went in one side and straight out the other. Missed his lung by a hairbreadth, I’m thankful to say. I’ve patched that up as best I could. Now I’m playing hide-and-seek with the other one. I think it’s lodged against his shoulder blade. Not far in. I … think … I’ve … got it. Yes!” She made a sharp movement and then held up a minute pair of tweezers. Whatever they held was far too small to see, but the tips were red and Omri shuddered. Matron dropped the bit of metal into the tray with a ping. Suddenly she began to laugh.

“Whatever would St. Thomas’s surgical staff say if they could see me now!” she gurgled.

“Will he be okay?” Omri asked breathlessly.

“Oh, I think so! Yes, indeed! He’s a very lucky lad, is your Indian friend.”

“We’re all lucky to have found you,” said Omri sincerely.

Matron was stripping the wrapper off a large field dressing. “First World War dressings,” she was murmuring. “Amazing how they’ve lasted! As if they were made last week!”

She indicated to Bright Stars that she should help her apply it to Little Bear’s back. Then they bandaged him between them, and after that she wiped her perspiring face on a scrap of cotton.

“You can turn the light off now,” she said. “Phew! I’m hot.” Her towering cap was collapsing like an ice palace, but she didn’t seem to care. “Any more tea?—What an experience! Wouldn’t have missed it for the world. Always thought I could do simple ops as well as any of those fat cats … Oh dear, what
am
I saying?” And she chuckled again at her own disrespect to professional etiquette.

After swigging down another bucket of tea and making sure Bright Stars had some too, she checked Little Bear’s pulse, gave Bright Stars some simple instructions, and then said, “Gentlemen, I think, if you don’t mind, I’d better be getting back to St. Thomas’s. Goodness alone
knows how they’re coping without me! I’m afraid the unthinkable has happened and I have fallen asleep on duty … I will simply never live it down.”

She shook hands with Bright Stars, and then gave her a pat—not on her shoulder, oddly, but on her stomach.

“Take care of your husband,” she said. “And take care of yourself, too.” Bright Stars looked shy. “You’ll have a nice surprise for him if he doesn’t come to very soon!” Then she waved to the boys, straightened her wilted cap and, hiking up her skirt over her black stockings, clambered back into the cupboard.

When she’d gone, Omri watched Bright Stars settling down at Little Bear’s side. He was still lying on the “table,” warmly wrapped up and sleeping soundly.

“What did she mean about a surprise?” he asked Patrick, who was yawning hugely.

“Oh, come on! Didn’t you notice?”

“Notice what?”

“Her big belly. She’s going to have a baby.”

“A baby! Wow! That’d be great!”

“Are you nuts? That’s all we need!”

“Indian women manage by themselves,” said Omri, who’d read about it. “They don’t make any fuss. Not like our mothers.”

“I should think any mother’d make a fuss if she had to have you,” said Patrick. “Where do I kip?”

Omri was beginning to feel exhausted too, but it seemed heartless to go to sleep.

“Do you think we should?”

“She said he’d be quite okay. She told Bright Stars what to do. There’s not much we can do, anyway. Look, can I just put these cushions on the floor? I’m knackered.”

In three minutes he was flat out.

It took Omri a little longer. He crouched by the chest and stared at Little Bear and Bright Stars. She must be tired too, especially considering …

“Do you need anything, Bright Stars? Something to eat?”

She raised her tired eyes to him and gave a little nod.

“I’ll get you something!” he whispered.

Down he went once again. He didn’t turn on lights this time. The reflection from the kitchen light could be seen in his parents’ bedroom. He had no desire to explain to anyone what he was doing up at such an hour. The light from the streetlamp was enough to show him cake, bread, butter—

What was that?

Something had gone past the window. He’d seen it out of the corner of his eye. He froze. He could have sworn it was a man’s head. When he could unfreeze, he went to the window and looked out.

All he could see was Kitsa sitting on the sill. Which would have settled the matter, except for one thing. Her head was up, her ears were pricked—and not at Omri, but in the other direction.

Omri climbed the stairs with the food, feeling more than a little uneasy. It seemed to him, on reflection, that the head he had seen had shone in the streetlamp as if it had no hair.

Little Bear’s recovery was little short of miraculous. The operation was a complete success. By the next day he was sitting up, demanding food and other services, not particularly grateful for his deliverance and, in general, very much himself as Omri remembered him.

He was unable to hide his delight at seeing Omri again. He tried to conceal his feelings behind a mask of dignity, but through his wooden expression his black eyes gleamed and a grin kept twitching at his stern mouth.

“Omri grow much,” he remarked between slurps of a mug of hot instant soup. (There was a distinct shortage of toothpaste tops throughout the house, which Omri’s mother was to remark on.) “But still only boy. Not chief, like Little Bear.”

“Are you a real chief now?” Omri asked. He was sitting on the floor beside the chest, gazing in rapture at his little Indian, restored to him, and, almost, to health.

Little Bear nodded impressively. “Father die. Little Bear chief of tribe.”

Omri glanced at Bright Stars. How much had she told him of the tragedy which had overtaken their village? She seemed to understand his thought and signaled him quickly behind Little Bear’s back. Omri nodded. Much better not to say too much until Little Bear was stronger. He hadn’t asked any questions yet.

Patrick had stayed for breakfast and then, reluctantly, phoned his mother. He came back up to Omri’s room looking bleak.

“She says I’ve got to come back,” he said. “We’re leaving today. I asked if I could stay and come back later, but she said I have to leave here in an hour.”

Omri didn’t say anything. He didn’t see how Patrick could bear to leave. To make matters worse, Omri’s parents had particularly asked if he could stay over another night. They were going to a party that evening and would be home late. Adiel and Gillon would be out too. There’d be a baby-sitter of course, but she was a stodgy old lady, and Patrick would be company for Omri. Omri thought Patrick’s mother was being entirely unreasonable, and said so. Patrick was inclined to agree.

Meanwhile, they had this hour. They decided to spend it talking and doing things for the Indians. The first thing Little Bear asked for was his old longhouse, built by
himself when he’d been with Omri last year. Fortunately, Omri still had it, or what was left of it. It had been made on a seed tray packed with earth, but this had dried out in the interval, so that several of the upright posts had come adrift and some of the bark tiles, so carefully shaped by Little Bear and hung on the crosspieces, had shriveled and dropped off.

When Little Bear saw his derelict masterwork he had to be forcibly restrained from leaping out of bed immediately to repair it.

“How Omri let fall down? Why Omri not mend?” he shouted wrathfully.

Omri knew better than to argue.

“I couldn’t do it like you can,” he said. “My fingers are too big.”

“Too big!” agreed Little Bear darkly. He stared at the longhouse from his bed. Omri had spent the early hours, before anyone was awake, making him a better bed from two matchboxes, giving him a headboard to sit up against. His mind was roving in all directions, thinking of ways to make Little Bear and Bright Stars more comfortable. He still had the old tepee … As soon as the Indian was a bit better, he would probably prefer to use that, for privacy. Omri had fixed a ramp leading onto the seed tray, and Bright Stars had begun to go up and down it carrying bedding into the tepee, like a little bird making its nest. A fat little bird … Omri wondered, watching her stagger to and fro, how long it would be before her baby came.

He was busy giving her a water supply. It was a sort of pond. The container was the lid of a coffee jar, sunk into the earth of the seed tray near the tepee. He was now making a proper bucket out of one of the toothpaste caps, by piercing two holes in the sides with a needle heated red-hot in the flame of an old candle he’d found, and threading in a handle made from a bit of one of his mother’s fine hairpins. That would make it easier to carry. Of course, that was just the beginning of all the things that would be needed if they stayed long.