After the battle, it was impossible to tell Obadiah Monk’s age. His army papers said 19 years old. Handsome and confidant, he had been sent to the Front and left it after a very short time. One minute he had been running forward, rifle poised to attack as he had been taught, the next he was on the ground in the mud.
Through red, Obadiah saw two shadowed men above grimace as they looked at him. He felt them lift him onto a stretcher, cold, damp. He could not cry out. All was silent pain and his body bumping through deafening sounds. Then Obadiah’s eyes met soft gauze and cotton wool and time lost its meaning.
Through ominous stillnesses, sounds of swishing water and the deep throat grind of engines, Obadiah heard soft voices of sympathy but no-one offered a drink or a cigarette. Finally he felt the cold, fresh, tightness of cotton sheets but could not smell their cleanliness. And he longed for the fresh fragrances of home and his mother.
A new voice broke with pain through Obadiah’s darkness and the gauze was lifted from his eyes. An army doctor in a brown uniform peered at him with an interested expression and a downward turn of mouth. The sister at his side in clean flowing whiteness would not meet Obadiah’s eyes but she held his hand. A feeling of doom passed through it.
Obadiah was taken to the operating theatre. When he awoke, his face felt small, boneless. The inevitable gauze left his eyes free and as he looked downwards he saw that it lay flat like a soft bed over his lower face. Where was his nose? His mouth felt wrong. It felt as if there was no jaw, no teeth, he could not speak and his tongue was limp. Thin tubes mysteriously went in and out of him.
The flowing white nurse flowed cool water into his mouth several times a day from a cup with a long spout. Each time, Obadiah placed his hand over her cool hand which held the cool cup. And he waited for her to place a small white pill on his floppy tongue to dissolve away the pain… and he tried to say thank you with his eyes… and his hands.
Then Obadiah began to stink. A pus filled stink. He knew it from the taught, recoiling face of the flowing white nurse when she lifted the gauze away. ‘Let me see myself,’ he tried to say with his hands, ‘let me see.’ But this was a ward without mirrors. Fear grasped Obadiah’s heart like a vice. His throat ached with trying to cry out.
Then days later, the army chaplain gave Obadiah a bible and… said he hoped the patient would find comfort. But Obadiah started scraping inside the black Bible with a long sharp finger nail. The flowing white nurse started to cut his nails in the interests of hygiene but Obadiah curled his fingers tightly into his palms. So she gave up.
For days and days Obadiah scraped. He clung to the black Bible, never letting anyone see the page at which it was open. He would not let it go. Those who saw Obadiah scraping suspected he felt that God had left him, deserted him. He was scratching God away. They felt sorry for him.
The army chaplain prayed for him.
Then the scratching stopped and the flowing white nurse felt relieved. Obadiah still clung to the Bible but his eyes had contentment in them. Then the flowing white nurse noticed that Obadiah’s pain was gradually increasing despite the pills. She could sense his agony. She could not understand it. The brown doctor shrugged and prescribed more pills.
After a long timelessness, Obadiah Monk… just died. The flowing white nurse found him one morning clutching the black Bible on his chest; his head lolled to one side. White foam ran thinly from under loosened gauze. The flowing white nurse moved away his hands with her cool hands and lifted the Bible from his chest. It was open and inside she saw a little tattered cavity; scraped away, no doubt, by a sharp finger nail. Inside was a single pill, one that Obadiah had missed; the last of all those saved over weeks to take away his pain in one massive dose.
© Andrea Sarginson
2015
