Author's Note: Sorry to all for the longer than usual waiting time for this chapter. I know that it is rather short but By July I will try to have the next chapter up….don't hold me to it though.
Duty & Dignity Chapter 3
Bandaging the man's chest was quite a difficult task. Mr. Hornblower was in such a dire need of air that his chest wouldn't lay still for him to bandage the tube without damaging the lung tissue. It seemed as though he was trying to be still but was losing the battle against his body. This man's life was hanging in the gallows; awaiting the inevitable pull that would suffocate and murder him. Blood continually leaked from the puncture site and Kennedy would finally get the bandage right and have to redo if again. The one thing he would give to Clive was that his help knew how to bandage mighty well.
Mr. Kennedy finally finished and had to return to the "Atropos", after quickly calculating the risk of hoisting the stretcher in with tackles or carrying it over a plank, left instructions for Clive on Mr. Hornblower's new health issues. Horatio would now need anti-infection meds and to have his wounds cleaned at least three times a day. With one last look Kennedy glanced over Hornblower and prayed the entire way in the longboat back to the "Atropos".
His chest hurt like hell. Barely a breath had made it into his lungs in the last half hour and it must be by shear luck that he hadn't slipped into unconsciousness or suffocated. Sitting upright was a hard task because of the lost leverage of his legs; the weight of pressure nearly sent him into spasms from the throbbing pain in his lower extremities. Was it possible for a human being to live through such utter torture? Did his comrades endure this every battle? Questions combated his exhausted mind and threatened to overcome his mental ability to assess his body's problem. His head was beginning to bob at the loss of air and he knew that he soon would lose his sanity and enter delirium if air were not provided to his lungs.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a man enter followed by Dr. Clive. This was an unknown figure and he seemed to be criticizing Clive for his abominable care of patients. The figure seemed to be answering to Dr. Kennedy; he whirled around in an instant and rushed over to his bed in four quick strides. Kennedy's hair was auburn brown, falling in uneven strands down his forehead, held together in the back by a black band. The color of his skin was an even tan, dark yet light. Though his most prominent feature were deep blue eyes, sparkling in the light cast by the rays of sun through the upper deck. Horatio's mind gathered all this in an instant.
An instant; such an immeasurable amount of time in which anything can happen or go wrong. His wounds were the result of an instant, his pain the result of an instant; even his conception that led to this insurmountable pain was the result of an instant. He could die in an instant, this is how he would wish to die, Horatio did not want to fade into oblivion with disease, he wanted to die in action with the wind on his face and the rain battering his broad cloth.
Dr. Kennedy seemed to be talking to him now, but he could not make out words and his eyesight started to blur. The doctor was now yelling for something and seemed to be under considerable stress. Sitting on a stool nearby the doctor straitened his stock while awaiting the tools he had sent for. Twitching his neck cloth must have been a habit as a child, one that he never grew out of. Pulling the stool closer he continued to procure words from his mind that neither Hornblower could understand in his mental state, nor Clive in his ignorance.
A knife abruptly cut through the skin covering his left lung and agony tormented his brain; breathe and feel pain, or hold his breath and die. The doctor was now thrusting some peculiar instrument down his lung. Suddenly Horatio could breathe, the obstruction was gone. Pain still fought the puncture mark but the pain was welcome as long as he had avoided the ever-nearing delirium. Delirium was new, pain he was long accustomed to.
The doctor was now bandaging his sweaty chest. Kennedy gave him a look that could be interpreted as understanding or judgment clouded with concern. This look gave way to a brick wall in his mind, one that thought all human beings judged one another on the spot, the wall that was built so nobody could tell his emotion; crumbling down in pieces. This look gave Horatio theories to ponder while fighting to survive the next few hours.
His cot was only a measly four feet away at most, yet he was too weary to even bring himself to fall upon it. Hornblower's case had brought back memories from the past, reveries he did not wish to dwell upon. The young man was familiar in a sense to him, perhaps even similar. Both him and Archie couldn't stand being off to the side when they could be of service. Yet, familiar seemed more appropriate. The brown hair and ovular face, which Kennedy had seen so often before, seemed apparent in this man's features.
Archie could not bring himself to become suspicious of this poor lad of a man, not when he would be his most critical patient, not when he might enter surgery with this man alive and screaming to be let from the torture chamber he would surely be in, not when he was as familiar to him as his own son. Not when he was as similar as his own son.