THE POSTMODERN MALADY OF DR. PETER HUDSON

PART III

The orderly, Private Elliott, did not want to disturb the Captain from taking a few minutes rest. God knows, thought Elliott, that man deserves it! He had worked feverishly for eighteen hours treating, as best he could, the bloodless, the limbless, the mindless, and the soulless, dragged from the field, and placed in the hospital as if their very lives depended upon it. Of course they did, literally, but history would teach us that all those lives were already lost.

This was the war where human life was not the most precious thing that would be deformed and destroyed, where the mutation of the human form into a muddy slime of sludge and shit was not, for all its potency, the most earth shattering resolution. Death was not the greatest enemy here, life did not matter, not human life nor individual life, but it was existence itself that was under threat.

The Captain pondered – from his small sanctuary, an office in a field hospital – no longer would one know what being human meant, not after this horror was finally ended. The Captain looked up from his thoughts, and though he could see Elliott through them, he still answered him, and Elliott, for all his trepidation, informed the Captain that another man had been brought in, missing an eye, and delirious from shock. It was a phenomenon the Captain had noticed in his time here, that the fact of just being here was the actual sickness, the disease; he would rather take a bullet next to suffering from it himself.

“I’ll do what I can, Elliott, in a moment.” The Captain’s tone was rough, barely audible, yet his consonants were clipped, and his speech polished. He stared at Elliott for just a second longer than one would politely expect, which unnerved the orderly, who wondered then if the Captain was not suffering from some shock himself. The stare was, for the Captain’s benefit, to take a little more of the man in front of him into his soul. He had worked alongside Elliott for several weeks, but taken little notice of who he really was. That was the Captain’s feeling, because the Captain felt there was something about this place that allowed such a thing to happen. It was perhaps a necessity in a place where death was demanded that one should detach oneself from the reality of that demand, and doubly so for the Captain was in the unenviable position of saving life, not taking it. Imagine the futility, if you can, against such insurmountable odds.

Elliott was handsome, tanned and at twenty-eight, a few years younger than the Captain. His hair was dark, straight, and parted from left to right – not unlike the Captain either. Elliott was eager to, even that was conveyed from just one look, but not eager like only a fool would be in such a place. No, Elliott had a keenness for life and knowledge, perhaps a desire to live through this, where many had resigned themselves to any exit God would grant them. Also, as the Captain had become gradually aware, Elliott was an educated man. It was in the voice, the organisation of language, and the manner. It made the uniform seem quite out of place, and so the Captain wondered, why was this man a Private, and not an officer?

“How did you end up here, Elliott?” he asked.

“How did any of us end up here, Sir?” replied the Private.

“An officer expects an answer, not a question, man,” replied the Captain, a little angrily – though this was probably due to fatigue more than dissatisfaction with the orderly, or his reply.

“I’m sorry, Sir, it’s just one can’t help but wonder. This war seems like an exercise, an exercise in using things up. Guns, ammunition, rockets, gas… human life… I can see why we would want to use up the former, but not at the expense of the latter. Life is constant, but not as easily replenished as ammunition. A generation cannot be created in a factory, can it, Sir?”

“Not without a generation to work that factory, no, it cannot. Where is this man, what is his name?”

“I don’t have a name for him, Sir, and it seems unlikely we’ll get one any time soon. He won’t speak.”