A Fortunate Man Read Free

the doctor; his eyes focused. For him too the conclusion was nearer and this gave him the courage to be quieter. Suddenly it was silent. The men had stopped hammering but were still kneeling on the ground. They knelt and looked at the doctor. His hands are at home on a body. Even these new wounds which had not existed twenty minutes before were familiar to him. Within seconds of being beside the man he injected morphine. The three onlookers were relieved by the doctor’s presence. But now his very sureness made it seem to them that he was part of the accident: almost its accomplice.
    â€˜He had a chance,’ said one of the kneeling men, ‘when Harry here shouted but he went and turned about the wrong way.’
    The doctor set up the plasma for a transfusion into the arm. As he moved around, he explained what he was doing to try to reassure the others.
    â€˜I shouted at him,’ said Harry, ‘he could have got clear if he’d looked sharp.’
    â€˜He would have got clear like that,’ said the third.
    As the morphine worked, the wounded man’s face relaxed and his eyes closed. It was then as though the relief he felt was so intense that it reached the others.
    â€˜He’s lucky to be alive,’ said Harry.
    â€˜He could have got clear like that,’ said the third.
    The doctor asked them if they could shift the tree.
    â€˜I reckon we can if we are three now.’
    Nobody was kneeling any longer. The three woodsmen were standing, impatient to begin. The mist was getting whiter. The moisture was condensing on the half-empty bottle of plasma. The doctor noticed that this fractionally changed its colour, making it look yellower than normal.
    â€˜I want you to lift,’ he said, ‘while I put a splint on his leg.’
    When the wounded man felt the reverberations in the tree as they levered it, he began to moan again.
    â€˜We could injure him worse than ever,’ said Harry, ‘getting him out.’ He could see the crushed leg underneath like a dog killed on the road.
    â€˜Just hold it steady,’ said the doctor.
    Again the doctor, whom they knew so well, seemed the accomplice of disaster as he worked under the tree on the leg the fourth of them would lose.
    â€˜We’d never believed you’d got here so quick, doc,’ said the third.
    â€˜You know Sleepy Joe?’ asked the doctor. ‘He was trapped under a tree for twelve hours before any help came.’
    He gave instructions on how to lift the wounded man on to the door and then into the back of the Land Rover.
    â€˜You’ll be all right now Jack,’ said one of them to the wounded man whose face was as damp and pallid as the mist. The third touched his shoulder.
    The ambulance was waiting at the bridge. When it had driven off, Harry turned to the doctor confidentially.
    â€˜He’s lost his leg,’ he said, ‘hasn’t he?’
    â€˜No, he won’t lose his leg,’ said the doctor.
    The woodman walked slowly back up to the forest. As he climbed he put a hand on each thigh. He told the other two what the doctor had told him. As they worked there during the day stripping the tree, they noticed again and again the hollow in the ground where he had been trapped. The fallen leaves there were so dark and wet that it was impossible to distinguish the blood. But every time they noticed the place they questioned whether the doctor could be right.
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    She is a woman of about thirty-seven. There is just still about her the air of a schoolgirl: one of the less bright girls who is physically more developed than the others but whose physical maturity has already made her slow and maternal rather than shifting and sexy. There is just the last trace of this air about her. In two years it will have vanished. She looks after her mother and it is now for the mother rather than the daughter that the doctor usually visits the cottage.
    He first saw