Free Rook: Snowman by Graham Masterton Page B

“I think I’ve seen it all now.”
    “Please,” Rachel asked him; and it was almost a command. “Please tell all of the students to go back to whateverit was that they were doing before. We don’t need a crowd of hysterical spectators, not now.”
    The fire chief saluted. “Yessir ma’am,” and went back down the steps.
    Rachel continued to cut into Ray’s arm. Dennis turned his head away, but Jim watched in horrified fascination, even though he couldn’t stand the soft, slicing sound of it. Rachel dissected a large square of skin and fibrous tissue from the underlying muscles. The flesh was scarlet, like raw chuck steak. She picked up her shining saw and started to cut through Ray’s humerus bone, just above the place where it flared out to meet the elbow. Jim closed his eyes but he could still hear the sharp, kvetch-kvetch-kvetch of the sawblade, cutting through human bone. When he opened them again, he saw that Ray’s arm was completely detached, leaving his frozen left hand still gripping the handrail.
    He swallowed hard, but his mouth filled up with bile and half-digested Chex. Almost all of the students had been cleared away by the firefighters, but he saw a figure underneath the shadow of the large cypress tree in back of the main college building. He strained his eyes, and he could see that it was Jack Hubbard, in his black jeans and black shirt, his eyes invisible behind his sunglasses, watching. A firefighter called out to him to leave the area, but he ignored him and remained where he was.
    But Jim didn’t have time to worry about Jack Hubbard. His back was aching from holding up Ray’s unconscious weight, while Rachel was bent over in concentration, doing some incredibly fiddly needlework.
    Ray shivered, but Jim knew that he was deeply unconscious. Washington shook his head and said, “Oh, man. I don’t know whether I can take this. Oh, man.”
    “Please, Washington. Hold on a little longer.”
    “I’m trying to, man. But, man.”

    Rachel said, “In the old days, when they didn’t have anesthetic, they used to use the circular method for amputation. You cut off the skin, muscles and bone at successively higher levels, so that the skin met afterwards over the other tissues. It was quick, that was the best thing about it, but it didn’t always give you a satisfactory stump. The method I’m using here takes a little longer, but it gives you a much better stump.”
    “A much better stump? Oh, sure.” Jim began to feel faint, and to see tiny prickles of light in front of his eyes. “The flap method, huh?”
    “That’s right. See here, I’m going to ligature all of the severed blood vessels in his arm. Then I’m going to take this flap of flesh and stitch its sides and its end.”
    Rachel was so matter-of-fact that it was difficult to grasp the enormity of what she was doing. She was saving Ray’s life. But he would never be able to feel anything with his fingers any more: never be able to stroke another animal, and feel its fur. Never be able to touch a woman, and feel her softness through his fingertips.
    Jim could see only bone; and gristle; and a complicated array of veins and arteries.
    Rachel sewed up his left arm. She must have been good at needlecraft at school, because she managed to tug the flap back together. The surgical thread made a soft rasping sound as she pulled it through his skin.
    When she came to amputate Ray’s right arm, Rachel found that the frostbite had already advanced beyond his elbow. His forearm was black and crusty, his upper arm was already white, and she had to cut his arm off just below the shoulder. Again, that slicing sound. Again that rasping saw. Then, over an hour since Nestor had first come running up the corridor to tell Jim what had happened, Ray was laid on to a gurney, his two stumps sticking up like thehandles of a wheelbarrow, and carried, tilting, down to the ambulance.
Stretchers are laid out, the mangled lifted
And stowed into the little