Dreadnought Read Online Free PDF

exaggerated. Then she set the mask aside and seized the noteboard that was propped up against his cot, most of its forms left unfilled.
    “Nurse?” Dr. Luther asked.
    “One moment,” she begged. “Before you start napping, Gilbert Henry who’d rather be called just Henry, let me write your information down for safekeeping—so the nurse on the next shift will know all about you.”
    “If you . . . like, ma’am.”
    “That’s a good man, and a fine patient,” she praised him without looking at him. “So tell me quickly, have you got a mother waiting for you back home? Or . . . or,” she almost choked. “A wife?”
    “No wife. A mother . . . though. And . . . a . . . brother, still . . . a . . . boy.”
    She wondered how he’d made it this far in such bad shape—if he’d clung to life this long purely with the goal of the hospital in mind, thinking that if he made it to Robertson, he’d be all right.
    “A mother and a little brother. Their names?”
    “Abigail June. Maiden . . . name . . . Harper.”
    She stalked his words with the pencil nub, scribbling as fast as she could in her graceless, awkward script. “Abigail June, born Harper. That’s your mother, yes? And what town?”
    “Memphis. I joined . . . up. In Memphis.”
    “A Tennessee boy. Those are just about my favorite kind,” she said.
    “Just about?”
    She confirmed, “Just about.” She set the noteboard aside, back up against the leg of the cot, and retrieved the gas. “Now, Mr. Gilbert Henry, are you ready?”
    He nodded bravely and weakly.
    “Very good, dear sir. Just breathe normally, if you don’t mind—” She added privately,
And insofar as you’re able.
“That’s right, very good. And I want you to count backwards, from the number ten. Can you do that for me?”
    His head bobbed very slightly. “Ten,” he said, and the word was muffled around the blown glass shape of the mask. “Ni . . .”
    And that was it. He was already out.
    Mercy sighed heavily. The doctor said quietly, “Turn it off.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “The gas. Turn it off.”
    She shook her head. “But if you’re going to take the arm, he might need—”
    “I’m not taking the arm. There’s no call to do it. No sense in it,” he added. He might’ve said more, but she knew what he meant, and she waved a hand to tell him no, that she didn’t want to hear it.
    “You can’t just let him lie here.”
    “Mercy,” Dr. Luther said more tenderly. “You’ve done him a kindness. He’s not going to come around again. Taking the arm would kill him faster, and maim him, too. Let him nap it out, peacefully. Let his family bury him whole. Watch,” he said.
    She was watching already, the way the broad chest rose and fell, but without any rhythm, and without any strength. With less drive. More infrequently.
    The doctor stood and wrapped his stethoscope into a bundle to jam in his pocket. “I didn’t need to listen to his lungs to know he’s a goner,” he explained, and bent his body over Gilbert Henry to whisper at Mercy. “And I have three other patients—two of whom might actually survive the afternoon if we’re quick enough. Sit with him if you like, but don’t stay long.” He withdrew, and picked up his bag. Then he said in his normal voice, “He doesn’t know you’re here, and he won’t know when you leave. You know it as well as I do.”
    She stayed anyway, lingering as long as she dared.
    He didn’t have a wife to leave a widow, but he had a mother somewhere, and a little brother. He hadn’t mentioned a father; any father had probably died years ago, in the same damn war. Maybe his father had gone like this, too—lying on a cot, scarcely identified and in pieces. Maybe his father had never gotten home, or word had never made it home, and he’d died alone in a field and no one had even come to bury him for weeks, since that was how it often went in the earlier days of the conflict.
    One more ragged breath crawled