Chapter 60: The Miracle Doctor

The extreme cold of minus forty degrees continued to gnaw away at the group's physical strength and willpower.

Walter led the way, eyes sharp on the perimeter. Lindholm supported Vatanen's left arm while Ojala braced the right, the four of them carving a jagged, distorted arc across the snow.

Vatanen's strings of curses had devolved from boisterous roars into faint, rhythmic grumbles, but the stubbornness of a seasoned veteran kept him moving.

Just then, several blurred figures materialized from the ice fog ahead.

Walter's gaze turned icy. His Mosin-Nagant snapped up, aiming with near-instinctive speed.

"Don't fire! Is that you, Walter?" a familiar voice cut through the mist, laced with anxiety.

It was Second Lieutenant Koskela.

Seconds later, Simo emerged from the fog, followed by a squad of recruits who looked shaken yet filled with a wide-eyed, undeniable curiosity.

"Lieutenant? What are you doing out here?" Walter lowered his rifle, surprised.

"You have the nerve to ask?" The Lieutenant stepped forward quickly, wiping a layer of frost from his eyebrows. "Those cannon blasts nearly shook my roof down! I thought you'd run headfirst into a Soviet tank company."

"I grabbed Simo and the recruits to come as backup," Koskela continued. "Turns out, you lot were having a grand old time. The Russian camp is a sea of fire; half the place is in a total uproar."

"Nothing to worry about, sir," Walter replied with a wry smile. "It's just that our 'Artillery King' had a new hole opened in his backside." He gestured back toward Vatanen.

The recruits, who had been too tense to breathe, felt their eyes dart toward Vatanen's blood-stained, frozen-solid rear the moment they heard the words "Artillery King" and "backside."

"What are you looking at? Never seen a hero bleed before?" Vatanen lifted his head weakly, baring his teeth at the new recruits. "I just sent dozens of Ruskies to heaven with a single shell. They're just jealous of my dashing figure, that's why they shot me in the ass!"

"Alright, that's enough embarrassing yourself."

Lieutenant Koskela sighed and signaled to two recruits. "You two, get the sled over here and put him on it. We need to get back to camp fast. If he bleeds out, it's my head on the block."

Together, they half-threw, half-placed Vatanen onto the sled and hurried back toward the company's position.

…

The company's field hospital was essentially a reinforced, semi-subterranean wooden shack. Inside, the kerosene lamps cast a dim glow and emitted a pungent odor, though it was nothing compared to the stench of disinfectant, pus, blood, and low-grade tobacco.

The military doctor here was named Larsson. Back in Kuopio, however, he had been a veterinarian specializing in horses. In a war of attrition as brutal as the Winter War, a vet who could tell the difference between a horse and a human was considered high-level talent.

"Oho, this is a big one," Dr. Larsson said, pushing his spectacles back up his nose as he inspected Vatanen's wound.

Vatanen was currently sprawled across a makeshift wooden operating table. Due to the extreme cold, the shredded flesh of his rear, his thermal underwear, and his heavy greatcoat had frozen into a single, rock-hard lump of black and red ice.

"Don't move, lad," Larsson said gruffly. "We have to thaw this mess first. If I go in with the shears now, I'll take half your butt-cheek off with the fabric."

Larsson turned and barked at his assistant, "Hot water! Bring me a kettle of boiling water!"

A moment later, a steaming kettle was handed over. Larsson didn't pour it directly; he tested the weight and temperature in his hands. Once it had cooled slightly, he began to pour it evenly along the edges of the wound, much like one might scald a pig to remove its hair.

"ARGH—!!!"

Vatanen, despite his weakened state, let out an earth-shattering shriek. His body surged, nearly vaulting off the table.

"Hold him down!" Larsson commanded Walter calmly.

Walter and Ojala pinned Vatanen's limbs to the wood. As the steam rose, the frozen fabric finally gave way with a wet, sticky peeling sound.

"Shears!" The vet reached out his hand without looking back.

He took the shears but didn't cut immediately. Instead, he looked at Walter standing nearby. "The Lieutenant told me you're a doctor's son? Hands steady?"

Walter blinked, then nodded. "Steady."

"Then you do it," Larsson said, unceremoniously shoving the shears into Walter's hand. "I've been staring at this for a while and for the life of me, I can't find where his horse-tail is. Without a tail for reference, I might slip and snip his 'equipment' off. Then he'd have to squat to pee for the rest of his life."

Walter was momentarily speechless. He took the shears and deftly cut an unseemly hole in the seat of Vatanen's trousers, then carefully sliced away the remaining fibers from the wound. As the cloth was peeled back, it revealed one pale, cold-blued buttock and another that was a mangled mess of flesh and blood.

"Morphine!" Vatanen groaned, his eyes rolling back as he mumbled incoherently.

"The morphine's right here, quit your howling!" Larsson fished a precious vial of morphine from his medical bag. Without bothering with an alcohol swab, he plunged the needle straight into Vatanen's uninjured hip.

Walter watched the vet's movements, his eye twitching. "Doctor, that's the right leg. The wound is on the left side."

Larsson continued the injection, talking nonsense with a perfectly serious face. "What do you know? This is the 'Contralateral Inhibition Method.' Injecting the uninjured side aids circulation and lets the medicine absorb faster through the main artery. Besides, if I jabbed it into that rotten meat, the morphine would just leak out the bullet hole!"

Walter opened his mouth to argue that the man clearly just couldn't tell left from right, but held his tongue.

Once the injection was finished, Larsson looped a piece of twine through the empty glass vial and tied it around Vatanen's neck. This was standard procedure to prevent a casualty from being double-dosed, which could lead to respiratory depression.

"Need... need another shot..." Vatanen muttered, the drug not yet taking effect.

"Another shot and you'll be meeting God!" Walter pressed him down. "The morphine will put you to sleep, and you'll never wake up."

Larsson nodded and said to Walter, "Alright, the anesthetic is in. You do the heavy lifting. I don't have hemostats here, so you'll have to use this method."

Larsson handed over a long roll of sterile gauze soaked in disinfectant and a pair of long-handled tweezers.

"Packing," Larsson pointed to the bullet track in Vatanen's rear, which looked like a small cave. "Push it in through this end, pull it out the other. Drag out the bits of shredded meat, then pack it tight, just like a gunner swabbing a cannon barrel."

The description alone was enough to make one's skin crawl.

Walter gritted his teeth, gripped the tweezers, and pinched the end of the gauze strip. Even with the morphine, Vatanen's body buckled in a violent spasm the moment the cold metal touched the raw wound.

"Hold on, Vatanen," Walter's voice was soft, but it carried a reassuring strength.

He slowly guided the tweezers into the tunnel of flesh. Vatanen's fingernails dug into the cracks of the wooden table, creating a grating sound that set everyone's teeth on edge. Walter's hand remained as steady as a mountain, pushing inch by inch until the gauze emerged from the exit wound.

The visual impact of the "through-and-through" packing was so intense that two of the watching recruits covered their mouths and bolted outside to vomit.

"Sulfonamide powder!" Larsson directed.

A generous amount of white powder was sprinkled evenly over the wound to prevent suppuration. Finally, Walter took up a suturing needle and quickly threw two stitches across the edges of the torn muscle.

"Don't seal it shut; leave it open," Larsson reminded him. "We'll need to debride it again later. Those stitches are just to keep that wad of gauze from falling out."

By the time it was finished, Walter was drenched in sweat. He took a wet towel from Ojala to wipe his hands, looking down at Vatanen, who was lying like a dead fish with a morphine vial dangling from his neck.

"The injury isn't that bad," Larsson remarked as he packed his bag. "Didn't hit the bone or the bowels. He won't leak when he goes to the latrine. He's a lucky bastard. Two weeks of rest and he'll be back carrying a rifle."

However, Dr. Larsson didn't leave immediately. The elderly "Miracle Doctor" adjusted his glasses and stared at the half-dead Vatanen for two seconds, seemingly feeling as though the procedure was missing a step.

Suddenly, as if remembering a crucial detail, he reached out a large hand, pried Vatanen's jaw open without a word, and expertly felt around the man's teeth.

"Hmm... enamel is fine, wear isn't too bad, gums aren't inflamed. Sturdy build, then. Teeth like this can handle the strain..."

Larsson muttered to himself until a flicker of terrified struggle appeared in Vatanen's morphine-addled eyes. The vet suddenly jolted, pulling his hand back as if he'd been electrocuted. He coughed awkwardly, wiped the saliva on his coat, and explained to a deadpan Walter:

"Force of habit... Back at the stables, I always had to check their teeth before sending them off. Nearly forgot he was a human."

Sprawled on the bed, Vatanen mumbled incoherently, "...You... you son of a..."

"Alright, let's get him out of here," Walter sighed, waving the others to carry Vatanen away.