by Emma Fraser
And she did. She knew that now. When it might be too late.
What did her mother’s disapproval – all of it – matter if she couldn’t be with Archie? She could go to America, be a doctor there, and they could be happy.
Or could have been. If she hadn’t let her stupid pride and her place in society stop her. How had she ever thought she would be embarrassed to call Archie her husband? She should be proud.
She sat there shivering until long after the sun had gone down, unable to bring herself to return to camp. She was still thinking of Archie when she heard branches snapping under feet. She sighed but didn’t turn. She should have known that someone would come looking for her.
‘Isabel?’
She whirled around. Archie, a bandage on one of his hands, was looking down at her. ‘You’re alive,’ she whispered, hardly able to believe it was him. She scrambled to her feet and threw herself against him. ‘Thank God.’
His arms tightened around her and she breathed in the smell of him. The sweat, the blood, the smoke. She didn’t want to think of death, or of rotting wounds and discarded limbs, or the knowledge that life could be snuffed out like a candle at any time. But if it were to be, she wanted to know what it was like to be loved and to love in return. She wanted to imprint every bit of him on her memory.
She placed her hands on either side of his head and pulled his face towards her.
And then he was kissing her and she was pressing herself into him, needing to feel all of him against her. He was moaning into her neck, saying words in Gaelic that she didn’t understand but knew were of love. He lifted her nightdress and when he touched the bare skin of her thighs, she stopped thinking. All she knew for sure was that she wanted him to touch her for ever.
Later, as they lay together in the grass, Isabel knew that she was fundamentally changed. How, she couldn’t quite say, only that she couldn’t – wouldn’t – go back to the life she’d once treasured. She had never been more at peace than she was now, in Archie’s arms. She blushed, glad of the darkness. She hadn’t been passive when they’d made love – she’d been demanding. He’d been excited by her need and the words of encouragement she’d whispered to him when at first he’d tried to draw away from her. She had no shame with him, no anxiety that he would despise her for what they’d done, or for her wildness.
With the end of the war, a new world would come and she’d be part of it. All that she’d previously cared about, all that she’d thought mattered, had gone, as if blown away by the breeze. What mattered was the here and now, his hand in her hair, the warmth of his body, the sharing of air as they breathed in rhythm. She was no longer passive, a hollowed-out branch tossed on a sea, to be pushed wherever the wind sent her. With him beside her, she could be mistress of her own destiny.
‘Perhaps I should have let you believe I was dead before now,’ he said, with laughter in his voice.
She turned on her side and rose on her elbow to look at him. ‘Perhaps you should,’ she agreed. ‘Does Jessie know you’re safe?’
‘She said she never doubted it.’
‘How did you find me?’
‘Maud told me you’d heard about the deaths and thought it might be me. She said I’d find you here if I wanted to.’
‘Do you still love me?’ She needed to know.
He traced her lips with the fingers of his uninjured hand. ‘You need to ask me that?’
‘No.’ She caught his other arm in hers and pressed her lips to the skin above the bandage. ‘What happened?’
‘It’s nothing. Just a graze. I was lucky. The man carrying the other side wasn’t.’ He kissed her lips. ‘I wish you would go from here. It’s not safe. They don’t care who they fire on. It’s all so desperate now.’
She smiled up at him, revelling in the desire and love in his eyes. She stretched like a cat knowing she was teasing him. ‘You know we can’t go,’ she said, ‘not while they’re still bringing us their injured. In the meantime, why don’t you make love to me again?’
Chapter 46
Jessie wondered if she was using up all her favours with God. He’d returned Tommy to her, then Archie. Not that she’d really believed Archie was one of the Americans who’d been killed two weeks earlier. Just as she would have known in her heart that Tommy was dead, she would have felt it if Archie had been killed. Still, she made sure to thank God in her prayers every night.
She was on her way to the mess tent when a motor ambulance pulled up. At last, one of the trucks they had been promised for weeks had arrived. A little late but welcome.
Isabel was waiting to greet the chauffeur. Jessie hadn’t seen much of her over the last few days – or Archie, for that matter. She frowned. Come to think of it, recently, when she heard Archie was in the camp and went to seek him out, it was to find he wasn’t there. And neither was Isabel. It was possible, of course, that they weren’t together, but … A hollow feeling gathered in her stomach. She’d seen enough of Isabel over the last two weeks to become aware of a change in her. Despite the doctor’s obvious exhaustion, her face was permanently aglow as if she were hugging a secret to herself. How could she have been so blind? It was all making sense now.
Even after everything that had happened, Archie still couldn’t let Isabel go. And for what? When the war was over, she would return to her life in Edinburgh and Archie to his in America. Out here it was easy to forget how different their lives were. Her brother was mistaken if he thought it could be different.
When the chauffeur jumped down from the motor ambulance, Jessie’s heart banged against her ribs. There was no mistaking the red hair. Of all the chauffeurs to bring the vehicle, it had to be Lady Dorothea. God help them all – Isabel had no idea that the woman she was about to greet was the sister of the man she had killed, albeit unknowingly. And everyone here knew that Archie was Jessie’s brother. Could this mess get any worse?
Their voices drifted on the still air. ‘Dr MacKenzie, if I remember!’ She stepped towards Isabel and held out a slim hand. ‘Imagine us meeting here, after all this time.’
‘Dorothea!’ Isabel sounded taken aback. ‘So you’re the shover we’ve been expecting. Welcome. You’ve no idea how pleased we are to see you and your ambulance.’
Jessie felt paralysed. She had to get a message to Archie, to warn him to stay away. But how?
A group of Serbian soldiers hurried over to Isabel and started gesturing animatedly.
Isabel shook her head, but each time she did so, the soldiers raised their voices and pointed in the direction of the fighting.
Maud came to stand next to Jessie. ‘I wonder what’s going on? Let’s find out.’ Before Jessie could protest, Maud had taken her by the arm and was pulling her along.
‘Let me take one of the ambulances,’ Lady Dorothea was saying. ‘It’s not far. I could be there and back in a jiffy.’
‘It’s too dangerous,’ Isabel replied.
‘We can’t just leave them there to die!’ she protested. ‘The soldiers won’t fire if we go.’
‘Go where?’ Maud interrupted.
‘Sister Stuart! How lovely to see you again.’ Her pleasure at seeing Jessie again was unmistakable.
‘Maxwell! Nice to see you too.’ It wasn’t. It was awful. The soldiers were still talking to Isabel, their voices rising. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Apparently there’s been a terrible battle about three miles from the nearest casualty clearing station. They’re trying to evacuate it while seeing to the wounded at the same time, but there are injured soldiers still out there with no one to help them.’
‘We could go,’ Maud said. ‘Somebody has to do something! We’re set up to be a field hospital, after all.’
Isabel chewed on her lip. ‘We’re quiet here. If anyone’s going, it should be me.’
The fighting further north was so intense that the wounded were being taken by train to a field hospital further south. The only patients they were treating now were those with minor injuries.
‘I’ll go too,’ Jessie said quietly. Her heart was hammering against her chest. ‘Between us, we’ll manage.’
‘Very well,’ Isabel said. Then she hesitated. ‘But…’
‘But?’ Lady Dorothea repeated.
‘As far as the clearing station, but absolutely no further. I won’t risk the lives of the women under my command. We’ll wait there for the army to retrieve the injured, then bring them back here. If we can’t, or if there’s evidence that the fighting is moving closer, we will return at once. Is that clear?’
Maud grinned. ‘Of course, Dr MacKenzie. Immediately.’
‘Sister Stuart?’
‘I’m ready.’
‘Dorothea?’
‘Count me in. But shouldn’t we get a move on?’
It took them a little while to transfer their mobile equipment to the ambulance and for Isabel to let the other doctors know where they were going.
When they were ready they squashed into the front of the truck and within minutes they were on their way. The engine protested loudly as they bounced along the rutted track up the hill. Dorothea gripped the steering-wheel tightly as she concentrated on keeping the vehicle on its four wheels. ‘Are you scared?’ she shouted above the noise.
‘Terrified. Of your driving, that is.’ Isabel laughed. ‘Keep your eyes on the road, for Heaven’s sake.’
It seemed that, like her, Isabel was more excited than terrified. Jessie didn’t believe that they were in any more danger than they had been these last few weeks. Three days ago they’d heard that a German plane had dropped a bomb just outside the hospital building in Kragujevatz, killing seven civilians, but mercifully leaving the hospital intact.
After twenty minutes of bone-shaking road, they drew up outside the casualty clearing station. Several trucks were parked haphazardly as men carried the wounded into the tents or placed them in the back of ambulances to be taken to the railway station.
Leaving Dorothea at the wheel, they jumped down and went to find the commanding officer.
‘We’ve come to help,’ Isabel said. ‘I’m Dr MacKenzie, this is Sister Tully and Sister Stuart. We can take casualties back to our hospital.’
The CO was relieved to see them. ‘We’re retreating and need to get this place cleared. Go and find the medical officer and take as many as he thinks are fit to travel with you. Then return, please.’ He grimaced. ‘I need every ambulance I can get my hands on right now.’
A row of tarpaulin-covered stretchers lay on the ground and Jessie averted her eyes. Everywhere she looked there were injured men, some lying quietly, others crying out for help. A short distance away others sat smoking, looking about with blank and unseeing eyes.
Archie was kneeling next to a soldier, the barrel of a syringe between his teeth as he used his hands to tie a tourniquet around the bloody stump of the man’s arm. Isabel and Maud hurried past into a tent and Jessie dropped to her knees beside her brother, taking the syringe from his mouth.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Archie had to shout to make himself heard over the cannon.
Calmly Jessie filled the syringe with morphine and injected the dose into the white-faced soldier. ‘We’re here to take the injured to our hospital,’ she said, as she checked for a pulse. It was weak but regular. ‘Archie, I have to warn you, the ambulance driver waiting for us is Lady Dorothea.’
Archie frowned. ‘I can’t worry about that now.’ He turned back to the man on the stretcher. ‘Just lie quietly, chum. I’ll be back in a minute.’
He got to his feet and Jessie followed his gaze to another stretcher a few feet away. This time the soldier was unconscious, the spreading stain of blood on his bandaged abdomen a sure sign that he was still bleeding. But, to her shock, Archie stepped over him and knelt beside another, less severely injured man. ‘What about this one?’ she called after him. ‘He needs medical attention urgently.’
Archie shook his head. ‘We have limited supplies left. We have to help those who can be saved.’
Furious, she stepped over the stretchers until she was at the unconscious man’s side. Crouching next to him she felt for his pulse. It was barely discernible. Then she looked at his wound. The bright red was rapidly turning brown in the heat of the sun. ‘Don’t worry, soldier,’ she said, hoping he would know he wasn’t alone and abandoned.
From all around, the sounds of men in pain, whimpers and loud curses, filled the air. Archie moved from soldier to soldier, stopping once in a while to summon a stretcher-bearer. Although the sun was still high in the sky, the air was thick with smoke and the smell of cordite.
Jessie looked down at her patient again. His eyes were open, his pupils fixed and dilated. Very gently she closed his eyelids and got to her feet.
When she returned to the ambulance Lady Dorothea was already cranking the engine. The back was filled with stretchers, three rows deep and two levels high, and Isabel was giving orders to Maud who was in the back.
‘Are you ready to leave?’ Lady Dorothea asked.
‘I’m going to stay,’ Isabel said. ‘They could do with another doctor here.’
‘And a nurse. I’m staying too,’ Jessie added.
‘It sounds as if the fighting’s getting closer.’ Lady Dorothea’s hair had come loose from its pins and was swirling around her face. ‘Perhaps it would be wise for us all to leave.’
Isabel shook her head. ‘You’re going to have to return for more. We’ll come back with you then. Now, you and Maud go! Quickly!’
They didn’t wait to see them leave as another two lorries pulled up with more wounded. As soon as they were unloaded Isabel made a quick assessment of each injury. She instructed Jessie to tie tourniquets or apply pressure to wounds, while Isabel directed the more seriously injured to the operating tent.
‘They’re not operating on hopeless cases,’ Jessie said. ‘They say they don’t have enough supplies.’
‘I will not leave men whose chances seem lost,’ Isabel muttered. ‘If the doctors here decide to leave them, I can’t do anything about it, but I will not, cannot, make a medical decision based on anything other than the nature of the injury.’
Jessie wanted to hug her. Right now, working together, she couldn’t care less what Isabel had done in the past. She was a great doctor.
Jessie was aware of Archie close by, his large hands deft as he bandaged wounds or injected morphine, until at last the tide of the injured began to slow and the line of waiting soldiers dropped to three or four.
While they worked, she was conscious of Lady Dorothea and Maud returning and leaving again, but she knew neither she nor Isabel would leave until all of the men had been taken from the casualty clearing station.
As soon as the immediate needs of the injured had been met, she sat back on her haunches and wiped the perspiration from her face. Although the noise of gunfire and cannon was more sporadic, it sounded closer.
Jessie glanced up to see Archie, his face grim, talking to a wildly gesticulating soldier. He patted the man on the back before approaching one of the captains standing near Isabel.
‘There are wounded men not far from here, sir,’ Archie said. ‘Requesting permission to take a truck and see if we can rescue them.’
‘It’s too dangerous,’ the captain replied. ‘I need every man to help here. Permission refused.’
Archie’s face was like thunder. ‘Then I should remind you that I’m not under your command, sir. I’m going to go, but I need a doctor. I understand the medical officer in the first-aid station is in a bad way. There is no one else to help them.’
‘It’s impossible, man. The surgeons are all operating. I can’t spare a single man. Neither can I stop you going on your own, but I advise against it.’
Jessie and Isabel looked at each other and stepped forward. ‘We’ll come with you.’
Archie shook his head. ‘It’s too dangerous for women.’
Jessie looked at the face she knew almost as well as she did her own. ‘I’m not scared.�
�
‘Do you remember that day we met on the cliffs back on Skye?’ Isabel said softly. ‘You told me that climbing down was too dangerous, but it didn’t stop me then. And you’re not going to stop me now.’ She touched his arm and looked him directly in the eye. ‘Please, Archie, I need to do this.’
‘I must insist that you return immediately to your hospital,’ the captain said. ‘I will not have the death of women on my hands.’
Isabel’s face flushed with anger. ‘But if we don’t go, you’ll have more deaths on your hands.’
‘It’s out of the question, and that’s the last I’ll say on the matter.’
‘One of the good things about being a doctor with the Scottish Women’s Hospital, is that we are not under your command either, Captain. If I wish to go, there is nothing you can do to stop me.’
The captain looked indecisive. Then he shook his head. ‘As you say, I can’t stop you. But I wash my hands of the whole business.’ He placed his baton under his arm and stalked away.
‘We’ll collect who we can and then get out. Agreed?’ Archie said.
Isabel frowned. Lady Dorothea and Maud had returned and were waiting for instructions. ‘We’ll need our motor ambulance as it has all the equipment and medical supplies – at least enough to keep the men alive until we can transport them back to Mladanovatz. They can go by hospital train from there.’
When Isabel explained what they were planning to do, Maud and Lady Dorothea insisted on coming too. Once more Archie tried to protest and once more he was thwarted. As the truck lurched forward, Jessie tried to ignore the hammering of her heart by thinking about what she might have to do in the next few hours.
‘The first-aid station is around three miles from here,’ Archie said. Instinctively they ducked as a shell whizzed over their heads and exploded next to the truck. Archie swore in Gaelic.