The Woman at the Front

by Lecia Cornwall

  But Fraser MacLeod ignored him, keeping his attention on Eleanor. His grip on her arm tightened, and he pointed toward the door with his free hand. “There are wounded men out there who need help, more than Blair and Bellford can handle. You’re needed.”

  She stared up at him miserably. “I’m not allowed to help—the colonel said . . .”

  He made a small sound of frustration, muttered something guttural in Gaelic. He gripped her other arm as well and leaned close to her face. “I don’t give a damn about the rules, nor do those poor bastards waiting out there for help, dying. Ye told me ye were a doctor. Can a doctor stand here drinking with her fancy friends and do nothing?”

  “ ’S’truth, man, you cannot speak to me that way,” Edward said, though Fraser hadn’t said a single word to him. He still held Maud in his arms. “Stand to attention! What are you anyway, a sergeant? I can’t even tell under all the mud and the, um— Go and get cleaned up at once! Eleanor, come and see to Maud.”

  Fraser didn’t come to attention. He frowned at Edward and at poor Lady Maud. “My medical officer took a piece of shrapnel in the gut. He needs surgery, and so do a lot of others. We need Miss Atherton—Dr. Atherton—to help. Now. Slap the lass’s cheek to wake her. Put her head between her knees if she swoons again.”

  “Now wait a minute, you,” Edward tried again, shifting Maud’s limp weight awkwardly, but Fraser MacLeod turned back to Eleanor.

  “Will you come or no?”

  She stared up into his eyes and read concern and urgency. This was what she was trained to do. It was against the rules. If the colonel found out, he’d send her home. She didn’t look at Louis. The choice was hers.

  “Yes.”

  Fraser let out a breath and strode toward the door, her elbow still in his grip, and she had to run to keep pace with his long strides.

  “Eleanor!” Edward called after her. “You can’t! What about Maud?”

  Eleanor paused. “Do as the sergeant said. Chafe her wrists and loosen her collar. Rub a little champagne on her pulse points. She’ll be fine.”

  She paused at the door to wash her hands. “What can I do?” she said, rolling up her sleeves.

  He grabbed one of the buckets used to carry supplies and filled it with bandages and towels. She followed his lead and took another, added basic medical tools—scissors, forceps, a scalpel, tweezers, and bandages.

  She felt as dizzy as Maud, and she took a deep breath. “Where do I start?”

  He looked down at her, his gray eyes bright and serious. “I’ll show ye.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Eleanor gasped as she came around the end of the tent. Every inch of ground was now covered with stretchers, dozens of them, dozens of dozens, perhaps, and the ambulances were disgorging more. Still more bloody, shocked, bandaged men were propped together like broken dolls on benches or on the muddy ground. And up the road came an endless parade of more. Eleanor stared at the smashed faces, the missing limbs, the broken bones canted at impossible angles. The smell was terrible, even in the open air, and the unholy buzz of moans and cries vibrated in her chest, turned her knees to water.

  “My God,” Eleanor murmured. “Why aren’t they inside? They should be inside.”

  “The reception tent’s full. Ye need to triage them, sort them, get them the help they need,” Fraser said.

  “I can’t,” she said. She was a doctor. She should know how to help, what to do. She should be able to fix this. But she didn’t know anything, couldn’t think or move. She couldn’t even breathe. “There’s too many. I’ve never . . .”

  He squeezed her arm. “Ye can because ye have to. There’s no choice. They need a doctor, and there’s no one else but you.” She tore her eyes from the grim scene and looked up at him. She read determination in his eyes. There was no fear or panic. He looked down at her as if he was sure she could do this, had confidence that she could manage this horror. She drew strength from him and nodded.

  “What do I do, where do I start?” she asked again.

  His shoulders eased. “One at a time,” he said. He guided her to the first stretcher.

  “What have ye got?” Fraser asked the nurse bending over the patient. Her white pinafore was bloody. She looked up, and her lips parted in surprise at the sight of Eleanor.

  “But—”

  Eleanor dropped down beside her. “I’m here to help.”

  “Gunshot wound, left thigh. He’s in shock,” the nurse reported.

  Fraser turned the patient gently. “Look to see if the bullet went straight through.” It had.

  “It will need cleaning and dressing,” Eleanor said. “Irrigate the wound with disinfectant and warm him against shock.”

  Fraser moved toward the next stretcher. Under a makeshift bandage, half the lad’s skull was gone, and blood oozed from his ears. Eleanor swallowed hard. “He needs surgery at once—” But Fraser shook his head.

  “There’s nothing you or anyone else can do for this lad now. He won’t last the night. He’s for the moribund ward.” She stared at him in horror, and he held her gaze calmly. “The chaplain and the VADs will make sure he isn’t alone. Ye have to concentrate on the men ye can save, the ones who have a chance.”

  The orderlies stood waiting for her pronouncement. “Moribund.” The word was thick and ugly on her tongue. The orderlies carried the stretcher away to a tent that stood apart from the others in a quiet corner of the compound. She blinked away tears.

  “Ye need to move on,” Fraser said. “Can ye do it?”

  She was struggling to breathe, the stench nearly unbearable. Her stomach had crowded up next to her heart, crushing her lungs. Her hands shook. The bearers placed another stretcher in front of her at MacLeod’s beckon, and she looked down into the soldier’s wide eyes, huge in a face white with fear and pain and too little blood. She moved automatically, her brain already working, her eyes seeking his wounds, her hands reaching for him.

  “First check for—” the sergeant began, but her hands moved automatically, her mind noted the wounds, the medical protocol.

  “I can do this,” she said through gritted teeth, in part to Fraser, but more to herself.

  She knelt in the mud, felt the cold wetness soak through her skirt to her skin, and ignored it. She lifted the blood-soaked bandage around the soldier’s thigh, and hot blood spurted from a damaged artery, spraying her face. She swiped it away, and the wind cooled and stiffened it on her cheek. Fraser clamped a hand over the wound and applied a tourniquet.

  “We’re trained to stop bleeding as soon as we can in the field.” He showed her the paper tag tied to the button on the man’s tunic and handed her a stub of a pencil. “Write ‘tourniquet’ and the time so the surgeon knows.”

  Eleanor made the note and turned to the waiting nurse. “Stabilize him with fluids and get him to surgery. He’ll need a transfusion.”

  The next man lay so still that she put her fingers against his pulse. “He’s only sleeping,” Fraser said. “Most of them fall asleep as soon as they know they’re safe.”

  “He looks—peaceful,” Eleanor said, though the soldier’s face was spattered with blood and dust and sweat. She examined the long gash on his leg and felt the chill in the boy’s limbs. He was soaked to the skin, his flesh ice-cold. “The laceration is just a deep scratch,” she said to the orderly who arrived to look at the patient. “But he needs to be warmed up. Treat him for shock, get him dry and clean, suture and bandage him, and let him sleep.”

  The orderly scowled at Fraser. “I can’t take orders from her. She’s a civilian, just a visitor.”

  Fraser moved to interfere, but Eleanor met the orderly’s insolent glare. “What’s your name, Corporal?”

  “Swiftwood,” he said tersely.

  “I’m a doctor, Corporal Swiftwood, fully trained and certified. Are you a doctor?”


  He stiffened. “No, but—”

  “Do you think I’m wrong in my diagnosis and recommendations?”

  The orderly cast a quick glance at the sleeping soldier, at the wound on his chest, at his pale, sleeping face. “No,” he said again, just as grudgingly.

  She got to her feet. “Then do as I say. There are others to see to.” She walked away, suspecting that behind her he was looking to Fraser, but when she glanced over her shoulder at the stretcher bearer, he was following her, ignoring the stunned corporal, leaving him to carry out her instructions. She felt a surge of gratitude—another rush of surprise at Fraser MacLeod’s confidence in her.

  In the next hours, she sent dozens to the dressing tent, and dozens to surgery, and far too many to the moribund ward.

  She looked up as another ambulance pulled up next to them, and Fraser moved to open the back doors as the driver climbed down, his face grim. “No hurry, Sergeant—it went quiet back there a few miles back. This lot will want the chaplain now, not the doctor.”

  Eleanor swallowed, but Fraser simply nodded and pointed to the next vehicle. “Let’s save the ones we can,” he said again. He caught the arm of a passing VAD. “Has Captain Duncan gone to surgery yet?”

  The girl shook her head. “He’s still in resus.”

  He looked at Eleanor. “Can you carry on here without me?”

  She nodded.

  “Are ye sure?”

  She wasn’t sure at all. She was terrified, but she nodded again, more crisply this time. She squared her shoulders. “I’m sure.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The Reverend Captain Hanniford Strong wondered how they were going to manage the deluge of wounded, already lined up in their terrible multitudes waiting for help, with more coming. They were all frightened and in need of comfort and care. The surgeons and nurses were trying hard to keep up, and God and His angels surely had their hands full.

  Worse, he’d heard that Captain Duncan, the 51st’s regimental medical officer, was among the fallen, badly wounded. For a moment the chaplain looked skyward, asking the Almighty for help. They couldn’t afford to lose good doctors like Captain Duncan. Strong joined the nurses, orderlies, and bearers in the triage area, knowing they’d need every pair of hands, even his, to make it through this day. “Let this war end, Heavenly Father. Send a miracle, or an angel,” he murmured aloud. As he peered heavenward, he noticed the clouds were thickening, rushing in over the horizon like another belligerent army. “And if you could keep the rain off for just a few hours, Lord, we’d be most grateful,” he added. But it never hurt to offer the Almighty a helping hand. He’d break out waterproof tarpaulins to cover the unfortunate soldiers, just in case. He looked around for Private Gibbons.

  Instead he saw Miss Eleanor Atherton. The young woman’s red hair burned like a flame against the gray light. Her face was white, her eyes wide pools of horror. He knew what she was seeing—a vision of hell on earth, all the corruptions and evils and tragedies of war. He frowned. She didn’t belong here. In a moment she’d faint, need to be carried away, tended to, soothed. And what, he wondered, was the best Bible verse for that? There was no explanation, no forgetting, after seeing this. Forgiving one’s enemies seemed impossible some days.

  But she didn’t faint.

  With Sergeant MacLeod beside her, she crouched beside the first stretcher. Her eyes sharpened as she unwrapped the bandages, looked at the wounds, and assessed them. She looked up at the waiting orderly and gave instructions, and he saw the lad nod and jump to. And when that patient was sent inside, Miss Atherton followed the sergeant to the next man. She lifted the bloody bandage, and Strong winced as blood sprayed her cheek, dyeing her pretty blouse gore-red. He held his breath. Now she’d faint.

  But she didn’t. She kept going, her movements quick and definitive. He marveled at the calm determination in her slender frame. He watched as a patient clasped her hand in gratitude, then saw her smile at him and move on. It didn’t matter a jot after all that she was female—not to the patients, at least—they were just glad of someone to help them.

  Her face and hair and blouse were soon streaked with blood and her skirt was heavy with mud, but she didn’t seem to notice. She kept on, doing her best. To him, she looked every inch a doctor—or an angel.

  Sergeant Fraser was talking her through the process of triage. She examined a man with half his jaw missing and one with his arm blown off. Someone had lovingly laid the poor lad’s severed limb on the stretcher beside him. She grimaced, blinked, instructed the orderlies and moved on. She swayed on her feet for a moment, and the sergeant gripped her arm, and she went on.

  The warm glow of gratitude for a prayer answered filled Strong’s breast, and he reached for the crucifix that hung around his neck, closed his hand over it, and sent up a word of thanks.

  “You’re needed, Reverend,” a nurse said quietly, and he turned.

  “I’m just coming, Sister Ellis.” He pointed toward Eleanor Atherton. “I was watching Dr. Atherton work. Can you go and fetch a surgical gown to cover her clothes? Not that it will help now, but better late than never.”

  The chaplain looked once more as she bent over another patient, checking the tag and the bandages as if she’d done it a thousand times instead of just a dozen. God’s mysterious ways were a marvel, even here in the midst of war.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Fraser found Captain Nathaniel Duncan in the resuscitation tent, waiting his turn for surgery.

  “How bad?” the medical officer murmured. “Don’t spare me, Fraser.” He paused. “Moribund?”

  “Stop blethering and let me look,” Fraser said. A VAD was pressing a pad of blood-soaked cloth against Duncan’s belly. She lifted the cloth, and Fraser’s own stomach did a barrel roll at the sight of it. It was severe, probably fatal, but if Duncan had lived this long, had made it here to a CCS, was lucid enough to ask questions, then perhaps there was a chance . . . Ah, but how many times had stretcher bearers carried a man out of danger, off a battlefield where he’d survived in the open for days, only to learn that he died when he finally reached the Casualty Clearing Station?

  Duncan was pale and sweating, his eyes too bright. Fraser forced a smile.

  “Och, it’s just a Blighty.”

  The VAD was choking back tears, her hands shaking. He realized that he didn’t know her name, that she was new, and probably fresh from England. This was probably the first intake of casualties she’d seen. She was as pale as milk and glassy-eyed. He should send her outside, tell her to go and get some fresh air, but it was just as bad out there as it was in here. He squeezed her arm, made her look up.

  “Go and find Dr. Atherton. Do ye know who she is?” She nodded. “Tell her I’ve sent ye to help her. Do everything she says, and don’t faint, do ye understand? No one will have time to revive ye,” he said, giving her a task, a purpose, making her focus. He used the same method with new stretcher bearers, green lads afraid of the noise and smell and sight of the battlefield, horrified by the wounds, the sucking mud and the bullets and the long, heavy carries. If they focused on one task at a time, they made it through.

  Duncan quirked a smile as the girl left.

  “Poor chit mistook you for an officer,” he said. “She doesn’t know you’re far better than that.” He coughed, and there was blood at the corners of his mouth. Fraser wiped it away.

  “How are the lads I brought in?” he asked before Fraser could speak.

  Duncan had done a foolishly heroic thing when the dawn attack went badly. He’d gone out onto the battlefield to help bring in some of the wounded, and he’d strayed too far and was hit. He shouldn’t have been there at all, but they were short of bearers—four killed in action, three down with trench fever, seven others wounded.

  “You saved three men,” Fraser said to him. “You’ll get a medal for it.”

 
“God, I hope not,” Duncan said tiredly, his voice a mere thread of sound. “You’re the one who deserves the medal for carrying me in. I wasn’t unconscious, you know. I heard every word you said, every curse. I put you in danger. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  “Aye, but ye’d do it again, wouldn’t ye?” Fraser asked.

  Duncan was a good man, a good officer, the kind who’d do anything for his men, which meant the men liked him. When Fraser had carried the captain back to the aid post, a wounded private gave up his place on the ambulance to make room for Duncan.

  Fraser looked under the dressing again and saw the hard glitter of the chunk of shrapnel. No, it was a button, blown off Duncan’s shirt and into his flesh by the explosion. “I’ll get ye more morphine.”

  “No. I’ve had enough. I want to be clearheaded,” the captain said. “I won’t go quietly into the night. Tell my wife—”

  “No one’s going into the night,” Fraser insisted, and he caught a passing orderly. “Tell Captain Blair I need him right now.”

  “I’ll tell him, but he’s in surgery.”

  “Will it help?” Duncan asked Fraser. “It means taking Blair away from some poor bugger who has a better chance than me.”

  “Blair’s a good surgeon. You’ll be home before you know it.”

  “Thank you for that.” Duncan shut his eyes. “Will you stay with me for a while? Just till they take me in for surgery. Do you have time?”

  “I’ve got all the time in the world,” Fraser said, and he pressed a fresh pad against the hole in the medical officer’s chest and hoped Blair got there soon.

  * * *

  • • •

  David Blair looked at Nathaniel Duncan as they carried him into the theater. Fraser MacLeod was carrying one end of the stretcher, his expression grim. Duncan’s eyes were glassy with morphine, but still he gasped in pain as they laid him gently on the operating table.

  “I do hope you’ll mind my shirt, Blair. The laundry lads will be hard-pressed to clean it as it is. Any more bloodstains and they’ll likely change sides and find some nice, tidy German officer to do for instead.”