The Woman at the Front

by Lecia Cornwall

  “Perhaps ye can make their job easier by buttoning your shirt on the outside next time,” Fraser quipped. “Do ye want us to save the button so ye can sew it back on?”

  “Yes. Thrifty,” Duncan whispered.

  There was a crash as the nurse assisting Colonel Bellford with anesthesia fainted from the fumes. The colonel frowned at her prostrate form. “Swiftwood! Take her out, get her some air. Get someone else to give ether before this man wakes up.”

  The orderly who’d been ready to assist David hurried over to the other table.

  “Uh-oh,” Duncan said. “Looks like I’ll have to do my own anesthetic.”

  “I’ll do it,” Fraser MacLeod said, his eyes meeting David’s. “I’ve seen it done often enough. Talk me through it.”

  Duncan groaned. “Nearer my God to Thee,” he said, rolling his eyes and trying to grin. It came out a grimace. He caught Fraser’s hand. “I trust you. Lucky bearer and all.”

  “Put a mask on, and don’t breathe too deeply,” Blair told Fraser. “Hold the mask over Duncan’s face and give a drop at a time, slowly and steadily.”

  “Who’s doing triage?” Bellwood demanded, looking up from the patient in front of him.

  “Eleanor Atherton,” Fraser whispered to Blair. “And she’s doing a damned good job.” He watched David Blair’s eyes widen, then he nodded.

  “It’s being managed, sir,” Blair called to the colonel.

  “Good, good,” Bellford said and turned his attention back to his patient.

  “Ready?” Blair asked Duncan, and he nodded slightly.

  The MO clasped Fraser’s hand. “If this goes south, give my best to the men, and get yourself home before your luck runs out, won’t you?”

  “I’ll see ye when ye wake up,” Fraser said, and he put the ether mask over Duncan’s face. He held his breath and added the first drop carefully, watching Duncan’s eyes drift shut. He was no longer a praying man, and he didn’t believe in luck, but he hoped both God and good fortune were on Nathaniel Duncan’s side.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was long past dark when Fraser walked out of the operating tent, having done anesthetic for Duncan and four other patients. He crossed the now-empty compound, picked up a bucket, and helped the drivers clean the ambulances, pouring soapy water over the benches and floors to wash away the blood and mud and make them ready for the next cargo. He worked until he was sweating and the urge to vomit was gone, subsumed by exhaustion.

  He emptied another bucket and turned to find David Blair standing behind him. “Got a cigarette? I’m out of pipe tobacco.”

  Fraser reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and took out a flat metal tin, opened it, and held it out. The surgeon sat down on the fender of the ambulance and lit the gasper, drew deeply on it and puffed smoke into the clear night air. “How many hours was that?” he asked. “Is it still tonight, or already tomorrow night?”

  Fraser sat down beside him. “Fourteen hours, give or take. It’s a little past ten.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, the blue smoke of the cigarette rising around them like one more ghost in a place already filled with ghosts. Fraser pictured the departed as roaming the field behind the white tents of the CCS, lost, confused by what had happened to them, bending low to look into the faces of their living comrades, invisibly pleading . . . He didn’t want to think of Duncan’s restless spirit. He reached for the flask in his pocket, the last of his precious Highland whisky, the last taste of home. He drank, letting the spirit numb his tongue and burn a path down his throat, before he passed the flask to David Blair. “Here’s to Duncan.”

  Blair raised the flask before he drank. “To Duncan.”

  “We’ll need a new MO at the front,” Fraser said somberly.

  “I know. We’re two men short here as well. We’ve been waiting weeks for a new surgeon.”

  Fraser scanned the tents, the sky, the boardwalk. “Eleanor Atherton did well today. She knows the way of things now, could be of use here. It would free a man—you, probably—to take over the aid post for a few days.”

  Blair took a long drag on the cigarette. “Bellford would never go for it.”

  “Does he have a choice?”

  “His word is law. And she has a choice. This is no place for a woman.”

  “She’s not just any woman.”

  Blair looked at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Aye. The nurses manage, and most of the VADs are gently raised lasses, and they cope—” Fraser broke off as one of the VADs, her uniform bloody, hurried out of the moribund tent to be sick. “Well, most of them do.” He wondered how the lass he’d sent to help Eleanor had fared. “Why not Eleanor Atherton?”

  Blair grunted. “Won’t do, MacLeod. She’s leaving. Chastaine will be ready to travel within the week, and Bellford would be apoplectic at the very idea of her staying.”

  “Chastaine.” Fraser drew out the word, his Gaelic burr lengthening the word to a growl.

  “What? You don’t like the gallant hero? Golden-haired, blue-eyed, cleft-jawed, and nobly born?”

  “Do you?” Fraser asked.

  Blair frowned. “Not in the least. She deserves better.” They passed the flask once more. “Is it love, do you think?”

  “It’s his mother,” Fraser said. “She wants him home.”

  “I wish my mother wanted me home, at least enough to send a pretty woman to carry me there.”

  “Aye.”

  “On her part, well, I think she’d like it to be love,” Blair said. “It’s in the way she looks at him.”

  “Like the sun rose out of his—”

  Fraser stopped when Reverend Strong stepped out of the moribund tent, his white stole around his shoulders, his prayer book in his hands. He saw the glow of David’s cigarette and came to join them.

  “Seventeen dead,” the chaplain said, adding his weight to the bumper. He looked around, his sorrowful gaze stopping on the makeshift cemetery, at the burial detail carrying the shrouded bodies out to new graves. “Such a waste. How many have we already laid to rest here?” he asked.

  The gravediggers were “disgraced” patients, men recovering from venereal diseases, sentenced to do the most disagreeable jobs the army could find for their sins, including burying their fallen comrades.

  Fraser had heard there were infected women who’d lay with soldiers for an extra fee to give them the disease so they could stay safe behind the lines for a time. It still counted as a self-inflicted wound. Soldiers with the clap went without pay, and the harsher commanders sent letters home to their kin informing them precisely why their pay had been stopped. But staying alive was worth the risk and the humiliation for some, as were a few weeks safe behind the lines. They handled the dead without resentment, laying them down with gentle reverence.

  “Better to think of all the ones we’ve saved, Padre,” Blair said.

  Fraser thought of Duncan. He flicked the end of his cigarette into the mud. It hissed as it went out. “I’ll help dig the graves.”

  The chaplain smiled tiredly. “Thank you, Sergeant, but I didn’t come to ask for that. I came to say there’d be even more dead if not for your Miss Atherton. She’s been a godsend, a fine doctor.”

  “Your Miss Atherton?” David asked Fraser, and Fraser noted the sharp edge of jealousy in the casual comment.

  “Nay, not mine. I simply found her at the train station in Calais and helped her get here.”

  “Perhaps you shouldn’t have. Perhaps you should have sent her home,” David said, his tone sharper still, a bayonet of indignation now.

  “Or perhaps Sergeant MacLeod was simply an instrument in a higher plan, and she was meant to come,” the chaplain said.

  “God sent a woman here?” David Blair scoffed. “Cruel of Him.”

  “Mysterious ways, Captain, mysterious w
ays,” the chaplain replied. “Who’s to question His plan?”

  “I was just telling Captain Blair that we’ll need a new MO at the aid post.” Fraser shifted the topic before it became a debate, keeping his tone casual.

  Strong’s eyes widened. “Are you suggesting sending Miss Atherton there?” He looked at Blair. “A woman, Captain? A lass of such tender years?”

  “Mysterious ways, Chaplain,” Blair said harshly.

  “Not there,” Fraser said quickly. “Blair’ll have to go, but she could help here at the CCS. She’s qualified, and ye need a doctor.”

  “But she’s not entirely qualified—she’s still a woman,” Strong argued. He glanced at the venereal gravediggers. “She can’t be asked to . . . to . . . treat—or even diagnose—certain conditions!”

  “She can do triage. She can remove shrapnel and give injections and perform basic procedures,” Fraser said.

  “Yes, I suppose so,” the chaplain murmured. “She did all of that and more today.”

  “She saw far worse things than the clap,” Fraser said.

  The chaplain closed his eyes at the crudeness. “Sadly true, but—”

  “It seems to me that you’ve been praying for weeks—months—for divine intervention,” Blair interrupted. “For help for the sick, relief, for an end to suffering. Perhaps Eleanor Atherton is the answer to your prayers.”

  “I don’t question that, Captain, but I doubt Colonel Bellford will have the same appreciation for the Lord’s sense of—unique solutions.”

  Blair rose. “I’ll speak to him.”

  “And Lieutenant Chastaine?” the chaplain asked. “What happens to him if she stays?”

  Blair shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea, but I have a feeling he’s the kind of chap who’ll land on his feet with or without Eleanor Atherton by his side.” He stretched his shoulders. “If no one needs me, I’m going to try and get some sleep. All this can wait until morning.”

  Fraser watched him walk away and got to his feet. “I think I’ll go and get a cup of tea,” he said to the chaplain, and he went toward the triage tent, the last place he’d seen Eleanor Atherton.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Fraser found Eleanor sitting on a bench by herself in the triage tent, staring at the wasteland of bloody bandages, vomit, and the remains of filthy uniforms that had been cut off and discarded. Only three men remained now, lying on stretchers with hot-water bottles tucked around them as they stabilized.

  “Are ye all right?” Fraser asked, sitting down beside her. She still had dried blood on her cheek, and her hair was tumbling out of the tight pins, long locks of it framing her pale face. Her hands were folded on her knee, and her skirts were covered with a bloody hospital gown. She looked exhausted and alert, her eyes wide, taking in everything. He knew her mind must be ticking like a stopwatch.

  She looked every inch a proper doctor.

  She focused on him slowly and scanned his face, her eyes softening at the sight of him. “I’m fine. Your medical officer?”

  He shook his head, unable to speak over the bitterness in his throat. She reached for his hand, squeezing it.

  He stared down at her fingers against his. The rest of her was a mess, but her hands were clean, ready, though it had been fourteen hours since the first ambulance arrived. She hadn’t stopped, or broken down, or given up. He closed his hand around hers and held tight, drawing on her strength.

  “Miss Atherton? Surely it’s not you. Not here.” Colonel Bellford stood in the doorway, glaring at them in alarm.

  Eleanor withdrew her hand from Fraser’s and rose to her feet. The colonel looked over her bloody attire. “You were told to stay away from the wounded.”

  “I was asked to help,” she said simply. “I couldn’t say no, sir. There were . . . so many.” She stepped in front of Fraser, not mentioning his name as the one who had brought her here and insisted she help.

  Bellford’s face darkened. He was as exhausted as everyone else, his eyes bloodshot. He opened his mouth to speak, to command and rail and forbid. Fraser met the commander’s eyes, ready to defend Eleanor, to take the blame, the bloody field punishment, or the court-martial, or whatever else Bellford had in mind.

  But Eleanor began to push past the colonel. He grabbed her arm. “I am not finished, young woman.”

  Eleanor pointed. “That man is choking.”

  “Of course he is—the West Kents were caught in a gas attack. Sister Kelly, go and see to that man at once. Jeffers, find Captain Blair and tell him I need to see him.” Bellford looked back at Eleanor. “Do you know anything at all about treating a gas victim?”

  She regarded him. “I do now. After today.”

  The colonel looked at her in dull surprise, then released her and stepped back. “You’ve done enough,” he said crisply. “Go and get some rest.” He turned and walked away to check the gas victim without a backward glance. Eleanor watched him go.

  “Come on,” Fraser said. “He’s right—ye need to eat, and sleep.” He resisted the urge to reach up and swipe at the blood on her cheek. In truth, he was sorely tempted to kiss her.

  She swallowed, then looked around her, taking in the aftermath once more, making sure no one else needed her.

  “I liked it,” she told him softly. “Not because men were hurt, but because I was useful—I helped, I made a difference. They needed me.” Her eyes met Fraser’s, and he saw the flame burning there, the sense of purpose and determination, the realization that she was alive amid the carnage, had come through it. “Was I useful?”

  “Aye, lass, ye were useful,” he said. Faint praise, but he couldn’t say more—his tongue was too thick, his throat too tight. He couldn’t touch her, it wasn’t allowed, but he reached for her hand anyway and brought it to his lips, planting a quick kiss on her knuckles. Admiration, thanks, grief—he included it all in the press of his mouth on her skin. Her knuckles were rough and red, and she smelled of carbolic. She drew a sharp little breath and squeezed his hand, stepping closer to him. It had been a long day, emotionally and physically draining, probably the hardest day she’d ever had, the worst. If he needed comfort, she needed it just as badly. He wanted to pull her into his arms, hold her, make them both feel human and whole again.

  “Miss?” Private Gibbons said softly, and Fraser dropped her hand and stepped back. Eleanor blushed, her pale face heating, and Fraser knew her thoughts had been the same as his own. “The colonel said I was to see that you ate something,” Gibbons recited his orders. “Then I’m to escort you to your quarters and see that you have plenty of hot water. I’m to tell you that you are ordered to rest, and then to report to the colonel in the morning in his office.” He gave her a sweet, vacant smile. “There’s hot tea and sandwiches in the refectory if you’re ready, miss.”

  She looked at Fraser. “Will you come with me?”

  He clenched his fists against the desire to follow her. “Nay. I’ve got to get back. We’ve no MO at the front, and any fresh wounded will have to get by with what the bearers can do for them.”

  She scanned his face for a moment, and again he felt the desire to touch her, to wipe away the dried blood on her cheek or tuck the errant strands of hair back behind her ear. He put his hands in his pockets. “Thank ye for what ye did today.”

  She scanned his face as if she were memorizing it. “I’m the one who owes you my thanks, Sergeant. I wish . . . I hope I’ll see you again. Not under such dire circumstances, of course, but . . .” He watched her lips move, saw the color rising in her pale cheeks, but Gibbons was waiting. “Stay safe,” she said softly.

  He watched her go, feeling as if he’d been given a blessing.

  Or a curse.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Another medical officer killed in action,” Robert Bellford muttered to David Blair in the privacy of his quarters when things were finally quiet. It was not quit
e dawn, a bit early for a drink, or a bit late, but one long hellish day had turned into night and was about to become another bloody day. It seemed most appropriate to share a drink now, and surely it counted as medicinal.

  He took out the bottle of exquisite cognac he kept for such occasions, for times when the war threatened to overwhelm him. He poured two glasses, considering the events, the cases, the successes and failures of the past twenty-four hours. He handed one glass to Blair and raised his own. For a moment he regarded the dark amber liquor. The rare and excellent spirit was forty years old, a gift from his wife. It had been bottled in 1874, when the world was at peace and he was still in short pants and carefree.

  “To Captain Nathaniel Duncan,” he said, and David Blair raised his glass in return. They both sipped, and the mellow heat of the cognac flowed through Robert’s veins like molten honey.

  The moment of bliss was over all too soon. There wasn’t enough cognac in the world to keep from being overwhelmed by this damned war, eaten away and destroyed from the inside out, heart and mind and soul. But he was an officer, a surgeon, and a gentleman, and there was nothing for it but to carry on, do his duty, and lead, no matter how long it took.

  He looked at David Blair. The surgeon’s shoes, and the hems of his trousers, were still spotted with blood, as were his own. Neither of them had been to bed yet. He wondered if he looked as bad as the captain did. The man needed shaving, a bath, and sleep. Food, too. In the seven months Blair had been at 46/CCS he’d lost at least twenty pounds. Dread and overwork made everyone lean and gaunt. Surgeons and soldiers and nurses and orderlies were all hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, their bellies caved against their spines. He remembered Blair when he had arrived, rosy, earnest, and eager. Blair was a good surgeon, relentlessly patient with the wounded and the staff, and he kept his head in a crisis. Bellford was grateful for that—he just needed two or three more doctors as good as David Blair.