‘What’s wrong?’ Lucy asked, knowing something wasn’t right, knowing she needed to stop and check over this child before she ran back to the truck. ‘Qu’est-ce que le problème?’ she tried.
The child slowly took her hands from her side, parting her fingers and then pulling her palms away. Lucy gasped as crimson red spread like a fast-moving cloud across the girl’s top, seeping out.
‘No!’ Lucy shouted, leaping forwards, stumbling as she frantically tried to reach her. How could anyone have gunned these children down like this? Injured them so terribly with no adults around to pose a threat? Or maybe there had been and they were dead.
‘Pressure,’ she said, unable to think of the French word for it. As she showed her what to do. ‘Hold.’
She looked behind her at the older girl, nodded with her head, but the poor child looked terrified.
Lucy thrust one hand against the child’s side and reached back for the other girl, grabbing her and tugging her forwards. She replaced her hand with the girl’s, pushing hard, showing her what to do.
‘Help!’ Lucy screamed. ‘We need help here!’ Why were the soldiers not coming over? Why was no one helping her? Why did no one else care about these poor children, alone and so terribly injured?
‘Wait,’ she said, nodding at the children. ‘I will come back. I promise.’
Lucy stood, glanced at her bloodstained hands for a moment before turning back to the army trucks. They were watching her, the soldiers standing there, the lorries in the background. She opened her mouth to yell at them, to scream that she needed more hands, that they needed to get these children out of here to safety.
She lifted one foot, about to move, wondering who had done this, whether there were SS soldiers close by or . . . Lucy stopped. She watched as one of the soldiers lifted his gun. There was a yell and then all the soldiers suddenly had their rifles cocked. What were they doing? Were they about to shoot her?
Everything moved in slow motion then, from the rising of guns to the piercing scream behind her, a blur that made her feel as if she were watching everything unfold from above. Lucy dragged her eyes from the soldiers, head turning as she looked back. A feeling of dread washed through her – empty, silent blackness taking hold as everything paused around her.
The distinctive grey-green SS uniforms caught her eye first, the cruel expression of a soldier with his gun cocked at the children she’d just fought so desperately to save. The yells from her own soldiers behind her, her mouth open as she tried to scream and instead made no noise at all.
Burning heat burst through her body. The ground vomited dirt as it flew up to meet her, a blast echoing through her ears, throwing her off her feet, making her feel as if she was caught in the centre of a tornado.
‘No!’ she screamed, the word rocketing through her mind as everything blurred. Her neck was on fire, her arm burning. She looked down, expecting to see flames, expecting to be in an actual fire, the heat was so bad.
But she didn’t see her arm. She saw blackness, blackness everywhere like a charred log from a fire, and bubbling flesh where her skin should have been. Lucy tried to sit up, tried to move, tried to speak, but nothing happened.
She forced her feet to move, clumsy, managing to rise on to all fours and move like a dog for a step or two until she fell to the ground, not even having the strength to raise her face from the dirt.
There was a loud ringing in her ears that was deafening. Lucy managed to roll over, just a little, her body heavy as lead, skin burning so hot she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs. But all she managed was a guttural groan as she lay, stagnant, one eye open, smoke and debris billowing around her.
She shut her eyes, trying to push away the pain, trying to remember what it was like back in London, imagined her mother’s arms around her, whispering a song in her ear. She was in bed, a child, wrapped in a warm blanket, her mother’s body a comforting weight beside her.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.
Lucy smiled up at her mother as everything else went dark. She was home. She was safe. She could close her eyes now.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ellie
Ellie placed a hand flat on her stomach, looking down at it. There was nothing to see, but knowing that so much was changing within her was making her so curious, and touching it made her feel more content. It gave her the feeling that she might just be able to protect this baby, if she could only make it home safe, if she could arrive back in London in one piece, go to her family, and then meet Spencer’s mother.
The thought of meeting her sent a shiver through Ellie that she found hard to ignore. Despite Spencer’s constant reassurances, she doubted she would be good enough for his mother, given that her son was such a dashing young doctor, so well-spoken and obviously from a very good family. An Irish farm lass was most likely not what Mrs Black had expected for her boy, no matter what he’d told her to the contrary. But maybe she was used to Spencer being different. He always seemed to care so little about who he was treating or talking to. He cared about people, no matter who they were, and that was one of the reasons she’d been drawn to him. He was the kind of man she’d dreamt of, the type of man she wanted to make a life with once all this was over.
But for now, she had to simply survive the boat ride. She’d been told they should have a safe passage, that the most dangerous part was getting to the ship and boarding, but she wasn’t so sure about how safe anything felt any more. If only her friends were with her to talk to, to pass the time and chat about what awaited them back home. Then again, she had to admit that she was grateful to be travelling home at all.
Ellie twirled the ring on her finger, smiled when she thought of the effort that Spencer must have gone to in order to have had it made at such short notice. It was simple, plain as plain could be, but it was hers and it reminded her every time she looked at it or felt its weight against her skin that she was married. To Spencer. She had only to hope that Spencer would make it home from France to meet his little baby.
Ellie stretched and then made her way from the quarters where she was staying with the other nurses, some on leave and others being transferred back to England, back to the hospital area. It didn’t seem to matter that she was pregnant; they were desperate for nurses on board and she was more than happy to do her bit. There was something less daunting about nursing in this way; perhaps she felt safer, or less connected to the immediacy of war. The daily terror of dying had drained so much of her confidence and happiness, but now, heading for home, she could feel more of her old self slowly coming back. Their job was to assist the wounded and care for them, tend to their wounds and make sure their journey was as comfortable as possible, and she liked not having the worry of patching them up only to have them sent back to the front.
‘Nurse, can you assist here please?’
She smiled to herself. Perhaps even the doctors were feeling more at ease on board, for it had been a long time since she’d heard anyone superior to her say the word ‘please’ in the same sentence as ‘nurse’.
‘What can I do for you?’ she asked.
Ellie looked down at the man on the bed closest to her and fought the urge not to retch. The poor soldier was covered in the most terrible burns. She wondered why he’d been earmarked for sea travel instead of an emergency air evacuation.
Taking a deep breath and smiling, not wanting to scare the poor young soldier further, she touched his hand, the one part of him poking out that was miraculously unscathed. ‘Would you like me to assist in the bandage changes?’
‘Yes. I’ll need his dressings changed regularly. Once you’re done here, I’d like you on my service to assist with some of the other burns victims, changing dressings first and then overseeing their meals.’
Ellie nodded, feeling nauseous. The baby and the moving of the ship had been bad enough, but preparing to change the dressings of a severely burnt soldier, knowing how terribly he’d start to scream once she started
, was unbearable. Perhaps her job hadn’t got better after all.
‘This is going to hurt, I’m so sorry,’ she told him, still holding his hand.
The soldier nodded and she turned to gather what she needed from the nearby nurses’ station. When she turned back, she noticed tears slipping silently down the soldier’s cheeks, knowing what was coming, what pain he was about to endure. Ellie felt tears slide down her own cheeks, but she didn’t stop what she was doing, kept preparing, not wanting to delay the inevitable. She told herself that it was fine to cry with him; all it did was show how much she cared, that she was sharing his pain. There was nothing wrong with compassion.
She’d have preferred to be fork-mashing his dinner and murmuring stories to him to pass the time, but that could come later.
‘Here goes,’ she muttered, using her forceps to slowly, painstakingly, remove the first of his old bandages as he started to scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Scarlet
Scarlet knew she should be crying. She should be wailing or sobbing or something other than what she was doing right now. Which was standing very, very still, body shaking, as she stared at the man she’d been waiting so long to find.
Thomas. It was actually Thomas.
‘I never expected to hear your voice again.’ His voice was lower, quieter than she remembered. ‘Let alone see you here.’
Scarlet looked at Spencer. He was staring at her, not saying anything, and Scarlet knew she had to do something. Her body was so numb, her hands like lead at her sides as she tried but failed to lift them.
‘Thomas?’ she whispered. ‘Thomas, it’s truly you?’
He made a grunting noise and she forced her feet forward, dropping down in front of him and placing her head against his knees, arms around him. She wanted to be happy, she wanted to kiss him and squeal and be so, so happy to have found the fiancé that everybody else had presumed dead. She’d believed for so long, and now she was touching him, the man who by all accounts should be dead, and instead of being overjoyed, all she could think about was James. The brother she wished was in her arms right now. James, who was on his way back to London. James, who had whispered to her and kissed her and made her feel things she’d never in her lifetime forget.
‘I can’t believe I’ve found you,’ Scarlet said – the only honest words that she could say out loud.
‘Doctor, may I have a word?’ The nun spoke to Spencer, but it gave Scarlet an excuse to pull away, to look back at Spencer and hope that her presence would be requested, too. But it wasn’t. Spencer gave her a long look that she couldn’t read, then disappeared.
Scarlet slowly turned back to Thomas, rose enough to shuffle sideways and move into the chair beside him. She held out her hand to him and when he didn’t take it she reached for him, gently stroking his skin.
Thomas flinched. She saw it, but she didn’t stop. She’d been nursing soldiers long enough to know that they didn’t want people to act differently around them even though they felt so different within themselves.
‘Thomas, I was so sure I’d find you,’ Scarlet told him quietly. ‘From the moment I knew we were being posted to France, I had this feeling that I would find you myself. Everything I’ve done, I did to find you.’
He stared at her, a half-smile on his face. He was so deeply troubled, she could see that, but he was still the same man she’d promised to marry, who she’d fallen in love with before waving him off and swearing that she’d always wait for him.
‘When your letters stopped coming I feared you’d met someone else, that you’d fallen for a beautiful Frenchwoman, perhaps, but when your family told me it had been months since your last letter, and then being told you were missing . . .’ Scarlet’s voice cracked, all the strength that had been keeping her going, that had made her believe he was alive and to nurse through such tough conditions, seeping from her body.
‘I’m so happy we’ve found you,’ she said, blinking away her tears and clearing her husky throat. ‘Your family will be so thrilled to know you’re safe, that we’ll be bringing you home.’
‘No,’ Thomas said, his voice as hostile as the glare he was giving her.
‘Of course they’ll be happy!’ she insisted. ‘I met your brother, I nursed him, and he’s—’
‘James?’ Thomas choked on the word.
‘James is alive,’ she told him, squeezing his hand, hating that he tried to pull it away, flinching as if she’d hurt him. ‘I met him by chance and we were both posted here. But he was injured, twice in fact, and he’s been sent home now. Nothing he won’t fully recover from, although he was shot pretty badly the second time.’
The snigger took Scarlet by surprise, the hate, or maybe it was pain, as it passed across Thomas’s face, making her snatch her hand back and dig her nails hard into her palm.
‘So he’s not a cripple like me?’ he sneered. ‘Is that what you’re trying to tell me?’
Thomas pulled back the blanket that had been covering him, showing the legs, the knees that Scarlet had embraced only moments before. They didn’t move. She didn’t ask him whether he could move them or not, they were covered by trousers, but given the way he’d spoken to her she doubted very much that he could. She discreetly sniffed the air, couldn’t detect any obvious gangrene.
‘You can’t walk?’ she asked gently.
‘If I could bloody well walk I would have stood up when my fiancée walked into the room!’ he barked.
Scarlet recoiled as if he’d slapped her across the cheek, his words as powerful as any punch. This was not the Thomas she’d fought for. This was not the man she’d promised to marry. Memories of him flooded her mind, reminded her of the man he was: good and steadfast, decent and kind.
‘Thomas, we have excellent doctors on staff at our hospital and Doctor Black . . .’
The man who she’d once felt such deep love for, such desperation to find, started to sob before her. His body was shaking, heaving, crumpling over as he cried like a baby torn from its mother. Scarlet reached for him, didn’t hesitate, couldn’t do anything but be there for him. Before the war, she didn’t recall ever seeing a man cry, never once, but since she’d been nursing she’d seen hundreds of men sob. Mourning the loss of friends or brothers, their limbs or sight, or simply crying with gratitude that they’d been saved. That they were going to be safe, perhaps even to be sent home, with food in their bellies and the warm hand of a nurse to hold when they were at their worst.
Scarlet wrapped her arms around Thomas and held him tight, letting him cry as she soothed him and made shushing sounds in his ear as she would to comfort a child. This was the last time she could think about James, romantically at least. Thomas was her fiancé. Thomas needed her. Thomas was her priority now, and she would do everything in her power to heal him and get him home, to be there for him and nurse him back to health. It was Thomas to whom she was promised, not James, and what had happened with James needed to be remembered as a wartime lapse of judgement and nothing more.
‘What are you even doing here?’ he muttered. ‘Why are you nursing?’
She sighed. ‘I’m doing my duty, just like everyone else.’
‘Scarlet?’
She eased herself away from him, enough to lift her chin and look up at Spencer, who was saying her name from the other side of the room. She met his gaze and knew she had to step away from Thomas.
‘We need to discuss something,’ Spencer said, his smile tight.
Scarlet stood, pressed a quick, light kiss to Thomas’s cheek and followed Spencer back out into the hall. ‘He’s not in a good way,’ she blurted out before the doctor had a chance to speak. ‘He doesn’t seem like himself.’
‘Scarlet. We’ve been advised to wait until morning, then we’ll drive directly to Brussels to our new hospital there. They’ll be well set up by then, and we can give your Thomas all the medical assistance he needs.’
She nodded, the only thing she felt truly capable of right now. ‘You’re not g
oing to examine him now?’
Spencer’s face was grim. ‘I am, but from what I’ve been told he’s in denial about his injuries, perhaps even about what happened in the first place. All we know is that he was dragged from the plane before it exploded, and somehow brought here safely. The fact he’s still alive is a miracle.’
Scarlet didn’t know what was wrong with him, what the extent of his injuries were, but the fact that his legs weren’t working properly was terrifying. To her and certainly to him. But he was her responsibility, and whatever was wrong, whatever happened, she wasn’t going to leave his side. She looked at him and felt only duty, a sense of helping a friend, but her feelings didn’t matter. She’d made him a promise, and there was nothing more to it than that.
‘So we stay here for the night?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Spencer said, touching her shoulder. She was so pleased he was here with her, that she wasn’t with any other doctor. ‘I want to examine him alone, in privacy, man to man,’ he said. ‘I think that given the circumstances we can afford him that luxury.’
‘Thank you,’ Scarlet said.
‘Now you go and take a bath. I’ve managed to negotiate hot water into our accommodation.’
Spencer said the words with a smile and she had to fight the urge to throw her arms around him. He had so much to worry about himself, yet here he was being so kind and not letting on to anyone his personal concerns. She caught a glimpse of the band around his finger, the ring that reminded her he was married to her friend making her feel somehow that Ellie was here with them.
‘I can’t say no to a bath now, can I?’ she replied.
Spencer turned to go back into the room and Scarlet hated how easily she kept her back turned and went in search of the nun instead of returning to see Thomas. The possibility of submerging herself in a tub of warm water was a luxury like no other.
Wives of War Page 24