by Amanda Harte
Dwight Hollins wasn’t as tall as she had expected—perhaps an inch under six feet—nor was he lanky. This man was well muscled, and if it weren’t for the scowl, his face would be a handsome one. His eyes were hazel, and though his hair was covered with a cap, Carolyn knew from Helen’s tales that it was brown.
“Is it still morning?” he asked, his words dripping with disdain. “Or perhaps it is morning again? I’ve been waiting long enough that that seems possible.”
Carolyn looked around. The other doctors and nurses were so engrossed with their own patients that they seemed not to notice her. Thank goodness. No one had recognized her as an aide and was going to demand that she leave. Perhaps she could get through this after all. The first step was to placate the doctor. His nurse was late. Even though she was not responsible, there was no denying that. “I’m sorry.”
The scowl deepened. “Don’t apologize to me,” he said, his tone somehow managing to be both frosty and yet burning with sarcasm. “It’s the men here who deserve your apologies.” Dwight Hollins gestured toward the stretchers that lined the perimeter of the room. It was a measure of how many wounded had arrived that the patients were here rather than being in a ward, waiting for surgery.
Laughter, Carolyn again reminded herself, could heal. She held out her skirts and curtseyed as if she were greeting royalty. “My apologies, gentlemen. My granny warned me that vanity was a sin and that I shouldn’t spend so much time fixing my hair, but she also told me that first impressions were important. I ask y’all, what’s a girl to do when she gets conflicting advice?”
As she had hoped, several of the patients laughed. Dr. Hollins did not. “If you’re ready now,” he said, his eyes darkening with something that looked like anger, “perhaps we could do our jobs.”
“Certainly, Doctor.” Carolyn tried not to think about the charade that she had begun. Somehow, some way, she had to make this man think that she was a nurse.
He uncovered the makeshift bandage on the first patient’s arm and nodded as Carolyn took her place next to him. “Scalpel,” he ordered.
Oh, no! There were half a dozen instruments on the tray. One of them was surely a scalpel, but Carolyn had no idea which. She froze.
The doctor held his hand out, then turned to glare at Carolyn. “The one on the right,” he said, his voice as cold as ice. “Might I suggest that you spend less time trying to charm the patients and a bit more helping me.”
She had been trying to charm the patients, but not for the reason Hollow Heart thought. She started to protest, then stopped. So what if he believed she was frivolous and vain? That was preferable to having him realize that she had never before touched a scalpel. “Yes, Doctor,” Carolyn said as sweetly as she could. “It won’t happen again.”
“It had better not.”
And it did not. Carolyn soon learned that Dr. Hollins had a habit of glancing at the instrument tray before he requested an item. If she watched carefully, she would see what he wanted. After the first few times, she reached for the item and placed it in his open hand before he had finished asking for it. The second time that happened, though he made no comment, his tone seemed to warm ever so slightly. After that, it became a challenge for Carolyn. She tried to anticipate the doctor’s needs, retrieving a suture or a bandage and handing it to him before he could speak. This was a game she could play and win. Even better, it served the very important purpose of helping keep Carolyn’s mind off the men they were treating. If she focused on the instruments and Dwight Hollins’s face, she was less aware of the twisted limbs and torn flesh and the men who suffered so greatly.
Many of those men were awake while the doctor treated them, and so Carolyn forced herself to keep a smile on her face. She would look at each one and give him a special smile, pretending he was the man of her dreams, the one who had escorted her to a ball at the country club. In her fantasy, they were dressed in formal clothing, and she wore a fragrant corsage. Though she smiled at the men and occasionally touched one’s hand to reassure him, she never spoke to them. That might disturb the doctor’s concentration. And if there was one thing Carolyn had quickly realized, it was that the doctor took his work seriously. So very seriously.
She glanced down at the ring on her left hand. Her sisters had told her that Ed was too serious for her, that she’d never be happy marrying a man like him. If Martha and Emily thought Ed was serious, they should meet Dwight Hollins. Compared to him, Ed Bleeker was a veritable comedian.
When the next patient was brought to them and the doctor uncovered his leg, Carolyn tried not to wince. Fragments of bone protruded from flesh so badly mangled that she could not see how it could ever heal. Though it was one of the most difficult things she had ever done, she smiled at the young man.
The doctor did not smile. “Chloroform,” he said firmly.
Carolyn tried not to think about the reasons he wanted to sedate this patient. She wasn’t here to think. She was here to help the doctor and by helping him, to help these poor men. As she held the soaked gauze over the patient’s nose, she smiled brightly. The man returned her smile.
“He won’t be smiling when he wakes up with only one leg.”
Carolyn’s hand began to tremble as the implication of the doctor’s words registered. He was going to amputate the man’s leg. She bit the inside of her cheek, then closed her eyes when she realized Dwight Hollins expected her to assist him. She couldn’t! It was one thing to hand him instruments, to help him remove shrapnel and suture wounds. It was far different to cut off a man’s leg. She couldn’t!
Sensing her fears, the doctor fixed his gaze on her. “Is something wrong?” he demanded.
Everything! her mind shrieked, but she forced down the bile and said as calmly as she could, “Nothing other than a moment of pity for this man.”
“He needs your help, not your pity.” No wonder they called him Hollow Heart; the man had no emotions. He might be a skilled physician—and Carolyn had heard that he was one of the finest doctors in the Army—but he lacked basic humanity. How could anyone be so cold? She might have thought that it was a reaction to the destruction that surrounded them, a way of insulating himself from the constant suffering, but Helen had told her that the other doctors were far more human. What had made Dwight Hollins this way? Why didn’t his heart ache as hers did?
Carolyn flashed her bright smile at the doctor. “I’ll give this man both help and sympathy,” she declared as the saw bit into the shattered bone.
Afterwards, Carolyn knew it was a blessing that she could recall none of the details of the surgery. She attempted to play the same game she had before, to watch Dwight’s eyes and anticipate his needs. Sometimes it worked. When it didn’t, he seemed to understand and would point to the instrument he needed. Somehow they finished the amputation. By the end of the day, they had treated more soldiers than Carolyn could count.
When their shift was over, Dwight Hollins nodded briefly as he removed his cap and smock. “Not bad, Nurse.”
Carolyn felt blood rush to her face. For years, people had praised her beauty and her grace. Men had showered her with compliments. Women had told her how they envied her her golden hair, the eyes so dark a blue that they could only be called sapphire, and the heart-shaped face that her sisters wished they had inherited from their mother. Though those compliments had all been fervent, none had touched her the way Dwight Hollins’s three words had.
Carolyn started to smile. Somehow she had survived the day without Dwight’s realizing that she was an imposter, that she had never before done anything like this. Somehow she had managed to help the doctor, and in doing that, she had helped the men. Carolyn’s smile broadened. The people at home were wrong. She was not useless! She had proven that. And maybe, just maybe, coming to France was not a mistake, after all.
Chapter Two
Dwight rolled the portable screen next to the bed. Though the other men in the ward would be able to hear him, the screen provided this patient a semblance of
privacy. It also reduced distractions, and that, Dwight knew, was essential. If a doctor was going to do his best work, he needed to concentrate on his patients.
“How do you feel, Mr. Osborne?” he asked. Though it still felt a little odd, addressing someone younger than himself as “Mister,” Dwight knew it was important. The formal title gave the patients dignity, and that was one of the few things he could offer to men who had suffered the indignities of war.
Though the other doctors disagreed and preferred to address their patients by their first names, Dwight wanted the young men to know that he respected them and their service. He wasn’t like the blonde nurse who wouldn’t stop flirting with them. Didn’t she realize that she was treating them like schoolboys? They might be only eighteen or nineteen, but if they were old enough to fight, they were old enough to be afforded respect. Though thoughts of the blonde nurse irritated him, Dwight kept his face impassive. That was what a good doctor did.
“It hurts, Doc,” the man said. “I feel like my leg’s on fire.”
With a heavy heart, Dwight uncovered what remained of the man’s right leg, looking for signs of infection. How he had hated to amputate the leg, knowing that—even with a prosthesis—the young man would never live a totally normal life. He would walk, but he would never be able to run or play ball with his children. And, if the leg became infected, he might never walk. He might not even live long enough to return home. That was a prospect Dwight did not want to consider. Far too many men had died in this awful war that the politicians claimed would end all wars.
Dwight pulled aside the sterile gauze and studied the stump. Thank goodness, there were none of the angry red lines that he had feared! “It’s healing well, Mr. Osborne,” he said, keeping his voice even. There was no point in showing his elation, for that would reveal the fact that he had been concerned. A good doctor did not alarm his patients. A good doctor did not let his feelings show.
Dwight glanced out the window next to Private Osborne’s bed. Today the wind no longer lashed the rain; instead, drops slid down the windows, partially obscuring the view of the moat. When he had first arrived in Goudot, Dwight had been surprised by the magnificence of the castle that had been converted to a base hospital. A three-story stone edifice with towers, turrets, and a moat was a far cry from a farmhouse in the Midwest and even further from the hospital of his dreams. Still, a man did what he had to.
“I can give you something more for the pain,” he told Private Osborne. Wanting to alleviate pain was the reason Dwight had become a physician.
The young man shook his head. “I don’t like that medicine. It makes me sleep.” He looked down at his leg and frowned. “I’m afraid that I won’t wake up.”
“I understand.” And Dwight did. Everyone feared something different. His youngest sister feared spiders; the oldest had a phobia about roaches; the nurses here feared him. All except the blonde one. She was different. It was distracting, the way she flirted with the patients, and that smile was enough to make a man forget what he was doing. Despite that, Dwight couldn’t fault her competence. She was the best assistant he’d ever had.
He reached for the chart that hung at the foot of the hospital bed. “I’ll have the nurse put extra salve on your leg when she dresses it. That should help.”
The man nodded. As Dwight scribbled his orders on the chart, he heard a woman’s footsteps, followed by a feminine voice. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” Though the voice sounded familiar, there was something odd about it, almost as if the speaker’s nasal passages were congested. “How are things in Raindrop City today?”
Dwight started to smiled, then stopped himself. The staff seemed to have given everyone a nickname, and now it appeared that the town itself had one. It was an appropriate sobriquet. Not only did it rain here almost every day, but the word Goudot sounded like the French phrase gouttes d’eau or drops of water.
One of the men whistled. “Look at this, will you, boys? The sunshine just arrived.”
The woman laughed. “Did I miss the sun? All I saw was mud—inches and inches of mud.” The voice was definitely familiar, although the woman sounded as if she had a respiratory infection.
As Dwight started to pull the screen aside to see who would venture into a ward of seriously injured men with a potentially communicable disease, Private Osborne touched his arm. “Cover my leg, won’t you, Doc? That way I can pretend …” There was no need for him to finish the sentence. If he couldn’t see the missing limb, for a little while at least, he could pretend that the surgery had not taken place.
Dwight nodded. He shouldn’t have let himself be distracted. The rustling on the other side of the screen told him the men were moving in their beds, probably getting ready for the nurse.
“You ready to write a letter for me?” one man asked.
The woman’s voice was closer now, and Dwight could almost picture her walking from one bed to the next, checking on the patients. “Of course, Mr. Perkins. I’ll be with you as soon as I finish the pans.”
It was annoying that he couldn’t place the voice. It was even more annoying that he cared. Resolutely, Dwight focused his attention on Private Osborne’s chart.
“You know we don’t like ’em any better than you do.”
The men chuckled, and Dwight heard the clanking of metal as the woman emptied a bedpan. “Well, gentlemen, my granny says …”
Dwight almost dropped the chart. There was only one woman at this hospital who quoted her grandmother. He knew that. What he did not know was why she was here exposing wounded men to her respiratory infection. Dwight yanked the screen aside, intending to reprimand the blonde nurse. Instead he blinked, not quite believing what he saw. The pretty blonde nurse wasn’t ill. She was wearing … No, it couldn’t be.
“What is that contraption on your nose?” he demanded.
Those deep blue eyes that had smiled across an operating table widened ever so slightly. “It’s called a clothespin.”
“I can see that.” Did the woman think he was stupid? Seven sisters generated a lot of laundry. As a result, Dwight had seen more clothespins than he cared to admit. Yet he had never seen a woman wearing one.
The nurse tipped her nose with the offending clothespin into the air. “If you knew that, why did you ask what it was?”
Impudent. She was worse than his sister Eve had been as a child. “Because,” he said, sternly refusing to remember how he had laughed at Eve’s antics, “for a moment I thought my eyes were deceiving me.” This was, after all, a hospital, not a child’s playroom. It was bad enough that this woman joked at inappropriate times. This was worse. “Would you kindly explain why you are wearing a clothespin?”
Dwight’s eyes moved slowly from the top of her head to her feet, assessing the rest of her costume. The crisp white cap and apron were standard issue, as was the gray dress with its white collar and cuffs. It was only the clothespin that was out of place.
The nurse shrugged. “It makes my job easier.” When she pointed toward the bedpan, a mischievous grin lighting her face, it was all Dwight could do not to laugh. Though he had more than a passing acquaintance with clothespins, having been pressed into laundry service on several occasions, he had never had to empty a bedpan. That was a situation he had no intention of changing. The nurse’s solution to a known problem was ingenious and, yes, amusing. But a good doctor kept levity out of the hospital. A hospital was a serious place.
“A clothespin is not an authorized part of the uniform,” Dwight informed the nurse. Didn’t she understand the need for discipline? This wasn’t simply a hospital; it was a hospital in a war zone. Regulations were not only needed, they were essential.
Apparently she did not understand, for she said simply, “I beg to disagree.” Though her voice bore the soft twang Dwight associated with Texas, there was nothing soft about her attitude. Her head was held high, and despite the ridiculous item perched on her nose, she somehow appeared regal.
Dwight glared at the woman who
was making a mockery of the hospital. “Kindly show me where the guidelines specify the use of a clothespin to block unpleasant odors.”
The eyes that were bluer than a summer sky flashed with annoyance. “Absence does not necessarily mean something is prohibited.”
Dwight heard one of the patients muffle a sound. He chose not to listen too closely, for fear that he would identify the sound as a chuckle. This was not amusing! The woman’s behavior was bordering on insubordination.
“What basis do you have for that statement?” he demanded.
“The handbook does not specifically authorize the wearing of spectacles, yet no one would stop a nurse from wearing them if she needed them.”
This time there was no doubt about it. The men were laughing. “She’s got you there, Doc,” one announced.
“Nurse, I’d like to see you outside.” He had to put a stop to this. If the nurses did not respect him, how could the patients trust him to help them? Dwight knew that more than medicine was required to heal a man, particularly a man who had been severely wounded. Sometimes faith was needed. Dwight’s medical books had recounted numerous incidents where patients recovered when given a placebo, simply because they had confidence in the physician’s abilities. He couldn’t let anyone, especially not this flirtatious, distracting woman, endanger the patients by lessening their faith in him.
“C’mon, Doc,” another patient said. “She wasn’t hurting anyone. Truth is, we like Clothespin Carolyn.” Carolyn. So that was her name. It suited her. Hadn’t one of his sisters told him that the name meant “womanly”? Whatever else she was, there was no denying that this Carolyn was all woman.
“She makes us laugh,” a third man chimed in.
Dwight knew when he was defeated. He would lose more than he could possibly gain if he continued this conversation with Clothespin Carolyn. “I’ll bet she does.” Picking up his bag, he walked toward the door. He would return to this ward when he was certain Carolyn and her clothespin were gone.