If I Were You

by Lynn Austin

  As quickly as survivors were located and dug free, ambulances transported them to hospital, then raced back for more. The task was endless and agonizing, the dead and dying outnumbering the living. When Audrey’s composure began to crumble beneath the weight of suffering, she and Eve swapped tasks.

  Forty-eight hours passed before the last of the victims were freed and Audrey and Eve had a chance to sleep. The final toll, she was told, included 121 dead and 141 seriously injured. The chaplain from the morning worship service was among the dead, along with several senior British Army officers and a US Army colonel.

  Audrey wondered if the suffering would ever end. The V-1 bombs continued to fall on London throughout the month of June, meaning that Audrey and Eve were always on call, working day and night. If they weren’t driving, they were keeping their vehicle in good repair, the engine cleaned from clogging dust, the tires checked for punctures from broken glass. Audrey learned to recognize the ominous buzz of the V-1 bombs, which the Londoners had nicknamed doodlebugs. She experienced a new, heart-pounding fear when forced to wait, holding her breath, during the interminable moments between when the stuttering motor halted and when the deafening explosion finally came. No one could predict where or when the missiles would fall. Letters from Robert became her lifeline, short and hastily written, but a joy to read and reread at the end of a grueling day. He was still in England, keeping the air base running and the airplanes flying, providing air support for the battles raging on the Continent.

  We’ve heard terrible reports of the V-1 bombings in London, he wrote. I worry about you, Audrey, my love.

  She assured him she was safe. I’m learning to put my sensitivities aside and administer first aid when needed, she wrote back. One must get used to the sight of blood to be of any help at all. Perhaps I’ll be a real nurse by the end of the war. As the endless weeks and months passed, she and Robert longed for the day when they would see each other again. Neither of them had any idea when that day would be.

  “You two ladies deserve a break,” Eve’s supervisor told her and Audrey one lovely September morning. “How would you like to go for a ride outside London?”

  Eve longed for the forest, the scent of pine and moss and damp earth. “That sounds wonderful! Where are we going?”

  “We borrowed one of our ambulances from another unit and we’d like you to return it. I understand you’re both from a nearby village.”

  Eve couldn’t have imagined anything better. She could see her old friends, visit the cemetery, walk in the woods. Audrey would see Robert, and maybe Louis could get an evening off to go dancing. Eve felt a thrill of anticipation at the thought of laughing with Louis, dancing in the comfort of his arms.

  “I’ll drive. You can nap,” Eve offered, sliding behind the wheel. “You don’t want Robert to see you with dark circles beneath your eyes, do you?” Audrey looked bone weary after months of demanding work. She was dozing before they reached London’s outskirts.

  The familiar countryside soothed Eve. How wonderful to leave behind the signs of war and ruined lives and the stress of coping with V-1 missiles. She was driving through an idyllic village, thinking how untouched by hardship it seemed, when she heard a motorcycle approaching behind her. She checked her rearview mirror to see if the driver wanted to overtake her. There was no motorcycle. Nor was one approaching in front of her. Her heart stopped when she realized what it was.

  Eve jerked the steering wheel to pull over and slammed on the brakes. “Audrey! Audrey, get out! Get out now!” she screamed.

  Audrey looked around, dazed. “What? . . . Why?”

  “It’s a V-1, Audrey! Get out!” Eve scrambled from the ambulance to take cover, not bothering to shut the door. When she looked back, Audrey was still inside.

  The V-1’s sputtering motor halted.

  Oh, no!

  Eve sprinted to the ambulance and yanked open the passenger door. She pulled Audrey out. They were staggering away from the vehicle when the force of the blast knocked them both to the ground. It happened so fast that Eve had the sensation of slamming into a brick wall. Pinpricks of light danced in her vision like stars. The shock wave traveled through every inch of her body. She barely had time to cover her head before a cloud of debris and dust rained down.

  She lay in the weeds, stunned. Deafened. She tried to sit up and her head whirled as if she’d spun in circles. The sensation made her vomit. “Audrey . . . ,” she rasped. She could barely hear her own voice. “Audrey, where are you?” She sat up slowly and looked around. Audrey lay in an ungainly heap, her limbs sprawled, her leg twisted at an unnatural angle. She wasn’t moving.

  Eve heard ringing. An ambulance was coming. Thank God. She crawled painfully toward Audrey to see if she was alive, if she was breathing, and found a pulse in her throat. “Audrey! Audrey, wake up!” she begged. Blood matted her forehead and hair. Something was sticking out of her leg. Her own shinbone. Blood pulsed from the wound. Eve pulled out a handkerchief for a makeshift tourniquet, using a stick to twist it tight. It would do until the ambulance arrived. Where was the crew? Come on, come on! They must be nearby. The bells were so loud!

  Yet all of the other sounds around her were muffled. Eve couldn’t hear birds or the wind in the trees or any other noises. She could barely hear her own voice when she cried out for help. They weren’t ambulance bells. The ringing was in her ears. And Audrey might be dying. She needed to drive her to hospital.

  Eve looked around for their ambulance, praying that the bomb hadn’t destroyed it. It sat alongside the road where she’d left it, only a few yards away, the windows blasted out by the explosion. Eve half crawled, half staggered to it, ignoring her nausea and throbbing head. Every movement brought a surge of agony from her left arm, but she managed to open the rear doors. Pull out a stretcher. Drag it to where Audrey lay. Shift her limp body onto it. Drag it back to the ambulance. Audrey didn’t moan or move, even as Eve clumsily hauled the stretcher into the rear of the ambulance. She checked Audrey’s pulse again. Weak. She replaced the handkerchief with a real tourniquet. The exertion made Eve dizzy. She closed her eyes for a second to keep from passing out. She couldn’t faint. She couldn’t.

  Eve grabbed a blanket from the back before closing the doors and used it to cover the broken glass on the driver’s seat. A jolt of pain shot through her leg as she depressed the clutch. Another pierced her arm as she grabbed the gear lever. Oh, God, help me! She couldn’t drive. She had to.

  Tears of pain and panic blurred Eve’s vision. Only fear and training propelled her forward. Two ambulances raced past, coming from the opposite direction. They sounded miles away even as they zoomed by. She should have waited, searched for other victims. There wasn’t time.

  At last, at last, Eve pulled up at the hospital’s emergency entrance as she had so many times. The engine bucked and died but she was in too much pain to step on the clutch one last time. She’d been trained to keep calm, but she flung open her door and half fell from the ambulance, screaming at the attendants to hurry. Audrey didn’t move when they transferred her to a gurney. “Is she alive?” Eve asked as they rushed Audrey inside. She couldn’t understand the muffled reply.

  A nurse eased Eve onto another gurney. “Let’s take care of you,” she mumbled. Eve felt a shock of pain before everything went black.

  A doctor stood over her when she opened her eyes, listening to her chest with his stethoscope. He said something to her and she shook her head. “I can’t hear anything!”

  “You’re going to be all right,” he said, bending close. “Your eardrums weren’t ruptured. We’ll stitch up the worst of your lacerations, like the deep one in your leg. You suffered bruising and a dislocated elbow, but you’ll recover.”

  Eve tried to sit up. “I need to move the ambulance—”

  A nurse held her down. “We already moved it. We have more casualties coming in.”

  “What about my friend? She has a head injury—”

  “We know. We’re taking care o
f her. She needs surgery for a compound fracture in her leg. You lie here quietly, now, so we can get you stitched up.”

  Eve did as she was told and lay still on the gurney. The pain as they yanked her elbow joint into place was like nothing she’d ever felt before. Then, miraculously, the pain was gone. The cuts requiring stitches contained bits of broken glass, likely from the shattered windscreen. More casualties poured into the emergency room, and the nurses moved Eve to a chair near their station so they could use the gurney for someone else. Eve wished she could help, but she couldn’t stop trembling, even with a blanket wrapped around her. Audrey was badly injured, and Eve was terrified for her.

  Hours passed before the flow of ambulances and victims halted. Eve’s hearing improved, but her head continued to throb. She stopped one of the busy nurses and asked about Audrey. “I’ll send a doctor out to speak with you,” she promised. At last, the same doctor who’d spoken with Eve earlier crouched in front of her, leaning close to her ear.

  “Your friend had surgery for her fractured leg. She’s still unconscious. We won’t know more about her head injury for a while. In the meantime, you should notify her family.”

  A wave of nausea rolled through Eve. Audrey would want Robert by her side. Eve needed to call the American air base and Wellingford Hall to locate him. Yet she would never be able to use a telephone until her hearing improved. She pulled herself to her feet, slowly, painfully, and limped over to two ATS ambulance drivers who stood talking near the door. “Will you help me, please?” Eve explained what had happened and begged them to notify Audrey Clarkson’s fiancé, Robert Barrett, at the American air base or at his barracks in Wellingford Hall. The drivers wrote down the information and promised not to give up until they got through to him. They helped Eve to her chair at the nurses’ station before hurrying away to use the phone.

  Eve leaned against the wall and closed her eyes. God, are You going to take Audrey away along with everyone else I’ve ever loved? If so, please take me, too. She drifted to sleep from exhaustion and shock.

  When she opened her eyes again, someone was gently shaking her and calling her name. “Eve . . . Eve . . . ?” Louis crouched beside her. Night had fallen outside the emergency room doors. “Eve, are you okay?”

  “I think so. . . . I fell asleep.” If Louis was here, then Robert must be here, too. “Audrey! Is she all right? Did they tell you anything?”

  “She’s still unconscious.”

  “I need to see her.” She tried to stand, but Louis made her stay seated.

  “She needs to be hospitalized for a few more days. In the meantime, you need to get out of here and get some rest.”

  “I need to stay with Audrey—”

  “Bob is with her. The doctor said I should take you home.”

  “I . . . I don’t have a home.” The truth struck Eve like a second shock wave. She covered her face and wept. Louis’s arms surrounded her—gently, so gently, as if afraid he’d hurt her. She leaned against him and sobbed. She felt his warmth and strength and never wanted him to let go. “Don’t leave me all alone, Louis. Please!”

  “I won’t.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her outside to his jeep. She didn’t care where he took her as long as he stayed beside her and didn’t leave. He drove to Wellingford Hall. After Robbins fussed over her and Mrs. Smith promised tea and hot soup, Louis carried her up the stairs to her bedroom on the third floor.

  “I can walk,” she told him, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Mrs. Smith brought the tray and stayed with her and Louis while she tried to eat. Eve’s stomach felt queasy as if the blast had shaken all of her insides out of place. Louis left the room while Mrs. Smith helped Eve change from her bloody uniform into a nightgown, but Eve begged him to come back and stay with her for a while, if he didn’t mind.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he assured her. “The doctor said you shouldn’t be alone.”

  Alone. The word terrified her. The only person she had in the world was Audrey. If anything happened to her . . .

  “Do you remember what happened?” Louis asked, sitting beside her on the bed.

  “Audrey and I were delivering an ambulance to our old post . . . I heard a doodlebug . . . Such a stupid name for something so deadly . . . I thought Audrey was going to die!” Her tears began to fall.

  “She’s not,” Louis said, holding her tightly. “The doctors are pretty sure she’ll be okay.”

  “I thought I was going to die, too, and I didn’t want to. I needed to live and save Audrey. She’s the only family I have left, and if anything happens to her . . . I’ll be . . . I’ll be alone!” She started to shiver uncontrollably. Louis made her lie down and tucked a blanket around her the way Granny Maud used to do before kissing her good night. “Don’t leave me, Louis!”

  “I won’t. I’m here, Eve.” He lay down on the bed beside her and held her again.

  “I’m so tired of bombs . . . and living in fear,” she wept. “I’ve been surrounded by death for so long that I feel half-dead myself. I know how thin the line is between life and death—one breath, one heartbeat.” She rolled over onto her side to face him, laying her hand on his chest so she could feel his heartbeat. The steadiness of it comforted her. “Do you ever feel afraid, Louis? Tell me the truth. Ever since the war started, I’ve been trying so hard to be brave. But I need to know that someone else is as terrified as I am.” He nodded. He understood.

  “When Bob got the call about you and Audrey—” Louis’s voice broke. Tears pooled in his eyes. “I thought, Not them. Please, God. Don’t take any more people I care about. Some of the crews at the air base . . . I’ll be eating with them one day, then they’re gone the next, shot down, and they’re never coming back. I have to gather up their personal effects and notify their loved ones—” He uttered a sob as tears flowed down his face. “I’m sorry . . .” He let go of her long enough to swipe his tears. Eve felt such a longing for this kind, gentle man, such love.

  “Don’t be sorry, Louis. God knows we have every right to cry. Although He doesn’t seem to care.”

  “My boyhood buddy Arnie is over in Belgium right now. Right in the thick of things. And I just got news that my other friend Tom was wounded in Italy. I’ll be transferred to France soon, and we’ll have a long, hard fight ahead of us before we get to Berlin, and . . . I’ve never told anyone this, not even Bob . . . but I have a terrible feeling that I’m going to be next—that I’m going to die—and I’m so scared!”

  Eve rested her face against his stubbled cheek and let their tears flow together. His were warm and somehow soothing.

  “If we die, Eve, what purpose will it serve? Do the deaths we’ve seen have any meaning at all? Will ours make a difference?”

  “I don’t know. I came so close to dying today.” A shiver raced through her. Louis held her tighter. “I’ve been living with death, surrounded by it, for five endless years, and I’m so sick of it. The smell of it, the sight of it. The horror of it. And there’s no end in sight. I long to forget about this war, Louis. For an hour—or even for five minutes! I want to forget so I can feel alive again. I don’t want to hear the drone of approaching planes or the buzzing V-1s as they fall. I don’t want to hear the explosions when they hit and know that people’s lives have just shattered into a million pieces. I’m tired of the wailing sirens, the clanging ambulance bells.” She pulled back to look into his sorrowful eyes. “Please, Louis. Please help me forget.”

  Louis gazed at her for a long moment through tear-filled eyes, then cupped her face in his hands. He kissed her. A dam burst inside Eve and she kissed him in return with all of the love and longing that her barricaded heart had stored away. All that mattered was the touch of his lips on hers, the warmth of his arms surrounding her.

  At last Louis pulled back and whispered, “I love you, Eve.” She looked into his eyes, into his soul, and saw his heart. He was telling the truth. He loved her. “I never meant to fall in love with you, but it happened. I think about you all the
time, and I ask Bob if he knows when you’re coming to Wellingford again so I can see you. All those hours we spent together, dancing, laughing . . . I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  “And I love you,” she whispered. His handsome smile, the sound of his laughter, his ginger hair. Love had all but disappeared from her war-scarred world, and she hungered for its healing power. “I’ve tried to deny it and convince myself that we’re just friends, but it isn’t true. I love you, Louis. I thought I would never love anyone except Alfie, but I feel closer to you after these months we’ve spent together than I ever did to Alfie. I could never be sure of him.” And Alfie had been right—he was shallow. Louis had substance and depth.

  “How did this happen to us?” he asked in wonder.

  “I don’t know. But kiss me again, Louis. Maybe we can forget that we may not be alive tomorrow.” He pulled her close, and Eve offered all her grief and passion to him, surrendering all her pain and fear to his love.

  They fell asleep in each other’s arms.

  Eve awoke during the night and Louis was still beside her, strong and warm and alive. She watched his chest move with each breath he took, and the sound of his breathing soothed her back to sleep. She awoke again when he kissed her softly. He stood over her, dressed in his uniform. Before she could say anything, he slipped from the room.

  Loneliness engulfed her. Her arms felt empty, the room cold and bare. Mum was gone. The splendor of Wellingford Hall was gone. And now Louis was gone, too.

  She climbed out of bed and moved the blackout curtain to peer outside. Light from the dawning sun flooded the room, blinding her. A tidal wave of guilt slammed into her. What have I done? Louis is another woman’s husband!

  Granny Maud had made her memorize the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” was one of them. But Granny had also insisted that the Good Shepherd would always be near Eve, watching over her—and He wasn’t. Innocent people died by the thousands and hundreds of thousands, and He didn’t care. Audrey had almost been one of them. None of what Granny Maud had taught her was true. None of it.