“The hospital? I’ve been trying to find it. Quite lost.”
Ivy winced, but good manners—and medical training—prevailed. “Are you injured?”
“I’m afraid I’m not the most athletic of men. I hit a rough patch of pavement and took a tumble from my bicycle. I didn’t think much of it, but my hand is swelling. I broke it as a boy.”
Something tender in her moved her feet closer. He had long fingers with square tips, and he held them slightly apart in a rounded position that spoke of pain.
The arm he cradled bore the brassard of Organisation Todt, and she stopped short.
But the man was hurting. To deny him care because of his political ideology would be as wrong as the Germans denying care to the Soviets because of theirs.
Gerrit stood only two feet away, the closest she’d stood to him, his gaze soft in the muted light.
She hauled in a breath and turned west. “I’ll show you the way.”
“Thank you.” He fell in beside her. “If it weren’t for my injury, I’d offer to carry your books. Notebooks?”
“Sketch pads.” Almost three dozen of them.
“Art night at the medical society?” he said in a humorous tone.
Her lips betrayed her and smiled. She wrestled them into a neutral expression. “We have a serious paper shortage in Jersey. Doctors need paper for patient charts, our notes, even prescriptions. And I have more than my share.”
Gerrit nodded toward the stack in her arms. “That’s quite a lot of sketch pads.”
Ivy didn’t want to converse, and she sighed. “When I left Oxford, I ordered six sketch pads from my favorite art shop. The clerk misunderstood me and ordered sixty. The shop owner was furious,and he would have fired the poor girl, so I said I had wanted sixty after all.”
Gerrit’s smile radiated warmth, as always. “How thoughtful of you.”
She shifted her gaze to the park grounds on her right, dark in the moonless night. “A fortuitous mistake, since I haven’t been able to buy any during the occupation.”
“You’re giving them away.” His voice lowered in concern. “How many will you have left?”
“Two for my medical practice—same as I’m giving the other doctors, two each. And—and one for drawing.” Her throat tightened.
“Only one? That won’t last long.”
No, it wouldn’t, and she couldn’t speak.
“You must keep more.” Indignation lifted Gerrit’s voice, and he circled his injured arm, almost bumping her. “I draw too, but as a draftsman. I draw buildings and machines, things without life. But you—I saw your art at Christmas—you draw things with life. You drawwithlife. To do so, it must bring you life too, yes? Like food for your mind, your soul.”
Never had someone voiced it in such a way. It was true. Drawing nourished her, and when Fern had deprived her of sketching, she’d felt famished.
Her feet slowed and stopped.
Gerrit stopped too, and his gaze settled down on her, earnest, understanding, alive for what made her feel alive.
“Yes.” The word tumbled out, laying a bridge between them.
A bridge she couldn’t allow.
She whipped her gaze around. They stood at the corner of Gloucester Street. Across the way rose the stately gray hospital.
“Right now,” she said, “about two dozen men and women are lying in hospital, dying from diabetes because we have no insulin. Children and adults are dying from diphtheria because we have no antitoxin. Elderly people like Thelma Galais grow weaker dueto a lack of food. Sacrificing my sketch pads for the sake of the medical community—well, it’s no sacrifice. It’s a mere inconvenience.”
“I’m sorry.” Gerrit’s voice dived low in sympathy—not only for her inconvenience but for the suffering of the islanders.
The bridge remained intact.
