In the treatment room, Charlie and Gerrit hoisted Bernardus onto the examination table.
Ivy flung on her white coat and washed her hands with what little soap she had. “I’m not a surgeon. I don’t have proper anesthetics.”
“You’re his only chance. Our only chance.” Charlie grabbed scissors and cut off the remains of Bernardus’s boot. “If he goes to hospital, the doctors may save his life, but the Germans will arrest him, torture him, find out he’s in the resistance.”
“Charlie,” Gerrit said with a growl.
“Resistance?” Ivy glanced over her shoulder at the men, who scowled at each other.
Charlie snapped his gaze to Ivy. “If Bernardus talks, they’ll find out Gerrit and I are in the resistance too, and they might unravel our whole network.”
“Charlie!” Gerrit said. “Silence.”
Ivy’s hands hung limp under the cold water. Charlie wasn’t in the resistance. Impossible. Jersey had no organized resistance. But France did. And Charlie traveled to France. “Charlie? What—”
“Your patient.” Charlie snipped away at the tattered trousers. “Bleeding, dying.”
Ivy gave her head a shake and scrubbed her hands. “Charlie, you’ll serve as my assistant. First, please shave his leg around the wound and place towels under his leg. Gerrit, you’ll find blankets in the cabinet on the far left, bottom shelf. Please wrap Bernardus, leaving his injured leg exposed. He’s in shock, and we need to warm him.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Gerrit was in the resistance too? Not a collaborator?
No, she didn’t have time for speculation. She had to save a man’s life with her minimal surgical training and the bottle of chloroform Dad kept on hand for emergencies. If he only knew how she’d be using it.
After she dried her hands, she gathered surgical dressings from the cabinet and placed her surgical instruments in a basin filled with disinfectant.
“No. Oh no.” Gerrit’s voice plummeted deep. He held a folded piece of paper. “The mine map. This should have gone in the boat.”
“Burn it,” Charlie said.
Gerrit tucked it into his brown uniform jacket. “No, I’ll sneak it back into OT Headquarters. They’ll never know I took it.”
Ivy gaped at him. What was happening?
She gritted her jaw. A grave injury had happened, and Bernardus needed her full attention.
“I finished shaving,” Charlie said.
“Thank you.” At the sink, she scrubbed her hands again. She hadn’t enough time or helpers to prepare a sterile operating theater. “We have less than two hours of electricity. Charlie, fetch the paraffin lamps and all the candles you can find. Matches too.” If only she could send Gerrit instead, but he wouldn’t know where to find anything.
Charlie ran out of the room.
After Ivy pulled on rubber gloves, she examined her patient. The wounds were indeed grave but seemed limited to his left leg. She might be able to save his leg, but he’d already lost most of his foot.
She draped sheets around the wound and over a table, where she laid out her surgical instruments and prepared some sutures.
Gerrit cleared his throat. “You must have questions for me.”
She couldn’t look at him. “I do. But not now.”
“Understood. May I—can I help in any way?”
Ivy nodded to a large stainless-steel basin. “I need to irrigate the wound, wash out the sand. Please hold that basin under the edge of the table to catch the drainage.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
She opened a bottle of Dakin’s solution and poured it over the wound, and a light smell of chlorine counteracted the scent of sand and seawater and blood.
