‘I heard Reg’s car outside,’ Mary said in a low voice. ‘You go see what’s what. I’ll wake Topsy and tell the surgeon to be ready.’
Bobby nodded and got to her feet.
There was a thin dawn light silhouetting the old Wolseley when she emerged from the house. Bobby blinked as her eyes adjusted. It wasn’t Reg who was getting out of the driver’s side but Charlie, looking pale and hollow-eyed after his night’s work. Dr Minchin got out of the passenger-side door.
There was a figure laid on the back seat. Bobby looked up at Charlie, who answered the question in her eyes.
‘It’s the pilot. He’s clinging on still.’
‘Then get him inside, quickly,’ she said. ‘Dr Lazenby, the surgeon, is ready to operate in the south parlour. Topsy will show you both the way, then you can drive back to the village for his comrade.’
Bobby held the front door open for the men as they bore the injured pilot inside on his stretcher. Topsy and Mary were waiting anxiously in the hallway to show them to the surgery. Topsy, Bobby noticed, had now donned the sterile white coat and cap she had been so set against earlier.
‘Oh my goodness,’ Topsy whispered when she caught sight of the man’s injuries. ‘Is he… he isn’t…’
‘He isn’t dead – at least not yet,’ Dr Minchin told her. ‘Lord knows how he’s still with us after what his poor battered body has been through tonight. Which way, young lady? There isn’t time to waste.’
‘Oh, the poor boy,’ Topsy said, her gaze lingering over the burns on his face. ‘He must be in terrible pain.’
‘Not at the moment. He’s full of the morphine I injected into him. Which way to the surgery?’
Topsy drew her gaze away from the man and pulled herself together. ‘Come with me.’
Bobby followed them to the south parlour, where Dr Lazenby was waiting. He was a no-nonsense Scotsman with a shrewd expression and kind eyes who didn’t flinch while he examined the man’s wounds with medical detachment.
‘Not much I can do for his face other than dress it,’ he said when he’d taken a good look. ‘These burns need a specialist – pray God the RAF can come through with one. But it’s the metal in his guts that’s the more immediate risk to his survival and that, at least, I can deal with.’
‘Anything I can do, Archie?’ Dr Minchin asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, Dick, you’re better placed tending to his comrade until the cavalry arrives from the airbase. I assume they’ve been notified we have two of their own here.’
‘My brother went home to telephone,’ Charlie said.
‘Good. Then they ought to have personnel on the way very soon, I would have thought.’
‘In that case, the most helpful thing I can do is probably to set the gunner’s broken legs,’ Dr Minchin said. ‘Charlie, we ought to get back quickly and fetch him. He was starting to come around when we left.’
Charlie nodded, and they hurried away.
Topsy, Mary and Bobby lingered uncertainly, not sure what to do. Bobby’s gaze kept returning to the injured man. The burned side of his face did indeed look monstrous, but on the other side he was a sensitive-looking young man of perhaps twenty-one or twenty-two, with a head of cherubic blond curls. Somewhere he had a mother and father, probably. Perhaps a sweetheart, or a wife. She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer that the doctor would be able to help him. His breathing was so shallow now that she could barely hear it.
Dr Lazenby looked at the women while he washed his hands. ‘Any of you ladies done any nursing?’
‘A little, but my skills must be rather out of date,’ Mary said. ‘I spent a few months in the VAD in the last war.’
‘I’ve been accepted to the VAD too, but I haven’t done the training yet,’ Topsy said. ‘All I know so far is from books.’ She looked at the man on the operating table. ‘But I’d very much like to stay and try to help him, please.’
‘You know the names of the instruments? What they look like?’
‘Oh yes, I’ve read all about them,’ Topsy said eagerly. ‘Maimie, my friend, has been testing me on them.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t have any nursing,’ Bobby told him. ‘Only basic first aid training.’
‘All right, I suppose I shall have to make do with what I’ve got.’ He nodded to Bobby. ‘You go help Dick Minchin with the other chap.You other two ladies, sterilise your hands, put on these masks and prepare to do as I tell you for the next couple of hours.’
Chapter 23
Bobby, feeling rather aimless after her dismissal from the operating room, went outside to wait for Charlie and Dr Minchin to return with the second patient.
