“It’s nothing.”
“I don’t think so,” he said. He tried to press a clean corner of Trent’s bedsheet against her brow, but she took it from him and dabbed at the cut herself. She was surprised by the amount of fresh blood.
“I don’t even feel it.”
“Adrenaline,” he said, slowly rising to his feet as he adjusted Trent’s weight. “You’ll feel it later. It’s gonna be a big bump. Careful when you get up.”
She shook away his offered hand, but the ground beneath her shifted, and she almost fell. His free arm wrapped firmly around her waist, and somehow, he held both her and Trent against his body as they limped forward. Suddenly, she was so tired. Exhaustion battled her head wound for dominance.
It was his voice in her ear, husky yet somehow reassuring, that kept her upright. “Come on, Bluebird. Let’s get outta here.”
fourJERRY
Jerry cracked his eyes open then squeezed them closed. It wasn’t worth the effort. Smoke from the night before had seared his corneas and still smouldered within. He didn’t need his eyes to know who in the temporary tent was making careful sounds of optimism. Amid all the coughing, he heard the weary, hushed voices of doctors and nurses evaluating the situation. Apparently, the hospital tent had not been entirely wrecked, so some of the patients had been returned there the following morning, but many, including Jerry, had not, as the whole back section needed to be rebuilt.
A whole new side of the war had been revealed to Jerry last night. Before then, he had assumed the soldiers at the Front were the only ones fighting to stay alive, day in and day out. Now he understood how hard the doctors and nurses fought, not only to survive but to keep their patients alive. Last night, their bravery had been on full display, he thought, picturing Nurse Savard’s smudged, bloody face.
He hoped she was all right. When they had reached the hospital’s exit, Sergeant Hatch had rushed over to take Trent’s body and help them get out of range. By the time Jerry delivered Adele to the matron,he could tell that she was more than a little woozy. Nurse Johnson had looked her over with concern then directed him to take Adele to the nurses’ tent, assuring him she’d be in good hands there. When he knocked on the door, a stocky, no-nonsense nurse with short black hair had answered.
“What have you done, Delly?” she’d said, examining Adele’s forehead. “My, that’s a good one you got there.”
Adele groaned, stepping into her care.
“Nurse Johnson says it’s a concussion,” Jerry said, watching as the woman handed Adele off to someone else inside. “You’ll check on her, right? She shouldn’t sleep too long.”
“Yes, we know about concussions here. Thanks for taking care of her.” She tilted her head. “Hey, I saw you in there. You gotta be worse off than she is. How many times did you go back in?”
He swallowed hard, remembering the hot pulse of Ian Trent’s blood on his own hands. He couldn’t help thinking that if he’d just gotten up, grabbed bandages, pressed harder, donesomething… His hand went to the side of his own neck in reflex, but there was no blood there. Just his pulse.
“Trent died.”
The tight lines of her face eased, as if she understood what he was thinking. “You saved a lot of lives, Corporal. You can’t save them all.”
It wasn’t the comfort he needed, but it never was.
“I promise we’ll take care of her,” she said, then she offered a private smile. “I’ll tell her you were concerned, shall I?”
He hadn’t wanted to go into that, to tell her how important it was to him that Nurse Savard be all right, so he just gave a little nod, said goodnight, and wandered back into the crowd. Someone found him and assigned him to temporary barracks, where he’d squeezed in with eight other men and fallen into an uneasy sleep.
Now, he kept his eyes closed, listening to the sounds around him. He knew the moment Nurse Savard entered the tent and spoke to the doctor,her singsong voice clear despite everything she’d survived. A few minutes later, she was by his side.
“How are you this morning, Corporal Bailey?” she asked.
“I should ask you the same thing,” he replied.
He heard a quiet trickle of water in her bowl, then felt a cool wet cloth, pressing gently against his burning eyelids.
“I’m fine, thank you,” she assured him. “All stitched up and ready to go.”
He couldn’t resist peeking up at her. She had a bandage across her brow and a pretty impressive black eye beginning to bloom on one side, but she was still beautiful.
“Do they attack the hospital often?”
“Not a lot, but enough. We were hit more often in France than here in Belgium. I think this was one of the worst ones, though.”
“Did everyone make it?”
She held his gaze. “Everyone but Corporal Trent. That was a good thing you did last night, bringing him out.”
