“Won’t happen, Iven,” added Mary, seeing her face. “This way.”
Mary opened the front door onto a glorious dusk: a scarlet, saffron, and violet sky that hardly seemed to belong to the gray earth. “The ambulances come up the drive. And we have triage in the carriage house,” she said, pointing. “You’ll be out there quite a bit.”
They turned back into the house. The main ward of Couthove had been set up in the once elegant ballroom, full now of close-packed beds and sickroom smell: alcohol and iodine, bodily fluids, and sweat. The glorious parquet was stained. There had been a buzz of conversation as they entered, and Laura caught just the edge of it:
—paradise, if you find it.
So? Every whorehouse is paradise to some.
Another voice, low and grave:My mate found it. Coming back drunk from leave. Was crying when he told me. He forgot the war, he said. Just like the stories. Saw his girl, even. In that magic mirror. A perfect night. But he never found it again.
You don’t ever find it again.
He don’t charge money. No, not money…
He split with the girl, you know, not long after. It was like he’d forgotten all about her. He’s dead now.
The conversation subsided into a general murmur, and then Pim was hurrying over. “Laura!” she cried. “I was so worried. You’dsuch a fever. But Dr. Jones said you’d do. Isn’t he marvelous? How are you, dear?”
“Blooming,” said Laura. Pim’s face was thinner than it had been in Halifax, but she was smiling. Mary hadn’t exaggerated. The men were all looking at her as though she were their own personal miracle.
“I’ve been writing the men’s letters,” said Pim. “They dictate, or if they—if they can’t dictate, then I just write their mothers myself. And I draw little pictures—look.”
She pulled out a sketchbook, unfolded a loose page to show a very credible sketch of a young man with a bandaged shoulder, smiling.
“I am sure they are grateful…” began Laura, and then Jones appeared, and cut her off.
“Rounds, Iven,” he said. “Half an hour, then supper, then back to bed with you.”
Laura sighed internally. Reminded herself that Jones was not the most dictatorial surgeon she’d ever met, even if he had a knack for getting under her skin. “Yes, Doctor,” she said mildly, mouthedLaterto Pim, and crossed the room.
They went from patient to patient, checking charts, taking temperatures, asking questions. Jones at work was dispassionate but careful, decisive. She began to relax into the routine of it. But then, six beds in, they came to a man called Trovato. His leg was very clearly gangrenous, and Laura was nonplussed. Why hadn’t Jones amputated? The smell was unmistakable: ripe, swampy, unlike anything else. “Doctor—” she began.
“Yes, yes,” said Jones, not looking up. “Unorthodox, I’ll give you that. But the gangrene hasn’t spread; there’s a chance it will slough and we will save the leg.”
“I’d like to keep my leg,” put in Trovato earnestly.
Laura just managed to keep her thoughts to herself. No doctor she’d ever known would have hesitated to amputate. “Dress the wound, Iven,” said Jones, as though he could hear her disapproval. He was making notes on the chart. Laura began laying out bandagesand disinfectant. Jones, after a glance at the patient’s set face, called, “Mrs. Shaw, come here.”
Laura bit her lip. But Pim had signed on for this, and so Laura said nothing when her friend hurried over and took Trovato’s hand, smiling. He relaxed a fraction.
Laura set to irrigating the wound. Trovato made a small, animal sound. Pim held his hand tighter. Laura didn’t stop. Army medicine was as much about ruthlessness as anything else. “You’ve been out here before, Sister, haven’t you?” Trovato said to Laura, with the air of a man trying to distract himself. His eyes were closed, but he must have seen her hands.
“I came out in the spring of ’15. With the bluebirds.” The Canadian nursing service, she meant. “Was discharged this November.” She shot him a brief, reassuring smile, but his eyes were still closed. “Suppose I couldn’t stay away from you lot.”
“Got a story for us, Sister?” he asked. “From those far-off days?”
Anything to distract him,Laura thought, beginning to dress the wound fresh. She shot Jones a sideways look. She wasn’t in the regular army anymore—she didn’t have to behave. “Have you heard the story of the ammonal at Hooge?” She let her voice carry to the room at large. Saw men stir under their blankets.
Jones raised both brows.
“It was early days,” Laura said, winding the bandage. “Just when they’d first got the bright notion to dislodge Fritz from Hooge by undermining his positions and blowing him up. Steady. That’s the worst over.” Trovato had gone an extraordinary gray-green. Pim bent to murmur something in his ear. He gave her a wavering smile, an incisor missing.
“In ’15,” Laura went on, “the lines passed right through the grounds of Hooge Château, and Hooge, as you maybe know, was the worst place on the worst salient on the worst sector of the Front.”
Some of the men were lifting themselves up to hear better.
“Fritz held the château itself, and Tommy held the stable, and they’d dug trenches in between. Each one was making plans to blowthe others out. Well, the British hit on the idea of mines: Dig holes, pack them with gun cotton, fire it, there you have it.
