· · ·
Sterilization rooms had been gathering places in every field hospital Laura had ever worked in, and the one at Couthove was no different. Sterilization rooms always had hot water. An endless supply going, to clean instruments. One could draw the water off for cocoa, for tea. One could stand near the steaming burner and feel a little warmer. But this time, when Laura ventured in search of cocoa, the sterilization room was empty. Or almost empty. To Laura’s surprise, Pim was there, standing flushed and fully dressed for the outdoors with a coat over her uniform. There was mud on her boots.
“Out for a stroll?” Laura asked. She busied herself with cocoa powder and hot water, extra sugar, tinned milk.
A line deepened between Pim’s brows. But she replied in a rush, “I went out to look.”
Laura stopped stirring. “Look?”
“I heard the men—they kept sayinghewas there. I thought it might be the fiddler—their legend, you know?” Lower, she added, “I thought it might be Faland. So I went to look.”
Several replies came to Laura’s lips but she bit them back. Finally she settled on the most sensible: “Did you see anything?”
Pim shook her head. She stood in the middle of the room, looking fragile.
Laura said gently, “Pim,whywould he be here? Of all places—at this hospital, in the dead of night?”
Pim said, “I just thought he might be. A feeling.”
Laura, at a loss, said, “Do you want tea or cocoa? You need something; you look half-frozen.”
“Hm?” said Pim. “Oh. Tea, please. No sugar.”
In silence, Laura drew off more hot water, set some tea to steeping, added tinned milk. Handed it to Pim, who took a sip. Made a face. Not even tea steeped beyond recognition could mask the taste of chlorine.
Laura gave her a speaking look, handed her the box of sugar cubes, and said, “Pim, that disturbance tonight—the patients havehad morphine, they’re in pain, they’ve seen terrible things, they have nightmares. It’s not uncommon, in hospitals, for one man to set the others off. Someone had a fit and the others took it badly. Pim, please. It wasn’t Faland. Let him go.”
What could Pim possibly want from him? Something like she’d got at the Parkeys’ séances? Another sight of her son in his mirror?They pine.With a shudder, Laura recalled her own glimpse of Freddie.
Pim said, with a sudden wry expression, as though she’d read Laura’s thought, “I’ll be all right, Laura. I’m not going to pine away. Stop looking so worried. It was foolish of me, I know.” Her hand hovered, hesitating, over the box of sugar.
“What is foolish?” said Mary, sailing in with Jones at her back.
“Cavities,” said Pim, without missing a beat. She ran her tongue over her teeth.
Jones was looking from Pim to Laura, as though he’d caught the tension between them.
Laura said, “Mrs. Shaw, there is a fine French word that the English adopted, and that word istriage.” Pedantically, she added, “Fromtrier,to sort. In this case, to prioritize.”
“I don’t understand.”
Mary interjected, “Iven is telling you that teeth are less important than—” She gave Laura an inquiring look.
“Getting through the night,” said Laura. It was barely sunrise, and the remains of pneumonia whispered like wings when she breathed. She drained off the sweet dregs of her cocoa and lit a cigarette. Army issue; the tobacco was harsh in her mouth. Pim looked from Laura to her tea, then visibly steeled herself, dropped in three lumps, stirred, and took a sip. Made another face.
“You both look as though you’d been dragged backward through a hedge,” observed Mary.
“It comes of lurching off one’s sickbed straight into a hospital ward at four in the morning,” said Laura. She sounded testy even to her own ears. “I’ll be sleek as a bride after breakfast. Which I am going to eat now.” She left the sterilization room, disquieted still at the look on Pim’s face.
· · ·
That afternoon, Laura cornered Mary in her little booth, what must formerly have been the housekeeper’s office, where she was going over inventory. Mary didn’t look up when Laura came in, but said straight off: “I suppose you’re here wanting to know when I’ll give you leave to wander the countryside after your lost sibling.”
That was, in fact, what Laura wanted to know. “If you please.”
Mary put down her pencil. “I did promise I’d let you. But you know how things are, Iven. I’m going to need you. Strong. Well.”
Laura just nodded.
