Ambulances were already sweeping up the drive. A glance outside showed the orderlies pulling out men wrapped in dirty blankets. Laura and Pim went out to the carriage house. The orderlies carried them in and laid them down, and suddenly Laura was too busy to think at all.
Time was reduced to a series of images, each etched sharply in her mind: A man grinning despite a thigh laid open; he knew he’d live and get a ticket home out of it. A man gray-white, his head lopsided. Patient after patient. Mary directed the orderlies with their stretchers, so that the men in each row touched without a break.
“—Put him here.”
“No, we can’t save the foot—”
“Water, for God’s sake, Sister,” said a man on the floor.
Slit boots piled up in heaps beside the stretchers. Orderlies went by with buckets of soapy water to wash the yellow-nailed feet. Laura went from man to man, examining, comforting, deciding who needed emergency surgery and who could wait. “Here!” she called. “A lung, here, hemorrhaging.” The man was swept up and taken away.
A voice, urgent: “Sister, Sister, what do I do? This one’s brain came off with the bandage. I put it in a bucket.”
She gave the man morphine. “But Laura, isn’t that too much?” whispered Pim. Laura didn’t answer and Pim fell silent. The patient’s breath shuddered out of him.
At some point, she grew aware of hands on hers, an acerbic voice speaking.“Doctor,” she said.
Jones said, “Iven, if you looked in a mirror and saw your own face…”
She said, “I know my limit.”
“Has it occurred to you,” said Jones, “that your limit has perhaps diminished after a hearty round of pneumo—” He didn’t finish. Three voices were calling for him, and others for Laura. “Iven, if you collapse, you’ll have me crowing I told you so.”
He strode away.
It was near dawn. The influx had slowed a little. How many hours since the rush began? Laura paused to ease the growing ache in her back, and that was when she heard Pim scream from somewhere outside. Back forgotten, she ran toward the sound. She’d seen patients turn murderous before, the war more real in their minds than anything else. The scream had come from somewhere between thecarriage house and the château. Laura stopped in the grass-grown drive, seeking.
A glimpse of stained uniform, and there was Pim, staggering, holding up a man deep in the shadow of the building. Laura ran, managed to get an arm under him before he fell.
As Laura and Pim eased him down between them, she saw his set face.
His blue eyes.
He was wounded. He was staring fixedly at her.
“Laura, I thought it was Jimmy,” Pim was gasping. “I mean, I saw—his hair—he—”
Laura had no time to answer. Her hands were flying over Winter’s body, looking for the source of the blood on his clothes. He was clammy. She found the bullet hole in his left side, small caliber. Perhaps it hadn’t perforated the intestine. Nicked his liver, though, and he’d been bleeding for a while. His pulse was a thread; she didn’t think he’d been strong to begin with. His open eyes were still fixed on her face.
She had a split second to decide what to do.
“Pim, get Jones. Get himnow. Only Jones; no one else. All right?”
Pim took one look at Laura’s face and ran off, her feet quick on the grass-grown gravel.
“Laura Iven,” said the man on the ground. His eyes searched her face. “Laura.”
“I’m Laura,” she whispered. “Laura Iven, and Wilfred is my brother.”
Winter looked fleetingly perplexed. “How am I here?” His eyes were half-closed.
“I don’t know. You’re wounded,” said Laura.
The German whispered, “I saw him yesterday. Wilfred.”
Her heart gave a single great thump. “Where?”
Winter didn’t answer. He looked like he was struggling to stay conscious, like a man in a shipwreck, braced for the next wave. Laura bent nearer. “Do you know where he is now?”
