Chapter 24
chapter
St. Helier
The tip of Ivy’s pencil didn’t move. For the past six weeks since Thelma and Demyan had died, she’d been unable to draw.
“Your art brings joy. It brings light. It brings—hope. Don’t ever stop,” Gerrit had said to her that day. But her art also sprang from joy and light and hope, and she had none.
“That isn’t true,” she murmured. She had Charlie. Whatever had been bothering him bothered him no more, and he’d been sweet and attentive, especially after he heard about Thelma. He’d loved Thelma too.
“I have my home.” The familiar drawing room, still carrying the warmth of Dad and Mum’s love, still echoing the laughter of happier times. “And I have the Lord.”
The front door banged open. “Ivy! Hurry! Emergency.”
“Charlie?” Ivy tossed aside sketch pad and pencil, and she ran downstairs in her house slippers.
Charlie backed through the front door dragging something heavy on a piece of canvas—no someone heavy. Gerrit van der Zee held the other end.
Ivy braced herself against the wall in the hallway. “What on earth?”
“Hurry.” Charlie huffed as he carried his end of the canvas. “It’s Bernardus. He’s badly injured.”
Why would they bring him to her? She dashed to the telephone. “I’ll ring for an ambulance to take him to casualty at the hospital.”
“No,” Charlie and Gerrit said together, and Gerrit kicked the front door shut.
“He was injured by a land mine.” Charlie entered the treatment room. “They’ll know he was committing sabotage.”
“Sabotage!” She stared down at the unconscious man, his face blackened, a white tourniquet about his thigh, his leg—what was left of it—stained crimson.
In the treatment room, Charlie and Gerrit hoisted Bernardus onto the examination table.
Ivy flung on her white coat and washed her hands with what little soap she had. “I’m not a surgeon. I don’t have proper anesthetics.”
“You’re his only chance. Our only chance.” Charlie grabbed scissors and cut off the remains of Bernardus’s boot. “If he goes to hospital, the doctors may save his life, but the Germans will arrest him, torture him, find out he’s in the resistance.”
“Charlie,” Gerrit said with a growl.
“Resistance?” Ivy glanced over her shoulder at the men, who scowled at each other.
Charlie snapped his gaze to Ivy. “If Bernardus talks, they’ll find out Gerrit and I are in the resistance too, and they might unravel our whole network.”
“Charlie!” Gerrit said. “Silence.”
Ivy’s hands hung limp under the cold water. Charlie wasn’t in the resistance. Impossible. Jersey had no organized resistance. But France did. And Charlie traveled to France. “Charlie? What—”
“Your patient.” Charlie snipped away at the tattered trousers. “Bleeding, dying.”
Ivy gave her head a shake and scrubbed her hands.
“Charlie, you’ll serve as my assistant. First, please shave his leg around the wound and place towels under his leg.
Gerrit, you’ll find blankets in the cabinet on the far left, bottom shelf.
Please wrap Bernardus, leaving his injured leg exposed.
He’s in shock, and we need to warm him.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Gerrit was in the resistance too? Not a collaborator?
No, she didn’t have time for speculation. She had to save a man’s life with her minimal surgical training and the bottle of chloroform Dad kept on hand for emergencies. If he only knew how she’d be using it.
After she dried her hands, she gathered surgical dressings from the cabinet and placed her surgical instruments in a basin filled with disinfectant.
“No. Oh no.” Gerrit’s voice plummeted deep. He held a folded piece of paper. “The mine map. This should have gone in the boat.”
“Burn it,” Charlie said.
Gerrit tucked it into his brown uniform jacket. “No, I’ll sneak it back into OT Headquarters. They’ll never know I took it.”
Ivy gaped at him. What was happening?
She gritted her jaw. A grave injury had happened, and Bernardus needed her full attention.
“I finished shaving,” Charlie said.
“Thank you.” At the sink, she scrubbed her hands again.
She hadn’t enough time or helpers to prepare a sterile operating theater.
“We have less than two hours of electricity. Charlie, fetch the paraffin lamps and all the candles you can find. Matches too.” If only she could send Gerrit instead, but he wouldn’t know where to find anything.
Charlie ran out of the room.
After Ivy pulled on rubber gloves, she examined her patient. The wounds were indeed grave but seemed limited to his left leg. She might be able to save his leg, but he’d already lost most of his foot.
She draped sheets around the wound and over a table, where she laid out her surgical instruments and prepared some sutures.
Gerrit cleared his throat. “You must have questions for me.”
She couldn’t look at him. “I do. But not now.”
“Understood. May I—can I help in any way?”
Ivy nodded to a large stainless-steel basin. “I need to irrigate the wound, wash out the sand. Please hold that basin under the edge of the table to catch the drainage.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
She opened a bottle of Dakin’s solution and poured it over the wound, and a light smell of chlorine counteracted the scent of sand and seawater and blood.
Liquid tinkled into the basin. “Bernardus will need to go into hiding,” Gerrit said. “For the same reason he can’t go to hospital.”
If he survived. First, Ivy had to stop the bleeding, and she applied clamps to ruptured vessels. “I have a car and some petrol. After I finish the operation, I’ll take him to my uncle’s farm.”
“Yes. That’s a good idea. They’ve hidden someone before. They’ll know what to do.”
Demyan Marchenko. Ivy’s jaw dangled, and she glanced at the Dutchman catching the last dribbles of Dakin’s solution. How did he know?
Demyan had mentioned someone helping him escape after he shot the guard. Was it Gerrit? Bernardus?
Gerrit dumped the basin in the sink. “How else can I help?”
All she wanted from him was answers—but she hadn’t the time.
She dragged her gaze to the table. What could he do?
Chloroform? Bernardus was unconscious, but she couldn’t have him wake during surgery.
“Wash your hands well. I’ll put a few drops of chloroform on a cloth mask, and you can tie it over his mouth and nose.
I’ll have Charlie monitor the anesthesia when he returns. ”
“Yes, Doctor.”
With the main vessels clamped, Ivy chose forceps to pick out bits of fabric and gravel that had evaded the irrigating solution.
“Tomorrow morning.” Gerrit paused with his hands under the water. “They’ll realize he’s gone, send out a manhunt.”
Ivy sighed and plucked out a shred of black fabric. “My uncle will hide him well.”
“Unless . . . what if they think he escaped? The boat—yes.” Gerrit spun to her, and thoughts darted in his green-blue eyes. “The cinema. Charlie. I’ll need to—I need to leave. Now. Can you spare me?”
Ivy bobbled a nod. She had no idea what he was talking about.
Charlie entered the room with a box of supplies.
Gerrit scrambled past Charlie to the door. “Charlie, I’m working on a plan. I’ll come back later tonight, tell you everything. You’ll need to know.”
“All right.” Charlie stared after his friend, then at Ivy. “What’s happening?”
“That’s what I’d like to know.” Ivy tilted her head to the sink. “Take off your jacket, put on Dad’s white coat, and wash your hands.”
Charlie shrugged off his jacket, revealing his vest—his shirt must have become the tourniquet. “We’ll need to distract Fern when she comes home.”
And when they transported Bernardus to the car. Somehow.
Charlie slipped on Dad’s coat. “You probably want to know about the resistance.”
She did. More than anything. But first, she had to save this man’s life.