Chapter Eighteen
He watched her go into the fire and emerge from the ashes unscathed.
She cannot die. Cannot bleed. Yet he feels the sudden greedy pull of Death, feels the blood sliding down her neck.
It is only seeing her alive through the haze of dust and debris—the dead and the dying—that tames the terror seizing his heart.
éTAPLES, FRANCE
Anna has lived through more wars than she can count. Some she’s seen, others she’s only heard of.
This one feels different.
There are so many players, so many countries involved that it has become less a war of nations and more a war of the world. More nations, more soldiers, more injured.
Anna’s living in England when the posters start lining the street. Three women dressed in crisp uniforms standing in front of a vivid red cross. The words ‘V.A.D.’ and ‘Urgently Needed’ is printed along the bottom.
She signs up that day. They ship her out that week.
The first thing that strikes her when she pulls up to the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade Hospital is how large it is.
The second, upon entering through the doors, is how well equipped they are.
The facility is clean, boasting the latest medical equipment that money can buy: an x-ray room and operating theatre, separate wards labeled from A to R with covered walkways between.
There’s even a garden for recovering patients to enjoy.
It’s impressive … until it isn’t.
Three days is all it takes to forget about how well-equipped they are.
The knowledge gets buried beneath the echoed sound of gunfire that never seems to sleep, beneath patching up the stretcher-bearers who’ve been hit trying to pull the wounded out of No Man’s Land.
Ambulances, clearly marked with a bright Red Cross, return with stories about bombs being hurled in their direction.
Nurses and Medical Officers working at the Casualty Clearing Stations come in by Ambulance Train.
There is ongoing debate on whether they’re being targeted or if the accuracy of the shells being lobbed across the battlefield and the men firing them simply don’t care where it lands so long as it’s on the enemy side.
It feels tame compared to some of the injuries the soldiers at the front line are brought in with. For all her experience with injury and war, she doesn’t expect things to be as bad as they are.
The injuries she sees are different—more horrific—than the ones she treated in France and America.
The patients that come to the hospital are the same ones that would have died on the battlefield only a few centuries ago.
Medicine has advanced, progressing forward leaps and bounds with every bit of knowledge the world discovers.
It would be made all the more wonderful, if only the weapons of war hadn’t evolved too.
The St. John Ambulance Brigade and Hospital started with five-hundred and twenty-five beds. Now, nearly three years later and after several expansions, capacity has been stretched to seven-hundred-forty-four.
They need every single one.
Their waking hours are always busy—cleaning bedpans, cooking, scrubbing floors, washing linens.
Their nights are haunted by nightmares of blood and screams, of ravaged faces and blistered lungs.
They hang, suspended between reality and dreams, a part of them always listening for the chug of engines, metal wheels on the tracks, and the long mournful whistle of a train full of bleeding bodies fighting for life.
It is a nightmare if Anna has ever lived one.
Anna starts her rounds, checking on wounds and trading dirty bandages for clean ones. Ever since the head nurse discovered she had enough medical experience to recognize the difference between healthy tissue and a wound just starting to turn, she’s been more involved in patient care than not.
Margaret comes into the ward, a stray piece of unruly blonde hair escaping her cap.
“There you are. Are you available to help assist in surgery tonight? Dolly is still so terribly squeamish.” Her lips thin, annoyed.
“After what happened with Patsy, I’m not sure any of us want to put that on her just yet. ”
Anna smothers a laugh. Poor Patsy had bravely made it through her first surgery, but had promptly lost her lunch after.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t quite made it to the bin.
The other V.A.D.s hadn’t appreciated having the extra mess to clean.
“Yes, of course. Let me just check on Mr. Willits’ amputation first.”
A sigh of relief, and Margaret is already turning to leave—no doubt to wrangle up more people for another five matters needing solving. “Bless you. If only all our volunteers could be as competent.”
She smiles thinly, uncomfortable. Most of the tension between the nurses and the volunteers has resolved—chipped away by time and an endless stream of broken bodies—but some lingering resentment remains.
Majority of the volunteers are from well-off families.
They come to St. James with hands that have never seen labor, romanced by the idea of helping their country’s soldiers without having any understanding of what war would look like.
Yet Anna is impressed, again and again, at how they grow; rising to challenges no one should be put up against and situations no one could have prepared them for. She knows, despite their occasional remarks, that the nursing staff has come to appreciate their efforts, too.
Anna starts down the long line of beds towards Mr. Willits at the end, steps quick, when the hospital goes dark.
Anna stills as the whispered murmurs erupt from the beds around her. She ignores them, breathes numbers under her breath.
“One.”
The sound of aircraft engines, growing closer.
“Two.”
A scattering of gunfire shot off into the dark.
“Three.”
A long high whistle and—
Anna is lost.
Her thoughts are slow and distorted, her vision a blur of smoke and flames. There’s people running, mouths moving, but all she hears is a painfully high pitched ringing. Her head hurts.
She touches her temple. Her fingers come back bloody, but that can’t be right. She doesn’t bleed.
She rubs it between her fingers, slick and crimson, and looks down at herself.
Her nurses uniform is covered in ash and dust, places torn and red with blood as she sits amongst unfamiliar rubble.
She doesn’t remember sinking to the ground, doesn’t understand why there is a flurry of people moving around her—shouting questions she can’t understand.
A face appears in front of her, her nurse’s cap smeared with dirt and blood.
It takes longer than it should for Anna to recognize her and longer still for the ringing to fade enough for the sounds leaving her mouth to make sense.
“Is it yours?! The blood?!”
Anna looks down at her hand. Crimson still stains her fingers. “It can’t be.”
Margaret stares, her eyes wide and pupils dilated. “Stand up, can you stand up?!” She keeps shouting. Anna can’t tell if it’s for her sake or her own, but she follows the order.
Standing, bracing herself on Margaret’s offered arm, Anna looks down to where she had been sitting and sees a hand under the rubble. A patient. She had been on her way to check on a patient, when the room went black.
Not her blood. It’s not hers.
Somehow, it’s that thought that brings her back to herself. Shaking her head, she stops, pulling away from Margaret’s firm hold—the kind of hold she would use for a patient. “I’m all right, sorry. I’m just—where do you need me?”
“You have a head injury,” Margaret snaps, coaxing her forward. “You’re going to the injury bay to get checked out.”
“It’s not—”
“You’re covered in it, Marian.”
Marian. That’s right. She isn’t Anna, not in this life. Marian—the girl from Yorkshire. The girl with wealthy parents that don’t exist. “But—”
“No.” The word is firm, leaving no room for argument. Anna lets her lead her to the infirmary, even though they’ll find there’s nothing wrong with her. Even though she can see her comrades running through the carnage, digging patients from the rubble.
Dr. Jennings shines a light in her eyes, measuring her pupils’ reactions and asks that she follow his finger as he moves it from one end of her vision to the other. He’s already examined her scalp, finding no apparent injury.
Anna won’t let him do a full examination.
Margaret is just behind him, looking confused and concerned as she anxiously twists her hands in front of her. Anna has overheard from the others that the injured have all been evacuated from the bomb site.
They won’t tell her how many they’ve lost.
“Well, I can’t find anything out of the ordinary. Your heart sounds strong and your pupils are reacting accordingly. The dizziness and confusion you experienced were likely just the shock.”
Anna nods. “Then I would like to continue my duties.”
He hesitates, but they both know they need as many hands as they can get. “Very well, but if you begin feeling off at all, I want you to come find me immediately. Understand?”
“I understand.”
Dr. Jennings dips his chin in acknowledgement and hurries off to the next patient waiting for his attention. There’s no shortage of them.
Margaret stays behind though, looking pale. “I was so sure—I passed over you. You were laying there, motionless, eyes staring up at nothing.” She draws a shaky breath, coming to sit on the edge of the hospital bed. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not,” Anna consoles, because she can’t risk telling the younger woman that she can’t.
“There was blood everywhere,” she whispers, looking over her shoulders before leaning in close. “Marian … I checked your pulse.”
Anna’s heart stutters, her mind searching for an excuse even as she tries to come to terms with what Margaret has just told her. “It was really chaotic,” she says softly. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone’s made a mistake.”