In the Shadow of the Lamp (14 page)

“We’re going to have to take your arm, soldier,” the doctor said. The doctor’s voice was calm and patient, and he had a slight, soft accent.

“Will it hurt?”

“Not so very much worse than it hurts already, and then it will be over. Hold him, men.”

“No! No! No!” The soldier’s voice rose to a girlish scream. I wanted to cover my ears but all the other wounded soldiers in their beds stared straight at me. I tried not to imagine that leg in the Hôtel Dieu in Paris, the blood and such that poured out of it.
Come back to now,
I thought.
Look at what’s around you.
I made myself think about other things. What first came to mind was rats. I didn’t see a single one on this floor. No food for them, I supposed, now that everything was cleaner. And then it struck me that it was generally quieter. There was no rasping of men scratching at their beards, hairy chests, arms and legs. The chloride of lime had begun to do its work. The vermin stayed away. Everyone somehow seemed healthier, less wasted. It was all because of Miss Nightingale.

I saw a soldier lying all crooked, his head about to loll off the edge of the mattress. “Let me straighten your pillow,” I said. He was only just conscious, but he murmured and didn’t resist when I nudged him into the center of it again. He raised two fingers on his right hand. It was a thank-you.

A moment later the doctor came out from behind the screen, his coat and hands covered in blood and his face pale. If I didn’t know he was a doctor, I might have thought that was the first time he had ever amputated a limb, he looked so unwell. I thought I’d better tell him my business quickly. “There’s a man—” He lifted his eyes to mine, and I stopped talking. I knew this doctor. He was the one who nodded to me on the
Vectis,
when we both looked out and saw the fishing boat. The one who helped me get out of the horrible storm our first night at sea. I thought he looked kind then, and what I heard from behind the screen sounded kind now. I cleared my throat as if I had a cough, just to give myself a little time.

“Yes?” It was a drawn-out sound, not crisp and sharp like most of the army doctors.

“Downstairs, a man is crashing about like he’s still got his sea legs. I don’t think he should be discharged with the others.”

“I can guess the one you mean, Nurse Fraser,” he said.

I was so surprised he knew my name that I almost missed what he said next.

“He’s got a bad head wound, won’t likely be right ever again. No one seems to know what to do with him.” The doctor’s face had already regained some of its color.

“Well, he can’t go back and fight,” I said. “He’d be a danger to our side!”

A group of orderlies had meanwhile gathered around us to listen, and all of them started laughing. I didn’t mean to be funny. What if Miss Nightingale heard about this? I wasn’t supposed to be on this ward anyway.

The doctor must have noticed me worrying. “You lot should be helping bring in the wounded. Get to it!” They scurried off in their dirty uniforms, taking the smell of dried blood and old food with them.
If Miss Nightingale was in charge of them they’d be good deal more orderly
, I thought.

“Thank you,” I said to the doctor, wondering how to get his attention back to the matter of the man downstairs who was stumbling about. Then I don’t know what but something made me brave. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Dr. Maclean. James Maclean, at your service.”

He gave me the slightest bow. No one had ever bowed to me before, nor looked right at me until I thought he could see inside my head.

“I have a little brother named Jimmy,” I said, not really sure why, but I had to get back to something familiar, something to anchor me. Will’s blue eyes were lovely and kind, but they didn’t make me feel uneasy. Dr. Maclean’s brown eyes with their thick, dark lashes knocked me off balance, like the poor fellow downstairs. With Dr. Maclean, I couldn’t have said what might be going through his mind. And he spoke with an accent, Scotch, I guessed. “I’d better go back downstairs,” I said.

“Before the fearsome Miss Nightingale finds you up here alone with a doctor?” he said.

I looked around at all the eyes focused on us from the nearby beds. “Not exactly alone.”

He laughed. “That’s twice in five minutes you’ve made me laugh, Nurse Fraser. It’s a dangerous precedent.”

He gestured with a blood-covered hand for me to precede him along the narrow space between the wounded men’s feet. I didn’t need to be told twice, and hurried back down to where Emma was handing out clothing to soldiers, holding on to the memory of the sound of my name in Dr. Maclean’s musical accent.

C
hapter 14

We finished with the discharged men just in time for tea. Emma and I sat in the common room with Mrs. Drake and two others, all of us so exhausted we could hardly speak.

“Where’s everyone else?” Emma asked after a bit.

“They just keep coming,” said Mrs. Drake, shaking her head. “No time to take a rest.”

One other, a nurse who hardly ever spoke to us, said, “So many, and so badly wounded. We wanted to stay, but Miss Nightingale is sending us back to eat in shifts.”

All this had been going on while Emma and I were getting the healing soldiers fitted out with togs so they could go back to fight again. We exchanged a look. I don’t even remember whether it was me or Emma who said, “We must go and help them.” I couldn’t bear to think that wounded soldiers might be waiting for care, and us sitting by, taking our rest.

It was definitely Emma, though, who said, “She’s trying to keep us away from the men. She thinks ’cause we’re young they’ll get distracted or upset, and we won’t be able to nurse. But that shouldn’t matter. Why shouldn’t a man in pain see a pretty face to comfort him? I can nurse just as well as the rest.”

Emma was so worked up she had tears in her eyes. I agreed with her. It didn’t seem fair. Why have us there at all if we weren’t going to be any help? I’d only eaten a few bites of our supper of bread and cheese when Emma stood, grabbed my arm, and said, “Let’s go, Moll. We didn’t come out here to be serving maids.”

I barely had time to grab my cloak off the hook before I found myself running by Emma’s side through the corridor to the stairs.

Instead of stopping indoors, where the men who had already been seen by the doctors were being put on pallets prepared by the orderlies, we ran straight outside, out to where the ships docked and the wounded and sick were still being unloaded.

A clear sky and a full moon sat calm and beautiful above us. The wind didn’t blow such a gale any more. Spread out over the ground all the way from the hospital to the dock were soldiers—or pieces of soldiers. Even the ones who sat up and smoked, dirty bandages on their arms or legs or wrapped round their chests, looked like something had gone missing from them, like they left a part of themselves on the battlefield. There were so many, and I knew the wards in the hospital were as full as could be. Where would all these men possibly go?

No time to wonder. “There’s Miss Nightingale over there. We have to go and talk to her.” This time I took hold of Emma.

“Are you completely daft? Let’s just get to work. She’ll only send us back.”

I watched Miss Nightingale pointing and talking, keeping calm but with an edge of urgency to everything she did.
It must be hard to be her, to be expected to come to this impossible place and make everything right
, I thought. I turned back to Emma. “I don’t think so. I think we have to tell her we’re here.” I pulled on Emma again. When she resisted, I let go and walked as quick and direct as I could, stepping around wounded men to get to where Miss Nightingale stood. She looked up as I came over, at first staring past me like I wasn’t there. “We’ve come to help, Miss Nightingale,” I said, standing my ground in front of her, hoping Emma had followed me.

“They need people to clean wounds. Not enough orderlies. Go over to Dr. Maclean and follow his instructions.” She pointed to an area where a few tents had been set up closer to the hospital. Turkish soldiers carried stretchers over, not much heeding whether they bumped or jostled the men on them, only trying to get as many moved around as fast as possible.

I turned to call to Emma and found her right behind me. “Let’s go.”

Though he’d been bloody enough when I’d seen him earlier, I hardly recognized Dr. Maclean for the blood all over his jacket, arms, and legs. Even his shoes were covered, and he’d wiped a streak across his forehead too. As each stretcher arrived, he’d yell out, “Stump!” or “Shrapnel!” or “Dead!”—which in his accent sounded like “Daid”—and point to a tent where the stretcher should be moved.

“We’re here to help,” I said to him not wanting to waste any time.

He glanced up briefly. I thought I saw a moment of surprise, or something like it, in his eyes. “Nurse Bigelow, you can go over to that tent and do as Dr. Arbuthnot says. Nurse Fraser, you stay here.”

I didn’t dare look round at Emma, lest she guess from my face that I was glad to be by Dr. Maclean. Before I had a chance to breathe, though, the Turks brought over a man writhing in pain, hands gripping his stomach. Through the dried blood, the coarse linen scraps of bandages that must have been wrapped round him in Balaclava were still faintly visible.

“Put him right here. He shouldn’t be moved anymore.” Dr. Maclean knelt down beside the stretcher on the ground. “Now, my man, you have to let me see what’s happened to you.”

“I can’t. It’ll all fall out if I take my hands away.” His voice was shaky and shrill, like a child afraid he’ll get a beating.

“Nurse, get this man a drink and wipe off his face.” As I turned to go Dr. Maclean grabbed my hand and murmured, “Distract him a little; try to get his mind off what I’m doing.”

I went to the barrel of water that had been brought out for washing and drinking and dipped one of the dirty tin cups in it. I had nothing to use to clean off the soldier’s face, so I quickly tore a bit of my petticoat and soaked it in the water.

When I returned, the soldier was still clutching his stomach with surprising strength, considering how bad he was. I crouched down by his head. “Here, take a sip of water. You must be ever so thirsty.” I mopped some of the dirt off his face and turned it toward me, trying to make him see me. His eyes jumped around and he blinked fast, like gnats were getting in the corners. I gently cleaned around them. “It’s all right. You’re safe now. Dr. Maclean’s going to make you better.”

“Are you an angel?” he said, finally letting his eyes rest on me. “Have I died?”

I smiled. “Not an angel. Just a nurse. And you’re looking a sight better already.”

I kept talking to him, low and soft. He told me where he came from, and about his mother and sisters. I could tell from the set of his shoulders, how they relaxed back to the ground, that the soldier had finally let go of his stomach, and from the activity that I sensed rather than saw I knew Dr. Maclean was doing his best to stitch him up and bandage him again. I didn’t dare shift my attention away from the lad’s eyes, like I was holding him in a trance that would break if I blinked. The last thing I wanted was for him to realize what was happening and reach down and get in the doctor’s way.

“Will they send me home?” the soldier asked.

“I imagine you’re done fighting for now,” I answered. He closed his eyes and smiled, not broadly, but with such sweetness I wanted to kiss him. Then his pale face got even whiter and he went so completely loose that I thought he fell into an instant, deep sleep. I turned to Dr. Maclean. He sat up and looked at me, eyes full of sorrow.

“He’s dead.”

I wanted to yell out,
No! He can’t be! We were just talking.
But before I could react, Dr. Maclean motioned the orderlies over and they covered the soldier with a blanket and took him away.

C
hapter 15

The sun came up while we were still treating the wounded and trying to find places to fit them in the hospital. I got pretty good at telling what was wrong: a bone sticking out was a compound fracture. The stumps were easy enough to identify. Then there were bullet and bayonet wounds—lots of blood, but if the bones weren’t broken and if they were only in a limb and not through the chest, not so dangerous. Those were sometimes treated right there outside, the men bandaged up and sent back to the camp where their regiments had started out before sailing across the Black Sea to fight.

Always I stayed aware of Dr. Maclean even when I wasn’t looking at him. His movements were slow and careful at the same time, as if he was thinking through everything he did, trying his hardest not to make a mistake. We eventually caught up with the stream of casualties and the numbers of wounded thinned out so you could see the ground between them. Only then did I stand up straight and stretch my arms out, noticing how stiff and sore I was from holding hands, wrapping bandages, and kneeling.

Dr. Maclean had stood up as well. He didn’t look at me, just stared across to the hospital ships. His face was sad and angry at the same time. The other doctors wandered aimlessly, checking bandages now and again, smoking their pipes, talking in low voices. But not Dr. Maclean.