In the Shadow of the Lamp (18 page)

I took my hand away, resisting the urge to rub the spot on my wrist that now burned like a brand.

I didn’t understand why I felt that way. It wasn’t like Dr. Maclean had been as kind as Will, and I didn’t know him, really. But I never before felt the way I did when Dr. Maclean looked at me. And a shock went right through me when he touched me. Now, I didn’t dare look into Will’s eyes, afraid he’d be able to read everything I was thinking and he’d hate me for it.

“I saw your mum before I left. She said to tell you she misses you, but not to worry. Young Ted has been making money at the docks.” His voice was still gentle, but I could hear the longing in it, like what he was saying wasn’t the same as what he meant.

And talking about my mum and Ted—it brought them right up to me like they were there, inside Will’s heart. Touching him linked me to them. I reached out to him again. “Was she cross? About me going away?”

Will covered my hand with both of his. They were large and callused and warm. He smiled. “Not cross at all. She’s very proud of what you’re doing.”

“Did you tell her—”

“No. There was no need for her to know what wasn’t true anyway. But Molly, do you really just think of me as your friend?”

He leaned forward and lifted my chin so I had to look into his eyes. They were that clear, honest blue I remembered so well, a color that made me trust him, like they were letting me peer right inside his heart. And I knew they were searching mine for an answer. “I don’t know,” I said. “Things were so upside down when I left.” It was as close to the truth as I could get.

He nodded and leaned back, relaxing his hold on me. “And you’re so young.”

I shook my head the tiniest bit, trying to send him a message that no one knew exactly how young I was, that Miss Nightingale thought I was at least nineteen. “Old enough to be a nurse,” I said, trying to turn it into a joke.

“Not old enough to be married, though.” He fixed me with his gaze again, leaning so close that he couldn’t look at both my eyes at the same time but had to flick back and forth from one to the other. I had to force myself not to cast my eyes down again, to escape from the question that I knew was coming but I wasn’t ready for. “When this is over, will you think about it? Will you, Moll?”

Marry Will. It was a crazy thought, half pleasing and half terrifying. Why would he want to after everything that had happened? “I don’t know.” I felt stupid, not able to say anything else. And I could feel Mrs. Drake listening, wondering if she’d heard it all and what she’d tell the others.

“I see.” The sadness in Will’s voice stabbed my heart and the eager light faded from his eyes.

“Oh, Will, you know I care about you very much, and I’m so grateful for what you did. Here.” I fished in my pocket and handed him a little pouch I’d sewn with most of the money I owed him in it.

“What’s this?”

He brightened up when I gave him the pouch, and I realized he must have thought I had made some kind of present for him to take to the front, some token for luck. I was suddenly ashamed and wished I’d thought of making him a handkerchief or something. “It’s not all of it, but most of the money you lent me, for the train.”

All at once, the door that had welcomed me through his eyes and into his heart slammed shut. I had wounded him deeply, and he’d not set a foot on a battlefield yet. He stuffed the pouch in his jacket pocket and stood.

“I have to get back to camp, Miss Fraser.” He bowed to me, formal and stiff, as he used to bow to Mr. Abington-Smythe. I wanted to cry, to beg him to start his visit over again, to let me make it come out differently.

I bit my lower lip. What was I doing? This honorable young man who talked of marrying me was going off to war, and I was letting him leave without a word of encouragement. It wasn’t too late, if I was brave enough.

“Will!” I called to him as he walked away. He stopped and turned. I ran to him and rose up on my tiptoes. I intended to kiss his cheek, an affectionate sign that wouldn’t mean too much. But he turned and met my lips with his, trembling. I reached my arms around his neck and whispered into his ear. “I will think about it.”

He gave me a smile so full of hope and love it hurt, then turned and walked out, his head high and shoulders set.

“So,” Emma said as we got ready for bed that night, “you’ve got two beaus, it seems.”

“Don’t say that! I haven’t got any.” Sometimes Emma’s teasing really annoyed me. Especially when she was so wrong and I couldn’t find any way to convince her of it.

“That’s not what Mrs. Drake is telling everyone she sees. How ‘poor you’ sent your fiancé off to the front.”

My fiancé! How would I squash that rumor? “Don’t poke fun at something you don’t understand. I’m just grateful to Will is all. And he is not my fiancé.”

“I suppose that depends on how you show your gratitude.” She nudged me with her shoulder.

“I showed it by paying him back the money he lent me so I could get to Folkestone and come here. Nothing else.”

She pursed her lips into a kissing shape but didn’t say anything. Just before we blew out the lamp on the table between our beds, Emma said, “You know it’s just a bit of fun, Moll, don’t you? I don’t want you to feel hurt by what I said.”

I rolled onto my side and propped my head up on my hand. “I know. But I wish you wouldn’t tease sometimes. It’s complicated with Will.”

“Was it always? I mean, what if you hadn’t met Dr. Maclean?” She leaned forward so we could talk more quietly.

“Dr. Maclean is nothing to me! He’s a doctor and I’m a nurse.”

“Haven’t you noticed that he always manages to be in the wards when you are?”

“All of the doctors are in the wards.” I rolled onto my back. Was it true, what she said? I had noticed but didn’t want to make anything of it. And he always greeted me and asked me about cases.

“You may be blind, but I’m not. You watch yourself, Miss Molly. Or you’ll be the one who gets sent home for fraternizing. And I wouldn’t like that one bit.”

Maybe Emma said that just because if I went, she wouldn’t have anyone to cover for her when she broke the rules. Even so, I was glad she said it.

C
hapter 19

Our short reprieve from the shiploads of wounded didn’t last long. But Miss Stanley’s new nurses were still not employed.

“We expect to receive another seven hundred men by ship any day,” said Miss Nightingale. “As you all know, the wards are completely full and all that are able to be discharged have been. And despite the efforts of Lady Stratford de Redcliffe, work in the wards has not progressed because the men she had hired went on strike almost immediately. Therefore, I have taken matters into my own hands and hired two hundred Turkish workmen to repair the dilapidated hospital wings, which have enough room for an additional eight hundred men.”

Miss Nightingale walked up and down in front of us in the common room like she was giving orders to a battalion of soldiers. Lady Stratford de Redcliffe was another one of her personal skirmishes. She’d come from the embassy, sweeping in as if she could accomplish everything Miss Nightingale still hadn’t got to. But everyone underestimated Miss Nightingale’s strength of purpose. If she couldn’t do it, it couldn’t be done.

“Mr. Macdonald has graciously been supplying us with much needed materials, and I have requested hair mattresses and more wooden beds. I have no intention of returning us to the task of stuffing mattresses.”

A sigh of relief went round the room.

“Because I shall be much occupied with supervising the reconstruction of the dilapidated wards, I have decided that some of the new nurses, the ones who arrived without my sanction, can be employed in the hospital. In addition, a new hospital is being built a short distance away, at Koulali, and I have every hope that they will find adequate employment there once it is completed.”

Although I didn’t know everything that was going on, I could tell Miss Nightingale was pleased that she had stopped the others from interfering with her. Sometimes I worried that she was trying so hard to get things done that she made more enemies than she needed to. And yet she cared very much about everything and everyone. I never begrudged her for it, not like some of the others—including Emma. Thinking back to when we arrived, the hospital was now a completely different place thanks to her. Who else would have been able to bring such order to the mess? Men’s wounds were now cleaned and dressings changed regularly; everyone had mattresses and most also had beds for the mattresses to lie upon; everyone got the food they were supposed to, three times a day. Even the rats obeyed her and were much less bold than they were when we first arrived. The latrines, too, had been dug deeper so the stench didn’t come into the wards. She seemed to have power to do things beyond a normal lady’s abilities. I adored her.

“There is another small matter that also demands our attention. That is that I have been made aware of certain needs of the soldiers’ wives, who have followed their husbands to war. It seems there are a number of imminent births. I have requested a separate basement ward for the purpose of creating a lying-in hospital.”

She assigned two of the older nurses to be ready to assist at births if necessary.

I supposed it must have been so she could give the lowest duties to the new nurses, but Emma and I found ourselves suddenly on shifts where we had to do more of what you’d call real nursing. And I was quite surprised that first day to find I’d been assigned to follow Dr. Maclean on his rounds in a ward that had some of the most critically injured men.

“I’m glad it’s you, Molly—Nurse Fraser,” he said when I arrived with an armload of towels and a basket of clean bandages.

I didn’t dare really look at him. I hoped we could simply be two people working together, instead of that frightening state where we weren’t quite friends, but almost something more.

“This fellow’s had an amputation and we must see how his stump is healing,” Dr. Maclean said, talking to me as if I were another doctor. I tried to pretend I was used to it, that there was nothing more normal to me than being on an equal footing with a medical man, and said nothing. “Kindly unwrap the wound for me, Nurse,” he said.

The fellow’s leg had been removed just above the knee. I folded the blanket back so it only revealed the bandaged stump and set my fingers to untying the tight knot the surgeon had made in the gauze. It was stiff with dried blood.

“Use these,” Dr. Maclean said, handing me a pair of scissors with angled blades and a dull edge on one side. “They’re made so you can slip them under a bandage and cut without hurting the patient.”

My hands trembled a little, but I snipped the tied gauze and then unwound it. As I got closer to the wound, I could see that the blood had seeped through and I thought it might pull at the man’s skin. I looked into his face.

“Don’t mind, miss. You can’t hurt me.”

He had stubbly growth on his face and his cheeks were ashy gray. Despite what he said, I was afraid. Dr. Maclean gently took the bandage out of my hand and continued the job.

“There, it’s healing well, my man,” he said. “Take a look, Nurse Fraser.”

He stood aside so I could see. After standing by when so many open wounds were being treated, I didn’t hesitate to look. And it was a very clean-looking stump. I could see the stitches criss-crossing in the middle.

“Let’s clean it off and then wrap it up again,” Dr. Maclean said, handing me a soft cloth soaked in fresh water.

I gently patted the wound, cleaning away the dried blood until it looked almost like the edges of a torn sheet that had been sewed together with black thread.

“Now watch while I put a fresh bandage on.”

I was so intent on what we were doing, really fascinated by seeing how a wound could heal and someone who had been badly injured could be made nearly whole again, that I didn’t hear anyone walking up to us and jumped at the sound of the voice.

“Maclean! What do you think you’re doing?” It was Dr. Menzies.

“I’m taking care of this man’s stump, sir,” Dr. Maclean said, continuing what he was doing without so much as looking round.

“Do you suppose we have an excess of bandages and can afford to wrap a perfectly good surgery more than once?”

I shrank back out of the way, leaving the two doctors near the patient. I saw that the bandage had been dirty and needed changing. Would they really have left him in his original, bloody bandage until it was time to fit him with a wooden leg?