Silence for the Dead (24 page)

N
ina had made me take a few hours' rest while we waited for the ambulances to come. I'd refused to go upstairs to bed, but spread a blanket in the corner of the floor and curled up to sleep, another blanket that Jack had pulled from the linen closet bundled under my head. “You should sleep, too,” I told him, as he crouched next to me.

He shook his head. “I haven't been working your hours. Don't worry, Kitty. I'll be here. I'll wake you if you're needed.”

I gave him the letters and the notes that Maisey had brought. As I lay down, my apron rustled, and I pulled out the envelope I'd taken from Mr. Deighton's briefcase a lifetime ago. I turned it over in my hand, looking at Matron's writing, and then I held it out to him. “Take this, too.”

“What is it?”

“The incident reports Matron gave Mr. Deighton.”

Jack took it, his gaze searching my face. “I see. Are you going to tell me where you got them?”

“Later.” I hadn't thought I could rest, but I found myself fading. “It will make a good story for the journey to Newcastle on Tyne.”

“Don't you want to read it?”

“I thought I did,” I replied, “but now I don't think so. Perhaps you could read it for me.”

“All right,” he said. “Just rest.”

“Jack,” I said, the question seeming urgent in my tired mind, “which dream was yours? I read them all twice and I can't tell.”

His hand rested lightly on top of the blanket he'd pulled over me. “I'd rather you didn't know,” he said after a moment. “We're all dreaming the same thing—I see that now. It doesn't matter which one is mine.”

I wanted to argue, but I was asleep before I could try.

I awoke a few hours later as Nina shook me. It was full dark now, and I could hear rain pounding on the windows. The patients on the floor next to me were quiet.

I rolled over. “What time is it?” I asked her.

“Nearly one o'clock,” she replied.

“One o'clock!”
I gaped at her. The ambulances were over four hours late. “Have the ambulances arrived?”

“Just now,” said Nina. “But there's a problem.”

I threw off my blanket and stood, straightening my wrinkled skirts. I'd slept fully dressed, including apron, stockings, and shoes. My hair was still wrapped in its braids. It wasn't the best way to sleep, but I'd slept rough before. I followed Nina quietly toward the front door, stepping over the sleeping bodies of the patients.

Paraffin lamps had been brought in to light the hall. The flickering light created an eerie effect: Rows of bodies lined the floor, as still as corpses, while the rain fell relentlessly outside. I could see the men's faces as they slept feverishly, their flushed cheeks and sunken eyes, and I recognized every one of them. Martha, Matron, and Boney had been placed side by side. They all seemed to be sleeping, and Martha tossed uneasily.

We stepped through the front doorway to find Jack Yates standing on the portico, sheltered from the rain by its colonnade. Captain Mabry stood next to him, and they were talking to two men in mackintoshes and watch caps. Four covered ambulances idled on the circular drive, and two other drivers stood in the rain and waited, smoking cigarettes.

“What's going on?” I asked.

Jack turned to me. “There are four ambulances,” he replied, “and each can only take four patients. They can only take sixteen.”

I turned to the drivers. “We've seventeen sick here,” I said.

“Twenty-one,” Jack corrected me. “Four more fell ill while you were sleeping.”

I was appalled. “Are you saying that fourteen of the patients here are now sick?”

“And four orderlies,” he said, “and three nurses.”

“We can't take them all,” said one of the drivers. “We've no room.”

“You could put more patients in each ambulance,” Jack protested. “That's what I've been trying to tell you.”

“I can't do it. Each ambulance only takes four. Otherwise it's overcrowding.”

Jack shook his head. “I saw worse than that at the Front.”

“So did I,” said Captain Mabry.

“It can't be done,” said the second driver. “We can't overcrowd ambulances like that. It's against regulations. We'd be sacked.”

“What about the rest of the sick?” I asked.

The second driver turned to me. “We'll send back a second detachment, but it won't be until after the rain has stopped and the bridge is passable. As it is, we had a devil of a time getting here, and we have to move now, or we won't get out of here at all.”

“These patients could be dead by then.”

“That's what I've been saying,” Jack said. “Are you going to leave these people to die?”

The ambulance driver turned to him with a look of frightened disgust on his face that I was starting to recognize. The sight of a shirt and trousers with
PORTIS HOUSE HOSPITAL
stenciled on them seemed to bring it out in everyone. “I know one thing,” the man said. “I know I'm not taking orders from a bloody—”

“Stop it,” I cut in. “In the absence of Matron, Nurse Shouldice and I are in charge.” I glanced at Nina, who was dead on her feet; I wasn't even certain she was listening. “If we don't move soon, the bridge will be impassable. Start loading as many patients as you can. Make sure you take the three nurses—they're just under the windows, over there. Nurse Shouldice will accompany you to help with their care. I'll stay here with the remainder.”

He nodded at me and motioned to the other two men, who threw down their smokes and came out of the rain. Soon there were stretchers passing quietly out, some of the feverish patients moaning or crying. I found myself looking at every face, etching it into memory in case I never saw it again. I tried very hard not to care.

I turned back to Jack and Mabry, unable to watch anymore. “You should go with them,” I said. “They'd likely let you ride in the front seats with the drivers. It's possible you could be of help.”

“And leave you here alone?” Jack looked at Mabry. “What are the odds of our doing that, do you think, Captain?”

“Very long,” Mabry replied coolly. “Very long indeed.”

“I'm not going, either.”

I turned. I'd almost forgotten about Nina, so quiet had she been. “Nina, you should evacuate.”

“Those patients are going to a hospital,” she said. “These ones aren't. They'll need nursing.”

“I can take care of it.”

“Kitty.” She glanced at Jack and Mabry, then back at me, resigned. “You're not a nurse.”

It felt like a slap. In the chaos since I'd found Martha lying on the floor of the corridor over a day earlier, I'd honestly forgotten. “Fluids, beef tea, rest,” I said. “I can do all that.”

“And what if one of them gets an infection?” Nina shot back. “What if one of them gets fluid in his lungs? Or sleepwalks and hurts himself? What if Mr. West has one of his fits, or Mr. Childress? What will you do then?”

I bit my lip. “All right. But you're half asleep, Nina. It's your turn to go rest. I insist on it.”

She pushed up her glasses. “You won't get any argument from me,” she said in her old sullen way, and she stomped away to find a blanket.

Captain Mabry was looking through his spectacles and down his patrician nose at me. “What?” I said to him. “You've never seen a girl impersonate a nurse before?”

“It's a bit of a long story,” Jack offered.

“Intriguing,” said the captain. “It has something to do with that unpleasant chap we ejected the other day, I assume?”

“Something like that,” I replied.

“I see.” He paused. “Your treatment of nosebleeds was very well- done, Nurse Weekes.”

“Thank you. I'm sorry I had to pull rank back there, but he wasn't going to listen to you, and I had to move things along. Now, we need to get Paulus up-to-date on what's going on.”

“If we can find him,” Jack said.

“What?”

“I've been looking for him for over an hour. Roger's gone, too.”

Paulus had never warmed to me, but I was unsettled at the thought of doing without his huge bulk. “He can't have gone far,” I said. “Let's help get these ambulances off, and let's keep looking.”

•   •   •

P
aulus turned up half an hour later with Roger in tow. The two of them came into the hall as the ambulances pulled away, looking sweaty and a little harried. Paulus had drops of rain spattered over his whites. “Where are they going?” he said. “What's going on?”

I turned to him, worry making my voice sharp. “Where the hell have you been?”

“I had work to do,” he retorted.

“Well, you have more work to do now. They couldn't fit us all, so they've gone with as many as they can take, and they're coming back after the rain has stopped and the bridge has cleared.”

“That's just bloody great.” Paulus flushed. “We're all right fucked—that's what we are.”

“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I want a meeting of everyone left who is able-bodied, except for Nurse Shouldice, who must rest. Round up everyone and go to the dining room. Now.”

The meeting was a depressing one. I put a lantern down on one of the long tables and looked around. I was the only nurse; Roger and Paulus were the only orderlies. Jack and Captain Mabry pulled up chairs, and West wheeled in his chair. The disease had passed him over so far.

I exchanged a look with Jack. He appeared tired, but not much the worse for wear. He'd been through harder things than this, of course. I wondered whether he'd read Maisey's papers or the reports from Matron, but I could see no sign of it on his face.

For the first time I missed Matron. Her rules had seemed stupid, but now I knew that she would have kept an itemized ledger noting every staff and patient in the hospital and their current whereabouts. I had to run everything through my tired, jumbled head. “Where are the kitchen staff?” I asked.

“Gone back to the village hours ago,” said Paulus. “The gardener, too. The whole building was being evacuated and I thought we wouldn't need them, so I sent them off.”

“Nathan doesn't live in the village,” I said.

“Bammy does. He said his mum would take Nathan in. Nathan wanted to go, so I let them.”

“Paulus, we have a deadly virus here. And you've just sent two people to carry it back to Bascombe.”

Both orderlies looked incredulous. “Are you saying we should have sent them on those ambulances to Newcastle on Tyne, even though Bammy lives just across the way?” said Roger.

“Yes.” I rubbed my temples. Actually, I didn't know. Would the ambulances have taken people still healthy along with the sick? Matron would have known. “They could at least have stayed long enough to be evaluated by the nursing staff.”
Of which I am not one.

“We didn't have time for that,” said Paulus. “Besides, if you want to be the one to get Nathan into one of those ambulances, you can try. I certainly won't.”

“Nurse Weekes is right,” Jack said. “I didn't know you were scared of Nathan the cook, Vries.”

Paulus turned to him. “It isn't my job to wrestle people like him,” he said, his accent sounding exotic in our half-dark dining room. “It's my job to wrestle people like
you.
”

“What's done is done,” Captain Mabry said in his best aristocratic voice. “We can't get them back now, even if they would come.” He looked at me. “We have more pressing problems.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do the arithmetic,” Jack said. “Count the patients.”

I did, shuffling them through my brain. And suddenly I saw it. “Archie Childress,” I said. “He wasn't evacuated, and he isn't on the floor in the hall. Where is he?”

“Creeton, too,” said Jack. “He didn't need to be carried downstairs, but I told him to come. I didn't want him alone, and I wanted him where we could all keep an eye on him. He said he would come, but he never appeared.”

“Oh, my God.” I looked around the table. I didn't think that anything could be worse than this. “We're missing two patients.”

Paulus raised one of his huge hands. “As to that, we can shed a little light. On one of them, at least.”

We all turned to him. His gaze dropped for a second, and I thought I saw uncertainty cross his face. Then he looked back up and spoke. “We found Creeton and Childress in the common room. Creeton was having a go at Childress—you know, teasing him. The stutter and the shaking. He's always liked to take the piss out of Childress, but this time he seemed angry. He hasn't been the same since—well, you know. He was taking it out on Childress rather hard. Said Childress's weakness was what had brought it.”

“
Him
,”
Roger corrected. “He said Childress's weakness was what had brought
him.
”

Paulus frowned. “I don't think so. What the hell does that mean? Brought who?”

There was silence around the table. Jack and I exchanged a glance. I didn't think Archie had somehow brought the ghost of Mikael Gersbach or his father to Portis House. But if Creeton was not in his right mind . . .

“Anyway, Childress flew at Creeton,” Paulus continued. “Started to hit Creeton something fierce. He's thin, that one, but when he's angry he's damned determined.”

I put a hand to my mouth. Oh, Archie.
Creeton likes to have a go at me, but I can handle it,
he'd told me. “What happened?”

“We pulled them apart,” Paulus said. “It took two of us to take care of Childress, he was struggling so hard. When we came back to the common room, Creeton was gone. We spent over an hour looking for him and had to give up. That's when I came into the main hall and saw the ambulances had gone.”