Saturday 1 June
Every man on the ward was listening to the wireless that Sister had unexpectedly allowed to be brought in, as the BBC reported the latest numbers of soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk.
The nurses were listening as keenly as the patients as they went about their duties of setting up trolleys and trays for bed baths, temperature taking, and the giving out of medicine.
‘Another sixty-eight thousand brought off yesterday,’ old Mr Whitehead announced with evident satisfaction. ‘That’s just under two hundred thousand brought back safe, by my reckoning.’
Grace paused to smile at this good news before checking that the wheels of his bed were all turned inwards just as they should be.
The whole country had been holding its collective breath and saying its heartfelt prayers, following the speedy evacuation of the BEF, elated with relief when they heard a new report of more men brought off, and then plunged down into anxiety again when there were reports of the ships bringing them home being hit by the Luftwaffe despite the RAF’s stalwart attempts to keep them at bay. At least three Allied destroyers had been sunk and seven more damaged in one of the worst air attacks, on 29 May.
‘Aye, but what about them that are still there?’ Bill Johnson, another patient, asked grimly. ‘By my reckoning there are still a hundred and fifty thousand of them left.’
‘Time to take your temperature, please, Mr Johnson,’ Grace warned him firmly, but she was smiling at him as he dutifully obliged and stopped speaking so that she could carry out her task and then mark his temperature down on his chart before moving on to the next bed.
‘Gort won’t stop until he’s got them all back safe, and neither will Admiral Ramsay,’ Mr Whitehead insisted loyally.
‘Gort’s back in England now and what’s left of the BEF will have to look to Major General Harold Alexander, poor sods. They haven’t got a cat in hell’s chance,’ said Bill Johnson.
‘We can’t give up on them,’ Grace burst out, looking up from the empty bed she and Nurse Ellis, the other junior, were about to start making up, forgetting herself for a moment as her emotions overwhelmed her, her face burning when Staff Nurse Reid frowned in her direction.
‘The lass is right,’ one of the other men said. ‘We’ve got to keep hoping and praying for them, even if it’s a miracle we’ll be praying for.’
No explanation had been given to the junior nurses as to why they had had to make up extra beds and prepare those patients who were considered almost well enough to go home to leave earlier than originally planned, but they had all guessed that the empty beds could be needed for returning injured soldiers.
Teddy confirmed this when he and Grace managed to snatch five minutes together at lunchtime.
‘We’re all on standby in case we’re needed to bring back the wounded from Lime Street when they’re brought off the trains.’
He wasn’t looking very well, and it seemed to Grace that he was finding it harder than normal to breathe but she knew that telling him to rest was all too likely to have the opposite effect to what she wanted.
There’d been no word as yet from Luke, and although her father kept on saying that no news was good news in an attempt to cheer up her mother, Grace could see in her eyes what she feared. For the first time since she had started her nurse’s training, Grace wished she was still in the St John Ambulance Brigade, since their volunteers were all being sent to the stations to be ready for the troop trains coming up from the south coast bringing the BEF men back to their bases.
The military hospitals down south had taken those most in need of emergency treatment, of course, but as Teddy had warned her, their own hospital was on an alert ready to take injured men for whom there were no hospital beds elsewhere.
Seb closed his eyes, but it was no use, the images were still there. Marie, her brown eyes fierce with determination as she told him that even if she could leave for safety with him, she would not do so.
‘France is my country. And if I must die for her then I will do so. I cannot do the work you have trained me for in your country, Sebastion, you know that. My place is here.’
Had he been naïve or just stupid in not understanding how the pressure of the secret and urgent work he had been sent to France to do might affect him? When he had been recruited in England, trained and then sent to France to help set up and, in turn, train cells of Frenchmen and women to use special codes and wireless equipment to report back to England, if, as now looked likely, France should fall, it had never occurred to him that he might feel like this. He had argued fiercely with Command in England to be allowed to stay on and work with those he had trained, but he had been told that his role was now over and he must return to England. Like a coward, leaving those braver than he to face the enemy and, in all probability, to die. None of them was under any illusions. The life of a member of an underground cell was more likely to be short than long. Short and extremely unpleasant, if they were captured and tortured. He could feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead.
The train travelling north had been full of BEF men returning home and he had only just managed to squeeze on to it. He’d been later leaving France than originally planned and had got caught up in the retreat. When the Luftwaffe had machine-gunned the line of men he was standing in, waiting to get on board one of boats at Dunkirk, he’d ended up with a shoulder wound – nothing serious, he’d been told. He had a day in London being debriefed, with his shoulder hurting like hell, unable to get Marie’s face out of his mind, and now he was on his way to Liverpool to take up his new post at Derby House, as a member of an offshoot of what was known as the ‘Y’ Section. Their ‘secret’ job was to listen in to enemy Morse code and other messages, translate them, and then pass them on to their headquarters at Bletchley Park.
Sebastion had not wanted to recruit Marie in the first place. She had been too young, in his opinion, and too pretty, the kind of girl that men would always look at. They had been taught to look for recruits who could fade into the background and pass unnoticed. Marie, though, had been determined. She had been good as well, quick to learn, cool and controlled, where some of the recruits were too hot-headed and reckless.
Her circumstances had been perfect for their purpose as well. Her parents owned a small bar where she worked, the kind of place where comings and goings were a normal part of its daily routine. Even better had been that beneath the tabac was a series of interconnecting cellars, two of which they had hidden behind a false wall.
From that cellar Marie would report back to England. He should have been there with her. He had recruited her and he felt responsible for her. But orders were orders, and his were to return to England. He’d still felt like shit climbing into that boat, hearing a young sailor telling him cheerfully, ‘Soon have you back in Blighty, old chum.’
No, he shouldn’t have recruited her. He should have turned her away, left her safe to grow up and get married and have children of her own, instead of risking her life. And she would risk that. He had read that in her face. She was fiercely and proudly partisan about her country and her desire for its freedom, for its liberty, and equality.
He had left her knowing that the German Army was advancing, knowing that it was his duty to obey his own orders, and knowing too that he despised and hated himself for leaving her behind to face what she would have to.
‘I would not have it any other way,’ she had told him when he had said this to her, and begged her to let him take her to safety. ‘My choice is to fight for my country. My safety counts as nothing compared with that.’
Jean had been working down at Lime Street as a volunteer, her heart shredded with shocked anguish by what she saw in the expressions of the returning men. Some were still wearing their battledress, sea-stained and in some cases bloodstained as well, the smell of damp khaki sharp on the nostrils, especially when allied to unwashed flesh.
Some of the men were so exhausted that she’d had to hold the cup for them so that they could drink the tea she was handing out. Great big tall, broad-shouldered men, trembling and crying like babies in their disbelieving relief at being spared the fate they had thought would be theirs, and shame for their public defeat.
And all the time she was offering kind words and a drink of tea, Jean was scanning the sea of male faces, looking for Luke’s.
Some families had already had word via one of the postcards provide by the WVS, which the men had filled in as they passed through the English ports; others had received telephone calls. But the Campions had heard nothing. And now, six days after the final evacuation had taken place, Jean could hardly bear to think of where Luke might be.
Over forty thousand men had been left behind to be taken prisoner by the Germans – if they were lucky. Others had been killed by the Luftwaffe in those ships that had been sunk. The needs of the living must, of course, always come before those of the dead and, as Sam kept saying, they shouldn’t give up hope.
‘I’ll take over here now, Mrs Campion,’ one of the other members of the WVS group offered.
Tiredly, Jean nodded. She had been at Lime Street since early this morning and she needed to get home. Sam would be wanting his tea.
* * *
‘I thought they said we’d be taking a few of the overspill that they couldn’t find beds for,’ Hannah complained wearily to Grace as they each grabbed a quick bite of supper. ‘We’ve been operating nonstop since nine o’clock this morning.’
‘Our ward’s full,’ Grace agreed between mouthfuls of shepherd’s pie, ‘and as I came down for supper Sister was saying that we’d have to fit in another four beds. Some of those poor men, though, Hannah. What they must have been through.’
‘I know,’ she agreed quietly. ‘We’ve had some really nasty injuries in, arms and legs gone – and worse – caused by shrapnel.’
They looked at one another.
‘Mr Leonard operated on two men who he reckons won’t last the night. And then there was a lad, only seventeen, half his face gone.’
Grace put down her fork, her food suddenly tasting like sawdust.
The first thing Jean saw when she walked into her kitchen through the back door was the army greatcoat thrown over the back of a chair, salt-stained and encrusted in places with dark splodges that her brain hoped were mud, but which the sickening twisting pain in her heart told her were blood.
Then she looked up from the coat and saw Luke standing in the doorway to the hall, his gruff, ‘Mum,’ having her running to him, tears spilling from her eyes, a choke of something she couldn’t truthfully articulate clogging in her throat as his arms closed round her and she hugged him tightly.
‘You’re back.’
‘Got home half an hour ago. Wasn’t sure whether or not there’d be anyone in so I went round to the Salvage Corps’ HQ in Hatton Gardens to see if Dad was around, and luckily he was.’
Now Jean could see that Sam was standing in the hallway behind Luke, a look of fierce fatherly love and pride in his eyes. Fresh tears filled her own as she mentally said a thankful prayer for her son’s safe return home, and added another for the renewal of the father-and-son bond she had feared at one time had been destroyed for ever.
From upstairs the sound of one of the twins’ favourite records suddenly broke the silence.
Releasing Luke, Jean shook her head and exclaimed, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake. I’ll go up and tell them to turn that off.’
‘No don’t, Mum,’ Luke urged her. There were shadows in his eyes and in the sharper lines of his face Jean could see the man he had now become. ‘There’s bin many a time these last few days when I’ve have given anything to know I’d hear them playing that gramophone of theirs again. Aye, and plenty of times when I thought I wouldn’t, an’ all.’ His voice broke, his hand shaking as he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, turning away from her to light one. Because he did not want her to see what he was feeling?
Sam’s calm, ‘Get the kettle on, love; we’re both gasping,’ and the quick jerk of his head in Luke’s direction behind Luke’s back helped to steady her. This was a time when Luke needed his dad, perhaps even more than he needed her. There were things they could say to one another man to man, perhaps, that Luke would not want to say to her.
‘He’s had a bad time, hasn’t he?’ she asked Sam later when, after a bath and a change of clothes, Luke had insisted on going up to the hospital to try to see Grace and tell her that he was back safely.
‘I’ve got a couple of injured mates who might be up there, so I can see them as well,’ he had told them before he left.
‘Yes,’ Sam told her. ‘He’s told me a bit about it but not all of it, I reckon. That’s how it is for a man; there are some things that he can only talk about freely with them that was there with him. It’s a bit like that in the Corps sometimes, when we’ve had a bad ’un to deal with. According to what he’s told me they were given the order to retreat to Dunkirk and then told it was every man for himself. The Royal Engineers had built a bridge, which they held for them. Seemingly they only just got across it before the RAF blew it up to stop the Germans from making use of it. When they got close to Dunkirk, Luke said that all they could see was smoke from the fires because of the Germans bombing the oil depots. They were sent to a place called La Panne. Luke said if you’ve ever imagined hell then La Panne was it.’
Jean bit her lip. She knew how it would have affected Sam to think of his son exposed to such horror and danger, and him not being there with him to protect him.
‘There were men queuing everywhere: across the sand and right out into the water waiting to be taken off the beach, and all the time the queues were getting longer. Luke said he saw one captain threatening to shoot his own men when they broke ranks and tried to make for the sea instead of joining one of the lines. There was a beach master in charge of it all, but he didn’t have any control over the Germans, who were dive-bombing the men as they stood there.’
Jean had started to tremble. Even though Luke was safe, the pictures Sam was creating inside her head were sharply shocking and painful.
‘Three days it took them to reach Dunkirk, and then another two waiting to be taken off, all that time with no food and only the water they’d brought with them.’
Sam sighed. ‘Our Luke was only a lad when he left us, Jean, but he’s come back a man. They were dive-bombed by the Germans over and over again, and Luke said that you never knew when it was going to happen but when it did you didn’t dare leave the line in case you lost your place so you just had to throw yourself down in the sand where you were and hope for the best.
‘He said that the captain, the same one that had threatened to shoot his own men, had to put a bullet through a poor lad who’d been that badly wounded he couldn’t have survived. Then, when they finally got their turn to get onto one of the boats taking the men out to the ships, it almost capsized and the three men last on had to get off again. Luke said he saw a ship bombed and set ablaze from stem to stern, men jumping off it in all directions.’
‘Oh, Sam, it just doesn’t bear thinking about.’
‘Maybe not, love, but it has to be thought about, because if we don’t think about it then we won’t fight ruddy Hitler and he won’t be stopped. We need to stop him, Jean. We need to stop him, and we ruddy well will.’
Grace had never seen the area inside the main entrance to the hospital as busy and crowded as it was today. Everywhere she looked there seemed to be men in uniform – mainly the walking wounded, who had been told to report to their nearest hospital once they reached home, and also, of course, the close relatives of those who had received far more serious injuries and who had been brought to the hospital by ambulance.
She just had time to dash outside and have a quick word with Teddy before she was due back on her ward, to reassure herself that he was not overdoing things, and she was squeezing past the crowd in the doorway when she heard Luke calling her name.
By the time she had turned round to look for him Luke had reached her and her relief at seeing him uninjured made her hug him tightly and blink back her tears.
‘Come and say hello to Teddy,’ she begged him. ‘He’ll want to hear everything. We’ve read such dreadful stories in the papers.’
A quick look at Luke’s face told her that the reality had been even more terrible than the stories.
‘I’ll catch up with Teddy another time,’ Luke told her. ‘I was hoping that Lillian might be on duty. I wanted to tell her myself that I’d made it back. She’s the loveliest girl and very special to me, Grace.’
Grace’s heart sank.
‘She is, and she’s on Women’s Surgical, but I doubt that you’ll be able to see her. The sister on that ward is a real dragon. Luke …’ She wanted to warn him not to expect too much. She had no idea what Lillian might have said privately to him, of course, in the letters they had been exchanging, but she did know that Lillian had been going out with other men, and that she did not in any way consider herself committed to him.
‘At least Charlie’s safe. He sent us a telegram to tell us.’
‘Did he say when he was coming home?’ Bella asked her mother. Every returning BEF man who did not require hospital treatment had been given an extended period of home leave.
‘He says that he isn’t. He feels it’s his duty to help one of his friends who had a bit of a bad time so he’s going to be staying with him in London.’
Bella yawned in the afternoon sunshine of her parents’ garden. Being pregnant was so dreadfully tiring. All she seemed to want to do was sleep.
Teddy had been as pleased about Luke’s safe return as Grace had known he would be, and Grace’s heart was light with relief as she made her way back to the ward. The four empty beds were now occupied, along with the small private side wards. An army officer, his own arm bandaged, was touring the beds, accompanied by Sister.
‘We’ve got six new patients down from surgery, Campion,’ Staff Nurse Reid informed Grace crisply, ‘two who are very poorly and in the side wards; two with amputations and two with shrapnel wounds. Go and collect the necessary bowls and start with these two in beds twelve and fourteen.’
The bowls were for the patients to be sick in after they recovered from the anaesthetic, and beds twelve and fourteen held the less seriously injured shrapnel-wounded patients who would come round properly first.
The young soldier in bed twelve retched gratefully into the bowl, looking embarrassed when he had finished, and Grace wiped his face and then allowed him a small sip of water.
‘Eee, Nurse, I feel that helpless, just like a baby,’ he told her.
‘Well, you aren’t a baby; you’re a very brave man,’ Grace comforted him, ‘but you must try to lie still. We don’t want all Mr Leonard’s nice stitches coming out, do we?’
The grin he gave her told her that she had hit the right note. And Grace smiled at him as she took his temperature and then noted it down on the chart at the bottom of his bed.
It was normal, which was good, because hopefully that meant that his wound was infection free.
He was already closing his eyes and relaxing into sleep as she moved from his bed to the next one.
Its dark-haired occupant was lying with his face turned away from her, his shoulder bandaged.
‘I dare say you’ll be feeling a bit poorly,’ she began as she walked round the other side of the bed, but the automatic words she had now learned by heart remained unspoken when she recognised him.
‘Seb … Sebastion.’
His eyes had been closed but now they opened and he focused on her. When he had told her how important it was that she went ahead with her nurse’s training, Grace knew that neither of them had really imagined that those words would have such a real and personal meaning.
‘You …’ He was frowning now and Grace suspected he was having difficulty remembering her name. Any chagrin she might have felt was quickly set aside by her training and professionalism as she recognised that he was in pain and still very much under the influence of the anaesthetic.
‘Yes, it’s me, Grace Campion,’ she told him calmly. ‘You’ve had an operation to have some shrapnel removed from your shoulder, and I dare say you’re feeling a bit poorly right now. You may want …’ Just in time Grace thrust the bowl under his chin.
Unlike her first patient, Seb had a temperature a bit higher than it should have been. She made the appropriate note on his chart.
It had given her quite a turn at first to see him lying there. She’d certainly make sure she gave him the best nursing she could to thank him for what he had done for her.
She told Teddy about the coincidence of having Seb on her ward as they shared a cigarette together after she had come off duty.
‘I’m so glad that Luke is all right. Mum will be over the moon. He’s her favourite, although she’d never admit it. He told me that two of the men in front of him in the queue for the boats were killed when they were dive-bombed. Those poor boys, Teddy – from what I’ve heard they’ve been through so much. It’s a miracle we’ve got as many of them back as we did, but Luke said he reckoned there were a lot that didn’t make it.’
‘Aye,’ Teddy agreed, ‘and a lot that did make it that are in a bad way. We brought some back from Lime Street with injuries that bad you wonder if they’d have been better off if someone had finished them off,’ Teddy told her bluntly.
‘We’ve got two boys on our ward in a terrible state,’ Grace agreed. ‘Mr Leonard’s done his best but one poor boy has half his face missing and the other’s lost his mind. He still thinks he’s on the beach. It’s pitiful, Teddy.’
He put his arm around her shoulders and gave her a brief hug. ‘You’ve got to be strong for them, Grace, otherwise you won’t be able to do your job. They’ve done their bit for us, now we owe it to them to do ours.’
‘Luke said that the worst thing to bear was feeling ashamed because they’d had to retreat. He said they couldn’t believe it when they were on the train and they saw so many people at every station they passed through waving to them and cheering them on.’
‘That’s because it weren’t their fault … I’ve been down to the Odeon today and booked us tickets for that Gone With the Wind you said you wanted to see. I thought it might cheer you up a bit.’
Grace had almost forgotten about the film that had taken America by storm and which had now premiered in London.
‘Oh, Teddy, you are kind,’ she told him gratefully.
‘We could have a bit of summat to eat first, if you like, p’haps at Joe Lyons?’ Teddy suggested.
‘I’d like that,’ Grace agreed, stifling a small yawn.
It had been a long and very tiring day, and the relief of having Luke safely home on top of so much hard work had left her feeling drained.
‘You look half asleep on your feet,’ said Teddy. ‘You’d better go in and get some kip.’
‘Yes, I must,’ Grace agreed. ‘Sister warned us before we came off duty that we’re going to have to make up more beds in the morning because more troop trains are due. We may even need to put beds in the corridors.’ She stifled another yawn. Britain might be on daylight saving time and it was still light outside, but Sister was a stickler for routine and rules, so that on her ward, the blackout curtains were put in place at ten p.m. promptly, and her patients expected to go immediately to sleep.
Seb, though, could not sleep. He had refused the morphine he had been offered by the very efficient-looking senior nurse who had come round after Grace had gone off duty, and now his shoulder hurt like hell, far more so than it had done before he had had the shrapnel removed. Quite a coincidence, being nursed by Grace …
Lying here surrounded by injured men from Dunkirk reinforced the enormity of what had happened, and the battle that now lay ahead of them if they were to have any hope of winning this war. So many thought that they could not win it.
The man in the side ward who had lost his mind was reliving the hours he had spent on the beach, sobbing and screaming as he pleaded to be saved.
The solder in the next bed to his own muttered, ‘Poor sod. Every time I close me eyes all I can see is me mate lying there next to me with his legs blown off, and saying he was worried about getting in one of the boats because he couldn’t swim. We had to leave him there on the beach. Best not to think about it, though, otherwise you’d go as mad as him over there. Then ruddy Hitler would have won, wouldn’t he,’ cos he won’t be doing no more fighting. I will, though, and when I do, and when I aim that gun, it will be me mate I’ll be thinking about. I can’t bring him back but I can sure as hell make them pay for what they did to him.’
The screaming had stopped now but the sobbing continued. Seb thought of Marie. There didn’t seem much chance of the French and those British who had been left to fight alongside them holding back the Germans for very long.
The Germans would deal ruthlessly with anyone who opposed them, and Marie was so bloody patriotic and proud of it that she would stand up to them and put herself in danger. He had never known anyone like her. Being French had been more important to her than anything else, including being a woman. She put many men he knew to shame, including himself. He could quite easily have imagined her in a different age, storming the Bastille and demanding liberty for the people and death for those who oppressed them. But knowing that could not take away the guilt he felt at leaving and being safe, whilst she and her family were not.
‘They have their work and you have yours,’ his commanding officer had told him. ‘That is the nature of this work. You have done your bit with them in the field, now you are needed here to work on something else.’
‘Have you heard the latest?’ Hannah asked Grace as they walked to their rooms together. ‘Lillian’s found herself that medic she was wanting; one of the new housemen, that one who caught her when she fainted. Doreen says he’s besotted with her and she’s like a cat with a full bowl of cream. What’s wrong?’ she asked when she saw Grace’s expression.
‘Luke, my brother, came to see me this afternoon. He was at Dunkirk and lucky enough not get be injured. I did try to warn him not to get too keen on Lillian, but she’s obviously still been writing to him and he seems to think that they’re an item.’
‘Oh, what rotten luck for him,’ Hannah sympathised. ‘She’ll have to tell him, of course. Let’s just hope that she lets him down lightly.’
‘Yes,’ Grace agreed hollowly.
Seb watched as Grace approached his bed. He hadn’t slept very well and the wound in his shoulder was throbbing painfully.
The men who had been on the ward for the greatest length of time had been quick to fill in the new arrivals on the ward’s routine and its nurses. Grace, he had learned, was well liked by the patients, who considered her to be kind and compassionate as well as a good nurse.
‘A lovely-looking lass,’ an all,’ one of the men had said. ‘Walking out with one of the ambulance drivers, she is, so I’ve heard.’
Seb wasn’t surprised, of course, that a pretty girl like Grace was walking out with someone.
He remembered very well how tempted to kiss her he had been himself. The Tennis Club dance seemed to belong to another life now, one he could hardly relate to any more. He tried to move and stopped as pain shot through his shoulder.
Immediately Grace was at his bedside, smiling calmly as she fluffed up his pillow and poured him a fresh glass of water.
To his embarrassment his body was responding to the thought of kissing her in a way it had no right to at all. To stop it he said to her, ‘It’s not just a nurse’s uniform you’ve got now, from what I hear. You’re going steady with an ambulance driver as well.’
Grace looked over her shoulder to make sure that Sister wasn’t watching them. They weren’t supposed to talk about their private lives to the patients.
‘If you’re meaning Teddy, then him and me aren’t going steady, we’re just friends,’ she told him with great dignity.
Seb was surprised at how much that pleased him.
‘I’ve just got to take your temperature now,’ said Grace, determined to be professional, ‘and if you could use this …’
She didn’t look at him as she handed him the urine bottle, and Seb was surprised at how self-conscious he suddenly felt in view of the way he’d been prodded and checked over by so many nurses these last few days. War, after all, had a way of causing a man to lose his embarrassment about any bodily functions – or at least some of them, he corrected himself, remembering his discomfort over his ‘short arm’ reaction to the thought of kissing Grace.
Seb’s temperature was higher than it had been last night. Grace frowned. His colour was high as well.
‘I’d better just check your pulse.’
‘Give over, Nurse,’ the man in the next bed joked. ‘We all know you only do that ’cos you want to hold our hands.’
Grace laughed and managed to fight back her unwanted blush. Seb’s pulse was faster than it should be and his skin felt hot and dry. He was manifesting all the classic signs that his wound could be infected. There wasn’t anything on his chart about changing his dressings but Mr Leonard would be doing his round later, she knew, and would naturally check up on those patients on whom he had recently operated. Even so, it wouldn’t do any harm just to mention her suspicions to Staff, would it?
She waited until the staff nurse was on her own and then hurried over to her, quickly explaining what concerned her. Staff Nurse Reid gave her a searching look before going over to Seb’s bed, where she checked both his chart and redid his temperature.
As discreetly as she could Grace watched her whilst she collected the bottles to take to the sluice for urine tests. Staff was now speaking with Sister. They both went over to Seb’s bed, and then Sister demanded, ‘Screens, please, Nurse.’
Leaving the bottles, Grace hurried over to help the ward’s second-year nurse wheel the heavy screens into place around Seb’s bed.
As soon as they were in place Sister told her, ‘Dressings trolley, Campion.’
It was Staff Nurse Reid herself who removed the dressing on Seb’s shoulder wound. Grace had plenty of experience of unpleasant sights now but for some reason the hole left in Seb’s flesh where Mr Leonard had removed the shrapnel so shocked her that she thought for a moment she might actually faint. Or was it the smell of the infected wound that was affecting her? It shouldn’t be. She had seen and smelled far worse on gangrenous wounds and amputations.
Grace tried to focus professionally on Seb’s shoulder. The skin had been torn by the shrapnel, one piece having been removed originally and the wound stitched without the surgeon realising there was a smaller piece left inside. Mr Leonard had had to dig deeper to remove it, and the area around the wound was very inflamed and infected, probably because of the shrapnel left inside, Grace recognised.
‘Mitchell, go down and ask Dr Greenlow if he can spare a minute, will you?’ Sister was saying to the second-year nurse.
‘This looks a bit sore,’ she said to Seb. ‘I’m going to ask the houseman to let you have some morphine to ease the pain a bit.’
Within ten minutes Mitchell was injecting the morphine into Seb’s arm whilst the houseman frowned over his wound and instructed Sister to place a temporary dressing on it until Mr Leonard did his round.
‘Well spotted, Campion,’ Staff Nurse Reid complimented Grace as she followed her into the sluice. Grace desperately wanted to ask her if Seb would be all right but she knew that she couldn’t. Septicaemia from an infected wound was something they all dreaded. All they could do was keep the wound as clean as possible and give the patient M and B tablets. If with a wound like Seb’s the infection did spread, then that meant that the infected limb had to be amputated to save the patient’s life. Grace’s hands shook.