Connie Willis - All Clear

“We’ll see to him,” Camberley said. “Where the bloody hell is that stretcher?”

“Can you walk, do you think, Douglas?” Reed asked.

“Of course I can walk,” Mary said. “He was bleeding badly. I tied a tourniquet on one leg, but—”

“Put your arm round my neck,” Reed said, “there’s a good girl. Here we go,” and began to walk her slowly across the rubble, and it was a good thing she was holding on to her. The ground was very rough. It was difficult to keep one’s balance.

“He was over by the fire,” Mary said, but the fire was in the wrong place. It was near the ambulances, in the road.

That’s not the right fire, she thought, stopping to look around at the rubble, trying to see where he was, but Camberley wouldn’t let her, she kept urging her along.

“His foot had been severed,” Mary said. “You need—”

“Stop worrying about everyone else and concentrate on this last bit. You can do it. Only a bit farther.”

“He was over there,” Mary said, pointing, and saw two FANYs carrying a laden stretcher from that direction.

Oh, good, they got him out, she thought, and let Camberley walk her the rest of the way to the ambulance. Two ambulances were already driving away. One of them was from Brixton. She could read its lettering in the firelight. And here was Bela Lugosi. But where was their ambulance? “Did you take Paige to hospital in the new—?”

“Here we are, then,” Camberley said, opening up the back of Bela Lugosi. Mary sat down on the edge, suddenly very tired.

“I need some help over here,” Camberley called.

Two FANYs Mary didn’t know came over, helped her into the ambulance and onto a cot, covered her with a blanket, and hooked up a plasma bag.

“It’s not blood,” she told them. “Was he all right?” But they were already shutting the doors, the ambulance was already moving, and then they were at the hospital and she was being unloaded, carried in, deposited in a bed.

“Concussion, shock, bleeding,” Camberley told the nurse.

“It’s printer’s ink,” Mary said, but when she held out her hands to show them, they were covered in red, not black. Paige’s arm must have bled more than she thought.

“Has Lieutenant Fairchild been brought in yet?” she asked the nurse. “Lieutenant Paige Fairchild?”

“I’ll ask,” she said, and went across the ward to another nurse.

“Internal bleeding,” she heard the other nurse whisper and shake her head.

She’s dead, Mary thought. And it’s my fault. If I hadn’t pushed Talbot down, I’d never have met Stephen, he’d never have come to the post.

But that couldn’t be right. Historians couldn’t alter events. But I must have, she thought, unable to work it out because her head hurt too badly. Because Paige is dead.

But just after dawn Fairchild was brought in and put in the bed next to her, pale and unconscious, and in the morning Camberley, covered in dirt and brick dust, sneaked in to see how Mary was doing and to tell her Fairchild had been in surgery most of the night for a ruptured spleen, but that the doctors had assured her she’d recover completely.

“Thank goodness,” Mary said, looking over at Fairchild, who lay with her eyes closed and her hands folded across her breast, like Sleeping Beauty. She had a bandage on her arm.

“I feel so guilty,” Camberley said, “knowing I should be the one who was in that ambulance instead of Fairchild. It’s my fault—”

No, it isn’t, Mary thought. It’s mine.

“It was so lucky you were on the far side of the incident when the V-2 hit,” she said.

I was tying off the man’s leg, she thought. “Did he make it?” she asked, and when Camberley looked blankly at her, she said, “The man we were working on. With the severed foot.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “We didn’t bring him in. I’ll ask the nurse.” But the nurse said the only other patients who’d been admitted the night before were a woman and her two little boys.

“He may have been taken to some other hospital,” Camberley said, and promised to ring up Croydon and ask.

But she didn’t return, and when Talbot came during visiting hours with flowers and grapes, she said, “Camberley said to tell you the man you asked about wasn’t taken to St. Francis’s, and that Croydon said the only person they transported was Fairchild. But Camberley said he must be somewhere because she checked with the mortuary van, which was there, and the only person they’d transported had died instantly.”

The man we found who’d been cut in half, Mary thought. “Tell her to ring up Brixton and ask them if they transported him,” she said. “They had an ambulance there.”

Talbot looked over at Fairchild. She still hadn’t come out of the ether, though now she looked like she was only sleeping, and her color was better. She looked even younger and more childlike than usual.

“What about Flight Officer Lang?” Talbot asked. “Shall I ring him up and tell him what happened?”

“Not till after I’ve been discharged,” Mary said.

Talbot nodded approvingly. “When will they let you go home, do you think?”

“This afternoon, I should imagine.”

And then I’ll go look for the missing man myself, Mary thought. But the doctor refused to let her go due to her possibly having a concussion, and when she attempted to explain about the man to her nurse, the nurse told her to “try to rest.” Which was impossible when there was a chance that no one had transported him, that they’d missed him in the darkness and he was still lying there in the rubble.

She wished she’d asked Talbot to bring her her bag. If she had some money she could ring up Brixton herself. If the nurses would let her anywhere near a telephone. Thus far they wouldn’t even let her out of bed. They’d even reprimanded her for walking the two feet over to Fairchild’s bed when she woke and called for telephone. Thus far they wouldn’t even let her out of bed. They’d even reprimanded her for walking the two feet over to Fairchild’s bed when she woke and called for her.

“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she’d said groggily, clutching Mary’s hand. “I was so afraid—”

“So was I,” Mary had said, “but the doctors say we’re both going to be perfectly fine, though a bit banged up.”

And it’s a good thing I’m going to be here through VE-Day, she thought. If I went back to Oxford looking like this, Mr. Dunworthy would never let me go to the Blitz.

Camberley came late that afternoon as Mary was about to be taken up for X-rays, on her way home from a run. “Did you ring up Brixton?” Mary asked.

“Yes,” Camberley said, “but they said they weren’t at the incident. Might the ambulance have been from Bromley?”

“I suppose so.” She could have misread the name in the flickering firelight.

“Or might he have been examined and discharged?” Camberley asked, but the hospital wouldn’t even discharge her, and she only had a few cuts and bruises.

“No,” she said, “he was much too badly injured. Did you check the morgue here and at St. Francis’s? He might have died on the way to hospital, and that’s why they don’t show him as being admitted.”

“I’ll check,” Camberley said, and hesitated. “Are you certain you saw him last night? You were rather badly concussed. You might have been muddled—”

“I wasn’t muddled. He—”

“You were muddled about Brixton’s being there. You might have got someone you administered first aid to at some other incident confused with—”

“No, I saw him, too,” Fairchild said from the other bed, and Mary could have kissed her. “That’s who I was fetching the medical kit for.”