Connie Willis - All Clear

“There’s blood all over,” Binnie said, and there was a tone of desperation in her voice that was totally unlike her.

Eileen pulled the car over to the curb, stopped it, and climbed over the seat to look.

Binnie was right. There was blood everywhere. Binnie was pushing down manfully, but she wasn’t strong enough to stanch the bleeding. “Here, let me,” Eileen said, and Binnie immediately let go and scooted aside. Blood spurted.

“Wow!” Alf exclaimed. “Lookit that!”

Eileen pressed down on the towel as hard as she could. The bleeding slowed but didn’t stop. She got on her knees, bent forward so her full weight was over the officer, and pushed down.

“It’s stoppin’,” Binnie said.

But how did that help? The moment she let up on the towel, the wound would begin spurting again, and they couldn’t stay here indefinitely. The lieutenant’s only hope lay in their getting him to hospital, and soon. “Binnie? Do you think you could drive?” Eileen asked.

“A’ course,” Binnie said, and scrambled over the seats and into the driver’s seat.

“Do you remember where first gear is?”

In answer, Binnie stepped on the clutch, put the car in gear, and shot down the street at breakneck speed.

She’s going to get us all killed, Eileen thought, but she didn’t tell her to slow down. Speed was their only hope, both for the officer and the driver, who looked as though she was already dead. Even bending over her, Eileen couldn’t hear her breathing.

“Go right,” Alf said. “Now down there. Now bear left.” Binnie was apparently going the way he told her because he didn’t call her a noddlehead.

She hoped to goodness he knew where he was going and wasn’t only making it up as he went along. But he only hesitated once, to say, “It’s the next one, I think, or the one after. No, go back, it was the first one.” Binnie threw the car into reverse, backed up, and turned into the street he’d indicated.

Eileen didn’t have time to ask if they were getting close. She had her hands full with the lieutenant, who was coming back to consciousness and attempting to pull away from her, and it was all she could do to keep the pad in place.

“Now bear right down that lane,” Alf said, “all the way to the end.”

There was a brief silence, and then Binnie said accusingly, “You told me wrong. There ain’t no way out, just buildin’s.”

“I know,” Alf said. “We’re ’ere.”

Eileen bent forward to look out the front window. They were. The stone buildings of St. Bart’s towered beautifully ahead of them.

“Which door do we go in?” Binnie asked Alf.

“I dunno,” Alf said. “Eileen, where do we go?”

“Binnie, come back here and take over,” Eileen said. Binnie scrambled over the seat and took Eileen’s place, and Eileen squeezed past her into the driver’s seat, but in the darkness she couldn’t tell which door she should pull the ambulance up to either. There were a dozen doors, none of them marked and none of them lit.

“I’ll go see,” Alf said, and was out of the ambulance and out of sight before she could stop him.

Hurry, Eileen thought, her hands gripping the steering wheel, ready to move the car the instant he returned.

“Why don’t he come?” Binnie asked, sounding panicked. “The blood’s comin’ through again.”

There was no sign of Alf. Eileen honked the horn, but no one came.

“I think the driver lady’s stopped breathin’,” Binnie said.

They’re both going to die right here outside St. Bart’s, Eileen thought desperately.

She put on the emergency brake, said, “I’m going to go find it,” and flung herself out of the ambulance and across the drive to the nearest door.

It was locked. She banged on it for what seemed like an eternity and then ran to the next one, and the next. The last one opened onto a narrow, dimly lit corridor, and at one side a counter and sign: Dispensary.

Eileen ran up to the counter, praying there was someone behind it.

There was—a plump, sweet-faced woman in a gray dress with white cuffs and collar and a cameo at her throat. She looked out of place, as if she should be presiding over a tea party.

She won’t be of any help at all, Eileen thought, but there was no one else.

“I have two patients outside, and I can’t find where to go, the doors are all locked, and the ambulance driver’s unconscious and the other one’s bleeding badly,” she said, thinking, I’m babbling, she’ll never be able to understand, but amazingly, the woman did.

“Where’s the ambulance?” she said, snatching up a telephone. “Outside this door?”

“Yes, I mean, no. It’s—I kept trying doors and they were all locked. I—”

“Bring the ambulance round to this door,” the woman ordered, and said into the telephone, “I have an emergency here in the dispensary. I need a stretcher crew immediately, and tell them we’ll need a transfusion.”

“Thank you,” Eileen breathed, and ran back out to the ambulance, scrambled in, said to Binnie, “I’ve found help,” and started the ambulance. By the time she’d backed it up to the dispensary door, a group of attendants was already there, opening the back doors, loading the driver and the officer efficiently onto wheeled carts, and draping them with white sheets.

“He’s bleedin’,” Binnie said, scrambling out of the ambulance after them. “You got to apply direct pressure.”

The attendant nodded. “Go with her and make your report,” he said to Eileen, pointing to the nurse standing next to the stretchers.

“I’m not—” Eileen began.

The nurse herded her and Binnie through the door. “Where are you injured?” she asked as soon as they were inside.

“She ain’t,” Binnie said. “It’s them what’s ’urt.” She pointed at the stretchers they were bringing in.

“Come with me,” the nurse said, and led them down the corridor after the carts, which the attendants were pushing at breakneck speed.

The nurse was walking almost as quickly. “I’m not the ambulance driver,” Eileen said, trying to keep up with her. “The injured woman is. They recruited me because I could drive—”

The nurse wasn’t listening. She’d raised her head and was listening to a drone of planes which was growing louder and louder.

Oh, no, Eileen thought, was St. Bart’s hit on the twenty-ninth?

They turned down another corridor, and then another, at the end of which the carts disappeared through a pair of double doors. “Wait here,” the nurse said, and went through them, too.

“You ain’t gonna have to file a report, are you?” Binnie asked.

“A report?”

“Yeah, about us takin’ the ambulance. We won’t ’ave to tell ’em our names, will we?”

“Where’d you two go?” Alf asked, appearing out of nowhere.

“Where’d we go?” Binnie said indignantly. “You were the one what disappeared.”

“I never. I went to find where to go, like you told me—”

“Shh,” Eileen said. “This is a hospital.”

Alf looked around. “What are you standin’ ’ere for? I thought you said you ’ad to go to St. Paul’s.”

“I do, but the nurse—”

“Then we better go before she comes back. The ambulance is this way,” Alf said.

“We can’t drive the ambulance to St. Paul’s,” Eileen said. “The hospital needs it.”

“But if they ain’t got nobody to drive it, it ain’t no good to ’em. We might as well take it,” Alf said, ever practical.

“And if we don’t, ’ow’ll you get there?” Binnie asked. “It’s miles, and the trains’ve stopped running.”

“They have? What time is it?” Eileen asked, glancing at her watch.

It was nearly eleven. Mike would have long since come back to Blackfriars looking for her. He’d have no idea where she’d gone. She had to get back there.