“And my cousin’s batman?” asked Hugh.
“Sorry,” said the doctor. “One officer added to the list is a courtesy; having other ranks jump the queue begins to look like disregard for the regulations. Believe me, we spend too much of our time already turning down impassioned petitions.”
“I appreciate your help, sir,” said Hugh. He knew better than to argue. He would have done the same if he were in charge and might even have denied Daniel priority. How different it felt, thought Hugh, to apply rules universally and then to apply them to one’s own family. He thought of the efficient way he conducted his surgeries, patching as he could and trying not to care too much if the injured died. There were always many more waiting, and he could not afford to waste his time mourning.
As dawn was breaking, Hugh waited with Harry and Daniel for the fleet of ambulances to come for the next round of patients. He was delighted to see Archie and Bill coming up the field and waved them over. “Can you take my patients?” he said.
“Delighted, I’m sure,” said Archie. “No one cares who we take as long as you got the right ticket.” A green label attached to the jacket indicated a patient for transport.
“Take the boy instead of me,” said Daniel. He fumbled for the ticket on his chest. “We’ll call it an error and I’ll find a place on the next convoy.”
“You need to go now,” said Hugh. “No arguments.”
Bill raised an eyebrow, and Hugh took him aside. “Is he badly off?” said Bill.
“Yes,” said Hugh. “He has a hole in his skull, and that kind of injury just can’t be properly cleaned or treated at the field station. If I can get him home, or even to the big hospital on the coast, he has a chance.”
“And the boy?”
“Also not very good,” said Hugh. “The lung may get infected. He needs to be out of the cold and nursed intensively, but they’ve marked him to stay.”
“Look, the answer is that you take them both and I’ll go on the next convoy,” said Harry Wheaton. He tried to undo his ticket with his one good hand.
“Everyone’s a hero today,” said Bill. “Upper-class toffs, outdoing themselves to be romantic, Archie.”
“Quite making me teary-eyed,” said Archie. “Good as a play at the music hall.”
“Insolent little man,” said Harry.
“Well, if the arm is not infected,” said Hugh, “I suppose there is no harm in Captain Wheaton’s delayed removal?”
“Except it’s not his only injury, is it, guvnor?” said Bill. With a flick of the wrist he threw off the tarpaulin from Harry’s cot. Harry’s left leg was gone at the knee, a bloody stump wrapped in such a thick layer of bandages that it looked like the pollarded branch of a tree.
“Good God, Harry, why didn’t you say?” said Hugh. “Amputation is a serious injury.”
“Didn’t want your pity,” said Harry. “Plenty of my own to keep me occupied.”
“You need a hospital too, Harry,” said Hugh. “Gangrene is a real possibility if you stay out here.”
“All right, Archie, what do you say we do a sloppy job again and take an extra passenger or two with the labels mixed up?” said Bill. “Not like we haven’t done it before.”
“It’ll be docked pay this time for sure,” said Archie. “But it only gets them to the train.”
“So maybe we get lost along the way?” said Bill. “Take them all the way to the coast?”
“Not like we haven’t done that before neither,” said Archie. “Double-quick then, before the sergeant major catches on.”
—
At the port, the ambulance mingled with those from the train station and delivered Hugh’s little party and four other men directly to the big hospital near the docks. Bill and Archie got a severe dressing-down for producing six patients with only five authorized sets of papers. Their artfully disconsolate faces and shuffling feet could not hide a certain eye-rolling sarcasm from the sergeant major at the loading bay. Had the need for their services not been acute, they might both have been thrown in a dungeon—of which the sergeant major claimed to have use—but he docked them two weeks’ pay and sent them off on another run with no time off for dinner.
Hugh clasped their hands and tried to offer them money, but the two were scathing in their rejection.
“Keep it,” said Bill. “Champagne and cigars cost a lot here in port.”
“Spend it on a woman, guvnor,” said Archie. “Put a smile on that long face of yours.” They drove away, still exchanging rude comments on Hugh’s personal appearance and general stuffiness, and he understood at last that such earthbound ruffians formed as indelible a part of England’s fabled backbone as any boys from Eton’s playing fields.
The hospital was also a collection point for patients bound for England, and the wards spilled into two warehouses on the docks, where patients were cared for and maintained until the arrival of a hospital ship to take them home. Organization in these warehouses was slightly looser than in the main building, and Hugh was able to persuade several orderlies that Snout the batman might stay with his officer, Captain Wheaton. Once they and Daniel were settled together, Hugh told Harry Wheaton to look after them while he went to secure passes to England on the next ship.
“Not sure what I can do except watch them drool,” said Harry, who was busy trying to look brave and interesting for a pretty nurse in a starched white apron bringing tea along the row of beds.
“Make sure they keep drooling,” said Hugh. “Just don’t let them die while I’m gone.”
In a large open office on the docks, he found his surgeon, Colonel Sir Alex Ramsey, surrounded by two walls of filing cabinets and pressed into a corner by the desks of clerks and nurses, who had their own rows of filing cabinets. Overhead large green-painted metal lights cast an unhealthy pallor on the proceedings.
“As you can see, things did not turn out as we had intended,” said the surgeon. “They have me running half the hospitals. I spend my days with a paper knife, not a scalpel.” He did not, however, look displeased with such an arrangement.
“I have been kept busy,” said Hugh. “You did not mislead me as to the experience I would gain. It may have been at the expense of some poor souls who got me instead of the more experienced surgeon.”
“A head injury hospital is still in the cards for next year or so.”
“I suppose that means the war will be going on awhile, sir?”
“We are making plans to see it through,” said the surgeon. “What can I do for you, my boy?” Hugh told him a brief version of what happened and begged him to assign his little group of three passes for the next ship to England. The surgeon too hesitated over the private.
“He’s underage, sir,” said Hugh.
“Well, I suppose we must prove our commitment to the men and show we assign no preference to officers,” said the surgeon. “I expect you’d like to accompany them?”
“I do have leave owed to me,” said Hugh.
“And will you be using some of that leave to pay a visit to my daughter?” said the surgeon. Hugh felt a throb of panic in his chest, which he pushed away. His sense of honor struggled for a moment with his need to see his cousin safe. He tried to conjure Lucy in his mind, but instead he could only see Beatrice Nash, laughing on his aunt’s terrace, her hair coming down from its pins in a sudden breeze. He opened his mouth to speak, but the surgeon stopped him.
“I’ll understand that as a no,” he said. “A pity, but it can’t be helped. She’s taken up with young Carruthers, you know. He joined the Coldstream Guards.”
“I’m very happy for her,” said Hugh.