The way his eyebrows knitted together, the clear confusion on his face, made Lucy pull back. She wasn’t going to push him. He’d suffered a head trauma, been through hell and back, and she just had to hope for his sake that his memory started to return sooner than later.
‘Whoever she is, I’m sure she’s anxiously waiting for news of you.’
He smiled. ‘Maybe. I just . . .’ His voice trailed off. ‘It’s a strange thing to have a photograph of a woman on me and not recall a thing about her. Maybe it belonged to another man and I was carrying it for him.’
Lucy doubted it, but she bit her tongue to stop from speaking her thoughts.
‘How is your arm?’
She glanced down at the small bandage covering the skin across her forearm before answering him. ‘It was only a bad graze. It will be fine.’ At the time she hadn’t even realised what had happened, but with it bandaged the small wound didn’t bother her.
‘Doc told me I don’t have to have my food all mashed up today,’ he said, voice cheery again.
Lucy laughed. ‘Well, good. I was getting tired of having to do that for you every time.’
They sat quietly, listening to the sounds of war that weren’t so very far away.
‘I have some time off this morning,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be going to town and my friend Scarlet wants to enquire about her fiancé again – see if there’s been any news.’
Her soldier nodded. She hated that she didn’t know his name, that she constantly ran through different men’s names in her mind trying to find one that suited him. Although compared to the mystery of the woman in the photo, this wasn’t anywhere near as worrying.
‘Go and get away from here,’ he said, his smile kind as he looked up at her. ‘It’ll be hell again in here soon and if you don’t go, they’ll end up calling you in.’
She nodded, her cheeks flushing with heat when he caught her eye again. He was right. But for some strange reason, she didn’t like the thought of leaving him, and for a girl who’d never bothered with men or spent every waking hour imagining the man of her dreams, it rattled her.
‘I’ll see you soon, then,’ Lucy said, patting his hand as she went to move away.
His fingers caught hers again.
‘What? No goodbye kiss? What if I die while you’re gone and you regret not kissing me for the rest of your life?’
Lucy swatted him away, pleased that he was in such good humour today. After what he’d been through, he was so lucky simply to be alive.
‘No kisses. Not with a photo of your sweetheart in your pocket.’
She patted his hand, letting her fingers linger for a moment too long and then quickly withdrawing them. This man had a sweetheart. He was flirting with her and she needed to remember that he was taken. She’d never had her heart broken before, and she wasn’t about to let it happen now. Lucy sighed. Maybe she needed to talk to the girls about him. They probably knew a lot more than her about this type of thing.
She knew Scarlet would be waiting for her, so she kept walking, not looking back, trying not to think about why the man she was leaving for the day already meant so much to her. She’d assisted in his surgery, bathed him, fed him, watched over him. But then she’d done that with countless soldiers since she’d arrived – cared for them and whispered kind words as she tried to ease their suffering, doing whatever she could. Handsome men, crippled men, crying men, smiling men. But this man . . . maybe it was something to do with rescuing him. It had to be. Because she wasn’t the kind of girl to get all hot under the collar about a man she’d just met.
‘Ready to go?’ Scarlet called out from up ahead, emerging from the toilets.
Lucy groaned, realising that she too needed to relieve herself before they headed off.
‘Give me a couple minutes. Is Ellie coming?’
Scarlet smiled. ‘I’m about to haul her out of bed. I’m so pleased we covered shifts for her because she’s slowly coming out of it. I think.’
Lucy smiled back and kept walking along the plank. Getting ready was a matter of rolling out of bed and not much more here. There was precious little time to spend on ablutions before work began for the day or night, other than to brush one’s hair and ensure it was neat. They had a bucket of water a day for all purposes, which usually meant there was only a small tin to spare for the quick washes they had in their overcrowded tent. But then, she’d gone weeks without hot water now, so she was starting to get used to it.
She held her breath as she gritted her teeth and pulled the screen door, entering the toilet area.
Going without water was one thing, but this . . . A bite-sized lump of vomit rose in her throat and she stoically swallowed it down.
This was the depths of hell, the bowels of disgustingness.
This was what she’d never, ever get used to.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ellie
The wind was cool against her cheeks as she walked, and Ellie was the closest to happy that she’d been in a long while. She was away from the hospital, from the smell of blood and dead soldiers that usually haunted every moment of her every day. She’d woken to Scarlet shaking her gently and passing her a cup of their awful Compo tea, and it had been the first time she’d swallowed it down without wanting to moan. Maybe she was getting used to it. Rumour had it that they’d be able to pay for a hot bath and a real coffee in town, and she’d been looking forward to it for days. Anything would be better than tea made from dehydrated tea, milk and sugar that all came in one big cube and was brewed in a bucket. It made her stomach churn even thinking about the bucket being passed around the entire tent.
Some of the other nurses had already been into town for a bath and extra food, and now that they were actually getting some time off, she couldn’t wait to do the same. She thought of Spencer then, how desperate he must be for a hot bath, too. The poor man had been working as hard as they, doing surgery after surgery, a constant rotation of amputations and patching men up as best he could. But even though his face was so pale and drawn, his body exhausted, he’d always managed to give her a smile, a brush of his lips to her cheek, a quick squeeze of her shoulder if she passed him. They’d hardly seen one another, but when they had, he’d made it clear that he was there for her. He was special, her Spencer, and the more she observed his manner, how he treated every single patient with such respect and dignity, the more she loved him.
‘So do you know his name yet?’ Scarlet asked Lucy.
‘Nope. I know nothing more about him now than I did the day I met him.’
Ellie tuned into the conversation, abandoning her thoughts of Spencer to give them her attention. They’d both looked after her, been so kind and caring, and she wanted to enjoy her few hours off with them.
‘Why hasn’t he been sent away already?’ Ellie asked.
She watched as Lucy shrugged. ‘Something to do with the Yanks coming to check over any of their men we might have. There’s another American soldier in the ward, too.’