‘Because it was a good career choice, and because I like helping people. Simple as that.’
‘You’re a good man, you know that?’ She held him close. He was like her father, warm and caring, open and strong, and she liked that. She didn’t know what she’d done to make him like her so much, but she wasn’t going to waste time worrying about it any longer.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Scarlet
‘James!’
Scarlet ran so fast she skidded and almost landed on top of the stretcher being carried in.
‘James, what . . . ?’ she gasped when she saw his gaping wound, the blood oozing from not only his side but his leg as well.
She ran alongside him, assisted as he was transferred into a bed. Her head was thumping from working all night after the long day out with her friends, not to mention the nightmare she’d woken from the previous night, dripping in sweat and screaming his name.
‘What happened to you?’ she asked as she applied pressure to his side, a doctor coming over to check his leg.
Scarlet prayed that it wasn’t too bad, didn’t want to look for fear that it would be an amputation. She’d started to wonder if too many limbs were being cut off, if the doctors thought they had no other option, when if they’d been back home, if they’d been able to evacuate them fast enough, they might have been able to save arms and legs aplenty.
‘I got shot again,’ he gasped as she pushed harder at his side, concerned at how quickly the fabric was soaked a dark, violent red.
‘You went back to the front?’ she fumed.
The grimace he made told her she was right, and she was tempted to slap him hard across the face. Except she knew how much pain he was already in, and how stupid men could be when it meant getting back to their units and helping their men.
‘I believed you were going home, that you were going to be safe.’
‘Should have . . .’ he gasped, ‘followed orders. This bloody wound reopened as soon as I started running and shooting.’
She tried impossibly hard to suppress her anger with him. ‘You’ll be evacuated within the day now,’ she told him. ‘Don’t go having any more hare-brained ideas about getting back out there. Your fighting days are over, for now at least.’
‘Wanted to . . .’ he started, taking a deep breath, ‘find out more. Thomas.’
Scarlet nodded. ‘I see.’
He might have feelings for her, but Thomas was his brother. Of course he was desperate to find him, see if there were any way he could get him home. What they’d had between them was banished to memories, and she needed to remember that. Part of her was devastated that he hadn’t said anything about returning for her, but she knew that was silly. They’d sworn never to speak of what had happened again. It was as simple as that.
‘I have a plan, James. Trust me.’
She wasn’t lying. She’d had a plan for days now, had even gone as far as discussing it with Spencer, and she was certain it would work. If Thomas were where she thought he could be, then she’d find him. And if not him? Then at least she’d find someone else’s Thomas and help to bring him home. She trembled with fear at the very thought of finding Thomas now, scared of how her feelings had changed, but she couldn’t back down now, not now that she’d come so far.
‘Doctor!’ she cried, her breath catching in her throat as she watched James’s eyes flutter, as if he were slowly slipping away from her. ‘Help, please!’
Not James. Not her James.
‘Prepare this man for surgery. Nurse! Attend to him!’ the doctor barked at her as she stood, dead still, staring at James on the bed before her. His uniform was filthy, her hand was covered in his blood, the colour seeping across her skin and making it look like her own hands were bleeding.
‘Nurse!’
The second bark made Scarlet snap out of it. Thomas might be a long shot. But James? James was here. James she could do everything within her power to save.
Scarlet had been working all day. Her hands were sore and red, and she wasn’t sure if that was from overwork or because they were stained with the blood of the men she’d been tending to. She stared down; her hands started to shake, body slowly beginning to tremble as she looked around.
They’d had hundreds of men. Hundreds. The ambulances hadn’t stopped arriving, the blood hadn’t stopped spurting, and she still hadn’t eaten anything. And even though she knew that every soldier was someone’s loved one, that her focus should have been purely on the injured man lying in front of her, all she’d thought about was James. Not Thomas. Not the man she was promised to. James.
‘Where is he?’ she murmured to herself, not sure whether anyone else could hear them. The room spun around her, everything a blur, her stomach churning as she inhaled, trying to breathe when all she could manage were rapid gasps.
Where was he?
‘Nurse, out of the way!’
The shout from behind made her lurch forward, tripping. She was so hungry, so tired, so . . . She needed to find James.
‘Lucy!’ she called, seeing her friend standing over a patient. She recognised her blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun.
Scarlet rushed over to her, the blood starting to pump through her body again as she moved. He couldn’t be gone. She needed one more moment with him, one last stolen moment before he left and she had to pretend all over again not to have feelings for him.
‘You’re looking for him?’ Lucy called. ‘For James?’
Scarlet nodded, catching her breath. If she’d had the chance she would have stayed with him, cared for him and been there when he came out of surgery. Instead she’d been rushing around trying to do everything she could, and she didn’t even know if he was still here.
‘I saw him being taken out of surgery. I made sure to ask after him the moment I had the chance and I went to see him with my own eyes. They haven’t evacuated anyone since then.’
Scarlet nodded, relief washing through her, and touched Lucy’s arm, looking down at the man she was standing with. ‘You doing all right?’ she asked, talking to Lucy as her friend hovered over the American soldier.
Lucy let out a long, shuddering, deep sigh. ‘Given the circumstances? I guess you could say that. Although I’m sick of doctors acting like we’re no more important than orderlies when we have to work like dogs and assist them at every turn.’
Scarlet kept her hand on Lucy’s arm for a heartbeat longer, but she saw the way the soldier was looking at her friend, and she wanted to leave them alone. ‘It can’t keep going on like this. We have to keep telling ourselves that.’ She didn’t go on, didn’t tell her that sometimes she worried that it wouldn’t stop, that they were stuck in France for the rest of their lives until they, too, were blown up by a bomb or shot down by the enemy.