The thought of meeting her sent a shiver through Ellie that she found hard to ignore. Despite Spencer’s constant reassurances, she doubted she would be good enough for his mother, given that her son was such a dashing young doctor, so well-spoken and obviously from a very good family. An Irish farm lass was most likely not what Mrs Black had expected for her boy, no matter what he’d told her to the contrary. But maybe she was used to Spencer being different. He always seemed to care so little about who he was treating or talking to. He cared about people, no matter who they were, and that was one of the reasons she’d been drawn to him. He was the kind of man she’d dreamt of, the type of man she wanted to make a life with once all this was over.
But for now, she had to simply survive the boat ride. She’d been told they should have a safe passage, that the most dangerous part was getting to the ship and boarding, but she wasn’t so sure about how safe anything felt any more. If only her friends were with her to talk to, to pass the time and chat about what awaited them back home. Then again, she had to admit that she was grateful to be travelling home at all.
Ellie twirled the ring on her finger, smiled when she thought of the effort that Spencer must have gone to in order to have had it made at such short notice. It was simple, plain as plain could be, but it was hers and it reminded her every time she looked at it or felt its weight against her skin that she was married. To Spencer. She had only to hope that Spencer would make it home from France to meet his little baby.
Ellie stretched and then made her way from the quarters where she was staying with the other nurses, some on leave and others being transferred back to England, back to the hospital area. It didn’t seem to matter that she was pregnant; they were desperate for nurses on board and she was more than happy to do her bit. There was something less daunting about nursing in this way; perhaps she felt safer, or less connected to the immediacy of war. The daily terror of dying had drained so much of her confidence and happiness, but now, heading for home, she could feel more of her old self slowly coming back. Their job was to assist the wounded and care for them, tend to their wounds and make sure their journey was as comfortable as possible, and she liked not having the worry of patching them up only to have them sent back to the front.
‘Nurse, can you assist here please?’
She smiled to herself. Perhaps even the doctors were feeling more at ease on board, for it had been a long time since she’d heard anyone superior to her say the word ‘please’ in the same sentence as ‘nurse’.
‘What can I do for you?’ she asked.
Ellie looked down at the man on the bed closest to her and fought the urge not to retch. The poor soldier was covered in the most terrible burns. She wondered why he’d been earmarked for sea travel instead of an emergency air evacuation.
Taking a deep breath and smiling, not wanting to scare the poor young soldier further, she touched his hand, the one part of him poking out that was miraculously unscathed. ‘Would you like me to assist in the bandage changes?’
‘Yes. I’ll need his dressings changed regularly. Once you’re done here, I’d like you on my service to assist with some of the other burns victims, changing dressings first and then overseeing their meals.’
Ellie nodded, feeling nauseous. The baby and the moving of the ship had been bad enough, but preparing to change the dressings of a severely burnt soldier, knowing how terribly he’d start to scream once she started, was unbearable. Perhaps her job hadn’t got better after all.
‘This is going to hurt, I’m so sorry,’ she told him, still holding his hand.
The soldier nodded and she turned to gather what she needed from the nearby nurses’ station. When she turned back, she noticed tears slipping silently down the soldier’s cheeks, knowing what was coming, what pain he was about to endure. Ellie felt tears slide down her own cheeks, but she didn’t stop what she was doing, kept preparing, not wanting to delay the inevitable. She told herself that it was fine to cry with him; all it did was show how much she cared, that she was sharing his pain. There was nothing wrong with compassion.
She’d have preferred to be fork-mashing his dinner and murmuring stories to him to pass the time, but that could come later.
‘Here goes,’ she muttered, using her forceps to slowly, painstakingly, remove the first of his old bandages as he started to scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Scarlet
Scarlet knew she should be crying. She should be wailing or sobbing or something other than what she was doing right now. Which was standing very, very still, body shaking, as she stared at the man she’d been waiting so long to find.
Thomas. It was actually Thomas.
‘I never expected to hear your voice again.’ His voice was lower, quieter than she remembered. ‘Let alone see you here.’
Scarlet looked at Spencer. He was staring at her, not saying anything, and Scarlet knew she had to do something. Her body was so numb, her hands like lead at her sides as she tried but failed to lift them.
‘Thomas?’ she whispered. ‘Thomas, it’s truly you?’
He made a grunting noise and she forced her feet forward, dropping down in front of him and placing her head against his knees, arms around him. She wanted to be happy, she wanted to kiss him and squeal and be so, so happy to have found the fiancé that everybody else had presumed dead. She’d believed for so long, and now she was touching him, the man who by all accounts should be dead, and instead of being overjoyed, all she could think about was James. The brother she wished was in her arms right now. James, who was on his way back to London. James, who had whispered to her and kissed her and made her feel things she’d never in her lifetime forget.
‘I can’t believe I’ve found you,’ Scarlet said – the only honest words that she could say out loud.
‘Doctor, may I have a word?’ The nun spoke to Spencer, but it gave Scarlet an excuse to pull away, to look back at Spencer and hope that her presence would be requested, too. But it wasn’t. Spencer gave her a long look that she couldn’t read, then disappeared.
Scarlet slowly turned back to Thomas, rose enough to shuffle sideways and move into the chair beside him. She held out her hand to him and when he didn’t take it she reached for him, gently stroking his skin.
Thomas flinched. She saw it, but she didn’t stop. She’d been nursing soldiers long enough to know that they didn’t want people to act differently around them even though they felt so different within themselves.
‘Thomas, I was so sure I’d find you,’ Scarlet told him quietly. ‘From the moment I knew we were being posted to France, I had this feeling that I would find you myself. Everything I’ve done, I did to find you.’
He stared at her, a half-smile on his face. He was so deeply troubled, she could see that, but he was still the same man she’d promised to marry, who she’d fallen in love with before waving him off and swearing that she’d always wait for him.
‘When your letters stopped coming I feared you’d met someone else, that you’d fallen for a beautiful Frenchwoman, perhaps, but when your family told me it had been months since your last letter, and then being told you were missing . . .’ Scarlet’s voice cracked, all the strength that had been keeping her going, that had made her believe he was alive and to nurse through such tough conditions, seeping from her body.