“Stop it,” I cut in. “In the absence of Matron, Nurse Shouldice and I are in charge.” I glanced at Nina, who was dead on her feet; I wasn’t even certain she was listening. “If we don’t move soon, the bridge will be impassable. Start loading as many patients as you can. Make sure you take the three nurses—they’re just under the windows, over there. Nurse Shouldice will accompany you to help with their care. I’ll stay here with the remainder.”
He nodded at me and motioned to the other two men, who threw down their smokes and came out of the rain. Soon there were stretchers passing quietly out, some of the feverish patients moaning or crying. I found myself looking at every face, etching it into memory in case I never saw it again. I tried very hard not to care.
I turned back to Jack and Mabry, unable to watch anymore. “You should go with them,” I said. “They’d likely let you ride in the front seats with the drivers. It’s possible you could be of help.”
“And leave you here alone?” Jack looked at Mabry. “What are the odds of our doing that, do you think, Captain?”
“Very long,” Mabry replied coolly. “Very long indeed.”
“I’m not going, either.”
I turned. I’d almost forgotten about Nina, so quiet had she been. “Nina, you should evacuate.”
“Those patients are going to a hospital,” she said. “These ones aren’t. They’ll need nursing.”
“I can take care of it.”
“Kitty.” She glanced at Jack and Mabry, then back at me, resigned. “You’re not a nurse.”
It felt like a slap. In the chaos since I’d found Martha lying on the floor of the corridor over a day earlier, I’d honestly forgotten. “Fluids, beef tea, rest,” I said. “I can do all that.”
“And what if one of them gets an infection?” Nina shot back. “What if one of them gets fluid in his lungs? Or sleepwalks and hurts himself? What if Mr. West has one of his fits, or Mr. Childress? What will you do then?”
I bit my lip. “All right. But you’re half asleep, Nina. It’s your turn to go rest. I insist on it.”
She pushed up her glasses. “You won’t get any argument from me,” she said in her old sullen way, and she stomped away to find a blanket.
Captain Mabry was looking through his spectacles and down his patrician nose at me. “What?” I said to him. “You’ve never seen a girl impersonate a nurse before?”
“It’s a bit of a long story,” Jack offered.
“Intriguing,” said the captain. “It has something to do with that unpleasant chap we ejected the other day, I assume?”
“Something like that,” I replied.
“I see.” He paused. “Your treatment of nosebleeds was very well- done, Nurse Weekes.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry I had to pull rank back there, but he wasn’t going to listen to you, and I had to move things along. Now, we need to get Paulus up-to-date on what’s going on.”
“If we can find him,” Jack said.
“What?”
“I’ve been looking for him for over an hour. Roger’s gone, too.”
Paulus had never warmed to me, but I was unsettled at the thought of doing without his huge bulk. “He can’t have gone far,” I said. “Let’s help get these ambulances off, and let’s keep looking.”
? ? ?
Paulus turned up half an hour later with Roger in tow. The two of them came into the hall as the ambulances pulled away, looking sweaty and a little harried. Paulus had drops of rain spattered over his whites. “Where are they going?” he said. “What’s going on?”
I turned to him, worry making my voice sharp. “Where the hell have you been?”
“I had work to do,” he retorted.
“Well, you have more work to do now. They couldn’t fit us all, so they’ve gone with as many as they can take, and they’re coming back after the rain has stopped and the bridge has cleared.”
“That’s just bloody great.” Paulus flushed. “We’re all right fucked—that’s what we are.”
“Speak for yourself,” I said. “I want a meeting of everyone left who is able-bodied, except for Nurse Shouldice, who must rest. Round up everyone and go to the dining room. Now.”
The meeting was a depressing one. I put a lantern down on one of the long tables and looked around. I was the only nurse; Roger and Paulus were the only orderlies. Jack and Captain Mabry pulled up chairs, and West wheeled in his chair. The disease had passed him over so far.
I exchanged a look with Jack. He appeared tired, but not much the worse for wear. He’d been through harder things than this, of course. I wondered whether he’d read Maisey’s papers or the reports from Matron, but I could see no sign of it on his face.
For the first time I missed Matron. Her rules had seemed stupid, but now I knew that she would have kept an itemized ledger noting every staff and patient in the hospital and their current whereabouts. I had to run everything through my tired, jumbled head. “Where are the kitchen staff?” I asked.
“Gone back to the village hours ago,” said Paulus. “The gardener, too. The whole building was being evacuated and I thought we wouldn’t need them, so I sent them off.”
“Nathan doesn’t live in the village,” I said.
“Bammy does. He said his mum would take Nathan in. Nathan wanted to go, so I let them.”
“Paulus, we have a deadly virus here. And you’ve just sent two people to carry it back to Bascombe.”
Both orderlies looked incredulous. “Are you saying we should have sent them on those ambulances to Newcastle on Tyne, even though Bammy lives just across the way?” said Roger.
“Yes.” I rubbed my temples. Actually, I didn’t know. Would the ambulances have taken people still healthy along with the sick? Matron would have known. “They could at least have stayed long enough to be evaluated by the nursing staff.” Of which I am not one.
“We didn’t have time for that,” said Paulus. “Besides, if you want to be the one to get Nathan into one of those ambulances, you can try. I certainly won’t.”
“Nurse Weekes is right,” Jack said. “I didn’t know you were scared of Nathan the cook, Vries.”
Paulus turned to him. “It isn’t my job to wrestle people like him,” he said, his accent sounding exotic in our half-dark dining room. “It’s my job to wrestle people like you.”
“What’s done is done,” Captain Mabry said in his best aristocratic voice. “We can’t get them back now, even if they would come.” He looked at me. “We have more pressing problems.”
“What do you mean?”
“Do the arithmetic,” Jack said. “Count the patients.”
I did, shuffling them through my brain. And suddenly I saw it. “Archie Childress,” I said. “He wasn’t evacuated, and he isn’t on the floor in the hall. Where is he?”
“Creeton, too,” said Jack. “He didn’t need to be carried downstairs, but I told him to come. I didn’t want him alone, and I wanted him where we could all keep an eye on him. He said he would come, but he never appeared.”
“Oh, my God.” I looked around the table. I didn’t think that anything could be worse than this. “We’re missing two patients.”
Paulus raised one of his huge hands. “As to that, we can shed a little light. On one of them, at least.”
We all turned to him. His gaze dropped for a second, and I thought I saw uncertainty cross his face. Then he looked back up and spoke. “We found Creeton and Childress in the common room. Creeton was having a go at Childress—you know, teasing him. The stutter and the shaking. He’s always liked to take the piss out of Childress, but this time he seemed angry. He hasn’t been the same since—well, you know. He was taking it out on Childress rather hard. Said Childress’s weakness was what had brought it.”
“Him,” Roger corrected. “He said Childress’s weakness was what had brought him.”
Paulus frowned. “I don’t think so. What the hell does that mean? Brought who?”
There was silence around the table. Jack and I exchanged a glance. I didn’t think Archie had somehow brought the ghost of Mikael Gersbach or his father to Portis House. But if Creeton was not in his right mind . . .