Page 19

Here was an abandoned office, a cubbyhole of an office, crammed with papers, maps and notices tacked to the walls. Kate was fairly sure it was a dreadful place to put a body. She was equally sure that if she tried to move Miss Cooper any farther, Miss Cooper wasn’t going to be the only one in the infirmary.

“Yes,” she said, resisting the urge to drop her side of the burden. “Together now.”

Together they lowered Miss Cooper to the ground, her head and shoulders propped on Emmie’s lap. She was breathing shallowly, her skin clammy with sweat. Emmie removed Miss Cooper’s hat pin and smoothed the hair back from her brow.

Kate felt her wrist. “She has a pulse, at least.” What that pulse was, or what it was supposed to be, Kate had no idea.

Emmie looked up at Kate, her face distressed. “I knew I ought to have taken a nursing course.”

“This place is teeming with nurses,” said Kate roughly, because she felt just as useless. This did not bode well for their utility out in the ravaged French countryside. “She doesn’t need a nurse, just a vial of smelling salts. Or a splash of cold water.”

“Kate! It was awful, admit it. That last cast . . .”

Awful, yes. But also incredible, that the doctors could play with flesh like clay, could mold it back into shape. Or almost back into shape. Kate thought of her father, dead from a blow to the head from a horse’s hoof. He hadn’t died immediately. What might these doctors have done? Would they have reached into his very brain and brought him back?

“It’s incredible what they do. Awe inspiring, even.” Standing, Kate brushed her hands on her skirt. They were in a hospital, for goodness’ sake. “Someone here must have smelling salts.”

Emmie was squinting worriedly at Miss Cooper. “Do you think this is why Mrs. Rutherford wanted us here? To test us?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” It was impossible to tell with Mrs. Rutherford how much was method and how much madness. If it was a test, Kate didn’t like to think what it signified that they were already one down.

“But we’re not going to work with wounded. Not these sort of wounded.” Kate wished Emmie wouldn’t look at her like that, as though she had the answers. None of them had any idea what the Germans had done to the villagers whose homes they had occupied. “It’s meant to be social work. Visiting children and bringing them milk.”

“Don’t forget the chickens,” said Kate.

Emmie smiled despite herself. “I’ve been doing my best to forget the chickens. I only volunteered to keep the peace. Although I imagine chickens could be rather sweet.”

“Or rather smelly. Ouch!” Kate pulled back, rubbing her shoulder as a door banged open into her back.

“Dr. Blake? I need—” said a very clipped, very British voice. The man who went along with the voice stopped himself just short of tripping over Margaret’s feet, which, admittedly, were stretched across most of the available floor space. “You’re not Dr. Blake.”

“Dr. Blake is busy,” said Kate, her arm smarting. “Come back later.”

“You don’t work here,” said the man. He was tall and thin, with dark hair clipped close to his head and a narrow mustache above his lips. He looked down his nose at them in a way that made Kate feel even shorter than her five foot one. “Do you?”

“We were touring the hospital and one of our friends was taken ill,” said Emmie, automatically apologizing, as Emmie always did. “We know we probably shouldn’t be in here, but we thought we ought to be out of the way. . . .”

“She saw the wounded and keeled over, did she?” said the man, who had, thought Kate, no business at all being so disagreeable.

She was about to tell him so, when Emmie lifted her chin and said, with great dignity, “Her breakfast disagreed with her. It’s the sort of thing that could happen to anyone, really. It’s the war bread, you see.”

“You haven’t any smelling salts, have you?” Kate asked before they could digress into the culinary.

The Englishman pulled on his gloves with sharp, jerky movements. “I didn’t come equipped for swooning maidens. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“Swooning maidens?” Emmie gave a gurgle of a laugh. “You make us sound like something out of a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. You know, the bit where the pirate king starts shouting about maidens and they all run about—well, anyway. But we’re not like that. We’re . . . les Collégiennes Américaines!”

The Englishman stared at Emmie, and then said, “Three Little Maids from School, then.”

“Seventeen, actually,” said Emmie. “We’ll be eighteen when our agriculturalist arrives. We’re a relief unit sent by Smith College.”

“Genius tutelary indeed. What are you meant to be relieving?”

“Eleven distressed villages in the area of Grécourt,” said Kate sharply. “Look, are you going to help or not?”

“Grécourt?”

“Yes. You can find it on that map over there. Are those our lines?” Emmie added, her attention caught by the American flags stuck to the map on the wall.