Page 62 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“If you drain the abscess and clean it properly, there’s a chance. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a dozen casualties waiting for me in the surgery tent.”

He staggered off. Like the nurses, the surgeons hadn’t had much sleep. Or any.

Drain it. She could do that. She’d done that before. There had been a time, in her first posting in Greece, when she’d had to go running to the doctors for every little thing, but not anymore. There were only six tables in the operating tent and eight surgeons. The doctors were too busy with major casualties to deal with anything less pressing.

Clean the patient, wash her hands, sterilize the knife, prepare the fresh dressings. Sometimes Betsy felt like her hands were moving without volition from her brain. A Red Cross uniform without a body in it, going through the motions by rote.

At least the influx of wounded seemed to have stopped for a moment. It was dark again, her lantern the only light. The men wheezed and tossed in their beds. The air stank of carbolic, sickness, and the salt of the sea.

As she knelt beside him, Private Holt’s eyes slitted open. “You,” he rasped. “It’s you.”

Betsy wondered what he was seeing. Did he see a disheveled nurse in a dirty apron or someone else entirely, some Fate or Fury or face from his past?

He would have to wake up now, with no chloroform to be had.

“Nurse Hayes,” Betsy said matter-of-factly. “We’ve met. You have a nasty abscess in your leg and I need to drain it. I think you’d be better off going to sleep again. This is going to hurt.”

Chapter Sixteen

Dear Ava,

I’m writing from a little makeshift hospital in an old schoolhouse in a town you’ve never heard of.

It’s the night watch. I’ve found I rather like the night watch. It’s quiet and the men are mostly sleeping and there are no fresh casualties coming in.

I’m not much of a practical nurse, but I like to think I’m still doing my bit. My bandages may be lumpy, but I’m very good at arranging wards and jollying the men. They like to be scolded. It makes them feel safe.

If you’d been here, we could have made such a team.

Are you still upset with me? Please don’t be upset with me. You know I meant it all for the best. And I am doing my best for these men, whatever you might think.

Please write me back.

All my love,

Betsy

—Miss Betsy Hayes ’96 to Ava Saltonstall ’96

Athens, Greece

April 1897

Betsy tried to pretend it didn’t hurt.

She tried to pretend it didn’t hurt when Ava packed her bags and left, with the stiff-lipped thanks for her hostess that basic courtesy demanded. She tried to feel the elation she ought when the letter arrived from Queen Olga, commending her enthusiasm and inviting her to join the other nurses in their departure for the front.

And now here she was, standing in the hubbub of Omonia station, off to war! History was being made; the Greeks were rising against the barbarian as they had so long ago. The Persians had underestimated the Greeks, just as the tottering old Ottoman Empire was doing now. It was a noble war, Betsy told herself. A war of self-determination, all the Greek-speaking peoples throwing off the Ottoman yoke.

But Betsy couldn’t quite muster the right martial spirit. It was tainted. It wasn’t supposed to be like this; she and Ava were meant to be going together. If Ava hadn’t wanted to go, she ought to have just said so and not used Betsy as her excuse, Betsy told herself loftily, although deep down, deep in the squirmy part of her stomach, there was a bit of her that knew that hadn’t been it at all, that she had touched some hard, immovable part of Ava that truly believed Betsy was breaking an immutable ethical code.

Ava would forgive her. Wouldn’t she? She always had before.

She’d never looked like that before.

She’d never said things like that before.

Betsy shivered, even though it was warm on the train platform, warm with the press of bodies as nurses and soldiers and journalists and civilians surged toward the front.