Page 89 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Ava rolled down her sleeves, pinning the cuffs neatly back in place. “I’ll cry into my pillow.”

“Ava! I’m serious. I don’t want to abandon you—not if you need me.” Why did everything have to be so hard? Betsy wished, just once, she could know what was really right, that she could make a decision without feeling like she was failing someone no matter what.

“They need you more.” Ava looked directly at Betsy, her expression serious. “Go. I walked out on you in Athens. Now it’s your turn.”

“To walk out on you?”

Ava made an exasperated noise, somewhere between a grunt and a snort. “No! I should never have said it that way. It’s your turn to do what you need to do. Don’t worry about me. You told me yourself. This is what I was born to do. Lawrence is teaching me how to sew up perforated intestines.”

Betsy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You’ll invite me to the wedding?”

“Worse. I’m going to make you be maid of honor.” Ava grinned crookedly at her. “You’ll have to wear orange flowers and simper at the groomsmen.”

Betsy’s lips wobbled. “You really are getting your revenge.”

Ava gave a sharp bark of a laugh. “You don’t know the half of it. The place will be swarming with Princeton men. Do you think you can stand it?”

“I will for you.” Impulsively, Betsy wrapped her arms around Ava and hugged her, hard. After a moment, she could feel Ava hug her back.

Betsy scrunched her eyes closed, trying to just take this moment and hold it, something to remember, whatever happened next.

Gently, Ava untangled herself, holding Betsy out at arm’s length. Her eyebrows were, for once, entirely still. “Betsy? Those patients on the ship—they’re lucky to have you.”

Betsy wasn’t so sure about that. But she was what they had and she meant to do her best for them.

On an impulse, she raided the hospital stores, loading up a bag with quinine tablets, antiseptic preparations, Armour’s beef extract, malted milk, oatmeal, bandages, and an extra thermometer, just in case. The hospital wouldn’t miss any of it. The State of Texas had brought back supplies from Tampa. It was probably coals to Newcastle—she hoped it was coals to Newcastle—but better to have too much than too little, and her experience with the army hospital had taught her that men seldom thought to pack food fit for invalids.

As Betsy bustled out with her sack, feeling like an unlikely Father Christmas, the men were already being rowed out to the boat.

To the wrong boat.

Betsy could see the Relief, bobbing at anchor, but that wasn’t where her men were being taken. The ship was long and low with one big smokestack in the middle with a large number 5 painted on it. It hardly looked seaworthy, much less wounded-worthy.

Betsy grabbed one of the orderlies. “That’s not the Relief. There’s been some mistake. We were meant to be boarding the Relief.”

The orderly backed away from her toward the next row of stretchers. “No, ma’am. The Relief is to stay here. Orders.”

Whose orders? What orders?

“I was told we were going on the Relief,” Betsy said stubbornly. “Who’s in charge here? I need to speak to whoever is in charge.”

A man came puffing up to her. He was holding a medical bag in one hand. It clanked reassuringly as he lifted a hand to his hat in greeting. Another man, smaller and slighter, followed close behind him. “Nurse? I’m Dr. Hicks, and this is Dr. Baird.”

“Nurse Hayes.” Betsy held out a hand, delighted to have someone with some authority to be able to defer the problem. “We’re being put on the wrong ship.”

“Er, um . . .” said Dr. Baird, looking to his colleague.

“It’s only a three-day sail to New York,” said Dr. Hicks, the more outspoken of the two. Betsy caught a distinct whiff of whiskey. “This transport should do us just fine. It’s no Relief, of course. But nothing to worry about.”

Nothing to worry about? Betsy would show them worry. “It’s been provisioned, I assume?” she demanded.

“Betsy . . .” Behind her, she saw Kit, struggling on her stretcher. “Where are they taking me? Betsy! What’s happening?”

Betsy hurried over to her. “You have a little fever,” she lied. “We’re being evacuated with some of the men.”

The boats were waiting to row them out, so tiny against the vast ocean beyond. And there, in the distance, hulked the Seneca, looking more like a tin coffin than a hospital ship. Not a coffin. Betsy wasn’t going to think of coffins. It was only a three-day sail and they had two doctors on board. And beef tea in her sack.

“Betsy . . .” Kit was coughing again, coughing and shaking, as the orderlies carried her down toward a boat. “I hurt.”