Page 64 of These Immortal Truths
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
He watched her go into the fire and emerge from the ashes unscathed. She cannot die. Cannot bleed. Yet he feels the sudden greedy pull of Death, feels the blood sliding down her neck. It is only seeing her alive through the haze of dust and debris—the dead and the dying—that tames the terror seizing his heart.
ÉTAPLES, FRANCE
1918
Anna has lived through more wars than she can count. Some she’s seen, others she’s only heard of.
This one feels different.
There are so many players, so many countries involved that it has become less a war of nations and more a war of the world. More nations, more soldiers, more injured.
Anna’s living in England when the posters start lining thestreet. Three women dressed in crisp uniforms standing in front of a vivid red cross. The words ‘V.A.D.’ and ‘Urgently Needed’ is printed along the bottom.
She signs up that day. They ship her out that week.
The first thing that strikes her when she pulls up to the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade Hospital is how large it is. The second, upon entering through the doors, is howwell equippedthey are. The facility is clean, boasting the latest medical equipment that money can buy: an x-ray room and operating theatre, separate wards labeled from A to R with covered walkways between. There’s even a garden for recovering patients to enjoy.
It’s impressive … until it isn’t.
Three days is all it takes to forget about how well-equipped they are. The knowledge gets buried beneath the echoed sound of gunfire that never seems to sleep, beneath patching up the stretcher-bearers who’ve been hit trying to pull the wounded out of No Man’s Land. Ambulances, clearly marked with a bright Red Cross, return with stories about bombs being hurled in their direction. Nurses and Medical Officers working at the Casualty Clearing Stations come in by Ambulance Train. There is ongoing debate on whether they’re being targeted or if the accuracy of the shells being lobbed across the battlefield and the men firing them simply don’t care where it lands so long as it’s on the enemy side.
It feels tame compared to some of the injuries the soldiers at the front line are brought in with. For all her experience with injury and war, she doesn’t expect things to be as bad as they are.
The injuries she sees are different—more horrific—than the ones she treated in France and America. The patients that come to the hospital are the same ones that would have died on the battlefield only a few centuries ago. Medicine has advanced, progressing forward leaps and bounds with every bit of knowledge the world discovers.
It would be made all the more wonderful, if only the weapons of war hadn’t evolved too.
The St. John Ambulance Brigade and Hospital started with five-hundred and twenty-five beds. Now, nearly three years later andafter several expansions, capacity has been stretched to seven-hundred-forty-four.
They need every single one.
Their waking hours are always busy—cleaning bedpans, cooking, scrubbing floors, washing linens. Their nights are haunted by nightmares of blood and screams, of ravaged faces and blistered lungs. They hang, suspended between reality and dreams, a part of them always listening for the chug of engines, metal wheels on the tracks, and the long mournful whistle of a train full of bleeding bodies fighting for life.
It is a nightmare if Anna has ever lived one.
Anna starts her rounds, checking on wounds and trading dirty bandages for clean ones. Ever since the head nurse discovered she had enough medical experience to recognize the difference between healthy tissue and a wound just starting to turn, she’s been more involved in patient care than not.
Margaret comes into the ward, a stray piece of unruly blonde hair escaping her cap. “There you are. Are you available to help assist in surgery tonight? Dolly is still so terribly squeamish.” Her lips thin, annoyed. “After what happened with Patsy, I’m not sure any of us want to put that on her just yet.”
Anna smothers a laugh. Poor Patsy had bravely made it through her first surgery, but had promptly lost her lunch after. Unfortunately, she hadn’t quite made it to the bin. The other V.A.D.s hadn’t appreciated having the extra mess to clean. “Yes, of course. Let me just check on Mr. Willits’ amputation first.”
A sigh of relief, and Margaret is already turning to leave—no doubt to wrangle up more people for another five matters needing solving. “Bless you. If only all our volunteers could be as competent.”
She smiles thinly, uncomfortable. Most of the tension between the nurses and the volunteers has resolved—chipped away by time and an endless stream of broken bodies—but some lingering resentment remains. Majority of the volunteers are from well-off families. They come to St. James with hands that have never seen labor, romancedby the idea of helping their country’s soldiers without having any understanding of what war would look like.
Yet Anna is impressed, again and again, at how they grow; rising to challenges no one should be put up against and situations no one could have prepared them for. She knows, despite their occasional remarks, that the nursing staff has come to appreciate their efforts, too.
Anna starts down the long line of beds towards Mr. Willits at the end, steps quick, when the hospital goes dark.
Anna stills as the whispered murmurs erupt from the beds around her. She ignores them, breathes numbers under her breath.
“One.”
The sound of aircraft engines, growing closer.
“Two.”
