Page 30 of The Girls of Pearl Harbor
Eva was jolted from her thoughts as more yells echoed through the ward and the reality of what she was dealing with hit her full force. She pushed her father from her mind, refusing to think about what might happen if Charlie was gone.
Because without her Charlie, the Japanese may as well just kill her too.
CHAPTER SEVEN
APRIL
April might have always dreamed of being a doctor one day, but until today, she’d barely done more than change dressings and give injections and perform other basic treatments. Assisting Dr. Grey had been the closest she’d been to surgery, but within the past few hours, she’d done more procedures and seen more wounds than any amount of training or textbooks could have prepared her for.
Her latest patient had just been brought in, and she could see from the state of his leg, with flesh and bone protruding and his ankle at a peculiar angle, that he was going to have to be prepared for surgery. She glanced over at the corridor, the one leading to the emergency operating theaters they’d set up, and knew he’d be waiting hours before a surgeon could attend to him.
She touched his hand, hoping her warm pat was reassuring, as she read the smudgedMandTon his forehead. There was no more pain relief she could give him, but judging from the shaking of his body and the bluish tinge to his lips, he was either simply cold or entering into shock. Given his wounds, she was guessing shock.
‘I’m going to find you a blanket,’ she said, smiling down at him. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
She quickly went to the supplies cupboard where they were kept, but the shelves where they were usually neatly stacked were bare.
‘Any blankets?’ she called to a corpsman who rushed past her.
‘None left here,’ he said without stopping.
April glanced back at her patient and decided to run for blankets herself. She had the other patients under her care as stable as she could make them, and others were already lined up in their beds, waiting for surgery. She walked fast, not wanting to trip with so many people everywhere, and pushed through the doors leading past the nurses’ mess area and through another set of doors. There were patients there, too, all waiting, all groaning and crying to themselves as if they were trying so hard not to disturb others, but the pain was so intense they couldn’t even breathe without a noise coming from their bodies.
‘April, is that you?’
The male voice was deep and commanding, and she knew instinctively that it belonged to Dr. Grey before she saw him. She walked into the temporary operating room and found him working alone with a flashlight shining from a shelf where he’d positioned it.
‘I need you to help me move this patient,’ he said. ‘The nurse helping me never came back!’
‘Of course,’ she replied, hurrying to his side and looking down at the soldier. He was as white as a sheet, and from the flutter of his eyelids, she could see he was drifting in and out of consciousness.
‘Where should I stand?’ she asked, noticing how extensive his burns were. ‘Is it safe to move him?’
Dr. Grey gave her a sharp stare from the head of the bed, and she quickly looked down, wishing she hadn’t said anything.
‘Please prepare the paper.’
She reached for the oil and slathered it over the fresh paper, ready for the patient. It was what they’d been taught to do for any patient with severe burns, to stop them from sticking painfully to a sheet.
‘You take his feet; I’ll take his upper body,’ Dr. Grey said.
She nodded.
‘And thank you,’ Grey murmured. ‘It’s nice to have your assistance again.’
After everything that had happened, all the tragedy, the loss of life, she knew it was stupid to light up over a little comment, but she couldn’t help smiling as she reached for the man’s feet and counted with the doctor.
‘One, two, three!’
No!
April opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She stared at her hand, buckling forward as she dropped what was left of the patient to the paper, before realizing what she still had hold of.
She was holding his ankle in her hand. She was holding half a leg in her bare hand! The man’s leg had fallen away at the knee. The rest of the poor man was lying in front of her, and she was holding his burned, bloody leg!
‘I ... I ... ,’ she stuttered, dropping the leg and backing away.
‘You weren’t to know; it’s fine,’ Dr. Grey said. ‘I may have had to amputate anyway.’
