Page 81 of The Girls of Pearl Harbor
‘Incoming!’ someone yelled, and the deep male voice jolted April into action. She dropped her coat onto her patient’s bed and ran beside Evans.
‘I need morphine, now!’ he yelled. ‘Get these men out of pain, and start assessing their wounds!’
She snatched the morphine vials as he assessed the first patient, and other doctors and nurses flocked around the others.
‘Start with morphine, and ask any lucid patients whether they’ve had tetanus shots,’ he said as he fought to stop the first soldier’s arm from losing so much blood. She watched as it pooled on the floor before he stemmed it with a tourniquet. ‘And let’s save lives today, April. We’ve already lost enough men and enough limbs to this goddamn war. It’s time we started figuring out how to save every body part and their lives along with them.’
April stole a quick glance at this new doctor, at the determination etched on his face as he ran beside the stretcher on its way to surgery. And just like that, a flicker of doubt punched through her. Had too many men lost limbs under Dr. Grey’s care? Had Grace been right to question that the other day? She shrugged the thought away and focused on the next patient. A few minutes earlier, she’d been filled with excitement about her almost kiss with Dr. Grey, but now all those doubts were creeping back from the day before, and she had no idea what she was supposed to make of it all.
Six hours later, April was exhausted. The time had passed by in a blur, and they’d saved more lives than they’d lost, but it still hurt knowing how many hadn’t made it. She looked around the ward and slowly made her way toward Patrick’s bed, hurrying the last few steps when she saw that he was far worse than he’d been that morning. His pallor was gray, and he had an obvious fever.
Grace came past then, quietly standing beside her.
‘He looks dreadful,’ Grace said.
‘I know. Something’s gone wrong, but I just don’t know what,’ she said with a sigh, dipping a cloth in cool water to cleanse his forehead. ‘Would you mind finding Dr. Evans for me?’
‘The new doctor?’ Grace asked. ‘I met him a couple of days ago. He’s full of as much energy and enthusiasm as all the other doctors combined. Is he the one the locals said had helped them?’
April nodded. ‘I wondered why his name sounded so familiar; you’re right.’
Grace hurried off, and Dr. Evans was by her side within a few minutes, but from the look on his face, she knew it wasn’t good.
‘We need to open him up, figure out what’s wrong. April, can you assist?’
‘Of course. Should I find Dr. Grey?’
‘Nurse!’ he said, beckoning to Grace. ‘Find Dr. Grey; tell him we’re opening up a patient of his and that I need to consult with him.’
Grace ran off again, and with the help of a corpsman they moved the patient and hurried him into surgery. Within half an hour, Dr. Evans was slicing through his skin, cutting past the stitches in the man’s abdomen she’d helped with only two days prior.
‘This is unusual,’ he said as he reached his hand out and April placed an instrument in his palm. ‘I can’t see any bleeding or ruptures’—he paused and bent lower—‘no cause for infection—’
She leaned closer as he went silent; then she gasped as he reached into the patient and pulled out a wad of fabric bandage and a metal clamp. He raised it and looked at her before depositing it into a metal bowl.
‘We’re losing him!’ April cried as blood poured out of him and his pulse vanished; she met the doctor’s horrified gaze.
He frantically started closing, and she held the soldier’s hand, shaking as she prayed that he’d make it.
‘What the hell is going on in here?’
Dr. Evans didn’t look up, but Dr. Grey marched in, a cloth lifted to cover his mouth as he fixed his stare on her.
‘We tried to alert you immediately, but there was no time. He had an infection and ...’ She shook her head, and Dr. Evans threw his instruments down with a sudden bang, ripping his mask off and looking like he was about to punch Grey.
‘You’re the doctor who did this?’ he said, seething.
Grey folded his arms across his chest, brows raised. ‘Did what? Saved that man’s life before you managed to kill him on the table?’
Dr. Evans pointed to the bowl on the table beside the patient as April watched, silent tears sliding down her cheeks as she let her hand rest on the patient, knowing he was gone but hating that his last moments were filled with such rage.
‘There’s only one doctor who killed that patient, and it’s you,’ Evans shouted. ‘I found a goddamninstrumentinside of him!’
Dr. Grey moved silently toward the dish before speaking again, his eyes flickering to hers, holding her gaze as if to silence her. ‘You want someone to blame, how about Little Miss Doctor over there?’ he said, gesturing at her as if she were nobody important. ‘This was all her.’
April’s jaw dropped.
‘You’re going to blame the nurse?’ Evans spluttered.
