Page 10 of The Secrets We Left Behind
Elise nodded. “Perhaps.”
But as they walked down the stairs, hand in hand, ten minutes later, the repetitive thud of machine guns made her legs buckle beneath her. She landed on the stair with a thud, narrowly missing the dog, and dropped her head between her knees, hands over her ears.
Every single one of those men was now dead. She just knew it. And she had no idea how she was going to protect her sister from an enemy who knew no bounds.
CHAPTER FOUR
CATE
Cate had never seen anything like it. It was horrendous. One minute she’d been terrified for her own fate, the next they’d been inundated with men crying out for help, and she’d barely spent another second worrying about what was going to happen to her. Time was a luxury they didn’t have. It was a race to save lives, patch up wounds, administer morphine and assist the remaining doctors. Even with their usual staff, it would have been a tall order to deal with so many casualties; there were men being rushed in by the dozen.
Her fringe clung limply to her forehead, her skin clammy as she ran between beds, trying her best to drown out the sound of men dying, wishing she could cover her ears. She whispered to the soldier lying on the bed in front of her, his head bandaged and a tourniquet around his leg, waiting for a surgery that would most likely never eventuate. She silently shuddered at the thought of the rot setting into his limb if he didn’t get the operation he needed, which was probably an amputation.
“This will help with the pain,” she said, forcing her smile, knowing that he needed to see her appear outwardly calm. It alwayssurprised her, the change in some men who were gravely injured, close to death even, when they had a nurse touch them and take care of them. She supposed it reminded them of someone from home; a wife or even their mother or sister perhaps, and as she gave him morphine and then wrote a hasty M on his forehead bandage in red, she touched his hand and gave it a quick squeeze. The light in his eyes at her touch made it worth the effort, and she thought of the men regaining consciousness who were being told they’d had the surgery they needed, simply to placate them and put an end to their hysteria. They were being lied to just to keep them calm.
She turned to the next patient, her smile still fixed, but froze in place as she saw the distant, glassy look in his eyes. Cate shuffled forward and pressed two fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse, even though she knew she wouldn’t find one. She’d been nursing long enough to recognize those eyes, as if she were looking at a house with no lights on inside. He was long gone.
Cate gently brushed her fingers over his eyelids, closing them before saying a quick, silent prayer. She’d lost a lot of men over the past year, and it never got any easier. She cast a glance around her, at the room that had once seemed so elegant, the first reminder she’d truly had since stepping foot in France of what life had been like before the war. This was now a place of hell, the old-world elegance gone, replaced with splattered blood and bandages, with cries and profanities as men fought to live and doctors fought to save them. One man had been strung up by straps, suspended above his mattress, his skin so badly burned that if he touched anything it would adhere to him. Cate knew she’d never, ever forget his howls of pain as they’d stripped his clothes off before realizing the extent of his burns, before plying him with morphine as orderlies worked fast to do something,anything, to avoid placing him on a bed.
“Help!”
The call wouldn’t have surprised her usually, not when so many men called out to her so frequently in the hospital, but the fact that it was a woman’s voice made her turn. Cate scanned the room, finding her balance again, looking for where it had come from. There were no other nurses left behind, which meant that as far as she knew, she was the only woman.
And then she saw her. The woman was a similar age to her, maybe early twenties, and her eyes were so wide as she stood in the open doorway they reminded her of saucers. She was clutching something, a case of some description, but it was the desperate look on her face that caught Cate’s attention the most.
She ran over to her, reaching out. “Are you injured? Where have you come from?” She searched her face. “I’ll help you, just tell me what you need.” Cate glanced past her and saw that the rain had started to fall with more urgency now, the front door wide open at the end of the hall.
“I’m Ruth. I, I ...”
Cate reached for her arm and grasped her, holding her firm. “You’re safe here, Ruth. I’m a nurse and if you’re injured I can help you.” She looked over her, not seeing any injuries other than scratches on what skin she could see.
“No, we’re not safe,” Ruth said, leaning in closer, so close that Cate could feel her warm breath against her cheek. She instinctively went to take a step back, but stopped when the other woman started speaking again.
“The Nazis are coming. They’re right behind me,” she cried. “I came here because I thought there might be soldiers, I thought maybe they were protecting the hospital when I saw the red cross on the ground outside, but ...”
As Ruth’s voice trailed off, Cate turned slowly and looked back at the injured soldiers, all thinking they had a chance at survivalnow they were in a hospital. But she could see now that they were little more than a target.
“Surely they’re not so close yet,” Cate said, focusing her attention back on Ruth. “We were assured they were some way off, at least a day or more. You’ve seen them with your own eyes?”
Ruth nodded, backing away slightly, like a cornered animal. “I’m with the ATS, I’m a telephone operator,” she said. “We were amongst the last to be evacuated, and when the order came it was too late. We all had to make our way as best we could to the beach, but there’s no way they’re going to get us all out of here in time. It’s impossible.” She shook her head. “The Germans are only a mile or so away, maybe less.”
Cate touched her hand to her chest, feeling her heart as it hammered away. She took a slow, deep breath, knowing she should be attending her patients instead of talking to this woman. But she managed to block out the shallow groans and cries of the troops behind her for another moment.
“What are you saying?” she asked. “That we don’t have any time left?”
“I’m saying you need to go, and you need to go now,” Ruth said. “It’s every man, and woman, for themselves.”
Cate stood and watched as Ruth backed further away down the hall, not able to take her eyes off her.
“Run!” Ruth yelled, as gunfire echoed outside, so close that Cate half-expected to smell the gunpowder in the air. “You need to go now!”
Panic threatened to paralyze her, but it was a sudden surge of fear that made her lurch forward as shouts and more gunfire became audible from outside. Ruth had been right: they weren’t just coming—she was guessing they were already well and truly here.
Cate ran to the door, bustling past orderlies who were making their way in with more patients. Only it wasn’t the enemy whocaught her eye, but Lilly. She would have recognized her blonde halo of hair anywhere.
“Lilly!” Cate screamed. “What are you doing here?”
Lilly looked around. Cate could see that her face was blurred with dirt, and as Lilly gestured with her hands, wildly, she saw they were stained with blood. She only hoped it was someone else’s blood, not hers.
