Page 1 of Sands of Sirocco
ChapterOne
Kantara, Egypt
November, 1917
Men never seemed to tire of finding the most idiotic ways to kill themselves.Even if by accident.
Ginger Whitman stepped back from the operating table, taking a pause from the gruesome work in front of her.The accidents, like this one, stood out amongst the deliberate bloodshed.Given the time she’d spent at operating tables, she may as well be a surgeon.As it was, she wasn’t even assigned as a nurse for this train.
She wiped her hands on her apron, leaving streaks of blood.The patient on the table wasn’t dead yet but would be soon if she didn’t work quickly.He moaned, though his cries had lowered to a rolling boil of pain since she’d given him morphine.However, any slight shift or touch was likely to cause an eruption of screams again … and being on a train that jostled easily didn’t help.
The operating theater of the train was dimly lit.Windows on either side of the carriage reflected the fading light of the surrounding desert beyond the walls of the train.They’d stopped in the middle of the wilderness unexpectedly.The stillness also ushered in the stifling heat.
Whatever the reason for their stop, the poor soul in front of her had suffered for it.And the men who had stopped the train on a slope had been the idiots—not him.The manner of his injury had been horrific.He was a brakeman for the railway and had been on top of a train car before they’d completely come to a stop.His leg had slipped between two train cars, then got crushed when the cars had slammed together.
The bleeding tangle of bone and flesh below the knee no longer resembled a leg.Neither would it ever again function as one.If he survived.Poor man.
The soldiers she’d spoken with often feared this type of injury most of all.
She turned to the waiting stare of the nurse who oversaw patients on the train.Sister … Ginger blinked.What’s her name again?
The last few weeks had been such a blur of people.And when the nurse had come through the carriage reserved for the Queen Alexandra’s nurses, Ginger had been dozing.Weeks of fourteen-hour shifts at the front had caught up with her.They’d woken her since she was the most senior nurse.
“I think we’ll have to amputate.”Ginger kept her voice low.“The bleeding is too severe and the leg too mangled.”
“No!”the man cried.“No, please, not my leg!Sister, please … save my leg.”His eyes were dark and wild, his Australian accent like that of many other soldiers who served in this region.
The other nurse’s face paled.The operating theater was empty, most noticeably, of its surgeon.Even during the transports, a surgeon was normally present on the train.But in this case, they were nearing the end of the line and the surgeon had disembarked at the last stop, at Romani.“It can’t wait until we reach Kantara?”the nurse asked.
More than anything, Ginger wished it could wait.Amputations weren’t usually in her purview.But she’d assisted in more than she could count.And if I do it wrong?
The man would end up suffering for it.The haste of field hospital amputations often resulted in several more surgeries to the same limb, trying to correct the lingering issues, including pain.
And there wouldn’t be the benefit of chloroform and ether.Bloody Royal Army Medical Corps.She’d trained as an anesthetist for a few months earlier in the summer.Then they’d forbidden it for English nurses.Because women shouldn’t do such things.
Bristling with irritation, Ginger shook her head.“The train cars crushed his leg—it could lead to contracture and worse and his bleeding is too severe.”Her eyes went to the window on the opposite wall of the train car.The horizon of the desert landscape was darkening, the fading light of the sun streaking the sky with blazing ochre and maroon.Skylights on the roof of the car added more light, but that wouldn’t help now.Once the sunlight was gone, they’d have to work by candlelight.
“Do you have any idea why we stopped here in the first place?Or when the train will start moving again?”Ginger asked.Unscheduled stops were rare, but perhaps the engineer had seen something on the tracks up ahead.
“None.”
“All right.”Ginger squeezed her eyes shut, trying to shake the fog of sleep lingering in her mind.If there was no one else and no time to waste, she didn’t have any options.She settled her shoulders back.
She could do this.He would die if she didn’t.
She cocked her head, indicating the nurse should follow her to the far side of the carriage, out of earshot.Their footsteps echoed across the wooden floor.“Can you get the guillotine?We’ll need an orderly to hold him down.”
The nurse’s eyes widened.“Are you going to perform the surgery?”
“Yes.We have to hurry.”It would be laborious if she wanted to leave the man as good of a stump as possible.Multiple surgeries on a stump were horrific—months, sometimes years of suffering.Some men would wake in the night screaming with the pain they felt in the limbs they no longer had.
How many times had she been at their sides during those times, helpless to relieve their agony?
As the nurse left, Ginger rushed across the room, looking for the anesthetic.Her pulse ticked faster.
RAMC be damned.
She wasn’t about to torture the man.Her hands trembled as she lifted the mask for the anesthetic.
