A World Between Us

Felix felt taut with purpose, almost elated. The light was fading, but she knew they were prepared. Gleaming instruments were sorted in their trays. Swabs. Gauze. Plaster. Waste buckets. All ready. The orderlies had their instructions. A last-minute hunt for a missing case of morphine had been successful. John and Kitty paced the reception room, checking, rechecking, counting. Saline. Glucose. Calcium chloride. All there. At the gateway they stood with cigarettes, ears cocked to the rumbling across the hills that sounded for all the world like a late summer storm brewing. In the courtyard, stretchers were lined up against the wall, like waiting sentries.

The first ambulance arrived at sunset. Four men were dumped in the courtyard. Two were already dead. The ambulance men grabbed fresh stretchers and drove back to the front, six miles away.

When the first soldier was carried into theatre, a black cross and a ‘T’ scrawled on his forehead to mark his pre-meds, Felix met the man’s drifting eyes and took his calloused hand. A worker in the fields, she guessed. His bare arm was strong and sinewy and brown. ‘Salud, camarada,’ she whispered, hiding her shock at the state of him. You didn’t see wounds like this in Whitechapel. She held the mask over his face. Ethyl chloride. Medicamentos para los obreros de España.

‘Hold it there. That’s right.’ Mr Smilie – Doug, she must remember to call him Doug – Doug knew it was only the second anaesthetic she had ever given and he talked her through it, calming her. Felix was glad this patient was Spanish, and wouldn’t understand. She couldn’t tell how old he was – old enough to be a father, easily. His hair was very black, receding a little at his forehead.

The face behind the mask still had traces of mud on one side, where he had fallen. Only the wound area had been washed and shaved, prepped for surgery.

‘He’s off. So put him on the ether now. Watch the flow. That’s perfect. Keep his chin forward, remember, don’t let his tongue fall back. Ready. Dolores, you take over now. Can you manage? Keep it steady. Felix, scrub up, quick.’

She was already at the sink, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Though the water was freezing, the routine’s familiarity was reassuring. She needed reassurance. It was all she could do not to turn and run.

Mr Smilie kept talking. ‘Look. Do you see? All the tissue damage behind the entry wound? We’ve got bone fragments in the musculature. Pass me the other forceps, yes, those small ones.’

She had them in her hand. And her hand was steady. And she knew her face would not betray her horror.

Mr Fiedler was operating on an abdominal case at the next counter, with the help of their only trained anaesthetist and two practicantes from Madrid. Felix was dimly aware of the other team – they sometimes bumped into each other on their way to the sink – but she tried to concentrate on their own patient.

It seemed only moments before Kitty rushed in. ‘How much longer with this one? We’ve got an urgent chest case waiting. Category two.’

‘They’re arriving all the time now. We can’t keep up. Do you still need Dolores or can we have her out with us?’

Operation followed operation. They simply could not sterilise the instruments fast enough. One tense-jawed face replaced another on the counter. Most were beyond speech. Others looked up at Felix as though they had seen a vision.

It was nearly dawn before Felix first left the theatre. She became suddenly desperate for air, as though she would die herself without it. On a nod from Mr Smilie, she staggered towards the courtyard.

Leaning on the doorjamb, Felix began to tremble. She couldn’t go any further anyway: a body lay at her feet, blocking the way. She had nearly stumbled onto it. She bent to apologise, but as she put a hand on the man’s arm, she could feel that it was already beginning to stiffen. From a little further off she heard a quiet groan. There were bodies everywhere.

She had never heard such desperation in a voice, but she could not move. Here, over here . . . help me, it went on calling. Perhaps drowning was like this. Felix felt herself sinking and the world blackening. For a terrifying moment she no longer knew how to make her lungs draw breath. Then a figure picked its way through the stretchers. Kitty was by her side, dry-eyed, solid. With a hand on each shoulder, she forced Felix to raise her head.

With an enormous effort, Felix drew herself up. ‘I’m fine. Don’t worry. You won’t have to look after me too.’

‘Good girl. I’ll see you later. We may need your blood soon as well – are you Group IV, do you know? We’ve not nearly enough. It’s desperate, truly desperate.’

As Felix turned to go back to the bar, an orderly clapped her on the back, and forced a hunk of bread and tinned meat into her hand.

During the next two days Felix slept for less than an hour – she took a blanket to the dispensary and lay there, where she knew she’d quickly be roused. There was no point in taking up bed space. Dolores found her soon enough, brought her a coffee, briefly took her place on the floor. The room was filling up with emptied boxes. They needed more supplies.

Felix found herself crouching on the floor, against the counter, her head clutched in both hands. The building shook with an explosion, short, violent and very close by. Shouting and screaming followed. An orderly came running in, gabbling in such rapid Spanish she had no hope of making sense of it. Mr Fiedler stopped cursing and slowed him down.

‘No cause for alarm. Not much anyway. A hand grenade in the incinerator they think – no – not sabotage. An accident. An oversight. All soiled clothing to be searched thoroughly from now on before it’s burned. That’s an order.’

A short time later, a claxon hoot, and more shouting of a different kind: joyful and wild.

Released, she ran towards the noise. The wounded in the courtyard had been abandoned to the orderlies and guards. John and Kitty were both at the roadside, greeting the tall, balding driver of a small Renault truck. His neat navy boiler suit bore a Red Cross badge.

‘An angel has arrived. Or a fairy godmother. Who knows?’ Kitty’s laughter had a manic edge. ‘They’ve brought us blood, from Madrid. Pints of it. Who thought of that? Oh God, you don’t know much we need this.’

‘I think I do.’ He was Canadian and triumphant, and his eyebrows rose like mountains.

‘I love you . . . what is your name? Dr what? Dr Bethune. Dr Bethune, will you marry me?’

‘Can you spare us any apparatus?’ asked John. ‘We’ve been surviving with two cannulas and a funnel.’

‘I’ll see what I can find. Oh, we’ve brought novocaine too. And an icebox.’

Unloading began, and Kitty fell on the racks of bottles like a vampire. Felix was about to get back to her post when John stopped her.

‘I have actually. We can’t go on with the ops till the autoclave cycle’s finished. I was just going to the cookhouse to get coffee for the others.’

‘We’ve got a couple of new cases . . . the first from the British Battalion as a matter of fact. The news isn’t good from that quarter, but that’s another story. Let’s focus on the task in hand.’ John seemed to be telling himself. Please, please not him, Felix begged silently. They both quickened their steps. ‘Bad shock. Exsanguinated. Borderline two or three. But they’ve no chance of surviving an operation without more blood. If you can help, we could get several transfusions going at once, what with the new equipment Bethune’s brought. Can you cut down a vein?’

‘Here, over here. No more space in triage.’ He led the way, and they stopped to tell Dolores as they went. ‘Can’t get much out of them right now. I was hoping to find out what’s been happening, but there’s no chance of that.’

John took her to a small side room, off the main hall. It was piled with furniture and boxes cleared from elsewhere, but there was just enough floor space for a blood-soaked mattress. A man lay under a blanket. It wasn’t Nat. This patient was broader, much older, as white as paper. Felix knelt and felt his pulse.

They set up the transfusion together, opening their patient at the ankle. The vein was close to collapse, but they decided it would do under the circumstances. ‘We’re aiming at about seventy cc a minute. Give or take.’ After a while John left Felix holding up the funnel, dripping citrated blood into the rubber tubing from a bottle that once contained wine.

It was almost peaceful here, after the operating theatre’s frenzy. Felix’s raised arm began to sway, and she forced her eyes open. Was it the light filtering through the window – Red sun in the morning, she fretted – or was he getting some colour back in his face? Yes, his lips were definitely less blue.

Her pocket watch was resting on the blanket, so that she could see it clearly. It fell to the floor with a clatter as her patient shifted his leg slightly. He let out a long sigh.

‘You’re in safe hands now,’ murmured Felix, unsure if he’d hear. But his eyes opened, and looked at her.

The blood was nearly gone. She waited for the last drops to make their journey, removed the cannula, and bound up his ankle. She felt his pulse again. Much stronger.

The rush of recognition made tears prick in her eyes. A London voice. Croaky, but clear enough. East End, she reckoned.

‘I expect so,’ she replied, fighting for calm. ‘You ought to be up to it very soon.’

Felix made a bit of a show of checking his casualty card, as if his wound was so slight you might not notice it. Bernard Solomon, she noted.

He grimaced. ‘We weren’t even in retreat. Just my luck. But it was bloody mayhem, I tell you.’ He fell silent, then looked at her. ‘Have you got a moment, love?’

‘I’m dying for a cigarette. Could you help me?’ He couldn’t seem to move his arms, but he indicated his breast pocket with his eyes.

Felix remembered what Kitty had told Dolores. Never leave a dying man. She hadn’t thought to wonder how you’d know. Anyway, this blood should do the trick. He’d be in theatre soon. They’d get him back on his feet. Felix knelt across the man, and gently drew out a tobacco pouch. Opening it, she caught a smell she used to know.

‘No. Wills. My last from home. Been saving it for a special occasion. I reckon this counts, don’t you?’

Felix couldn’t confess now that she’d never rolled a cigarette in her life before. Most of the other English volunteers smoked whenever they could. She’d watched Charlie’s ritual rolling, and she did her best to copy it now with this man’s sole remaining paper. After several attempts, she thought she’d got it tight enough. Her mouth was very dry, but she managed to find just enough spit to stick it down. A few strands of stray tobacco hung from the end.

His lips parted obediently, cracking a slight crust of saliva that had formed at one corner. She put the cigarette in place, then found his lighter. The flame glowed blue. The man drew deeply, and a couple of tears came from nowhere, and edged down the sides of his face, finding the creases and wrinkles.

She took the cigarette away for a moment so he could exhale, and then let her hand rest on his.

‘I don’t know how many we’ve lost. Half the company, it felt.’ He was finding it harder and harder to talk, but Felix couldn’t stop him. ‘Half the bleeding battalion gone, I should think . . . Wouldn’t be here myself if it weren’t for – we were stuck, you see, really stuck on a hill . . . so bare . . . couldn’t see how we’d ever get back . . . Back to the sunken road. Just me and a pal. Nice lad . . . spirited. Clever, you know . . . About your age . . . Been with him since Albacete. A proper mensch. Came from the same neck of the woods as me, as a matter of fact . . .’

‘Did he?’ The thud of her heart grew faster. She remembered the feel of Nat’s lips and the sound of his breathing.

‘Stayed with me till the stretcher came, he did. Long wait . . . Believe me . . . And he didn’t have to. “You should go,” I told him. Did he listen to me? Hope he’s doing all right now. No, I reckon he’s the lucky type . . . he’ll be all right, I reckon, please God.’

He began to ramble. Felix didn’t really know what he was saying, but she nodded, and said, ‘Yes,’ and, ‘Oh no,’ and went on stroking his hand. It didn’t seem right to ask the questions she wanted to. He talked about the moon, how thin and wispy it had been. Gradually his speech petered out. Felix felt his pulse. Then his eyes opened again.

‘That blood you gave me. Did me a world of good. Got any more where it came from?’

Before she could answer, Bernie’s eyes closed. The last breath left his blood-filled lungs.

Despite herself, Felix began to sob. All she had seen in the past few days seemed to crush her at once. It wasn’t just her hunger for Nat that was wearing her down. It was everything. She managed to stop herself when she saw Dolores, watching from the doorway.

He had been so quick at his task. Wasted no time. But he could still catch up with her. He’d find the right words to explain somehow.

Of course she’s shocked. Who the hell wouldn’t be? Right in front of her like that. There was no other way, of course. But still it was horrible. Horrible.

Nat breaks into a run. The ice-cold air tears at his throat as he breathes faster and faster. Passing the ruined house, he’s confused by the tracks still visible in the swirling snow. Everything seems darker. He imagines a movement, and ducks inside. She’ll be in there, waiting for him, needing the comfort that only he can give, surely she will. He can take her in his arms again. He can make it all right again. She’s got to understand. War’s war. She must know that by now. She must know that.

The building is empty.

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