Nat tried to join the end of the queue, but among so many women, he could hardly help sticking out. The sling on his arm didn’t help. Like a white flag, wasn’t it? The women immediately started to bustle him forward to the front of the line, treating him like the hero he didn’t feel. Such a lot of fuss, he thought angrily, for a minor shrapnel wound.
It was only an upside-down kind of luck that found him here. His hand was healing well, but it would be another few weeks before he could fire a rifle again. On leave in Madrid, Nat gave himself over to guilt. It was hard not to brood, and Nat didn’t even want to try to stop. Every time he thought about Bernie, the words of Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, crept into his head. Oseh shalom bim’romav hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu v’al kol Yisroel . . . He who maketh peace in His high places, may He make peace for us and for all Israel.
A number of rooms opened off the hallway, none of them looking much like laboratories. From one, a middle-aged woman emerged wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, calling back her thanks to whoever was inside. She looked pale but happy, and held a packet of rice to her chest. At the bottom of the staircase a nurse in a spotless uniform sat at a table, her white flowing headdress bowed over her paperwork. ‘Next please,’ she called out, glancing up at Nat only when she sensed his looming height in front of her.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked in Spanish, smiling broadly.
‘I wanted to give,’ said Nat, fumbling for the right words, holding out his good arm. ‘Sangre.’
‘And are you on our donor list, camarada?’
The shell that caught his arm had also burst his eardrums. ‘Sorry?’
She repeated the question, more loudly and slowly.
‘No, this is my first time. Does it matter?’
‘It depends. Will you be a regular donor?’ She was staring at his uniform. ‘Most people on our register come every three or four weeks.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said truthfully. ‘I’m not sure how long I’ll be in Madrid. I’ll come every time I can.’
‘Well, you’ll need to give me some details, and we’ll take a sample, and then we can let you know.’ She opened a file and began to fill in a form. ‘Name?’
He answered her questions. Nationality: British. Marital status: single. Colour of iris. Colour of skin. No, no children, living or dead. No hereditary diseases that he knew of. No, he’d never had malaria. No (he flushed), not syphilis either. She rang a bell, and another nurse led him away to a room lined with refrigerators. Four long thin tables, with armrests at each side, served as couches.
The nurse helped Nat take his place on the only free bed. It was awkwardly high, when you only had one hand working. He swung his legs up, leaned back, and inspected the ceiling. A great many cherubs were looking down at him.
The nurse put a tourniquet on his uninjured arm, and showed him how to clench and unclench his fist. He hardly noticed when she found his vein with her needle.
The blood was flowing nicely into the syringe when he heard a deep Canadian voice. In strode a tall man with the most enormous bald forehead Nat had ever seen. A few paces behind him, a fair-haired young man was earnestly recording the Canadian’s words in a notebook.
‘So it’s really just like delivering milk. Not half so easy to get containers of course – we can hardly do “rinse and return” on the battlefield. Though as it happens, milk bottles work very well.’ Inspired by Nat’s presence perhaps, he continued: ‘My plan is for every soldier in the Republican Army to have a dog tag showing his blood type, eventually. That way we won’t waste time, and we won’t make mistakes. But for now, the great thing is to have got the blood moving. It’s getting to where it’s needed.’
‘So the essential principle is to take the blood to the wounded, not the wounded to the blood?’
The man reminded Nat of a schoolboy, checking his facts with a charismatic headmaster. Not a show-off, but the swotty type who hates to get things wrong.
‘Precisely. The difference is phenomenal. We’re saving hundreds of lives this way.’
‘Any real figures?’
‘Hard to say exactly. I’ll have to let you know. The recent breakthrough is training. You see, when it comes down to it, any fool can do a blood transfusion. Yes, of course I exaggerate . . .’
‘I was just going to say—’
‘Well, it hardly takes a surgeon. Their skills we need at the operating table. Training medical minions leaves us a lot more time to get on with the collecting, as well as the distribution and organisation. And of course training others. As it happens, we’re expecting a couple of nurses here in a few hours’ time to do just that. You can interview them if you want to hang around.’
The man with the notebook seemed to hesitate, nervous blue eyes flicking round the room.
‘I’m not sure. You see . . .’
Oh make your mind up, thought Nat.
‘Suit yourself. Now come this way, and I’ll show you where we prepare the serums.’
Nat heard the conversation fade. Some journalist on a deadline. All right for him. He’d be back in London with his girlfriend in a few weeks’ time, boasting about his next assignment.
The nurse withdrew the needle, pressed firmly on Nat’s vein, and then stuck a plaster over the bead of blood that immediately began to form.
‘Now you are entitled to a drink and some food. Just take this card to the counter in the room opposite. But you’ll probably want to rest for a few minutes here. I haven’t taken much this time – it’s just for testing – but even that can affect some people. Ten minutes.’
Nat shook his head, and let her pull him to his feet. His ears immediately began to roar and pop, and a rushing sensation swept through his body. He was weaker than he thought. Even when he stopped swaying, nothing seemed any clearer. Worse, if anything.
A figure was forming, a girl. He knew that nose, that forehead, didn’t he? Not this hair, cut short into a bob. There was not enough of it left for a dark strand to escape and fall across the cheek of this girl. He must be confused. Or deceived. His longing for Felix was doing him in. Playing tricks on him. It had become like a craving, an addiction. He felt half-crazy with the ache of it. Nat’s vision blurred and the rushing in his head grew louder. He closed his eyes, staggered, and gripped the arm of the Spanish nurse to keep himself upright.