Fay caught her breath. "His hand? Is it bad?" she asked. "His—his right hand?"
"Plenty bad, I reckon. Can't cope with unnecessary casualties here, so he put himself aboard a plane that was going out. Guess he'll get it dealt with back home."
The Commandant turned to walk off, but something in Fay's face made him pause. "Wasn't Osborne's fault," he said gruffly. "Faulty hinge on the ambulance door—those machines have taken a beating on these roads, I guess."
"Which hand?" Fay's voice was almost inaudible, but in any event the Commandant had walked away. "Dear God, let it be the left!" she breathed ... suddenly the lovely morning had turned to night.
-APIFK
FAY, slept the sleep of exhaustion, but it did not refresh her. When she woke, with a raging headache and a bewildered mind, she found herself repeating over and over again to herself, "Ships that pass in the night." And as she pulled herself together all the events of yesterday came back to her, and she remembered that it was Mark who had said that yesterday. Only he had not got it quite right. What was it he had said?—"Ships that pass in the dark." Yes, that was it —and she had corrected him.
As she remembered that little incident which had seemed so insignificant at the time, something tugged at her brain. Someone else, she seemed to recall, had made the same misquotation of that saying. When and where had it been? It was not important—she had far more urgent things to trouble her now—but the half-recollection would let her have no peace. As she bathed her face in cold water, which did help to freshen her and clean her brain a little, the word "night" seemed to take on some special connection with whatever it was she was trying to remember.
Then suddenly it came back. She paused for a moment, halted in mid-action as she was transported back in time and space—back to a darkened ward and the ringing of a telephone, startlingly loud in the silence. And a voice with a rather phony Scots accent—a voice which had used that very phrase, "Ships that pass in the dark."
So the night caller—it had been Mark. The problem of the caller's identity had teased her for a time, but its solution did not help. It only presented her with another completely
unanswerable question. Why should Mark have rung her on the night of the dance? Especially as just then they had been at daggers drawn ...
Realising that this was a question which could not be answered at the best of times, and certainly not in her present exhausted state, Fay put it firmly from he: and reported to the Commandant's quarters. She found him just going off for rest and realised that he had hardly been off duty at all during the whole of the crisis, and it was small wonder that he had had scant sympathy for Mark's accident.
"Ah, Sister Gabriel—just the woman I want," he greeted her.
"Yes, Commandant. Where do you want me to report?" "In the first place I want to know—how long can your hospital spare you?"
"I was on leave at a place near Nice," she told him "I've another six days of leave yet, I think." She could not be sure, for truth to tell she had lost count of the days.
"Right," he said brusquely. "I'd like to keep you here for a bit—probably longer than that—and you won't be fit for duty when we've finished with you!" For the first time Fay saw the glimmer of a twinkle in his eyes. "I want you to take over the hospital section here. The casualty work has pretty well stopped now. We've still a lot of people to move to homes or hostels of some kind—hand them over to the welfare services, in other words. But there remain the cases which we can't move. Most of them will die, poor devils, but they've got to be cared for in the meantime. Bit of a thankless task, I'm afraid, and I've only got the most motley crew of nurses to offer you, but you'll manage, I think."
"Yes, Commandant," Fay agreed. "I had better get in touch with my hospital, though."
"We'll do that for you," the man pulled a sheet of paper towards him. "St. Edith's, London—that right?"
"Yes."
If she would have said more he gave her no chance. "O.K. You have full authority. Arrange rotas—but you'll be the only qualified Sister. Spare yourself all you can. You're shockingly short of equipment, but we may be able to ease that in a day or so."
The care of the sick, whether they were destined for death or recovery, was part of Fay's vocation, and she did not jib. But to be cut off from the outside world without contact, without news—without news of Mark, in particular—was hard indeed to bear. Nevertheless, as the interview seemed to be ended she turned to go and take up her duties in the hospital building. As she did so the Commandant halted her.
"Oh, Sister—" he said, and she turned to find him regarding her with tired, sympathetic eyes in his rather podgy face. "You were asking about young Osborne, weren't you? Well, I'm sorry to say that it was his right hand. A great pity—he was a fine surgeon—"
Fay did not hear any more. She was conscious only of the great kindliness in his eyes before unshed tears in her own blinded her as she turned with a whispered, "Thank you, Commandant," and left him. She knew that whatever might happen in the days to come she would have to face nothing worse than this, for what had happened to Mark was something worse than death.
The work Fay had to undertake for the next two weeks was indeed gruelling, and not made any easier by the fact that the nurses she had to work with were none of them English-speaking, and had little training for the most part. This meant that she seldom or never got an unbroken rest period. In all she did she knew she had the support and approbation of the Commandant, especially as under her care several patients who had been considered as unlikely to recover were indeed brought to a condition where it was possible to move them to other hospitals where they could receive the specialised treatment needed.
One other bright spot, too, was the young mother on whom Mark had operated. She made a wonderful recovery, aided of course by the news that her child was doing well and waiting for her in a hospital not twenty miles away. Her young husband too, who had had both legs broken while he was working as a volunteer with a rescue party, was making good progress, and for that one little family at least there was hope of a brighter future.
But the shadow that the disaster had brought would hang
over the place for a long time to come. Almost it might be said that Dubrocja had ceased to exist and the survivors would have to be absorbed into other townships. It was the end of a whole community.
Francesca Renati came out to the emergency hospital once—to see the mother of the child. Her visit luckily coincided with Fay's duty. They exchanged addresses, and it was Francesca who brought up the subject of Mark.
"Your friend—Mr. Osborne, isn't it? I hear he had an accident. Was it bad?"
"I'm afraid so," Fay told her. "I've only heard what the Commandant said, and what one of the ambulance men told me, but it seems that his right hand was badly crushed—trapped in the ambulance door."
"That is bad," Francesca's dark eyes expressed her concern. "For a surgeon—and a surgeon such as he was !—that is very bad. What will he do if he cannot operate again?"
"I don't know," Fay answered bleakly. It was the question she had been asking herself all along. It might not be as bad as that, but doubt was no less torturing than certainty.
"But you will be married just the same when you go back to England?" Francesca queried.
"Good heavens, no!" Fay spoke so sharply that the other woman jumped. "He's married already."
Francesca looked completely baffled. "But you love each other—" she protested.
"I don't know what makes you think that." Fay struggled to keep her voice steady and matter-of-fact. "I may have made a bit of a fool of myself in letting myself care for him, but I can assure you that Mr. Osborne is a very happily married man with two lovely small boys."
The sympathy in Francesca's eyes was so real that it made Fay's hurt more intense. "How sad, how very sad. It is worse for you," she sighed deeply.
Fay knew what she meant. Her man had died—and there was something irrevocable about death which made it bearable; more bearable than the terrible longing which possessed her at times. She was glad that Mark did not have to suffer that.
She still could not begin to explain to herself why Mark should have given Francesca, as an observer, the impression
that he cared. Why had he bothered to ring her up on the night of the hospital dance? How had he so exactly gauged her mood of utter loneliness so that she was glad to talk to a stranger? How had he managed to put his finger so accurately on the one thing which made marriage to Geoff impossible for her?
But she had no time to answer any of her own questions—if indeed they were answerable at all. She was getting more and more tired, although she herself hardly realised it. She knew only that there was no joy, no sense of achievement in her work
anymore
, and she could not envisage anything beyond the field hospital. It seemed to her that she had come to the end of all her ambition here.
It was only a few days after Francesca's visit that the Commandant sent for her.
He had been a bit of a martinet and a slave-driver while the emergency lasted, but now that things were easing up the essential kindliness of the man was showing through. He looked at Fay with keenly scrutinising eyes for a full half minute before he spoke.
"Feeling tired, Sister?" he enquired, and reaching out took her wrist between his fingers. What he felt there did not seem to please him, for he brushed aside her disavowal, saying, "Umm, I can see you are. Well, we'd better send you home, I guess."
Fay started to say that she was not too tired to stay as long as there was a need for her services, but plainly the Commandant was not listening. He was ruffling through a sheaf of papers.
"Let's see—there's a plane leaving for Nice in the morning —we'll put you on that. Be ready to leave here at seven-thirty. Transport will be laid on, and a car will meet the plane in Nice to take you to—this place where you were staying."
Fay blinked. She could hardly believe in the efficiency of the big American. He must have decided on this course before he sent for her.
"Thank you, Commandant—" she managed to put in, "but I'm really not so tired as all that—I can stay until you can get a replacement—"
"You'll do as you're told, Sister," he said brusquely, but the twinkle in his eye belied the sharpness of his words. "We shall clear all cases out of here in two or three days from now, and they are sending me a Sister—Assistant Matron, rather—from the hospital at Brenska. We shall cope. Now your instructions are to return to Lamontella and stay there for another two weeks before returning to your hospital."
"But—"
"Your Matron's instructions. Argue it out with her later if you want to—but if you take my advice you'll make the most of the opportunity to catch up on lost rest and general strain." He got up, indicating that the interview was over, or so Fay thought, but instead he took her shoulders between his hands. "You've done a very good job of work here, and it will be recorded. I'm not all that good at saying pretty things, Sister, but—well, thanks, and good luck to you. I hope you find that things aren't as bad as you fear for young Osborne."
She turned and left the office rather hurriedly. Suddenly she felt that tears were too near the surface for her to remain.
It was not until she was on the plane next morning, however, that she realised just how lost and purposeless her life seemed now that she was leaving behind the scene of tragedy which had filled it for the past weeks. There she had been needed, there she had had something to give where it was most needed. By contrast the future seemed to hold no place for her ... she checked on the thought. "That isn't true !" she told herself. "You're a nurse—there is always a need for you." But in her heart she knew that what she really meant was that the one person who made up her world had no need of her love.
It seemed no time at all after the plane took off before Fay realised that she was being told to fasten her safety belt as they were coming in to land at Nice.
All the arrangements for the return flight had gone without a hitch so that Fay, tired as she was, scarcely bothered to wonder who had made them all. It did occur to her in the car which was taking her from Nice to Lamontella that she had not warned Pietro and Rose of her imminent arrival,
but when she got to their bungalow she found that they were expecting her.
"Oh, miss, I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you! I began to think you'd never come back from that dreadful place. What a time you must have had—and my word, how thin you've got! And as white as a ghost. We've been hearing all about it—"
"Si, si," Pietro put in, his dark eyes looking at her with the adoration of a faithful dog. "We hear how brave you are—and how you work day and night to save those poor souls. So very brave—"
Fay was unprepared for this respect which her absence seemed to have turned to near reverence, and she had to stop them.
"There was a great band of helpers—all sorts of people, all doing wonderful work," she told them. "I didn't do it all on my own, you know!"
It was obvious that this point was unimportant as far as Rose was concerned. "Well, we mustn't keeping you standing talking when what you want is a nice cup of tea and then bed," she stated categorically. "Did you have lunch, miss?"