because her head hurt too badly. Because Paige is dead.
But just after dawn Fairchild was brought in and put in the bed next to her, pale and unconscious, and in the morning Camberley, covered in dirt and brick dust, sneaked in to see how Mary was doing and to tell her Fairchild had been in surgery most of the night for a ruptured spleen, but that the doctors had assured her she’d recover completely.
“Thank goodness,” Mary said, looking over at Fairchild, who lay with her eyes closed and her hands folded across her breast, like Sleeping Beauty. She had a bandage on her arm.
“I feel so guilty,” Camberley said, “knowing I should be the one who was in that ambulance instead of Fairchild. It’s my fault—”
No, it isn’t, Mary thought. It’s mine.
“It was so lucky you were on the far side of the incident when the V-2 hit,” she said.
I was tying off the man’s leg, she thought. “Did he make it?” she asked, and when Camberley looked blankly at her, she said, “The man we were working on. With the severed foot.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “We didn’t bring him in. I’ll ask the nurse.” But the nurse said the only other patients who’d been admitted the night before were a woman and her two little boys.
“He may have been taken to some other hospital,” Camberley said, and promised to ring up Croydon and ask.
But she didn’t return, and when Talbot came during visiting hours with flowers and grapes, she said, “Camberley said to tell you the man you asked about wasn’t taken to St. Francis’s, and that Croydon said the only person they transported was Fairchild. But Camberley said he must be somewhere because she checked with the mortuary van, which was there, and the only person they’d transported had died instantly.”
The man we found who’d been cut in half, Mary thought. “Tell her to ring up Brixton and ask them if they transported him,” she said. “They had an ambulance there.”
Talbot looked over at Fairchild. She still hadn’t come out of the ether, though now she looked like she was only sleeping, and her color was better. She looked even younger and more childlike than usual.
“What about Flight Officer Lang?” Talbot asked. “Shall I ring him up and tell him what happened?”
“Not till after I’ve been discharged,” Mary said.
Talbot nodded approvingly. “When will they let you go home, do you think?”
“This afternoon, I should imagine.”
And then I’ll go look for the missing man myself, Mary thought. But the doctor refused to let her go due to her possibly having a concussion, and when she attempted to explain about the man to her nurse, the nurse told her to “try to rest.” Which was impossible when there was a chance that no one had transported him, that they’d missed him in the darkness and he was still lying there in the rubble.
She wished she’d asked Talbot to bring her her bag. If she had some money she could ring up Brixton herself. If the nurses would let her anywhere near a telephone. Thus far they wouldn’t even let her out of bed. They’d even reprimanded her for walking the two feet over to Fairchild’s bed when she woke and called for telephone. Thus far they wouldn’t even let her out of bed. They’d even reprimanded her for walking the two feet over to Fairchild’s bed when she woke and called for her.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she’d said groggily, clutching Mary’s hand. “I was so afraid—”
“So was I,” Mary had said, “but the doctors say we’re both going to be perfectly fine, though a bit banged up.”
And it’s a good thing I’m going to be here through VE-Day, she thought. If I went back to Oxford looking like this, Mr. Dunworthy would never let me go to the Blitz.
Camberley came late that afternoon as Mary was about to be taken up for X-rays, on her way home from a run. “Did you ring up Brixton?” Mary asked.
“Yes,” Camberley said, “but they said they weren’t at the incident. Might the ambulance have been from Bromley?”
“I suppose so.” She could have misread the name in the flickering firelight.
“Or might he have been examined and discharged?” Camberley asked, but the hospital wouldn’t even discharge her, and she only had a few cuts and bruises.
“No,” she said, “he was much too badly injured. Did you check the morgue here and at St. Francis’s? He might have died on the way to hospital, and that’s why they don’t show him as being admitted.”
“I’ll check,” Camberley said, and hesitated. “Are you certain you saw him last night? You were rather badly concussed. You might have been muddled—”
“I wasn’t muddled. He—”
“You were muddled about Brixton’s being there. You might have got someone you administered first aid to at some other incident confused with—”
“No, I saw him, too,” Fairchild said from the other bed, and Mary could have kissed her. “That’s who I was fetching the medical kit for.”
The orderly arrived with a wheelchair to take Mary to X-ray. “When you come again, bring my bag,” she told Camberley. “It’s in the ambulance.”
On the way to the X-ray she looked for a telephone box. There was one just outside the ward. Good. And luckily, their beds were just inside the ward’s doors. As soon as she got her bag, she’d sneak out and ring up Croydon and ask them to go check the incident again. But when she got back, Fairchild was crying.
Dread gripped her. “Did they find him?” Mary asked.
Fairchild shook her head, unable to speak for the tears spilling down her cheeks.
