Hope - Lesley Pearse [209]
On an impulse Hope bent and kissed his forehead, then rushed for the door and left without another word.
*
On the day after the battle of Balaclava there had been another small battle near a deserted village called Inkerman. Shortly afterwards, Russian troops were observed massing up on the Fedioukine Hills, and it was clear they were planning another far more powerful attack soon. But worrying as that was, while the guns were firing constantly up at Sebastopol, sending a daily stream of wounded and sick soldiers down to the hospital, there was too much to be done to consider how they would cope with yet more casualties.
On 4 November it rained hard and the men on picket duty keeping an eye on the Russian troops reported a quiet night, but, as they were coming off duty at dawn on the 5th, the attack came.
There was thick fog, and the allied troops were heavily outnumbered and short of ammunition, but what they lacked in numbers, they made up for in courage and initiative, and by mid-afternoon the Russians were in full retreat.
Word of the victory came quickly to the hospital, but it was hard for anyone to feel a celebration was in order, not with 2,500 of their men killed and wounded, and another 1,700 French soldiers likewise. They had no doubt either that some of the 12,000 Russian casualties would end up here too. But they did what they had to, rolled up their sleeves and prepared for the onslaught as best they could.
That night, and for the following three nights, Hope had only a couple of hours’ sleep. She knew the surgeons were justified in saying they would do more harm than good attempting to operate in poor light, and understood why they took themselves off to their beds at night, but she could not walk away with the cries of the suffering ringing in her ears.
It was so cold, and many of the wounded lay shivering on the carts that had brought them there, for there was no space to bring them inside. All she could do was tuck a blanket around them, help them sip some brandy or merely wash their faces. But at least asking their names, telling them they’d be seen as soon as possible, and showing that she cared, helped them to get through the night.
Captain Pettigrew came to the hospital at dawn on the fourth day when she was alone in the room with the most seriously injured. He was walking with the aid of an improvised crutch, and when she saw him, she flew at him to reprimand him.
‘Are you stupid?’ she hissed at him. ‘You’ll break that wound open!’
‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Nothing compared to some of these injuries. I came to see if there was anything I could do.’
He was clearly serious, and Hope saw the horror in his eyes as he noticed a box of amputated limbs which hadn’t yet been taken away for disposal by one of the orderlies.
Hope quickly covered it with a blanket. But she couldn’t conceal the number of men with blood-soaked dressings, or the wailing from one soldier in the corner. Everywhere the Captain looked there was horror, and even to someone with no medical knowledge it was clear most of them would die.
‘It was good of you to offer help,’ she said. ‘But you shouldn’t be in here. Maybe in a day or two you could talk to some of the less seriously injured – a lot of them can’t manage to write a letter home and they’d appreciate you doing it for them. But go now, before you fall and burst your stitches.’
He held on tightly to the crutch, but reached out and tucked a stray curl back under her cap. ‘With the best will in the world, you can’t make everyone better,’ he said with the tenderness of understanding. ‘I know you’ve been here for at least twenty hours a day and you’ll become ill if you continue to do that. You need some rest, food, and probably a bath. Come to my house later and you’ll get all that.’
‘A bath?’ she said in astonishment. He had hit on the one