Hope - Lesley Pearse [226]
Taking a deep breath, she took charge.
First, she got the orderlies to move men who had been admitted a few days earlier and had already received surgery into one of the less crowded wards. After that, she got the newly wounded settled into the free beds, clearing most of the space on the floor. While one orderly was told to mop up the mess on the floor, she instructed the others to give the wounded water, to get them out of filthy uniforms and wash them.
‘Maybe we can’t take away their pain,’ she explained. ‘But by cleaning them up and trying to make them more comfortable, we are reassuring them that they are going to be seen by a doctor soon and that we care.’
Doctors came past her all morning, most acknowledging her presence with a nod or a brief greeting, but often there was a warm, grateful smile. She continued to wash men, get them drinks, or help them if they were vomiting. As patients were brought back from operations, she checked on them regularly, offering bed pans and bottles.
By two in the afternoon everything was under control again, and after leaving a few instructions with the orderlies she went back to her own ward.
As she opened the door her heart sank, for Surgeon Truscott was examining the man she had been going to get help for that morning. He looked round at her and glowered.
‘And where have you been?’
Truscott had arrived in Balaclava some weeks after the base hospital had been established and so he hadn’t got used to her helping with the sick in Varna as many of the other doctors had. Hope had always known that he didn’t approve of women in regimental hospitals; he had often made barbed comments about her in the past.
He was a big, bumptious man with a swirling moustache, close to sixty, who believed that the scope of medical assistance given in the days of the Peninsular War was quite adequate for this one. Bennett thought him an able surgeon, but very out of date with his techniques. In the past few months he’d barely been seen in the hospital; according to gossip he went out riding a great deal.
‘I went to find a doctor to look at this man’s wound,’ she said truthfully. ‘But they were so much in need of help with the recently wounded that I stayed.’
‘So this man’s life wasn’t important to you?’
Hope was fairly certain that the Polish man’s infection was only a mild one, and that a delay of a few hours would have done no harm at all.
‘Of course it was, sir,’ she said. ‘But there were men in much more grievous danger in the main hospital.’
‘So you decide who needs medical assistance now, do you?’ he bellowed at her. ‘Deserting your post while on duty is a very serious offence!’
‘I hadn’t deserted. I was just giving assistance elsewhere,’ she said, her anger rising. She wished she had told a doctor about this Pole’s wound first, but even if she had, she knew none of the doctors would have broken off from what they were doing to treat something they would have considered trivial. ‘Besides, I can hardly be accused of desertion when I am only a volunteer.’
‘I will not stand for insubordination,’ he roared, making every man in the ward look round. ‘Do you know who I am?’
She was tempted to retort, ‘A jackass,’ but she held that back. ‘Yes, sir, you are Surgeon Truscott.’
‘With over thirty years’ experience in surgery,’ he shouted. ‘There is no place for women in regimental hospitals. What sort of a milksop is your husband to bring you out here with him? And then to inflict you on us!’
Suddenly, and without any warning, the surgeon was struggling, for a man had crept up behind him and was holding a knife to his throat.
Hope gasped in shock. She had not seen Asiz, the little Croatian man, get out of his bed and steal across the floor. He was only slightly taller than her, while Truscott was six feet tall, but the knife he was holding looked very sharp. He wasn’t the man Angus had given his warning to, but clearly all the Croatians had taken