No° 17 Casualty Clearing Station
Amiens, France
December 1917
Working at the seventeenth casualty clearing station had been forty-eight hours of hell Caroline wished she could have erased from her memory entirely.
It had only taken two weeks of constant bombardment with patients for the hospital to fall to its knees since a vicious battle around Cambrai broke out, causing mass casualties. While the British Army had been victorious in the first days of the fight, she had overheard that the new German tanks and superior artillery had sent the Brits reeling. The hospital had been teetering on the edge of implosion even before she and Emily had arrived to help. So it made sense, even though it had shocked her initially when the ward Matron had nearly cried when they appeared, fresh-faced and ready to work.
There was no time to breathe, let alone think, before being whisked away to start triaging an endless line of screaming men. What she experienced was nothing short of horror, as she and Emily worked tooth and nail to fight to patch up soldiers holding on by a thread. At the end of the sleepless two days, her hands were covered in painful chilblains from the continual disinfectant on her hands, her head throbbing with lack of food and water.
The Matron begged them to stay when their contract ended, and Caroline had seriously considered the offer, seeing how badly the hospital was struggling. Yet, in the end, just after Caroline had eaten her first bite of a much-needed dinner, an ambulance squealed into the CSS, demanding that both women return to Calais.
The Germans had broken through the lines, and all casualty clearing stations and hospitals were to be ready to catch the overflow of men filtering throughout the medical system.
When the clock struck six, they stuffed themselves in between five soldiers who were stable enough to be transported in the ambulance. It stunk of blood and urine, a sign that everyone was being pushed to the brink if there was insufficient time to wash it out between runs. While the journey should only have taken two hours, some of the main roads were washed out, and they had to take a slower route on backroads that were so pockmarked with shell holes they crawled back to Calais. The only redeeming quality of the journey was that she and Emily could catch a few more hours of sleep, not even disturbed by the screaming shells that pierced the air and caused the ambulance to rock and shudder against the impact.
"Nurse! Wakey, wakey!" Corporal Riley yelled, his fist banging against the open ambulance doorway, jolting her awake. Caroline's eyes flew open, and her vision blurred at the burst of sunshine. It took a moment to figure out where she was.
"Hope you enjoyed your rest because it's a circus here." Corporal Riley said as he held out his hand to help her down from the back of the truck.
Caroline let out an involuntary groan at his words; she was desperately hoping she could make herself a large cup of Bovril tea and then sleep for a few hours before checking in with Matron about the hours of her next shift.
"I didn't hear that, Nurse!" Corporal Riley stated as she stifled a yawn.
"No, you didn't." She replied firmly, hopping out of the truck and landing ankle-deep in sticky mud.
"Just perfect," she cursed under her breath.
"Matron knows that you're here. She's in the receiving ward. Check-in with her."
Caroline looked around to see the flurry of trucks moving on the roads in and out of the hospital, men being transported on stretchers and in pairs and threes, holding each other up as they hobbled through the receiving tent.
"Just bloody perfect." She swore again, now that she was out of earshot from anyone else.
"Won't it ever end, Caroline?" Emily said beside her, a quaver in her voice as a stretcher whizzed past them with a man so severely burned that his face was barely recognizable as human.
"It must." She replied, reaching out and clasping Emily's hands in hers and giving them a firm squeeze.
"We've come too far to let them down now," Caroline said as her eyes drifted to look at the soldiers lined up in rows outside the receiving tent, waiting to be admitted.
"Quickly, we must go," Caroline said firmly as she grabbed Emily by the wrist and dragged her towards the bustling tent.
Matron had been standing in the middle of the marquee, directing dozens of orderlies and nurses towards the direst of cases. When Caroline and Emily stood in front of her for a horrible moment, Caroline thought she might burst into tears.
"Thank goodness you're here," her voice dripped with gratitude. "The Germans broke through the lines early this morning. We have men from all sectors south of us flooding in."
Both nurses nodded their heads, the screaming inside of the tent too loud for them to bother to respond with words.
"I need both of you on the receiving ward. Triage as best you can. Only those who will survive surgery will be admitted. Am I clear? There is no morphine, so try your best to keep them quiet and comfortable. The ones who won't make it can be sent to the resus tent if an orderly is available. I do hate to see them die alone on the grass." Someone called out for Matron, and her eyes darted around, taking a long step towards the problem. "Are you ready? You are in for a long night."
"Yes, Matron." Both women said in unison, their eyes fixed firmly ahead of them.
"Good. Off you go." Matron shooed them as she turned around and ran down the ward's aisle, off to the next tent.
The women darted back outside to the overflowing receiving ward. Caroline tried to ignore the screaming cries for help and the bloodstained hands that reached out to try and grasp her ankle as she walked past.
"Someone is coming to help you!" she called out quickly, trying not to look them in the eye so as not to stall her progress. "You will be alright; the doctor will see you soon."
After weaving their way through stretcher-bearers, orderlies and ambulances, the women found their way.
"Where do we begin?" Emily gasped, tears forming in her eyes as they took in the line of what must have been a hundred men spilled out all over the lawn.
"Anywhere we can," Caroline said, not pausing before running ahead and leaning down to the first man that screamed for her the loudest.
Though her body was past its point of exhaustion, Caroline worked on muscle memory alone, her hands moving through each assessment with care and detail.
"Surgery!" She yelled out to Corporal Riley, who just happened to be walking behind her. "Upper abdominal gunshot wound, but he's stable enough." She called out, grasping the soldier's hand as she applied another bandage over the blood-soaked field dressing he had arrived in.
Corporal Riley scooped him up in his arms for no stretcher was available, and dragged the groaning soldier towards the surgical tent.
Her eyes darted to the next soldier beside him. His face was grey and his breath shallow, but she couldn't identify any significant bullet holes or other wounds.
"Can't breathe," he hissed out, and she had to dip her ear over his mouth to understand him.
"Where does it hurt, Sergeant?" She whispered, palpating his body for any pain reactions or blood.
"I can't feel anything, Nurse." he hissed while coughing up blood that dripped down the side of his mouth.
Nerve damage. Possible crushing injury.
"I think I was shot, miss," he said as she wiped the blood from his mouth while frantically trying to assess him. From what she could see, there was no evidence of bullet holes. Unless…
A vision of another cold December morning from four years ago flashed through her mind. A day that saw her wildly patching up a similar injury on her mother, which in the end left her unable to move nor speak again.
"I'm just going to roll you over, Sergeant," Caroline said before she grabbed the webbing on his uniform and rolled him over on his side to reveal the canvas fabric soaked through with rust-coloured blood.
There it was—the bullet hole piercing his tunic directly through his lower spine. The lack of exit wound in his front meant only one thing, she knew from her own gruesome experience. The bullet had most likely hit his spinal cord and ricocheted across his internal organs, ripping him apart from the inside out. There was nothing she could do to save him now.
She desperately looked around for the orderly to come and scoop him up so he could spend his final moments in a bed in resus, but none was available. After a sickening thud of her heart, she knew that this soldier's last minutes on Earth would be spent with her, lying helpless in the rain and blood-saturated dirt.
"What's your name, Sergeant?" She asked sweetly, grabbing onto his limp hand and squeezing tightly.
"Henry," he gasped, his eyes looking wildly around in a panic, making her reach out to smooth the hair off his forehead. Knowing her role right now was not a nurse but a woman who loved him and would smile upon him as she tried her best to comfort him.
"Am I going to die?"
"Yes, Henry," she whispered, still clutching his hand tightly and bringing it to her lips to give him a gentle kiss.
His face relaxed slightly at the words as he closed his eyes. There was something about knowing the finality of their lives that seemed to ease the soldier's racing minds at the end. Though it always broke her heart, seeing the tears well the corners of their eyes as Henry's now were. Caroline tried to keep her voice as calm and loving as possible, gripping him harder and running her hands across his face.
"It won't be long now, darling. There's no need to be frightened. I'm here with you. I won't ever leave you." She repeated as he gasped out again, more blood falling from the corners of his mouth.
Caroline gazed into his eyes, speaking quiet, sweet words to him, clutching his fingers until they fell lifeless in her palms.
His brown eyes remained open, but all life behind them had evaporated. The only thing that comforted her was that the panic and pain had also been spirited away with it. His young face was now at peace.
"Nurse!" The next man down the row screamed at her, and her reverent moment was shattered as she gathered her composure again and returned to work.
Caroline spent the next three hours triaging the seemingly endless line of broken men. She tried not to lose all hope the farther she moved down the line seeing how many men were already dead by the time she got to them. It wasn't her fault, she repeated to herself. It's the enemy's fault, not her; she would repeat to herself whenever she looked down upon a lifeless man on his stretcher.
"Is that the last one?" Corporal Riley asked, his uniform covered in blood, his normal neat hair astray from the day's chaos. Caroline's eyes snapped up to see that he was right; somehow, she and Emily had managed to sift through the swarm so that only a few more generally stable men remained.
"Yes, he's rather lucky; his shrapnel wound was through and through," Caroline responded, wiping her hands on her already unrecognizable apron.
"You've done well, Nurse." He responded with a tired smile and a nod.
"Thank you, Corporal. So many owe their lives to you today." She reminded him with an equally weary face.
Caroline now looked around through a thick daze and noticed her surroundings. The hospital had quieted down, there were not as many trucks zooming around, and the screams of both injured men and frantic doctors faded to an exhausted hum.
For some reason, her gaze was pulled toward the horizon, and she stared in a stupor at the landscape. It was a welcomed change from the horrors she had been exposed to in the last four days. The hazy sun was just starting to slip beyond the tree line, the birds quieting in anticipation of their peaceful night's rest. How lovely it would be to come back to this place one day when the war was won, and there was nothing to mar the beauty of the land she could never enjoy. But the blood-red sunset tonight reminded her that her job was unfinished and she must return to work again.
Her glazed eyes fluttered, a cloud of exhaustion flooding her brain and body. But she knew if she stopped moving now, she ran the risk of never moving again. Tearing her eyes from the sunset, she stumbled back into the resus ward, knowing that she needed to see Matron. When she got there, the stalwart woman sat at her desk, her face unchanged as ever, signing paperwork.
Upon looking up at Caroline, her mouth tightened, and she barked quickly, "Your uniform is incorrect, Nurse. Fix it immediately. I shan't allow you on the wards in such a state of undress."
Caroline did as she was told and rolled down her sleeves to button them at her wrist and tried and failed to re-pin her hair that had fallen loose around her face from her askew veil.
"Better," Matron nodded happily, "Your work has been excellent today. And by all reports, you were a credit to our hospital during your time at the CCS."
Caroline was far too exhausted even to acknowledge Matron's words as she stood swaying on the balls of her feet, desperately trying to fight the fog that clouded her brain.
"I see fit to give you twelve hours rest. Beginning now."
If Caroline hadn't been too exhausted to speak, she would have cried out with happiness. Twelve hours rest! Oh, she wouldn't open her eyes for a moment of it! Forgetting her manners, Caroline quickly tried to turn away and make her way towards her tent, but Matron stopped her.
"Please change your apron before walking through the ward, Nurse. It wouldn't do for the men's morale to see such a sight." She added, nodding to the deep red stains covering her apron.
Caroline agreed and changed her apron before walking through the resus tent, trying her best not to look at any of the men lying there. If she did, there was a good chance she would never reach her bed and spend the rest of the night seeing their every need.
By the time she made it out into the cool evening, the sun had sunk beyond the trees, and the bloody sky had now turned to a tranquil navy blue with the beginnings of stars just poking out from behind their curtains.
Just as she turned towards the duckboards that led to the nurse's accommodations, she caught sight of the post-op tent; its door flap held open by an orderly wheeling another patient through.
Despite wanting nothing more than to crash onto her pillow, her feet and most ferociously, her heart needed something very different, and she felt herself changing course towards the ward tent.
She didn't care that she probably looked a fright. Caroline just needed to see him, his smile, and hear his laugh, even if it was at her expense. She needed to know that something in her life still made her feel alive. Especially after a day like today where she felt that there was nothing that could ever make her happy again. After not seeing him for nearly four days, her hopeless body that was purely operating out of survival desperately sought out one thing.
Caroline didn't even bother checking in with the ward sister on duty before gliding past her desk, intent on catching him before he fell asleep. As she marched towards his bed, she stopped dead, looking at his form in the bed and finding it all wrong. The person there was all brown hair and moustache, short and stocky when there should have been his tall, smiling self, pushing his golden hair out his face while she read to him.
"Is everything alright, Nurse?" the concerned man said, clearly noticing the horror on her face that she failed to conceal at the shock of finding John gone.
"Yes, I'm so very sorry for disrupting your rest." She whispered, trying to swallow the tears that threatened her resolve and ability to stand on her feet a second longer.
She turned and stumbled, her mind spinning with all the possibilities of what could have happened in the time since she had been gone. There was never any talk of moving him; she had seen his papers herself. He was nowhere near ready to be discharged. The possibilities rolled through her mind as she walked up to the ward sister's desk and stood with her arms crossed. Caroline hardly knew this woman but didn't concern herself with niceties when she spoke.
"When was bed six last moved?"
"Pardon me?" The sister balked, looking at the dishevelled nurse in front of her barking orders.
"Bed six! Private Shelby. When was he moved?" Caroline nearly yelled, her voice breaking.
"I just took over this afternoon. I know some of the patients who were faring well were transferred to the fifteenth hospital to free up space before the new influx of cases were dropped on us this afternoon."
It couldn't be possible. After everything she had been through, now she was forced to deal with the chance he had been transferred without her saying goodbye?
"How many were moved?"
"Perhaps five?"
Caroline groaned and rubbed her face with her hands, trying to bring some clarity to herself. She was causing a scene, and she knew it. If this were to get back to Matron, there would most certainly be consequences. But at this moment, she didn't care. She didn't care how this sister looked at her with displeasure at her emotional response, she didn't care if she was disciplined for it. All she cared about now was dragging her near lifeless body back to her tent and sleeping off what must be a living nightmare.
"Thank you, Sister. I'm sorry for the disruption." She whispered, her eyes low to mask her tears, and she shuffled out of the tent and into the night again.
This day had been rocketing towards her for a month now, the day that he would have to leave and return to his unit. But she was unprepared for the splanchnic reaction her body gave when faced with the news head-on, and she found that she was wholly unprepared. It was as if a piece of her was ripped from deep inside her heart and now was just floating listlessly within her. Her mind slipped back to the young soldier from today, whose torn insides had been the death of him and she swallowed hard, the tears now flowing freely down her face.
As she wandered back to her tent, a heaving sob ripped from her chest. The pain from today finally came to a head as it grappled for space within what remained of her heart. How she hoped that she could see him tonight so he could soothe her enough so that she could begin to piece herself back together. That did not seem possible for her to do anymore, now that she knew there was a chance she would never see him again.
The white tent shone ahead in the moonlight above like a beacon, the only thing able to guide her down the path. There was no lamplight on, and she wished desperately that none of the other girls were back from their shifts so that she could cry in peace.
As she shuffled closer, a lingering scent of cigarette smoke travelled through the air and met her nose; sending a craving rippling through her more than she dared to say. Searching around to see if there was someone around who she could steal a smoke off, she finally laid eyes on the glowing butt not far from the door of her tent.
"Excuse me? I know this is untoward, but may I please have a drag off your cigarette?"
"I dunno, nurse, smoking is a filthy habit."
The familiar voice caught her in the stomach, erasing all thoughts from her brain, and she found herself running toward him, crashing into his torso and clutching onto the back of his tunic like a life raft.
"John!" She cried, staring into his smiling face and taking a deep breath before hugging him close, breathing in his earthy scent and closing her eyes against the warmth flooding her.
"That's Private Shelby to you, Nurse."
"You know what I mean, you impossible man."
He laughed, and she felt the vibrations of his deep voice caressing her cheek as she pressed against him, causing her to take a shuddering breath.
"What's all this now, sweetheart? That better not have been you, I heard blubbering all the way from the ward tent." He responded, tilting her head up to meet his shining eyes.
Caroline blinked back further tears and caught them in her eyelashes, reluctantly letting go of him once she realised her lapse in judgement when she all but tackled him the moment she knew it was him.
"I was told you were transferred." She said slowly, trying to collect herself as a deep sense of relief washed over her.
"Nah, they wouldn't do that to the poor hospital next door." He teased, reaching out to caress away a tear that rolled down her cheek as she looked up at him.
"You're walking." She replied as she took another small step toward him.
Now that she knew what it was like to be held by him, her body didn't want to part from the peace his touch provided her.
"That I am. Doctor Wallace said only ten minutes a day now, though. I knew you would be back today, and when all this shit happened, I figured you would have been caught up at work. So I've been waiting a bit, ensuring you don't need anything."
"You used up all your ten minutes on me?"
"Actually, I've used about thirty, but we won't tell the doc that, will we? They've moved me to the fucking boonies of tents."
"That's what you get for putting half the ward sisters on their knees with your insufferable humour." She said, plucking the cigarette from his mouth and bringing it to her lips, taking a long puff and letting the smoke billow around them with a long satisfied moan.
"I guess I was right. You sure needed that." He laughed as Caroline nodded her head and gave him a small smile, still too emotionally fraught to even register embarrassment at her wanton behaviour this evening.
"You must've had a hell of a day, mo stór," he whispered, reaching out so his hand could cup her face and gently caress her cheek with his thumb.
"I don't know how I'm still standing."
"Well, don't let me keep you. You deserve your rest. I just wanted to make sure that you made it home safely."
"I'm supposed to be the one looking after you,"
"I sleep better knowing you're taken care of too, love."
"You're a good man, Private Shelby. I'm relieved to see you on the mend."
With a soft smile, he nodded his head and for a horrible second, it looked like he was going to walk away. But as his feet shuffled backwards, at the last second, he turned around and spoke with a hurried tone. "I'm also here because I just needed to see you,"
His words hung in the frosty air, and Caroline felt she could no longer take a breath.
"I missed you," She responded, breaking their gaze as she looked at her feet.
She could hear him move towards her, and suddenly he was right in front of her as his arms circled her back, pulling her in close to him again.
"I missed you too," he breathed against her hair, and Caroline had to swallow hard to prevent a tumble of words from escaping her lips that she may come later to regret.
Remember that he will leave. She reminded herself firmly. The day will come when he is gone for good.
"You are my lifeline," Was all she could allow herself to say as she melted into him, her head resting against his chest while the world slipped from underneath her.
"I told you I will protect you, that you'll always be safe with me," he murmured in her ear as his hands slid from behind her back, sweeping across her hips to hold her firmly by the waist, pressing them together. "You rest well." He whispered, his forehead briefly resting against hers before he broke away. But not before she was sure that she felt him place a lingering kiss on the top of her head.
Caroline couldn't imagine ever living another day without his touch.
They both stood in silence, Caroline fearful of speaking and breaking the spell around them as his hands moved slowly up and down her waist, causing all words to fail her.
"Goodnight, love. Sleep well; I will see you tomorrow."
"Goodnight," She breathed, though there was so much more her tired brain wanted to say.
A slow grin emerged on his face as he replaced the dead cigarette in his mouth with a fresh toothpick, squeezing her waist gently before slipping out of her arms.
Though she waited patiently, the butterflies in her stomach never ceased fluttering as she watched him slowly walk back toward the ward tent, a slight hitch in his step.
She wanted nothing more than to kiss him tonight; but what would he have thought if she attacked him, covered in blood and tears if she had? Perhaps tomorrow, on their walk, once she had had some time to rest she could show him how much she had truly missed him.
After catching her breath once he disappeared out of sight, she slid into the tent, her tears dry and a new complacent peace set within her. She could manage anything thrown her way as long as he was here.
"You are so busted!" A voice from a bed in the far back sounded out.
—-
John's leg was beginning to bother him by the time he returned to his tent. Sure, he could have told her the truth, but he didn't know what she would say if he told her he had waited outside her tent for at least two hours to see her. He knew he was already taking a risk absconding from his bed without permission, so he thought he would save himself the compounded stress.
Though he had missed her terribly while she was away, nothing prepared him for how his heart would feel when he saw her this afternoon, working through the endless rows of men. When he was being moved, out of the corner of his eye, her luscious hair caught the light, drawing his eye and sending his head spinning. He had seen her work before but not like this. Her apron was bloodstained, her hard-set stare moving with a flurry between agonized men. She was a soldier just as much as he, and he knew he needed to see her tonight, hoping in vain that he could help wipe away the sad exhaustion that flooded the treasured features of her face.
No nurses had been on his new tent all afternoon, so when he heard the chaos dying outside, he quietly escaped the confines of his bed and made his way out to the tents that he assumed were the nursing accommodations. He hadn't been sure which one was hers, so he waited for her in the shadows of the trees off the path. John had almost given up when he finally heard someone crying down the path.
To be honest, he was surprised when he discovered the person coming down the duckboards was her. He had never imagined her capable of tears before; her shell had always been so fully intact each time she was on the wards. He found that the tears undid something inside him, coupled with another strong feeling that almost brought him to tears.
All the risks of serious repercussions were dashed once he saw her. Even the chance that he took by surprising her outside her tent unannounced. She could have been furious at him. But she wasn't; quite the opposite, in fact.
John was unprepared for the magnitude of desire to overcome him as soon as she was pressed against his body, relishing in the softness of her cheek as she nuzzled into his neck, trying to get closer to him. All day, he had mulled over what Tommy would do if he were in John's situation. And he knew that his older brother would not have left a woman like that to go unkissed for long. So while that was his intention, to shower her with kisses, letting his hands discover every inch of her beautiful figure —
He stopped with a sharp gasp, his leg trembling underneath him as he leant against a fence post and mopped his brow, sweating profusely despite the cold air. They should have just cut the bloody thing off weeks ago and saved him the frustration of having his body feel like it was betraying him! Shrugging off the pain, he continued walking the last few metres to his tent. A good sleep would fix everything, both the throbbing of his leg and heart.
Patience was a virtue. Hadn't she told him that before? Of course, tonight wasn't their night, but he sure as hell tried his best to show her how he felt without taking things too far, given her delicate state.
His name sounded so good falling from her lips. And she had fallen into his arms and clung to him tightly. That had to mean something, didn't it? Or so he thought as he finally collapsed onto his bed.
Tomorrow he would tell her; tomorrow, he would show her that there was no other woman for him. And if the way she looked at him that night meant anything, maybe she wouldn't half mind hearing him say it either.
"The hell you've been, Shelby?" Private Mackay called out through the darkness.
"Messing with my destiny." He murmured back, his eyes fixed on the ceiling as visions of bodies moving with desire flashed across his mind's eye.
"You're lucky none of the nurses have been by in hours!"
"Yes, I am that, a lucky bastard." He replied, his voice thick with emotion.
That night he travelled far in his dreams, surrounded by swirling images and conversations flashing in his mind that kept him in such a lucid state that he couldn't determine if he was awake or dreaming.
