“If I’m having them out, I’d rather have an operation.”
Her hands were trembling. But she was surprised how easily it came to her, the brisk voice of the no-nonsense nurse. She pulled the screen around his bed.
“Don’t be silly. We’ll have them out in a jiff. How did it happen?”
While he explained to her that his job was building runways in the fields of northern France, his eyes kept returning to the steel forceps she had collected from the autoclave. They lay dripping in the blue-edged kidney bowl.
“We’d get going on the job, then Jerry comes over and dumps his load. We drops back, starts all over in another field, then it’s Jerry again and we’re falling back again. Till we fell into the sea.”
She smiled and pulled back his bedcovers. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”
The oil and grime had been washed from his legs to reveal an area below his thigh where pieces of shrapnel were embedded in the flesh. He leaned forward, watching her anxiously. She said, “Lie back so I can see what’s there.”
“They’re not bothering me or anything.”
“Just lie back.”
Several pieces were spread across a twelve-inch area. There was swelling and slight inflammation around each rupture in the skin.
“I don’t mind them, Nurse. I’d be happy leaving them where they are.” He laughed without conviction. “Something to show me grandchildren.”
“They’re getting infected,” she said. “And they could sink.”
“Sink?”
“Into your flesh. Into your bloodstream, and get carried to your heart. Or your brain.”
He seemed to believe her. He lay back and sighed at the distant ceiling. “Bloody ’ell. I mean, excuse me, Nurse. I don’t think I’m up to it today.”
“Let’s count them up together, shall we?”
They did so, out loud. Eight. She pushed him gently in the chest.
“They’ve got to come out. Lie back now. I’ll be as quick as I can. If it helps you, grip the bedhead behind you.”
His leg was tensed and trembling as she took the forceps.
“Don’t hold your breath. Try and relax.”
He made a derisive, snorting sound. “Relax!”
She steadied her right hand with her left. It would have been easier for her to sit on the edge of the bed, but that was unprofessional and strictly prohibited. When she placed her left hand on an unaffected part of his leg, he flinched. She chose the smallest piece she could find on the edge of the cluster. The protruding part was obliquely triangular. She gripped it, paused a second, then pulled it clear, firmly, but without jerking.
“Fuck!”
The escaped word ricocheted around the ward and seemed to repeat itself several times. There was silence, or at least a lowering of sound beyond the screens. Briony still held the bloody metal fragment between her forceps. It was three quarters of an inch long and narrowed to a point. Purposeful steps were approaching. She dropped the shrapnel into the kidney bowl as Sister Drummond whisked the screen aside. She was perfectly calm as she glanced at the foot of the bed to take in the man’s name and, presumably, his condition, then she stood over him and gazed into his face.
“How dare you,” the sister said quietly. And then again, “How dare you speak that way in front of one of my nurses.”
“I beg your pardon, Sister. It just came out.”
Sister Drummond looked with disdain into the bowl. “Compared to what we’ve admitted these past few hours, Airman Young, your injuries are superficial. So you’ll consider yourself lucky. And you’ll show some courage worthy of your uniform. Carry on, Nurse Tallis.”
Into the silence that followed her departure, Briony said brightly, “We’ll get on, shall we? Only seven to go. When it’s over, I’ll bring you a measure of brandy.”
He sweated, his whole body shook, and his knuckles turned white round the iron bedhead, but he did not make a sound as she continued to pull the pieces clear.
“You know, you can shout, if you want.”
But he didn’t want a second visit from Sister Drummond, and Briony understood. She was saving the largest until last. It did not come clear in one stroke. He bucked on the bed, and hissed through his clenched teeth. By the second attempt, the shrapnel stuck out two inches from his flesh. She tugged it clear on the third try, and held it up for him, a gory four-inch stiletto of irregular steel. He stared at it in wonder. “Run him under the tap, Nurse. I’ll take him home.” Then he turned into the pillow and began to sob. It may have been the word home, as well as the pain. She slipped away to get his brandy, and stopped in the sluice to be sick. For a long time she undressed, washed and dressed the more superficial of the wounds. Then came the order she was dreading.
“I want you to go and dress Private Latimer’s face.”
She had already tried to feed him earlier with a teaspoon into what remained of his mouth, trying to spare him the humiliation of dribbling. He had pushed her hand away. Swallowing was excruciating. Half his face had been shot away. What she dreaded, more than the removal of the dressing, was the look of reproach in his large brown eyes. What have you done to me? His form of communication was a soft aah sound from the back of his throat, a little moan of disappointment.
“We’ll soon have you fixed,” she had kept repeating, and could think of nothing else. And now, approaching his bed with her materials, she said cheerily, “Hello, Private Latimer. It’s me again.”
He looked at her without recognition. She said as she unpinned the bandage that was secured at the top of his head, “It’s going to be all right. You’ll walk out of here in a week or two, you’ll see. And that’s more than we can say to a lot of them in here.”
That was one comfort. There was always someone worse. Half an hour earlier they had carried out a multiple amputation on a captain from the East Surreys—the regiment the boys in the village had joined. And then there were the dying. Using a pair of surgical tongs, she began carefully pulling away the sodden, congealed lengths of ribbon gauze from the cavity in the side of his face. When the last was out, the resemblance to the cutaway model they used in anatomy classes was only faint. This was all ruin, crimson and raw. She could see through his missing cheek to his upper and lower molars, and the tongue glistening, and hideously long. Further up, where she hardly dared look, were the exposed muscles around his eye socket. So intimate, and never intended to be seen. Private Latimer had become a monster, and he must have guessed this was so. Did a girl love him before? Could she continue to?