Out of earshot of the wounded man she said, “Before you transport him you’ll need to bind the injured arm to his body. I resettled the artery as best I could but it’s still damaged. And I had to apply the tourniquet quite tightly because of the volume of blood loss. Remember to tell the surgeon it’s the brachial artery. When he gets to hospital he will require immediate surgery. You can’t keep such a tight tourniquet on indefinitely or else the lack of blood flow will permanently damage the limb, and it might need to come off. Now, do you have morphine?”
One of the medics, who had listened to her with growing incredulity, said, “Yes, but—”
She interrupted. “Then let me have a syrette of it to give to him. That will sedate him for the trip to hospital and also for his surgery.”
The medic blurted out, “Give you morphine? You’re just a child!”
Oliver stepped forward and said, “Um, I’m a doctor, and my daughter is just repeating what I said before you arrived.” He looked at Molly, his expression embarrassed. “She wants to be, um, a nurse, when she grows up.”
The medic looked much more at ease. “Ah, right you are. Do you want to give him the shot of morphine then, Doc?”
Oliver became quite pale. “No, you chaps go right ahead.”
After they took the injured man away, Charlie said, “That was amazin’, Molly.”
Oliver added, “I’m sorry about all that, Molly. He thinks I’m a doctor, but you were the one who saved that man’s life. I carry first aid material when I patrol and I know how to patch and bandage, but nothing like you just did.”
“I just hope he’ll recover. I tried to sound confident in front of him, but the wound was quite serious.”
They walked back to Molly’s home.
However, they found it no longer existed.
Gone by Equal Measures
The fire brigade and members of the Civil Defence’s Heavy Rescue Division finally managed to pull Mrs. Pride’s body from the rubble of what had once been the stately Wakefield home. Oliver, Molly, and Charlie stood numbly by as the dead woman’s body was placed into an ambulance and taken away. It would be determined later that nearly a hundred people were killed during this raid, five hundred more injured, and more than a hundred homes and buildings destroyed, many of them in the posh areas of Chelsea, Knightsbridge, and Mayfair.
“But she wasn’t in there when we left,” said Molly, still in shock at losing her nanny, her home, and all her possessions in a few hours’ time.
“She might have gone out and then come back for some reason,” said Oliver. “And then decided to shelter there. It is very tragic.” He looked up and down the street. All the other structures in his line of sight had remained largely undamaged aside from Molly’s and the one next to hers. He well knew there was never any rhyme or reason as to why one place was hit and another one wasn’t.
As they stood there another constable came over. “You lived there, lass?” he asked.
“W-what?” she stuttered.
“You lived there with the dead woman? The lady over there said so. Said Mrs. Pride was your nanny.”
“That’s right.”
“Where are your parents then, luv?”
Molly froze but only for an instant. “They... they were not at home. I expect them back tomorrow.”
“All right. Do you have some place to stay until they get back?”
Oliver stepped up. “She can stay with... with my wife and me. We’re friends of the family. We were here visiting Molly while her parents were gone. We went to the Underground when the sirens sounded.”
The constable glanced at Charlie. “And you, lad?”
“He’s my son,” answered Oliver promptly.
“Right then. Well, good luck to you all.”
He hurried back over to where Molly’s home had once stood.
Molly said, “Where do Charlie and I go now? An orphanage?”
She glanced at Charlie, who stared dully back at her.
“I think we can allow that discussion to wait for another time,” said Oliver.
“Mrs. Pride must be given a proper burial, but I’m not sure how to manage it. What little monies we had were inside the house.”
“Does she have family?” asked Oliver.
Molly slowly shook her head. “None that I know of. Her husband died before she came to work for us. She never mentioned children.”
“Siblings, perhaps?”
“I don’t know. It seems quite stupid on my part but we never talked about any of that,” she added guiltily.
“Well, let’s go to the bookshop and we can think things over. We’ll come up with something.”
They walked off through the smoke and destruction of the night’s bombing, past fresh rubble, and bodies under bloody sheets, and the wounded being loaded into vehicles, and slowly made their way to Covent Garden and The Book Keep. Oliver unlocked the door and ushered them in.
“I have a spare room that you and Charlie can use. Imogen kept items from her younger days that I still have and that might fit you, Molly. And I had a cousin’s son who lived with us early on in the war and who was around your size, Charlie. He left some odd bits of clothing behind.”
It was evident to both Molly and Charlie that Oliver was trying his best to remain optimistic in the face of such stark challenges.
“I have food... um, enough,” he added feebly. “And a good deal of tea.”
Molly gasped. “My ration book. It was in the house.”
Charlie said, “Gran had my book. It’s long gone by now.”
Oliver said, “It only costs a shilling to replace a lost ration book. However, it might be... difficult, since you both would have to appear in person to claim a new one. And there would be troublesome questions. Oh, before I forget, we should talk about your schooling.”
“I’m of age, all done,” said Charlie immediately.
Molly added, “I am as well, but I hope to sit for my exams next year when I turn sixteen.”
“All right,” said a relieved Oliver. He rushed off to make tea, while Charlie found himself staring at the repaired front door. Molly caught his eye.
“Charlie, is something wrong?”
He turned to her with an angry look. “Pretty much everythin’ is wrong, for both of us. Don’t you see that? We are orphans. Least I am, and you’re close to it. They’ll put us in some place with a bunch of other kids nobody cares about.”
“That’s not how it works, Charlie.”
His features tightened and he snapped, “It is how it works. I got mates. I know what happens to... to people like that.” He glanced at the door again, and his anger faded to melancholy.
Oliver returned with the teacups and a few biscuits on a tray.
They drank the tea and Charlie had two biscuits, while Molly had one. She ate it with a detached air, as her gaze ran mindlessly over the shelved books.
Oliver peered over his cup at each of them in turn. The weight of what he had just decided to do was clearly pressing down upon his slender shoulders, compacting him into perhaps a lessened version of himself. He turned to look at the till and seemed to be calculating how much money was in there.
Not nearly enough, his sober expression proclaimed. A widower without children now had two, and in contravention of the law. Orphaned children were sent to orphanages. He knew that better than most. He and his brother had gone to an orphanage when their parents had been killed in a railway accident near Doncaster.
“I really can’t believe that Mrs. Pride is gone,” said Molly. “Aside from my mother she was my only companion, really. My father was always so busy.”