“Thanks, mate. If you see me go down, prop me up with a broom.”
He walked around to the side of the building where large pots of boiling water had been set up for disinfecting stained aprons, gloves, and masks. A good soak in bleach and a vigorous scrubbing with lye and the surgical items would be ready to greet the next patients with medical cleanliness. Hurrying back inside, he was careful to stay out of view. If he were spotted by a militant nurse he’d never find his bed.
He quickly checked out. The nurse on duty tipped her head as Wynn signed the logbook. “See you in six hours, Doctor MacCallan.”
“Aren’t you the wishful thinker?” Wynn slipped his arms into his constricting jacket, not bothering with the tie.
“Someone has to be.”
“Too right about that. Good night.”
“Good night, Doctor.”
Leaving the hospital, Wynn turned down the empty Boulevard de Courcelles and started walking the two blocks to where he and the other doctors were quartered. He was grateful his special pass allowed him out after curfew or he’d be forced to pitch a tent in his office until morning. The cobblestone street was lined with tall maple trees in the full bloom of green. Quintessential Parisian sandstone buildings with tiny wrought iron balconies and intricate carvings stood guard against the slow passing of time as hurried generations passed before their solemn gazes. Gas lamps rested silently from their hooks on street poles as the City of Light was forced to extinguish her glow while surrounded by war. She sighed now after the exhaustion of a washed-out day as her beauty sparkled under the brilliant coaxing of moonlight.
The air was heavy with summer, a blessing after one of the coldest winters in France’s history. The people of Paris had taken to chopping down doors and furniture that had withstood innumerable revolutions to keep fires going in their homes, but it couldn’t prevent the numerous deaths from exposure. Conditions on the battlefield were a thousand times worse. It was a miracle any of the soldiers had survived. Injuries of shell fragments, shattered bones, and bullet holes had turned to frostbite and hypothermia.
“Non!” The shriek carried down the empty street. Three doors ahead, a woman stood in the entrance shouting in French at a person standing on her front steps.
The person, draped in a long shawl that covered their head, took a step back and held up their hands as if pleading. A woman by the slender shape and fringe of her covering.
“Non!” The Frenchwoman grabbed a bottle from behind her and raised it as if preparing to hurl it.
The shawl woman stumbled to the footpath, blocking her face and head with her arms. With a vicious screech, the Frenchwoman lobbed the bottle into the street, then turned and slammed the door behind her. Glass shattered. The panicked woman turned away but caught her foot on the edge of her shawl, tripping her into the street and the broken glass. As she cried out in pain, her hood toppled back to reveal a sheen of silver hair and face that could have been carved from exquisite ice. Yanking the covering back in place, the woman stumbled to her feet and lurched forward.
“Miss!” Wynn hurried toward her. “You’re hurt. Let me help you.”
Clutching her shawl, the woman hobbled across the street and slipped between the gates to the Parc Monceau. Wynn raced after her. She was quick, darting among the trees and their shadows until breaking through the tall black gate on the opposite side. By the time he reached the gate, she had vanished across the five-point intersection of Rue de Courcelles and Avenue Hoche. Commonly filled with the clatter of carriages and carts and pedestrians, it lay empty in the hours after curfew.
How could an injured woman move that fast? The injury was most likely bleeding. He scanned the ground. Drops of blood leading down Avenue Hoche. Feeling all too much like a hound, he followed the wet trail until it turned down an alleyway. The tall, surrounding buildings closed around him as he slipped down the narrow passage and emerged into a small courtyard behind a squat building with conical roofs topped by gold balls and crosses. A church. A Russian Orthodox church, to be exact. He’d never been in this neighborhood before.
The woman crept from a dark corner of the courtyard. Her limp had worsened and she was breathing hard. She needed medical attention.
A siren exploded in the distance. Hospital alarm. Wounded conveys incoming, which meant all hands to the operating theater.
There were other doctors. Wynn wasn’t needed despite the urging in his veins. He stepped into the courtyard and collided into a set of rubbish bins. The metal lids clattered to the stone ground.
The woman dashed across the courtyard and yanked at a cellar door at the back of the church.
“Wait!” Wynn called.
The woman rushed inside and slammed the door behind her. The sound of a rusty lock clicked in place.
The siren sounded again. He could ignore it no longer. With one last frustrating glance to the door, Wynn took off running back to hospital.
The operating theater bustled with activity until the wee hours of the morning. Soldiers from the offense exploding around Reims. Sometime around five, after his last patient was carried off to a recovery room, Wynn dozed off in a corner chair only to be awakened by the gentle shaking of a nurse.
“Doctor, there’s no need for you to remain. Please go home and rest.”
A flock of Voluntary Aid Detachment nurses had descended to clean and tidy the once grand dining room that was now filled with operating tables, surgical tools, and apparatuses imperative to his work. Only a bin filled with filthy and bloody bandages served as proof to the night’s frantic endeavors.
Wynn came awake in an instant. A habit forged in occupational necessity. “I’ll check on my patients first. There was one head case—”
“Doctor Byeford is doing a round and has promised to alert you if there is a need. Shoo, Doctor.”
“Aye-aye, Sister.” Pushing to his feet, he gave her a mock salute. One never argued with the Sisters. The medical staff would be hopeless without them.
After discarding his surgical apron, mask, and gloves and a good scrubbing of the hands, Wynn made for the front door with his bed calling to him. This time he might actually make it.
“We don’t take your kind here. Find the All Saint’s Chapel. They’re taking on cases likes yours.” A baby-faced lieutenant straight out of medical school blocked the front steps to what appeared to be two women wrapped in colorful shawls despite the summer air.
“Please. She cannot make it so far,” said the taller one. Russian. And highly cultured from the sound of it.
“I’m sure you’ve a mystic in your traveling caravan to chant over your troubles. What was that chap’s name? Rasputin? I hear he took real good care of your Imperial family. Especially the tsarina.”
“You know nothing of which you speak, impudent slovach.” The woman’s tone was brittle as an icicle.
Wynn stepped forward before the lieutenant could further prove his worthlessness. “May I be of assistance?”
The little man whipped around and paled. “Doctor MacCallan. I was telling these people that their needs will be better assisted at the refugee chapel in Paris. Where their kind are.”
“That’s over eight kilometers from here.”
“Yes, sir, but they can’t—”
Wynn sidestepped his blethering. “What needs have you, ladies?” Any further words stuck in Wynn’s throat as the woman turned to face him. The early gray morning light sculpted her like white marble just as she had appeared a few hours before, falling in the street. In a word, breathtaking. “You!”