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
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!”
“I beg pardon?” She didn’t recognize him. Her ice blue gaze held him with a haughtiness that bespoke a life of bowing down to no one. Tall and slender, she held herself like an aristocrat.
He wanted nothing more than to get to the bottom of her midnight escapade, but not standing on the front steps for all of France to see. He dragged his attention to the other woman with a face full of wrinkles and a wrapped hand cradled to her bosom. The one in need of medical attention. “Come inside. Please.”
The lieutenant moved to block the steps. “But, sir—”
Wynn pinned him with a superior look of disgust. He hated throwing his rank around, but in this weasel’s case he was willing to make an exception. “You may resume your duties. Bed pans, was it?”
Scowling, the lieutenant scurried off. Wynn stood aside and swept his arm toward the hospital entrance. “Ladies. After you.”
Anchoring her arm around the older woman, the younger lady guided her up the remaining steps and glided into the hospital. Or glided as best she could while favoring her right leg.
The Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, or VAD, glanced up from reception. A welcoming smile on her young face. “Back so soon, Doctor?”
“Can’t keep me away. I’ll be in my office for examination.”
“Yes, sir.”
Under ordinary circumstances Wynn would never allow a patient into the private sanctum of the medical staff, but every available room was stuffed to the brim with wounded Tommies. Plus, there was one other rather alarming reason he didn’t wish to open his work quarters. At least not to ladies.