Wynn swung open the door and winced. Shoved together in the center of the room were two desks, littered with clamps, linens, and glass bottles of carbolic lotion and disinfectant. Maps of France, battlefields, and train depots were tacked to the walls, and an overflow of charts were stacked on the desks. The results of doctors being too busy binding up patients to hassle with paperwork.
“Excuse the mess. This is what happens when you throw in two bachelors and hope for the best.”
The young woman’s gaze scanned around the room before cutting to him and revealing a razor-sharp intellect. “Are you a doctor?”
“Hope so. Otherwise I’m going to be in trouble when they find me in here.” Her expression didn’t crack.
She shuffled forward and plopped down, clinging to her injured hand. Wynn gave her a quick assessment: ashy skin, cracked lips, dry eyes, onset of arthritis. Frizzy gray hair receding under a black shawl tied under a sagging chin. Worn but sturdy clothes. Cracked boots and hunched back. Diagnosis? Accustomed to hard work and plain food. A meager lifestyle, but not poor. Until now.
Kneeling, he took her hand and gently unwrapped the cloth to reveal a cut forefinger and thumb. Bright red blood trickled from the cuts as air hit the skin. He quickly rewrapped it. “Squeeze to keep pressure on it.” Rummaging through the supplies, he scrounged up fresh gauze, linen strips, lysol swabs, and ointment and set them on the desk next to her. “How did you cut yourself?”
Neither woman said a word.
Wynn reached for the stained cloth around the old woman’s hand. She slapped him away and pointed at the younger woman, speaking in fervent Russian. The younger woman shook her head, seeming to argue as she tried to draw attention back to the old woman’s hand. Exasperated, the old woman yanked at the young woman’s skirt. It was then that Wynn noticed the tear and the stain of blood.
The injury from when she fell before running away from him. An injury she was now trying to hide in favor of her elder companion’s wound. Admirable, but pride had no function in the medical ward.
“I’d like to exam your leg,” Wynn said.
“See to her first.”
“Miss, you’re bleeding and limping, which is a more serious case. Your companion is well enough for now.”
Those ice blue eyes cut into him, assessing his capability of determining such a conclusion no doubt. Only with a tug from the old woman did she acquiesce and take a seat in the chair Wynn pulled out from Gerard’s desk.
Though dressed simply in blue and gray, her clothes were of a fine quality despite the hole torn over her shin. Ladies were not often found begging in the streets. If she wanted to maintain a sense of mystery, she had perfected the art.
Lips pursed in distaste at his choice of words—he hated saying them himself—she lifted the hem of her skirt to just below her knee. Thin, cotton stockings covered her shapely legs, but one had been rolled down to expose a piece of glass embedded in the shin. A thick, green paste had been applied to the area, but bright red dots of blood trickled down her leg. The fragment had most likely loosened during her walk to hospital.
“You’re in luck,” he said. “We won’t need to amputate after all.”
She gasped. “It is not so bad.”
“No, it’s not.”
“You are funny.”
“Thank you.”
“I did not mean it as a compliment.”
“Well, that’s put me in my place.” Moving to the stack of supplies, Wynn found an extraction kit complete with forceps, iodine, gauze, linen, and suturing needle. He’d used these on shrapnel patients more times than he cared to count. This would be the first on a woman.
“How did you come by the injury?” He was fairly certain he knew the answer, but how far to prod? Forthcoming with information the woman was not.
Panic flashed across her face. She quickly smoothed it over. “I fell.”
“On a bottle?”
“There are many things on the ground that should not be there and I tripped.”
Clearly she didn’t want to confess the true origin of her injury. He would respect her desire for privacy. For now. Rubbing his hands with a few drops of iodine, Wynn quickly laid out his tools in order of necessity, then patted the top of his desk.
“Apologies for not having a proper examination table, but this will have to do.”
Maneuvering gracefully to sit atop the desk, she then straightened out her legs with toes pointed and back straight as a board. Impeccable posture considering the pain she must be in.
Using the forceps, Wynn dipped a pad of gauze into the iodine.