Page 53 of Strangers in Time

N URSE A UXILIARY

T HE WHISKERED, APRONED MAN in the chemist’s shop politely declined Molly’s offer to mix the powders, but commended her proper English spirit in trying to do her part in the midst of a global conflict.

“And you tell your mum I said so,” he added in an encouraging tone.

I wish I could , thought Molly.

She trudged down the street feeling dirty and unkempt. She had searched through Imogen’s old clothes, as Oliver had suggested, only to find them full of mold and mildew from water leaks in the flat. So she had sponged her clothes as best she could, and used a few articles of Imogen’s to shape her hair and clean her face and the rest of her body. But her shoes were stained and her stockings were beginning to droop and her hat had been squished in on one side, what with all the jostling in the Underground that night.

Two more chemist’s shops rejected her request, and neither was nearly as gracious about it as the first. The last fellow actually accused Molly of wasting his time while playing an obvious joke on him before sending her off with a flea in her ear.

“Get on with you before I say something you won’t soon forget, missy. Don’t you know there’s a bloody war going on? A belt to your shins would be the ticket if you were my daughter.”

She tried other places, shops and markets and emporiums and cafes and anywhere else that had a POSITION NEEDED sign. But the folks inside always found some reason to deny her employment. Perhaps it was her age, or her clothes—which were, though a bit grimy now, evidently once costly. They might be saving the jobs for those who they believed truly needed them, she thought.

Even though I truly do.

She had been about to give up when she saw a sign and wondered how she had missed it: COVENT GARDEN MEDICAL CLINIC brANCH .

It was posted outside of a brick building with one door and four windows facing the street. She peered in one of the windows and saw beds with sick and injured people lying in them, and nurses in skirts, capes, and hats rushing around with bottles and trays and anxious looks.

Then, when she drew away from the window and stepped inside the small vestibule, Molly saw the placard: NURSE AUXILIARIES NEEDED. INQUIRE WITHIN .

She squared her shoulders, righted her dented hat, gripped the door handle, and prepared herself to inquire within.

Molly was met by a slim nurse in a dark pleated skirt and white rubber-soled shoes. Thick worry lines etched her forehead.

“Yes?” she said. “Are you here to visit someone?”

“No, I’m here to apply for the position as a nurse auxiliary.”

The woman frowned. “What? I do not have time to waste with silly—”

“I have medical training and I want to help.”

“You are a child!”

“No, I’m not. I’m sixteen .”

“That’s still far too young for this position! Special training is required. For your information we are affiliated with the British Army and have been sent here to help with bombing victims and the like. Many of us have served in combat hospitals at the front lines.”

“Sixteen-year-old women can marry in England, and have children,” countered Molly. “People my age are working in factories and on farms raising crops, and doing a great many other things for the war effort.”

“Well, be that as it may, that gives you no right to come in here and pretend to know how to treat the sick and injured. We don’t bloody well pick cabbages here, young lady. We had a bombing recently and are overrun with casualties.”

“I know about the bombing,” said Molly. “I was there. I saw… death.”

“Then you should know better,” bristled the nurse.

“I’m telling you that I was trained to assist the sick and wounded.”

“Where?” demanded the nurse.

“In Leiston, where I was enlisted to help at the local hospital. It had been turned over for war use. Many of the wounds were very serious. The vicar’s sister, who I was staying with, was an exceptionally trained senior nurse who would assist the doctors in operations. She taught me. As did one of the doctors stationed there. I performed nursing services, from bandaging wounds to even frequently assisting in surgeries.”

“Rubbish,” snapped the nurse.

“How would you treat a serious infection, then?”

The question did not come from the nurse.

Another woman, tall and formidable and wearing the official markings of a Principal Matron—equivalent to the rank of an army major—stood in the doorway and had evidently overheard this part of their conversation. Her pale, stern features seemed cast from marble.

The nurse looked at her in surprise. “Matron Tweedy, I didn’t see you there.”

“I’m sure, Sister Helen.” She looked at Molly. “Well, child ?”

Molly looked up at her. “A serious infection?”

“Surely you know what serious infections are if you spent any time treating wounded soldiers,” said Tweedy, giving Molly a penetrating stare. “Come, come, for such an experienced nurse the answer should be an easy one.”

Molly said, “All right. We would use sulfanilamide as a disinfectant, or else shots of penicillin. Both were excellent at killing lethal bacteria, which, as you know, can quickly enter the bloodstream and lead to death by septicemia. That happened far too often. As did gangrene, of course. We had to amputate many limbs. It was really quite awful, but necessary to save lives. Because once the infection spreads, it is very difficult to stop. Death is often the result.”

The superior smile that had been playing over Tweedy’s lips vanished. “You know about penicillin and sulfanilamide, do you?”

“Sister Cooper told me that penicillin was invented by Alexander Fleming, and sulfanilamide was discovered by a researcher at the Pasteur Institute. Those medications have saved a great many lives during the war. As has plasma. It’s far more stable than actual blood, and doesn’t go foul nearly as quickly. Wounded men obviously lose a great deal of blood, and plasma works exceptionally well. And one couldn’t very well ask injured men who had lost a great deal of blood themselves to donate more. And excessive blood loss can quickly lead to shock, which, in turn, can kill rapidly. Our only problem was we could never get enough of the plasma. It was in very limited supply. I don’t know about the situation here.”

“It is quite dire here as well. And soldiers in great pain?” Tweedy said slowly. “How would you handle that?”

“We used syrettes to inject standardized dosages of morphine into the bloodstream. It rendered the men unconscious so that they could be properly administered to without struggling about and doing themselves even greater harm. We would pin the syrette to their collars to alert everyone that they had been given a dose, because morphine is quite potent and an overdose could easily kill. The hospital was quite chaotic at times, particularly when the troop ship docked and all the wounded started arriving, so we did all we could to avoid any mishaps like that.”

Sister Helen and Tweedy exchanged an astonished look.

Tweedy said, “I’m sorry that I doubted you. You evidently did help with the wounded.”

“My apologies for doubting you, too, Miss,” said Sister Helen.

“I suppose I am quite young for work such as that,” said Molly, more to herself than to either of them. “But they needed my help while I was there and thus I helped. It was the least I could do, you see. The men had sacrificed so much.” She eyed Tweedy. “So can I help here?”

Tweedy glanced at her colleague. “Well, these are extraordinary circumstances which perhaps require extraordinary measures. I was redeployed from the continent six months ago because of the injuries and disease proliferating through London presently. And we are quite short-handed, which is why we are seeking additional help. And the fact is the hospitals only provide nursing auxiliaries fifty hours of training before they go into service, and it sounds like you have had far more experience than that.”

“I often worked more than fifty hours in a single week.”

“I’m afraid that we can’t pay much. Four pounds a week, but we have a small canteen here, breakfast, elevenses, lunch, and dinner. It’s nothing fancy, of course, but it is good, healthy food.”

“That will be fine.”

“Where do you live?” asked Tweedy.

Molly almost said Chelsea, but caught herself and replied, “Not very far from here at all.”

“I’m afraid, because of your youth, we will need a letter from your parents authorizing you to work here.”

Molly didn’t hesitate. “My father will be glad to do so. Now that I’m back in London, he encouraged me to help with the skills and knowledge that I have.”

“Very public-spirited of him, too,” commended Tweedy. “Sister Helen here will take some information from you and then you can bring the letter from your father tomorrow and we can go from there. Does that suit you, um…?”

“Molly, Molly Wakefield. It suits me very well. Thank you.”

“No, thank you .”