Angel of the Somme: The Great War, Book 1 (7 page)

Chapter Ten

Rose looked over her supply laden cart, abject terror in her eyes.

“You’ll do fine,” Lily reassured for the umpteenth time. “It’s just a blanket bath. It’ll be exactly the same as when you practiced on me.” Surely Lily’s hour and a half rehearsal with Rose must have eased her mind somewhat.

“It’s not exactly the same,” Rose said, blinking down at the row of neatly folded washcloths before her.

“Mostly the same.” Lily smiled. “All except for that crucial…oh let’s say two percent of exterior plumbing,”

Rose blinked.

“Okay, maybe four percent. Depending.” Lily nudged Rose, hoping for a grin. Rose released a trembling sigh instead.

“Come along, Rose. Bathing men is just like taking off a bandage.”

“A frightening surprise beneath?” Rose looked over in horror.

“No. It’s best to tackle the task quickly and without a lot of forethought.” Lily poured hot water into the metal basin atop her cart, then did the same to the dish on Rose’s cart. She pushed her cart through the ward door with confidence, resisting the urge to look over her shoulder to see if Rose followed.

Hoping that a familiar face might put Rose at ease, Lily steered her cart to her favorite corner of the room, toward Gordy and Sam. She’d not had a chance to converse with Sam since his morphine-fueled flirtations the previous day. She was more than a little curious about how he’d respond to her with a clearer mind, though she had to admit she felt a strange mixture of dread and excitement. He had a way to muddle up her head like no one else.

He’d been so charming, so sweet in his confession of attraction, but Lily knew that a drug-addled mind was likely to say any number of foolish things. Still, the charming captain had never been anything but sincere with her. And every night as she’d drifted off to sleep, she played their conversation over and over again in her mind.

It wouldn’t do to bathe him herself, however. He’d likely remember every word he’d said and would be far too embarrassed by such intimate contact with her so soon. Better to have Rose tend to the captain while Lily bathed sweet, chatty Gordy.

Just as they pulled up to their patients, however, Rose stopped her.

“Lily, you mustn’t make me bathe Captain Dwight.” Rose gave Lily a desperate look.

“Why ever not, Rose?” Lily asked. She was trying to be patient with her, but the wilting flower was becoming a bit of a trial. “I assure you, he’s a gentleman.”

“Oh, that’s not it.” Rose shook her head. “It’s with his, you know, his seizures. Can’t I bathe the other one? The lieutenant? I’d feel so much better if I didn’t have to fret that my patient might pitch a fit in the middle of the bath.”

Lily sighed. She supposed her roommate had a legitimate point. Even if bathing Sam put her in a somewhat awkward position, it wouldn’t be fair to put any more stress on Rose. The poor thing was already strung as tight as a barbed wire fence.

“Fine,” Lily capitulated. She briskly moved her cart beside the captain’s bed while Rose wheeled hers next to Gordy.

“Good morning, Bluebird.” Gordy’s voice sounded so formal that Lily scarcely recognized him. “We’re getting blanket baths, are we?”

“That you are,” Lily said with much forced cheer.

“Blanket bath?” Sam asked. “You wash our…linens?”

Lily shook her head. First Rose and now Sam. Modesty was running amok at New Bedlam. “I wash
you
, Captain.”

Sam’s Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

“Miss Lewis,” Gordy said from just behind Lily’s shoulder. How interesting. He still hadn’t gotten around to calling her roommate “Rosebud” to her face. Until that moment, Lily was convinced Gordy didn’t have a shy bone in his body. Apparently, he had at least one, and it was Rose-shaped.

“We’ll just get started then.” Lily focused her attention on a distinctly uncomfortable Sam. “It’ll be nice to feel fresh again, won’t it?”

“Yes,” Sam mumbled with an absolute lack of conviction.

“First we’ll remove their top, then begin soaping,” Lily called over her shoulder. “Just follow my lead, Rose.” Lily stepped toward Sam and swiftly began the process of unbuttoning his hospital blues. As she leaned over, she took the opportunity to make a confession.

“This is Rose’s first blanket bath,” she whispered. “She’s a little terrified.”

“Oh dear,” Sam said, a look of empathy shining in his eyes. “I thought I was the only one.”

Lily smiled. His self-depreciating honesty never ceased to charm her.

“Once his top is off, place the warming blanket over him and then you can make your mitten,” Lily called loud enough for Rose to hear.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Rose, I’m just Lily. I’m still not a ma’am!”

Rose tittered nervously and Lily shook her head.

“I don’t think Rose’s giggles are going to do much for poor Gordy right now,” Sam murmured.

Lily’s leaned down to whisper, “Though he likely deserves it, I don’t want to torment him or Rose. Any ideas?”

Sam thought for a moment. “So, Gordy,” he called in a loud voice, “why don’t you tell us a little more about that grizzly bear you fought?”

“I’m not entirely sure I remember that story.” Gordy sounded completely stunned.

“Sure you do,” Lily said, catching on in an instant. “You must tell Miss Lewis the story about the bear. He’s a bona fide Canadian, Rose. Fellows from Canada tame the wilderness like an Englishman drinks tea.”

“A grizzly bear?” Rose sounded delighted. “You fought a bear, truly?”

Sam chucked and murmured, “As true as anything the lad says.”

“Well, yes. Yes, I did.” Gordy’s voice sounded steadier with each word. “It was while hunting caribou up in the Yukon.”

“Well done,” Lily said quietly to Sam as she removed his top. Though she’d bathed him before, he’d always been unconscious. To be so near to him while he was bare-chested brought her heart rate up in a way that would have severely disappointed any proper Army nurse.

Lily plucked a washcloth off the cart and folded it carefully around her hand, creating a makeshift mitten, just like she’d learned in training. Perhaps once she started bathing him, routine would take over and her heart rate would be a little more cooperative. “And, Rose, don’t forget to bathe him as he talks.”

“Yes, ma’am—I mean Lily.”

Lily shook her head. “Ma’amed by someone only a year younger than myself.”

“And how old is that?” Sam tilted his head toward her as she dipped her mitten into the basin of hot water and began to work up a lather.

“Twenty-three, Captain Dwight.”

“It’s Sam. When you call me ‘Captain Dwight’, it feels a great deal like being ‘ma’amed’ I suspect.”

Once she had a good lather worked up, she dabbed at his forehead, then around his eyes and down his stubbled cheeks. His eyelids drifted closed and he released a soft sigh. Lily had to bite the insides of her cheeks to keep from grinning. He found such joy in the simplest of pleasures.

“You could use as shave as well, Captain.” She was careful to make her tone sound as nurselike as possible.

“They’re not trusting me with a razor yet,” Sam said.

“We can tend to that later tonight. Or tomorrow if we run out of time.”

“Thank you, Lily. That would be lovely.”

She felt his gaze on her the way a person would feel a sunbeam on their arm—bright and warming. She fought the urge to meet his eyes and concentrated instead upon rinsing the soap from his face and neck.

“While I’m at it, I’d like to check your wound. I don’t believe your bandage has been changed since your last seizure.”

Sam turned his head to the side and Lily examined the small rectangular bandage just above his right ear. It was still white and clean. She removed it with a practiced tug, relieved to find only a few drops of blood on the gauze. The wound itself was no longer swollen. It was an inch long, a jagged line closed by stitches. A small indentation ran the length of the injury. Once Sam’s hair grew back, it would be impossible to know he’d even been injured.

Lily folded a fresh bit of gauze and reapplied the bandage. From the next bed, Gordy was enthusiastically describing the harrowing details of a caribou stampede. The splashing sounds indicated that either Rose was getting on with bathing him or perhaps Gordy was reenacting caribou fording a stream.

Once she’d rebandaged Sam’s head, she washed and rinsed his arms. As she scrubbed his chest, she couldn’t help but notice that he appeared slightly thinner since his last bath. She rubbed her washcloth in a circular motion across his pectoral muscles, and when she glanced up, he still watched her with that same intent look in his eye.

“Is something the matter?” Lily asked.

“Nothing at all.” He coughed and shifted his gaze to the ceiling.

As Lily began to rinse his chest, she remembered his request from yesterday. “Oh, yesterday you said something…”

“Yes?” he interrupted nervously.

“…about a friend of yours that might have been admitted. You asked me to check the registry for any new patients from Cornwall.”

“Oh, that!” Sam said, his face awash in relief. “Certainly, I remember that.”

“I should have mentioned it straight away,” Lily continued as she patted his chest dry. “I checked last night. We had all of two phosgene admissions and they were both from a Pals regiment in Yorkshire. None from Cornwall, I’m afraid.”

“Thank you for checking,” Sam replied. He opened his mouth as if he wanted to add something, then quickly closed it again.

“How’re you doing, Rose?” Lily called over her shoulder. “Things have gotten very quiet over there.”

“I suppose I’m doing all right,” Rose said with absolute lack of conviction.

“And you’re rinsing, aren’t you, Rose?”

“Rinsing!” Rose said the word as if it were a curse.

Lily turned around and then allowed a wide grin to spread across her face. She leaned down to Sam’s ear. “Gordy is an absolute chatterbox, especially when he’s getting a bath. Something very odd is going on with him when it comes to Rose.”

“Gordy,” Sam called, “why don’t you tell Miss Lewis about your battles with river sharks. Those tales are most interesting.”

“Oh yes,” Rose enthused. “I’d love to hear about that!”

“Very well,” Gordy began. “A river shark is a formidable foe and I’ve faced a few in my day…”

Lily laughed, but quietly enough to not offend Gordy. “Well done!” She gave Sam a grin. “Now, if you’ll just turn to face the wall, I’ll get to work on your backside.”

“Backside?” Sam raised his brows.

“Backside,” Lily said firmly, making a rolling gesture with her hand.

Sam turned toward the wall while Lily secured the blanket and rolled it along with him. Before he could settle into position, she slipped her hand beneath the covers and untied the drawstring that held his drawers around his hips.

“If you would please lift up, I can slide your drawers down,” she said.

He shifted slightly. She shimmied his drawers past his hips, down his legs and whisked them off his feet.

“Your back first, then buttocks,” she announced. Medical terminology and a professional attitude usually eased a patient’s mortification. She only hoped it worked with Sam.

She placed her mitten on the center of his back and he jumped a little. Even through the cloth, she could feel his muscles were tightly drawn. She leaned down to his ear. “Relax. Pretend I’m Matron Marshall.”

He laughed a little and she could feel his back muscles loosen. She began to move the soapy cloth across his shoulders, then down his back. As she adjusted the warming blanket, her fingertips brushed across his skin. She heard him intake his breath in a loud gulp.

Dear god, he was as bad as Rose.

“Sometimes it helps to chat when a person is feeling awkward,” she suggested. “It seems to be working for Gordy and Rose. Perhaps you could tell me about your farm?”

“Perhaps…oh dear. Would you mind terribly if you were the one talking instead?”

“Me?” She soaped up the cloth, then began to rub circular motions down the small of his back.

“Well, yes,” Sam said. “Since you already know so much about my life, through all my letters and such, perhaps instead you could tell me about yourself, about your life before the war. Canada can’t be all grizzly bears and river sharks. Tell me about your family.”

“Ah, it’s just my father and me. My mother died of typhus before I was old enough to know her.” She swished her washcloth in the basin, then began to rinse his shoulders. “It’s a very boring story, really. Only child of the frontier doctor.”

He laughed. “Sounds like the adventure of a lifetime.”

“Not so glamorous, really. He has a small clinic that tends to fishermen and loggers, mostly. It was enough to teach me the basics.”

She slid the warm cloth slid down to rinse his buttocks, moving across his skin with smooth strokes. His cheeks tightened involuntarily as she patted him dry. He took in a shaking breath.

Poor Sam.

“There, we’re nearly done.” She attempted to keep her tone both cheerful and professional. “If you’d just roll onto your back, I can wash your legs and finish things up.” She didn’t need to mention that
finishing things up
included his private area, that area of external plumbing which had so terrified Rose.

“Ah,” Sam said. “Perhaps if we could just, ah, wait a moment?”

“Sooner started, sooner ended,” Lily replied.

When she looked at his hands, she could see he’d clenched them into fists. “It’s just that I… Oh, Lily.” He let out his breath in a whoosh. “It’s bad enough that I said all those things to you yesterday while on morphine. I really couldn’t endure…you know.”

She leaned down to speak into his ear. “I’m a VAD. It’s nothing that I haven’t washed before.”

His cheek blushed furiously. She couldn’t help but smile at his sweet response, relieved that he couldn’t see her.

Sam sighed. “It’s just that, ah, how to say? I’m experiencing a rather unfortunate reaction.”

An erection was a perfectly natural response to a blanket bath, but one which was terribly embarrassing for patients. She knew Sam would have to be especially mortified. Lily didn’t move away from his ear. “It’s all right, Sam. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve had that particular reaction while I bathed you.”