All Clear

It was locked. She banged on it for what seemed like an eternity and then ran to the next one, and the next. The last one opened onto a narrow, dimly lit corridor, and at one side a counter and sign: Dispensary.

Eileen ran up to the counter, praying there was someone behind it.

There was—a plump, sweet-faced woman in a gray dress with white cuffs and collar and a cameo at her throat. She looked out of place, as if she should be presiding over a tea party.

She won’t be of any help at all, Eileen thought, but there was no one else.

“I have two patients outside, and I can’t find where to go, the doors are all locked, and the ambulance driver’s unconscious and the other one’s bleeding badly,” she said, thinking, I’m babbling, she’ll never be able to understand, but amazingly, the woman did.

“Where’s the ambulance?” she said, snatching up a telephone. “Outside this door?”

“Yes, I mean, no. It’s—I kept trying doors and they were all locked. I—”

“Bring the ambulance round to this door,” the woman ordered, and said into the telephone, “I have an emergency here in the dispensary. I need a stretcher crew immediately, and tell them we’ll need a transfusion.”

“Thank you,” Eileen breathed, and ran back out to the ambulance, scrambled in, said to Binnie, “I’ve found help,” and started the ambulance. By the time she’d backed it up to the dispensary door, a group of attendants was already there, opening the back doors, loading the driver and the officer efficiently onto wheeled carts, and draping them with white sheets.

“He’s bleedin’,” Binnie said, scrambling out of the ambulance after them. “You got to apply direct pressure.”

The attendant nodded. “Go with her and make your report,” he said to Eileen, pointing to the nurse standing next to the stretchers.

“I’m not—” Eileen began.

The nurse herded her and Binnie through the door. “Where are you injured?” she asked as soon as they were inside.

“She ain’t,” Binnie said. “It’s them what’s ’urt.” She pointed at the stretchers they were bringing in.

“Come with me,” the nurse said, and led them down the corridor after the carts, which the attendants were pushing at breakneck speed.

The nurse was walking almost as quickly. “I’m not the ambulance driver,” Eileen said, trying to keep up with her. “The injured woman is. They recruited me because I could drive—”

The nurse wasn’t listening. She’d raised her head and was listening to a drone of planes which was growing louder and louder.

Oh, no, Eileen thought, was St. Bart’s hit on the twenty-ninth?

They turned down another corridor, and then another, at the end of which the carts disappeared through a pair of double doors. “Wait here,” the nurse said, and went through them, too.

“You ain’t gonna have to file a report, are you?” Binnie asked.

“A report?”

“Yeah, about us takin’ the ambulance. We won’t ’ave to tell ’em our names, will we?”

“Where’d you two go?” Alf asked, appearing out of nowhere.

“Where’d we go?” Binnie said indignantly. “You were the one what disappeared.”

“I never. I went to find where to go, like you told me—”

“Shh,” Eileen said. “This is a hospital.”

Alf looked around. “What are you standin’ ’ere for? I thought you said you ’ad to go to St. Paul’s.”

“I do, but the nurse—”

“Then we better go before she comes back. The ambulance is this way,” Alf said.

“We can’t drive the ambulance to St. Paul’s,” Eileen said. “The hospital needs it.”

“But if they ain’t got nobody to drive it, it ain’t no good to ’em. We might as well take it,” Alf said, ever practical.

“And if we don’t, ’ow’ll you get there?” Binnie asked. “It’s miles, and the trains’ve stopped running.”

“They have? What time is it?” Eileen asked, glancing at her watch.

It was nearly eleven. Mike would have long since come back to Blackfriars looking for her. He’d have no idea where she’d gone. She had to get back there.

But how? The planes were growing steadily louder, and fires were already blocking nearly every street that led back to Blackfriars. And they’d have spread during the time they’d been here. Soon no one would be able to get anywhere near it or St. Paul’s. The entire City would be ablaze, and there’d be no way to get to Mike or Polly. Or to Mr. Bartholomew, whom they’d surely found by now. They’d each promised they wouldn’t go without the others, but what if the drop was only open for a short time? What if they hadn’t any choice but to go without her?

“Where did you say the ambulance was?” she asked.

“This way.” Alf plunged down a corridor.

“Wait,” Eileen said. “How do you know it’s still there? Someone else may have taken it out.”

Alf reached in his pocket and held the key up. “I took it out when I was lookin’ for you. So nobody could pinch it.”

“Alf!”

“There’s lots of thieves about during raids,” he said innocently.

“We better go before that nurse comes back and asks us our names,” Binnie said.

“This way,” Alf said, “quick,” and led them back through a maze of corridors to the one that led to the dispensary.