A Question of Honor by Charles Todd Page B

understand each other,” he said through clenched teeth.
    A disembodied voice, with the thick accent of the north of England, came from the other side of the debris. “He won’t let us give him morphine. He thinks it’s a trick.”
    “Yes, well, he may soon regret that,” I replied, and began moving some of the smaller bits of wood in front of me.
    “Careful, Sister,” someone shouted from the other side. “It’s like skittles, touch one and the lot goes down.”
    I worked more slowly, but it was necessary to get close enough to deal with the wound. The orderly beside me said, “Here, let me,” and moved into my place, working with care.
    “I was a miner once,” he said, just as a part of the flooring above came down over us, like a roof fallen in. “But this is the best we can do.”
    I took his place again and slid as close as I could to the wounded man. It was then I could see what no one else had, a pointed shard of wood pinning the officer’s arm to the wall, for all the world like a spear.
    “What’s your name?” I asked as I sat there judging what to do next.
    “Graham,” he said, biting off the word.
    The way the shard of wood was angled was making it hard for Lieutenant Graham to breathe, jamming that arm tight against his chest. And there was no room on his other side to escape from it.
    “I’m going to work now,” I said calmly, more calmly than I felt. “Put down that revolver, Lieutenant, if you want any hope of salvaging your arm. I refuse to be shot by accident.”
    He didn’t move at first, and then he cried out as he lowered his other arm, inadvertently pulling against his shoulders.
    I thought, If I can remove that shard—or have the orderly with me do it—there’s a good chance he’ll lose his arm with it. But if I can dig around the point, we might be able to pull out the Lieutenant and that spear with him, and let a surgeon finish the task.
    “ I need something sharp—a heavy spoon, an entrenching tool, something.”
    The orderly scrambled away, and just as quickly he was back with a bayonet and a large steel spoon of the kind used to cook for great numbers of people.
    “That should do the trick,” he said.
    The spoon was too dull, the bayonet too heavy, but I managed to get it where I wanted it, and then began to dig.
    The orderly touched my arm. “Clever, that. Let me.”
    I moved away, holding the bayonet in place until he could take it. He went to work with a will, but Lieutenant Graham cried out with each stroke as it jarred the piece of wood and the arm sliced by it.
    “I told you, you’re going to regret not taking the morphine,” I said.
    “Shut up,” Lieutenant Graham answered rudely.
    We worked for half an hour before we freed the point of the wood shard. And then we had to work around so that we could bring it and the Lieutenant out together.
    We had just started that when someone up above shouted, “ Gas .”
    We dropped everything and dug in our pouches for our gas masks. I was able to reach the Lieutenant’s and hold it in place. He was breathing shallowly as it was, and I was relieved when another voice called, “ False alarm .”
    We had to take the risk of dismantling more of the jumble of wood supports, and as I was helping on my side, I caught a glimpse of one of the men on the far side, a brief one as he turned to fling part of the flooring from above out of the way.
    I said nothing, looked quickly back at my patient, so that no one could read my expression.
    One of the men who had been helping me all afternoon was Lieutenant Wade .
    I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to remember exactly what I’d seen. Yes, it was Wade, except that he had a long-healed scar across his jawline. Not where it distorted the features but where he must have once been shot in the face.
    It hadn’t been there when he served under my father. And in the dark and rain the first time I’d seen him, I hadn’t noticed it.
    The orderly with me said, “Are you all