The Surgeon's Lady by Carla Kelly

started across the quadrangle at a trot, then told another mate to stay with Davey upstairs.
    “Come along,” he said.
    “Where is he going?” she asked, gesturing after the other surgeon, who by now had reached his own quarters in the same row of houses where Lt. Brittle lived. “Surely you have had less sleep than he.”
    “No. His wife was in confinement all last night and delivered a son. The baby is doing well, but his wife is not. I don’t think she will live.”
    “Poor man,” Laura murmured.
    “Sometimes it’s hard to believe that anyone dies in this world except soldiers, sailors and Marines, but it is so.” He picked up his apron, turned it inside out, and put it back on. “If you were dipping your toe in the River Styx with Davey, it’s time for a complete dunking now. Just do as we tell you. Remember this—there isn’t anything you can’t wash off your hands.”
    What am I doing? she thought, as she hurried to keep up with the running men. Casting dignity aside, she pulled up her skirts and lengthened her stride as a seaman in a jolly boat cast an expert line to another sailor on the pier and snugged the boat tight to the dock.
    Other orderlies and mates had arrived at the dock and were helping the men in the jolly boat onto land, where some of them sagged and then collapsed on the pier, unable to move. She saw two women in black already moving among them gesturing and then kneeling beside the wounded.
    “They’re matrons from other blocks,” Lt. Brittle said as he slowed his pace enough for her to catch up. “Good. Brian already has a bandage satchel. Here we go.”
     
    Laura stayed on the dock for three hours. It seemed strange to her that birds could still sing in such a place of carnage, but they did. At intervals between the groans and shrieks of men in more pain than she could imagine, she could hear the sound of hammering from the nearby drydocks, and in the distance, a knife grinder calling. Somewhere, at least, life was going on as usual.
    She did what Lt. Brittle told her to do, asking no questions.
    The surgeon was scarcely recognizable, covered inblood. Once or twice, he stood away from the tree and let an orderly throw a bucket of water on him, then give him a new apron.
    Then it was over. The matrons returned to their blocks, following a macabre parade of the walking wounded. The orderlies began to throw buckets of water on the bloody pier, and one gathered up Lt. Brittle’s capital knives.
    “Careful of those,” he called. “When they’re washed, sharpen them.” He smiled then, for the first time in hours. “Oh, hang it. You know how to take care of them better than I do! Sorry, lad.”
    Another orderly helped her to her feet. She wanted to at least smile her thanks to him, but her face was stiff. She put a hand to her cheek and felt the dried blood there. She wanted to cry, but that would have taken more energy than she possessed. She just stood there and stared at the surgeon.
    He came to her then and did nothing more than take her in his arms. She still could not cry or speak, until he took her chin in one hand and gave her a little shake. She gasped, and then looked at him.
    “Can you manage?” he asked.
    “I can,” she said, only because that was the answer he needed.
    He spoke to the closest orderly. “Would you walk this nice lady back to my quarters and turn her over to my housekeeper?”
    “Aye, aye, sir,” the orderly said with a grin. “This makes me the most fortunate bloke in the Royal Navy and the envy of me peers.”
    What he said struck Laura as funnier than anything shehad ever heard before. She laughed, which only made Lt. Brittle look at her closely.
    “I am not given to hysterics, sir,” she told him, and saw the relief in his eyes. “You must admit what he just said is funny, and indicative of the rascals this navy seems to attract. I’m a sad case and I’ve ruined my one remaining dress.”
    The surgeon’s relief was almost palpable,