“Nurse . . . oh.” That morning felt like years ago already. It seemed absurd they’d only been in Paris for a day; it felt more like weeks. “The Canadian nurse with the red hair.”
“I know. It’s foolish of me.” Kate could hear Emmie thrashing about in the bedclothes. “We didn’t even see her foot. It wasn’t like those pictures we saw of the men without noses or—oh, you know. And her face—I suppose it’s the sort of thing that might happen if your hair caught fire on a candle, or you accidentally leaned too close to a fire, or goodness only knows what. Not necessarily a war injury. These sorts of things do happen. I met a woman at the settlement house who had lost both her eyebrows to a mistake with a gas jet.”
Kate groaned and buried her face in her pillow. “Emmie. What are you talking about?”
“Nurse Fellowes. Every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing her face, with all those scars.” Emmie sat up, swinging her legs over the side of the cot. Kate could see her in the darkness as a vague outline, long braid down over one shoulder. “It’s just that one doesn’t expect nurses to be hurt. Soldiers—they know they’re going to be shot at. But nurses?”
Reluctantly, Kate propped herself up on one arm. “I don’t imagine shells discriminate based on profession.”
“It seems wrong somehow, to hurt someone who’s trying to heal. War is war. I understand that. But—when someone is trying to do good . . .”
“I don’t imagine they do it on purpose.” It felt like being back at Smith again, whispering back and forth in the middle of the night. Although, admittedly, the subject matter had changed somewhat.
Kate had forgotten what it was to have a confidante, someone to talk to in the middle of the night. The last six years had been solitary ones. She had gone skating a time or two with her fellow teachers, and to the cinema as opportunity offered, but the acquaintance had never turned into friendship. The fault was hers, she knew. She felt as though she were a fraud; that if anyone got too close they would know her for what she was, not Kate Moran, Smith graduate, but Katie Moranck, whose mother scrubbed floors to keep a roof over their heads.
It was only Emmie who had seemed not to care about that, not to see her as less.
Until Julia had spoiled it all.
Emmie shivered and drew the blanket up around her shoulders. “Someone—someone told me the Germans deliberately fire at the ambulances. I know I’m not much to look at, but it’s one thing to be plain with the face one is born with and quite another thing to be—to be disfigured. Does that make me a coward?”
“Emmie?” Kate struggled to a sitting position, peering at her friend’s face in the darkness. “Is this because of that horrible British officer?”
“He wasn’t horrible. I don’t think he was unkind so much as sad. When you think about what he must have seen . . . He looks as though he hasn’t slept in a month.”
Kate muffled a yawn. “You aren’t going to offer to go plump his pillows, are you? That would be taking the angel-of-mercy act too far.”
“I’m not trying to put on an act.” The hurt in Emmie’s voice was enough to kill any thought of falling asleep.
“I didn’t mean that. I mean, I didn’t mean it like that.” Kate squeezed her eyes shut. They’d lost the habit of speaking to one another; it was like speaking a language at which she’d once been fluent and finding she was using all the wrong verbs. “It’s been a long day. I hardly know what I’m saying. I guess I’m rattled too.”
“I’m sorry,” said Emmie, immediately all concern. “I should have thought . . .”
“Never mind,” said Kate quickly. The last thing she needed was Emmie worrying over her; that would make her feel truly wormlike. “We won’t be that near the front, you know. I doubt they’ll think us worth shelling.”
“And even if they did, it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?” Emmie’s voice was very small in the large room. Kate could hear Miss Patton snoring on the far side of the room. “For the children. I should be thinking of them, not us.”
“Hmm,” said Kate.
“It will all be better once we get there. It’s the waiting that’s so hard,” said Emmie, and Kate didn’t point out that she had said the same thing on the boat, that it would all be better once they got to Paris. Well, here they were in Paris—and they did have cots, so she supposed that was better, by a certain value of better.