Page 79 of Strangers in Time

He nodded, his pale features in anguish.

Oliver held the arm where Molly told him to and she very carefully chose the location before slowly wrapping the sash around the man’s upper arm, and tying it off to form a tourniquet. She then checked the blood flow and was relieved to see that it had diminished quite dramatically.

She looked down at the man. “You’re going to be fine, but you need to remain quite still. Charlie, run and get help. He needs to go to hospital straightaway.”

Charlie raced off and came back a minute later with a policeman. Molly told him what was needed, and he rushed off blowing a whistle. While he was gone Molly checked the tourniquet and wiped the sweat and blood off the man’s face. She had also used a clean handkerchief from her pocket to pack the wound. “Close your eyes and breathe in and out slowly and calmly,” she advised. “That will lower your heart rate, which will slow your loss of blood. Help will be here soon.”

“Where did you learn to do all that?” asked an amazed Oliver.

“At hospital in Leiston.”

The constable returned with an ambulance and two medics. Molly told them her diagnosis and that the injured man needed to remain very still and the tourniquet kept in place.

Out of earshot of the wounded man she said, “Before you transport him you’ll need to bind the injured arm to his body. I resettled the artery as best I could but it’s still damaged. And I had to apply the tourniquet quite tightly because of the volume of blood loss. Remember to tell the surgeon it’s thebrachialartery. When he gets to hospital he will require immediate surgery. You can’t keep such a tight tourniquet on indefinitely or else the lack of blood flow will permanently damage the limb, and it might need to come off. Now, do you have morphine?”

One of the medics, who had listened to her with growing incredulity, said, “Yes, but—”

She interrupted. “Then let me have a syrette of it to give to him. That will sedate him for the trip to hospital and also for his surgery.”

The medic blurted out, “Give youmorphine? You’re just a child!”

Oliver stepped forward and said, “Um, I’m a doctor, and mydaughteris just repeating what I said before you arrived.” He looked at Molly, his expression embarrassed. “She wants to be, um, anurse, when she grows up.”

The medic looked much more at ease. “Ah, right you are. Do you want to give him the shot of morphine then, Doc?”

Oliver became quite pale. “No, you chaps go right ahead.”

After they took the injured man away, Charlie said, “That was amazin’, Molly.”

Oliver added, “I’m sorry about all that, Molly. He thinks I’m a doctor, but you were the one who saved that man’s life. I carry first aid material when I patrol and I know how to patch and bandage, but nothing like you just did.”

“I just hope he’ll recover. I tried to sound confident in front of him, but the wound was quite serious.”

They walked back to Molly’s home.

However, they found it no longer existed.

GONE BYEQUALMEASURES

THE FIRE BRIGADE ANDmembers of the Civil Defence’s Heavy Rescue Division finally managed to pull Mrs. Pride’s body from the rubble of what had once been the stately Wakefield home. Oliver, Molly, and Charlie stood numbly by as the dead woman’s body was placed into an ambulance and taken away. It would be determined later that nearly a hundred people were killed during this raid, five hundred more injured, and more than a hundred homes and buildings destroyed, many of them in the posh areas of Chelsea, Knightsbridge, and Mayfair.

“But she wasn’t in there when we left,” said Molly, still in shock at losing her nanny, her home, and all her possessions in a few hours’ time.

“She might have gone out and then come back for some reason,” said Oliver. “And then decided to shelter there. It is very tragic.” He looked up and down the street. All the other structures in his line of sight had remained largely undamaged aside from Molly’s and the one next to hers. He well knew there was never any rhyme or reason as to why one place was hit and another one wasn’t.

As they stood there another constable came over. “You lived there, lass?” he asked.

“W-what?” she stuttered.

“You lived there with the dead woman? The lady over there said so. Said Mrs. Pride was your nanny.”

“That’s right.”

“Where are your parents then, luv?”

Molly froze but only for an instant. “They… they were not at home. I expect them back tomorrow.”

“All right. Do you have some place to stay until they get back?”

---