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"Yes e saluted her out of habit or relief on his way out of the tent, thrilled to have been given a task
The unifor beside Jensen He said, "There’s nothing to be done for hiet an idea of how bad it is" But sheto die, isn’t he?"
Jensen clapped the other man in the side and said, "Don’t you put it like that! Don’t talk about hi to be all right Just da to be"
Mercy very seriously doubted that the colonel could hear anything, much less any studied critique of his likely survival But when the requested ite away the layers of clotted fabric and gore as gently as possible to get at the ainst the colonel’s filthy skin, and he ht he was too far gone for pain or response
Inside the doctor’s bag, she found some ether in a bottle, as well as needles and thread, soes, and other things of varying usefulness, including another fat roll of bandages She whipped these out and unrolled theot to stop his bleeding The rest of thisgoddah here, or here--" She indicated the massive patches where his flesh had been blasted away "You need to get him out of this field Ship hiet hiht now"
She did not say that she did not think he’d ever survive long enough to make it to the nearest hospital, or that any further effort was damn near futile She couldn’t say it She couldn’t do that to them
Instead she sighed, shook her head, and said, "Mr Chase, I’ to need you to hold this lantern for me Hold it up so I can see"
She retrieved the dead doctor’s tweezers
"What are you going to do?"
"The poor bastard’s got so much scrap and shot in hi to pick out what I can, before he wakes up and objects I need you to helpwith your free hand, here Dunk it and get it good and wet Now Wherever I point, that’s where I want you to squeeze the water out to clear the blood away, so I can see You understand?"
"I understand," he said without sounding one bit happy about it
Outside, sos collided with a crash that outdid all the artillery Mercy could picture theainst each other because nothing else on earth could stop either one of them
She forced herself to focus on the shrapnel that came out of the colonel in shards, chunks, and flecks There was no tin pan handy, so she dropped the bloody scraps down to the dirt beside her feet, directing George Chase to aiht over here, please, or no--farther that way Occasionally the colonel would whimper in his sleep, even as numb with unconsciousness as he was Mercy had kept the ether bottle handy just in case, but he never awakened enough to require it Still she tweezed, pricked, pulled, and tugged theshort of a miracle held his major arteries intact
An explosion shook the tent, illuh instead of the ed and waited for the percussion to pass, waited for her ears to pop and her hands to stop shaking
Down, then Down his shoulder, to his chest and his ribs
Neveroutside, on the other side of a cotton tent that wouldn’t stop a good thunderstor sideways, fro Perhaps a quarter of a rappled with each other for their lives, and for the lives of their nations Mercy could hear it--and it was as that she could not process, not while she had this piece of bleeding h his cot So, and realized that his blood had finally pooled straight through the spot where he slept, and it was dribbling down on her shoes
She did not say, He’ll neverBut the longer she kept herself fro it, the less inclined she was to think it--and the more focused she became on the task at hand, and her borroeezers, and the quivering raw steak beneath her fingers
When she’d re that could reasonably be reain buried down in the muscles, somewhere), she dried him and wrapped hies, and showed George Chase how to use the opiuood doctor had left behind