[Sidenote: The hospital floors are crowded.]
But, grace to heaven, the Germans did not come that night! At midnight I
went into Ward 4, where some of the worst wounded had been placed.
Stretchers had been laid on top of the beds and flat on the floor on
both sides of the central aisle, till one could hardly move. Most of the
wounded seemed to sleep. Only here and there one begged for water, and
these men were usually wounded in the abdomen where not even water
could be given. We could moisten their lips and wipe off the hot
feverish faces, and that was all.
[Sidenote: Everything possible has been done.]
By one o'clock it was evident that the most of what could be done had
been done. Another section of our women had arrived with more food, and
I went out to the covered way between the receiving room and the
operating room, to steal a ride home on the driver's seat of some
departing ambulance. An English boy, who had been gassed, asked me
hoarsely if I could get him a blanket, and I did so. Another man was
there, on whose eyelashes and eyebrows something that looked like ice
seemed to hang. I think it was an application to soothe gas-burns.
It was two o'clock before I got to bed at the mess. The English officer
was still occupying my apartment. I might pass off my action in
resigning it to him as philanthropy, but candor compels me to admit that
I was glad of an excuse to stay at the house where there was company in
case of a bombing raid.
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