And Tom had been caught in this sudden attack! Evacuated to Lyse! The field hospitals, as well as this one at Clair, were overcrowded. It was a long way to take wounded men to Lyse to be operated upon.
“Operated upon!” The thought made Ruth shudder. She turned sick and dizzy. Tom Cameron crippled and unconscious! An arm torn off! A cripple for the rest of his life!
She looked at the bloody fingerprints on the envelope. Tom’s blood, perhaps.
He was being taken to Lyse, where nobody would know him and he would know nobody! Oh, why had it not been his fate to be brought to this hospital at Clair where Ruth was stationed?
There was a faint call from one of the patients. It occurred twice before the girl aroused to its significance.
She must put aside her personal fears and troubles. She was here to attend to the ward while the regular night nurse was engaged elsewhere.
Because Tom Cameron was wounded—perhaps dying—she could not neglect her duty here. She went quietly and brought a drink of cool water to the feverish and restless blessé who had called.
CHAPTER XIX—AT THE WAYSIDE CROSS
The early hours of that morning were the most tedious that Ruth Fielding ever had experienced. She was tied here to the convalescent ward of the Clair Hospital, while her every thought was bent upon that rocking ambulance that might be taking the broken body of Tom Cameron to the great base hospital at Lyse.
Was it possible that Tom was in Charlie Bragg’s car? What might not happen to the ambulance on the dark and rough road over which Ruth had once ridden with the young American chauffeur.