Mrs. Goudeket and Polly Chesbro had, semi-automatically, fallen into the routine of the improvised hospital. For hours they had been doling out rationed water, mopping brows, jumping to the "Here-you" of the handful of nurses and doctors, cleaning up vomit and blood, dumping and washing ducks and bedpans. Mrs. Goudeket first saw the brisk new lieutenant talking crisply to an exhausted nurse.
"That one," she said. "He isn't tired."
Polly said wanly, "That's nice." She wasn't listening, particularly. She'd come to the hospital in the first place to keep an eye on the burgess, but he was off in an upper room, what they humorously called the "quiet" ward because there was, in fact, fractionally less noise and confusion there than on the lower level. She hadn't seen him for hours.
Mrs. Goudeket insisted, "Look, darling. There's another one. Maybe another ambulance came in?"
"That's nice," said Polly, escaping. They were moving two of the patients again, and it was her sector of the floor. The patients were carried off in litters—new green ones, Polly noticed wearily; maybe there was another ambulance in. Strip the cots, bundle the bedding, scrounge through the stacks of afghans and torn sheets and quilted comforters for something to make a new bed with, turn down the covers and help the new patient in.
But there wasn't any new patient, not for either of the beds.
Two pink-faced kids in clean green fatigues brushed by her and set a litter down next to the bed with the eleven-year-old boy in it. Polly started to warn them about his probable fractured ribs; he had been under most of a frame dwelling for eight hours before he was found. But they seemed to know what they were doing; they rolled him gently to one side, slipped the litter under, rolled him gently back.
She watched them carrying him away. Funny. A lot of the patients were going away, carried by these frighteningly expert, incredibly fresh new people.
It had to be true. Help had arrived—help in quantities, enough to meet the need.