“Number three there may have to have another hypo. He’s very disturbed,” she explained.
Some would have to have sulpha tablets, and others must have attention at regular intervals. One poor chap, who couldn’t move, must have his position eased occasionally. Nancy went her rounds and toward midnight sat down at the end of the long tent, just inside the mosquito netting. This end of the tent was close to the bush, and the sounds of many strange insects was like a pulse beat in the night. Once she heard planes droning far off under the star-studded sky. Occasionally a groan escaped someone in the tent.
Their new tent ward boasted no floor, and Nancy had to keep on the alert for frogs and insects that got under the netting in spite of all their precautions. She finally decided the creatures must come up from the earth.
She had just caught a green frog in a small box and was taking him to the door when there came a prolonged groan from cot three. She washed her hands in the basin near the door, and hurried to the patient, who had been sleeping ever since she came in. The electric wiring had not even been finished, so she picked up a lantern and hung it on the tent post above the suffering patient.
She turned around and was moving closer when the man on the bed lifted his head and stared at her with wild eyes. Then a joyous expression broke over the gaunt face as he cried, “Tommy, old boy! I knew you’d get away from ’em.”
Nancy wore her seersucker trousers and shirt, and had her head tied in a kerchief, a precaution against the wind that blew eternally across their campsite.
If the patient had fired a gun at her, however, she could not have been more shocked when he called her “Tommy!” Could he possibly mean her Tommy, her own lost brother?
When she recovered from the shock, she went nearer the bed. The brown-bearded man, his face haggard from suffering, fell back to the pillow in disappointment.
“Aw-w,” he groaned, “I thought sure you were Tommy.”
“Tommy?” she whispered softly, putting a soothing hand on his forehead, and brushing back the fever-wet hair. “Tommy who?”