Free Home for Christmas by Annie Groves

of blood, and was now unconscious. Sally didn’t like the colour of him, or the weakness of his pulse, now that his body had gone into shock from the accident. She hoped that an ambulance turned up soon, because she didn’t hold out much hope of his surviving for very much longer without proper medical attention.
    ‘Here comes the stretcher.’
    Sally turned to see two ARP wardens hurrying towards her with it.
    ‘It’s going to be a while before we can get an ambulance to you. The ambulance service has been overwhelmed with calls,’ one of the wardens told her.
    How long was ‘a while’? The man desperately needed hospital attention. Sally looked towards the empty flat-bed lorry belonging to the salvage crew and made up her mind.
    ‘We can get him onto the stretcher and then, provided he wasn’t the driver of the lorry . . . ?’ She paused.
    ‘He wasn’t, miss, I mean, Nurse,’ one of the men told her. ‘John here is the driver.’
    John, bashful and very young, removed his cloth cap as he was pushed forward by the others, and rubbed a hand over his dust-covered face before confirming that he was indeed the driver.
    The main problem, as far as Sally could see, was going to be the piece of glass firmly embedded in her ‘patient’s’ arm and which must stay there.
    ‘I’ll need enough men to get . . .’ she paused and John the driver supplied her patient’s name, as ‘Eric’, revealing two missing teeth as he did so.
    ‘. . . We need to get Eric onto the stretcher and then into the lorry as carefully as possible. I’ll stay with him and hold onto his arm and the glass. We need to keep both as still as we can,’ she explained to the men.
    If one of the many newspaper photographers recording the devastation left by the bombs had been around, he would have got a photograph like no other, Sally thought ruefully when, in order to carry out her instructions, the salvage men, along with the firemen, formed a group to lift not only their workmate, but Sally herself, bodily into the back of the flat-bed truck.
    Not that any of the men took advantage of that intimacy – far from it; their reluctance to look at Sally as they lifted her assured her of their respect.
    Instead of an ambulance siren to speed their progress, an ARP warden rode with Sally and the four men who were holding down the stretcher, and the warden blew his regulation whistle to clear the way.
    The only time they were stopped was when a policeman stepped out into the road in front of them, tilting back his helmet as he demanded to know why the warden was blowing his whistle when there wasn’t an air raid on. However, as soon as the situation was explained to him they were waved on their way with great alacrity.
    Although Sally’s amateur stretcher-bearers had made a Herculean effort to keep the stretcher steady, when she could see the entrance to Bart’s casualty department ahead of them Sally felt very relieved. Eric was still unconscious and his breathing had become worryingly shallow and fast. Her own fingers were practically numb from holding his arm with one hand and the glass with the other, and she was praying that she could continue to keep hold. At least he wasn’t losing blood any more, thanks to the tourniquet.
    The very moment they came to a halt an indignant ambulance driver came rushing over to the lorry.
    ‘You can’t park here, mate. This is for ambulances only.’
    ‘This is an emergency,’ Sally could hear the ARP warden telling him from the passenger window of the driver’s cab. ‘Take a look in the back and see for yourself.’
    The next minute an ambulance driver’s head appeared over the side of the lorry, his eyes widening as he took in the scene at a glance.
    ‘Cor blimey,’ he exclaimed, then called out to his partner, ‘Frank, get some porters here, will you, mate?’
    Once again all the men studiously avoided looking at Sally as she was lifted out of the lorry along with her patient, and it was