Free When the Sky Fell Apart by Caroline Lea Page B

been, in so many cases. As you know, the medication we are giving Clement is having little effect. So I, ah, I came to ask if you would…treat his burns and his fever. Try to, well…help me try to keep him alive.’
    So this was what he wanted.
    Edith nodded slowly. ‘And if I can’t?’
    ‘Well, you may not be able to help him, of course. But at the moment he’s dead without your help. So anything you can do, anything at all, would be…’
    ‘Impressive? Extraordinary?’ She grinned.
    He gave a tiny smile. ‘Precisely, yes… So, will you help?’
    She stopped walking. What to say? Of course she was happy to help; such things came naturally to her. And even being asked was a pat on the back for Edith and a knife in the guts of the island gossips: one of the devil’s own, helping in the hospital, working alongside real doctors? The church prayer group would be spitting feathers and fasting for a week.
    And then, of course, there was the chance to save Clement’s life. She’d have felt a callous brute if she’d not agreed to help. But her maman had always told her that it paid to have people believe that they owed you something or other.
    The world doesn’t run on kindness, Edith. It runs on guilt and favours and credit.
    With the war on, who knew what the price would be on kindness for herself or for someone else?
    So she said, ‘I don’t know, Doctor, I really don’t…’
    He had been smiling—so sure she would say yes. His face fell.
    ‘But why on earth not? You’d be saving a man’s life.’
    ‘But that’s just the thing, isn’t it, Doctor: what if I don’t? What if he dies? There’s plenty of folk will be happy to think that I killed him off. The chap who was here before you hated me. He had everyone believing I was working hand in hand with the devil himself. And there’s many were happy to believe it. If Clement died—well… They’d see me locked up for murder, I’m sure. Throw me in the sea to see if I float or sink.’
    Carter tried to win her over to his way of thinking all the way back to her house, panting as he dragged the loaded basket. On and on and on he went. She let him talk. Folk always give more away when their thoughts run free.
    By the time they reached her rickety old gate, he was begging and bargaining. He promised that he would do whatever he could to lift her good name with the rest of the islanders. To hear him talk, he planned to trumpet her praises at dawn from the top of Mount Bingham, whether Clement lived or no.
    She took her basket back. The poor man was now quite exhausted.
    Edith smiled. ‘Thank you, Doctor. Most kind of you; you’ve saved my back, really you have. So, what time shall I call at the hospital tomorrow?’
    He was silent for a moment while her words sank in. ‘Then you’ll do it? You’ll help him? Wonderful woman, you won’t regret this. You’ll see! Thank you, you’re a marvel! Thank you, bless you!’
    And he actually kissed her on the cheek. Well, Edith couldn’t help herself—she let out a shriek and a giggle and he chuckled right along with her.
    Then he was suddenly serious. ‘Perhaps you’d be so kind as to help me with something else then?’
    ‘Try me, Doctor.’
    ‘My aim—that is to say, my intention—is to, well…’ He swallowed. ‘To evacuate Monsieur Hacquoil. Medical equipment on the mainland so far exceeds our own. He stands a much better chance of survival.’
    ‘I see. You need me to make him well enough to travel.’
    ‘Precisely. And also—’
    ‘You want my help taking him from the island?’
    ‘Would you? I just wouldn’t know where to start asking. For supplies, and the boat and so on. I don’t want to risk asking in the wrong places. They’re inclined to be garrulous, these island people.’
    ‘Noticed that, have you? But it’ll be a risky business: evacuating someone. There’s signs up that say they’ll shoot those who try to escape—and those that help could be shipped off to Germany. To