Slowly, ringing replaced the silence. And then came the noise of falling pieces of rock and stone and slate and glass.

And screams. So many screams.

He couldn’t move. He tried, or might have tried, but the pain was a blinding white fire that blended with the screams and the shouts and the sirens and the continued crash of falling debris. Time shattered. And then the world went utterly black again.

SATURDAY, 30 MARCH 1918

Lily placed the last of the rolled bandages in the cupboard where they belonged, checked the clock on the wall, and reached a hand down to her pocket. Her camera was there, as always. She’d used it this morning to take a few snapshots of patients who would soon be released and a few more of soldiers bound to call Charing Cross Hospital home for weeks yet, but who were eager to send something home to wives or mothers.

It was a little thing. But it brought a smile to their faces. It brought one to hers, too, as she turned toward the office at the end of the fourth-floor ward, where she’d just seen Arabelle go. Lily followed with a loud enough step to warn her friend that she wasn’t alone.

Ara turned at her desk, which was stacked so high with papers that they looked about to topple, and grinned. “Come to do all my paperwork for me?”

Lily laughed and leaned into the doorframe. “Not a chance. You’re the one who agreed to take your old position back.”

Though she made a show of grumpiness—hands on hips and an admirable scowl—there was no covering the pleasure in Arabelle’s eyes. She loved her job here in the same way that Lily loved her work at the retouching desk at the OB. It must have broken her heart to resign a few weeks ago in the face of her fiancé’s supposed legal trouble, but the board of directors had been quick to offer her position back to her after his name had been cleared. And praise the Lord, she’d accepted. Lily enjoyed working under Ara the most.

“Had I realized no one was keeping up with it while I was gone, I may have reconsidered their apology.” Arabelle shrugged and pulled out her chair. “I imagine your shift is over?”

Lily nodded. “But I wanted to catch you before I left. Mama asked me to invite you and your fiancé to dinner at your earliest convenience. Perhaps next Saturday?”

The light in Ara’s eyes was bright as a flash now, and her smile pure joy. Not at the prospect of dinner, but at the words your fiancé. Ara had been engaged before, and it hadn’t ever made her glow like this. It had just been the status quo. But Major Phillip Camden had made something altogether new come to life in her. “That sounds lovely. I’ll ask Cam if the date is convenient.”