“ ‘She lives,’ ” he said, smiling up at her. “ ‘If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.’ ”

Polly bit back tears. “Where are you hurt?” she asked, but she could already see. A red stain covered the top half of his shirt.

She stretched out over the edge of the hole so she could reach down to the wound. He didn’t flinch, but her hand came away wet. She tore open his shirt. The wound was an inch wide and above his heart, but it was bleeding badly, and there was no way to put a tourniquet on it. And no time to go for help. By the time she clambered back over the wreckage to the front of the theater, he’d have bled to death. She needed to stop the bleeding now.

Direct pressure. She replaced the torn shirt over the wound and pressed down with the palm of her hand while she looked about for something better. His coat—No, it was twisted under him so she couldn’t get at it. The upholstery from the seat cushions might work, but she knew from trying to free her foot that it was too tough to tear.

If that woman at the Works Board had let me become a rescue worker, she thought, I’d have had a medical kit and bandages with me.

She hoisted herself to her knees and wrenched off her skirt. “Help! Casualty over here!” she shouted, folding it into a not-nearly-thick-enough compress.

ENSA’s costumes are much too skimpy, she thought, wriggling out of her bolero and bloomers and folding them and the skirt into a thick square. She stretched out flat again, clad only in the bathing suit, laid the pad against the wound, and pressed down as hard as she could with the heel of her hand.

Sir Godfrey grimaced. “Did you come to tell me you’ve decided to do the pantomime after all?” he asked.

“Shh,” Polly said, “you mustn’t try to talk.”

“Nonsense. How else shall I do my death scene?”

Her heart twisted. “You’re not dying,” she said firmly. “It’s only a flesh wound.”

“You always were a wretched actress, Viola,” he said, shaking his head against the timbers he lay on. “This isn’t quite the farewell I’d imagined. I’d always hoped to die onstage. Halfway through the second act of a Barrie play so I would be spared from doing Act Three.”

He could always make her laugh, even here in the rubble, with him bleeding to death and no sign of a rescue squad.

What’s taking them so long? she thought. They’re as bad as the retrieval team.

Blood was soaking through the compress. She wasn’t applying enough pressure. She inched forward, trying to get into a better position, and pushed down as hard as she could on it.

“Which speech will you have?” Sir Godfrey asked. “Hamlet? ‘There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will.’ ”