Cate gently brushed her fingers over his eyelids, closing them before saying a quick, silent prayer. She’d lost a lot of men over the past year, and it never got any easier. She cast a glance around her, at the room that had once seemed so elegant, the first reminder she’d truly had since stepping foot in France of what life had been like before the war. This was now a place of hell, the old-world elegance gone, replaced with splattered blood and bandages, with cries and profanities as men fought to live and doctors fought to save them. One man had been strung up by straps, suspended above his mattress, his skin so badly burned that if he touched anything it would adhere to him. Cate knew she’d never, ever forget his howls of pain as they’d stripped his clothes off before realizing the extent of his burns, before plying him with morphine as orderlies worked fast to do something, anything, to avoid placing him on a bed.

“Help!”

The call wouldn’t have surprised her usually, not when so many men called out to her so frequently in the hospital, but the fact that it was a woman’s voice made her turn. Cate scanned the room, finding her balance again, looking for where it had come from. There were no other nurses left behind, which meant that as far as she knew, she was the only woman.

And then she saw her. The woman was a similar age to her, maybe early twenties, and her eyes were so wide as she stood in the open doorway they reminded her of saucers. She was clutching something, a case of some description, but it was the desperate look on her face that caught Cate’s attention the most.

She ran over to her, reaching out. “Are you injured? Where have you come from?” She searched her face. “I’ll help you, just tell me what you need.” Cate glanced past her and saw that the rain had started to fall with more urgency now, the front door wide open at the end of the hall.

“I’m Ruth. I, I . . .”

Cate reached for her arm and grasped her, holding her firm. “You’re safe here, Ruth. I’m a nurse and if you’re injured I can help you.” She looked over her, not seeing any injuries other than scratches on what skin she could see.

“No, we’re not safe,” Ruth said, leaning in closer, so close that Cate could feel her warm breath against her cheek. She instinctively went to take a step back, but stopped when the other woman started speaking again.

“The Nazis are coming. They’re right behind me,” she cried. “I came here because I thought there might be soldiers, I thought maybe they were protecting the hospital when I saw the red cross on the ground outside, but . . .”