Home Front Girls

muttered weakly as Lucy dropped to her knees beside her and took her hand.
    Lucy stared down at her, perplexed. What was Dotty talking about? Perhaps she had concussion?
    ‘It’s all right,’ she soothed, stroking the matted hair from Dotty’s forehead. ‘You must have had a bang on the head, but don’t worry, the ambulance is on its way. You’re going to be fine, I promise.’
    By now the men had disappeared back down into the cellar and it was as the sound of the ambulance bells reached them that they reappeared, carrying another figure.
    ‘They’ve got Miss Timms,’ Lucy told Dotty. ‘Everything is going to be all right now. You’re both safe.’
    Within minutes, both women had been lifted onto stretchers and placed in the ambulance, Lucy hastily told the ambulance men their names, and then it raced away with its bells clanging.
    ‘Thank you so much.’ Lucy turned to the soldiers who had been so valiant. ‘Which hospital do you think the ambulance will take them to?’
    ‘It’ll be the Coventry and Warwick,’ one of them told her. ‘Though God alone knows how long they’ll have to wait to be seen. It’s pandemonium there an’ all, as part of the hospital took a hit.’
    Lucy was sickened to know that not even a hospital was safe from the Luftwaffe’s raids.
    ‘Thank you again,’ she said with all her heart, then turned and raced towards her discarded bicycle as the soldiers threw their spades into the back of an Army jeep. Her legs were going like pistons on the pedals again as she flew back towards Annabelle’s to tell her and her mother that Dotty was safe.
    Both Annabelle and Miranda breathed a sigh of relief at the news.
    ‘Well done, Lucy darling. Now come in and clean yourself up a bit,’ Miranda urged kindly. ‘I’ll boil a kettle so you can have a good wash. There’s no point in racing off to the hospital tonight. We’ll all go first thing in the morning, and perhaps by then we’ll be allowed to see them both. In the meantime I can ring Robert and tell him that Dotty is safe. He rang again while you were gone and he’s almost beside himself with worry, bless him. He wanted to come today but the train lines are down so his friend is going to drive him here tomorrow. If Dotty is discharged she can come here to stay. Please stay here tonight too if you wish, my dear. I really don’t like the thought of you going home on that bike in the dark and I’d never get the car through.’
    But this offer was gently turned down. ‘Thanks, but I have to get back. Mrs P is watching Harry and if I don’t go home she’ll think something’s happened to me,’ the girl explained.
    Miranda nodded understandingly. ‘Very well then, but promise me you’ll be careful. And if the sirens should go on the way, you get into the nearest shelter, right?’
    ‘I will,’ Lucy agreed. It had been one of the longest days of her life and all she wanted to do now was throw off her filthy clothes, get clean and drop into bed, where she’d snuggle up to Harry, and try to forget some of the atrocities she had witnessed today.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
     
    The three women arrived at the hospital early the next morning to total chaos. Injured people were lying in the corridors on stretchers waiting to be seen by doctors and the reception area was swamped by people trying to trace their loved ones.
    ‘I reckon this is going to be a long job,’ Annabelle commented gloomily. ‘Looking at that queue, it’s going to be at least an hour before we even get to talk to anyone.’
    ‘Then so be it,’ Miranda said stoically as she joined the back of the straggling queue. ‘We may as well get on with it. There’s no point in just standing here moaning.’
    Harassed-looking nurses and doctors were hurrying to and fro whilst porters struggled to find somewhere to leave the injured. People were crying and Annabelle shuddered. It was like a waking nightmare, yet they had no choice but to wait their turn. Eventually they reached the reception desk and a nurse asked sharply, ‘Yes?’
    ‘A friend of ours was brought in here last night with the lady she lodges with,’ Miranda told her politely.
    ‘Very well. Names?’
    ‘Miss Dorothy Kent and Miss . . . Timms.’ Miranda and the girls suddenly realised that they didn’t even know Miss Timms’s Christian name. She had always been just Miss Timms to them.
    The woman began painstakingly to go through endless lists of admissions and at last she told them,