Chapter 433 — Three Shots I

Chapter 433: Chapter 433 — Three Shots I

The medic who stitched James’s side had cold hands and no interest in who he was.

"Seven stitches," she said, tying off the last one. "Don’t lift anything heavy for a day."

"I lift a sword."

"Then lift it gently."

He came out into the afternoon with his shirt half buttoned over the dressing. The junction was quieter than he had heard it since he came north. The gunfire was far off now, up past the town where the British were regrouping. Somebody had got a kettle going on a gas ring behind the sandbags, and there was a queue for it.

Finn was outside the medical station on an upturned crate. Eamon stood beside him in a grey jumper and jeans, his Challenger jacket open over the top and the rest of his kit in a heap at his feet. He was standing straighter than yesterday, but he still moved as if the floor might give way.

"There he is," said Eamon. "The man himself. Back from the front, while I’ve been sat in a tent with a nurse taking my pulse every twenty minutes."

"You’ve been sat in a tent," said Finn, "because yesterday you couldn’t walk in a straight line."

"I could walk in a straight line. I chose not to. I could have been useful from the back. Holding a radio. Making the tea." He waved at the gas ring. "Look at that queue. Disgrace. I’d have had that organised."

Ruth came past them with a box of dressings in her arms.

"You were useful," she said, without stopping. "You stayed out of my casualty queue. Best thing you’ve done all week."

She went in.

James laughed. It pulled at his stitches and he did it anyway.

"Did you get her?" said Eamon. "Harcourt?"

"Through the shoulder. Her own lads got her out before I could finish it."

Eamon nodded.

"Somebody who gets out of a fight with you," he said, "is somebody with enough sense to not get into the next one. I’d keep an eye on her."

"How’s the side?"

"It’s a side. It’s attached." He sat down at last on a crate beside Finn, carefully. "Go on, then. Tell me. Everybody in that tent has been telling me bits and I want the whole thing. What did Marcus do?"

Finn told him.

He told him about the Spire on the eastern houses, and Saoirse on the west road. Eamon stopped him twice to ask whether the lads from Cronin’s section had been with them. At the man with the hooked blades, he whistled.

"I’ve never seen her go," he said. "Never once. I’ve heard. Is it true she doesn’t even look at you when she does it?"

"She looks at you," said Finn. "She just looks at you before you’ve moved."

"Christ."

---

Owen came across the forecourt with his rifle slung and a folded sheet of paper in his hand.

"Carey," he said, before anyone asked. "They rang through from Drogheda. He’s out of surgery. They saved the leg."

Eamon sat up straighter on the crate.

"Saved it?"

"Saved it. He’ll not be back for months. But he’ll walk." Owen held up the paper. "That’s the ward. If anyone wants to ring him."

"I’ll ring him," said Eamon. "I’ll ring him every day till he’s sick of me. Did you give him his stuff?"

"His phone and his wallet. I sent them down with the ambulance this morning. With a note."

"What did the note say?"

"That he owes me for carrying him."

Eamon laughed.

"He’ll be raging," said Owen. "He gives out about every job you give him. You put him on the cooker, he gives out about the cooker. Then you ask for volunteers for anything rotten, and his hand’s up first."

"That’s the type," said Eamon. "The moaners’ll follow you into anything as long as they’re allowed to tell you it’s a stupid idea on the way. It’s the quiet ones who aren’t there when you turn round."

Owen grinned.

He talked to James carefully, as if James might be about to do something with a sword. With Eamon he did not bother. Two days ago they had gone over the same chapel wall into the same road, and it showed.

---

Farrell came round the corner of the barn with a folder under her arm.

Her sleeves were rolled to the elbow and her hair had come half out of its knot.

"Walsh. Is your section all accounted for?"

"Nearly, ma’am. There’s two gone down to Drogheda I can’t confirm. And the list from the battalion doesn’t match ours. We’ve got a name they haven’t and they’ve got two we haven’t."

"Find out. Come back to me when it’s reconciled." She looked at James and Finn. "You two. Medical cleared you?"

"Seven stitches," said James. "I’m fine."

"Fit," said Finn.

"I’m also—" Eamon began.

"Fitzgerald’s already sent me her assessment," said Farrell. "In writing."

From inside the medical station, Ruth’s voice said: "It hasn’t changed."

Eamon looked at the sky.

"This is a conspiracy," he said. "This is an organised conspiracy against one injured man."

"It’ll stay organised," said Farrell, "until the injured man does what he’s told."

She did not quite smile, but it was close.

Then her face went back to what it had been.

"The British have pulled north, but we don’t know how far, and we don’t know what they’re doing up there. We won this morning. That doesn’t mean we’re safe. Stay where I can find you. Both of you."

"We will."

"Does she ever stop?" said Eamon. "Five minutes. Have a cup of tea."

"She’s not the only one," said Ruth, coming out with an empty box, and looked straight at him.

James watched Farrell stop by five soldiers sitting grey-faced against the barn wall. She asked them something, listened, wrote in the folder, then called a corporal over and pointed at one of the five. The corporal took the man away toward the kettle. She went on to the next group.

---

Two soldiers James knew from the farmyard wall went past and one said, "All right, Ganner," the way he would have said it to anyone.

Three days ago these had been people in a canteen arguing about a penalty. Now he knew who moaned and who was quiet, and that Farrell asked people if they had eaten. He was not passing through any more. He was one of the people who held this place.

---

Two medics were loading an ambulance at the edge of the forecourt and making a mess of it. There were boxes of saline in one, dressings in another, and a stretcher frame that would not fold.

Eamon got up.

"Kelleher," said Ruth. "No."

"I’m not lifting anyone. I’m lifting a box. That box. Look at it. It weighs nothing. I’ll hand them things."

"Not the stretcher."

"Not the stretcher. Boxes."

She looked at him for a long moment.

"Boxes," she said. "Small ones."

He picked up his Challenger jacket off the heap and zipped it up to the throat.

"Look at that," said Finn. "Taking medical advice now. Zipping up."

"I’d rather wear the thing than carry it," said Eamon. "It’s heavy as sin, and it’s worth more than your car." He turned to James as he walked toward the ambulance. "Here, Ganner. When they send us back up, where do you think they’ll—"

He never finished.

---

Something hit him in the chest.

James saw the jacket go. The panel over Eamon’s breastbone, the good A-rank armour he had been so pleased about, opened like paper. Eamon went backward off his feet as if a car had hit him. He went back two metres into the side of the ambulance and the stack of boxes, and came down among them.

Then the sound arrived.

It was not a rifle. James had been hearing rifles for four days. This was something lower, heavier, a crack with a deep thump behind it that rolled across the forecourt and off the buildings and went on.

James turned.

Eamon was on the ground among the boxes.

He was not moving.

Finn got there first. He was off his crate before James had finished turning, and he dropped on his knees by Eamon’s head.

"Eamon. *Eamon.*"

Ruth came out of the medical station door at a run. She pushed past two soldiers who had stopped dead in her way and went down on her knees on the other side of him.

James got there.

He saw the jacket. There was a hole in the front of it the size of his palm, right over the breastbone. The armour round it was not torn. It was pushed inward and fused, as though something had gone through it too fast for it to break properly.

He saw what was under the jacket. He looked away from it and then made himself look back.

Ruth’s hands were moving.

They were doing what they always did. She had his collar open and two fingers on his throat. She had the jacket zip down, and her other hand was going into the dressing pouch on her belt and coming out with a pack. She knew every one of those movements so well she did not have to think about them.

She looked at the wound, and her hands stopped for a second.

Then they started again.

"Eamon," said Finn. "Eamon, come on. Come on. *Eamon.*"

Eamon didn’t answer.

James looked at Eamon’s face. He had seen that on Floor 40. Eamon was not there.

Ruth put the pack on the wound. She pressed. She pressed again, harder, with both hands.

Then she took one hand away and put two fingers to his throat. She held them there.

She held them a long time.

"Finn," she said. "Move back."

"What else? What can we do? What do you need?"

She did not answer him.

"Ruth. What do you *need*?"

"He’s gone," said Ruth.