“Do you have a pocket knife?” she asked the service man as he was stretching the woman on the ground.
He dug in his trouser pocket and produced one.
“Cut me a splint off some bush or tree,” she ordered. “I’ll have to protect this broken arm till it can be X-rayed and properly set.”
She took off her coat to cushion the gray head. While she waited for the splint she saw that injured people were being brought from the three rear coaches. Just beyond the clay bank which had saved their car from greater damage, she saw that several coaches had overturned and telescoped into a horrible mass of wreckage.
The soldier came back promptly with a good splint from which he was deftly peeling the bark. To Nancy’s surprise he knelt on the ground, and in the light of her flash began to manipulate the broken bone into position. One glance at those skillful fingers and Nancy exclaimed, “Oh, you’re a doctor!”
“Yes,” was all he said as he proceeded to the business of the moment.
“Thank God,” she said earnestly, and began to tear the sheet into bandages.
As she had done numberless times before in the emergency room, Nancy helped bind up the broken arm.
“I see you’ve at least had first aid,” he said as they worked.
“I’m a nurse,” she retorted as tersely as he had informed her he was a doctor.
“There’ll be plenty for us to do tonight,” he told her.
When the arm was set, he lifted the frail woman and carried her out of the cut.
“Wait here with her,” the doctor ordered. “I’ll go back for my bag. She should have a hypo. You can help.”
Someone had placed some boxes for steps at the rear entrance to the coach and he returned that way. They were still hauling people out and stretching them beside the end coach, which by some miracle had not overturned. To Nancy’s surprise she recognized the ANC captain she had noticed on the train yesterday afternoon. She was trying to stop the bleeding in a leg wound of a man next to Nancy’s old lady.
“Please, someone try to find a doctor,” she said to no one in particular.
“One was here just now,” Nancy told her. “He’ll be back in a moment. He went for his bag.”
Nancy bent to help the captain make a tourniquet below the injured man’s knee. She had just secured the knot with a stick when she saw the doctor returning. The ANC captain straightened and saluted.