Amy Read Online Free Page A

life.
    She rested her forehead against the window. She could leave the hospital without a reference, but where would that get her? She could go to some other town, put up her plate outside the door and hope for the best. The thought filled her with despair. That wasn’t what she wanted, what she had trained for.
    She drew back a little, and saw her reflection in the glass, her drawn, slender face, hair in the severe chignon. That was it, wasn’t it? In the eyes of some men, that was her original sin. She was a woman. Andthat made her incapable of rational thought, fit only to run a house and bear children. Even some women were against women doctors. Even female voices were raised against them. So much for the sisterhood.
    Shockingly, horribly, she did not have to decide what to do. Bulford had arranged her life for her. Someone had knocked on her door and told her that Sir William wished to see her in his office. He began at once.
    ‘I can no longer tolerate your behaviour, Miss Richmond.’
    She tried to speak calmly. ‘What do you mean? I have done nothing wrong. It is your behaviour that is intolerable.’
    ‘Really?’ He smiled at her – a frightening smile. ‘And how many people do you think would support you in that? The students? The nursing staff? I think not.’
    She stared at him, wordless, knowing that he had the better of her.
    ‘I am putting you on suspension,’ he said. ‘And I am going to make a report to the General Medical Council. I shall make it clear that I do not think that you are fit to practise medicine.’
    ‘You can’t do that,’ she said, appalled. ‘You can’t do that to me.’
    He smiled again. ‘Oh, yes, I can.’
     
    The rest was a blur. Days and weeks of waiting, of fear, of almost unbearable rage, of tears, of her father’s distress. And now this – this nothingness, these endless days and sleepless nights.
    She lay in her bed and stared into the dark. Her own problems were nothing now. Out there, outside her horrors and troubles there was a war, so savage that the world was already reeling in shock and horror. ‘I’m coming,’ she said to herself, aloud, in the dark. ‘I’m coming. I’ll do what I can – whatever it is.’ Knowing that she could have done so much more was a pain that was hardly bearable.

CHAPTER TWO
    1914
    T WO weeks later she and her father were standing on a platform at Victoria Station. The platform was crowded and the noise frightful – shouting voices, pounding feet, slamming doors. Even the pigeons had retreated up into the roof. She could see them flying, agitated, up above.
    Streams of men in khaki, kitbags on their shoulders, struggled up and down the platform. Corporals with lists shouted orders and the men threw their kitbags into the carriages and followed them, leaning out of the doors and windows, cigarettes hanging out of the corners of their mouths. Many of them stared at the group of women in uniform and one rosy-cheeked boy gave Amy a cheeky wink. A packed troop train left the station in a clanking of wheels and a cloud of steam, the men shouting and cheering. The station smelt of burning coal and oil and the sharp, acrid smell of new uniforms and new boots.
    Amy’s father stood straight and calm, but his face was as white as the newspaper under his arm. He gave a strained smile.
    ‘You all look splendid, Amy. Very smart and efficient.’
    Amy smiled back, trying to hide her own apprehension and keep up the sense of excitement and purpose. The news was too dreadful for words, so many casualties already, so many dead. The men on the trains didn’t seem to be worried, laughing and larking about, but here and there she saw a strained white face and anxious, haunted eyes. Many of them looked little more than schoolboys.
    The group of women stood loosely together, friends and relationsgathered about them. They were all wearing the uniform of the group that the doctors had called The Women’s Surgical Group. The station master had