"Not if we're quick."
"Nonsense. We must get him out of that."
He seized the handle of the stretcher and began pulling; she hung on to his arm and stopped that.
"No. No," she said. "You shan't touch him."
He flung her arm off and turned. "You fool," he said. "You fool."
She looked at him steadily, a long look that remembered, that made him remember.
"There isn't time," she said. "They'll begin firing in another minute."
"Damn you." But he had turned, slinking round the corner of the hood to the engine. While he cranked it up she thought of the kit that one of the men had left there in the yard. She made a dash and fetched it, and as she threw it on the floor the car started. She snatched at the rope and swung herself up on to the step. The dying man lay behind her, straight and stiff; his feet in their heavy boots stuck out close under her hand.
The four men nodded and grinned at her. They protected her. They understood.
If only she could get him into a clean bed. If only she had had time to take his boots off. It would be all right if only she could bring him in alive.
He was still alive when they got into Ghent.
She had forgotten John and it was not until they came to take out the stretcher that she was again aware of him. They had drawn up before the steps of the hospital; he had got down and was leaning sideways, staring under the stretcher.
"What is it?"
"You can see what it is. Blood."
From the hole in the man's head, through the soaked bandages, it still dripped, dripped with a light sound; it had made a glairy pool on the floor of the ambulance.
"Don't look at it," she said. "It'll make you sick. You know you can't stand it."
"Oh. I can't stand it, can't I?"
He straightened himself. He threw back his head; his upper lip lifted, stretched tight and thin above the clean white teeth. His eyes looked down at her, narrowed, bright slits under dropped lids.
"John--I want to get him in before he dies."
"All right. Get in under there. Take his head."
"Hadn't I better take his feet?"
"You'd better take what you're told to."
She stiffened to the weight, heaved up her shoulder. Two men came running down the steps to help her as John pulled.