The Counterfeit Nurse

How it begins

Anna could stitch a sleeve in darkness, but she could not find a pulse.

The distinction had become urgent.

A man lay on the hospital-train bench with his eyes closed and one hand gripping the edge of her borrowed apron. The guard beside him was asking questions.

"How long has he been like this?"

Anna knew the answer.

She did not know what the answer meant.

"Since the platform."

"Can he travel?"

She looked toward the next carriage.

Somewhere beyond the door was a real doctor.

Somewhere behind her were eleven people whose papers depended on everyone believing she belonged here.

The uniform fitted perfectly.

She had altered it herself.

The guard pointed at her identification.

"Sister Reed?"

Anna had spent fifteen years dressing actors who could become kings, beggars and dying men between one curtain and the next. She knew how much authority lived in a clean collar.

She had not understood how quickly authority could become danger.

"I need the doctor," she said.

"He's busy."

"So am I. Fetch him."

The guard blinked, then obeyed.

Anna crouched beside the patient.

"I don't know how to help you yet," she whispered. "But somebody is coming."

He opened one eye.

"That's more honest than the last hospital."

When Lukas Voss arrived, she drew him into the narrow space beside the linen cupboard.

"I'm not a nurse."

He looked at her uniform.

Then at her hands.

"No. Your knots are theatrical."

"I'm sorry."

"Are you carrying medicine?"

"No."

"Have you given him anything?"

"No."

"Good. Keep people away from the doorway. Bring clean blankets. And don't pretend to know what you don't."

He went to the patient.

Anna stood very still for one breath.

Then she fetched the blankets.

Outside, the train began to move through a country where the wrong name could stop a journey forever.

For the first time that morning, she had been given a task she could honestly do.