In Perfect Time by Sarah Sundin Read Free Book Online Page A

hadn’t made sense to her. How could she be punished with red hair and tone deafness before she’d committed the sin of envying her sisters for their gifts?
    Those verses—the verses he’d attributed to the Lord God Almighty—were spoken by Bildad and Eliphaz, not by Job and not by God. And if Roger Cooper was right, Bildad and Eliphaz didn’t speak the truth.
    Kay slammed the Bible shut and stuffed it in her small canvas musette bag. How on earth could she get throughall forty-two chapters of the blasted book? She could barely handle one chapter at a time.
    Kay pushed herself to her feet and snagged the clipboard with the flight manifest off its hook by the cargo door.
    Tonight she’d add more questions to her list for Roger. After she filled a page, front and back, she’d mail it. Would he answer? He didn’t seem terribly enthusiastic, but he also seemed like the kind of man who kept his word.
    For now, she had work to do. Only a dozen patients today. Another lull had developed on the fronts at Cassino and Anzio, preparing for the big push, everyone hoped.
    Kay opened the medical chest and filled a pouch on her belt with medications and supplies. Sergeant Dabrowski was busy distributing rations and water, lighting cigarettes, and reading letters, so Kay would take vital signs and administer meds.
    She started at the bottom litter on the right, checked the patient’s medical tag against the flight manifest, inquired how he was doing, looked for signs of bleeding or infection, and recorded his temperature, pulse, and respiration. After she gave him an aspirin, she repeated the process for the soldier in the middle litter.
    Grant Klein talked about flying too much, but something he once said stuck in her brain. After the pilot got the aircraft in straight and level flight, he could use the automatic pilot system to keep it there.
    Thank goodness Kay had her own automatic pilot, the skills she’d learned in almost a decade of nursing. Today she needed it.
    Today she’d read Job 8:5–6, the words of Bildad: “If thou wouldest seek unto God betimes, and make thy supplication to the Almighty; If thou wert pure and upright; surely now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of thy righteousness prosperous.”
    Father slapped the pulpit when he read that verse, andhe read it at every single tent meeting. The concept in those verses was the key to his success.
    Just like Job, Father had lost everything. He’d lost four sons and his wife and his farm and his health. But he’d made himself pure and upright. The Lord rewarded him with a prosperous ministry, good health, a beautiful young wife, and three daughters, whom he’d named after Job’s daughters—Jemima and Kezia and Kerenhappuch.
    Kay stuck her foot in the stirrup under the bottom litter and hitched herself up to care for the man on top.
    Her given name hissed in her ear. Kezia. Kuh-zzzzye-uh.
    She drew up morphine into a syringe.
    “What’s that?”
    “Morphine for your pain.” She felt the inside of his elbow and found a good vein.
    “I’m not in pain.”
    Kay looked into his pale blue eyes. Had she actually looked at him yet? “It’s been four hours since your last dose. Better to give you another dose now than wait until the pain in your wound flares again.”
    Blond eyebrows tented. “I’m not wounded. I’m just sick is all. Can’t shake this pneumonia.”
    Pneumonia? Bile chewed its way up her throat. She grabbed the medical tag—Pvt. Gerald Carson. The flight manifest—she was on Sgt. Joe Lazio.
    Oh no.
    Her cheeks tingled, and she glanced around the plane. When? Where had she gotten mixed up? When had she crossed to the left side of the plane? She didn’t remember. The flight manifest showed data for seven patients, but she was taking care of the man in the sixth position.
    She’d given morphine and sulfanilamide and aspirin. How many patients received the wrong drugs?
    “I—I’m sorry, Private. You’re right. You don’t