I sighed and responded rather irritably, “What is the problem with your room? Would you prefer one of the tents?”
“It backs up to the X-ray room.”
“I see. A busy location, especially at night, but isn’t the entrance on the opposite side? I scarcely think we can find you something quieter.” I pulled the next requisition from the pile.
Charlotte stared at her fingertips, which were beginning to tremble. “It’s not the noise, ma’am. It’s the X-rays. I can feel them coming through the wall.”
“Explain.” If this were anyone else, I would dismiss the notion as just another minor complaint, like the lack of proper shoe polish. But Charlotte had proven to be extraordinarily perceptive. She often gravitated to a patient just before they passed, even ones who weren’t expected to die.
“Well, I don’t know how to explain it exactly. It’s a sound, but not one I can hear. A vibration, sort of, that I feel in my gut.”
“Our hearing detects a range of frequencies. Dogs, for example, can hear frequencies that we can’t. I suppose it’s possible that the machine makes sounds that you can detect while others can’t.”
“Yes, Matron. I’m sure you’re right.” She tapped her fingers together and made no move to leave.
Pushing aside my stack of paperwork, I gave in. “Shall we check it out together?”
Her face brightened. It must be a lonely world for her, with no one to understand her sensibilities.
We went to her tiny, sparse room, not much bigger than my closet at home. Most of the nurses were quartered in huts or tents behind the grandstand, but when our desperately needed additional nurses arrived, we had run out of space, and a few nurses were squeezed between the X-ray room and laboratory. Charlotte’s and her roommate’s cots were neatly made, and a small braided rug warmed the floor between them. A single light bulb hung from a ceiling wire. A lit candle flickered and provided a warm vanilla scent, no doubt an effort to cover the dank odor that pervaded the camp.
“Are you feeling the vibrations now?” I asked.
“No. Nothing.”
I made a show of knocking on the thin walls, nothing more than sheets of plywood. The light bulb blinked and dimmed a bit, but Charlotte seemed not to notice.
Instead, her eyes widened, and she spun toward the back of the cabin. “There, do you feel that?” She held up her hands. “A little tingle.” She ran her finger lightly across her lips, then ran it down her chin, chest, and belly.
“No, I don’t feel or hear anything at all.” The timing of the light dimming, which happened whenever there was a surge in electricity demand, and her noticing some sort of change was too close to be a coincidence. “Wait here a moment. I want to check something.”
I hurried out of the hut, around the corner, and to the entrance of the X-ray room. Captain Ernst was helping a patient from a makeshift examination table, a stretcher lying across two sawhorses, onto another stretcher held by two orderlies.
Tall, with dark, wavy hair, he wore an air of indifference as he set about his work. But I knew differently. He was immensely proud of his work, often offering lectures regarding new developments. On one such occasion, feeling sorry for him as he addressed a smattering of patients and doctors who had wandered in, I secretly bribed a few nurses to attend.
“Knock knock. Are you just getting started, Captain?”
“Yes. One done so far. I’ll be done shortly if you need me.”
I nodded and headed back to Charlotte, having confirmed my suspicion that the X-ray machine had just come into use. Intending to address both of our concerns without frightening Charlotte, I came up with a plan.
She was standing in the middle of her cabin, eyes closed and arms crossed over her belly.
I cleared my throat so as not to alarm her. “Miss Cox, now that you mention it, I think I do hear something. And Captain Ernst could sorely use this hut for his supplies. I’ll see about assigning you and, uh—” I looked at her roommate’s cot, embarrassed to not recall who was assigned to it.
“Rebecca. Yes, thank you so much. Rebecca doesn’t hear it, but I’m sure she’d be fine moving with me.”
Changing cabins was the easy part. How would I convince the dedicated Captain Ernst that his X-ray machine was leaking something that might be harmful?
* * *
Several days later, I had secured Charlotte and Rebecca a new hut, far from the X-ray room. But Charlotte’s sensations during the X-rays continued to haunt me. I read everything I could find regarding X-rays, which wasn’t much as it was a fairly new technology, and there were few textbooks lying around.
In my research, I found that X-rays were discovered and developed mostly in France.
It was time to approach Captain Ernst regarding my concerns. I picked dinner time, early in the evening, before the casualties arrived. He was sitting alone in the mess tent, scooping ham out of a tin.
“Have you a moment, Captain?” I said in a bright, cheerful voice.
He motioned to the bench across the table from him. “Please.”
I slipped onto the bench and set my tray on the table. Gelatinous ham, cubes of what appeared to be potatoes, and a slimy green vegetable I couldn’t quite identify. At least the bread looked good.
“You’ll need this.” He pulled a label-less bottle of brown liquid from his pocket, and I eyed it suspiciously.
“Don’t ask, or I take it away.”
I shook a few drops onto my finger and tasted them. Salty, vinegary, and slightly sweet, with a hint of tomato. And maybe vodka. I sprinkled my food with it. “Can you bear some shop talk? Questions, mostly, just between you and me.”
“Fire away.” He took the bottle and stuffed it back into his pocket. “There are only the two of us in the Sacred Trust of the Brown Bottle.”
I started with a tip I thought might ease his work. “I see you transfer patients onto a stretcher for examination. Is there something special about the exam stretcher?”
“Not really. We have to change it out often, as it gets quite soiled, as you would imagine.”
“I see. I was wondering, wouldn’t it be easier for both you and the patient if he remained on his own stretcher? Moving must be quite painful for some and difficult for you to manage on your own.”
“That would require two stretcher carriers to stay for each exam. Interesting point though. We shall have to try it out. Any more advice?”
“As you know, I’ve reassigned the nurses who occupied the hut behind the X-ray room.”
“Thanks. Didn’t know I needed the room till I had it.” His face scrunched up, then he put his serviette up to his lips, evidently spitting something out.
“Tell me, do you feel safe, doing X-rays all day?”
He raised his eyebrows. “From what?”
“The rays themselves. Hasn’t radioactivity been shown to be harmful?”
“In much higher doses. And I wear a lead apron.”
“How do you know that’s enough?”
He wiped his mouth with the bunched-up serviette. “Because I’ve had the best training in the whole world. From Irène Curie herself.”
I looked at him blankly.
“You know, the daughter of Pierre and Marie Curie.”
I knew Pierre and Marie Curie, who had jointly won a Nobel Prize for discovering radioactive elements, had lived in Paris. “Of course. How fortunate for you. And I’m sure she’s eminently qualified, but I still have some concerns.”
The captain rose and collected his dishes. “Why don’t you join me in the lab and show me what’s bothering you?”
* * *
Captain Ernst placed a key in the flimsy lock securing the X-ray room. Equipment stood on a table next to a pair of sawhorses. “It’s quite simple, actually. We center the stretcher across the sawhorses. Photographic plates are slid under the patie
nt according to the target body part. Electricity is fed to these coils and then runs to the cathode tube.”
“A Crookes tube, in which the air has been evacuated.” I couldn’t help smiling at my little bit of knowledge.
“Precisely. The electricity excites the atoms in the remaining air, and electrons are attracted to the positive anode. This releases an electromagnetic pulse, a very short-waved beam we cannot see. These are the X-rays. They go through skin and muscle but are slowed down by bone or metal. The plates capture this, and voilà.” He held up an X-ray picture of a rib cage. “We have a view inside.”
“Perfectly amazing. And you can control these rays’ direction?”
“Not 100 percent of them, but mostly, yes.”
“And do they bounce around once they hit bone or metal or wood, for example?”
“Hmm, I would imagine so.”
“Have you heard about the researchers with burns and worse? Clearly, the rays disturb tissue.”
“Right you are. But those were people exposed for hours on end, for months, even years. It wasn’t unusual to expose a researcher’s arm for hours to get a picture. Now we can do it in mere seconds. Even so, we take the precaution of a lead apron and shielding.
“And radioactivity isn’t only beneficial in X-rays. The Curies have discovered and isolated a radioactive element, radium. They’ve experimented with using its radiation to destroy cancer and other diseased tissues. In the future, radiologists like me will be doing much more than taking pictures of people’s insides. We’ll be curing them.”
“That would be a miracle.” But I was more focused on our current issue. How to bring up Charlotte’s vague complaints, in the light of all this science, percolated in my mind. “So the rays can go through skin and muscle and are slowed but not stopped by something as thick and dense as bone. When they hit something dense like lead, they stop. Or perhaps bounce.”
I measured the room: three paces. “On the other side of these thin walls are people, coming and going, sleeping and working. All being exposed to X-rays, many hours a day for months. You’re protected by your apron, but what about them? And what about the parts of you that aren’t protected?”
The captain replaced the X-ray picture and presented a folded shield. “I also have this. And I do appreciate your concern but believe I know my business.”
“I don’t mean any disrespect.”
He nodded. “What is driving you to ask?”
I bit my lip. “Under the Sacred Trust of the Brown Bottle?”
“Of course.”
“One of my nurses, Charlotte Cox, can detect the rays. Her former hut is now your supply room.”
“I know the one. Little blond girl. Quiet, afraid of her own shadow.” He shook his head. “I hear she also senses the souls fading from our fallen soldiers.”
“That’s what they say. But I validated this claim during an X-ray procedure.” I described the earlier incident.
“Interesting. I will write to some folks in Paris. Meanwhile, collect all the lead you can find.”
Where would I find lead? Then I remembered the sound in the busy operating tent, the clank of extracted bullets and shell fragments hitting metal buckets.
* * *
Letters from my family arrived just a month after our arrival in France. What a joy it was to read of my sister’s education and Mother and Dad’s pride in everything we were doing abroad. I smoothed the vellum over and over, hoping to ease my homesickness. Even though I had lived away from them for quite some time, the ocean between us and the war made me feel farther away than the moon.
I was folding a letter back into its envelope when there was a knock on my door. Instead of yelling for them to enter, as was my habit, I opened the door to find three nurses spread across the frame: Charlotte on the right, Dorothy in the middle, and Margaret on the left. Smiling like Cheshire cats, they were obviously hiding something behind their backs.
“My dears, what can I do for you?”
“We were all missing home and thought you might be the loneliest of all.”
It was as if they had sensed my feelings through the walls. Tears sprung, quite unbidden, from my eyes. I had not cried a single time since leaving St. Louis, and this show of emotion would not do. I turned to wipe them away, unseen. “Why, what a lovely thought. Now, what do you have there? A biscuit to share? Oh, I do hope so.”
The women laughed. “Even better,” said Dorothy. She nudged her thick eyeglasses up her nose while keeping her other hand hidden behind her back.
Then Margaret, the shortest of the three with light brown hair tucked into a neat bun, produced sheaves of yellowed paper with thick lines of markings across them.
I accepted the paper. “Sheet music? Whatever for?”
“Voilà,” the three said. Dorothy produced a horsehair bow and Charlotte a slightly battered violin.
My hand clapped over my gaping mouth. “But where? Who?”
They all chattered at once. “We went into town…knew you played…had to look it up in French…did you know it is violon?”
Dorothy held up the bow. “And this is an archet de violon.”
“You did this for me?” Again, those darn tears intruded upon my vision. I set aside the sheet music and took the violin Charlotte offered, ran my hand across its smooth grain. It was obviously well made but in need of some polishing. I tightened the strings.
“Go ahead. Try it.” Dorothy handed me the bow.
“Oh no. I will need some time to get it in tune. I am overwhelmed, ladies. Thank you so much. But…” I hesitated, not wanting to hurt their feelings after such a magnanimous gift. “You must promise me this. You must not spend your hard-earned money on me. I will accept this gift and will find a way for it to benefit all. But otherwise, your work, your dedication, is the only gift I will ever want.”
Dorothy elbowed Margaret. “I told you.”
“Now leave me be.” As I closed the door, I longed to join them in the common room or for a chat in one of their huts. But lines had to be kept between us if I was to maintain any semblance of authority. Somehow, my loneliness grew.
I found some clean rags and wiped the violin and bow. There was too much rosin in the horsehair, but otherwise, it seemed to be in fine shape. I tightened the bow hair, then tucked the violin under my chin and played a note. Oh, the sound of it thrilled my ears. As I continued to tune it and play some simple songs, I could feel my spirits lift as if by magic.
CHAPTER 5
Soon, the time came for our British counterparts to leave. We had been working alongside them for a few weeks. Mostly, it was a congenial relationship, but we all knew it was to be short-lived. As their remaining days with us drew to an end, small scuffles broke out over the silliest things. Arguments about how and where supplies should be stored. The proper way to make a bed (British: cover loose over feet to promote good circulation; American: tucked in to keep out the germs). But eventually, compromises won the day. After all, we were on the same side.
Plans were made for a gathering to bid them farewell. I was nervous that it would coincide with a rash of new patients, so we chose early afternoon, which was usually quiet, and had several backup times scheduled just in case.
Parting was bittersweet. We had enjoyed their company while at the same time longing to do things our own way.
The night prior to the event was a busy one. Two hundred wounded soldiers had arrived. Although we didn’t lose a single one, it was a marathon of surgeries, blood transfusions, and dressing changes. Some of the patients had wounds too large or too deep to be closed, and they had to be irrigated. We were using the new Carrel-Dakin method, which required a delicate balance of chemicals in the disinfectant solution. Too strong, and it would injure the tissue further. Too weak, and it wouldn’t kill the germs. It also required a complex arrangement of tubing that had to be carefull
y filled, drained, and monitored.
The next morning and afternoon, the staff filtered into the dining tent for the farewell ceremony like walking dead, so complete was their exhaustion.
The tent, although my nurses had made some effort at decorations, with fresh flowers on the tables and a few lit candles here and there, seemed too somber for the celebration we had planned. After all were assembled, some sitting at the tables while others crowded into every available space, the ceremony began. The British unit commander and Colonel Fife each made brief remarks. Major Murphy and his British compatriot, along with the other doctors, nurses, and other staff, clapped politely at the formal goodbye speeches.
There must be a way to warm up this solemn affair, I thought. Then, I remembered my violin, which I had finally gotten shipshape, even if I didn’t have much of a repertoire. I fetched it from my room and asked Major Murphy for permission to play. Permission was granted, and with an audible sigh of relief, he faded back into the crowd.
I played the few songs I knew from memory, mostly silly little tunes any child would know. We had a small upright piano, and Dr. Gross, a young surgeon with a bad hip, started to accompany me, making it a bit more pleasant. Then I had an idea.
Slowly but strongly, I played the first few notes of a patriotic song. Dr. Gross nodded, and we began to play “My Country ’Tis of Thee.”
Dorothy stood tall and sang along, then egged on her fellow nurses. Soon, all the Americans were singing loudly “Sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.” After two verses, we stopped to much applause. Then, Matron Lipton rose. She sang “God Save the King” to the same tune. Soon, all the Brits had joined in, louder and stronger than had the Americans. The last time through, the Brits and Americans sang their own versions simultaneously at full voice.
When the voices faded, I put down my violin and sang the British third verse a cappella:
“Not in this land alone,
But be God’s mercies known,
From shore to shore.
Lord make the nations see,
The War Nurse Page 7
