Even though I knew Ned and his passing was painful to all of us, I also felt it was wrong somehow to have this elaborate service for one of our own, when all the Tommies and others were buried without.
Sometimes families would travel from England when they were informed that a loved one would likely perish. They would stay for the service. Sometimes, if I had had contact with the deceased, I would attend the short ceremony with them. This became harder and harder as the months wore on, each death adding to my emotional pain, but I was determined to continue the practice and somehow not become too numb to feel the loss.
After everyone else was gone, Fred and I shared our own time of remembrance. We lit candles in the little chapel, then sat in the small wooden folding chairs.
He blessed himself, then offered a prayer. “Dear Lord, take our dear Ned and keep him. His life on earth was much too short, but we give him now unto You.”
“How well did you know Ned?” I asked.
“Not very. He would come to my office now and then. He was the first to congratulate me when I officially took command, back in October.” He looked at me, an odd look on his face.
“While I didn’t, you seem to be saying.”
He waggled his head. “It was as if you didn’t even notice. When we first arrived, I had a steady stream of our people from St. Louis coming to me to complain about Colonel Fife did this or that.”
“I’m sure they did.”
“There was a lack of what the army calls a unity of command. They were used to reporting to me, trusted me. But he was put in charge. It was like that.” He paused and pointed to the flickering shadows from the candles. “I felt like a shadow on the wall. So when the army finally saw fit to put me in command, it was a big deal to me and, I think, the unit.”
“I’m sorry, Fred. Sorry to be naïve about these things.” I leaned my head on his shoulder. “Sorry to be so caught up in my own duties and not more attuned to your challenges. And your triumphs. And my own position—sort of part of the army, but without rank—leaves me rather out of tune with the command structure.”
“Maybe I’ve overestimated my importance in your world. I suppose that’s the real issue.”
“Don’t say that. The only thing you’ve overestimated is my innate sense of others’ sensitivities. I seem to be severely lacking in that territory, especially for a nurse.”
“Maybe it’s because you are a nurse. How can you possibly concern yourself with all the emotions of the people you have to deal with every day? I imagine you need sort of an emotional wall.” He looked over the prayer card with Ned’s name carefully printed on it. “And not only for the patients. Ned was the first of us, but I imagine not the last.”
“It’s a narrow path we both have to navigate, between caring too much and too little.” I stood, then went to blow out the candles. “In the future, don’t assume I’ve noticed things that concern you, and bring my attention to them if I should.”
* * *
We had not brought up our odd night together, my bout with hypothermia, or my wrecked legs. Maybe admitting to my frailties would force us to address them, and we both knew that would likely end in me being returned stateside. So Fred and I continued our close professional relationship, and I tried to be especially observant of his moods.
This was not an easy or natural thing for me. I was having dinner with him some days later and had made up my mind to listen to everything he said—and everything he wasn’t saying—with every bit of my attention. My habit with anyone, not just Fred, was to listen enough to garner any important new information while sorting out some other issue in my head at the same time. So I forced myself to change that habit.
As a result, I found myself picking up so many nuances, things that led me to ask more insightful questions, and indeed, learning things I never would have. I felt myself drawing closer to him on an intellectual level. I always knew he was brilliant, but really listening helped me to focus and even share more of what was on my own mind. After the dinner, my burdens felt lighter, and I had answers to things I hadn’t even directly thought about.
But more time spent in these intent conversations was more fodder for the rumor mill, due to our audience of curious, prying busybodies. Gossip was an inevitable part of any medical community, and Base Hospital 21 was no different. Perhaps it was the long, stressful hours, the close physical proximity to one another in our working space, or just human nature, but there were always rumors going around.
The discussions with the chief nurses in Paris regarding how to handle dances and outings and such between the men and women hadn’t seemed of personal import to me at the time. In fact, I remember my feet doing a quiet tap dance under the table as I tried to hide my exasperation over the prolonged and what I thought unnecessary discussion. But now I was glad that our hospital hadn’t seen the need for strict limits on relationships. For surely, Fred and I would be breaking them. There was still the matter of Red Cross policy, but so far, we had only skirted around the edges without intentionally breaking them.
CHAPTER 13
December 1917
Early in the month, we had a string of days filled with sunshine, even if it was the weak, watery sunshine of late fall. I checked on our Belgian patient, who so far had avoided leg amputation. Margaret was just about to wheel him outside for his daily dose of fresh air.
“Goeiemorgen, Matron!” the patient greeted me.
To which I replied in both languages, “Goeiemorgen and good morning to you. How are you feeling?”
“Goed, dank u. And that’s thanks to you and my girl, Margaret.”
Margaret beamed. “The doctors say if he keeps doing so well, he won’t lose his leg after all. That big, bad infection slid off in one slough.” She wrapped a blanket around his shoulders. “You’re a lot of work but worth it.”
As they headed out of the tent, I took a moment to feel something I hadn’t experienced in some time. Joy. Sometimes good things happened.
* * *
Just as we seemed to have gained some control over the new procedures for isolating respiratory patients, a new challenge presented itself. Or herself, I should say.
Madame Curie had chosen late fall as a good time to check back on how our new X-ray equipment was performing. Although it was a great privilege to meet with her, I had tried to dissuade her from coming.
Dear Madame,
I received your letter and wish to assure you that your improvements to our X-ray machine and the addition of the radon tube are working fabulously well. We are triangulating bullets and other fragments with such accuracy that our men are up and back to duty in no time.
As we are experiencing an influx of patients with what seems to be a contagious influenza, I regretfully advise you to postpone your visit until a safer time.
Respectfully,
Julia Stimson
The response came back just two days later. Madame Curie must have had friends within the French postal system.
Dear Miss Stimson,
I assure you I have faced much larger threats. I will arrive next Thursday. There is much to discuss.
—MC
Letter in hand, I rushed over to speak with Captain Ernst. He was just finishing up with a patient, and two men in hospital pajamas were preparing to roll the patient out on his gurney.
“Are we short of orderlies?” I asked Captain Ernst.
He slid the heavy lead apron from his shoulders, and it fell to a steel table with a thunk. Waiting until the men had left the room, he said in a low voice, “Those guys are shell-shocked. It’s good duty for them.”
“I see.” Even though it seemed like a good idea, I bristled at not being consulted. Orderlies were under my jurisdiction. But I tamped down that matter for the moment. After all, if Dr. Valentine could admit when others might have better ideas, so could I. “We’re to have anoth
er visit from Madame Curie.”
His face brightened. “Is Irène coming?”
I couldn’t resist a little ribbing. “She’s half your age.”
He folded his arms across his chest and nodded to the letter I carried. “What does she want?”
When would I learn that Dr. Ernst had no discernible sense of humor when it came to the Curies? I cleared my throat and unfolded the letter. “She’s coming next Thursday, just to check up on us. But then she mentions having ‘much to discuss.’”
He motioned for me to walk ahead of him as we exited his space. “Well, thank you for the warning, but there isn’t much I need to do to prepare.” He surprised me with a little chuckle, and I turned to see him rub his stubbly cheek. “Except maybe a clean shave, in case a certain someone shows up.”
On the next Thursday, on the dot of eight in the morning, the large white panel truck emblazoned with a red cross rumbled into the receiving area in front of the old grandstand. I tucked my hair into its tight bun and checked over my uniform. Not much made me nervous, but somehow this small, intense woman made me feel like a child in her presence. Irène was in the driver’s seat, and Captain Ernst greeted her while I went around to open the passenger door. There was Madame Curie, sitting up stiffly and staring ahead, a small leather bag clutched in her hands.
“Madame?”
Slowly, she turned to me, then seemed surprised to see me. “Don’t you have people for this?”
“For what, Madame?”
“To receive arriving supplies and guests, of course. And please, for you, I am Marie.”
“You are no ordinary guest.” I offered my hand to help her down from the truck, but she scampered down without my assistance. Although she was about fifty years old, she was as agile as someone half her age. “Would you like to rest first or tour the X-ray room straightaway, er, Marie?” Using her given name felt wrong somehow.
She handed me the leather bag and a large binder, bulging with paper. “Irène is fully capable of that. Let’s be off to your rooms, then.”
* * *
Once we were settled with cups of tea and some biscuits, I tried to update Madame on the numbers of patients who had been X-rayed and the additional shielding we had put in place. She nodded politely but tapped her spoon on my small table with impatience.
“You are a very busy woman, Madame, and you come at a time of considerable risk.” I let the unasked question linger in the air.
She stirred her tea with a tinkly-tink, even though she hadn’t added any sugar.
“It’s a delicate matter, young lady. I must find the proper English words to say something to you.”
My mind whirled. What could she possibly need to share that would give her pause? She hadn’t seemed to be one to mince words before. I reviewed the possibilities. Had she found grave danger in the radiation we were using? Was this critical tool about to be yanked away from us? Was Irène sent to advise Captain Ernst of this in private, out of respect?
“And it’s personal.”
So not radiation. “Personal for you or for me?” I got up to fetch more tea.
“You, of course. I wouldn’t come here to burden you with my own personal issues. Although I do wish you to learn from them.”
Despite her insistence that I call her Marie, I preferred the more respectful Madame. Perched on my little metal and green leather chair, masses of graying curly hair caught up in a messy bun, she reminded me of a cockatiel. “Madame, what could be so pressing as to take you away from your work?”
“My work? Good gracious, don’t you know it is all shut down?” She looked around my small office as if someone might be hiding in a corner. “We’ve hidden it, you know.”
“Hidden what? From whom?” I scraped my chair closer; she had my full attention now.
“The radium, of course. We can’t let it get into enemy hands. There’s no end of the destruction they could do with its power.”
My stomach started to flip like a landed fish. “You can’t hide something like that just anywhere. It would have to be very secure, far from the enemy, and where they aren’t likely to look. And what of the radon?”
I thought of the tiny amount of radon gas we had for the X-ray machine. She had said that she had extracted it from radioactive rocks. How could they possibly gather and store all those?
“We are speaking of an amount weighing no more than this.” She fished into a small bag hung around her neck, brought out a centime coin, and tossed it onto the table. “It is easy to hide.”
I stared at her reddened, chapped hands. Madame’s rather carefree attitude with the dangers presented by radioactivity worried me. At the same time, I was in awe of her; she had the power and knowledge to further science to benefit humanity in ways I could only imagine. I had to tread lightly, but still, the safety of my patients and nurses came first. “I understand. And I’m sure it’s securely locked away, far from posing any danger to anyone.”
“Away from Paris, I can tell you that much.” She tilted her head, her intense gray eyes bearing down on me. “But that isn’t why I came here.”
“It’s not? But you said… Well, why did you come?”
“I wanted to talk about you, dear.”
I shook my head. “Me? Fine. Anything you want to know. But first, I need to know one thing. Have you hidden your supply of radium in my hospital?”
She threw her head back and laughed, the first time I had seen her laugh, and it wasn’t a pleasant sight. She crowed and cackled, reminding me of a scene in a performance of Macbeth, when the witches chant, “Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.”
“I take that as a no.” I looked at my watch. I needed to make rounds at the end of the shift.
“I want to discuss the nature of your relationship with Major Murphy.”
“How so?” I could feel a knot developing in my throat, along with a desire to walk off in a huff. And I would have if this were anyone but Marie Curie sitting in front of me.
“It is a small world we live in, no? Such as it is, Irène has brought back some, how you would say, gossip.”
I held up my hand as if stopping traffic. “Madame, please don’t concern yourself.”
She grasped my hand, pushing it back onto the table. “You should know. That is all I’m saying. Small minds, or perhaps minds seeking a diversion, like to relish in these things. And these small minds are saying that you are in a relationship with the commanding officer here. And no good will come of that. You won’t be able to hide your feelings, and it will affect your work. Believe me, I know this.”
“Truly, not much has happened. Not that anyone else could be aware of anyway.” Heat was rising in my face. Of course, I had heard a few wisecracks and giggles here and there but thought nothing of them. How could a perfectly normal and healthy relationship between two adults possibly be harmful? We had been ever careful not to allow our friendship to affect our work. I needed to think this through alone and then discuss it with Fred. I glanced at Madame, and she seemed to read my thoughts.
“It doesn’t matter if you’ve done nothing wrong. It doesn’t matter if it’s love or lust or flirtation.” She picked up her centime from the table, tucked it back into her bag, and rose from her chair. “What matters is the important work you’re doing. Soon, you will have to make a choice. There is more to my story, but you will have to trust me for now.” She touched a crooked forefinger to her temple. “Think. Because there is no going back.”
* * *
My nurses started planning for Christmas directly after Thanksgiving. They wrote home for fun things to put in the men’s stockings, which they had started knitting and sewing. We already had a choir of sorts, and I wrote home for some music for us.
It felt strange to be planning a joyous celebration in the middle of a war. When the nurses were having a stocking sewi
ng session, I joined them one evening to see how they felt about it.
We had one hundred nurses now, and they planned to make ten stockings each, so we would have enough for a thousand men. Our admissions had fallen off lately, so we all hoped that should be enough. Since I could knit a bit, I settled myself next to Nora, who was using bright red and white yarn.
A pile of completed stockings was in a basket next to her. “If you can sew a white cuff on those, that would be most helpful,” she told me.
After chatting a bit about all the Christmas plans, I asked her straight out how she felt about the celebration.
“It’s a wonderful thing, really. An opportunity to show our men how much we care about them and how much support they have from back home.”
“Do you think it makes them sadder though, makes them miss home even more and resent all they’ve lost?” I used a yarn needle to attach the white cuff to the red stocking.
“No. The only thing that could be worse is if we neglect to celebrate at all.” She put down her knitting needles. “Come. I’d like to show you something you may not have noticed.”
We put on our coats, and she led me outside the hut to a dark corner across the racetrack from the lines of tents. There was a blanket of freshly fallen snow that seemed to hush any sounds. I pulled up my collar to protect my cheeks from an icy wind.
“Look up,” Nora said.
It was a moonless night, and clouds obscured most of the stars. There frankly wasn’t much to look at.
“Here it comes.”
A white spotlight appeared against the clouds and circled around us, then over the field. It made the clouds glow for a moment, then lit the dark space in between.
“It seems like it helps us see into heaven,” Nora said. “I know it’s man-made, but I like to think of it as a halo of protection over us. Out there, beyond it, is God and all the universe. But under that halo of light, we share a place of safety. A place where we love and take care of one another, even as terrible things happen outside it.”
The War Nurse Page 17
