by Bryan Young
Lunches were no better. They were usually crusts of bread and old cheese. We were lucky to get thin soups. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Hortense had allowed us some vin rouge, but for her that was completely out of the question.
“Non. Le vin est mauvais pour votre santé,” she would say. To American ears, they always seemed to compare the French language to the croaking of a frog, but Hortense bleated like a goat when she spoke. Her voice quivered with any word longer than a few syllables.
I could almost forgive her if she kept us free from wine just for lunch, but her rules of temperance extended to the last meal of our day as well. Dinners, usually a meager piece of warm meat and some shriveled and tasteless helping of vegetable matter, were served with water.
In the name of making us healthy, she kept from us the sweet nectar that would keep us whole. The sentiment would have been admirable if it wasn’t so needlessly cruel.
At first, it sounded easy enough to go without. I could will myself to live on stagnant water and hope for transubstantiation.
I’m not a religious man, so that tactic didn’t work for long. After two days I thought I would crack. It was easier to get wine in a trench than it was to get it past Hortense. She would stop up deliveries and take the bottles out of the bags of visitors.
To distract myself from my sobriety, I found things only got worse when I looked around to compare my treatment to the treatment given by the other nurses.
Jealousy might have been the first thing I felt when I saw her, the angel from my dreams. I was convinced I had imagined her. I blinked hard, trying to unsee her. But there she was, tending to a soldier across the room whose arm had been shorn off by a German steam-walker. Her skin was alabaster, flecked with a perfect constellation of soft brown freckles across her cheeks and over her button nose. Her hair was dark, but her eyes radiated green from the other side of the room. She wore her nurse’s uniform with a quiet and compassionate dignity that I’d never detected in Hortense.
I didn’t know what Sara’s name was then, but she paid an awful lot of attention to the other agony-racked patients in the hospital and not anywhere near enough attention to me, which was odd since I was still then convinced she was a mere figment of my dreams.
Her smile embodied an empathic warmth. I could still feel the brush of her skin across my forehead and the sound of her voice lulling me back to sleep.
The first time I knew she was real and not a shade of my sleep was five days into my convalescence. She was across the room, helping adjust the pillow of a fellow who’d received amputations at both forearms and wore a blood soaked rag over one eye.
I turned to the man in the bed beside me; Jean-Claude was his name. He’d been shredded by debris from a grenade, jumping in the way to protect his friend. Despite his physical damage, he had a keen mind and good eyes and ears.
“Jean-Claude,” I asked, “who is that?”
“L’infirmière? Sara. Sara is her name. Elle est l’anglais.”
Sara.
Hearing her name pass through Jean-Claude’s lips stopped every thought in my head.
Of course her name was Sara.
What else could it have been? “So you can see her, too?”
He turned over in his bed, annoyed. “Oui.”
I watched her brush another man’s cheek lightly, and I could feel it by proxy. I shivered. The soldier she tended was blinded by the gas, and the touch of her hand turned his frightened frown into a reassured, weak smile. It was as good as a kiss on the lips.
She moved on to the next besotted soldier and did the same thing, turning his fear and pain into a manageable sort of agony. Smiles followed in her wake, as though she were a gardener planting seeds of happiness and comfort.
I yearned for that sort of treatment. I yearned for comfort. A friend. Instead, I whiled away my time alone in stress and terror.
As I think back on things now, I realize that jealousy must be planted in a firm soil bed of friendship, love, and devotion in order for it to flower and blossom. The flower bed I’d left in the United States had been choked out by the weeds of Lucy’s parents, killing the sweet flowers that yearned to grow on their own. When I came to France, I vowed never again to get into such a garden, but there I was in a bed anyway, not in the soil, but a hospital. Would I be able to keep the weeds out?
Days passed in the hospital.
Hortense made it her business to make me well, but she just couldn’t manage. With a broad smile she might give me the wrong medication or eagerly change my bandages when no one had asked her to. I could feel my blood pressure raise every time she came near. In one of my dreams, I’d jumped once more across the Seine and found an entire cadre of Hortense clones dressed as Germans.
I’d wake up screaming, and all I wanted was the sweet, saintly care of the angel on the other side of the room.
But it was not meant to be.
My unfortunate curse forced me to watch her from across the way, offering her care and shining beauty to those convalescing on the eastern side of the hospital. Meanwhile, those of us fighting our injuries on the western front were left to battle Hortense.
The broken few of us in Hortense’s charge spent our time playing cards and making idle chatter. We told stories of the war now and then as we felt able. We’d tell stories of bravery beyond the wire, facing down machines belching steam, Germans belting obscenities, or times we’d avoided the gas narrowly. One of the fellows who had more strength and mobility than the rest of us angled our beds together so those of us in casts or too weak to move could get a solid game going. But Hortense didn’t seem to like that at all.
Every time she caught our beds out of sync, she came out from the nurse’s station wailing away at us in French. “Il pourrait y avoir une situation d'urgence à tout moment! Vous serez dans le chemin!”
One time she broke up our game and I wasn’t angered at all. A new assault had been launched and fresh wounded were brought into the ward on stretchers. Beds were pushed aside and crammed desperately together to accommodate our surging numbers. Surgeons came in, forced to perform operations right there in the ward with nothing to keep us away but nurses holding walls of sheets.
Anxiety built in me every time they brought in new men. Pandemonium would ensue, and I would clutch the edges of my bed until my knuckles turned white. I didn’t realize it, but I was bracing for a ground impact that would never come.
A few days passed like this, slowly, each minute ticking away in pain or chaos. I caught myself once, in the middle of a dark night, adding to the sounds of moaning and coughing with the sharp sobs I worked so hard to suppress.
Many stories I’d heard of the war, during and well after, began with love at first sight with a nurse in the hospital, and they would live happily ever after or sometimes not so happily. It seemed easy to fall in love with the only kind and truly beautiful face in the vicinity, but there was just something about Sara. She wasn’t just beautiful. She was truly remarkable. The brightness of her inner-beauty only added a heavenly glow to her outer-beauty.
It didn’t help that I was lonely and still heartbroken. She was the only one there who could cure my final, unseen wound. I just didn’t know it yet. I watched her and imagined what future she and I could have together.
My yearning loneliness paused with the arrival of a silhouette in the doorway. I couldn’t make out the fine details, but that figure was definitely clad in a French uniform.
Obscured in the blackened shadows, he scanned the ranks of wounded and focused in on me. Then, slowly, he walked toward me, filling me with worry. The only person who could do anything worse to me than Hortense was an officer of the Army.
There were only two things they would be at the hospital to talk to me for. Either they were there to give me a medal for bravery, or they were there to charge me with deserting my post, despite the positive benefits of my deeds.
They’d finally caught up to me, found me in the mess of paperwork and hospital gauze
and maybe, just maybe, they had decided to shoot me.
If I had to live any longer with the ache of loneliness and Hortense’s incompetence, maybe two bullets to the head would be for the best.
A laugh escaped me. I thought I was as good as dead up there on that zeppelin. Every minute I’d lived since had been borrowed time. If I didn’t have at least the joy of watching the angelic nurse across the room those past few days, I’d have gladly given back the time I’d borrowed. They may as well have been there to shoot me.
The French officer’s features came into focus as he stepped into the light. That’s when I realized I had absolutely nothing to fear.
10
The man before me was not arriving to deliver a bullet into my head for charges of desertion.
It was merely Renault.
“Hello, my friend,” I said when I recognized him. The anxious swelling in my middle faded when he came further into focus.
“Bonjour, mon ami.”
I worked hard to give him a broad smile, but it was half concealed by bandages. The stitches under the gauze made smiling painful.
“You look well,” he told me, sizing me up from the bedside.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
“I thought a hospital visit was the least I could do.”
“Any news?” My hand reached up, and my fingers wrapped nervously around my throat.
“Have no worry. There will be no charges. There was talk of charging you with desertion, but the officer that we, how to say, persuadé…? Yes. Persuaded? After he was made to realize what happened and what you did, he remained very quiet and opted not to make a report.”
“I’ll have to thank him.” My fingers eased their grip and my good hand found its way back to my side.
“I think it would be best to stay away from him entirely,” Renault said. “He’s grateful in the long run, but his part still stings.”
“I can understand that.”
“And what of you? You’re off the line, so things must be looking up.”
“It would be, but you don’t know how it is here.”
“Are they mistreating you?” Renault asked.
“There are two answers to that. The first is yes and the second is emphatically yes.”
“Do I need to make a report?” Renault looked around for someone to report to.
“It would do no good. The nurse who mishandles me is the one in charge.”
“I see. Le chien aboit, la caravane passe. Well, if there’s no one I can make a report to, is there anything you need that I can bring you?”
I nodded my head as best I could, but the motion was accompanied by a dull and throbbing pain. “I’m so very thirsty, and that nurse thinks it’s her business to keep me temperate. She says we’ll heal better.”
Renault smirked, “Je vois. No wine for the recuperating patient?”
“It’s a fate worse than death. Can you help?”
“I will see what I can do.” Renault turned to see Hortense hovering over a fellow patient, badgering him with a firm hand and a rough voice offering soothing pleasantries. “Je pense que je vois clairement le problème.”
“It’s not your problem, though, mon ami. You barely know me, and you owe me nothing.”
“If I owe you nothing, doing you a favor will mean you owe me. And a man in my position cannot be owed too much. You’ll be in my debt, just where I want you.”
Renault smiled and we both laughed. Aside from visions of angels, it was the first bit of joy I’d known since I’d woken up in the hospital. Renault had such an easy charm and could make friends with anyone.
“I will do what I can for you,” he said, finally.
“There is one other thing I would ask of you, and if you could arrange it, I would owe you for the rest of my life.”
Renault’s smile stretched so far he was forced into a squint. “With how quickly you are willing to risk it, I wonder how long that would be worth something.”
“It’s the nurse. She knows nothing of proper nursing and makes everything hurt. I need the other one.”
“The beautiful English one who let me in?”
“That one,” I said, pointing to the beautiful nurse with the caring eyes and loving hands.
“Sara? Oui, Sara was her name?”
“Yes. Sara.” I tried not to smile too wide. “I’ve seen her care for others and there’s no sign of mishandling whatsoever. With her tending my wounds, I’ll be back on my feet in no time.”
“Tending to your wounds, mon ami, or your heart?”
“Both I would hope, but I will take what I can get. Please, my friend?”
He took a long look at her. His eyes narrowed, and I hung to the silence waiting for his word to come in my favor.
After a moment, he half-smiled and nodded, almost tipping his hat in my direction. “I promise that I will do what I can.”
“Renault, you are a true friend.”
“Ha. Mere moments ago you were wondering why I was here, calling me a stranger. Now I am your true friend. You need to work on managing your feelings, Preston.”
Renault stayed for a time, telling me of the aftermath of the battle. After the airships had come down at my hand, hell had broken loose. At least that’s how he described it. I thought chaos descended the moment we were expected to go over the wire. No, he described something more akin to absolute and utter bedlam. Retreats were called, but then rescinded, adding a deep layer of confusion to the battle. Eventually, they took a piece of the line, though not all of it, but then lost it again when the Germans rolled out their steel tanks over the barbed wire. The weight of them under steam power made rolling over the wire difficult but possible. Eventually, a group of enterprising poilus were able to crawl in close enough without being crushed and affix bombs to their underbellies.
Even with my extraordinary help, that battle had lasted through the night and into the next day and no one was better for it. The only reason they decided I was a hero was because we would have surely lost the trench had I not acted. I’d evened out the fight. With the loss of so much advanced hardware, it must have been a particularly expensive loss for the Germans.
After his story, Renault left, promising to return with the wine and, hopefully, the nurse.
I wished then, and still now, that I knew him better. We barely knew each other, had no common friends, and we had barely one common experience between us. But, to his credit, he maintained a jovial presence the entire time, treating me like the oldest and most trusted of his friends, teasing me as only an old friend would dare.
As he made his way from the hospital room, I could see him there, a silhouette in the doorway. He stood next to her, stopping to have a word with this Sara in his jovial way. The light cast on her face so that it was the only thing I could see in detail.
He pointed me out to her with a big grand gesture and a handful of fingers. She turned her head and looked at me…
The smile she gave each of her patients spread across her face, but this time it was intended just for me. It was the smile of a mother for her children, or a shepherd for their well-tended flock. There was a joy in it that could only be brought by the unconditional care for someone in your charge. It was so hard to describe. Saintly, perhaps? I struggle to find the right words for her smile. I’m loathe to describe it, for if I do it wrong, it will give one an image of her that isn’t her.
I assure you there is nothing like her smile. A light in her eyes beams into you, radiating happiness and comfort. She brought more warmth than a steam engine, and you could feel it as she walked by. Everyone felt it, not just me.
But there she was, for the first time since my fevered dream, baring that sainted smile directly at me, all thanks to Renault.
Sara.
Just writing down her name pains me, as though it’s not something I should do. Something disallowed.
She must have been called off to some other duty, because when Renault left, she disappeared.
&n
bsp; Her smiling face was the image burned into my brain. I can’t escape that image, even when I closed my eyes.
It never ends.
The spark of what I dearly wished would turn into love began that night. Her demeanor was constantly pleasant, and her treatment of my fellow wounded soldiers showed me everything I needed to know about her personality. That she was in a war zone with no hint of fright taught me what I needed to know of her bravery. Every word in the vocabulary of her body language exuded caring and unconditional love.
In the theatre of my dreams I’d moved from the war to the hospital, and I found my hospital bed and myself lying in it. I could see myself there, from across the room. The cast on my leg covered over my broken bones, but the bandages over my face and body covered much of my fright.
The Hortense in my nightmare carried tools of fright and torture with her.
But Sara approached, casting Hortense aside with a gentle shove. When she finally reached me, she wiped away all my fear and doubts with a cool wash cloth. All the tension I felt, all the pain Hortense caused, intentional or otherwise, had dissolved. She poured water over my bandages, saturating the bedsheets beneath me and cooling me into a soothed state. Her fingers touched my face delicately, and I could feel my eyes soften.
She understood the meaning in my eyes and carefully curled up onto the bed with me, placing her head and her hand on my chest. Her ear pressed against my heart, listening for the steady beat of my passion, nuzzling a pleasant warmth back into me.
It was that image of serenity that drifted me peacefully to sleep through the ache of my wounds.
11
The hospital room was gray in the hour before the dawn, and I woke with a jerk to the sensation that I’d been falling into the Seine after LeBeau. The cool water I’d dreamt of was manifest on my body in the form of a chilly sweat.
There was no lingering dream, but my pulse had accelerated and I was mentally exhausted, as though I’d been running away from someone or something with a determined focus.
When my eyes finally adjusted to the dim light, I noticed that I had a visitor sitting at my bedside.
