Tabitha

by Vikki Kestell

  Tabitha shook her head. “No, darling. I am not. But your hair is a lovely color. Very like mine, do you not think?”

  “Nay,” Sally disagreed, shaking her head. “M’ hair’s nasty.”

  Tabitha flinched. “What? Who says so?”

  “They all says so,” Sally sighed.

  “The other children?”

  “Yah. Ev’ryone. They calls me Red.”

  A font of ire burbled up inside Tabitha and, against her will, her heart went out to the child. “Tell me, Sally. Do you think my hair is nasty?”

  Sally considered Tabitha’s question and then shook her head no. “Nay. Youse pretty.”

  “Well, so are you, Sally. Your hair is like mine, so you are pretty, too.”

  Sally watched Tabitha as if judging her words. Then she leaned into Tabitha and wrapped her arms about Tabitha’s neck. “I likes you.”

  As Tabitha hugged her back, her heart shucked off a sheet of ice.

  This is good, Lord. Matron was right. I needed to come back here. Thank you for making her send me here.

  After that, Tabitha spent every Sunday afternoon at St. Martin’s Orphanage. Since the buses did not run on Sundays, she begged the use of Sister Alistair’s motorcar.

  Sister Alistair did not object: Petrol was dear and costly, so she rarely drove. Tabitha was happy to pay for the fuel out of the ample funds Banks had forwarded to her.

  ~~~

  Another Christmas neared, and with it the end of 1917. Tabitha wrote home to Palmer House.

  Dear Miss Rose,

  Perhaps my heart is beginning to mend. I know, at least, that it is still alive and not a dead, insensible stone as it had felt before.

  I have returned to the orphanage Mason and I visited regularly. We had hoped to adopt two or more of the children when the war ended. The children! I care so deeply for these children. How I live and breathe and go on each day is still a mystery to me, but when I visit St. Martin’s, I know I am alive. And I know that I live to serve my Jesus through two important causes, nursing and these children.

  These little ones have suffered more than I have. Still, each Sunday they come running to greet me, their faces alight and merry. They think I come bearing treats and fun, and I do, of course. However, each week I also bear a heavy heart when I come to them. And yet, after each visit, I return home lighter. The children have no idea of the gift they give to me.

  I am determined that the money Mason left to me will be well used for Jesus’ sake when this war is done. I may not have a solid plan as yet, but I have, at least, sent my own will and testament to Banks. Should anything befall me, Mason’s wealth will be distributed as I have directed. I know he would be pleased.

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 25

  March 1918

  Tabitha waited for Matron or Sister Alistair to speak, wondering why she had been sent for.

  Matron consulted the report on her desk before she answered Tabitha’s question. “A contagion has reared its head on the Continent, Nurse Hale,” she began. “It appears to be quite serious.”

  Tabitha noted the solemn set of the two nurses’ expressions. “You are concerned, then?”

  “We are, yes. The newspapers are calling it the Spanish Influenza, as though it began in Spain or is contained there.” Matron frowned. “That story is likely not true. Last week Dame Becher, QAIMNS Matron-in-Chief, received a letter from the matron of the army hospital near Étaples, France. It was a letter that the matron was able to send by hand, thus, ah, bypassing army censors. What her letter describes is . . . quite disturbing.”

  Matron stared at Tabitha. “I may as well tell you that the matron of whom we speak is Sister McDonald. You know her well. You know her nursing skills and professionalism. Sister McDonald’s letter insists that the infection began at the troop staging center near Étaples. This center adjoins the army hospital of which she is nursing matron.

  “As soon as affected solders were admitted to the hospital, the entire facility fell to it, overwhelming their capacity to handle the outbreak. The subsequent mortality rate was high. Very high. From Étaples, it spread to troops in the field and other outposts. To other Allied Forces.”

  Matron sighed. “We are now hearing of similar cases here in England. Should this influenza get out into the general population? The effects could be devastating.”

  “What is to be done?” Tabitha asked.

  Matron nodded at Sister Alistair, who shifted on her feet and spoke.

  “I shall be leaving for France within the week, Nurse Hale. If we are to prevent an all-out epidemic among our soldiers, we must put in place the severe measures needed to curtail the disease’s spread. We need nurses who understand such things, who have appropriate training.”

  “Y-you are referring to my training in infectious diseases,” Tabitha whispered.

  “Yes, Nurse Hale. Although I cannot compel you, I am asking you to come with me. If you agree, we will take a small band of your best VADs with us. You will have three days to impress upon them the preventive sanctions we must practice, teach, and put into place. The powers-that-be have given us the authority, the extreme latitude required to contain the contagion.”

  “Three days! But-but what of the VAD classes? The ongoing training of new volunteers?”

  Matron fixed Tabitha with a serious eye. “Who is your most outstanding proctor, Nurse Hale?”

  Tabitha sighed and wiped a hand across her brow in distraction. “VAD Darby, Matron.”

  “She will assume your teaching and monitoring duties.” Catching Tabitha before she could object, the older woman added, “We cannot emphasize enough the importance of this mission. Darby must rise to the occasion like the rest of us. Because you have trained her, I am confident that she will.”

  “Yes, Matron.” Tabitha blinked, sorting through the many details she would need set in order.

  Matron and Sister Alistair exchanged glances. “Do you accept our assignment, Nurse Hale?”

  Tabitha straightened and squared her shoulders. “Yes, of course, Matron. I will go.”

  “Very good.” Matron stood and came around her desk to face Tabitha.

  “I have been authorized by Dame Becher herself to offer you this symbol of our fellowship, Nurse Hale. You cannot wear the uniform of the QAIMNS nor can the British Army command you as it can command us. You will still, outside this office, be known as Nurse Hale. However, this badge will mark you as the outstanding nursing sister you are and will garner you the respect you have earned.”

  Sister Alistair moved to Matron’s side and snapped opened a small velvet box. Matron removed from the box a medal suspended by a striped ribbon.

  Tabitha knew the distinctive medal—how could she not? It was a cross set within an oval, a stylized “A” set upon the cross. Inscribed on the oval band surrounding the cross were the words, Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service.

  The medal was worn proudly by every nursing sister of the QAIMNS.

  Tabitha trembled as Matron pinned the medal to the right strap of her VAD uniform apron. “In recognition of the selfless service you have rendered to England, I, Matron Edwynna Stiles, by the authority of Dame Flora Becher, Matron-in-Chief QAIMNS/QARANC, bestow upon you the medal of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service.”

  Tears streamed from Tabitha’s eyes. “You honor me,” she sniffled.

  “You honor your vocation, Sister Hale. You honor us.”

  “Yer want me—wot? Yer jokin’, Nurse Hale, yeah? I know nuffing of nursing loike you do!” Darby’s eyes were wide. She had reverted to the broad accents of her home, and she clutched at her apron as though it were on fire.

  “Do you not know every skill I have taught the VADs?” Tabitha demanded. “Have you not proctored and overseen every class I have taught? Is there anything we expect of a well-trained VAD that you do not know and practice yourself?”

  “No, but . . . cor! I-I-I’m not you!”

  Tabitha mouth cu
rved into a smile, a bit of sadness tinging that curve. “No, dear Ellen, you are your own self: You are a well-trained and disciplined VAD. When you are in the wards, you are a consummate professional. Now, in your new role as Head VAD, you must be a professional at all times, not only when you are in the wards. And I assure you, if you will lead and not give in to fear, the VADs will follow.”

  Tabitha fumbled for her armband and tugged it off. “You must put this on. For the next three days, you will be my shadow, and this band will announce your new status. Where I go, you will go. Everything I do, you will emulate.”

  She twitched the band into place above Darby’s oversleeve. “And when I leave, you will carry on. I have confidence that you will do a smashing job . . . Nurse Darby.”

  Darby’s complexion had taken on a green tinge, but she pointed with her chin. “You-you’re wearin’ the QAIMNS medal.”

  “Stranger things have happened in war, I hear,” Tabitha shrugged. “It is, however, the greatest and most singular honor of my life.”

  The next days were a whirlwind of activity. Tabitha taught the VADs everything she knew for containing the influenza.

  Matron had Miss Thompson dog her footsteps, taking notes and staying up late into the night to type the procedures.

  Darby attended Tabitha the way a drill sergeant attends a commander, correcting in a low, authoritative growl any VAD who failed to learn and do so quickly enough.

  Tabitha spent her last evenings writing letters home to her parents, Palmer House, Claire, and Banks explaining her new assignment. She packed and repacked her bag, not entirely certain what she would require in the field.

  The VAD in the supply office added to what Tabitha had packed: a sewing packet, candles and matches, heavy stockings and rubber boots, a rain slicker, and extra uniforms.

  “Got t’ have th’ right kit, Nurse Hale, wot?” she assured Tabitha. “Tis bloody spring, an’ th’ Frenchys’ roads an’ fields will run wi’ mud.”

  At the end of the week, Sister Alistair, Tabitha, and five VADs—all strong, healthy, well-trained and disciplined women—lined up beside the bus taking them to their departure port. Much of the hospital staff and many ambulatory patients turned out to send them off.

  “We hope to hear from you soon, Sister,” Matron spoke to Sister Alistair. She nodded to Tabitha and the other VADs. “Colchester is proud of you, ladies. We send you on now, in the grace of God.”

  Their ship sat in port, a great hulking mass of iron painted the color of an angry gray sea. The ship looked all the more ominous for the rain streaming from a gunmetal sky.

  German U-boats still plagued the shipping lanes, sinking with impunity any vessel they could. Thankfully, this journey across the Channel would be one of hours rather than days, and other vessels, including armed naval ships, would travel with them through the thick of the German threat.

  Still, Tabitha was not the only woman in their party to swallow anxious nerves. As she climbed the gangplank, she recited lines from Isaiah 43.

  Fear not: for I have redeemed thee,

  I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine.

  When thou passest through the waters,

  I will be with thee;

  and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:

  when thou walkest through the fire,

  thou shalt not be burned;

  neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.

  Tabitha and Sister Alistair, clad in their rain slickers, stood together at the rails but alone in their own thoughts. Their VADs clustered together in a tense knot not far from them.

  Tabitha forced her face into calm, stoic lines. I will not be afraid, Lord, for I know you are with me, she prayed. You are my Refuge, O God. Therefore I will not fear.

  Then the ship’s engines growled and the ship eased away from the docks. It steamed from port down river and into the open sea where it took up station among a convoy of ships crossing over to the coast of France. The waves of the Channel ran high that day; they pitched the ship—and its passengers’ stomachs—in a fitful, unpredictable cadence.

  Hours later, under a clearing sky, their ship broke off from under the watchful guns of several destroyers and made for the calm of a French port. Tabitha and Sister Alistair exchanged relieved glances when the ship’s hands ran the gangplank onto the docks.

  A booming voice hailed them when their feet touched the dock’s steady planks. “Sister Alistair? I am Sergeant Franklin.” He saluted. “I have orders to escort you and your aides during your posting in France. If you will come with me, please?”

  The stocky army sergeant’s roughened face and short, salt-and-pepper hair showed him to be middle-aged, likely in his mid-forties. He gestured toward a dull green canvas-covered truck. “This will be your conveyance and here is your driver,” he said by way of introduction. “I and another soldier will lead you in the vehicle just ahead.” He pointed to an open passenger car painted the same dull green as their truck.

  Handing a sealed packet to Sister Alistair, the sergeant added, “These are your orders, Sister, and our itinerary. We shall leave as soon as you are ready and spend the night at an outpost a few miles east of here.”

  Sister Alistair stepped aside to peruse her orders. When she had read them once, she motioned Tabitha to her side. “Please read these through, Nurse Hale.”

  Tabitha did so. “We shall be busy, Sister.”

  “Indeed. Well, let us be off.”

  Armed with the authority they needed to execute their orders, Sister Alistair, Tabitha, and their VADs climbed into the back of the truck and sat upon the hard benches on either side of it. Their driver handed in their bags, tied the canvas closed, and followed the passenger vehicle ahead of them down the road and into the murky spring dusk.

  They stopped well after dark at a supply outpost. That night they slept in two tents set aside for them. Sister Alistair insisted that Tabitha share her tent while the VADs shared the other.

  “I wish you to grow accustomed to this arrangement, Nurse Hale,” Sister Alistair informed Tabitha. “Yours is a leadership role in our mission, and I want it understood as such at each hospital or clearing station we reach. You will act on our orders with authority—subject only to me.”

  “Yes, Sister,” Tabitha answered, but her eyes were open wide as she tossed and turned upon the unfamiliar cot. Though she stared into the tent’s darkness, she saw her open hand and a puzzle piece resting in its palm. An edge piece. A corner.

  Oh, Mason, she thought. Who could have foreseen my life taking this curious turn? Only our great God.

  Early the following morning, their two-vehicle caravan began its journey. Sister Alistair’s orders were for their nursing troop to visit as many British and Allied Forces camps and outposts as they could reach. They were ordered to train the resident medical and volunteer staff in proper quarantine and preventive methods so as to curtail the spread of the influenza that was beginning to ravage the armies on both sides of the war.

  When their convoy arrived at the first outpost, Sister Alistair presented her orders and requested that the commandant or senior officer call the remaining officers and medical staff together. Sister Alistair described the course of influenza, how it was often most fatal to the very young, the elderly, and the infirm—such as those who were already wounded.

  Tabitha outlined quarantine procedures. “If the infection takes hold in the wounded wards, those patients will likely die, despite our best efforts,” Tabitha informed the medical staff. “Therefore, separate wards for the infected and wounded must be established now. These wards must be erected safe distances from each other. At the first sign of infection, the symptomatic patient must be removed to the quarantine zone.

  “And you must enforce strict boundaries between those who are nursing the infected and those who are nursing the wounded. Doctors, nurses, VADs, and orderlies nursing in the influenza wards are not to approach the non-infected zones or any non-infected part of camp,” Tabit
ha decreed. “They must even eat and sleep in separate quarters.”

  Tabitha gestured to her cohort of VADs. “These VADs are trained in the particulars of handling influenza patients. For the next three days they will hold clinics for your VADs and orderlies to demonstrate the care of infected patients and the prescribed protocols to protect aides and orderlies. Sister Alistair and I will do the same for physicians and nursing sisters. We will oversee the establishment of the separate wards and protocols until they are working as required.”

  The medical staff eyed Tabitha, garbed in her common VAD uniform yet working side-by-side as a peer with Sister Alistair, and issuing orders with calm authority. They noted, too, Tabitha’s American accent and the distinctive medal pinned to her apron strap. Whispers and conjecture about her circulated among them, but no one questioned her role.

  Not all camps Sister Alistair and her VADs visited were unprepared for the influenza: A few had alert doctors or nurses with knowledge of the newest epidemic procedures. Those camps needed less assistance from Sister Alistair’s little band.

  In other camps, however, the medical staff did not possess the authority to demand—and receive—complete cooperation of the camp’s commandant and staff. In effect, the medical staff were unable to enforce the protocols necessary to stop the spread of influenza. In those instances, the overarching authority of Sister Alistair’s orders required the camp’s officers to accede to her every demand.

  Sister Alistair’s and Tabitha’s best hopes were for the hospitals and posts where the contagion had not yet shown itself. But often their convoy arrived too late, and the disease was already running rampant through every part of the camp. The dead were buried in mass graves by the few who were not ill themselves.

  In those situations, Sister Alistair declared a complete quarantine around the camp itself.

  “You cannot mean it!” one exhausted commandant protested. “We cannot leave or receive reinforcements? No supplies? No mail?”