Blue Bird

I’m not ashamed.

She buckled her trousers, heart still pounding, breath rushing from chest to throat. Behind her, back turned, Michel was doing the same. She could hear the rustle of clothing, the metal of his belt.

All she knew was his name, and that when his unit was defeated by the German army he escaped to Calais and had spent months fighting with the Free French forces. That’s how he’d been injured, and she’d first met his crystal-blue gaze as a doctor from Liverpool pulled shrapnel from his chest and shoulder without anesthetic. He hadn’t shouted, cried out or cringed. He’d stared at her, and, as though it was helping him somehow, she met his gaze and tried to offer strength. As the doctor had probed the mangled meat of his left deltoid, the only sign of pain had been a tensed jaw muscle that eventually began to quiver from strain.

She was sure she had been the only one to notice it.

Pants fastened, blouse re-tucked, presentable again, she turned, uselessly smoothing her hair at the back of her head. Bits of tree bark fell as her fingertips brushed against them, and her body reacted again to the memory of only moments before.

I’m not ashamed.

Three weeks they’d been set up in his field west of Bayeux. Her first time away from home, her first time anywhere.

In the field hospital she’d seen men with various types of injuries, men that required more of her time than Michel had. Emergency surgeries done with torches and lanterns as the only light source, while grown men screamed over limbs too damaged to be saved. Bodies with no hope of seeing home again. Day three and she’d cried herself to sleep, wanting to go home.

Michel arrived after one of the more awful surgeries. The young man bled out from a gunshot wound to the stomach. At first sight it was known the damage was fatal, but they’d tried. Holding the man’s hand as the doctor administered morphine, watching as he lost the fight against death had been the most help she could offer. With tears in her eyes she’d washed her hands then been sent to attend the doctor who was with Michel.

The doctor could speak French, so she’d listened to their musical back-and-forth while responding to the English directions the doctor directed at her, light and professional.

As soon as their gazes locked, the earth tilted towards him and she felt herself drawn in. Her own eyes still shone with tears, but instead of hiding she stared right back. She understood, quite suddenly, why they called it attraction. Unseen forces were bringing her into his gaze, the warmth of his presence.

Her soul hadn’t recognized its other half, or its mirror. Her body simply wanted to be closer to him. Never in her life had she known this feeling, not even with Jack. Poor Jack, burned up in a flight training accident just six months after proposing.

I’m not ashamed.

With the cool, summer night air licking at the sweat in the hollow of her throat, she let herself acknowledge the heat in her face and neck. Her pulse fluttering against the side of her throat. A deep, bruising satisfaction from an urge surrendered to. With alarm, she also noticed something was missing, something she’d always felt after she’d been alone with Jack; the discouraging sense that she hadn’t been altered or different in any way. Disappointed that the physical act of love wasn’t really enough to change who she was or how she saw life. Was it her fault? Was there something intrinsically wrong with her?

Something felt different on this night. This hadn’t been her duty; she barely knew this man. She’d simply wanted him when she saw him. The first disorienting moment that his eyes ate her up, even as he bled and struggled not to flinch, was more thrilling than when Jack had kissed and touched her back home, the very night she’d agreed to make him part of her life.

Michel said something that brought her back to the present, and his expectant expression told her he’d asked a question. He knew she didn’t speak French any more than he spoke English, but as he offered his hand, she gathered that he’d asked if she was ready to go back to the hospital.

The hand extended to her was broad, and rough enough to scrape against the bare skin of her back, the underside of her knee, as he’d held her roughly against the tree that offered little cover save for the murmur of rustling leaves.

I’m not ashamed.

Michel had awful nightmares. He wasn’t one of the ones that shouted and flailed. He screamed in his sleep, half words and half the soul-rendering agony or someone who had to endure horrifying things. Gruesome, inhumane images that were held back behind a clenched jaw with a telltale nerve that flinched against orders. Sleep was the only time the guard dropped to let it out, and it was all the more violent from being held at bay. His body would lock as though in rigor mortis, just to allow the pain and horror to escape in a direct line. Every night the sound drew all the warmth from her bones, and she wondered that she was not afraid of him because of it.

In response she nodded, and he didn’t wait for her to take his hand. He shied from her touch in his first days at the hospital. Now he simply turned back the way they had walked a mere hour ago.

An hour to redirect her awareness of what she was, who she was, what she had inside of her that would give over her body to a man with no last name. To have that man awaken a pure, primal section of her being with a few sly glances across the tent, a hand that would boldly brush her hip as she leaned against his cot to fasten the bandages over his shoulder after the doctor had examined the stitches.

Michel led their way along a footpath through deep grass. Far in the distance the sounds of battle drifted their way, but only the lowest, deepest thundering of explosions. Even this distance from the front line and the smell of August’s green leaves could not keep the stench of acrid smoke at bay.

The twilight couldn’t penetrate the shadows of the trees they passed under, but the paleness of Michel’s shirt was just visible, so she followed that and stepped carefully. When she stumbled Michel paused and caught her arm. How he could see her, she had no idea.

“Faites attention,” he whispered, and she nodded. Then he simply stood gazing down on her. She could only make out the sheen of his eyes. After a moment, his hand came up and brushed hair away from her cheek. Another shine and she knew he was smiling. “Oiseau bleu,” he murmured softly, and she had to smile as well.

She had heard the soldiers calling nurses blue birds, a combination of “bird” for woman and “blue” for the uniforms they wore in training and in the cities. Here she had been able to wear the same trousers as the soldiers wore. They were stifling in the heat and she still had not gotten over the novelty of it.

He said more in French, then leaned in to kiss her, very softly on the mouth. He spoke again, then ended it with a phrase she did know. “Au revoir.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, softly, not wanting to shatter the sudden, surreal tone the night had taken.

He stepped away from her, and his face caught the moonlight for just a moment. He smiled, but it was a pained smile, and as he adjusted his arm in its sling, she realized what he meant to do.

“You can’t go,” she whispered. “You’re injured. Just wait for a transport—”

He vanished. She had been looking directly at him, and then in an instant he was gone. Without a sound.

She didn’t try to follow, caught up in the sense that perhaps he hadn’t even been real. But her body assured her he had been. She could still feel every touch.

“Michel?” she breathed into the night, straining for a footstep or a laugh that meant he had been kidding. Nothing reached her ears but the leaves overhead, lifted by the night breeze.

Picking her way along the footpath, she was oddly accepting of both his affection and then his departure. Of course he had to go. He had family, friends, maybe a wife. And he had been on his own for a long time by that point.

Closer to the field hospital tent she could hear raised voices and the roar of automobile engines. The sense of panic brought her back to her senses. She picked up her pace and when she pulled back the tent flap the doctor from Ontario with the kind eyes said simply, “There you are. Got a bad one in surgery. You ready to help?”

Refastening her hair on the back of her head, she nodded sharply. “Yes, I’m ready.”

Life continued, soldiers healed or died. All that was certain was right now. At that moment she washed her hands, noted the way her pulse steadied, and caught her own gaze in the shaving mirror over the sink.

I am alive. And I’m not ashamed.