HER HANDS #5

Please note. There are descriptions of religious beliefs and practices contained in HER HANDS. They are intended for use as setting, cultural context and character development. They are not intended to promote or criticize any religious belief or practice.

HER HANDS

Installment 5

Chapter 2

Scenes 15- 20

Evening supper was a silent affair. The nurses and aides ate briefly without speaking. All were in some degree of shock. Sarah sipped her beef broth, knowing she needed the strength it provided. She chose to stare into the clear brown depths of her bowl, which allowed her to shut out images from the day, or thoughts of what was yet to come. There was more to come, the day was not done. When she had been summoned to supper, the nun who had spoken to her informed Sarah she was to report to the nurse’s station when she had finished her meal.

Sarah shut her eyes, resting them when there were only a few spoons full of broth remaining. The pleasure of the rest overcame her, richly decadent, delicious. She thought of a perfect chocolate soufflé. She tasted it for a moment, but all moments end. They lead to the next, and in obeisance to that unarguable rule, she opened her eyes to finish her meal.

When she opened her eyes, Cecile was across the plank table from Sarah; just seated with a steaming bowl set before her. Sarah’s heart leaped like a stag in an open field.

Her friend smiled, “I startled you?”

Sarah nodded. “I’m glad, I didn’t expect…how are you?”

It was a stupid question and yet the most meaningful request imaginable. Both young women knew it was an important expression of caring. The words themselves didn’t matter. What mattered was the way they searched each other’s eyes, desperate to know that the other was intact, was maintaining her vigor through all of this that they barely comprehended.

Sarah reached out and touched Cecile’s hand beside the bowl. “I’m well. This is hard, but I’m well.”

Cecile nodded. “I am also.”

Sarah felt Cecile’s warm skin, confirming her vigor. “I have to finish and report back. And you?”

Cecile took her hand away to brush back a strand of hair. “I’ll take some rest now. I’m to report back at midnight. There are men arriving still.”

Sarah didn’t heed the information as she filled with concern that her friend would be too afflicted to rest. She searched Cecile’s eyes and found the calm that would allow her respite. Still, she said. “Take good care.”

Cecile smiled back in a way that confirmed Sarah’s relief, “I will. You as well.”

Sarah took up her bowl and drained it. “Until later.” She left.

***

There were a dozen nurses, nuns and aides gathered in dim light at the table and desk that served as the nurses’ station situated in the hallway outside the entrance to the main hall. The lights had been dimmed – every other fixture turned off – to provide some relief to those men now billeted in the hallway. The great movement of wounded bodies throughout the day had slowed by the fall of dusk. Somehow, many hundreds of men had been placed somewhere, where they were to remain, at least for now. It felt practically a miracle to Sarah. If she hadn’t been so exhausted, or hadn’t been so completely engaged in watering the men, she would have noticed earlier Mother Clothilde, and her senior staff amidst the dire confusion, sorting and settling the shambling, hobbling, dumbstruck men. Those women were behind the miracle.

With Sister Joanna stationed at the surgical tent, Sarah was paired with a young nun, Sister Claire, and the two of them were instructed that they were responsible for thirty men located in the northeast corner of the hall. All of the men to whom they were assigned had been administered morphine. They may rest or suffer. They may die this first night away from the battle lines. The nurses and aides were to comfort them, attend to them, pray for them. Sarah understood her role was to guide the men through the long night ahead.

The nurses, nuns and aides dispersed. Sarah stopped at the entry to the hall. The lights had been dimmed there as well. The sight that met her was one writhing mass, no one person differentiated, like an overwhelming infestation of vermin. Moans and whimpers reached her from the gloom. She gasped at realizing how she had just regarded the suffering men. “Jesus help me. Jesus hear me.”

Sister Claire took Sarah’s hand. “Follow me.” The two women threaded their way down the narrow path to the men who had been assigned to them. Without another word, they agreed to make the rounds together. They each knew they were about to spend a night like they had never experienced before.

Their instructions had been first to change the men’s dressings and to liberally apply the antibacterial solution. However this simple instruction was not easy to carry out. These men’s wounds were so fresh that the bandages were soaked through with blood from gaping barely closed with crude stitches done at the front just hours earlier. After the second man presented with the same severe wounds, the two young women realized they were not trained for the task at hand. They returned to the nurses’ station where a stern nun gave them a pair of scissors for cutting away the adhering old bandage, and instructed them to wrap each wound twice; the first bandage soaked in the bacterial wash and the second a dry bandage.

Sister Claire spoke, “Sister, we may not be the only ones who have not been trained.”

The chiseled nun glared at the young aide a hard second, then without smiling, she acknowledged the observation. “Very well. Only those who have been at the front know injuries such as these.”

The old woman peered into the great hallway where nuns, nurses and aides were scattered, ministering to the wounded in haphazard fashion. She commanded. “You two, go bring the rest to me.”

“Yes sister.” Sarah observed a tinge to the nun’s hard gaze. Fear? Frailty? Failure? The woman knew she had slipped. Sarah imagined her bearing the responsibility for allowing these untrained women to expose all these men to infection that could be the death of many of them by morning. Sarah yearned to console the old woman but she was not consolable by anything Sarah could offer.

Sister Claire stepped forward, into the nun’s line of vision, “Yes. Immediately.” Sarah echoed, “Yes.”

The nun’s gaze cleared, steeled. She nodded with her regained purpose.

Sister Claire and Sarah gathered the others and joined them for the shift supervisor’s instruction. The nun, Sister Eugenia, clearly and succinctly detailed how each type of wound was to be identified, prioritized and addressed. She made clear that each of these men’s lives depended on how their wounds were treated this night. Each woman solemnly nodded. In the silence they heard the rumble of the cannons. Sarah and many of the other women thought. “Oh God, why can’t they stop.”

Equipped and instructed, Sarah and Sister Claire tended to the men to whom they had been assigned. None of the men responded coherently to the attention they were receiving, each submerged in their opiated pool. Many of the wounds could not be touched, as Sister Eugenia had explained; the crushed skulls, the hastily set bone fractures and others. Yet each of the women in that ward that night learned the skills needed to treat the freshly wounded. Each of them witnessed men meet their demise that night, sometimes when they were just an arms length away.

After changing the men’s dressings, Sarah and Sister Claire spent the long night comforting with swabs of water or gentle touches the men who seemed most tormented as well as those who lay motionless. They rested briefly a couple times. They were relieved at midnight; their exhaustion from the sixteen hour shift crashed upon them as it did upon all of the women in the ward. As they passed out of the hall, each of them thanked Sister Eugenia. In response the creased nun blessed each of them as they passed with a sign of the cross.

Midnight, walking down the dimly lit hallway, Sarah saw Cecile approaching. She was fresh, having just woken. When Cecile recognized her friend through sleep hazed eyes, she was taken aback at Sarah’s exhausted demeanor. Sarah noticed the change in Cecile’s expression – it didn’t matter.

When they reached each other, they bussed, held each other’s hand. Sarah offered , “It has been a very long day.”

Cecile knew there was so much more behind those words. She replied, “Get some rest. When will you be back on duty?”

“At six. I understand they have devised that we will be working twelve hour shifts beginning tomorrow. My shift will be six in the morning to six evening.”

Cecile searched Sarah’s bloodshot eyes. “Will you be able to sleep?”

Sarah smiled to assure her good friend but answered honestly, “I’m not so sure. She nodded back over her shoulder, “It is very hard.”

Cecile kissed Sarah on the cheek. “I must go. She let go of Sarah’s hands and walked down the corridor to the main hall. Sarah watched her until she disappeared through the dim doorway. Sarah’s heart glowed from the depths of her exhaustion. She prayed vaguely for her friend’s wellbeing.

In the courtyard, in the moonlight, in the chill night air, Sarah’s senses swarmed her, shredding her fatigue. For the first time in many hours she filled her lungs with deep breath. She raised her face to bathe in the sacred light of the near full moon. She bathed in the air that encircled her, brushed her. For the first time in many hours she felt the skin of her face, her neck, her arms, her hands. She raised her auburn hair from the back of her neck and shivered with the cooled sweat chill as she faced the moon with her eyes shut. With two deep breaths she felt cleansed. There were no words then for what she felt, no words for what had been before. There was just this midnight hour and her. With that she opened her eyes to continue to the dormitory.

In the wash of moonshine she saw a transport truck across the courtyard, then a fine point of fire, near the truck, that arced in the shadows. A figure emerged from the shadows, the point of fire – a cigarette- in his hand that arced to his mouth.

Sarah stopped for a moment, then proceeded to the man as that was the direction to her room. The man sat on the front fender of the truck, bent over, intent on his cigarette. He looked up as she passed the fountain; the sound of her footsteps on the cobblestone, and her movement at the edge of his vision startled his attention.

Sarah watched the man as she approached him, knowing her path would take her within a couple meters of him if she were to proceed directly. She felt no need to do otherwise, she was not afraid. She only wondered why he was there. Why was he hunched over as he was? Why was he not in bed, as he was clearly exhausted in his nearly motionless state. Her answer to that last query was that they all were exhausted for so many reasons, in so many ways; physically, mentally, spiritually.

He seemed oblivious to the silver moonlight spread all about him. Did he feel the sweet air? A queer thought crossed Sarah’s mind; perhaps he is Death, resting. She noticed there was no cannon fire. Perhaps. She was not afraid.

When she was within a few meters, the man looked up. He had a couple days growth of beard. His sullen eyes betrayed his fatigue. He was just a man, of course.

“Good evening, monsieur.”

“Good evening, mademoiselle.”

She stopped in front of him, she was compelled to. Her exhaustion shed for the encounter. “What are you doing out sir? And is this your truck?” Sarah was genuinely curious.

“Thank you for stopping and asking. Would you have a cigarette with me?”

Sarah had smoked tobacco only a few times and didn’t much like it. “No, merci, but I will join you as you finish yours."

“Again, merci. To answer your second question first; no and yes. It is not my truck, it belongs to the army, perhaps to the ambulance corps. It doesn’t matter because it is mine now. I am its driver and it is my responsibility until another driver takes over for me or until I leave it to drive another truck, or to do whatever else I am ordered.” His voice was soft and raspy.

When he tilted his face up to speak to Sarah, the silver moonlight cast his deep creases in ink black shadow. He sounded and appeared to not be of this world, yet he spoke French. Sarah let the sight and sound of him fill her.

“I transport the wounded and the dead.” He gestured back at the truck, drew on his cigarette that glowed brighter, changing the cast of his pallor to silver-orange.

“And you have just brought more men?”

The driver nodded.

“You’ve come from the front?”

He nodded again.

Sarah reflected. “It feels so close.”

The cannon fire resumed. The village’s midnight silence fragmented.The driver drew on his cigarette, “It is, dear one. Yet unlikely to get closer. The armies wage back and forth with little gain, having dug in to withstand the other’s onslaughts.”

Sarah could not imagine the scene, she had no basis to imagine it. She only knew the human result. “And yet they continue?”

The driver shrugged, “Only bombardment and sniping at present.”

“Sniping?”

The man looked up at Sarah. “Men who shoot very well fire their rifles from a great distance at those poor souls who raise their heads from the trench or embankment.”

“Oh.” Sarah felt a sharp barb of revulsion at the thought of such a man, who killed with such intent. None of the men she had served these first few months were wounded only by a single bullet.

As if he read Sarah’s mind, the man in half shadow said, “You wouldn’t likely see them here. The bullet nearly always goes through the brain, Dead and buried a short distance away.”

Sarah grieved the men who did not return to their loved ones, alive or as a corpse. She bowed her head. The cannons roared. She asked, “Are they ours?”

“No, mostly theirs. We are uncertain where to fire.” The driver ground the stub of his cigarette out with his boot heel against the cobblestone. Brilliant orange flecks scattered, glowed their last, returned to darkness. He spoke, “Little one, it seems that your hospital, and many like yours close along the front are being given a purpose, to treat men right from the battlefield, briefly; to stabilize those who may live, to bury those who will not. The medical teams at the front can no longer handle that responsibility, there are just too many. They can only ready the wounded for immediate removal.”

Sarah didn’t understand.

Again, as if he knew her thoughts, the man explained. “There will be many more, many, many more wounded.

She quaked, “But we are full, far beyond capacity. I just worked eighteen hours, as many of us have.”

Because she should know, he continued. “I will be taking these men away at dawn. Most of them. There are very large hospitals being created far from the front, in Paris and other cities. I will drive these men to the nearest railroad siding where they will be picked up and transported to these hospitals. These trains have thousands of wounded men on board. Thousands more wait at the sidings to be transported.

“Have you seen the hospitals in the cities? What are they like?”

The driver rubbed his hands drily, “I haven’t but I imagine a great confusion. No one has ever had to deal with so much human destruction. Everyone I speak with is overwhelmed. Some are managing reasonably well.”

Sarah sensed all of the chaos in a moment that wracked her. She was a small part of a small part of a massive conflagration. Yet she wished. “This can’t last. This will end.” The man didn’t answer. What did he know? She had to know. “Where are you going? Where did you come from?”

The driver looked at Sarah and she believed she saw pain in his eyes, filled with the suffering of others. “From the railroad siding. I may return here or be sent to another hospital like this, to transport more men to the hospital train. Or I may return to the front to gather more wounded to bring them here or another hospital such as this. Every day is different, yet the same. It doesn’t matter. At dawn I’ll be given my orders.”

Sarah wavered in the moonlight. This is unceasing. She bent over and vomited between her legs spread apart. She was aware the man was holding her hair back. He offered her water from his flask and said, “You need your sleep, little bird. And I need mine.”

Sarah straightened , wiped her mouth with her sleeve, then stepped forward to embrace the driver, “I won’t forget this night. Nor you.”

The man stepped back. “Nor I.”

When Sarah reached her sleeping quarters, the women occupying nearly half the cots were all sound asleep. A couple of the women snored, some twitched and tossed. Sarah stood and let her eyes adjust to the moonlight, let herself take in these women as they were in this moment, deep in various slumbers’ rest.

She slipped quietly out of her stained apron, blouse and skirt and into the clean smell and feel of her flannel nightgown. She removed her wool stockings and her feet breathed. She slid beneath the blanket and blessed sleep descended on her like a holy spirit, taking her away.

When she entered her dreams she was not alone. The ambulance driver appeared at her side, floated with her. His presence was benign. It was understood he would travel with her, or perhaps she with him; that was not clear and did not matter. With that veil lifted she found herself in a charred landscape, the turf smoking. She wasn’t afraid. The ambulance driver? He was no longer present, and that caused a knot to form in her chest. In all directions there was nowhere to go, and there was no one. The scorched earth stretched to the horizon in all directions. She was sad, not afraid. She began to rise, slowly, a few feet at first. She stretched her arms out from her sides and rose further, slowly. She tipped her head back to see roiling clouds spiked with flashes of golden brilliance. The knot in her chest dissolved, the cavity beneath her ribs lightened. She scanned the clouds as she lifted and saw the ambulance driver some distance away. She thought to join him but saw dark forms ascending from the smoking landscape. The wisps became solid human forms floating up. To him. They held no light yet he sparked. He gathered them. She could not join him, for if she did, what then? The knot in her chest grew explosively and she plummeted. She could not look up. The smoldering turf and the dark wisps were all there was. She despaired: this was all. She shook violently which frightened her all the more. In that moment, approaching unbearable, she remembered the sky above, the flashes of brilliance in the roiling clouds. She remembered him, gathering the lifeless forms. So she knew and was released from her terror’s grip. She imagined a horizon lit green but didn’t see it in her dream. The knot dissolved and yet she was still here, to which she added “only now”. She plunged into a slumber deep, until the gentle hand of Sister Claire nudged her and she heard the woman’s whisper. “It’s time to rise, Sarah.” And again. “Sarah, time to rise.”

Sarah walked to breakfast with a silent clarity. All sights, all sounds entered her in sharp relief. She did not think of what might be. Seated in the dawn lit dining hall, next to Sister Claire, she listened to the just-wakened women entering in muffled tones. She stirred and ate the thin gruel, grateful for the pat of butter languishing in its midst. Sister Claire didn’t speak. The other women who joined them at the table didn’t speak. The six hours of respite had not replenished them.

The air then crackled and thrummed with energy that preceded the slew of women on shift coming in for their meal. They moved wordlessly but not silently, carrying the echoes of their nightlong efforts like shawls. Sarah, like most of the other seated women watched their counterparts, looking for what? Some sort of information that none of them would be able to articulate if asked. Perhaps just that they were well despite what the night had held. They did appear well, if by that is meant they were not devastated. They stood strong in line waiting for their allotted food.

Cecile slipped onto the bench next to Sarah, bypassing the food line when she had caught sight of her dear friend. Sarah was delighted, “Bon jour!”

Smiling warmly back, “Bon jour!”

Neither wanted to talk about nursing, not any of it. They just wanted to swim in the pleasure of the other’s presence. So they did.

“What are they serving?”

“Barley gruel with a fat dollop of butter.”

Both thought that it may not be long before there would be no butter, and both banished the thought. Sarah suddenly realized she had been rude for not having introduced Cecile to Sister Claire. She presented Cecile as her dear friend since they both had arrived at the hospital at the start of the war; Sister Claire as her partner the night before, “a brilliant star in the storm.”

The nun laughed lightly at the jest and explained herself as having just arrived the day before, transported from the hospital in Paris, where she had been stationed since the war’s beginning, to this base hospital now that the advance on Paris had been pushed back. The term “base hospital” surprised Sarah and Cecile. Is that how their hospital was referred to? And what did that mean? It was just the name for what they were living.

Instead Cecile asked, “But how did you get here so quickly?”

The young nun explained the network of hospital trains that brought the stable wounded from treatment centers like this to the larger hospitals away from the front, also transported all sorts of supplies and personnel to the treatment centers. She described it as a mad hive of activity.

Sarah remembered what the ambulance driver had said just six hours earlier. “I met one of the drivers. He made it sound like near chaos.”

Sister Claire laughed. “Less so if you have proper transport papers.”

Sarah and Cecile were too hungry for information to enjoy the humor, Sarah continued. “He said it is going to be like this for some time, no end in sight.”

The nun nodded. “I believe he may be right, but only to an extent. There may be no end in sight, but there will be an end.”

The two young women nodded at that truth in silence. Cecile broke the moment. “I should get my meal. As she stood she asked the nun. “Why did they send you here?”

“Because I’m needed.”

“No, I mean you, why did they send you?” The question was genuine, not a challenge or a desperate attempt to make sense of the senseless.

Sister Claire understood. “They seem to think I have a gift that can best be put to use in a situation such as this.”

Sarah recalled the officer, early in the war, who had commented on her gift, recalled a few quick instances of being observed obliquely by her peers and her superiors. She asked. “What gift?”

The nun smiled, “I’m not certain. Whatever it is, it has brought me here.”

Cecile brought her meal back and the three women talked of their homes, their loved ones, the favorite foods they missed. It was then that Sarah asked where their good friend Elise was. Cecile said she was not on her shift and thought she might be on Sarah’s. No, Sarah answered. Neither knew that their friend had contracted an infection that had quickly overtaken her body, her fever spiking as her friends dined. They next day they would learn that Elise was transported on a hospital train bound for Rouen. They never learned Elise died in transit.

That shift Sarah was again paired with Sister Claire which she suspected, correctly, was not a co-incidence. She didn’t share this prideful thought with the nun, as such foolishness can undermine the greatest intentions. However, throughout the morning she watched the other woman perform the tasks at hand cleanly, confidently. Sarah felt her hand steady as well.