HER HANDS

She placed her hand on the wound, the suppurating flesh. She felt the warmth of the infection against her palm. Sarah LaMontaigne knew what she was to do; clean this man’s wound, apply the salve, change the bandage. She moved intentionally, with little wasted motion down the row of men today, as she had the previous day and many days before that. But with each of the men, she paused. Always. No one noticed, or if they did no one commented when she placed her hand upon a wound with no apparent purpose.

If someone were to ask Sarah why, I’m not sure what she would have said in response. It wasn’t part of her training, the little training she had received before she was pressed into service, as all the teenage girls from her town had been when the bombs began raining down on the young men on the front lines in what was to become known as the Great War. With only a few days training, Sarah had been placed at the base hospital in a small village in the Somme commune north of Montidier, to administer to the men who had been removed from the nearby carnage in the battle at Charleroi, then Guise, still alive with pierced and shattered bodies and minds. She began touching the men’s wounds her second day serving at the hospital.

Sarah only knew it was right to do so. She knew about infection so she was fastidious about her hygiene, and yet if anyone had been keeping records, and understood the data, they could have ascertained that the men who Sarah treated had a significantly greater survival rate than the other pierced and shattered men. And if there had been instruments that could indicate such a thing as peace of mind, those reviewing the data would determine a markedly higher level of tranquility among those she treated. The more frequent a man’s contact with Sarah, the quicker his recovery to the limits that his mind and body were going to be able to recover. But there was no time for such measurements and conclusions, there was time only for ministering to the men, the swarming flow of men.

Sarah was however noticed by the shift nurse who supervised her. She saw that Sarah did not flinch, did not hesitate, did not retch or cringe. She saw Sarah remove the trousers of the men who had soiled themselves, saw her stand by the men screaming into their living hells, saw her mop the brows of the men convulsing, saw her stanch the blood of the men whose wounds had opened. She saw Sarah rest her hand on these men’s afflictions.

Sarah touched all of those men, those in agony or repose if only briefly. She worked every day for weeks, as all the young women at the hospital did, until there was a lull in the fighting after the massive slaughter that was to become known as the First Battle of the Marne. And they were given brief reprieves to leave. Several women didn’t return. At home, Sarah sat quietly, removed from her mother, her father and her two younger brothers. She sat in the sun the two days that were given to her, her tuxedo cat in her lap, her hands resting on his healthy body. The stream of images and sensations from the previous few weeks flowed through her, beneath her awareness, and perhaps they exited her. She did not try to make sense of what she had just lived through. She did not share in the elation that had reached her kin and neighbors about the siege of Liege having been lifted, the Hun stopped 15 kilometers from Paris, the ferocious counterattack along the Marne River that sent the German armies in retreat. She rested and healed.

***

Scene 2

Sarah returned to the hospital at the end of her reprieve. The beds were full but there were no men lying on stretchers in the hallways. There was no blood nor bodily discharge on the floors or walls, only the stains remaining after the lye scrubbing. The smell of ammonia and wood alcohol nearly overcame the reek of diseased flesh.

Sarah arrived, and after placing her belongings under her cot in the dormitory room, began ministering to the men remaining, the men who had suffered the greater devastation, who required longer hospitalization to reach the limits of their recovery. The first man she cared for needed the bandages changed that covered the top half of his head, that covered his eyes. She smelled the infection as she gently removed the cloth, as gently as she could possibly imagine herself to be; he was a burn victim and she knew the parting bandage would be a horrible violence whether he felt it through the morphine or not. She imagined herself a butterfly and set her fingertips against his skull that delicately.

He wrenched, he moaned, he cried out. Sarah did not flinch nor hesitate until the bandages were removed and his angry, charred skin was washed with the light and the air that washes all of us. Sarah paused, she held both of her palms slightly over the sockets that had once held his eyes, and breathed once, twice, before applying the salve.

A nun came up beside Sarah. She didn’t say anything but she had seen the teenage girl ministering to the man. She touched Sarah’s shoulder lightly and left as silently. Sarah felt the touch, glowing golden after the woman had left. Standing by the charred soldier she felt the warmth of the nun’s touch melt into her muscles, enter her marrow, reach her heart, where the glow rested. Sarah didn’t realize that warmth was what the men felt when she had rested her hands on them. But she knew she was stronger.

The man at her side moaned and Sarah placed her right hand over his heart, felt him ease. She lingered then moved on to the next bed, to a man whose linen sheet flattened where his legs would have been outlined. He had been watching her. Her eyes met his.

“How are you, sir?” Sarah began.

He said nothing, watching her reach for a basin of water and a fresh towel from the trolley.

“I am here to wash your wounds. May I?” She looked at the soldier directly.

“What is it you do?” He bit the words off, his gray - stubbled face grimaced. He was older than the others, not a boy.

Sarah paused, holding the bowl in front of her. He was more aware than she was used to. “What do you mean, sir?”

He wouldn’t remove his gaze from her, “What you just did, I saw it, how you touched that man, what was that?”

Sarah didn’t understand, “I’m sorry…”

He turned his head away from her.

“May I?”

He didn’t respond. Sarah lowered the sheet. She hesitated. She was aware of the surge from her heart. Instead of placing her hands over the bandaged stumps, Sarah brushed the man’s hair from his turned away face with her fingers, rested her finger tips on his temple.

“I’m going to wash your wounds now.”

She took her hand away and gently began to remove the bandages. She heard the man suck in air between his teeth, a conscious effort. He knew his pain, unlike nearly all of the young men she had treated before her reprieve, pouring in straight from the trenches and the killing fields. His body was his to feel. Perhaps he had gone through his allotment of morphine.

“I will be careful.” She imagined herself a breeze. She felt him ease. He knew, he trusted; he had seen her minister to the burned soldier in the bed beside his.

Scene 3

When it was time for the noon-day meal, Sarah took her place in line to be served red bean soup and black bread – this was before the scarcity became severe, so there were cubes of fatback couched with the beans and onions in the glistening broth. Looking around the dining hall, it seemed to Sarah there were fewer girls than before the reprieve. She thought she must be mistaken but she wasn’t. Many of the young women had refused to return, many of them closed themselves off with the nightmares they brought home from those first weeks of war. Political rallies for support weren’t enough to dispel their demons, peer pressure wasn’t enough to instill the fortitude needed to stand by the damaged and the dying. There would come a time when most of them would be able to resume routines in their families, in their villages, if only to bake bread or fold bandages for the war effort.

Perhaps more amazing was that so many of the teenage girls and young women returned to the hospital. Their eyes, set resolute, reflected what they had needed in order to return; slightly removed, slightly dull, the first blooms of wariness. In some indefinable way each of them knew they were vulnerable, each sensed their spirit could be crushed if they allowed the suffering to claim them. And yet, with a joke or kind gesture their eyes would light up and dance with a smile. They had that capacity for joy, located at the core of their being, able to remain intact through what was to be a long war.

As she left the serving line with her steaming bowl of soup and hank of bread, Sarah spied two girls she had grown to like, Elise and Cecile, sitting at the end of one of the long oaken tables. Elise, facing Sarah, waved her over. As Sarah placed her bowl on the table and seated herself on the bench next to Cecile, Elise asked, “You’re just back today? Have you been assigned?”

Sarah didn’t know what Elise was referring to and asked her to explain.

Cecile answered, “Elise and I returned yesterday. We were given our responsibilities, the usual you know, and as I was performing my duties I noticed this nun nearby, watching and sometimes coming forward to make a suggestions to me about how to apply some salve, how to draw flies away from an open wound, things like that. At supper she told me and Elise she was assigned to us, to help us improve our service to the men…”

Elise interrupted, “Cute little dwarf of a nun, Sister Marta. She doesn’t say much, only what she needs to…”

Cecile lowered her gaze to her soup bowl on the table before her and whispered excitedly, “There she is! No, don’t turn and look!”

Cecile raised her head and smiled awkwardly but her eyes shone: the nun had smiled at her from across the dining hall.

Sarah thought about the nun who had stood by her that morning, about her glowing touch. She said, “I think I know who I am going to be assigned to. She smiled. Elise and Cecile witnessed their friend’s expression and shared her happiness without a word about it.

Elise continued, “I don’t think everyone is getting assigned.”

Each of the girls thought that odd. Cecile postulated, “It’s probably because there aren’t enough nuns. Luck of the draw I suppose.” Yet they knew it could be worked out somehow to provide assignments for all. Sarah suggested they might have been chosen because they showed promise.

She remembered the older soldier from that morning, saying he had seen something. How did he put it; different, special? She wasn’t sure what he was talking about but maybe the nun had seen the same thing. Maybe Sister Marta had seen something different, special in Elise and Cecile. They were special. Sarah thought about how they moved among the wounded, almost gliding. She smiled at the recalled image. The nuns had seen that. They had seen that in Sarah. She blushed, pushed the prideful thought down but it surfaced long enough to allow that maybe the three of them had been assigned a nun, as Sarah was certain she would be assigned to the woman who had stood with her that afternoon. She bit her tongue at her pridefulness. Of course she wouldn’t share these shameful thoughts with her friends, and drag them into perfidy. The confessional booth would be the place for her to unburden these thoughts and their temptations. A knot in Sarah’s chest dissolved.

Suddenly Cecile’s eyes grew wide. Elise began to turn to follow her friend’s gaze to a presence behind Sarah, approaching. Elise nodded to Sarah to turn as well. She did. There, a few feet over Sarah’s left shoulder, standing in the aisle between the rows of tables, stood the nun from that morning. All those in the dining hall had stopped eating, but Sarah didn’t notice. She looked directly into the woman’s hazel eyes before the woman spoke, “I’m Sister Joanna, Sarah. Would you join me on my rounds this afternoon?”

It was the same nun who had touched her shoulder that morning! Sarah exploded light within and nodded yes.