In the Fall They Leave, page 3
“I hope so. We’re so close to finishing! Why did it have to happen now?”
“Or at all.”
“Oui. This is awful.”
Marie-Thérèse slips clean cuffs over her uniform sleeves and ties a fresh apron over the skirt while Rani names everyone who is leaving.
“Margaux should stay,” Marie-Thérèse says. “It might be safer here. She’s from Noyen. That’s where Germany wants to go, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply—”
“It’s all right. Go! Wait, don’t forget your cap!”
She’s relieved to find Julia on ward duty that night. The Flemish girl’s efficiency and good will has made her everyone’s favorite as a ward-duty partner. That night the two student-nurses are under the supervision of Sister Gauthier—Clara Gauthier, but “Sister” the title for a senior nurse at the clinic and in the city’s hospitals. In her first year, Marie-Thérèse learned that using the title now, for a secular nurse, alludes to a time when nuns were the only nurses despite their having little or no training. Then, ministering to the diseased and dying was lowly work, which few, apart from the nuns, were willing to take on. In fact, a stigma was often attached, and the sister-nurses, in their heavy garb, were frequently shunned by the healthy.
Immersing her hands in a solution of methylated spirit containing five cc of tincture of iodine and then drying them with a sterile cloth, she recalls how Florence Nightingale changed everything by making nursing a secular vocation in its own right, with training and protocols and strict emphasis on sanitation. Before those reforms, the mortality rate in field hospitals was greater than on the battlefield during the Crimean War. Still, the title of “Sister” persisted. Marie-Thérèse has developed a great respect for those early sister-nurses. Poorly equipped as they were to handle complicated cases, they nonetheless offered what comforts, physical and spiritual, they could to people who might as well have been among a pariah class.
How strange, she thinks, that in both of her endeavors thus far, hands have been so important.
A thought causing her to glance up at the wall clock’s minute hand, just rounding to the top. Silently, she walks to the bedside where Sister Gauthier is talking with Madame Heinbokel, a heavy woman whose festering right foot is bandaged. She’d stepped on a nail in her barn, and the throbbing pain is beating inside her “like a drum,” she often says. Yet she usually strives for cheer. “And why not, mademoiselle, on holiday like this and treated like our own queen herself!” But every so often, her eyes shut in a quick wince.
“Does your foot feel any better this evening, Madame Heinbokel?” Marie-Thérèse is using her calm and much-practiced nurse’s voice.
“I’d be lying if I said so. I just told Sister I hope you’re not planning to take it.”
Marie-Thérèse glances in Sister Gauthier’s direction, realizing too late that she just made a mistake. Dread settles in her stomach and her hands begin trembling. Distantly she hears Gauthier saying, “Of course we’re not! What a thought. You’ll be back feeding your chickens in no time, madame. And now Mademoiselle Hulbert is going to change your bandages. Soon you will feel much better.”
Marie-Thérèse stiffens.
Explain.
No, first get what you need.
No. Explain first, and then get everything.
Marie-Thérèse! Here you are, having to remind yourself like some first-year.
“Madame,” she says. “I will get the basin and fresh bandages. Then I am going to unwrap your foot and give it a little bath. After that I will dress it and wrap it back up—”
“Like pork in cabbage!”
“Oui. Exactement!”
“Will it hurt? Oh, of course it will. Just like this morning.”
“Somewhat, madame. There will be some pain.”
She returns with the items on a cart and helps the woman sit up. Then she maneuvers her so that both feet are dangling over the side. Everything is physics. She places a rubber pad on the bed, then unwinds the old bandage and lets it fall into a pail. Never anything soiled on the floor.
“It’s hurting more!” Madame Heinbokel cries, her eyes squeezing shut.
“Pardonnez-moi, madame. You may lie back again.”
Marie-Thérèse holds onto the woman’s right leg as her patient leans back, and then she rests the ankle on the scalloped part of the basin’s rim. The foot is puffy and swollen and a deep magenta color. The wound, just behind the large toe, is still frothed with pus and has a foul odor. Careful not to exhibit any sign that might be construed as disgust, she takes a vial of hydrogen peroxide solution from the cart and, with her left arm bracing the leg and holding a cloth at the heel, slowly pours the solution over the wound.
Madame Heinbokel gives a prolonged wail, causing others in the ward to regard them. She tells God that Mademoiselle Hulbert is trying to kill her.
“I’m afraid, madame, that you will live many more years to tend your chickens and pigs and vegetable garden. No eternal rest for you, at least not yet.” She dries the foot with a sterile cloth, “bipps” the wound with the bismuth iodoform paste, and then applies the iodoform gauze with tongs before re-bandaging the foot reasonably well.
In the relative privacy of the nurses’ office, Sister Gauthier critiques the interaction, beginning with the bandaging. Marie-Thérèse began from right to left, instead of just the opposite. It probably would hold all right, she adds, but Mademoiselle Hulbert must get it absolutely correct the next time.
“Oui. Merci.”
“The correct things: You were careful with the foot bath and did not have to change the bed linens with madame in the bed. Also, you made a joke at the right time, which is always beneficial. At another point you laughed and were cheerful in an appropriate way. And the wound dressing went well although when you first began to explain, you sounded stiff as a puppet. I, at least, heard fear in your voice. That must not happen. Nor should you glance at me in confusion or uncertainty if the patient can see you. Turn away if necessary and give me some indication of what you need to know. How many times must I remind you of this, Mademoiselle Hulbert? The patient is always hypersensitive to the least sign or tone that might indicate some terrible future we are trying to conceal from her. Later she will brood over it and work herself up. It does not help the healing but in fact hinders it.”
At least, Marie-Thérèse tells herself, it’s criticism. “Oui, Sister.”
Sister Gauthier, a petite woman just over five feet tall, has been overcompensated with a basso profundo voice that often makes student-nurses quail in her presence, and laugh when not. Gauthier has to work to keep it in check, especially in the wards, where such a voice can frighten patients or, at the very least, wake and annoy them. “You did well, Mademoiselle Hulbert,” she says now in her low rumble. “Write up your notes on Madame Heinbokel and then you and Julia go around the ward taking vital signs. Each of you observe the other. Leave Madame Du Lac to me, she remains in isolation. Also, Madame Deitlin. You two can observe me with her. The heart is weakening, the discrepancy between apical and peripheral pulse increasing. I may have to telephone Doctor Depage. In fact, I will, as a precaution.
“Oui, Sister.”
“Then both of you see if you can talk awhile with Madame Prennet. She’s been rather low.”
Peripheral vision catches a flash of light somewhere. Another bridge?
“Heat lightning,” Gauthier says. “Go on, now.”
After she and Julia finish taking vital signs and noting results, they approach Madame Prennet’s bed. The young woman’s eyes are shut. The bones of her face lift her sallow skin, Marie-Thérèse observes, much as poles raise the canvas of a tent. Her breathing comes in long shallow breaths that alternate, irregularly, with shorter ones. The occipital bones hold pools of shadow. Marie-Thérèse and Julia stand at the bedside, watching the young woman breathe. They’re about to leave the foot of the bed when Madame Prennet’s eyelids began trembling and then open.
“Bonsoir, madame,” Marie-Thérèse says. “How are you this evening?” But they know from the chart. The young woman’s weight is in decline, her temperature low, her pulse weak. She has been diagnosed with cervical cancer.
Madame Prennet moves her head slowly from side to side on the pillow.
“Do you know what I did today, Madame Prennet?” Marie-Thérèse says. “This morning I went to the station and met the matron. She is just back from England and will visit you soon after your surgery.”
Madame Prennet lets her eyes close again.
“Do you like flowers, madame?” Julia asks. “We will bring you some. There are roses and lilies in the back garden now.”
Marie-Thérèse draws a breath before saying, slowly, “You have been waiting for tomorrow and now it is almost here. Time is like that, isn’t it? Taking us to where we…need to be.” She glances at Julia, who adds faint agreement.
“He did not come today.”
“Doctor Depage?” Marie-Thérèse says. “He had several surgeries today, but you will see him tomorrow. He’s an excellent doctor, quite in demand. But tomorrow is your day. You will see him then.”
“My husband, Michiel.”
“Ah! Your husband!” A waiter in a café, she recalls. “Possibly he was asked to work longer today.”
“Is it a holiday? I have lost track of the days.”
Marie-Thérèse’s upper teeth clamp her lower lip.
Julia rescues her. “Madame, the weather has been very warm. Warm and humid. People do not wish to be inside. The cafés are full.”
“That is so,” Marie-Thérèse adds and goes into a story about the matron’s two dogs, a topic Madame Prennet usually enjoys, but tonight she only stares into the distance as Marie-Thérèse describes how they begged for tidbits at each café they passed.
“What color are they?” Madame Prennet finally says.
“Well, you know Jackie. The big one. He’s gray with some white. Donnie, the shepherd mix, has a white chest and tail and black tips on his ears.”
“The lilies,” Madame Prennet whispers.
“Yellow as butter,” Julia says. “We will bring you some.”
This isn’t such a good idea, Marie-Thérèse thinks, unless they pick stems with many buds. The blooms of these lilies last one day and one day only, withering by day’s end. “Or roses!” she adds with enthusiasm.
“Merci. You are very kind, but I am tired now.”
In the nurses’ office, the two students look at one another. “We can’t predict,” Marie-Thérèse says.
“But is she even strong enough for surgery?”
Echoing her own thoughts. “If anyone can save her, it’s Doctor Depage.”
Still, cancer. Photographs in textbooks depict cancer tumors as malformed masses feeding upon the body’s clarity and order. Yet that parasitic chaos must have its own kind of order, if one could call it that. Its own impulse to be. Marie-Thérèse says a swift prayer that Doctor Depage will be able to excise the darkness and draw Madame Prennet back from the edge, as he has so many others.
A waterfall of thought, and a chill, keep her awake too long. She decides to resort to her old strategy at the Académie and soak her hands in warm water for a few minutes. But just as she turns on the lavatory light, someone grips her ankle. Shock rampages through her at the sight of Charlotte lying on the hexagonal tiles. Charlotte in nightclothes, her faded brown plait half undone.
Words emerge too fast, too alarmed as she leans forward to touch the woman’s shoulder. “Miss Charlotte! Are you hurt?”
Charlotte smiles without turning her head. “Get it for me, dearie, won’t you? Such a love you are. I’ll stay right here and wait. Otherwise, you can’t go anywhere.”
“I must get help for you. Please let go.”
“Look what I have!” The woman opens her free hand, displaying several coins.
And then Marie-Thérèse understands. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have the key. Let me help you back to your room.”
“I don’t have the key,” Charlotte mimics. “I know that! But you can get it. If you don’t, I’ll tell on you. I’ll say you gave it to me and you won’t get a sou.” The whites of the woman’s eyes are stained pink.
“You must be here for a bath, Miss Charlotte, aren’t you? A warm bath! Let me draw it. There’ll be lots of hot water now.”
Charlotte twists around to clamp her free hand around Marie-Thérèse’s other ankle. Coins scatter over the tiles.
“Just let me fill the tub, Miss Charlotte, and you’ll see how nice the water is. It’ll be so warm and soothing, and you may take as long as you like. And while you bathe, I’ll get someone to open the cupboard.” Marie-Thérèse goes on and on about the warm water, nearly hypnotizing herself despite the tremors still racing through her.
Charlotte finally loosens her grip. Resisting the urge to pull away and run, Marie-Thérèse inserts the plug and turns the taps on full force. After helping Charlotte into the tub, she rushes across the hall and knocks on the nearest door. “Get Matron!”
“She gave it to me, that one,” Charlotte tells her. “She’s very naughty, Edith. And she lies. Dismiss her.” But the matron has seen the coins on the tiles.
Much later, Marie-Thérèse will remember this night coming at the end of a long and even terrible day, the first, really, of the war. She will remember the matron’s nod, the unspoken well done, and Charlotte’s sly smile and the brief silky warmth of bathwater on her own cold fingers, and how she and Rani talked nearly into morning, she not wanting sleep, finally. Only the words in the dark and the nearness of her friend.
Frightfulness
The day is blue and white, with a strong wind from the southeast that turns the barley field at the Arit farm into a sea of green waves. The wind and rippling field and copse of rounded trees in the distance, which always reminds ten-year-old Elli Arit of broccoli crowns, make the previous night’s strangeness seem nothing more than a fading dream. Then, there were flashes and thunderous explosions that drove her from the room she shared with her two younger sisters. Her parents were awake and whispering in their bedroom. The holy candle on the bureau threw flickers of shadow and light. It wasn’t burned often, only on feast days of the saints and during storms. So Elli thought that what she’d been hearing was a thunderstorm in the near distance.
Her mother, holding her awhile, confirmed this. “Go back to sleep now.” Elli returned to the tiny room where her two sisters were both breathing deeply. She lay down on her bed and waited for rain that didn’t come. It had not rained in some time. Rain would be good. But the air outside her open window was still, not a wisp to disturb the room’s humid warmth, and no sudden breeze heralding an impending storm. She thought it must be somewhere near Liège, where she and her family go on market days. If so, it seemed to want to stay there. The booming went on and on, a thudding she sometimes felt at her breastbone. Flashes gave quivering light to the ceiling and one wall. Her three-year-old sister, Margot, woke once, and Elli whispered that it was just a storm. Five-year-old Janine did not wake until morning. Everything was quiet then.
Now the wind shifts, and the waves rushing over the barley field change course. Some acrid smell wends its way through otherwise pure air. When she turns, she sees black smoke smudging the sky. Liège is that way. She thinks they must be burning something.
But the ewes and lambs in their enclosure are not bothered. Nor the black-and-white speckled hens pecking at grass and earth, sometimes plopping down and fluffing their feathers in the dust. Three of them run toward her.
“Bonjour, mesdames!” she tells them. “And where did you hide your treasures today, may I ask? Where must we go searching on this fine day?”
The three, squawking and clucking, run off in another direction. Such funny creatures! They always put her in a good humor, and for a while she forgets about the smoke to the east and the occasional taste of ash in the air.
That morning she and Janine collect eggs, refill water pans and buckets, and feed and water the rabbits in their hutch after raking out the dirty straw and replacing it with fresh and fragrant golden straw. Then after helping their mother wash buckets, pans, and funnels in the dairy, they’re free to wade in the nearby stream flowing through the grove of trees at the edge of their farm. Little Margot naps while Madame Arit darns stockings and alters the school clothing the two older girls will soon be wearing.
At the stream, Elli and Janine dangle their feet in shallow water as they eat their petite dejeuner of cheese, bread, and apples. Beech trees, with their thousands of serrated leaves, transmute the day’s light into a tranquil lagoon green. There’s a breeze, high up in the trees, but down near the water the air is still and warm and humming with the drone of a bee now and then, or a fly finding its way through the green caverns. The low stream meanders through small stones and offers only a quiet burble where it separates around a larger stone, then knits itself whole and slides on. Somewhere above the beeches, a hawk gives its piercing, high eeeeeee! Nearer to the girls, a cicada needles away with regularity, making Elli drowsy as she stares at a patch of vegetation growing in silt. Would it taste like lettuce? Or a stalk of timothy? The patch blurs into an undefined shape, glowing at its edges. Then heavy eyelids close until Janine pulls at her arm, wanting to wade. Holding hands and stepping in moist sand where they can, they walk upstream to the hollowed-out place where one bank rises a bit. This is their playhouse. It faces a small pool formed by piled-up branches and two tree trunks lying in a V. Minnows dart back and forth in their amber few inches as if one creature. Above the brown minnows, a water spider skims the surface in jerky fits and starts to no seeming purpose, which makes the girls laugh. When the slant of sunlight through the beeches shifts to the west, Elli says they need to go home.
