“You needed to see me—urgently. That’s why I’m here.” She took off her helmet and put it on the ground.
“Yes . . . yes, that’s true, but I didn’t want you to come to the Front. You’re in danger here.”
“As you are.”
His tired, dark eyes fixed upon her. “You must wait until I finish with this soldier, then we can talk. Find cover on the other side of the path.”
Tom turned back to his patient. Emma picked up her helmet and walked across the clearing, crossing over vehicle tracks partially obscured by weeds. She sat on a grassy slope away from the horse carts and watched as stretcher-bearers disappeared and emerged from the surrounding thickets, passing back and forth in front of her in a chaotic military procession.
“Put on your helmet,” a gruff voice commanded. The soldier who had guided Emma plopped down beside her, his backside sliding a little on the grass because of his weight. “Boche snipers are everywhere.”
Emma again complied with his request. “How do you do it?”
He pulled at his beard. “Fight?”
“Yes. How do you stand the mud, the cold, the heat, and every atrocity that comes with this war? And face death as well?”
“We have no choice. We must fight or surrender . . . and to surrender is to die.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to live?”
“What—turn France over to our enemies? The war has dragged on and there have been mutinies, but how could we face ourselves if we allowed the Boche to prevail?”
An unearthly stillness hung in the air after a round of distant blasts. Everyone, including the stretcher-bearers, halted. A few cocked their heads and turned their eyes upward.
The soldier swung his face toward Emma’s, his eyes sparkling with terror.
Pressure, like a wave, bore down upon them. Emma’s ears crackled as the soldier threw his body over hers.
“Cover your head,” he shouted as the shell plummeted toward them. She shielded her face with her arms as his weight knocked the breath out of her.
A concussion pounded in her ears and rippled across her body.
The world floated around her.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw men, horses, carts, and chunks of earth twirl in the air in a slow ballet and then fall carelessly to earth.
After the shock, the world was strangely silent and black.
* * *
I am dead.
She stifled a scream. Blood dripped from the mouth of the soldier on top of her and ran warm down her cheek and neck. She pushed the lolling head away, the helmet rolling to the ground, her ears barely hearing the muffled screams around her.
Gradually, more screams and a chorus of moans filtered through the pressure filling her head, as if she was swimming in the depths of a cold lake.
“Tom!” Clutching the soldier’s body, she tried to push it away, but his bulk was too much. She struggled, jerking her neck back and forth, in a paroxysm of fright, kicking the man’s legs and punching his shoulders, but the weight remained unmoved, as if a heavy slab had been placed upon her.
For a moment, terror filled her—convinced that this Poilu would be her sarcophagus. Like a ghost, the face of another Poilu floated above her. Blood streaked the side of his tunic, but his legs moved with vigor. He dislodged the soldier with a powerful shove from his booted foot. He leaned over the body, shouted “mort,” in Emma’s ear, and went on his way.
She rose on her elbows and viewed the carnage. The soldier who had saved her lay dead: his bloody legs across hers, his uniform jacket shredded by the clumps of dirt, rocks, and shards of metal protruding from his back. Ten meters to the right of the dressing station where Tom had attended his patient, smoke rose from a newly formed crater surrounded by splintered trees. Not far from her, a dying horse screamed on its back and kicked its legs in the air in anguish. A soldier came to the animal, withdrew his pistol, and fired two shots into its head.
Emma kicked at the soldier’s legs, finally freeing herself. She ran to the dressing station to find overturned tables, shattered glass, and operating instruments strewn across the brown earth. Tom’s patient lay on the ground, eyes frozen open in death. The soldier’s arm, the one that held the bullet, had been ripped from his shoulder.
She stepped over the jumbled equipment and found Tom partially concealed by an operating table and stretcher.
His eyes, at first closed, blinked open. Blood streamed down the side of his face.
Emma lifted the table from him as gently as she could and gasped. An open wound cut across his left thigh and upward toward his stomach, the apron and pants he wore ripped away in pieces.
He reached for her. “Emma, what happened?” His hoarse whisper barely penetrated the ringing in her ears.
She knelt next to him, calling his name, telling him to hold on, praying that help would arrive soon. She grabbed a cloth and pressed it against his thigh to staunch the flow of blood, looking for anything that might act as a tourniquet, crying out for help, but hearing only the moans of the dying in response. She pressed harder on the wound and Tom’s eyes rolled back in their sockets.
She was holding the crimson cloth over the laceration and shivering, her hands soaked in blood, when French soldiers emerged from the forest like columns of angry insects.
“Please help my husband,” she begged, and collapsed beside him, her own eyes closed in shock.
* * *
“How are you?”
Emma shook herself from her lethargy in the Toul hospital lobby. The day, the night, the morning had run together in a blur of dark trails and trenches that led away from the Front, men speaking maddeningly fast French, an uncomfortable, bouncing, ambulance ride, and a slow, exhaustive, collapse at the hospital. As she twisted in the chair, she couldn’t remember the day or the time, or whether she’d had anything to eat or drink.
“Madame? Are you with me?” The lines around Claude’s eyes contracted with his piteous look as he stood by her. “You need to rest. Let Richard take you to the cottage.”
“No.” She massaged the back of her neck.
“Please, Madame,” Claude implored, and lit a cigarette as she sank deeper into the chair.
“I want to talk to my husband,” she said.
“He is drugged. You need to rest.”
“I’m staying here until I can see him. Will he be all right?”
“I’m his doctor,” Claude said. “There’s no better doctor in Toul, except perhaps for your husband.”
He pulled a slip of paper from his laboratory coat. “The desk nurse asked me to deliver this message.” He cleared his throat as if to make an important announcement. “You have received calls and telegrams from—it looks like—her handwriting is terrible—Virginie, Madame Clement, a Moroccan named Hassan, and an insufferable Englishman by the name of Harvey. All have inquired about you and your husband’s health.”
Emma managed a weak smile. “That’s very nice. Please tell the desk nurse to give them my regards should they call again.”
Claude pulled a chair next to hers, and puffed on his cigarette. “Really, Madame, how are you?”
“Still unsettled. My ears keep popping and I can’t believe this has happened. We both knew there were risks.... I owe my life to an unknown Frenchman.”
Claude bowed his head and gazed at the smoke writhing around his hand like a gray snake. “Yes, perhaps never to know his name. Your husband is lucky. There was a great loss of blood, but he was lucky you were there. You might have saved his life. He will walk. There will be scars to deal with—the ones on the left side of his head, his thigh and stomach . . . but . . .”
Emma stared at him. “Yes . . . go on.”
Claude exhaled and coughed. “. . . I worry about one aspect.”
Emma stiffened in her chair.
“The shrapnel sliced into his groin as well as his thigh. I can’t be certain of the effect on his . . .” Claude looked intently at her for a few moments before continuing. “This
is a delicate subject, Madame.” He paused and arched an eyebrow allowing Emma to pick up on his inference.
“. . . ability to have sexual relations?”
Claude nodded. “I . . . we’ve tried our best to repair and reconstruct, but the damage may be too much. Salopards de Boches.”
“I understand,” Emma said, ignoring Claude’s pejorative about the Germans. “When can I see him?”
“You can see him now, but he won’t talk.”
“Fine. I’ll sit with him.”
Claude extended his hand and led her to an airy room on the second floor filled with wounded men. Tom, covered to his neck by a white sheet, lay in a bed in the far corner. The doctor pulled up a chair for her. “Maybe you will sleep while he sleeps. When he wakes, he may be able to talk.” Claude looked at his patient. “Your husband is fortunate. Richard told me the shell was a small one—only a 175 millimeter.” An uneasy smile crept across his face.
October 1917
I’m uncertain of the day or time. I know it’s after lunch, but the exact date escapes me. So this is what shock does to the body? I’ve drifted in and out of sleep for endless hours, my head resting on Tom’s bed. I begged for a sheet of paper and a pencil from a nurse so I could record my thoughts and translate them later to my diary. Seeing Tom in the hospital, swathed in bandages, has had quite the opposite effect I would have imagined. My compassion is often overpowered by my boiling anger at him for his blind dedication and my selfish unwillingness and ignorance about how to be a nurse.
Through my hazy thoughts, I ask myself why this happened! Not only why this has happened to Tom, or even us, but to me. It’s not fair, I keep thinking. Sometimes the hideous thought that Tom deserves his injuries because of his bullheaded devotion to medicine slips into my head, but then I look at my rage and see how displaced it is. I’m angry because I see the tenuous bond between us disintegrating even further. What if he dies? The thought of losing him makes me wither in pain. So much unsaid, so much guilt, and doubt about our lives now and going forward. This war conspired against us and nothing I can do will change our situation. And to know that Louisa has written Tom about Linton—I could throw the letter in her face and curse her for the damage she’s done.
I must end because the nurse is eyeing me queerly. She wants to change Tom’s bandages, and for me to move away from his bed.
The shell roared toward her, the acidic smell of fear rising from her skin. Emma struggled with the dead soldier until she awoke screaming and kicking, gripping the arms of the chair.
Tom, his eyes heavy lidded and nearly closed, looked at her. The room was dark except for a rectangular slab of white light that glimmered like a ghost in the doorway.
“You kicked the bed,” he whispered.
Emma pried her hands from the chair and leaned toward him. “I was having a nightmare. The shell was headed . . .” She picked up a clean cloth from the nightstand and swabbed Tom’s forehead. Patches of blood oozed through the gauze on the left side of his face. “You’re talking. How do you feel?”
“Like a mule kicked me in the gut.”
“Tom—”
“Shsssshh, we’ll wake the other men.”
“You’ve been dead to the world for nearly two days. I’m happy to hear your voice.”
Emma desperately wanted to ask him the question—Why did you want to see me?—to inquire about the letter she found at the cottage; but if ever the circumstances were wrong, at this early hour, long past midnight, so soon after his injury, this was the time.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get to talk,” he said, “but I think it had better wait.”
Emma stroked his hand. “It’s all right. We can have long conversations when you’re well. I’ll be here as long as it takes for you to recover.”
Tom attempted to lift his head from his pillow, but he groaned in pain and collapsed back upon the bed.
“Don’t be silly,” Emma said, attempting to quiet him. “You must lie still.”
“I can see that,” he whispered and then turned his head a bit toward her.
Emma thought she could see, in the semidarkness, a watery film of tears forming in his eyes.
“I’ll be fine,” he said. “You must return to Paris and go on with your work.”
“I’ll stay here. Virginie can carry on—she’s quite capable of running the studio.”
Tom flinched. “No. You must do your work. I insist.”
Emma gripped his hand. “Tom, be fair. You have no right to insist. How can you ask me to return to Paris when you’re suffering?”
Without hesitating he said, “Because others need you more.”
Stunned by his words, Emma released his hand and sagged back in her chair.
“I see,” she replied, clasping her hands and fighting against the tears welling in her eyes. “All right, then. I’ll leave in the morning. It will be better for both of us.”
Tom lifted his hand, but then, as if his arm was weighted by lead, it fell to the bed. “It’s the right thing—the injured soldiers need you. Do try to get some rest.”
She turned her head to wipe away a tear. When she looked back, he was asleep.
Emma closed her eyes and tried to do the same. A man drifted by her chair in the night; she was uncertain whether he was a soldier or a hospital aide. For all she knew, he could have been a hallucination. The hours slid by in jumpy fits and starts, punctuated by terrifying memories from the Front and the room’s lurking shadows. There were ethereal moments when she looked across the sick beds and tried to convince herself she was a participant in a terrible dream. Of course, she knew that wasn’t the truth. This was no dream—the world had, in an instant, become much more complicated for her and Tom.
CHAPTER 6
PARIS
December 1917
A bitter wind swept down rue Monge. The wooden door clattered as Emma opened it. Crossing her arms over her chest for warmth, she rushed through the passageway to the courtyard, the air crackling with cold and smelling of snow. Winter in Paris was different from the same season in Boston. The air here was sharp and crisp, not laced with the ocean’s salt and humidity. Virginie had predicted the storm the day before, sniffing outside, formulating her forecast.
Looking out over the courtyard, Emma climbed the stairs. The mottled ivy trembled against the stone walls, while the statues, dusted with flakes, stood gray and white in contrast to the muted green leaves.
She fished for the key in her pocket, found it, and opened the door. A sultry warmth, created by the boiling water on the small stove, enveloped her as she stepped inside.
“Snow today, as I said,” Virginie called out from the large studio on the front of the building. Hassan grunted in agreement.
“Hello to you, too, Mademoiselle. Did Madame Clement make tea before she left?”
“Oui, sur la table.”
The familiar bisque teapot, covered by a white tea cozy, sat on the alcove table. Emma poured a cup and walked to the studio, the room as gray as the snowy clouds visible through the windows. She took off her coat and placed it over a chair. Virginie was busy hanging a facial cast on the wall, while Hassan, attired in a white smock, crimson fez by his side, worked on another. Emma studied him as he etched around an eye socket with a sculpting tool.
“Very nice,” Emma said to him.
Hassan nodded. “Merci, Madame.”
“How many are we expecting today?” Emma asked Virginie.
“Two. One in the morning. One in the afternoon.”
“Not a busy day.”
“But the casualties continue to mount,” the nurse replied. “I read the death toll in the newspaper this morning. The fighting is heavy near Cambrai. British and German mostly.”
“The winter has dragged down the war,” Emma said, rubbing her hands together. “We should be grateful we have this haven. But we need to liven up the studio for Christmas. Perhaps Madame Clement can find some holly and holiday candles, or other festive decorations.”
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br /> “And champagne—pour une fête,” Virginie added.
Hassan smiled and tipped an imaginary glass with his right arm.
“Yes, I suppose champagne would be appropriate for a toast.”
“Did you talk with your husband this morning?” Virginie asked, quite out of the blue.
Bitterness swept over her, and, disliking the feeling, she pushed it away. “No. I decided to take a walk instead. I’m sure nothing has changed since we phoned a few days ago. He’s recovering nicely, taking small steps. The doctor expects him to be walking normally by the first of the year. He may even be able to return to work in a limited capacity.”
“The news is better and better,” Virginie said.
Emma nodded, but her heart was not in her gesture. The letter she’d read in the cottage still weighed on her mind, even though she’d tried to trivialize the memory. “I should prepare for our patient.” Emma sipped the last of her tea, picked up her coat, and placed the cup on the alcove table before heading upstairs to her room.
Once there, she tossed the garment on the bed and sat down beside it. The room was chilly under the sunless sky, the heat from below providing only slight warmth. The small fireplace, so cheery when ablaze, held only cold ashes. She sighed, smoothed her cheeks with her hands, and looked at the small desk near the fireplace where two letters from Anne, her housekeeper, rested. Her Boston home now seemed idyllic compared with Paris; such feelings were drawn to the forefront as she read Anne’s account of household life and playtime with Lazarus.
Below, a door opened and closed and Emma heard Madame Clement call out to Virginie. Emma rushed down the stairs, happy to the see the housekeeper, who carried a bag of sundry items, a coveted loaf of bread for lunch, and a bouquet of white daisies. Emma had no idea where Madame Clement got her flowers in the winter.
“I can always count on you to brighten our day with blossoms,” Emma said, kissing her on the cheek.
“Bonjour.” She pulled a letter from her coat pocket and handed it to Emma.
The handwriting was childlike and scrawling, unlike the carefully defined hand of the letter in Tom’s cottage. It was postmarked from Boston, the fifteenth of November. Emma ripped it open, studied the writing inside, which was identical to that on the envelope, and read it standing by the stairs.
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