The Shattered Tree

by Charles Todd

  They half led, half carried me part of the way, and then my head cleared, and I found my feet.

  “I’m fine, truly I am. I can walk the rest of the way.” To prove it, I straightened up, gasping at the fire in my side, and then I summoned a smile. “I’ll never ignore a patient again when he tells me it hurts,” I added lightly.

  Just then Dr. Winters came back to see what was keeping me, and he ran forward as he realized I was wounded.

  “How bad is it?” he asked me. After all, I’d been evaluating wounded for years, I thought; I ought to know what had happened to me.

  “My side. A deep graze, I think. Bleeding but nothing seriously hit. The sergeant?”

  “I think he’s going to make it.” He took my arm from the officer and called for an orderly who must have been hovering nearby, because he was there almost at once. He relieved the other soldier, but they seemed to linger, uncertain if I was all right.

  To Dr. Winters, the officer said with some satisfaction, “We dealt with him. The sniper.”

  Dr. Winters nodded, then he led me away, back toward the line of wounded still waiting. It looked longer now.

  I tried to shake off their hands, but the two men held me in a tight grip.

  “I’m going to be all right,” I said. “See to them first.”

  “It’s being taken care of. Let’s have a look at that wound.” Instead of taking me to the surgical tent, he insisted on putting me in my own quarters. Dismissing the orderly, he went on, “This is no time for modesty, Sister. Let me clean that wound.”

  I hesitated. “I can see to it myself.” I was standing without his support now, and although the tent seemed to have a tendency to move erratically, I knew I could manage. “Bring me what I need, then go back to work. I promise, if it’s worse than I think, I’ll come at once.”

  He left me, finally, after more persuasion, and then quickly returned with something to clean the wound and a roll of bandages as well as a pot of salve. He set them out carefully on my cot. “Can you undress with one arm?”

  “I can try.”

  “I’ll send Sister Weeks to you.”

  “No, truly. I can manage.”

  I wasn’t as certain as I sounded, but after searching my face to be sure I wasn’t about to pass out, he finally left.

  I sat down weakly, grateful to be off my feet. My side burned as if I’d struck a match to it, and every movement only made it worse. But somehow I got out of my apron and my uniform, then my undergarments, and, shivering with the cold, looked down at the tear in my side.

  It had missed anything vital, I thought, examining it with the aid of the mirror I used to pin up my hair. A long crease, deep into the skin, but not far enough to touch anything beyond it. Still, infection could be more deadly than the wound itself, and I set about cleaning it as best I could, putting salve on it to prevent infection, and then I was struggling to bandage it myself when Sister Martin stuck her head through the flap and said quickly, “Oh. I can manage that for you.”

  I was grateful to her. “What’s happening out there?”

  “Nothing Sister Weeks can’t deal with. The sergeant clotted; I think he is going to be all right, if the wound is clean enough.” Her hands were busy with my side, gently checking the wound, then carefully bandaging it. “Not bad enough for a Blighty ticket, but you’ll have to go to hospital.”

  A Blighty ticket was passage home to England for treatment. Some of the wounded hated it, feeling they were deserting comrades left to face danger and possible death alone. Others hailed it as a relief, a respite from horror.

  I knew she was right about hospital too. I sighed. In my mind I’d already gone over what had happened. “I think he pulled his shot as soon as he realized it was a Sister. He’d struck the corporal squarely in the throat. It was dark, he caught movement, took aim, and just at the last minute he saw his target clearly. Too late to stop the shot, but by jerking the rifle he still nearly missed me.”

  “You give him too much credit,” Sister Martin snapped. Although we had very good snipers on our side, feelings ran strongly against the enemy firing from a hide, where he couldn’t be seen. It wasn’t quite the thing, in the view of a good many people.

  But war wasn’t always played by cricket rules.

  “There,” she said. “That should keep it from bleeding. I’ll help you dress again, and then you can lie here until the ambulance run. Do you need anything for the pain? You must, surely?”

  I didn’t want morphine to put me out.

  “I’m all right, I can do my bit,” I argued again, hating this, hating having to leave my post. I realized suddenly how many soldiers had said the same thing to me, and I’d firmly assured them that I was a better judge of their wounds than they were.

  As Sister Martin was firmly assuring me now.

  She handed me a mug of water and some aspirin, and told me to lie down, let the bleeding stop, and not make a nuisance of myself.

  I grinned up at her as she cleared away the basin and the cloths and bandages.

  “Yes, Sister,” I said meekly, and she shook her head.

  “Cheeky,” she declared and started for the tent flap. “Now be good. Don’t get in the way.”

  I lay back on the cot and tried to find a comfortable position. But whatever I tried, it hurt, and the fire seemed to be spreading. It was only the nerve endings in the area around the wound making themselves felt, I told myself, and put my good arm over my eyes to shut out the lamp’s light.

  And I lay there gritting my teeth, stubbornly refusing to call for anything more than aspirin because I could hear the sounds of a barrage now, and I knew how many patients coming in would have shrapnel wounds, most of them very serious indeed. I could wait.

  It seemed like an eternity before the rumble of the ambulances arriving brought me wide awake just as Sister Martin returned. “I’ll pack your kit for you. You never know. They might not send you back to us.”

  I could hear her moving about but I didn’t turn my head. “I heal quickly,” I said. “I’ll be well again before you know it.” Even as I spoke the words I remembered the trouble I’d had with the arm I’d broken when Britannic went down under me.

  “Of course you will,” she agreed, but I didn’t think she believed it.

  Ten minutes later, I was seated next to the driver in the lead ambulance because the back was full. Dr. Winters came to speak to me, assuring me that Sister Martin had given him a good report, and that I’d be fit very soon.

  “As for the wounded with you, they’re stable. There won’t be any call for you to attend them.” He handed me a pillow to cushion my side and stepped back, offering me a worried smile.

  I settled myself, nodded to the driver, and we set out.

  It was torture.

  I think I passed out shortly before we reached the hospital.

  It was sheer luck that I went to the hospital where we’d taken the wounded Frenchman. On the last two ambulance runs before I was a patient myself, the convoy had been sent on to another hospital because there were no beds here.

  Of course, I wouldn’t be put in a cot in one of the wards. They were all male. I’d be given a room in the quarters set aside for nurses.

  And so I had a fair idea of where I was when I opened my eyes.

  Matron, peering at me over the rim of her glasses, said, “Well, hello. We wondered if you’d be awake in time for tea. I’ve had that wound looked at. You’ll be fine. It should heal cleanly.”

  I’d said as much to patients, then watched their fever rise without warning and infection carry them off by the next morning, in spite of all we could do.

  I smiled. “A comfort,” I said, and she smiled wryly in return.

  “Yes, well, we try to keep spirits up. It’s good medicine to do so.”

  They brought me tea on a tray, and with it a bowl of soup. I drank the soup and then the tea, and felt myself feeling increasingly drowsy.

  Had they put a sedative in my tea?

&
nbsp; There was no time to give to a wounded Sister. With the best will in the world, the staff would still have to care for those far more seriously injured. I’d been fed, a fresh bandage had been put on, and I could safely sleep for a few hours. Rest, the best healer.

  That was the last coherent thought I had before the darkness came down.

  The next morning I awoke with a very dry mouth from the sedative and a slight headache. By afternoon, I didn’t need anyone to tell me my fever had spiked. I lay there as the doctor looked at my wound, sniffed it, and shook his head.

  “No infection. I don’t think it’s anything more than the wound trying to heal,” he said as he straightened up and gave orders to the Sister who had accompanied him.

  I was to have tea and soups, nothing solid, and aspirin for the fever, and as much rest as possible.

  I’d watched his face as he bent down to sniff, and I didn’t see the telltale expression of someone finding suppurating of the wound that would indicate something worse.

  One of the troubles of being a trained nurse—I knew what could happen. I grimaced at the thought.

  Dr. Webb caught the grimace. “Are you in that much pain?” he asked quickly. Another bad sign that there was more damage than superficial examination could see.

  “It hurts,” I admitted. “But the pain hasn’t spread.”

  “Hmmm. Yes.” Rubbing his chin, he considered me. “What would you say to being sent to Rouen?”

  There was a base hospital there with the new X-ray machines, brought over early on by the Americans from St. Louis. I could tell he was considering looking for bits of my uniform or other fragments in the wound.

  “Not yet,” I said, remembering the condition of the roads. Another ambulance ride would be decidedly the wrong thing for me just now.

  He nodded. “Then we’ll go with the treatment I’ve described. Good day, Sister Crawford.”

  Sister Melville came in during the afternoon to change my bandages and inspect the wound once more. It hurt to move, but I clenched my teeth and said nothing as she worked. She offered to give me something for the pain, but I was still groggy from the last sedative. I smiled and shook my head.

  And, part of me demanded, have your own patients done exactly the same thing?

  By the dinner hour, I was regretting my bravado. One of the VADs came in with my tray and stayed to gossip. The Voluntary Aid Detachment had been started by the Red Cross and the Order of St. John, providing a range of care in Britain and finally in other theaters of the war.

  Millie—as she asked me to call her—had been a laundress, an ambulance driver, and a cook, and presently was a ward maid. “But I’ve learned enough to become a nurse next month, if the war doesn’t end before that.”

  Her enthusiasm kept me entertained as I ate. She even asked how I came to be wounded—she had never been sent to one of the forward aid stations—and how badly it had hurt.

  I told her a little, then as I finished my soup and the bread that had accompanied it, she seemed to run out of questions of her own, and I asked in my turn, “I hear there was a French Lieutenant being treated here.”

  Her face lit up. “There was, and he was as handsome as I’d heard Frenchmen would be.”

  “What was his name?”

  “He couldn’t tell us for two days. He was just ‘the Frenchman.’ It’s Moreau. Philippe Moreau. His mother was born in Alsace-Lorraine. She married a cousin, he said, to keep what money there was in the family.”

  “A love match? How romantic,” I responded, to encourage her.

  “He didn’t say. But I expect the French like arranged marriages. I’d want a love match, myself. But I’m told that Frenchmen take mistresses anyway. So perhaps it doesn’t matter.”

  “Who told you that?” I asked, surprised.

  “One of the orderlies. He’d been to Paris. He said.”

  “Is this French officer married?”

  “I don’t believe so. He never asked us to write any letters for him. You’d think his wife would want to know he was safe. We took that as a sign.”

  “And where is he now?”

  “We sent him on to Rouen. We needed the bed, and his diagnosis was exposure, loss of blood, and exhaustion. His wounds were serious, but not life threatening; he needed food and rest more than he needed urgent care, and Dr. MacDonald decided he could be safely moved. Although I must say, his feet were in a terrible state. I expect they will take longer to heal than his other injuries. Except of course for his forehead. That will leave a scar, I’m sure of it, but his hair will cover most of it. Still, he won’t be walking for a while to come.”

  As a rule, patients were sent to where they had the best chance of surviving. And after that, to wherever they needed to go to heal. We took convoys full of the worst cases home to England, where they could take the time necessary to recover. Broken bones, lost limbs, head wounds, internal injuries, surgical patients—anything that couldn’t be dealt with quickly and the man sent back to his company. We handled the emergencies. There weren’t enough beds or doctors and nurses to do more than that.

  It was natural to send the Frenchman on to Rouen.

  And then my gossiping friend told me something more.

  “Matron was eager to see the last of him. I can’t imagine why. He was such a lovely man.”

  “Did you speak to him?”

  “We were ordered not to. He had the most charming accent. I was helping Sister Evans change his bed, and he was awake, asking us where he was. He couldn’t seem to take in the fact that he was in a British hospital. I expect he didn’t remember how he got here.”

  Or the night he’d been angry enough to speak German?

  “He spoke English, then?”

  “Yes, he’d spent some time in London before the war, I believe.”

  “Did he speak German?” I could have bitten my tongue as soon as I realized it would seem to be a strange question.

  “Good heavens, why should he?” She looked quite shocked.

  “The French have fought the Germans often enough. It wouldn’t be surprising for their officers to study the language. And I believe many families had German governesses or nannies.”

  “We had an officer, a German prisoner, brought in a few days after the Frenchman had arrived, and Matron asked the Lieutenant if he could translate for the nurses, but he said he couldn’t. That his mother wasn’t allowed to speak German at home. The family didn’t want to forget that they were French, you see. And he was sent to France for schooling.”

  I could think of nothing else to say, except “How interesting.”

  Millie grinned, taking the tray and setting it to one side before bringing me a basin of water to wash my face and hands. “I can tell you, the Lieutenant had all of us atwitter. He’d been moved in with the other ranks his first night—it was the only bed available—but he was returned in the morning, just when I’d been assigned to that ward. The other staff made any excuse they could think of to pop in and see him for themselves. I had to restock sterile bandaging a number of times.”

  Sent to the other ranks to keep him and the Scot apart?

  “Was he friendly?”

  “Not very, no. But then he lay there with his eyes closed most of the time, and Sister Darrow told me he must have had a ferocious headache.”

  Or didn’t want to speak to anyone?

  I listened to her chatter for a moment or two, then asked, “I can’t help but wonder why he was so far from his own lines.” We seldom had French wounded here.

  Her eyebrows flew up. “But didn’t you know? He’d been a prisoner of the Germans. Somehow he got away. That’s why he was in such a state. He’d walked, trying to reach his own lines. No food, hiding during the day. It must have been quite terrible. I saw his feet for myself.”

  So had I. That made sense. I finished my bath, feeling quite exhausted. Millie plumped my pillows, lowered the lamp by my bed, and wished me a good night.

  On the brink of sleep, I found myself t
hinking about Lieutenant Moreau and his denial that he could speak German. Had he thought himself back in that prison camp when he was attacked?

  And yet . . .

  His outburst hadn’t sounded like the handful of words a man might pick up in a camp dealing with his captors. There had been fluency, not a halting attempt.

  I’d lived in India, where there were any number of local languages. Indeed, of necessity, many people spoke several. From my Hindu nurse I’d learned Hindi, one of the two umbrella languages of the north, and from our Muslim gatekeeper, I’d learned Urdu. But my ear had become accustomed to some of the local tongues, even when I couldn’t speak them.

  I would have been willing to wager that the French Lieutenant’s German had had no French accent.

  I slept much of the next day, and then on the following morning, I awoke to find Matron leaning over my cot, calling my name.

  It seemed I had a visitor.

  I blinked at her.

  My next thought was, Oh good heavens, Sergeant Lassiter has heard and has come to learn how best to find the sniper who shot me. He was Australian, and just audacious enough to think he could talk his way in to see me. And then it occurred to me that Matron would never countenance a sergeant’s visit to my quarters, avenging angel or not.

  Who then? Not my father, the Colonel Sahib, as my mother and I called him after our years in India. Although word might have been passed to him that I was in hospital. Simon? But even Simon wouldn’t be allowed in my quarters.

  “Who is it?” I asked, running out of possibilities. If it had been one of my flatmates, who had studied nursing in London at the same time I had—Diana or Mary, or even Elspeth—there would have been no need for Matron to accompany her.

  “You’ll see. Now, let me attend to you.” And she helped me wash my face, brush my hair, and make myself presentable.

  Satisfied, she left me, and moments later, my mother walked into the little room, followed by Simon, who seemed too large for my quarters as he closed the door behind him.

  “Mother!” I exclaimed, trying to raise myself a little in the bed and instantly regretting it.