Tabitha

by Vikki Kestell

  “No one enters the camp except properly trained nursing help and no one—no one—leaves,” Sister Alistair repeated. “This rule must be strictly enforced. Supplies and incoming mail must be left at the camp entrance. No outgoing mail may be picked up lest it spread the contagion. We must have your complete cooperation in this procedure, sir. The quarantine is not to be lifted until the camp has been free of infection for two weeks.”

  “But what of the wounded? Where will they be taken?”

  “They must be rerouted to a field hospital that has successfully separated the wounded from the infected,” Sister Alistair insisted. “Even once your quarantine is lifted, incoming wounded—and anyone wishing to enter the camp—must first be screened for fever and cough.”

  “Yes,” Tabitha added. “Even right now, while your camp is quarantined, we must still attempt the separation of the infected from those not yet symptomatic. You will protect some of your patients and staff in this manner and will be prepared to receive the wounded when the quarantine is lifted.”

  Their group spent one to three weeks at each camp or hospital, depending upon its size and needs, before moving on. Their convoy visited so many troop staging areas and medical outposts that Tabitha lost track of where they were or had been.

  She and Sister Alistair, of course, even instructed and enforced proper protections upon Sergeant Franklin and their drivers. She had the VADs employ the men to demonstrate chemical-treated handwashing and the use of face masks to camp orderlies. The three soldiers, having been pressed into burying the dead several times, obeyed without complaint.

  Their vehicles traveled the dangerous and war-torn roads from troop staging point to field hospital to casualty clearing station. They crisscrossed the midsection of France from northwest to southeast, but always west of the fighting.

  Their truck bore the Red Cross, the universally recognized symbol of medical personnel, on its canvas sides and even on its top. According to the first and second Geneva Conventions, the markings would protect them from intentional attack.

  Still, many of their destinations were near the battlefields. They often heard the thunder of artillery guns and felt the ground shake from the impact of shells. One day an artillery missile landed so close to their speeding caravan that its concussion rocked their truck, tossed the lead car into a ditch, and covered both vehicles with dirt and debris.

  Sister Alistair and Tabitha scrambled down from their truck and found Sergeant Franklin’s driver pinned beneath their automobile. He suffered a few cuts, but seemed fine otherwise. Sister Alistair bandaged the driver’s wounds while the driver of the truck, Sergeant Franklin, and the combined efforts of the remainder of the nursing team set the automobile back on its wheels. The truck driver then attached a chain to the car and pulled it from the ditch.

  More than once on their journeys they heard the scream of German aeroplanes diving toward them, only to hear the planes pull up and roar away from their tiny convoy as the enemy spied the truck’s Red Cross. The howl of the fighter’s engines terrified the other women in the back of the truck, Sister Alistair included. Several of the VADs sobbed or shrieked with hysteria, but the familiar whine and grumble of engine always turned Tabitha’s thoughts toward Mason.

  You and I crested the waves of the sea, Mason, my love. It was our honeymoon, and you flew me toward the moon itself. You scribed somersaults in the sky to thrill me, and we shouted with the joy of it.

  How I loved your heart then. How I will always love your kind, generous heart.

  In the last days of July, their entourage pulled back to a British base and hospital just outside Paris. There they received mail for the first time since leaving Colchester in March. Tabitha found a letter from Rose waiting for her.

  My dearest Tabitha,

  Joy and Mr. O’Dell’s son, Matthew, will soon have a brother or sister. Matthew is a lovely boy. He is now walking and chattering in the most darling manner.

  We have quite an active nursery when everyone is here, and I am blessed to be grandmother to them all: Billy and Marit’s Will and Charley, Minister Liáng and Mei-Xing’s Shan-Rose, Pastor Isaac and Breona’s Sean, and Joy and Mr. O’Dell’s Matthew—with more to come!

  Your friend Claire has become a great favorite with the children—and with us. She meets us at church every Sunday and spends the afternoon and evening with us. We love her dearly.

  We cannot help but hear and read alarming reports of the influenza, so we are praying daily for you. Do not be afraid, dear daughter. The Lord holds you in his mighty hands.

  Everyone here sends their warmest love and greetings. Now that our soldiers have joined the war, it must end soon, mustn’t it? And then you will come home to us. Please come home to us soon.

  Love,

  Rose

  ~~**~~

  Chapter 26

  August 1918

  Sister Alistair’s little band was exhausted beyond measure. They had traveled and labored steadily for months, yet their orders allowed them mere days to rest and prepare for their next assignment.

  The new orders, when Sister Alistair received them, were a shock to all of them: Sister Alistair was appointed matron of a casualty clearing station outside the Argonne Forest, replacing the camp’s previous matron whose health had broken under the strain. Only a single VAD of Sister Alistair’s selection was to accompany her.

  She chose Tabitha. “You are a strength to me that I cannot do without, Nurse Hale,” Sister Alistair whispered.

  Sergeant Franklin was ordered to escort Sister Alistair and Tabitha to their station and then return. The remainder of Sister Alistair’s VADs were assigned to other locations. Their two drivers had already been dispatched elsewhere—they did not even have the opportunity to say goodbye.

  “I do hate for our merry band to be broken up,” Sister Alistair sighed, “but I am very glad you shall accompany me to our next posting, Nurse Hale. And I am hoping we have seen the worst of the influenza.”

  But the contagion was not played out.

  Not by half.

  Before Sister Alistair and Tabitha left for their new post, a doctor returned from Brest, a town near the westernmost point of France. He reported on a second wave of the infection striking troops there. He addressed the assembled medical staff with news of the infection’s rekindled threat: a new and deadlier strain.

  Sister Alistair and Tabitha attended his debriefing. His report was terse.

  “As you are aware, influenza deaths normally occur among the very young, the elderly, the wounded, and the chronically infirm. However, it appears that the Spanish Influenza has changed. Mutated. With this alteration, we are seeing fit, healthy soldiers contract the disease—and pass away within days, despite our best efforts to save them. Doctors and nurses in their prime are suffering the same fate.

  “We have received word of this same mutated virulence from Allied Force doctors in Africa and from the United States. This new strain of the influenza seems to invoke a very strong reaction in the young and able-bodied man or woman. The patient’s response to the contagion is so severe that the infection overwhelms his or her system.”

  Sister Alistair and Tabitha glanced at each other. Sister Alistair bowed her head; Tabitha followed suit.

  Lord, Tabitha prayed. Where can we go but to you? Keep us close to your heart.

  A grueling three days later, Sister Alistair and Tabitha arrived at their new post northwest of the Argonne forest. This casualty clearing station was not one their influenza prevention convoy had visited. The station was well supplied, but the personnel were exhausted.

  Sister Alistair—now Matron Alistair—pressed her lips together and took up the reins of nursing leadership. She placed Tabitha in charge of the station’s VADs, but not before she made clear to her staff of nursing sisters that Tabitha was a trained nurse, every bit as much a nursing professional as any of them.

  “It seems our reputation has preceded us,” she confided to Tabitha. “The nursing staff
is thus also aware of your work with VADs. Sadly, the previous matron refused to relax the stringent class distinction between professional nurses and volunteers. She would not allow the sisters to train the VADs or delegate any but the most mundane nursing work to them.”

  Matron Alistair sighed. “What a waste. The sisters are overwhelmed to the point of breakdown—not unlike their previous matron! I believe the sisters are willing now to relinquish their bias against VADs and allow them to share the load more equitably. Therefore, I wish you to train these aides with all possible speed to assume more nursing duties.”

  “Yes, Sister. I beg your pardon—yes, Matron,” Tabitha answered.

  Matron frowned. “This station’s influenza containment procedures must also be revamped. The nursing sisters are so run-down that I am quite concerned. Should the new strain arrive here, our staff will be quite vulnerable.”

  The task of a casualty clearing station was to save and stabilize as many wounded as possible before sending them on to surgery in field hospitals or, if the soldiers could be patched up, to return them to their units to rejoin the fight.

  As the battlefront shifted location, so did their station. The soldiers and their commandant, a major who had lost an arm in the second Boer War, stood by only to guard the medical staff and move the station to best serve the closest battles. The station’s personnel, equipment, supplies, belongings, and tents often changed location three times in as many months.

  The flow in and out of the station was dizzying. As soon as their patients could be sent elsewhere, they were. Sadly, their station also became the burial ground for many souls who did not survive their wounds.

  “’Tis our lot,” a VAD named Moira MacTavish informed Tabitha as she walked through the wards the first time. “Been like this since I got here. Canna remember what a full night’s sleep is. Th’ doctors and sisters patch up the soldiers best they can and send them on t’ hospital—or back t’ th’ front, poor devils. We VADs do th’ laundry, change th’ linens, scrub th’ bedpans, feed th’ patients, listen t’ them talk and grieve, and write letters home for them.”

  Whether MacTavish understood Tabitha’s role and authority over the VADs or not, Tabitha appreciated her candor. The young woman glanced up, and Tabitha glimpsed the pain in her shadowed eyes. “I dinna think I can bear t’ write one more bonny boy’s g’bye letter—but what choice d’ I have when they’re a-dyin’?”

  Tabitha gripped the VAD’s shoulder. “We cannot do this under our own strength or courage. We must draw our courage from the One whose strength never fails.”

  MacTavish stared at Tabitha and then nodded. “Aye. You are right. Thank ye.”

  Before dinner that evening, the camp commander and Matron Alistair called for a meeting of the entire camp. Doctors, sisters, aides, orderlies, and soldiers assembled on the sunburned grass outside the mess tent. The August sun beat down on them, sapping the little strength they had left.

  “We have just received word,” the commandant told the assembly, “that a large convoy of wounded is on its way to us. We believe it will arrive a few hours from now, after dark. Please eat well—I do not know when or if we shall get to bed this night, and you will need your strength.”

  “Do we know how many patients to expect, Major?” Sister Alistair asked.

  “I cannot say, Sister,” the commandant answered, shaking his head. “‘Large convoy’ was the only information I received. Oh, and our patients may be from all the Allied Forces: British, French, Australian. Even American. We shall sort them out to their own hospital units after they are stabilized.”

  “Yes, Major. And I should like to press your men into service as orderlies,” Matron Alistair said in front of the assembly.

  The major stuttered and frowned, not appreciating having been put on the spot in public. “It has not been done, Matron,” he finally managed.

  “And yet they should not stand about idly while the medical staff are taxed beyond their ability, to the detriment of the wounded. Do you not agree, Major?”

  Staring daggers at Matron, the commandant gave her a curt nod. “As you say, Matron.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Matron Alistair turned to her nursing staff. “Please pair the new orderlies with experienced ones who can show them the ropes. And be watching for patients showing influenza symptoms: fever, cough, respiratory distress. Take all proper precautions and send symptomatic patients to quarantine immediately. Now, as the major said, eat well. We have a busy night ahead of us.”

  The trucks began to arrive sometime after eight in the evening. The nurses and orderlies lined up to unload the stretchers. The station’s personnel were masked and gloved.

  Tabitha and two nursing sisters worked to assess the condition of the incoming wounded. They directed orderlies to carry those needing immediate care to the surgery. They instructed that the patients who could wait for care be laid under a tent near the surgeries.

  For another group of patients, the nurses simply instructed, “Keep them comfortable.” It was heartrending to decide when a soldier’s wounds were so grievous that precious resources could not be wasted trying to save him. Those patients were carried to yet another tent where, under the care of a nursing sister, they were administered morphine to ease their pain and their passing.

  The night slipped by in a blur of sweat and labor. Tabitha identified two of the most likely VADs and summoned them to work alongside her.

  “You will be assuming more duties,” she explained, “nursing duties you were not previously allowed to perform. I expect you to look lively and follow my instructions immediately.”

  The VADs stuttered a “Yes, Nurse Hale,” but jumped to follow Tabitha’s orders. By the time the last casualties had been unloaded and cleared, the two women were proficient at several new tasks. At dawn Tabitha sent them to breakfast.

  “Thank you, Nurse Hale,” one of the nursing sisters murmured. “These women are not stupid and they are willing to learn. I have been trying for months to pass more nursing responsibilities onto their strong shoulders, but . . .”

  Tabitha nodded her understanding and they stumbled off to the mess tent in companionable silence.

  “Nurse,” the voice was weak, one of the many voices that called as the figures of the VADs bustled through the ward. “Nurse. Water. Please.”

  With no other VAD in sight, Tabitha poured a glass of water herself and lifted the patient’s bandaged head to drink from the glass in her hand. He swallowed with difficulty and sputtered and coughed, dribbling water down his face onto the sheet.

  “Take your time,” she encouraged him. “Drink slowly. I am not in a hurry.”

  Finally, he managed to swallow the glass’s contents. “Thank you,” was his whispered reply.

  Tabitha looked him over with a practiced eye, wiped the droplets from his chin, straightened his bedding and pillow, and checked the dressing around his head that covered the side of his face.

  “Everything here looks fine,” she said automatically, although she knew that the horrible wound would require significant care in a hospital. The man, an American soldier, she noted, would heal, but he would never look the same.

  She unbent, set down the glass, and turned to leave.

  “Wait. Please!”

  Tabitha paused and the skin along her arms turned to gooseflesh before she understood why: She knew his voice.

  “Tabitha? Is it you? Could it be?”

  Slowly she turned back around. With that recognition in mind and acknowledging the more than twenty years that had passed, she studied the man in the bed before her.

  “Hello, Cray.”

  “It is you! Impossible . . . but how—”

  Neither of them could speak—and yet far too much lay between them. They simply looked at each other.

  Tabitha saw a caricature of the Cray Bishoff she had known, the young man she had followed blindly into Arizona: He was older, of course, malnourished and worn from months at the front, and grievously wound
ed.

  “You are a nurse?” he whispered. She heard the wonder in his voice . . . and the charged questions behind his wonder.

  “Yes.” She shrugged, not wanting to say more.

  “I . . .” Tears stood in his eyes. “I . . .”

  From far away, Tabitha heard Rose Thoresen’s quiet voice.

  Tabitha, you spoke of hate earlier, the hate you had for the man who left you alone in the desert and who sold you to Opal.

  Cray. Cray Bishoff, Tabitha had whispered.

  Have you consciously, deliberately forgiven him?

  I do not know, Miss Rose. I try not to think about him or any part of my past.

  May I suggest, dear Tabitha, that you think about forgiving him? I suggest this not because he deserves your forgiveness or has asked for it, but because forgiving those who have wounded us sets us free. And I would have you perfectly, completely free, my daughter.

  Tabitha knew by heart the prayer she had spoken to God that day: Lord, I forgive Cray Bishoff. I forgive him for leaving me alone and . . . for selling me to Opal. I forgive him, Lord, as you have forgiven me in Christ. I let go of the hate I held toward him. Father, please set me free in every part of my life so that I can glorify you with every part of my being.

  Amen, Rose had murmured.

  “I forgave you, Cray,” Tabitha murmured. “I forgave you years ago. Because Jesus forgave me.”

  “You-you forgave me?” he stammered. “But-but I-I, but what I . . .” Even now, he could not speak of the horrible truth resonating between them.

  “Yes, Cray. I forgave you. And I forgive you now, afresh. I want you to know that Jesus died so that we can be absolved of even the unspeakable things we have done. Jesus died for you, too, Cray. If you will confess your sins to him, he will forgive you.”

  They said no more. Tabitha nodded and, as she walked away, tears trickled and then streamed down her cheeks.

  Thank you, Lord, she rejoiced. Thank you for using Rose to show me how to forgive. I am free, Father. Truly free. You have made me free in every way.