8. Helene
8
HELENE
In the gray, muffled predawn hours of August, Helene rested in the sluice at the back of the German military ward. She wiped the sweat from her forehead and tried to loosen the collar of her uniform. Each shift there were more soldiers, fresh, unshaven faces to replace those who had left. The fortunate ones returned to their postings in France, and the others were sent like fuel to feed the endless fires of vague and distant fronts.
Even though she knew Matron Durand was waiting, Helene stopped and let her hands idle on a stack of linens. Everything in the military ward was spotless and new, vials of medicine and glass thermometers, shiny black combs and razors still in their packaging. The linens were never stained or torn. There was always strong coffee for the patients in the morning, the smell so pungent that it made Helene’s eyes water. The soldiers had cigarettes with real tobacco, and there was local apple brandy in the evenings for the officers. Their dinner trays were full with fresh bread and good meat and cheese. Helene sometimes found herself watching them eat, trying not to think of her grandfather back home, standing in line in the early morning in his suit and hat to beg for whatever meager rations were left.
There was a muffled sound behind her, a man’s voice speaking in German, another answering it. She had been so sure they would all be like Lieutenant Vogel, would look at her with the same cold eyes, make every hour spent there feel like walking a tightrope, always an inch away from falling into an abyss. But they were mostly just boys, young men who were hurt or sick and a thousand miles from their mothers. They were quiet and they were scared, their jaws clenched as the nurses cleaned their wounds or adjusted their splints or administered medicine to bring down fevers.
She hated the kindness she sometimes heard in her voice when she talked to them, the gentleness in her hands when she helped them down the hallway to the bathroom. She tried so hard to shut it out, to close her eyes and think of her uncles, of her grandfather’s boat and livelihood, seized from him, of the yellow stars on the clothes of her Jewish neighbors or plastered on shop windows, of a thousand other crimes they owned, no matter how polite or young they were.
She wished she could be like Elisabeth, whose hardness hadn’t slipped once in her time on the ward, who was brisk and stony as she performed whatever task she was assigned. Helene searched the ward for her friend now and found her near the door, shoulders rigid, speaking in hushed tones with Matron Durand, who had one hand on her forehead, clearly frustrated.
Helene wondered what slight she had committed, a missed medication, perhaps, or forgetting to document a temperature or blood pressure on a patient’s chart. She tried to catch her eye, but just as Elisabeth looked up, Cecelia strode into the room, her normally perfect habit slightly askew. Helene’s body stiffened at the sight of her cousin. She had seen her occasionally since their first conversation, during meals or at mass, but they hadn’t spoken. Helene had been grateful to avoid her.
Helene had tried to heal once, two weeks previously, on her second shift on the military ward. It had been a rash moment of resentment, toward Cecelia, toward her mother for not allowing her to come back home, for sending her there in the first place. There was a soldier from the front, his back torn up by shrapnel. Despite the morphine, he continued to writhe in pain each night. She was assigned to baths that night, and when she reached him, every movement was clear agony. His entire body shook as she turned him, his face pale. And without really thinking, she tried to take away his pain.
But she couldn’t. Her hands were cold as she touched him. All she could see as she closed her eyes was her father, who had once been a boy just like him, a wounded soldier in the muddy field hospital where he met Helene’s mother.
“Something’s happening,” Elisabeth said beside Helene, who was so lost in her thoughts that she jumped at the sound of her friend’s voice. She hadn’t even noticed her approach.
Cecelia and Matron Durand were huddled in conversation, their backs to the ward. Helene didn’t want to imagine what they were discussing so urgently, but she felt a deep sense of foreboding. Helene could only understand the war in fragments, information passed in rumors or whispers through the hospital, the Germans advancing farther into Russia, reprisal killings for resistance in a Czech village, the mass arrest and deportation of Jewish people throughout France, each piece of knowledge more dismal and catastrophic than the last. There was never positive news in France. Only defeat and surrender and collaboration.
The door swung open and the German head of the hospital, Dr. Weber, entered, his usually clean-shaven face covered in white stubble, his skin as pale and anxious as Cecelia’s.
Cecelia broke away from Matron Durand to meet the doctor. A few soldiers stirred in their beds at the sound of so many footsteps.
“What are they saying?” Elisabeth whispered.
They were too far away to hear anything. “I can’t make it out.”
“I’m going to try to get closer.”
“Are you sure you should do that?” Helene asked. She didn’t like the thought of Elisabeth being subjected to Cecelia’s wrath.
Elisabeth rolled her eyes. “I’m not as scared of your cousin as you are.”
She walked toward Weber and Cecelia, her posture confident as she carried her tray of medicine cups toward a cabinet near the door. Weber’s and Cecelia’s heads were bowed together, their voices indistinguishable but urgent, and they didn’t seem to notice Elisabeth as she carefully placed the tray inside the cabinet. She hovered there for several moments, rearranging vials and syringes, trying to appear busy, until finally Cecelia caught on and cleared her throat loudly.
“Thank you, Nurse Laurent. That will be enough. Please go and make sure the clean linens are ready for the day shift.”
“I think there’s been a landing,” Elisabeth said when she returned to Helene, the words tumbling out of her mouth, her expression almost giddy.
For years Helene had waited for news of a landing, so long that the hope of an end to the war, so bright inside of her in the early days of occupation, had waned like a once-full moon.
“Did you hear me?” Elisabeth asked. “I heard the doctor tell Cecelia to ready nurses for an influx of wounded. He mentioned Dieppe.” She let out a shaky breath and then to Helene’s surprise leaped forward, embracing her with so much force Helene was almost knocked off her feet.
Helene had never seen her this way, like the girl she was under the layers of guardedness.
A feeble hope stirred in Helene’s chest. And it remained, tiny but persistent, as they finished their work and left the ward at the end of the shift, as the hospital came alive with whispers and rumors and talk of the coast. They could all feel it, their small, insular world stretching and shuddering toward the expansive, imminent dawn.
* * *
Shortly after Elisabeth and Helene returned to the dormitory, Mother Elise, followed closely by Cecelia, walked through the doors.
Mother Elise never came to the dormitories. She rarely spent time in the lay side of the H?tel-Dieu, was mostly cloistered in the convent except for mass and shared meals.
“Gather, girls,” Cecelia announced, her stern voice cutting through the babble of excitement.
The nursing students lined up and faced the nuns at the front of the room. Some of the girls giggled or linked arms as Mother Elise stepped forward to speak, but Helene was focused on Cecelia, the emptiness in her eyes. She felt the last, tattered remnants of her hope extinguish.
Mother Elise was quiet for a long moment, her elegant features hesitant. A few girls still whispered to each other. They didn’t understand the look on her face. But Helene knew it well. She had seen it on her grandfather the day after the Armistice, when she’d walked down to breakfast in one world only to have it taken from her by supper, when news of the surrender reached their town, solid ground replaced by a bottomless void.
Mother Elise steeled herself. “As you girls may have heard, there was an Allied landing in Dieppe this morning. We don’t have much information, only that the fighting began early, before sunrise.” She paused. “And that it appears to now be nearly over.”
She clasped her hands at her waist and stared out at their faces. Expressions changed slowly, as one by one the girls understood what Helene had known immediately, that if there had been an attempt at an Allied landing, the only way it could already be over was by a catastrophic defeat.
“Of course, we are grateful,” she continued. She glanced down, as though she couldn’t look at them as she finished her sentence. “We are grateful for a swift end to the fighting.” She pursed her lips and looked up again. “And for the continued security of our Vichy government.”
“Grateful,” Elisabeth muttered beside Helene, her jaw clenched. Her voice was so low Helene wasn’t sure she meant to say it out loud.
Cecelia took a step forward and raised a hand as a few of the girls turned to speak to each other or cry out. “Silence now, girls.”
Helene tried to read her cousin, to search for some sign of the fear that reverberated across the rest of them. But Cecelia didn’t betray any emotion.
“They have asked for nurses to come to the field,” she said. “We will ask some of you to stay here, to help the sisters and nurses prepare for the arrivals of the wounded. The ambulances will begin arriving any moment with the first of them.” Her gaze flickered to Helene’s. “The rest will go to Dieppe, to help treat the casualties on the beach and assist in whatever way you can.”
“Blanchet, Allard, Moreau, Chastain, Vernier, Bassett, Adrien.” Several of the girls looked up at the sound of their names. “Report to your assigned wards. Your matrons will direct you.” With a soft, scurrying of feet and a rustle of their gray uniforms they left the dormitory together.
“Corbin and Laurent. Shower and dress and report to your wards.”
Anne and Elisabeth stepped forward. Elisabeth caught Helene’s eye, questioning.
“The rest of you,” Cecelia said, surveying the small group that remained, most of them the more experienced nursing students, girls like Denise, who had been there at least a year, “report to me near the west entrance of the H?tel-Dieu in fifteen minutes. Bring your aprons and caps.”
Helene didn’t move at first, unsure she had heard correctly.
“That includes you, Paré. Dress quickly and come down with the rest,” Cecelia said.
Helene opened her mouth, but no sound came out. She had only been there two months. As a nurse, she had been tasked with nothing more complex than bed changes and baths. What could she possibly do on a battlefield?
“Why?” she finally managed to ask.
Cecelia’s expression didn’t waver.
“Come now. Do as you’ve been told.”
Helene’s body flooded with fear, to be in a position where she would have to face death and suffering on such a staggering scale, to have no idea if she would even be able to help. But she knew at the look in Cecelia’s eyes she had no choice. And so with a shaking hand, she picked up her clean uniform from the end of her bed and followed orders.
* * *
The truck jostled its way down the long road that led into Dieppe. The space underneath the canvas cover was shaded and silent, clouds of dirt kicked up by the oversize wheels occasionally floating through the wide opening in the canvas flaps in the back. As they churned through the countryside that separated Rouen from the coast, the flaps revealed farms and small villages, churches and schools, little shards of normalcy scattered along the route clashing with the sounds of aircraft overhead, the procession of armored cars, military vehicles, and ambulances that screamed past in the opposite direction.
Everything inside the truck had a dreamlike quality, the girls around her, vague and interchangeable, hands fidgeting relentlessly in their laps; the sisters seated across from them, almost comical in their oversize white habits and veils, their heads bowed as their lips moved in prayer.
The only person who appeared to her with any clarity was Cecelia. She didn’t bow her head or pray like the other sisters. She simply looked forward, her blue eyes almost glowing in the darkness.
After they’d been on the road for at least an hour, the truck stopped with a lurch. The driver idled for several moments before making a sharp turn to the left, the engine groaning as it picked up speed once more. Out the back of the truck Helene saw that the countryside had given way to the outskirts of a larger town, wide fields replaced by narrow streets and larger buildings, shops with darkened windows, shuttered homes and apartments. Helene knew their destination couldn’t be much farther.
“Do you smell that?” came a voice from her left, Adeline, one of the nursing students from a town on the coast not far from Honfleur.
“Do I…?” Helene started, but before she could finish, she knew what Adeline meant. It hit her like a wave. It was home, the scent her father once carried back from the docks, woven into the fabric of his jacket as he twirled Helene in great circles, her face buried into his neck. It was the rain outside her bedroom window at night, her first breath in the morning, the way the scent changed, softened or deepened with the winds and tide. It was the throughline, the horizon, the light that filtered through every one of her memories.
The salt air rose, taken in by warm gusts of air. Outside, the streets grew crowded with other trucks and ambulances. They passed tanks with enormous guns stacked to their roofs, an armada of vehicles, what seemed like thousands of men, Germans in uniforms with guns, Allied prisoners sitting on street corners with dirty faces or bloody bandages watched by more Germans with guns, an entire village full of men adrift.
As they inched through Dieppe’s city center, a group of Allied soldiers marched slowly past the back of the truck. A few were limping, their shoulders slumped, bandages soaked with blood tied around arms and legs.
There was a loud exclamation, and a German soldier came into view, his large, black gun shoved so hard into one man’s back that he fell to the ground. Beside Helene the other girls let out moans and clutched each other. Across from her the sisters prayed, their hands folded.
Helene watched numbly as the German towered above the other soldier, screaming, until the truck picked up speed and they faded into the background, the boy curled into a ball with his hands over his head.
“Was that an American?” Helene whispered to Adeline as they turned down a narrow side street away from the congested plaza. Her throat was dry and irritated from the dust.
“Canadian,” Cecelia said before Adeline could answer. Helene was surprised to have been heard over the commotion outside. “Most of them are.” It was the first time Cecelia had spoken since they left the H?tel-Dieu.
“It’s nearly time now,” Cecelia said to the group as the truck rumbled to a stop. Over the noise of the other trucks and aircraft, Helene could just barely make out the soft crash of waves in the distance. “Stay close to me. Do as they tell you. We are here to serve, but we must also be safe. Remember your training.”
The truck was flooded with light as the driver lifted the flaps to the side. The street was full of men, an endless sea of soldiers walking to and from the beach, some Germans, others in Canadian fatigues, their arms behind their backs, their postures collapsed.
“Go on now, girls, report to the medical tents. They’re bringing the men there from triage. Make yourselves useful in whatever way you can,” Cecelia said. The women began to climb out of the truck, but Cecelia put a hand on Helene’s arm to stop her before she could follow.
“You’ll come with me, Helene. Down to the beach.”
Helene couldn’t move or speak or even form a coherent thought. There was no anger in Cecelia’s expression, or disap pointment. Her normally composed features were clouded with apprehension.
Cecelia flinched as a gunshot rang out in the distance. Then she leaned forward and gripped Helene’s wrist. “Help them,” she said. “I brought you here so that you could help them.”
“I’m not a nurse.”
“I know that.”
Helene looked up at her, comprehension dawning. “You said…”
“I know what I said.” Cecelia held Helene’s wrist so tightly now it was painful. “And we will both reckon with the consequences of our actions.” She turned her head toward the beach. “But for that, there is time. Now, we must help them. True mercy. Not at the end of a rifle. Not cold and wet and alone. Find the ones at the end. And take away their pain. You can’t save them, Helene. But you can give them grace in their last moments.”
She lifted Helene’s wrist up until it was at her chest. “Can you do what your mother taught you, Helene?”
Helene trembled. She thought of the last time she was able to use her gift, the last few weeks of her father’s life, when her mother needed to sleep or see a patient. She was thirteen years old, watching her father die, unrecognizable, his mind delirious. She had tried to save him. She didn’t care what her mother told her. She pressed her hands onto his chest, begging him to live, but she couldn’t bring him back. She wasn’t strong enough.
“I… I don’t know that I can,” she said.
Cecelia’s gaze was so penetrating Helene felt every failing of her past exposed, cast into the glaring light of day. There was no compassion in her eyes, none of the gentle understanding of her mother. She didn’t look at Helene like a helpless child. She looked at her like an equal.
“You can, Helene. And you will.”
Something deep in Helene’s body seemed to come alive at Cecelia’s words. A current of energy ran down her arms, a sensation she had once known innately, one she had believed she might never feel again.
Without another word, she stepped down from the truck and followed Cecelia toward the beach.