Chapter Twenty-One #2
‘What offends you, Hugo?’
‘Primum non nocere.’
‘And what does that mean to the uneducated?’
‘First, do no harm,’ he said.
I was so tired. ‘Your oath,’ I said. ‘How convenient.’
‘Why convenient?’
‘It stops you thinking. Like any rule, it is a convenient excuse not to do the right thing when the right thing scares you.’
‘You think you have done the right thing?’
‘I know I did the right thing.’
I needed to sleep, but I couldn’t. He wouldn’t let me. The war wouldn’t let me.
‘Doing nothing is not harmless, Hugo.’
‘Life is not yours to take.’
‘And why not? What is so precious about the life that some of these boys are living? Death is a bloody kindness.’
He shook his head.
‘It’s what they want, Hugo. They beg for it. They beg you for it, I’ve heard them. I don’t know how you can deny them.’
His head stilled but his gaze hardened. I began to wonder who he was. Then I remembered the cross, hidden beneath his clothes. I’d held it between my fingers and considered it benign.
‘Are you worried I’ve committed a sin?’
He scoffed. ‘It is not your salvation I care about in this moment.’
‘What, then?’
I could see his jaw tense and his nostrils flare. He was furious and it was an effort for him to hold it in. ‘It is not your job to kill us,’ he finally said.
‘Us?’ I said. ‘We’re on different sides now?’
‘Your friends, your lovers, your brother. They have no choice. They have been given a gun. But not you.’
‘Don’t talk about my brother.’
‘But it’s true, isn’t it? Your brother has been given a gun and told to aim it at our heads. He may be responsible for any one of these men.’
‘And not one of these men would hesitate to shoot Bill. And maybe one of them already has.’ The words left my mouth and my legs began to shake.
It was a truth that undermined the fiction I had created about the men in that ward.
They were victims and I thought them incapable of pulling the trigger of a gun or ramming the end of a bayonet through British khaki.
I thought of them as boys and it had made it easier to care.
Hugo’s face softened and became more recognisable. ‘You have heard something of your brother?’
‘No. I’ve heard nothing. Nothing at all. Not one fucking word.’
Iso woke me for my next shift. I remember the headache and the sour taste of bile.
I’d gone into étaples, to one of the cafes on the prohibited list, but I don’t recall walking back to the base.
A debutante must have put me to bed and when Iso woke me I was still in the dress I’d worn the night before.
I still wore the stockings, sheer and silk, but not the drawers.
She touched my face and hair and talked about letting Alison know I was too sick to work. I shook my head and felt my brain bruise against the walls of my skull.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ll work.’ We always worked. We had to be half dead not to.
Iso helped me sit on the edge of my cot then rolled the loose plait of my hair into a bun and tied it beneath my cap. She went to the washstand to drench a cloth so I could wipe makeup from my face.
I tried to remember the night before. I’d been angry, at everything, and the drinks had come quickly – I’d had no shortage of company.
But that was all. The rest of the details were gone.
Along with my drawers. If I felt shame I don’t recall it, though I’d never found shame useful.
If Iso was shocked, she did not let on. She helped me dress then walked me to the nearest YMCA hut.
She held my arm like I was an invalid and made me coffee, overly sweet.
I asked for another with no sugar, no milk.
It was bitter and hard to drink but I drank it.
Every drop. She had sense enough not to offer food.
When we arrived at the German ward, I wouldn’t let her come in.
Bed four had been stripped.
Alison saw where I was looking. She studied my face, its colour perhaps, or its confusion. She had an instinct for what to chase down and what to leave. She decided that neither should be commented on. ‘About time, don’t you think? We need the cot.’
The notes. Hugo’s notes. I’d left before writing my own, but a dead body needs to be accounted for. Hugo had written up the patient notes. He’d covered for me.
‘I take it nothing of note happened before Dr Henning and the sister arrived?’ Her voice and her eyebrows remained neutral.
‘Nothing out of the ordinary,’ I said.
‘You did a round, I assume?’
I nodded.
‘Even the ordinary should be recorded, Nurse Taylor. In future, ensure that it is.’
It was a long day of surgeries and if Alison noted my lack of conversation she made no comment.
Because of the surgeries there were more staff than usual coming in and out of the ward.
There were orderlies removing waste and carrying stretchers to and fro.
There was a sister to assist the German-speaking surgeon and when he went for his lunch at three, a young surgeon took his place – out of his depth and perpetually startled.
Despite the expertise of the sister, Matron was called in immediately to help.
After an hour, a boy who should have lived came out with a sheet over his head and Matron followed.
She was bloodied and shaking her head. She asked an orderly to organise the early delivery of the Hun.
The intensity suited me. Despite the extra staff I was mostly alone on the ward and there was no time for conversation during the small intervals when one patient was returned from the surgery, and another taken.
I could have been semiconscious and still done my job better than most. I was aware of it then and I knew Alison was too.
Why else the blind eye on so many occasions?
So many, but not all.
Hugo was delivered and Matron walked towards him with a gown and cap. ‘If you care at all for your countrymen you will get in there as soon as you can.’
I watched as he put the gown over his prison jumper.
‘Nurse Taylor, do up his ties.’
I hesitated and her brows shot up. ‘Now would be good,’ then to Hugo, ‘I’ll see you in there.’
I walked towards him but he didn’t seek my eye. He stood sentry-still while I tied the gown and I thought of an earlier version of this same scene, the roles reversed.
It had felt like an embrace.
On the third tie I dared to slip my hand beneath the gown and press it into his waist.
‘You are done,’ he said, and without turning he walked to the surgery.
And so it was.
His letter is on the table and I want to rip it open and read his words. I want to be reassured he doesn’t hate me, because he did once. But there is so much more to remember. You are done, he’d said, and the sounds of the ward receded behind a ringing in my ear.
This, I think, is the hardest part, harder even than what came later.
I could not think clearly then but now I can.
I had disappointed Hugo, challenged his beliefs, but the greater injury was made by him.
I had failed to write up the patient notes that night and so he had to, and when he did, he’d lied.
I did not ask him to or expect it of him but his feeling for me insisted on it.
His feeling for me had become corrupting, and he had to distance himself to salvage some part of him that he valued.
At the time, I just felt abandoned.