Chapter Forty-Four
Forty-four
Large stones lined Isolation Road. They were whitewashed to reflect the moonlight and keep me to the path.
I remembered my first shift on the German ward and how I had walked with Iso and imagined those stones as dabs of white on one of her paintings.
I’d imagined myself as an impression – of a woman, nothing more.
A generic shape in a generic uniform, my whole existence in that place explained by those two things.
I’d been anxious that first day, though I’d denied it. Iso knew, of course, and had woken early to accompany me.
This time, I was alone.
If she’d been with me, things might have turned out differently.
It was almost as dark as that first time, though the light of day was leaving rather than arriving.
Iso would have been able to describe the difference between dawn and dusk in subtle strokes of colour, but I can’t.
Isolation Road was busy with people. Shifts were ending and starting across all the wards of 24 General, and hospital staff were coming in and out of huts and walking up and down the road.
I write this as if I have a memory of it, but I don’t.
It is an assumption, because of the time, because I was on my way to a shift and so others must have been, but I have no memory of greeting anyone, and in my mind the road is empty, as it had been, almost, on day one.
What I do recall is the German ward, and the warm yellow light spilling from its windows, and the shiver I felt despite the sultry night.
The shiver came and went, like a quake, like the vibrations that came and went from the front, and each time I was afraid it would not stop. I stood beside the hut until it passed.
Then I took three deep breaths, as I always have before going on stage for the final act. I wrote that later, in the journal, and I wonder now if I’d known all along.
I pushed on the door and entered.
Five bare bulbs strung along the length of the ward, casting arcs of light in the gathering dark.
I stood just inside the door as I had on that first day, one hand pressed to its surface, ready to push it back open and flee.
This time I knew the threat was real; I felt it fizzing in every fibre of my body. I should have fled but I did not.
The doctor emerged from the storeroom. He wore a white coat over blue trousers.
There were clogs on his feet. He was holding a bowl and checking its contents.
Hair fell across his forehead and he pushed it back.
I swallowed and the sound of it was loud in my head.
He looked up and I was staring. I should have looked away.
I should have taken my hand from the door and moved forward, along the length of the ward, towards the desk where Alison sat with her head down, her pen writing up notes for a handover.
But I didn’t look away. I didn’t take my hand from the door or move forward along the length of the ward. I was afraid I would fall. I was afraid I would start shivering again. I was afraid I would let go of the door and run to him. I had never felt so desperate.
Hugo shook his head, so slightly it might have been for himself and not for me.
He’d been lying in his cot with my heartbeat in his head, a memory on his fingertips.
I should have looked away but I couldn’t.
I should have walked, as I always did, past the beds and towards the storeroom, where I would store my bag and hang whatever needed hanging.
But I couldn’t move from the door, and he became still. Then his stillness was noticed.
Alison looked over her shoulder to where he was standing.
It was enough. Hugo’s gaze shifted from me to her and I took a breath.
I scanned the ward, heard its sounds, noticed the smell of a bed that needed changing.
There was a wash over all of it but it was enough for me to let go of the door.
I walked the length of the ward towards the nurses’ desk and Alison turned from Hugo to me.
What did she see? I have often wondered. Nothing in particular, nothing she could have put into words and written in her ledger. An impression, that is all, and Alison did not act on impressions. Not usually.
When she left I had little choice. There are times when need overwhelms sense and the body is the only thing that matters – hunger and thirst, birthing and dying.
Sensation is all there is and the mind cannot argue with what the body decides.
I began to shiver and he held me. If he hadn’t, my limbs would have calmed, my skin would have cooled.
I could have avoided Hugo until our shift was over.
It would have been possible, perhaps, to continue.
To work side by side until the end of the war.
To celebrate armistice whenever it came, and make promises we couldn’t possibly keep.