Rouen, France 1917
Rouen, France 1917
Sometimes, even now,
lying in bed,
the window half open,
a moon or not,
she would walk the floor, noting
who would make,
who would not.
She would make sure that the
wounds were being soaked with hypochlorite of soda*
and check how the new nurses
arranged the tubes to drain properly.
She could smell the dressings that needed to be changed.
She took notes on after surgery care.
She felt the same calm,
the exhaustion and the wavering
of lines between life and death.
The boys were mostly young,
their eyes,
if not too badly burned,
following her.
She and the other nurses were there to send them back into hell,
not save them.
That was for a different world.
Base hospital was a temporary, false heaven
of morphine and benzoin steam tents.**
She had never cried or broke down.
It was too alive with
the possibility of death
and everything needed to be counted
and watched,
noted.
Sixty years later
she would still methodically
do her work,
calculate the doses
and wonder about
that field where she had buried lost limbs,
by the dozen.
Did extra flowers grow there now?
She would even laugh
at a nurse’s dark joke.
Today she was looking for
her tabby Marlow
who often brought in
the perfectly dissected head of a field mouse.
And came to her bed
every morning to watch her drink tea.
My last family! Outlasted Henry and even Sylvia.
she would say and pat him until
he went under the covers.
Marlow!
Marlow!
Where are you, Marlow!
At the edge of the garden
she saw still fur amongst the leaves.
She felt her nurse shoes again
with the left heel slightly down
and the jersey dress-
so much better than the horrible starched uniforms!
She reached for that girl
walking the rows of struggling men
and taking notes for surgeons
and pouring antiseptic
over black and red gaping holes.
And laughing at the flirtatious,
fractured boys whose souls
were barely attached.
She bent down and pushed away the leaves
and took Marlow
in her arms.
He was stiff
and his lips were pulled back
to smile at her.
She remembered when he had shown up at the kitchen door
and jumped up on the table.
Henry had peered at him over the paper.
She had put out some cream
and that was that.
She felt the sting of hot tears.
Do you ever cry? Her new students had always asked her.
This was so much more
impossible to properly note
on a chart
than graph or measure in a field hospital,
than judge the degree of moaning voices,
than register the tired stirrings,
than calculate a war.
She held Marlow
all night
and woke up stiff
with cold.
She wrapped him
in a throw.
She had cried once,
she remembered.
Third night, maybe fourth
full of pure, un-stained optimism
she’d stayed up all night holding, rocking
a mustard-gassed boy until he was gone.
A nurse, already there for weeks, looked at her-
Best save yourself
and get sleep when you can.
And after that,
she had slept with a helmet
on her face
and an enamel basin on her chest.
She could feel them now
as she buried his light body
in the yard by the shed.
Those were only a pretense
of protection,
a suggestion by an ambulance girl
for stray shells, air raids.
Everybody knew
they were a soporific
to wear out eventually-
some day-
in the dream life ahead.
* An antiseptic
** Tents where tincture of bezoin was inhaled to prevent illness
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