Be You Bravely

Chapter 3 ~ The Sight of Pain

Rain. Slippery mud. Dirty bed sheets. Cold, damp, sick patients. This is what rain brings.

Elsie, a fellow nurse and I were trying, trying, trying with all our might to calm our newest patient down. Screams escaped his mouth as we disinfected his multiple burns. Skin from his face, arms and chest had been blown off in a petrol explosion two weeks ago. He had been transferred from one hundred kilometres away to us for special care. As I lifted my hand to his face with my cloth, his mangled hand grabbed mine. 

"Please... stop" he struggled to ask through the pain.

I smiled at him and looked into his eyes. They were deep blue, fulled with terror. Still staring into his eyes, I thought of how he was someone's son, he could be someone's husband. 

His grip tightened on my hand as Elsie dabbed more disinfectant on his red, bloodstained face, his eyes were closed now and I could see a trickle of tears running, down, down, down, his deformed face.  He cried out again. The salt burning his open wounds. Squeezing his hand in mine, he opened his eyes to see me. 

"We can't stop. But we are almost done, don't worry... shh" I whispered to him.

"Tell me... when can I go home?" 

I hate it when I'm asked this. When can these men go home? For some the answer is never. Hugh Robbins is a patient with us who has a bullet shot deep into his chest, right next to his heart. The bullet was never retrieved. Every time he moves he risks the bullet slipping into his heart. He will never make it home because of it. 

"When...?" the man begged me.

"Shh..." I whispered to him again, as Elsie started packing up the kit. He released my hand. It was red from where he had squeezed it through his pain.

"What may I call you?" he asked.

I knelt down beside him, tucking in his bedding. 

"My name is Alexandra, but you may call me Ally, please don't call me by my real name, only my mother does when she's angry." I smiled at him. 

I've learn't that any distraction from the agony is welcomed from the solders. They love jokes and laughter, nothing solemn, or sad. Solder's especially love stories about us nurses from when we were younger, and what we plan to do with our lives. So we tell them. It gives them hope to hear about the future. 

"And what may I call you?" I inquired, as I helped him to sit up and slipped a pillow behind his neck.

"Well, my full name is Walter Mick, but you may call me Micky. Walter is so proper and prim, Micky is better suited to me." He laughed, almost as though he had remembered a joke from long ago. From happier days. I didn't prob him with questions. I had learnt to never initiate anything with the solders, unless they spoke to you and invited you into their thoughts.

"Alright, Micky it is then." I curtsied, and picked up the cleaning kit and turned around, walking away. 

"Miss Ally" Doctor McLan called to me from where he was standing next to Ben Parks, whose lower right arm had been amputated. He was re wrapping the wound, which was healing well. I made my way over to him as fast as I could. Something about the look on his face told me that trouble was coming, whether it be for me, a patient, or another nurse. 

"Yes, Doctor McLan?" 

"Are you tending to a patient just now or may I have a word?" 

"I was about to see to Mr. Clark, but..."  he interrupted me mid sentence. 

"No, go tend to Mr. Clark, but I want to see you as soon as you are finished with him. Understand?" 

"Yes sir." 

Hurrying to Mr. Clark, I wondered about what Doctor McLan needed me for. Dorothy was the head nurse. Surely if there was a problem he would go to her, not me. Perhaps I had done something wrong, like not cleaned the saw after amputating Ben's arm.... 

I seated myself down next to Harry Clark. He had been blinded by a gas explosion. We had told him yesterday that he would never see again. I reached over for his hand to let him know that I was here.

"Hello Miss. Alexa..." he sounded cheerful despite the deathblow we had given him yesterday. 

"Hello Harry, how are you doing today?" I cautiously questioned. 

"Well, my heart is broken. I'll never see you... ever ever ever. I'll never see another sunset, or moon-rise." His expression slumped into a saddened frown.

"Harry, I am so sorry. But trust me when I say, the world isn't so pretty anymore. Everything is dark and grey and miserable. I don't think it will ever go back to the way it was." I felt a tear trickle down my cheek at my confession. 

"Nah Miss. That's just for now. The world will soon forget this war when it's over. Everyone will go back to the way it was before. The rich will be rich, the poor poorer. Only I won't be able to see when the wars over. But that's the way it goes I suppose. Everything happens for a reason, I have to believe that! If I hadn't been in that gas explosion, I would never of met you, and then my current situation would be much worse than it is now." 

He paused for a moment and let out a small sigh. 

"But tell me now, who is the new guy? I heard one of the nurses found a picture of him from before the war, apparently he was quite the looker!" he smiled cheekily.

"Well now.... his name is Micky," I started to unwrap the cloth on Harry's eyes," and I haven't heard that rumor... you can't see much of his face now." I inspected his eyes for possible infection, there was none. "It's just a tangled mess of skin with a disfigured bump for a nose and two eyes really. If was was a looker before, he's going to have to get used to not being a looker anymore." I cringed thinking of what he looked like now. 

"I'm glad I can't see him. I never had much of a stomach for those sorts of sights." Harry laughed as I wrapped a fresh band of gorse around his forehead and eyes.

"But your mother and father were doctors.... I would have imagined that you could stomach anything!" I teased him.

"Well, I stomach the food you feed me... so I've grown." 

"Insulting the cook I see? Well, I might just tell her what you said, she might just accidentally forget to make your dinner in the future..." I chuckled.

To be fair to Frances, our cook, she didn't have much to work with. So she did a pretty fine job with what she had. But it really wasn't amazing what she produced, to be perfectly honest. 

"I must be off now Harry, rest easy till come to you for dinner." 

"Yes, I have a dinner date with the prettiest nurse in the hospital!" He laughed.

"You're such a flirt, and how do you know if I'm pretty, you've never even seen me!" I shook my head.

"Because, you are the loveliest of nurses here, and that beats the outside beauty. So to me, you are beautiful." 

I was relieved he couldn't see me blushing as I said goodbye as I scurried away, my heart skipping with joy, but the moment I found Doctor McLan in his office my heart stopped skipping. His face said it all. Something terrible was about to happen.