Adele bid her patient farewell then returned to the treatment room to clean up the bits and pieces left behind. As she tossed the dirty linen into the garbage, a memory returned of the days when she had plucked shrapnel from men’s bodies and brains before throwing their bloody sheets and bandages into a laundry bin to be washed and sterilized and used again for someone else. Back then she was so exhausted she could barely stumble back to her tent before falling asleep. Now that she was here, working on cuts, scrapes, and the day-to-day demands of Dr. Knowles’s office, when she wasn’t treating more serious wounds, like the occasional stabbing or shooting, life was easier. It kept her busy, which she needed. For the most part, that allowed her to put the war behind her.
But there were things about her time overseas that she sorely missed: the dangers of surviving in the worst of places, the rewards of seeing a terribly wounded man healed, and the companionship of her friends. Dr. Knowles was a sweet man, but he could never replace the wonderful chatterboxes she had lived and worked with for four years. She missed Hazel and Lillian terribly, and the distance between the three girls seemed even more now that both of the others were married and pregnant. And though Adele was happy for them, they had left her behind when they joined that special club of motherhood of which Adele was not yet a part. Her sister, Marie, was already on her second, a little boy named Arthur, and understandably, her letters had become more sporadic as she juggled both a toddler and a newborn. On her mother’s advice, Adele had tried to make friends at church, but it hadn’t amounted to much. Most of the girls there had no idea what she’d experienced, and their priorities were mostly fashion and landing the perfect husband. Many of the men she met seemed to view her wartime experience as either distasteful or scandalous, which reminded her of Fred’s judgemental views, and she cut those conversations short.
Adele was happier now. She was safe, and work gave her purpose. She loved being around her family again. But deep down, she longed for a friend.
Once she’d tidied up, Adele returned to the waiting room for her next patient, Monsieur Lamar, a middle-aged gentleman with rosy cheeks and leathery skin who sat hunched on a chair. He rarely said much, but he came into the clinic almost every week for the same reason.
She leaned against the doorframe with a wry grin. “Monsieur Lamar, nice to see you again. Has your prescription run out already?”
He looked up and clutched his hat between his hands. “It don’t seem to be getting better yet,” he said, giving a little cough.
“I see. I’ll get the doctor for you.”
These days, the affliction that brought most people to the clinic was their apparently unquenchable thirst for alcohol. Ontario’s temperance law allowed doctors to prescribe alcohol to anyone who needed it for medicinal reasons, but what those reasons were wasn’t specified. Just the other day, Adele had walked past a drugstore where a line of people stood, waiting to hand in their prescriptions. Since buying their own liquor locally wasn’t allowed, they basically shopped at the pharmacy. The irony wasn’t lost on any of them, and Adele didn’t judge.
As she had told Marie, Adele believed people had a right to drink. Especially those who had been to war. She’d seen some severely inebriated patients, usually veterans who had tried to drown out the memories by drinking to excess, but they had Adele’s sympathy and understanding. Since returning home, she, Guillaume, and Maman had enjoyed a few drinks from his private stock, and it had done no one any harm. On the contrary: it helped to temporarily quiet her demons. Of course, there were always those who went too far or consumed bad, homemade hooch that was too raw for their bodies to handle, but she figured outlawing booze wasn’t going to stop those men anyway.
Adele knocked on the door to Dr. Knowles’s office then waited to hear his voice. As a nurse, she could treat most of the ailments they saw athis small practice, but the pharmacy still required the doctor’s signature on prescriptions.
“Come in,” Dr. Knowles called.
He sat behind a heavy oak desk, frowning at a stack of paperwork, but he lifted his bushy white eyebrows to her in question.
“Pardon me,” she said. “Monsieur Lamar is here for a refill.”
He nodded then pulled a prescription pad and pen from one of his drawers. He wrote the required language, signed his name in something akin to a scribble, then gave it to Adele.
“Remind him of the poker game tonight, would you? The good Monsieur Lamar somehow forgot the money he owed me last week.”
She chuckled. “I will, sir.”
Out in the waiting room, Adele handed the paper to Monsieur Lamar. “Here you are.”
“Merci, merci,” he said, without a trace of a cough.
“And Dr. Knowles asked me to remind you—”
“The poker game, yes. Tell him I will be therewithhis money.”
No sooner was he out the door than two men hobbled in off the street. One was bleeding from his forehead and leaning heavily on the other, who appeared unharmed. Adele rushed to the other side of the injured man, immediately assessing the source of the blood to be a wide laceration on his upper brow.
“Are you injured anywhere else?” she asked.
“Just his head,” the other man replied for him.
Adele’s eyes flitted over the speaker. He was close to six feet tall with a strong physique and a full head of coiffed brown waves. Next to him, his friend seemed small and out of place.
“Let’s get you into an exam room,” she said, refocusing on her patient. “What’s your name?”
Again, the other man spoke. “His name’s Richard. He crashed the car. Dickie’s always driving too fast.”
Richard groaned as Adele and the tall man helped him onto the examtable. He was young, barely older than a teenager, Adele realized, as she took a closer look at his face.
“Are you sure you’re not injured anywhere else? A car crash can be quite traumatic.”
Richard’s eyes darted toward his companion who declared, “He’s fine. Just cut his head.”
It seemed strange that the patient wasn’t saying anything at all, but when she held his gaze, he gave nothing away. She raised his chin and dabbed at the blood. The flow was slowing, but the cut was deeper than she’d expected.
