Page 65 of Two Wars and a Wedding

This wouldn’t do; she had to do something. “Water,” said Betsy, remembering something of her training. “We need hot water. We need to shave them and clean them.”

They didn’t have a single pot on hand. One of the nurses went running to a neighboring house to beg some boiled water. Another staggered over with a pile of towels. Betsy kept one eye on the other nurses, following what they were doing, trying to imitate their assured, quick motions. They shaved the men, cleaned them, eased off their clothes when they could be saved, and cut them off when they couldn’t, some so soaked with blood that the sight and smell made Betsy’s stomach turn, and she had to swallow hard and look away.

She’d never thought herself squeamish before.

She’d never seen anything like this before.

One man had been shot through the cheek, the bullet splintering his jaw before going out the other side. Another had been blinded by shrapnel, his eyes shredded past saving, delirious with pain.

Thank goodness, there was the army doctor that Dr. Kalopothakes had promised. Betsy ran to him, grabbing him by the arm.

“Tell me what to do for them,” Betsy begged in Greek.

So he told her, in rapid Greek. Betsy understood roughly a quarter of it. When she tried to question him, the doctor winced.

“En français?” he suggested in desperation.

So much for her hard-won Greek. French wasn’t much better. Betsy could declaim speeches from Racine, but medical terminology was beyond her.

Her entire education, it appeared, had been largely useless.

One of the Cretan nurses took her by the arm and led her to the supply cupboard, handing her a tin of boric acid and miming at her mouth, then pointing at the soldier with the gunshot wound. Lait, the doctor had said. That word she knew. She was to give the man milk and have his mouth cleaned with boric acid. He cried out horribly as Betsy tentatively began to swab the wound; she fell back, wanting to cry.

One of the other nurses took the cloth from her and showed her how to do it, quick and sure.

Eleven. There were only eleven men, but it felt like so many more. The light faded, the gloom broken only by the tiny specks of light provided by wicks floating in oil in jars of water, set into recesses of the wall.

Betsy had no idea where she was meant to sleep or put her things, but that didn’t matter, because it didn’t seem like she was to sleep; these men needed care, constant care, and there were dressings to be prepared for tomorrow, when more wounded were to come. More? Betsy couldn’t imagine more. Her apron was bloodstained; her hair was coming out of its pins. She wanted to be back in her room at Aikaterini’s house. She wanted to be anywhere but here.

“Mother,” called one of the men, thrashing restlessly on his cot.

He had been shot in four places, each bullet going straight through, eight separate wounds to be dressed and dressed and dressed again. They were in such terrible pain, these men. Where was the laudanum? The chloroform? She wished she had something to give him. She wished there was something she could do, anything. She was helpless, so helpless.

“Mother, Mother . . .” His voice rose with his pain. He was going to wake the other men.

Betsy hurried over to him, kneeling by his cot. “Shhhh.”

She took his hand. It felt so odd, holding a stranger’s hand. She didn’t know his name or where he was from or anything about him other than that he was hurt and delirious and missed his mother. So she patted his hand and made soothing noises until he fell asleep, with tears leaving tracks on his cheeks.

There were tears on her cheeks too. Betsy swiped them off and went back to join the other nurse on duty, preparing dressings for tomorrow.

Although, surely, tomorrow couldn’t be so bad as today.

It was worse. The stretcher bearers seemed to go on forever, one after the other after the other, until their beds were almost full. Twenty-five new casualties, on top of their eleven. But this time, Betsy knew what to do. Shave, wash, change.

The army doctor came by on his rounds, a soldier behind him with a basket of antiseptic and dressings.

“Chloroform,” Betsy blurted out. She had no idea what it was in French. “Le chloroform? Le chose qui fait l’oubli?”

“Nous n’en avons pas.”

None? How could they have no chloroform?

It had to be a linguistic issue, Betsy decided. She had just asked wrong. They couldn’t possibly be without anaesthetic.

But they were. There was, it seemed, a very small amount of chloroform and it was being saved for the worst cases. These were not the worst cases. In fact, they had been sending her the easy cases, given her youth and inexperience.

These were the easy cases?