Nightingale (2 page)

‘You've got to learn to recognise this. It's going to come in repeatedly and if my nurses can be my eyes around the ship, it will be an enormous help.'

She reached over with awkwardly gloved hands – the new advance – that made it impossible at times to make use of that all-important sensation of touch that she relied on. She pushed on Billy's blistered skin and felt a slight crackly sensation.

‘Can you feel it . . . the gas?' the doctor continued. ‘In these conditions it thrives. I'm guessing the triage team didn't consider him an emergency. Sadly, they've left him too long and the infection has got too much of a hold.'

Gangrene
, Claire thought. No need to say it in front of Billy.

‘He's becoming feverish, doctor,' Betty said.

He sighed. ‘Another sign. And this infected area will enlarge rapidly. We really do need to get his arm off immediately.'

Claire turned away again, this time to drag over a small rolling table with surgical scalpels and knives. Behind her Billy groaned and began to beg in a soft slur that the doctor just ‘fix up' his shoulder as best he could. Claire took a slow breath and reached for the brown bottle and mask.

‘Your war will be over soon, Billy,' she murmured to reassure herself more than Private Martin, who was no longer listening.

________

Back on the ward, Claire drew her wrist across her forehead before vigilantly washing her hands once again. She moved towards a new patient, flicking away droplets of water and recalling how her long-fingered hands, with neat, oblong nails, had been the envy of the other girls in her year at St Catherine's in Sydney, which she'd attended briefly. She smiled wryly to herself now; today her hands were raw from the constant disinfectant and carbolic soap, whose sulphurous smell clung to the makeshift ward like an invisible overseer.

‘Get some air,' she heard a voice say behind her.

She didn't have to look around to know who it was. ‘I'll be fine, Matron.'

‘That wasn't a suggestion, Nurse Nightingale,' the older woman said, eyeing her over tiny horn-rimmed glasses. ‘Nurse Parsons has already been sent up for a break. It's time you took one too.'

Claire had come to respect their head nurse. On that first night, when they'd begun excitedly mobilising from their tented hospital onto the
Gascon
, she'd given her nurses a welcome with her most stern face on.

‘. . . 
and there's to be no fraternising with the ship's officers. The captain has requested that colonial nurses eat separately!
'

Matron, Claire had learned, only sounded like a stickler; she bent the rules constantly to make sure they helped as many wounded as they possibly could. Claire obeyed her senior and headed up the stairs. The sound of mortar shells and artillery got louder the higher she ascended. The smell of carbolic switched to cordite, and black smoke, like drifts of gloom from various explosions, hung above the tiny bay. She wondered when the captain of the
Gascon
ever imagined the officers and nurses might fraternise. There was barely time for anyone to scribble letters home. Developing romantic relationships was the last notion on anyone's minds right now, she was sure.

The scene above was worse than below. Walking wounded helped their fellow diggers stagger down the short beach that was now a chaotic casualty clearing station, swarming with soldiers and alarmed animals that intermittently escaped handlers or pens and were capable of hurting themselves and further injuring already hurting men. Wounded diggers took their chances under fire and in a raggle-taggle line made their way towards the shore, ignoring regimental medical officers, who were also undoubtedly finding proper assessment near impossible. Their ticketing system had clearly been abandoned. To Claire's knowledge none of the nursing team had viewed a priority red ticket recently; besides, near enough every soldier seemed to qualify for that category.

She massaged the muscles above her shoulderblade and arched her back to stretch out the soreness that nagged from shifting around prone men daily. Day, night, afternoon, evening . . . it was a seemingly interminable round of blood-soaked dressings and despair. Each time the
Gascon
sailed away with its hundreds of casualties Claire knew there were dozens of desperately hurt men left behind at the clearing station on the beach. Too many of them would die before the three-day turnaround gave them access again to full surgical help.

Even so, some evenings they'd sailed with seven hundred injured or sick, dropping off the least grave at Mudros before going on to Egypt – to Alexandria, where ambulances, quality facilities and specialist staff attended to the most seriously hurt men, who may then be transported to Cairo for even more sophisticated help.

Cairo! What a city. It was only weeks but it felt like a lifetime ago that she'd witnessed the enormous orb of sun sinking behind the Great Pyramid of Cheops. Claire recalled in vivid clarity how, in the diffused half-light of that golden-pink evening, she had allowed one of the turban-headed donkey boys to assist her onto the saddle of his patient beast before guiding her to the opulent Shepheard's Hotel. Sunset cocktails had been flowing and she could remember the frisson in the air of imminent departure for most of the men present. Even now Claire could stretch her thoughts and almost taste the cooling hum of infused fresh mint tea that she'd sipped on the terrace behind the wrought-iron balustrade overlooking the frenetic activity of Ibrahim Pasha Street. And if she reached for the happy memory far enough, she knew she could reconstruct the feel of the famous hotel's wicker armchairs pressing against her grey nursing uniform and hear the echoes of laughter bouncing off the stucco façade as she and Rosie were entertained by some officers from the 3rd Light Horse Regiment.

So handsome in their dress khakis, they were surely the smartest of all the Australian divisions with those tall boots and spiral strap leggings and spurs. One of the men had allowed her to try on his slouch hat, making sure it sat on her head in true, rakish light horsemen style. Three finger spaces above the left ear, two finger spaces above the left eye and a finger space above the right eye. ‘There,' he'd said, having adjusted it perfectly, his tanned face stretching into an appreciative grin. ‘Now despite the fact that you're a gorgeous blonde who is surely going to give men in the trenches unhelpful daydreams, you're now an honorary member.' Its ostentatious but nonetheless striking white emu plumage at the back had danced in the soft Cairo breeze of a mild night that teetered, in late April, with the promise of summer around the corner.

Though the hotel was built in Opera Square and on the pulse of the city's heartland, Claire had decided it was spiritually a world away from the ramshackle cluster of brothels, restaurants, cafés and cinemas that cluttered around it, luring soldiers with coin to spend and an itch to scratch. Despite all the warnings from their troop leaders about the dangers of fraternising with the local women of the Wazzir district – or ‘Wozza', as the Aussies called it – she had noticed that the streets were thick with Australians, New Zealanders and British keen to escape into someone's arms – or fists – for a happy distraction.

She could picture the donkeys queued up kerbside, vying for space with fruit sellers or men who'd trained their monkeys to hop onto willing shoulders for an unusual photograph, which of course Rosie had to have to send home. Jugglers, card sharps, nut sellers, trick cyclists and gambling touts – even women selling themselves from balconies desperately tried to catch the attention of fit young men on leave with mainly one thing on their minds. That all felt like a century ago – a different world . . . another lifetime almost.

Matron arrived by her side and the aromatic memory of mint tea faded.

‘Is there any triage occurring down there?' Claire asked, nodding at the beach.

‘Think you could do better in that hell?'

‘It wasn't a criticism, Matron. I'm sorry, I —'

‘And mine wasn't a serious question. I feel as helpless as you do.'

Claire gave a sad smile. ‘I would like to try, though.'

Matron blinked slowly. ‘We don't put women ashore.'

‘Think of me as another soldier. Better, think of me as an extension of you, Matron. I know you could make a difference down there and I also suspect you'd love to get a better idea of what's happening too.'

Matron's eyes smiled, although her mouth forbade the warmth to touch its tightly pinched line.

‘Let me try,' Claire pleaded. ‘We can actually ticket some of these men and organise their care better. Right now they're all taking matters into their own hands.'

‘I am aware of that, Nightingale.'

‘They're dying, Matron.'

Her supervisor sighed. ‘They'll die here too.'

‘Yes, but at least they'll die hearing a woman's voice speaking kindly to them. Most of those boys need a mother as much as the morphine. A tender touch can do a world of good to their state of mind.'

‘You're as soft as you are daring, Nurse Nightingale. I hope you don't have to face the Western Front lines because that romantic soul of yours is going to be badly scarred.' Matron paused. ‘What is it about you, Claire? I can tell you about each of my staff: why they became nurses, why they volunteered for a war zone, why they do what they do. Most of them had the calling or felt the need to be doing something meaningful with their lives. But you remain an enigma to me. I like you very much, you're a brilliant young nurse, but sometimes you strike me as a ghost.'

Claire laughed, puzzled. ‘A ghost?'

‘Indeed. You move among us sometimes as if invisible, not wanting to leave a mark.'

‘Sometimes I do feel like that,' she admitted, further impressed by her elder's insight.

Matron smiled and her expression was filled with kind concern. ‘Why would you ask to go ashore when you know it's so dangerous?'

She stared at Matron, slightly flustered. ‘It's my job. Surely we —'

‘No need to patronise me, Nurse Nightingale. I've got three decades on you and deserve honesty.'

Claire's shoulders slumped. ‘I lost another patient this morning. He didn't even have stubble on his chin he was so young.'

‘They're mostly heartbreakingly young. Why did this one make such an impression on you?'

She folded her arms in a protective gesture. ‘His eyes reminded me of childhood summers in Cornwall with my father – happy times.' Claire sighed in memory. ‘And then I saw his tag and it told me his surname was Cornish.' She shrugged apologetically. ‘It was as though it was a message to me. I started to think about his mother.'

‘Most unwise. Didn't we teach you that?'

‘Easy to learn, hard to put into practice. And even more unwisely, his death got me thinking about my own family.'

‘And?' Matron pressed.

‘That the few people I love are no longer alive. And it occurred to me that should I die in some foreign land like young Cornish, it really wouldn't matter to anyone.' She watched Matron's expression turn fractionally exasperated as she opened her mouth to respond but Claire hurried on. ‘No, it's true, Matron. There is no one hoping to hear from me. I move from place to place, belonging nowhere and to no one. The person I'm closest to is Rosie Parsons and I met Rosie six weeks ago. I'm twenty-five, Matron; don't you think it's odd that in a quarter of a century I have no one who might be touched in any way should I die?'

‘Claire, how very bleak of you.'

She gave a sad smile. ‘Sorry. But you did insist.'

Matron squeezed Claire's wrist with concern. ‘And being adventurous soothes this mood?'

‘No, but I am a logical choice for a dangerous task. The most I have to lose is my life, and as no one cares about it, I'll endanger it willingly if it saves another person who matters to someone.'

‘And is this why you took up nursing, Claire? Did you go into this vocation simply so that you would have people to care for?'

‘I . . . I don't know.' She hesitated, caught by the insightful suggestion that she suspected was true. ‘More likely it's because of my father, whom I adored. We were a team; he used to say I was his favourite girl and that no woman would come between us.' She hesitated and then gave a rueful smile. ‘Of course one did, but that's by the by. My father fought and survived the Boer War, then came to Australia, where I'd been sent to live with cousins because my mother had passed away when I was a child, and he died far too soon after his return from disease . . . but I believe more especially from a lack of good nursing. If we can get to these men faster —' Claire gestured across Anzac Cove, ‘and perform triage with more expedience, maybe we can save them losing limbs or dying from injuries out there on foreign land.' She shrugged. ‘It's about more professional nursing.'

‘I see. You're a crusader,' Matron said, adding levity to her tone and a smile.

Claire shared it, glad to leave the dark years of her early teens behind. ‘I'm happy to take that role,' she replied.

‘Well, Claire, I want no heroics today. You are simply to help where you can in the brief period you'll have but essentially you are to observe and report.'

Claire's eyes widened. ‘You're letting me go onto the beach?'

‘I have a message to get to the medical officers from the surgeons here. You can go with the messenger. Whatever you can achieve in the time there is up to you. But I do agree it will help if we get a nurse on the ground. Focus – I want valuable information coming back with you.'

Claire's smile shone as brightly as her gaze. ‘Thank you, Matron.' She turned to fetch some supplies.

‘Nurse Nightingale.' Claire spun back as a roar from the nearby HMS
London
signalled the unleashing of some firepower. ‘This is a very dangerous business, you know. I'm breaking orders but only because you've broken my heart a little with your romantic notion of nursing. What you need is some real romance.'