I watch, transfixed, as they pass through the hospital gate and into the large front courtyard. There’s a clamor as the sirens die, a bustle of slamming doors and swarming uniforms as the drivers spill out to unload their cargo.
Hospitals all over France are overflowing. We’ve all heard the horror stories: doctors performing amputations from sunup to sundown, nurses so overwhelmed they often collapse from lack of sleep, volunteers changing linens and manning bedpans—anything to lighten the load.
Before I realize what I’m doing, I’ve abandoned my bicycle in the shade of a chestnut tree and am marching toward the courtyard. After two years of caring for Maman, changing her linens and helping her bathe, washing her bloody handkerchiefs and dosing out her sleeping draughts, I’m no stranger to the baser duties of nursing. Suddenly, I see a way to fill my days and be useful.
No one notices me. There’s so much going on, men scurrying in every direction, orders being shouted as the American drivers scramble to unload the casualties. Bandaged eyes. A shattered jaw. A leg grotesquely twisted. A palm-size bit of shrapnel jutting from a hastily dressed chest wound. A boy no older than me with a blood-soaked stump where his right arm should have been.
A wave of nausea washes over me as I take it all in, the courtyard tilting dizzily as I fight to keep down my breakfast. I cover my mouth, willing the faintness to pass as I search for the shortest route back to my bike. And yet, I can’t seem to make my feet move. I just stand there, paralyzed and clammy, caught between the overwhelming urge to flee and the need to render whatever aid I might be capable of.
In the end, the choice is made for me. One of the drivers—the one who seems to be in charge—suddenly notices me standing very still amid the chaos.
“Tell Alice we’ve got seven total,” he barks at me. “Three critical.”
Alice?
I blink at him, then turn to peer over my shoulder. When I find no one there, I turn back to him and blink again.
“Parlez-vous anglais?” he snaps in nearly perfect French.
“Oui. I mean, yes. Yes, I do.”
He narrows his eyes, surveying me from head to heel. There isn’t much to see. I haven’t bothered with my appearance since the shop closed, and I’ve bothered even less today. I’m wearing a pair of old culottes, practical when one must get around on a bicycle, and a plain white blouse with one of Maman’s cardigans over it.
“Are you a volunteer here?” he asks, in English now.
I look around awkwardly, then blurt the first word that comes into my head. “Oui.”
“Then get a move on. Seven and three.”
He turns away before I can ask him anything else and resumes barking orders. With my eyes averted, I pick my way around several stretchers and head for the entrance. There’s no guard posted, I realize, no sign of a German anywhere, which seems odd. You can’t go a block without tripping over a Nazi these days.
Inside, the chaos is more controlled, somber and antiseptic, like a hive where every inmate knows its purpose and goes about it with grim determination. Nurses, dull-eyed with fatigue, bustling about in their crisp whites and practical shoes. Volunteers crisscrossing the receiving area with carts and basins and armloads of linens. Soldiers in wheelchairs, clustered in corners and along walls, rehashing the glories of battle or smoking cigarettes and staring into space.
It’s overwhelming but exhilarating, too, to be standing in the middle of so much activity. Paris has fallen under a kind of spell since the Nazis arrived, as if the city itself has gone into hibernation, hoping to sleep until the nightmare is over. But the doctors and nurses, and even the volunteers, can’t afford to hibernate. They’re on a mission, and suddenly I desperately want to be part of it.
I catch the eye of a nurse with a head full of coppery curls beneath her starched cap. “I’m supposed to talk to Alice,” I say tentatively.
“There,” she responds with a hike of her thumb. “The one with the clipboard. If you run, you might just catch her.”
I catch up with Alice as she’s about to push through a set of double doors. “Excusez-moi.”
She turns, gray eyes wide beneath iron-colored brows. For an instant, she looks genuinely amused. “You must be new. No one says excuse me around here. What do you need?”
“A man outside—the one in charge of the ambulances—sent me to say seven total, three critical.”
The steely brows shoot up, all traces of amusement gone. “Right.”
And with that, she’s off, snapping out orders in a voice that can be heard long after the doors swing shut behind her. Moments later, the first stretchers appear, accompanied by a flurry of low voices and scuffing feet. I watch uneasily as they disappear through a different set of doors marked TRIAGE, wondering how many, if any, will go home to their families.