Matrons and Madams (Bread and Roses) - Softcover

Sister Clara Durling looked up from her notes as though she had just experienced an electric shock. Maidenhead Red Cross Hospital was so close to London that it received news of the truce almost simultaneously. Clara’s heart pounded when she heard the clipped British voice break with emotion as he announced: “The war is over!” She stood in the middle of the ward, observing the carnage around her. The soldiers were so heavily sedated she could not share the glorious news. Three women from the voluntary aid detachment, tears wetting their cheeks, continued checking on the state of bandages. The strong odour of antiseptic was a stark reminder that lethal bacteria lurked in every wound.“I need to take a few minutes to digest what this means,” Clara said to the volunteers. All three women looked exhausted. Rationing of food and the absence of all toiletries showed on their thin, pale faces.“I wish the end of the war meant the end of the wounded,” Clara said, her voice hoarse with fatigue. “Casualties are coming in so fast, the foyer is filled with beds. I’ll take a moment in the chapel if you don’t mind. And the men on the east wing need new bandages. I’ll be back shortly to help you.”As Sister Durling entered the chapel, she thought of the millions of lives lost for freedom. Sliding into the single pew she looked up at the wooden cross on the altar. Tears of pride, fear, relief, and longing flowed down her cheeks. “I still have my children,” she whispered to no one and wiped her eyes.She could still picture it as if it were yesterday: five-year-old Billy and four-year-old Ivy burrowing under the sheets on George’s convalescent bed to make a tent. George had been exposed to gas early in the war and suffered repeated lung infections. After the Battle of the Somme, he was sent home to heal and rest. The children would giggle when their father tickled them with his foot, but the moment they heard his raspy breathing, they’d slip out from under the sheets. Clara would put warm steam under his nose and rub camphor on his throat and chest. Her sense of duty outweighed the thought that she was getting her husband well enough to go back to his certain death. Soldiers with damaged lungs rarely left the hospital, but engineers were so desperately needed that even a sick one would, in the parlance of the War Office, give Britain one more fighting chance.Billy and Ivy would rush off to play and wait for their father to breathe normally again. Some days this did not happen. But on every good day, picnics, safaris, trips to the moon, and treks through the desert had taken place in the convalescent room. George had had a sense of fun that he would not let the war take away. When he was deemed well enough to return to the front, he had the children promise to continue flying to the moon so they could watch over him. Every evening they looked out the window, plotting their lunar adventure.George returned to France, but his lungs did not hold up in the mud-swamped trenches. He was transported to a coastal clearing station and back to England. Barely able to breathe, he must have prayed, as the horse-drawn ambulance trundled along the railway to the coast, that he would make it home to say goodbye to his family.When the cortege of Red Cross ambulances from the casualty ships had arrived at the Maidenhead Hospital, Clara had rushed out to meet her husband.The driver descended from the ambulance and walked toward her. “Major Durling did not survive the journey, ma’am,” he said, bowing his head respectfully. “I have the last letter he wrote. He told me his greatest wish was to make it back for your thirtieth birthday. Major Durling struggled with every breath, but we kept him comfortable with morphine. I’m so sorry, Sister Durling, to have to deliver such sad news on what was to be a special day.”There were three soldiers who had died in transport. Clara had no illusions; the battlefield was strewn with body parts. The bravest risked open fire to retrieve their blown-apart comrades so there could be a burial. She was grateful to have an entire George. He was buried in Knockholt Cemetery on the outskirts of Woodside. St. Katherine’s Anglican Church had been his family’s parish for generations. Two weeks after his shortened funeral service, Clara took the two-hour train ride back to Maidenhead Hospital. Britain was still at war.Clara’s quiet reflections in the hospital chapel were interrupted by an alarming thud on the floor above the chapel. She raced up the stairs to find a young soldier who had flipped his iron cot on its side. He was swearing incoherently and swinging frantically at the two orderlies trying to subdue him.“I want to go home!” he screamed. He was built like a milk wagon, but blind, and his mouth was so disfigured he could not feed himself. His parents said they could not handle him until he could eat properly. Only time and surgery would determine if the young man would ever be reunited with his parents.Clara gripped the soldier’s hands to avoid being struck. “We’ll get you home, but you must get well first. Let’s start by putting your bed upright.” She placed the soldier’s hands on the iron frame. “One, two, three, flip.” She put her arm around his waist and, holding one hand, walked him to the end of the corridor while the orderlies remade his bed.She returned to find Dr. Newbury in blood-spattered operating scrubs ready to give the soldier a dose of morphine. He had just finished a bilateral above-knee amputation.“Great news! Finally!” he said, putting his arm around Clara’s shoulder. “I wanted to say goodbye, Sister Durling, before you go on your well-deserved break.”Clara smiled. “Thank you. I’m aching to see Billy and Ivy. It’s been four weeks since I’ve laid eyes on my children.”Dr. Newbury was a Canadian surgeon who had joined the war effort at the age of sixty, despite the War Office considering him too old to enlist. When war broke out, he had just been appointed head of the department of surgery at the University of Alberta. He was small in stature with a booming voice that lifted everyone’s spirits, including Clara’s. I’ll miss him, she thought, when he returns to Canada. He distracted wounded soldiers with ribald tales as they waited for their next shot of morphine. He loved to recount life in Lethbridge, Alberta, where he had begun his surgical practice at the Galt Hospital. During one of these often risqué conversations, Clara heard that the mayor of Lethbridge, a friend of the doctor’s, treated prostitution like any other municipal service, providing the ladies of the night a safe, regulated area close to the hospital. The listening soldiers, in their fog of morphine, vowed to move to the infamous city if they survived the war.“I’m off to 11 Pickwick Place this evening,” Dr. Newbury said, chuckling. “I spoke with your brother-in-law and he’s offered to open his oldest brandy to celebrate.”Miff was a successful London solicitor who had married Clara’s younger sister, Addy. He had been rejected for service because of a mild heart condition. As his war effort, he offered free legal services to families of soldiers who had died. He and the Canadian doctor had become good friends. Miff had told Dr. Newbury one of the family’s secrets: his wife’s eldest sister had been sent to Canada at the age of nineteen. The doctor had nodded knowingly, his delicate way of saying: An unexpected pregnancy can happen to anyone.Clara was six years old and the eighth of the Ives children when her sister had suddenly departed. To her question “what’s...