Courage and Sacrifice.

Vicky straightened up from the bedside trying not to wince at the pain in her back. With her one free hand she made to wipe the sweat from her face when a brown arm appeared with a cool cloth to bath her aching forehead.
‘Thank you Amita although you should really be resting,’ she addressed the older women that now stood quietly to one side. ‘I rest when you do Vicky, will you come to eat soon?’
Despite her tiredness Vicky could still summon up a smile for this wonderful women who had cast aside all her upbringing to help her “English miss.” Amita was a Hindu of a fairly high caste, but after losing most of her family to the pandemic she had followed Vicky around everywhere, even into the men’s ward. Now Vicky looked back down at her patient, a young man of about her own age that was in the last stages of the deadly virus which had swept through India like a scythe through a field of wheat.
Already he was coughing up blood, his lungs drowning in it as he struggled to breath. Vicky knew the next few hours would be crucial, his chances of surviving now completely gone. She hardly had the energy left for the overwhelming sorrow that always swept over her when yet another patient died. In the last four months death had become almost a friend although it went against her nature to give up on even one person.
‘There is nothing else to do Amita, but the least I can do is to sit by him until the end comes, I don’t think it will be long now. Is there anyone here who can say a prayer over him, I can’t even tell if he’s a Hindu or a Muslim?’
‘The holy men, pah! They have all run away. Only the English father with his beads and book is left. His prayers will reach the Gods wherever they are.’
Vicky just nodded, here in this nightmarish place it did seem as if every God known to man had deserted them, but she was surprised to hear Amita say it. The older women had always been a devout worshipper even as her husband and sons had been taken from her. She relied heavily on Amita to tell Hindu from Muslim, Buddhist from Christian. With all dignity taken from the victims, sometimes the presence of their holy men could ease their terrible passing from this hell on earth.
‘Could you get one of the boys to find Father Francis, I think I saw Kumar around a while ago?’
‘I go myself, my English it get better every day I think?’
‘Its very good Amita, I am glad you are here with me. I only wish there were more like you to help us. We need more nurses and doctors, men to take the bodies away, women to help us cook and clean, but I think they are too afraid.’
‘I go now, find the father. Maybe take a little while with all the prayers he make to your God.’ With that she walked away, her sandals slipping slightly on the bloodstained floor.

She was so tired and much in need of a bath. Why did Amita never answer her question about more help? She had been in Bombay for four months now and except for a few older children the disease appeared to be hitting only the people from twenty to about forty, just the wrong age-group when they needed every able-bodied men and women to help out, not only in the hospitals but in the fields. Already food was rotting in the ground with so few of the people left to get the harvest in. Amita was a rare woman, an educated woman in her mid-fifties, but still a member of one of the ruling classes. If she could overcome her aversion to working along different religions and even talking to men, then there must be other older men and women somewhere who weren’t at work in the fields?
Once more her mind went back over her arrival in India, first to see if she could find the medicine man to lift the curse she had unwittingly laid on her family, but as soon as she seen the bodies already piling up in the streets she had reported to the nearest hospital. She had no fear for her own life ever since she had heard of the deaths that occurred in her family, but she would have spared Alex, Zara and Nathan if she could have.
Suddenly her patient started that racking cough which signalled that the end was near. Hastily she pulled up the plastic sheet, which was the only thing that protected her uniform from the terrible discharge of blood soon to come. Gently she took one of his blue hands in hers despite the risk of infection, it was all she could do now that cyanosis had taken him over. Blood gushed from every part of his body; even his eyes were weeping bloody tears.
She heard the calm voice of Father Francis behind her, his litany of absolution for the soul that was about to depart. Blood splashed his robes as he knelt next to her and made the sign of the cross on the man’s forehead. One last sigh and the soul left the body, a bloody husk empty of life. She didn’t even realise that she was crying again until she felt a tug at the hem of her dress.
It was little Kumar, a young boy of about seven or eight who had lost every member of his family and now run around the hospital taking errands and curling his body up on the mat at the foot of her bed to sleep.
‘Come missy Vicky, doctor man says you need food and rest. Grandmother go to heat water for you.’
She smiled through her tears at the honouree “grandmother” bestowed on Amita by all the children. So many had arrived here alone in the world while the few elderly people left were too busy trying to raise their own grandchildren and till the fields. Many had been taught a smattering of English already and the few that hadn’t were soon picking the language up.
Thanking Father Francis she followed Kumar out of the ward.

Once she had thoroughly scrubbed herself clean she sat down in her tiny room to share the sparse meal with Amita. It was the usual fare, rice mixed with some unknown vegetables and a few things that could be some sort of beans. Bread was scarce but there was the flat doughy stuff that filled her up, even though it wasn’t very appetising. At least there was still plenty of the dark Indian tea she had come to enjoy without milk or sugar. Remembering to use her right hand she scooped the food up with her fingers and some of the doughy bread. There was plenty of cutlery but it saved on the washing and sterilising process. Once the meal was finished she went behind the small screen that offered a modicum of privacy and changed into her cotton nightdress. Amita then took her leave, preferring to sleep in a small house nearby that hadn’t yet been taken over for nursing the sick.
There was a light tap on the door and Kumar entered now clad in a clean dhoti and ready to say his prayers with her. Gladly would she have just fallen on the bed, but she kept the ritual up for the sake of the boy. The first time she had knelt at the side of the bed Kumar had started laughing. ‘Why you greet the bed?’ he had giggled as she put her hands together. That was her introduction to the Hindu greeting of namaste. Hands clasped in the same attitude of saying prayers, she soon learnt that this had great significance to the people who would bow their head slightly with hands in the same position and say namaste (which was something like an honourable greeting with some religious meaning to it.)
Now Kumar joined her every night with his strange mixture of Hindu and English prayers. After that he would curl up on the mat at the end of her bed much as a guard dog would do for its master.
Sleep came instantly after her twenty-hour shift although her dreams were often troubled by memories of the past. In some she was fleeing with Nathan, in others she was in France receiving the letters that told of her families’ deaths. Nathan had spared her the details of Tim’s death but she had known from the moment he was shot. The sight was still with her although it had become easier to live with over the years. Now she saw herself as she had left her comfortable home to take up nursing in 1916. How she had crept out of the window late at night and was accepted without much probing into her past. Nathan had been furious but there was little he could by the time he had leave to visit her.
Dear Nathan, how she missed him but somehow she could never use her sight to find him.
Now the dreams started to turn dark and frightening. She was in a field hospital barely a few miles away from the trenches. The pounding of the guns and the screams of the dying were doubly sinister with the lights in the tent often dimming or going out altogether. Only to be shocked back into focus by the blinding flashes of the mortar bombs.
None of her brief six months training acting as a general intern could have prepared her for the sight and sounds of the real action where surgeons struggled with only the barest of instruments and precious little medicines. She soon learnt how to hold a man down as a doctor had to amputate an arm or a leg, sighing with relief when the patient passed out with the pain of it.
Sometimes there would be rum or whiskey instead of chloroform or a quick blow to the jaw administered only to save the man from pain. Hardening herself to carry out her work took time but without it she could never have carried on. Tired and sick to her soul she often took over quickly as the surgeon passed on to his next patient, sewing up wounds and helping to cauterise stumps.
Then there was the mad scramble into the ambulances as the battle drew nearer, the curses of the doctors, as a man newly operated on would die of shock or the jolting of wagons over ruts.
Vicky turned uneasily in her sleep and then woke up instantly as an arm grabbed hers.

.............