One fresh spring night in Mourmelon, Eugene receives a letter in the mail. The handwriting and blue ink are familiar, and he smiles as he tears the envelope open, settling down in the barracks to read.
Eugene always reads her letters twice, the first time quickly, his eyes skimming over the words like a rock over water, touching down and lingering on a word for a few seconds every so often. The second time he reads slowly, penetratingly, absorbing the meaning more deeply this time.
He is much more at ease writing to Renée now, now that he has broken an invisible barrier with his letter about Jackson. Eugene finds that his writing comes easily, much more easily than if he were to say these things aloud. Reading and writing is cathartic, and Eugene finds himself always looking forward to another letter, the way he would look forward to seeing Renée in Bastogne. When he writes, stress seems to melt away as he pours stories of happiness and frustration and grief onto the paper. With each letter he opens himself up a little more, both to Renée and the other men. He is still quiet and introspective, but no longer adverse to befriending the men, and he finds himself happier for it.
Even the other guys have noticed the change in him, even if they don't remark on it. Usually the guys who write and receive letters the most are men like Martin, who are married. When Eugene starts accumulating a stack of letters, the others notice.
That night, as Eugene sits at a table penning his reply, Luz sits down across from him. He glances at Eugene's latter and says, "Hey, who you writing to so much these days, huh?" He leans forward, a knowing smile on his face. "A girl?"
Even though there is nothing but friendship between him and Renée, Eugene feels his face flush ever so slightly. Luckily, it isn't noticeable. He avoids Luz's eyes and just laughs a little, as if it was a joke. Luz doesn't take it that way though.
"So I'm right? A girl?" He raises his eyebrows mischievously.
Eugene shakes his head. "No, just...just a friend."
Luz leans back, puffs on his cigarette. "Sure, sure. Hey Spina, you know who Doc's lady friend is?"
"I didn't even know he had one," says Spina, who was passing by, but now stops. Eugene can feel the heat crawling up his neck.
"Jesus, guys, leave the doc alone," says Babe, rolling his eyes. "It's probably just his ma, or his sister."
Luz holds up his hands. "Whatever you say, Babe." He gets up and walks off but not before winking conspiratorially at Eugene. Babe sits down in Luz's place.
"Thanks, Babe," says Eugene.
"So who are you writing to?" asks Babe curiously, but with none of Luz's teasing. His eyes drift down to the paper but Eugene moves his hand casually to cover it up.
"I told you, just a friend."
"A girl?"
"Does it matter?"
Babe shrugs. "Guess it doesn't." He stands up and claps Eugene on the shoulder. "See you back at the barracks."
Eugene isn't sure why he doesn't want to the others to find out who he's writing to. After all, he told the truth. Renée is a friend. But Eugene is by nature a withdrawn and private person. He likes to keep things to himself, and he sees nothing wrong with that.
Later that night before he sleeps, he rereads one of her old letters. Unbeknownst to him, a hundred miles away, Renée is doing the same, opening one of his old letters and reading by the small lamp in her room, while sitting up in bed. They read each other's words together, yet apart.
When Renée is done she carefully folds up the letter, replaces it in its envelope, and puts it back in its place in the stack. The letters have begun to accumulate, and Renée keeps track of them by tying them together in a bundle, which she keeps in a drawer of her desk. Both she and Eugene are faithful correspondents, and the stack grows accordingly. Having put the newest letter away, she gets back in bed, but doesn't lie down right away. Instead she looks out the window, at Bastogne.
The town is still in the process of rebuilding, and the streets are still lined with rubble. She looks out at her neighbor's house, knowing that five blocks beyond it is the school-turned-hospital she is going to work at tomorrow. Her nurse uniform has been washed and starched and is hanging in her closet, ready for work. Despite her mother's best efforts, the ends of the sleeves are always tinged brown, stained by the blood Renée doesn't have time to wash off while she's working. Renée always shudders a little as she puts her arms through the sleeves, wondering just how many men have added their blood to her uniform. She swears to herself that the first thing she will do when she's done being a nurse will be to burn that uniform.
None of her friends are nurses. They help with the war effort, to be sure, but in different ways. They collect and donate food, sew blankets, and quarter convalescing soldiers in their homes. But they never nurse them like Renée does. "Oh, I wouldn't be able to," they say. "Working with all that blood and those horrible wounds? I couldn't do it." The few times Renée speaks about nursing to them, they look at her with a gaze that is all admiration and awe. "You're so brave, to do that kind of work, Renée," they tell her.
But Renée is not brave at all. The first time she saw a man brought to the hospital with a mortar wound, she froze at the sight of so much blood and torn flesh. She had been surprised at her own reaction. Renée knew, when she signed up, that nursing was not the glamorous, romantic thing people thought it to be. She knew it would be bloody and awful, and at times downright horrifying. She was a tough girl, though. But seeing that man with his chest ripped open, the blood pooling in the wound so thickly it was black instead of red, was unlike anything she had ever seen. That man wasn't the only one to stop her in her tracks. The first time she attended an amputation, she hadn't been able to look at the patient at all, just stared blindly at the floor, handing the doctor what he asked for.
The worst was when she saw a man who had been blinded by shrapnel, blood pouring out of his ravaged eye sockets, him alternating between screaming and crying. He was hysterical and clearly in agonizing pain, but the men who were in danger of dying were of higher priority to the doctors, so nobody attended to him. Renée knew it was supposed to be her job, but she couldn't do it. She wanted to run, and never go back to that horrible hospital. But then she shook herself, ashamed and disgusted at herself. You wanted to help, she reminded herself.What good is a nurse who freezes every time she sees blood? You're made of tougher stuff. She swallowed her nausea, walked over to the man, took his hand, and helped him sit down. She held his hand and talked to him soothingly, and by the time the doctors got around to him, he was calm, and able to talk coherently and lucidly.
Renée supposes that must have been the first time she used her "healing touch". But she didn't do it because she was being brave. She did it because it needed to be done. She is tired of people calling her what she isn't. She lets the men call her an angel and a saint because it helps them, but it's not true.
What would Eugene say, she wonders, if someone called him brave, for doing his job. She is sure he would disagree as well. Medics are easily construed by those who have no real understanding of their job as brave men, risking life and limb just to reach a wounded comrade, but Eugene has written that it is not that way at all.
He wrote to her once: I'm always jumpy, waiting on the edge of my seat in case somebody calls for a medic and I need to run. And when I am needed, I go without a second thought, because I have to. When I'm running to a wounded soldier there's no bravery, only adrenaline. It's almost like being drunk, when you are less inhibited and do things without thinking. So it's not bravery, just stupidity.
As their correspondence progressed, the topics became darker, more personal. As a medic to a nurse, they understand each other, have experienced similar things that nobody else that they know has experienced. From his writing she senses that he is still slightly wary of discussing these things, since he has grown so used to keeping the thoughts to himself. But again, she never presses him for information or asks questions that are too probing. That is not her place, and besides, she understands all too well the predicament of seeing men die and being unable to talk about it. Renée could never tell her mother, or her friends about the troubles she faces as a nurse. The doctors would only tell her to toughen up and soldier on. What they don't understand is that it takes a different type of toughness to keep your spirit up in the face of so much death than it does to amputate a leg.
As she sits in her bed looking out her window and thinking of Eugene, she realizes how glad she is to have him as a friend. Friendship has always seemed so arbitrary to her: so often, the people who become her friends are her friends simply because they were there at a certain time, as her next door neighbor, or her desk mate in school. If they had been switched with anybody else in the world, Renée might be friends with them instead. Of course she knows there is more to real friendship than that, but sometimes it still seems that way.
Eugene is different though, because he could have been just another person who entered her life briefly, then faded out, like so many strangers have done. No, not exactly. He was more than that. After all, he came to say goodbye to her, and for that she is intensely thankful. She wonders what would have happened if he didn't. One day he would have simply stopped coming to the hospital, and she might not even have realized it until weeks after he had gone, when she would look up one day, look down the road, and wonder why it seemed so long since she last saw him, and then it would dawn on her.
She had been so happy to receive his first letter. As simple as it was, she treasured it, because it meant that he had not forgotten her. He wanted to keep in touch. He valued her as a friend. She wonders if she will ever see him again.
It is getting late, and she needs to be up early to go to work. Softly she draws the curtain, and turns the lamp off.
A bit more focus on Renée this chapter! I thought I didn't have enough of her thoughts in the story yet so this chapter is the remedy to that. Hope you enjoyed it! Thanks to Paratrooper56 for a lovely review last chapter! Reviews are always appreciated, I would love it if you would leave a review~