Part 2

August 1944

FOUR

As the military transport vehicle trundled to a stop, Patrick reached down for the army-issue bag between his feet and prepared to sling it over his shoulder when he stood. He waited for the truck's other occupant—a man on a stretcher—to be carried away before jumping down to the gravel below and taking a moment to observe his surroundings. When his new orders had been delivered to him, he had been told the Allied Forces hospital had once been a school building, but to him the three-story brick behemoth looked more like a mansion. He supposed the exterior didn't much matter as long as the interior had what was needed to perform his duties.

He absentmindedly reached for the cigarette pack in the front pocket of his uniform. When he pulled out a single cigarette and his lighter, he noticed his fingertips were trembling. He took the tobacco between his lips before shaking out his hands. The action made him feel like he was making an effort to stop the shakes, but he knew it was no use. The trembling hadn't stopped for months. Sometimes, a cigarette helped, but only for a few minutes. He would have smoked two packs a day if he thought it would make a difference in his nerves, but the relief was only ever temporary. Besides, even if he'd wanted to, that act would not have been impractical as it outpaced his rationed amount.

He let his bag fall to the ground as he smoked and continued to survey the grounds. The property had trees and grass not giant fields of mud, which was a marked improvement from where he'd come from. The air also had a distinct absence of char and body odor. He imagined the climate could be different inside the hospital, but at least there was the hope of coming outside for a break.

"Lieutenant Turner?"

Patrick turned to see a man approaching from the steps leading into the hospital. He quickly ground out his cigarette, picked up his bag, and approached the superior officer.

"Major Allen; pleasure to meet you."

"You as well," Patrick replied.

"I trust your journey from the front was uneventful?" Without giving Patrick a second to respond, the Major continued with, "Good. Then let's get you inside so you can get to work."

Patrick followed the officer inside the hospital and was immediately met with the familiar scent of antiseptic. After nearly a year at the front, it felt as close to going home as he was going to get. Where there was antiseptic, there was cleanliness and order and his rattled mind craved order above all else.

The Major introduced him to an assistant who was to take Patrick to his quarters. He was given fifteen minutes to settle in, and then he was to meet the Major back in his office on the first floor for further assignment. The assistant, a short but slender man who looked barely old enough to shave, led Patrick up a set of narrow stairs to the third floor. With it being August, the top floor was stiflingly hot, but he didn't mind it. He assumed that opinion might change when he tried to sleep later that night, but in that moment, he remained too relieved to have four solid walls around him and a roof above his head constructed of wood not cloth.

"This will be, er, your room. You can open the window for some airflow. Toilets and shower are down the hall to the left."

Patrick thanked the assistant and waited until the boy scurried off before dropping his bag and observing the small room. It was far from glamorous with a wood framed bed, single pillow, and a blanket that made him feel itchy just by looking at it. Across from the bed was a dresser on top of which sat a bowl and pitcher. A chair sat in one corner and in the opposite, there were a few hooks on the wall to hang clothing. He walked over to the window and tried to open it, but found it stuck. He wiggled it a bit and managed to heave it open a few centimeters, but no more. With that done, he sat down on the chair and waited for all the tension in his gut to unwind, but it didn't. Patrick sighed and retrieved another cigarette. The expectation to feel instant relief when he was alone in his quarters had always been a delusional one, but he found himself disappointed nonetheless.

While Patrick could still conclusively say his last week as a prisoner of the Italians was the worst of his life, the prior nine months at the front hadn't been much better. He likened it to having the choice between having most of the bones in his hand broken or all his fingers severed at the second knuckle. There was one clear preferred option, but had there been an option for neither, he would have taken it immediately.

After surrendering to the Americans, it had taken over a week for him to be transported back to a British unit where he received his orders to go to a field hospital near the front. As the front line continued to move northward in the push towards Rome, he moved along with them, spending his days removing bullets and shrapnel and doing what he could to put ravaged men back together again.

Though his work was not all that dissimilar to the surgeries he had performed with the Italians, the atmosphere was decidedly better as he was fed as well as he could be in the field and rarely threatened. He had a cot and a blanket. He'd even received a few parcels from his parents. Compared to many others, his experience was downright pleasant; yet he was miserable nearly every day.

While his surgical skills now came with praise no matter the outcome, the overall situation remained the same: he lost more patients than he saved, and it felt like every death etched the caverns in his soul ever deeper. He did all that he could and had been told he tried harder than most, but some men simply could not be saved. Intellectually he understood that. He knew that even the best hospitals in the world could not have saved a man nearly split in two by the concussion of a shell, but that didn't make those deaths any easier to process when his hands were the ones working to save the victim.

In addition to his grueling and gruesome work, their proximity to the front came along with the cacophony of sounds that had the unfortunate side effect of driving men mad. Screams, gunfire, and explosions once again became the soundtrack of his existence. No matter how many times he was assured they were a safe enough distance away from the line of fire that they weren't in danger, he still flinched when a particularly loud explosion could be heard. At the end of every shift, when his body ached from exhaustion, he'd fall onto his cot and shake for hours, waiting for that one shell that came just a little bit too far over the line.

By the middle of summer, he felt his mind and body had begun to fracture. Sometimes, he'd be standing in one spot for upwards of ten minutes just staring off into space without even realizing it. He would jump nearly every time someone came to talk to him. He'd taken to using the readily available drugs to pep himself up at the beginning of shifts, even though he knew that not only were they a bad idea, but they were most certainly aiding to his paranoia.

One day when he felt just centimeters from the brink of a full breakdown, he was the on-call surgeon for the latest casualty: an injured lieutenant colonel. Of course, he hadn't known that at the time. All he saw was a man covered in copious amounts of blood with a metal shard sticking out of the center of his chest. By some miracle Patrick had ended up saving the man and in turn saving himself.

Saving the superior officer had earned him commendations and a new assignment at a hospital east of Rome run by joint allied forces. His commanding officer had hinted at his mental fragility by mentioning that a hospital so far from the front would allow him time to rest and recuperate. Of course, he'd be doing so while working, but as it was his first opportunity to leave the front in over seven months, he certainly was not going to decline the generous offer.

After sitting in his room for nearly ten minutes, he took a few more to use the facilities before returning to the first floor and finding the Major's office. After a brief conversation about his credentials and previous experience, the Major deferred him to one of the other doctors, an American called Lieutenant Thomas, who would tour him through the facility and provide him his initial schedule and assignments.

The first floor of the building had the intensive care ward as well as the two operating theatres. Patrick took note that most of the beds were filled with injured men in various states of consciousness, but each appeared to be well taken care of, all things considered. It was honestly quite a relief to see so many clean bandages and white linens, as such things did not exist in their make-shift hospitals nearest the front.

From the first floor they went down to the ground floor, which had the kitchens, laundry, and storage areas. The man showed him the dining room shared by officers and doctors before leading him through the laundry area. Patrick immediately noticed that the women working with the laundry seemed to be mostly nuns. His initial thought was this made sense because the local area had a primarily Catholic population, but then he wondered if these women were locals or if locals working so closely with the Allies would have been allowed so soon after Rome had fallen.

As he half-listened to the Lieutenant explain how the laundry services and patient care intersected, Patrick felt a prickling sensation at the back of his neck. It reminded him of the feelings he had when the air changed just before a shell exploded, but he knew that was impossible. They were many kilometers away from the closest place where bombs could fall.

Feeling a bit uncomfortable, he twisted his neck to the side to alleviate some of the tension. In doing so, he looked towards the rear of the laundry room and caught sight of a woman pushing a cart full of freshly washed sheets. She wore a white veil and habit, though the sleeves were rolled up to expose her forearms. For a moment, he was absolutely convinced he was hallucinating her face, as he had several times before, but the vision wasn't disappearing. Instead, it approached him at a steady rate, and he could not stop himself from stepping towards it.

"Sarah?"

She looked up from the cart, obviously startled, but then her face relaxed immediately. "Patrick."

Hearing his name in her Scottish accent all but took the strength from his legs. "Oh—but it is you! you…you're here."

"And you're here," she echoed, a smile blossoming on her face.

Feeling absolutely astounded at the coincidence, he stammered out his next sentence. "I thought you—I wasn't sure if—I—"

"Lieutenant?"

Patrick turned back to the American, who was eyeing him curiously. Then he glanced back to the small nun, half expecting her to have vanished, but she hadn't. "I…er, yes, sorry." He apologized to the lieutenant before turning back to the woman he hadn't seen for many months. "We—may we speak later?"

"Of course," she said pleasantly.

"Good—great. I mean-"

"This way, Lieutenant," the American said, his tone now sounding downright impatient.

"Er, yes, I'm coming." With great reluctance, Patrick followed his tour guide out of the laundry though he could not stop himself from pausing in the doorway to look back and make sure she was still there. She was, and she was smiling at him.

For the next twenty minutes, Patrick followed Lieutenant Thomas around the hospital grounds trying his best to focus on the orientation, but finding his throughs drawn back to Sarah every few minutes. Sarah! She had not been a figment of his imagination or a hallucination after all. She was real!

After he left her to surrender to the Allies, Patrick had never seen her again. He'd inquired about her several times during his week with the Americans, but each time he received the essentially same answer: they had not seen a woman in weeks. By the time he was making his way back to the Eighth Army, he genuinely was worried his tortured mind may have truly made her up. Perhaps there had been a mute kitchen girl who provided him food, but she wasn't Scottish, and she had not help him escape. He tried to counteract these thoughts by reminding himself that someone brought him bolt cutters so he could remove his shackles, and someone had told him in which direction to flee to safety. Still, he'd been so tormented and undernourished, he began to doubt certain elements of his own memory.

In the months since he escaped, he thought about her once a week on average. Mostly, he dreamed about her. He dreamed about being back in the barn loft but being unable to escape and calling out for her to help him only to have her climb up the ladder and start yelling at him in Italian. He dreamed about fleeing through the countryside, becoming separated from her, and being unable to find her again. Once, he'd even dreamed about kissing her as they crouched behind the shrubbery before his surrender, which had been surprising, though not entirely unwelcome. Whenever he thought about her during his waking hours, it was always to treat her as some sort of angel who might be willing to alight onto his shoulder and protect him from the horrors of his surroundings. Foolish as that seemed when he looked back on it, at the time such thoughts had been very important in enabling him to continue on despite his horrifying surroundings.

Assuming that she was real, and he liked to think that she was, because if she was not real then his mental state was a lot worse than he was even aware of, he had never anticipated seeing her again. He had no way of knowing which company she had surrendered to or if she'd even been taken alive. The thought of her being shot when they'd come so far together made him feel sick, so he didn't like to think that way, but sometimes those cruel thoughts found their way into his consciousness. When they became particularly tormenting, he thought about trying to find her, but also knew that was impossible. He didn't have her surname and her first was far too common. In fact, it was so common that he often wondered if it was her real name or a fake she'd taken on as part of her village girl disguise. Were that the case, he had absolutely no hope of seeking her out, which made him even more grateful for the twist of luck that had brough them together once more.

At the end of his tour, Lieutenant Thomas returned Patrick to the main floor of the hospital to provide some more details about the lives of the staff in the hospital and what he could expect from his shifts, but before the conversation ended, their attention was drawn by commotion outside. Patrick moved to investigate but was nearly knocked over by three men carrying in a third, who was obviously bleeding profusely.

"We need a surgeon!" one of them shouted.

Stunned, Patrick looked over to the Lieutenant and said, "I thought you didn't get injuries from the front?" This was something that had been explicitly promised to him by his superior officer (though, admittedly, it would not have been the first time he was slightly mislead by information the army provided).

"We don't usually, but I suppose this is a prime opportunity for you to put your skills to use." The lieutenant spoke with alarming casualty before gesturing for Patrick to follow the injured patient.

Knowing a man's life hung in the balance and he did not have time to express his frustration, Patrick jogged towards the operating theatre while unbuttoning the restrictive jacket of his uniform. Once in the theatre, a nurse guided him to a sink for him to scrub up. She dressed him in a gown and mask as he asked, "What happened?" to the soldiers who placed the bleeding man on the operating table.

"Ah, it was an accident," the young man, an American, said.

"It—it just exploded, right in his hand!" another added.

Patrick sucked in a slow breath, trying to calm his mind and his heart rate so he could focus on the task at hand. One nurse had already begun to cut off the injured man's clothing while another provided ether, though the man was not presently conscious. The wound on the man's right arm was clearly catastrophic with fragments of exposed bone and ruined flesh now existing where his hand was previously. Patrick examined what remained of the forearm, but from the way it felt beneath his grasp, he knew there was no saving it.

"We'll amputate at the elbow," he informed the room. A chorus of, "Yes doctor," followed this announcement. Then, he was handed a scalpel and set to work.

As he often did when in the middle of a critical surgery, Patrick lost track of time as he did all that he could to stem the bleeding and repair the damage to the injured man's body. Of course, in this instance, like with many others, "repair" was not an option. This man would never have use of his hand or lower arm again, but Patrick would still be able to limit the impact on his life if he could amputate at the elbow clean enough to allow for a prosthetic.

Within twenty minutes of the start of surgery, it became clear to Patrick that his team was not used to addressing such catastrophic injuries, for field surgery relied more on speed than delicacy. He knew in time this was an adjustment he would need to make, but in that moment, he was focused mostly on tying off all the blood vessels efficiently than following all the suggestions of the French nurse who stood to his right.

When he'd put in the final stitch and stepped back to remove his gown and gloves, Patrick's adrenaline began to wear down and he felt an intense burst of nausea. "I…I need air." He said to the brown-eyed British nurse helping him. "There's a balcony. Straight down that hall then take a left," she informed as she pointed out the operating theatre door.

He nodded, threw his gloves to the ground, and took off in a hurried walk. He still wore his mask, so he tossed that onto the floor as he moved through the unfamiliar space. Fortunately, he was able to glimpse sunlight and hurried towards it. He threw open the door to the balcony, rushed over to the side, and vomited over the edge. Then, he sunk slowly down against the stone balcony edge as the tremors overtook his body.

Would the horrors of war never cease? He'd been sent to the Allied hospital as a relief from the violence of the front. He'd been told that hospital treated those who had survived their emergency surgeries at the front—or who had never been injured that catastrophically to begin with. Some would have lost limbs, but the care he provided would be far more day-to-day than emergency related. At worse, he'd be performing secondary surgeries to address bleeding or issues that had not been fully remedied in the field. All he wanted was a few days without blown off limbs, bullet wounds, and someone being gutted by shrapnel. Was that really too much to ask for?

After hanging over the side of the balcony for several minutes, he slid down to the ground and pressed his back against the wall. He bent his feet and brought up his knees so he could bury his face against them and wait for the shaking to stop. He wasn't sure how long he sat there before he felt a hand against his shoulder. He jumped and smacked his back hard against the stone wall.

"It's me, Patrick."

A shiver ran through him when he saw her face and recognized her as friend, not foe. As much as he wanted to be strong, the kindness of her eyes seemed to break him, and he felt a sob bubble out of his chest. She knelt beside him and brushed her fingers through the hair at his temple saying, "Shh. You're all right."

For the better part of five minutes, she stroked his hair and rubbed his shoulder as he continued to cry. He couldn't even bring himself to worry about how unmanly he appeared, for she had already seen him at his absolute lowest point. When his distress began to abate, he began to rub at his cheeks with his shirtsleeves until she handed him a handkerchief, which he thanked her for quietly.

"It will pass."

"What?" he asked, his voice still hoarse with emotion.

She sat down beside him on the concrete and gazed at him with great empathy. "The shock, the fear. Everyone who comes here from the front struggles like this, but it nearly always passes. When it gets to be too much, all you have to do is shut your eyes and feel the ground beneath your feet and the air against your face."

He did as she instructed, shutting his eyes and leaning his back against the balcony wall. Her hand moved from his shoulder to rest atop his, which was against his thigh. He sat there counting two breaths in and two breaths out for over a minute before the bands latched around his chest were noticeably loosened.

When he opened his eyes again, he took her in. With her pale skin, youthful face, and soft blue eyes she looked largely the same as she had the last time he saw her, with one very glaring difference. "Are you really a nun or is this another one of your masterful disguises?"

She cracked a smile and informed him, "I am really a nun."

"What shall I call you?"

"Sister Bernadette."

He nodded. "And, Sarah was…?"

She dipped her gaze towards the ground as she confessed, "A made-up name I gave you to you before I knew I who you really were. Once I did, it seemed a bit too complicated to change."

He nodded again, as this seemed entirely reasonable. Then, as he felt another shiver travel down his spine, he sighed, "I am glad to see you again."

"As am I to see you. Now, shut your eyes and take some more deep breaths. You can trust me."

He did as she instructed, put his hand over hers and said, "I already do."

"So, let me get this straight."

Sister Bernadette watched as Patrick took a slow drag of his cigarette and then eyed her curiously while exhaling the smoke. "The British Army wanted to send you back to London, and you said, 'No, thank you; I would prefer to remain in this never-ending hellscape.'"

She cracked a small smile, as it was nice to hear him with a lighter tone. His first several days at the Allied hospital had been quite an adjustment for him, but the storm clouds above him had finally begun to part. As such, they were having their first real conversation since being reunited while standing out on the balcony, not too far from where she'd found him when he had his breakdown on that first day.

"Those certainly were not the words I used, but that was the general message."

He tilted his head, his expression genuinely curious. "Why, though? After all that you went through, why did you stay?"

She certainly understood his confusion. Many enlisted men such as himself would have eagerly grabbed a one-way ticket home and never thought twice about it. Given the horrors they had seen and experienced, she understood it. Perhaps if she had been closer to the front, she would have also felt compelled to make a different choice, but she hadn't been close to any direct lines of fire and still felt called to help in any way she could. "I stayed because this is where God told me I needed to be."

He grumbled and took another drag of his cigarette. "Then God and I will have to respectfully disagree."

She hummed and walked over to stand beside him so she, too, could lean against the balcony railing. "I thought you were glad to see me."

"Extremely glad. I am happy to see that you are unharmed and even happier to know you are a living human and not the guardian angel my tortured mind manifested. This being said, I would be equally as happy to have received a letter sent from you in your safe and peaceful convent in London."

"I see." She didn't feel the need to point out that the Order she had joined shortly after graduating nursing school was not one to remain isolated inside a convent. Her order was one dedicated to community service, mostly in the form of midwifery and nursing, but the war changed all that. She and several others had been guided along with nuns from other orders around Britain to aid in the war effort. It was horribly tragic that so many of them had died in the process of providing that service, but that was also God's will. As someone who had managed to make it through, she knew she had to continue doing what she could to honor the Lord's wishes.

They remained silent as he finished his cigarette. Then, he leaned his forearms on the edge of the balcony as he gazed over at her. "Tell me more. What happened next?"

"Well, once the army made it clear that they were not interested in any nursing services I could provide, I found a local church that was able to direct me to some Italian nuns. As you can imagine, there were so many ruined villages and suffering people—women and children who had absolutely nothing to do with this conflict. I worked with that order for several months before I was able to get in touch with some people from back home. I was able to connect with a new group that arrived to provide aid, worked with them for several additional months, and that's how I ended up here in this hospital."

"The hospital hasn't been operational that long, right?"

"Correct. I was one of the first to arrive and I've been here…oh, a little more than a month."

He gave his head a little shake. "I still can't believe we both ended up here. It seems so…improbable."

"I know what you mean."

Sister Bernadette had never expected to see Patrick again after they parted on that cold morning after their escape. She kept him in her prayers during those first few days, hoping that he was being treated well by the Americans, that the injuries to his hands and body would heal, and that he would be able to get back to his work in medicine. As time passed, she thought about him less often, but he had never left her mind entirely.

While she worked in the small Italian villages, she remained mostly isolated from the horrors of war, but once she had rejoined with the British nuns, she'd traveled closer to the front. She'd seen men blinded or maimed in every conceivable way—and those were the ones that survived. The number of dead continued to be astounding. Every time she saw a soldier with a dark mop of hair or deep-set eyes like Patrick's, she'd give them a second glance just to see if it was him, but it never was. Then, that night, she would add him back into her prayers and ask for God to keep him safe. As the months wore on and she helped other soldiers with their plights, the number of times she thought of him began to dwindle. Then, one day, there he was standing right in front of her.

Sister Bernadette's mind had gone completely blank when she saw Patrick across the laundry room looking as pale as if he'd seen a ghost. She had begun to pray almost immediately after he left her sight, thanking God for keeping him safe over the last eight months, but also asking his purpose. Why had He brought Patrick back to her? She'd expected to wait some time for the answer, but it had come much sooner than expected—within several hours, in fact.

She had been changing the linens on two vacant beds in the first-floor ward when she'd see him blast out onto the balcony to be sick. When she'd taken time to check on him and heard him sniveling, she knew exactly why God had brought him back to her. He knew she could help him through his battle exhaustion. Patrick was not the first man she would try and aid, but he was the one she was most confident she could bring around, particularly with their history. She thanked God for trusting her with this task and asked for his continued strength and guidance throughout.

Standing on the balcony with him in that moment, she thanked God once again for his trust in her. With his breakdown soon after his arrival, Patrick had cleared the first hurdle to recovery, but he had a way to go. She could still see the pain etched onto his face even in the dim light of evening. The months on the front had worn him down, removing all evidence of youth from his features and adding a few creases around his mouth and on his brow. He looked nearly a decade her senior now—not that it mattered. Their age was immaterial to their friendship.

"It's getting a bit late," she said softly. "I should begin my evening prayers."

"Of course, sister. I'm glad we had the chance to catch up."

"I am too. Goodnight, Lieutenant."

He reached out to touch her hand before she could walk away. "Cutting someone free from their chains removes any need to address them formally."

She smiled gently and corrected her statement. "Goodnight, Patrick."

"Goodnight," he echoed.

After leaving the balcony, Sister Bernadette made her way to the stairway on the east side of the building and followed it down to the ground floor room off the laundry where she and the other nuns slept separately from those in uniform. She went through her usual routine of brushing her teeth, removing her veil, and washing her face, and then knelt beside her bed to join her sisters in their evening devotions.

Though she never would have complained about any task God guided her towards, as He always had His reasons, Sister Bernadette did appreciate the consistency of the hospital quite a bit. She had spent so many months without a dependable schedule or even a regular place to lay her head. She liked knowing she would be able to pray at the times she felt she needed to, as well as the schedule that allowed her to rotate through tasks as well as have a nearly unheard-of half-day off at least once a week. Though working in the community may have been slightly more personally fulfilling, as she enjoyed interacting with the children she found there, she knew the injured men appreciated her assistance, too. Given that her job changed many times over the prior year, she was not sure for how long she would remain at the hospital, but she would appreciate it for as long as she was able to particularly now that she could provide assistance to someone she considered a friend.