Chapter 4.

CHAPTER 4

Mary looked at the family in front of her, taking in the look on their faces. She would see grief clearly etched in every line and sorrow like a flag. They looked like they had lost everything and had nothing left.

“Good day,” she said.

“Yes?” the older woman asked.

“I’m sorry, can I come in? I’m not going to take much of your time. I have something to give you,”

The woman shoulders rose and fell.

“Okay, come in,”

Mary followed her inside the house and stood, waiting to be told to sit. She did not want to seem rude, and it was their house.

“Please, sit,” the son told her.

Nodding, Mary took a chair.

“I’m really sorry for coming when this clearly looks like a bad time but I have news to tell you. I think you would want to hear it.”

“Okay?” the father asked.

“I worked in the war as a volunteer nurse. My job brought me close to many people who were either gravelly injured or dying. I nursed some back to health and some, just couldn’t make it. I had a patient that got hit by a canon and was brought in. I treated him a couple of times and thought he would recover but he caught an infection which we had no sufficient means to treat at that time and…and he passed away. I was the nurse who was with your son till he took his last breath,” Mary said, her voice solemn.

“Oh. Oh, you were with him,” the older woman repeated, her voice breaking with every word.

“I remember him because he was one of the best patients I ever had. When he was brought in, we told him that we had to amputate his right arm to save his life. To my surprise, he took it with so much calm and said we had to do what was needed to save his life because he wanted to be able to go home and see his family.” Mary looked at the mother “He talked about how he missed you fussing over him, your meals and seeing you smile.”

She turned to the father.

“He talked about how he missed your stern lectures and advices you gave.” Then she turned to the brother, “He talked about you the most. He said you had gone off to school far away and he missed you the most. He told me about the good times he had with you and how much he wanted to see you again.”

“He said all that?” the mother asked, tears pouring down her face. Mary nodded and tried to smile a little. “He talked about all of you everyday, wrote letters that he planned to give to each of one of you when the war finally ended. He talked about how the war had changed everything and how he hoped everyday that he would come back and meet his folks in one piece. If there was one thing I learnt from Johnny, it was that he loved his family.”

“He did”

“When we found out that we could not treat the infection fast enough to save his life, we told him that there was no hope.  He was the kind of person that wanted to know how things were without any pretense. I knew he was devastated, all he wanted was to see all of you and each day as he became more delirious, he asked for a paper and pen to write. Some days what he wrote was barely legible and some times he would tear up the papers. But, he kept writing. He told me he had to say something to his family. Tell them one last time how much he loved them.

Two days before he died, he told me to write a letter for him. He made me promise to give that letter to his family once the war ended. I get requests like that from many soldiers but Johnny’s request was one I could not refuse,” Mary explained. Then she reached into her bag and brought out the well faded and worn letter that she had carried for months. “This is the letter he asked me to give you.”

Mary stretched it out to the mother who collected it, tears in her eyes. Looking at her read the letter, Mary felt it all over again. The pain that had sunk her heart when Johnny had caught the infection, the rage she had struggled to confine when she realized that they could do nothing to help him, the utter helplessness she had seen in his eyes after he had fought tooth and nail to hang on , the bleak expression on the other nurses faces as they watched him fade away, the bodies that had been carried out of the medical tent everyday; people who had wanted to go home to their families, men who had just gotten married to their sweethearts, boys who had joined the war because they thought it was the right thing and who the war had changed to men.

She thought about the smile she had to wear on her face each day as she tried to give people hope, the tears she shed in secret when the others  were not looking, the bile she had learnt to swallow as she saw gruesome wounds and blood in every corner.

She also thought about Johnny. He had been the best patient, like a burst of fresh air when everything was bleak and gloomy. He had come into the tent with a smile on his face and had kept that smile on each day till his end. Everyone had loved him- it was hard not to love a person who had joked and laughed and made every volunteer medical personnel attending to the injured smile.

Johnny had come to them and had given them hope. Unfortunately, they could not keep his hope alive. Mary felt her heart race hard and tears ran down her face freely.

“I’m sorry I could not save him. I tried all I could, but it just wasn’t enough,” Mary said quietly.

“It was not your fault. I’m sure you did everything you could. Thank you,” the older woman said.

“You could have done something to save him, I refuse to believe that there was nothing you could do,” Mary heard the older brother say.

“I refused to believe that there was nothing we could do to help him, so I tried every means possible. Believe me when I say if I could have given a part of me to keep him alive, I would have done it,” Mary replied. She could understand the brother’s denial and refusal to believe her. If it had been her brother or someone she loved, she would have her doubts.

But it was true, she had tried everything, every drug they had, but nothing had worked.

“You could have saved him,” the elder brother stood up ,” You are a nurse, trained to help people that are sick. You could have saved him, done something. You are here because of the guilt you feel for not doing your best. I bet you took one look at him and wrote him off, going to some other person.

How many other people did you leave to die?!” His voice was rising ,” How many people did you let die? Answer me!”

“Joel, sit down! You will not talk to her like that. She went to the war to help people and I’m sure she did all she could for Johnny. You will not stand here and accuse her of leaving your brother to die,” his father ordered.

“You really believe she wanted to help him? They had no obligation to keep them alive, none at all. Johnny was vibrant, active and full of life. And you knew his as well as I did. He was not the kind of person to just give up like that!”

“I…l,” Mary’s voice was breaking, “I did everything to save him, you have to believe me.”

“Why then did you come?” he asked her.

“I came because Johnny asked me to give you a letter. It was the last letter he wrote before he died,” Mary explained.

“When you came here, you said it yourself. He wasn’t the only one that gave you a letter to give his family. You had others, many at their dying moment, give you things to give the people they had left behind. What makes Johnny’s letter better or different?”

“I don’t know how to explain Johnny to you. He brought life to us where we had dead and dying people all around. He made us have hope, hope that what we were doing was not in vain. You should know better than I do that Johnny was the kind of person you could not easily forget.”

Mary looked at him and willed him in her mind to believe him, but she saw in his eyes that he was not going to.