Danielle Steel - A Good Woman

“You’re far too familiar with the patients,” the Englishman, who was systematically unpleasant to her, criticized her one day.

“That’s interesting,” Annabelle said calmly. “I think you’re very rude to them.”

“How would you know? When have you ever been in a hospital before?”

“I just spent three months working near the front in Asnières, and I’ve worked as a volunteer in hospitals for six years, the last two with newly arrived immigrants at Ellis Island in New York.” He said nothing to her after that, and wouldn’t have admitted it to her, but he had been impressed by her three months at Asnières. He had heard from others how rough it was. Marcel Bobigny caught up with her after class, and asked what it had been like working at the Abbaye de Royaumont. It was the first real conversation she’d had with anyone there in a month. And she was grateful to have someone to talk to at last.

“It was hard,” she said honestly. “We all worked about eighteen hours a day, sometimes more. It’s run and staffed by women, which was the original concept, but a few male doctors have come from Paris now. They need all the help they can get.”

“What kind of cases did you see there?” he asked with interest. He thought the others were wrong to give her such a hard time. He liked her. She was good-humored, a good sport, worked hard, and lacked their pretensions.

“We saw mostly lost limbs, a lot of gangrene, explosions, nerve gas, dysentery, cholera, pretty much what you’d expect so close to the front.” She said it simply and matter-of-factly, with no attempt to impress him or brag about herself.

“What did they let you do?”

“Chloroform in the operating theater, once in a while. Mostly I emptied surgical pans, but the chief surgeon was very nice about showing me things as I went along. The rest of the time I was in the surgical ward, taking care of the men after surgery, and a couple of times I drove an ambulance to pitch in.”

“That’s pretty good for someone who has no official training.” He was impressed.

“They needed the help.” He nodded, wishing he was there himself. He said as much to Annabelle, and she smiled. He was the only one of her fellow students who had been civil to her, and even nice. Most of them ignored her.

In February, a month and a half after she’d gotten there, everyone was animated at dinner, discussing the Battle of Verdun, which had begun several days before, and already caused enormous loss of life on both sides. It was a vicious battle that upset them all, and Marcel drew her into the conversation. The others were so involved in the discussion, they even forgot to frown when she spoke, or ignore her.

The Battle of Verdun was the main topic of conversation every night at dinner, until two weeks later, in early March, the Fifth Battle of the Isonzo, in Italy against Austria-Hungary, took precedence. The conversation ricocheted equally between medical issues and the war. It was a cause of deep concern to all.

Eventually the Englishman asked her about when America might join the war. President Wilson was still assuring everyone they wouldn’t, but it was an open secret that the United States was supplying both sides, and being criticized heavily for it. Annabelle said clearly that she thought that that was wrong and so did they. She thought the U.S. should get into the war, and come to Europe in aid of their allies. The conversation led to the Lusitania then, and everyone’s belief that she had been blown up because of war supplies she was secretly carrying, which had never been officially disclosed. Talking about the Lusitania somehow led to the Titanic, and Annabelle grew quiet and looked pained. Rupert, the Englishman, noticed and made a remark. “It wasn’t our finest hour,” he conceded with a smile.

“Nor mine,” she said quietly. “My parents and brother were on it,” she said, as the whole table went quiet and stared at her.

“Did they make it through all right?” one of the French students asked, and she shook her head. “My mother got off in one of the lifeboats, but my father and brother went down with the ship.”

There was a chorus of I’m sorry’s and Marcel discreetly turned the conversation to other things, trying to make the awkward moment easier for her. He liked her and wanted to protect her from the others. But little by little, they were softening toward her too. Her kindness, simplicity, intelligence, and humility were hard to resist.

Two weeks after that, the French passenger ship Sussex was torpedoed, which brought it all up again. By then, the situation at the front had worsened, and almost four million people had died. The toll was mounting day by day. At times, it distracted them all from their studies and they could talk of nothing else. But they were all working hard. There were no slackers in the group, and with their classes so small, every student stood out.

Without actually meaning to, they had all relaxed about Annabelle by April, and by May many of them were actually willing to speak to her, have conversations with her, and even laugh with her. They had come to respect her quietly voiced intelligent questions, and her bedside manner with the patients was much better than theirs. Her professors had all noticed it, and Dr. Graumont had long since written to Dr. de Bré to assure him that he hadn’t made a mistake. He told him that Annabelle Worthington was an excellent student, and would make a fine physician one day. And to Annabelle, compared to the Abbey in Asnières, the hospital in Nice was extremely tame, but interesting anyway. And she finally got her wish. They had begun dissecting cadavers, and she found it as fascinating as she always thought she would.

News of the war continued to distract them, as they followed their classes through the summer. On July 1, the Battle of the Somme began, with the highest number of casualties in the war so far. By the time the day was over, there were sixty thousand dead and wounded. The numbers were horrifying. And as the summer went on, it just got worse. It was hard to concentrate on their studies at times as a result. There was such a shocking loss of life as the war wore on, seemingly with no end in sight. Europe had been at war for two years by then.

In August, she tried not to let herself think of her anniversary with Josiah. It would have been their third, and she had been in Europe for eleven months. It seemed hard to believe. Since she had come to the medical school in Nice, time had flown. They were doing so many things, and trying to learn so much. They were working with patients more frequently now, and spent three full days a week at the hospital in Nice. The war wounded were even finding their way there, as injured men who would not be returning to the front were being transferred closer to home. She even came across two men she had taken care of in Asnières. They were thrilled to see her, and she stopped by to visit them whenever she could.

By then, she and Marcel were good friends. They chatted every night after dinner, and often studied together. And the other students had finally accepted her in their midst. She was well thought of, liked, and respected by her peers. Some of her fellow students even laughed about how unpleasant they had been to her in the beginning, and Rupert, the pompous Englishman who had been the rudest to her, had slowly become her friend. It was hard for any of them to find fault with her work, and she was unfailingly pleasant to all of them. Marcel called her the godmother in their midst.

They were walking through the orchards one day, after classes, when he turned to her with a curious look.

“Why is a beautiful woman like you not married?” he asked her. She knew he wasn’t pursuing her, since he had just gotten engaged to a young woman in Nice. She had been a friend of his family’s for years. He was from Beaulieu, not far away, and went home for visits, or even dinner, as often as he could. His fiancée visited him at the school, and Annabelle liked her very much.