Danielle Steel - A Good Woman

In September, the Germans were soundly beating the Russians. And in Villers-Cotterêts, Annabelle was throwing up every day. The worst had happened. She hadn’t had her period since July, and she knew that she was pregnant. She had no idea what to do about it. There was no one she could tell, no way to stop it. Her back and head and other parts of her had taken weeks to heal, but the effects of what he’d done would last forever. She thought about finding an abortionist somewhere, but she didn’t know whom to ask, and she knew how dangerous it was. Two of the nurses had died of abortions since she’d been at the hospital. Annabelle didn’t dare risk it. She would have preferred to just kill herself, but she didn’t have the courage to do that either. And she didn’t want that monster’s baby. As best she could figure it, the child was due in late April, and she would have to leave the hospital as soon as it began to show. Fortunately, so far it didn’t. And she was working harder than ever, carrying men and heavy equipment, bumping along the rutted roads in the ambulance. She was praying that nature would be kind to her and she’d have a miscarriage, but as time went on, it became increasingly obvious that she wouldn’t. And as her waist and body began to thicken, she stole strips of linen from the surgery, and bound herself as tightly as she could. She could hardly breathe, but she was determined to work as long as she was able. And she had no idea where to go once she couldn’t.

At Christmas, it still didn’t show, but by then she could feel the baby moving gently inside her. She tried to resist it, and told herself she had every reason to hate it, but she couldn’t. The baby was as innocent as she was, even if she loathed its father. She thought of contacting him to tell him what had happened and force him to take responsibility, but she knew that given what she’d seen that night, he would only deny it. And who knew how many women he had raped before, or since? She was just a piece of flotsam that had drifted past him on the sea of war, and he would cast her away just as he had that night, and his baby with her. She had no recourse whatsoever, she was only a woman carrying an illegitimate baby in wartime, and no one would care for an instant that she had been raped.

In January she was still working. She was six months pregnant, and she covered her thickened midsection with her apron. There was no bulge because she was still binding herself so tightly, and from worry and the poor food anyway, she ate very little. She had gained no weight, if anything she had lost some. She had been deeply depressed since July when it happened. And she told no one.

It was a bitter cold, rainy day later that month when she was working in the men’s surgical ward one afternoon, to fill in for someone else, when she heard two of the men talking. Both were British, one an officer, the other a sergeant. Both had lost limbs in the most recent awful battle in the trenches. And she stopped in her tracks when she heard them mention Harry. She didn’t know why, it could have been anyone, but a moment later the officer said that it was a terrible loss that Harry Winshire had died. They talked about what a good man he was and how they would miss him. She wanted to turn and scream at them that he wasn’t a good man, but a monster. She stumbled from the ward, and stood trembling outside in the cold, gulping air, and feeling as though she were strangling. Not only had he raped her, but now he was dead. Her baby would have no father and never had. She knew it was probably better this way, and he deserved it, and as the enormity of what was happening to her hit her again, she was suddenly so overcome by a feeling of raw terror that she staggered slowly like a willow in the breeze, and fainted into the mud around her. Two nurses saw her fall and came running toward her, as one of the surgeons leaving the building stopped and knelt beside her. As always, everyone was terrified of cholera, but when they touched her, they saw that she had no fever. They suspected it was too much work and too little food or sleep, a condition from which they had all been suffering for years.

The doctor helped carry her inside, and she regained consciousness as they put her on a gurney. She was soaking wet, her hair was matted to her head from the rain, and her apron was plastered to her. She was apologizing profusely for causing so much trouble, and tried to get up and escape them. But the moment she did, she fainted again, and this time the doctor pushed the gurney into a small room and closed the door. He didn’t know her well, but had seen her often.

He quietly asked her if she had dysentery, and she insisted she was fine, and said she had been working since early that morning and hadn’t eaten since the day before. She tried to smile brightly at him, but he wasn’t fooled. Her face was the same color as her apron. He asked her name, and she told him.

“Miss Worthington, I believe you are suffering from battle fatigue. Perhaps you need to go away for a few days, and try to recover.” None of them had taken a break in months, and she didn’t want to, but she also knew that her days at the hospital were numbered. Her belly was growing exponentially now and was harder and harder to conceal, no matter how tight her binding. “Is there anything else about your health you haven’t told me?” he asked with a look of concern. The last thing they wanted was their medical personnel spreading infectious diseases or starting an epidemic, or simply dying from overwork and illnesses they had concealed. They were all so conscientious about their work that many of the nurses and doctors hid it when they were sick. He was afraid that was the case with her. She looked awful.

She started to shake her head, and then he saw the tears in her eyes. “No, I’m fine,” she insisted.

“So fine that you just fainted twice,” he said gently. He had the feeling there was something else, but she was determined not to tell him, and she looked as malnourished as many others. He asked her to lie down so he could feel her body through her clothes, and as soon as she lay down, he saw the gentle bulge of her belly and met her eyes. He ever so gently put his hands on it, and could feel the swelling she had concealed with such determination for so long, and he understood instantly what it was. She wasn’t the first young woman to get pregnant by a soldier during wartime. As he looked at her, she began to sob.

“I think that’s the problem,” he said as she sat up, took out a handkerchief, and blew her nose. She looked mortally embarrassed and desperately unhappy. “When are you expecting?”

She nearly choked on the words, and wanted to explain how it had happened, but didn’t dare. The truth was so awful, and surely he and everyone else would blame her, and never believe her. She was certain of it, she had seen it happen to others before. Women who said they had been raped, when in fact they had simply had an affair out of wedlock. Why should he believe her? So, like Josiah’s secret that she had safeguarded for him to protect him when he left her, now she was keeping Viscount Winshire’s. And the one who paid the price for all of it was her. “In April,” she said, with a look of despair.

“You’ve managed to keep it secret for a long time.” He loosened her apron, undid her waistband, and lifted up her blouse, and was horrified when he saw how tightly she had bound herself, and obviously had for months. “It’s a wonder you can breathe.” It was far tighter than any corset, and a cruelty to mother and child.

“I can’t,” she said through her tears.

“You’ll have to stop work soon,” he said, telling her what she already knew. “And the father?” he inquired kindly.

“Dead,” she whispered. “I just found out today.” She didn’t tell him that she hated Harry and was glad that he was dead. He deserved it. She knew the doctor would have been shocked if she said it.