Chapter 20 Chapter Nineteen

Her responsibilities are heavier.Now she's carrying tweezers and a tray to the next ward to tend to an Air Force soldier with shrapnel in his leg.She came to the bed.He watched her put down her tools warily. "If I want to remove the shrapnel like this, I would rather have a major operation." Her hands kept shaking.She wondered why the crisp nurse's voice rang in her ears at this moment.She drew the curtains around the bed. "Don't be silly. I'll take it out quickly. It'll be fine. How did you get hurt?" He explained to Briony that he was building a runway in northern France, but all the while he kept his eyes on the steel tongs she had just pulled out of the autoclave.They were lying wet on a blue-rimmed tray.

"We were about to start when the Germans came and they started bombing. We had to retreat and start over at another place, and then the Germans came again and we had to retreat until we fell into the sea." She smiled and lifted his bedspread. "Let's take a look, shall we?" The grease under his thigh and the soot embedded in the wound have been washed away, and the shrapnel inserted into the flesh can be clearly seen.He leaned forward and looked at her nervously. She said, "Lie down well. That way I can see clearly." "It's all right with me. They don't really affect me."

"Lie down." There were shrapnel all twelve inches.Each wound was inflamed and swollen. "I don't care, Nurse. I'd rather have them on me." He laughed, but without conviction. "I can leave a memorial for my descendants." "Infected," she said, "and they sink in." "trapped in?" "Trapped into your flesh. Trapped in your bloodstream, transported to your heart. Or brain." He seemed to believe her.He lay down, stared at the far ceiling and sighed. "Shit...I mean, I'm sorry, nurse. I'm not prepared for today."

"Let's count the shrapnel together, shall we?" They really counted out loud.There are eight pieces in total.She pressed his chest lightly. "Be sure to take it out. Come, lie down. I will try to hurry up. Maybe this method will work. You try to hold on to the head of the bed." He watched her pick up the tweezers, her legs tensed immediately, and she was still trembling. "Don't hold your breath. Try to relax." He snorted contemptuously through his nose. "Relax!" She held her left arm with her right hand.It will be much more convenient if you sit on the edge of the bed and do it.But this gesture is too unprofessional and strictly forbidden.When her left hand touched the uninjured part of his leg, he still twitched and wanted to pull his leg back.She selected the smallest piece from a cluster of shrapnel.The protruding part is in the shape of a slanted triangle.She clamped it, paused, and pulled it out decisively.

"Fuck!" This swear word blurted out and bounced and echoed in the ward, as if repeated many times.Silence followed, at least the voices behind the screen were muted.Briony held the tweezers, still holding the bloody shard of metal.The pointed piece is three-quarters of an inch long.From a distance came the sound of firm footsteps.She threw the shrapnel into the kidney basin when Sister Drummond drew back the screen and walked in.With an unusually calm glance at the foot of the bed, she knew the patient's name, and the state of his injury.Then, she stared condescendingly into his face.

"How dare you do that?" said the head nurse calmly. "How dare you talk like that in front of my nurse?" "Excuse me, Matron. I couldn't help it..." Sister Drummond cast a disdainful glance into the basin. "Compared to the wounded we received in the past few hours, Pilot Yang, your injury is only external. You should feel lucky. Besides, you have to show some courage to be worthy of this military uniform. Tower Nurse Leith, go ahead." After the head nurse left, there was silence in the ward.Briony said briskly, "Do you want to go ahead? There are only seven. I'll get you some brandy when the operation is over."

He was sweating profusely, trembling all over, tightly clutching the iron railing at the head of the bed, his knuckles turned white, but he didn't say a word as he continued to remove the debris. "If you can't help it, just call it out." But he didn't want to alarm the matron again, and Briony knew that.She saved the largest piece of shrapnel for last.But the piece of shrapnel could not be taken out all at once.He arched his back on the bed, hissing through clenched teeth.She tried again, and the shrapnel came out two inches from the flesh, and a third time with the tweezers, a four-inch long, blood-stained irregular piece of steel was finally removed.She held it up for him to see.

He stared blankly at the iron sheet. "Please wash it up, I'm going to take it home and keep it." As soon as he finished speaking, he buried his face in the pillow and sobbed.Maybe it was the pain, maybe it was the word "home" that touched him.She tiptoed away to get the brandy.At the douche, she suddenly felt nauseous. It took her a long time to remove the bandages from the wound, clean the wound, and bandage the wound again.Then, she received a new order, an order she had always dreaded. "You bandage Private Latimer's face." Private Latimer had half his face blown off, so swallowing food was torture.Earlier, she had tried to feed him with a teaspoon to keep the water from leaking out of his mutilated mouth, which was ridiculous, but he pushed her hand away.She was afraid now, not of removing his bandages, but of the accusatory look in his big brown eyes, as if to say, "What have you done to me?" There was a soft "ahah" sound from the bottom of the throat, and a moan of disappointment.

"You'll be bandaged right away," she repeated persistently, because she couldn't think of anything else to say. Now she walked over to his bedside with bandages and medical equipment, and said with a big smile, "Hey, Private Latimer, here I go again." He looked at her without recognizing her."Don't worry. You'll be out of the hospital in a week or two. Just wait and see. Not a lot of people here are so lucky," she said, as she unwrapped the bandage from the top of his head. This is indeed a consolation.There are always people who get sicker.Just half an hour before, the colonel who had been sent in from the East Surrey Front Regiment - into which the lads from the village joined - had had his leg amputated.Others are dying.

Briony took a pair of surgical tweezers and carefully removed a large mass of soaked and coagulated gauze from the hollow of his face.After the last piece of gauze was removed, the cutaway model used in anatomy class was vaguely recognizable.His face was ruined, pink flesh exposed to the air, his upper and lower molars visible from his missing cheeks, and his gleaming tongue, long and horribly long.She didn't dare to look up again: the muscles around the eye sockets were exposed, it was a secret place, never intended to be shown to others.Private Latimer was now an ugly creature, as he must have guessed himself.Has a girl ever loved him before? Will she still love him?

"It'll be bandaged in a minute," she lied again. She re-wrapped his face with clean gauze soaked in Yusu, when he let out a miserable cry. "Would you like a drink?" He shook his head and began moaning again. "you're uncomfortable?" no. "Want to drink water?" He nodded.All he had left was a small corner of his lip.She put the spout of the teapot into his mouth to pour water, and every time he swallowed, the muscles in his face would twitch. As a result, the missing muscles on his face became more painful.He could bear it no longer, but as soon as she took the teapot away his hand reached for her wrist.He still wants to drink.This went on for several minutes—he couldn't bear the pain, but he had to drink water. She could still be with him, but there are always jobs waiting for her: for a while, the nurse needs to help, and for a while, the wounded on the bed needs to be taken care of.A soldier who had been given anesthesia woke up and vomited all over her, so she had to find another clean apron so she could leave the ward to rest.Looking out the corridor window, she was surprised to find that it was pitch black outside.It had been five hours since they returned from the park.While she was standing by the linen locker putting on her apron, the matron suddenly appeared again.It's hard to say what's changed—her demeanor is detached, orders are still irresistible.Under self-discipline, there may be a tacit understanding in adversity. "Brionny, go and put a wet pack on Mark Intyre's limbs. Disinfect the rest of his body with tannic acid. If you have trouble, come to me directly." The head nurse turned around and assigned tasks to another nurse.Briony had just seen the corporal being carried in.He was one of many soldiers drowned in blazing gasoline on a sinking ferry off the coast of Dunkirk.Later, a destroyer rescued him from the water.The sticky gasoline clung to his skin and burned through his tissues. By the time he was put on the bed, he had been burned terribly.She thought, the corporal must not survive.Because he had to be given morphine, he couldn't even find a blood vessel.Two hours ago, when she and two other nurses carried him to the urinal on the bed, when their hands touched him, he screamed heart-rendingly. Wet packs are two large plastic film containers filled with saline solution, in which the injured hands and feet are placed to float. The temperature of the solution must be moderate, and deviations of one degree up and down are not allowed.When Briony arrived, a trainee nurse was preparing fresh potions by the cart with the kerosene stove.Wet packs need to be changed frequently.Corporal Mark Intel lay on his back on a cot where the sheets did not touch the injured limb, because he couldn't bear the sheets touching his skin.He whimpered and wanted to drink water, this scene was really emotional to watch.The burnt person was always severely dehydrated: his lips were disfigured and swollen; his tongue was so blistered that it was difficult to drink from his mouth.The salt water stopped dripping.There was no place for the needle to pierce the burned blood vessel.An experienced nurse she had never seen before was changing a bag of saline for him.Briony prepared a bowl of tannins and a roll of sanitary napkins, trying to sanitize the patient, starting at his feet, so as not to disturb the nurse, who was now looking for a tampon on her burnt arm. Blood vessel. But the nurse asked, "Who told you to come here?" "Matron Drummond." The nurse didn't even raise her head, and said bluntly: "He has suffered enough, I will give him an infusion first, and you can do something else." Briony did as she was told.She didn't know how long it had been, but it was probably in the early hours of the morning when someone asked her to get new towels.She saw the nurse just now standing at the door of the duty room, sobbing secretly.Corporal Mark Intel is dead, his bed number has been taken by someone else. Trainee nurses and second-year students work twelve hours straight.Other interns and permanent nurses have been working non-stop, and no one can remember how long they have worked on the ward.Briony recalled that her previous work had effectively prepared her for the current training, especially in terms of obedience.She didn't know what nursing was all about until that night though.She had never seen a man cry before, and the first time she saw it, she was shocked, but in the next hour, she gradually got used to it.On the other hand, the tenacity of some soldiers surprised her, even made her daunted.Soldiers fresh from amputations seem unable to refrain from making crude jokes.What is there to kick a wife with next? Every secret of the body is revealed: bones protrude from the flesh, intestines and optic nerves are laid out in plain sight.From this she learned a simple truth: people, in the final analysis, are a material existence, which is easy to be damaged, but not easy to repair.In fact, she knew this a long time ago, and everyone knew it too.For the first time, she was able to get so close to the battlefield. Every patient she took care of had some basic elements that are closely related to war-blood, fuel oil, sand, sea water, bullets, shrapnel, engine oil, gunpowder smell and sweat soaked His battle suit, with his pockets filled with rotten food and gooey shavings of Amo's chocolate bars.When she washed her hands at the sink—the faucet was high, next to a soda cube—she often washed beach sand through her fingers.She and the trainee nurses in the group only see themselves as pure nurses, not as friends.She only vaguely remembers helping to lift Corporal Mark Intyre onto the bed frame, and one of the girls was Fiona.There were times when the soldiers in Briony's care were in pain, and an inexplicable tenderness lifted her above the pain and enabled her to go about her work orderly and without fear.This may be the nursing work in her eyes. She is eager to become a qualified nurse and to get a badge.She could imagine that she might abandon her writing ambitions and devote herself to moments of fraternity and exuberance. It was almost 3:30 in the morning when she was called to see the head nurse.The head nurse was making the bed alone.Earlier, she had seen the head nurse in the washroom.The head nurse seems to be omnipotent and everywhere.Briony automatically set to work for the matron. The head nurse asked her, "I seem to recall you speaking some French." "Yes, Matron. It's just a little bit of school." The head nurse nodded across the room. "See that soldier sitting at the head of the row? Seriously traumatized, but not enough to wear a mask. Get a chair, sit next to him, hold his hand, talk to him." Briony couldn't help feeling offended.She said: "But the head nurse, I'm not tired, I'm really not tired." "Just do as I tell you." "Yes, Matron." He looked only fifteen years old, but from his medical record card, he was the same age as himself, both eighteen years old.He sat there with a few pillows propped on his back, looking around in amazement like an absent-minded child.Looking at him, it was hard to imagine that he would be a soldier.He is handsome and handsome, with thick eyebrows, dark green eyes, and soft and full lips.His face was pale and glowed abnormally, and his eyes were piercing, but sickly.His head was tightly bandaged.She took a chair and walked towards him, and he smiled at her as if he had been waiting for her.She held his hand, and he didn't seem surprised. "You're here at last." His French vowels had a pleasant nasal sound, but she could only understand them so-so.His hands were cold and greasy to the touch. She said, "The head nurse asked me to come and talk to you." She didn't know how to say "mother nurse" in French, so she had to translate it literally. "Your head nurse is so kind." He tilted his head and added, "Of course, she has always been like this. By the way, is everything okay with her? What has she been up to these days?" With such kindness and tenderness in his eyes, and with such a childish eagerness to speak to her, she had to go on. "She's a nurse too." "Yes, you told me just now. Is she still happy? Is she married to the man she loves? I'm sorry, you see, I can't even remember his name. Since the injury, I My memory isn't very good. But they tell me it'll come back soon. By the way, what's his name?"