• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He explained what he had been doing to improve the conditions, and the woman raised her eyebrows appraisingly. “So you’re not just one of the killers, then? Very good, Monsieur. What is your name?” He told her, and then asked the nurse to introduce herself. The other men watched, envying his conversation with her.

“I was born in Florence, so my father gave me that name -- Florence Nightingale. I was shipped to the Crimea by the British Secretary of War to help, and not long after I arrived, that idiotic attack at Balaclava happened. Now there are more wounded than I know what to do with. I have thirty-eight nurses and, just in one day, close to five hundred wounded in a hospital that was never meant to be used as such a facility.”

Florence Nightingale frowned again, stealing beauty from her beatific face, then she smiled in such a generous way that it struck to Nemo’s heart. “We shall tend you as best we can. Many others will die here, and I can’t help that, but I will give comfort wherever I can. I promise not to let anyone travel that long, dark road due to neglect on my part or on the part of my nurses.”

Nemo touched his injured side. She looked at the old dressing, her face awash with despair, but she drove back the emotion. “You’ll survive, Monsieur Nemo. Your wound is serious, but not life-threatening unless it becomes infected. Of all the casualties I’ve seen in this endless war, three-quarters have died from disease or ill-treatment, rather than the wounds themselves.”

Florence Nightingale stood straight, her face hard again. “But that will change.” She touched the bandages and shook her head. “This needs a fresh dressing, but I have no more cloth. In fact, we are boiling uniforms cut from dead soldiers just so we can tear them into strips for bandages. I will do what I can.” She gave him a wan smile, indicating the conversation was over. “Thank you for allowing me to practice my French.”

Stern again, she pointed a finger at him. “My main command for you, André Nemo, is to get better -- but not completely well, because they will send you back to the battlefield. Since your own commanding officers cannot keep track of you, I need you to heal so you can help me clean this place and tend the other soldiers.”

He smiled back, then winced as another bolt of pain shot through his ribs. Her orders made more sense than anything he’d heard from true military commanders. “I will do my best to obey you, Mademoiselle Nightingale.”

v

Sitting with other wounded men in the crowded hospital, Nemo ate a thin gruel, drank copious amounts of tea, and tended his own injury. The smelly air was heavy with the sounds of coughing, groaning men. The nurses couldn’t possibly do enough to help their patients -- and given few resources, supplies, materials, or even personal vigor, Nemo could think of little he could do to help.

After his days aboard the Coralie, then living alone on the rugged island, and even during the balloon trip across Africa, Nemo had learned some first aid. As a healthy 26-year-old, his stamina worked to his advantage. Most of the other injured men had lived in trenches for months during the siege of Sevastopol, and were much worse off.

Soldiers in the infirmary rooms smoked cigarettes, a paper-wrapped form of tobacco that had recently come into fashion during the war. But the acrid smoke did little to mask the hospital’s sour stench of sickness, chemicals, and death.

One night, the man with two splinted arms unexpectedly died from a blood clot. His one-legged companion wallowed in such deep depression that Nemo was convinced the man wanted his stump to fester with gangrene. The peripheral horrors of war continued to dismay him, and he did not understand why people had to do such things to each other.

When Nemo attempted to walk, he could feel the bones and skin knitting in his side. Since he was more mobile than most, he gave up his hard pallet to a more seriously injured soldier. Still, he limped around like Victor Hugo’s famous hunchback. Every