Page 44 of The Moonlight Healers

Helene blinked back at him. But he just smiled wider at her confusion.

“Sorry?”

“You said you’re a terrible nurse.”

“I don’t think I used the wordterrible…”

Thomas held up his hands. “Fine, maybe not in those words. But from the looks of it, you might be the best they’ve got.”

She followed his gaze as he surveyed the room. A few cots down, Dominique, a teenager only a few weeks ahead of Helene in training, was bent over a soldier, her forehead drenched insweat. The soldier in the bed grimaced as she fumbled to apply antiseptic to his wound.

“My bandage hasn’t been changed since they operated. I don’t know much about medicine, but I imagine it’s not supposed to look like that.”

Helene peered closer at his leg. He was right. There was blood seeping onto the fabric near his knee. “I’m not sure what we have in the way of supplies,” Helene said as she checked over her shoulder. “I can try to find a clean bandage, some iodine.”

“Perfect. This way you don’t have to go away again.” Thomas’s cheeks were slightly pink. “At least not yet.”

She wished more than anything she could put her hands on his wound and fix it with her touch. But his leg wound was far deeper than the simple scrapes and bruises she had mended with her mother. And in the crowded ward, with Thomas’s eyes on her, there was no way to do it without revealing herself. Helene could feel the echoes of her mother’s warnings in her body, the constant vigilance to not be seen for who she truly was.

Helene took a deep breath in through her nose. After Dieppe, she could no longer make excuses, or tell herself she wasn’t equipped. She had survived a battlefield. “I’ll go and get supplies then.”

“You promise you’ll come back?”

Helene nodded. “Promise.”

* * *

The next day, Helene sat at the breakfast table and picked at the bland food on her plate. She had lost her appetite the moment she read her mother’s letter, which arrived that morning. Helene withdrew the note from her pocket and read it again, trying to parse further clarity from her mother’s vague phrasing.

Your grandfather isn’t at home right now. All is fine. There is nothing to worry about. But he’s been sent away for awhile, for reasons that are difficult to explain in a letter. I’ll write more when I can, and I’m sure he’ll be back home with us soon.

Helene traced her mother’s handwriting, the crisp precision of her elegant lines.He’s been sent away for a while.

He had done something stupid. Or said something stupid. Broke curfew. Fear clutched at her chest. If she had been home, this never would have happened. Her mother was too distracted, too busy with her work. And now her grandfather was gone, in some prison or work camp.

Helene carried her plate to the bin. She knew it was useless to try to eat, and even though her shift didn’t start for a few more hours, she decided to head back to the prisoner’s ward. She needed a distraction from her mother’s news. And if she were completely honest with herself, she also wanted to see Thomas again, to hear his voice once more before he was sent away. No one would question why she was on duty early. Since Dieppe, nurses and doctors were working twenty-four-hour shifts, scouring the hospital for what was left of dwindling food and supplies. The rigid order had dissolved, and they could use all the help they could get.

Helene was almost at the entrance to the hospital wing, when she heard her name called from behind her.

Cecelia stood near a door that led to the convent. She was dressed in a clean, pressed habit, her hair pulled back into a tight bun beneath her veil. But as she stepped forward into a beam of bright afternoon sun, Helene noticed how pale she was, her eyes lined with inky blue circles. Cecelia, like most of the other sisters, had been working nonstop in the German military ward.

“I was hoping to find you,” Cecelia said. A few nurses walking down the hallway looked up as Cecelia’s shoes made sharp clicks on the stone floor. “I tried your dormitory but you were gone already.”

It felt strange, to see this cold, intimidating version of Cecelia again. She’d thought something fundamental had shifted between them in Dieppe. She was hopeful there might be an understanding, a truce of kinds, and Cecelia might even allow Helene to use her gift to treat the Allied soldiers on the wards, take away the pain from shrapnel wounds, ease the burns caused by explosive devices.

But Cecelia’s expression was stern. “Can I speak with you a moment?”

Helene nodded.

“In private,” Cecelia said as she motioned toward the door. “Follow me, please.”

Helene trailed Cecelia into a small chapel within the convent that was off limits to the lay nurses. Compared to the vast, echoing Église Sainte-Madeleine, with its soaring stone arches and enormous windows, this chapel was modest and plain. Save for one lone stained glass window, the walls were made of rough, hand-carved stone. The space was tiny, but in a way that felt comforting instead of claustrophobic, as if the world had been contained to this simple room.

There were two small stone statues at the front of the chapel, of Mary and another saint Helene didn’t recognize. Beside them a row of candles flickered, casting an orange glow. A few simple wooden pews lined either side of a central aisle.

“Sit,” Cecelia asked, gesturing toward one of the pews.

Helene genuflected briefly at the aisle before she sat down on the wooden pew. Cecelia sat beside her, so close that the soft white fabric of her habit brushed against Helene’s fingers.

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