Page 61 of The Moonlight Healers

HELENE

Helene walked with purpose down the dormitory hallway of the Hôtel-Dieu. None of the fresh-faced guards stationed at the gates outside had questioned her explanation for her return from Honfleur. To them, she was simply another indistinguishable French girl, and so with a perfunctory glance at her identification papers they had waved her inside.

It was mercifully empty at midafternoon, with the sisters and nurses either off on the wards or sleeping, and yet Helene couldn’t help but peer over her shoulder as she strode the dimly lit space. She couldn’t afford any delays. She didn’t have much time.

She tried to focus only on what was directly in front of her. She couldn’t dwell on the look on her mother’s face as the train pulled away, the way she held her with a tightness that felt so much like a permanent goodbye. She pushed away the forged identity cards hidden beneath her pillow, waiting like an unexploded bomb at the center of her life, and the question of what would be left if it ever detonated.

She crept inside her dormitory. The room was quiet, most of the cots vacant except the dozen or so belonging to the probates and nursing students assigned to night duty. Helene slipped off her shoes until she was only in stockings, her skin sticky from the day’s heat. Her bed was already bare, stripped of its linens, the trunk with her uniform open beside it, the contents removed.

Helene carefully set down her suitcase and padded over to Elisabeth’s bed, where her friend slept curled in a ball. She knelt beside her trunk. Elisabeth was taller, but Helene could still easily wear her friend’s uniform. She undid the clasps, pausing at the click, but Elisabeth didn’t stir.

Helene held her breath as the trunk creaked open, and felt for one of the neatly starched and folded squares of gray fabric.

“What are you doing?”

Helene dropped the uniform at the sound of Elisabeth’s voice, thick with sleep. She was sitting up in bed, her mouth creased into a frown as her eyes traveled from Helene to the open trunk.

“What are you doing back here?” Elisabeth asked in a hushed voice as she glanced around at the other sleeping girls. There were indentations on her face from where her skin had pressed into the pillow.

Helene looked over at the windows, where the afternoon sun was sinking lower over the city. Every second of passing time represented one less second at her disposal. “I need to borrow one of your uniforms. I’ll explain everything later, I promise.”

“Thomas’s body went missing,” Elisabeth said, dropping her voice even lower. “Right before you left. Vanished from the morgue with no explanation. They came and searched the entire hospital for him.” Elisabeth watched Helene closely. “But you know that already, don’t you?”

Helene tried to keep her composure. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

There was an edge of hurt in Elisabeth’s expression. “Why are you lying to me?”

Excuses formed in Helene’s mind. But she didn’t want to hide her true self from the first real friend she’d ever had. Maybe her mother was wrong, that not every part of the world was dangerous to healers, that there were places and people who were safe harbors.

“What if I told you he was dead? Thomas. And that I brought him back.” She waited for a reaction from Elisabeth, but her friend’s features remained neutral. “You wouldn’t believe me, would you?”

The heavy breathing of the girls sleeping was the only sound in the room.

“Is that why Cecelia took you to Dieppe?” Elisabeth asked. There was uncertainty, but not the total disbelief Helene had expected. “I wondered why she’d choose you of all people.”

Helene nodded. “Because she’s my cousin. This ability is in her blood too. It was different, in Dieppe. I didn’t save their lives. I only… I helped them die, with some peace. But I brought Thomas back. And that’s why Cecelia sent me away. She thinks it’s wrong, evil.”

Elisabeth stared at her pensively, then broke into a wry smile. “That’s the least of the evil in this world. Cecelia of all people should know that. But I still don’t understand why you came back. Why not just stay home? That’s what you’ve always wanted, to go back, isn’t it?”

“Because it’s not… He won’t keep living, Thomas. I gave him time, but it’s borrowed. He’ll still die. Unless…”

The hinges of the cot creaked as Elisabeth leaned forward. “Unless what?”

“Unless I take that time from someone else.” Helene couldn’t bring herself to look at Elisabeth, to see the horror or revulsion.

Elisabeth slid off the bed and onto the floor beside her. “You mean you have to kill someone? For him to live.”

Helene flinched at the casual way Elisabeth had said it. She seemed calm, curious.

“I know it’s awful. I know what you must think of me.”

Elisabeth didn’t speak for a long time. Finally, she faced Helene.

“My name isn’t Elisabeth,” she said softly. “My name is Irene. Your cousin knows that. And Mother Elise. A few of the other sisters. They’re why I’m here. Why I’m Elisabeth Laurent from Calais. And not Irene Berkowicz from Caen.” She clenched her hands together.

Helene remembered the yellow stars worn by some of the families in Honfleur, Jewish families, the shops with signs in their windows, the foreign neighbors who had vanished over the last year, their French families left with nothing but vague explanations about deportations.

“Last summer my father got a letter in the mail, a green ticket, for a…” Irene’s lip curled. “They called it a status review. He wasn’t a citizen, but my mother is. She was born here. So even though we had heard stories, he thought—we thought it was just a formality. We thought he would come home. He died from the flu, a few months later, or that’s what they told us.” Her eyes glazed over. “In June, my mother was the one to get the letter.”

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