Stella Bain

Marne, March 1916

Sunrise glow through canvas panels. Foul smell of gas gangrene. Men moaning allaround her. Pandemonium and chaos.

She floats inside a cloud. Cottony, a little dingy. Pinpricks of light summonher to wakefulness. She drifts, and then she sleeps.

Distinct sounds of metal on metal, used instruments tossed into a pan. She triesto remember why she lies on a cot, enclosed within panels of canvas, a placewhere men who die are prepared for burial away from the rest of the wounded, atask she has performed any number of times.

She glances down and finds that she is wearing mauve men's pajamas. Why do herfeet hurt?

A small piece of cloth with a question mark on it is pinned to a uniform hangingfrom a hook. For several minutes, she studies the uniform before realizing thatshe does not know her own name. She receives this fact with growing anxiety.

The name Lis floats lightly into her thoughts. But she does not thinkLis is her name. Elizabeth ...? No. Ella ...? Ellen ...? Possibly, though thereought to be a sibilant. She ponders the empty space where a name should be.

The name Stella bubbles up into her consciousness. Can Stella be it? Sheexamines the letters as they appear in her mind, and the more she studies them,the more certain she is that Stella is correct.

Again, she drifts into a half sleep. When she comes to, she cannot remember thename she has decided upon. She lets her mind empty, and, gradually, it returns.

Stella.

Such a small thing.

Such a big thing.

Stella has no idea where she has come from. She senses it might be an unhappyplace, a door she might not want to open. But no one's entire past can beunhappy, can it? It might contain unhappy events or a tendency towardmelancholy, but the whole cannot be miserable.

All around her, the hum of flies and the beat of fast footsteps. Orders areshouted; a new batch of wounded is coming in; the staff will want her bed, ofcourse they will. There is nothing wrong with her, and she has simply beenallowed to sleep a long time.

She rubs her feet together. A sharp pain through the muffling of bandages. Howhas she injured her feet?

A panel is moved aside, and she hears a woman speak in French. Seconds later, anurse, a nun, enters the small canvas compartment. As she moves toward the bed,she looms large in her starched uniform and wimple. She scrutinizes Stella'seyes, scanning, the patient knows, for dilated pupils. "You are British?" thesister asks.

"I am not sure," Stella answers.

"You have been unconscious for two days," the sister explains, stepping back andfussing with the sheets as she slides Stella's feet from under the covers. "Yourfeet had bits of shrapnel in them when you arrived. Someone with a cart left yououtside the tent in the middle of the night. I should like to examine yourfeet."

This is someone else's story, Stella thinks, not hers.

"What is your name?"

"Stella." She pauses. "Where am I?"

"Marne."

"Marne is in France?"

"Yes," the sister answers, pursing her mouth. "My name is Sister Luke. I amBritish, but almost everyone else at the camp is French. We believe your bootsblew off when you were knocked unconscious by the first shell and that a secondshell injured your feet. You had not a scratch on you otherwise, apart from somebruises from falling."

"Will I be able to walk?" Stella asks.

Sister Luke studies her. "I think you are American."

"Am I?"

"From your accent. But you were found in a British VAD uniform."

Stella cannot explain this.

"You are a VAD?"

"I don't know."

Stella can see that the sister is annoyed and has other, more pressing mattersto attend to.

"But I know how to drive an ambulance," she blurts out.

Is this true? If not, why does she think it is?

"You know this, and yet you do not know your posting?" the sister asks withbarely concealed disbelief.

Yes, the paradox is bewildering but does not seem urgent. Beyond the canvas,Stella knows, everything is urgent.

The sister moves toward the opening in the compartment. "Apart from your feet, Ican find nothing wrong with you. You will have them examined and dressed on aregular basis. Then you will rest and eat and drink while we ascertain youridentification. We will contact all the nearby hospital camps. You cannot havecome very far. When your feet are better, you can work. Perhaps we will see ifyou can drive that ambulance after all. In the meantime, you are to remain here.What is your last name?"

Stella simply shakes her head.

Orders are given, and a nurse's aide arrives with a tray. The dressing ofStella's wounds is more painful than she would have thought possible. The aide,who looks exhausted, helps Stella drink two glasses of water. Stella feels sorryfor the young woman and does not ask questions because she knows the effort itwill take to answer them.

Stella's last name comes to her the way a bird takes flight. She tells the aide,"I am Stella Bain."

When the aide leaves, Stella closes her eyes and then opens them. She repeatsthis exercise several times. But no matter how often she does it, she cannotremember what regiment she was attached to or what she was doing on abattlefield.

A month later, Stella has recovered from her wounds and serves as a nurse's aidein a French uniform. Again, she puzzles over the way her skills have returned toher, even though she does not know where she learned them.

Stella is appalled by her surroundings: the soil thick with manure; mud-lacedwounds causing suppurating infections; compound fractures imposing a deathsentence. A swab of Lysol along with gauze dipped in iodine is all the medicineon offer. A gas-gangrenous wound, not to be confused with the effect of poisonedgas, balloons up to grotesque proportions. Stella watches a doctor play an idlebeat upon a man's flesh with his fingers. The sight is awful, the sound hollow.Almost all the men die.

Sometimes, the doctors' screams are louder than the patients'. The surgeon's jobis beyond belief, a hell on earth worse than any hell imagined. Stella wants toknow how many of them go mad, all sensibility and religion violently strippedaway during the endless succession of amputations.

Always look a man in the eye, no matter how terrible the wound. This the Englishsister teaches, orders, her to do. The wounded's journey is long: from thetrenches of no-man's-land to the aid post to the field dressing station to thecasualty-clearing station, only to die on the train on the way to the basehospital.

In her off-hours, Stella mends tears in her skirt, brushes mud off her hem, andsearches for lice in the seams of her clothing. She washes collars and cuffs andthe cloth of her cap, and if there is water left over, she tries to clean herbody.

One day, she asks the sister on duty if she might have a piece of paper and apencil. In her tent, Stella begins to sketch what she can see around her: alantern, a canvas table, a cot in the corner. Her roommate, Jeanne, catches herat this activity and marvels at Stella's ability. In broken English and using akind of sign language, she asks if Stella will draw her portrait so that shemight send it back to her family. Jeanne has hollow eyes and a vocation. As shedraws the young woman, Stella wants to ask her how her religion has survived thesights they have both witnessed, but Stella's grasp of French is not good enoughfor any sort of meaningful conversation.

When Jeanne brings a fellow aide to the tent and asks Stella if she will drawher friend's portrait, Stella agrees on the condition that Jeanne find her morepaper and pencils and a knife for sharpening the pencils. This Jeanne happilydoes. Jeanne's friend insists on paying Stella for her sketch. Gradually, anumber of nurses and their aides line up to have their portraits done as well.

But between the portraits, when Stella is alone, the private drawings she makesdisturb her. She sketches the exteriors of unknown houses, surrounded bygrotesque trees and bushes. When she tries again, the drawings are nearly thesame, but the atmosphere of claustrophobia grows even more pronounced. Thesketches produce a keen sense of distress, but she cannot stop herself fromcontinuing to make them.

Stella does not know how she came by her skill at drawing. It seems to haveappeared simply out of a desire to do so.

The English sister must have remembered Stella's statement that she can drive anambulance, for she receives her first assignment on a June night.

"Over and up," the French orderly beside her says. The ambulance bucks, but doesnot stall. Stella has to feel her way along the road, since no lights can beused. Her eyes strain and water. In the distance, rockets throw a greenish lightover the countryside.

Stella screams when a shell bursts two hundred feet ahead. First, a large splashof earth, and then a ball of smoke, which drifts away. The orderly swears,French words that she understands. The orderly is fluent in English, which is,Stella supposes, the reason he has been assigned to her.

"It's going to get rough," the man explains. "Especially when we pull in. Thatis where we are most vulnerable. As soon as I jump off, you turn the truckaround and keep the engine running. Someone will help me load. When I pound theback here, you start driving, no matter what is happening. You find a way to getback."

Physical fear begins to climb Stella's spine, and yet she has done this before,has she not? Her hand shakes on the gearshift. She squeezes her shoulder bladestogether, expecting a direct hit to the Croix Rouge symbol on the roof. She hasno idea where the road begins. She struggles to see the slightest indication oftracks, but smoke clouds the path. How will she find her way back to camp withthe wounded inside? Regulations prohibit her from stopping at any point, even ifthe men behind her start to shout.

She senses the bump of each stretcher as it is loaded into the back of the bus.She waits for the pounding on the wooden panel.

Stella does not know how many are in the back, how badly wounded they are. Shecannot even be sure it is the orderly himself who has signaled to her. Shewishes he were up front so that she could talk to him.

"Left," she says aloud to herself as she finds and follows the tracks. Andlater, "Slow down."

When she arrives back at camp, she slides like a reptile from the driver's seat.Despite the cold, she has perspired through to her coat. She counts the woundedas they are unloaded. She is struck by their apparent freedom from pain.Stranger still, she can hear one of them whistling. She feels stronger andlighter than she has in months.

One day, walking through the camp, Stella hears a man curse the institution thatassigned his brother to a ship that sank. Her mind snags on the wordAdmiralty in the sentence. She puzzles over it so much in the days thatfollow that Admiralty becomes a kind of mythic goal, a monolith drawingher toward it. She believes that she will one day reach it, and she hopes thatonce she sees the building or the landscape, she will remember why it seems tobe so important. But how strange, because to her knowledge she has never been inEngland. Can her quest be the result of an event in her former life?

Admiralty hums in its own layer, the one behind the present moment andbefore the void that is her memory. A word. A title. A note. It presses andtroubles her, even when she actively tries to think of something else.

Stella learns that the Admiralty, headquarters to the British Royal Navy, standsin central London. She begins to cherish the word because she believes it comesfrom her previous life, perhaps the first chink in the armor of her inner mind,where memory and identity lie. Has she ever worked at the Admiralty? Lived closeto it? Did she once have a husband who worked there? The notion threatens her,because she cannot imagine having forgotten something as basic as a man sheloved and the intimacy they shared. Often she studies her fingers, searching fora tiny circle that might signal the previous presence of a wedding band. But shehas found nothing. In the privacy of her tent, shortly after her arrival, sheconducted a physical examination. A husband or a lover is a possibility.

Throughout the summer, Stella's life consists of tending to the wounded, drivingan ambulance, and drawing on paper with a pencil. In this way, she sometimesforgets that she cannot remember.

In October, Stella is granted leave. She thinks this might be her one chance toget to England. She must find the Admiralty and discover its importance. Jeannetells her she should go to Paris.

Stella asks for and is given a canvas satchel in which she packs her Britishuniform, her sketches, and the money she has earned from making portraits ofnurses and their aides.

Once in Paris, she catches a train for the coast, where, she has heard, Englishhospital ships carrying wounded men are setting out for home. But the train, dueto heavy bombardment, has to stop before it reaches Étaples. Even from adistance of ten miles, the shelling can be heard. The hospital personnel areurged to stay in their seats; the train will be rerouted.

With her satchel, Stella slips from the train and makes her way into the woods.If her exit has been seen, will they bother to look for her? She cannot imaginea doctor or a train conductor trying to find her. Stella remains, for themoment, a stateless woman in a lawless country.

The journey through the forest is arduous and frightening, but gradually thewoods thin out to reveal the coastal village. Along the way, she encounters achaos such as she has never seen before. She begins to cough, whether from thesmoke or illness she cannot tell. In Étaples, Stella discovers that the largeRed Cross hospital ship to which the wounded were headed has partially sunk.

She ducks inside a tent and changes into her British VAD uniform. "I've lost myway," she tells the first official-looking British man she meets.

"They're using smaller ships now to get across the Channel. There's a dock atthe eastern end you might try."

Stella locates a ship that was perhaps a ferry or a pleasure boat. There is nopleasure aboard it now. When she sees the cargo, she gasps. The wounded and thedead have not been separated. The calls of the injured sound as if they comefrom an underworld she has only dreamed about. Here and there, she observesnurse's aides like herself comforting men and applying dressings.

No one asks to see her identity card. No one cares. She does what she has beendoing for months in Marne, tending to the wounded and assisting with operationsthat cannot wait until they reach the shore.

When in England, Stella boards a train with the most seriously hurt, the oneswho might not, even with a doctor's ministrations, make it to Victoria station.En route, the men are sick and their bowels loosen. There is a priest on boardto deliver last rites, and it is one of Stella's duties to make sure she canfind the man at any given moment.

In London, Stella silently wishes the wounded well and then leaves them. Tradingwith the soldiers heading toward the front, she exchanges her French money forEnglish money. Exhausted, Stella follows a crowd along what looks to be a mainthoroughfare. She walks in a direction she thinks will lead to the Admiralty,but after a while senses that she has made a mistake. Finding herself on anarrow lane, she tries to retrace her steps. She walks without food or water,fingering the unfamiliar British coins inside her pocket. She moves forwarduntil she can walk no more, but still she keeps trudging. She walks until shecomes to a stop against a wrought-iron fence. A woman in a rose-colored suitasks her a question.

London, October 1916

A woman in a rose-colored suit, which strikes Stella as both odd and beautifulbecause she has seen little color on anyone in London, asks her if she isunwell.

"My name is Lily Bridge. From my window across the garden, I saw you leaningagainst the fence. Pardon my candor, but you seem to be overwrought."

Who, Stella would like to know, is not overwrought in this time and place?