Always the Children by Anne Watts

Author:Anne Watts [Watts, Anne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781234567890
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

33

A NUN, A NURSE

AND A TRUCK

Sister Marie Clare had an adventurous spirit to match my own. We were a good mix or a bad mix, depending on your point of view, and I know we gave Pat Smith some headaches. All Dr Smith’s staff were categorically forbidden to go to the original hospital under any circumstances, because of the subsidence which had caused it to be closed in the first place.

We occasionally had to drive down to the American evacuation hospital in Pleiku to refill our oxygen tanks. On one occasion we were running dangerously low on oxygen, but heightened enemy activity in the area ruled out any kind of trip to Pleiku.

However, we’d been tipped off by some junior military that there were still some full oxygen tanks in storage at the old hospital. So, Marie Clare and I decided together to ignore the rules. All we thought about was the patients’ need for oxygen, and if it was there, well, we could go get it. And the less anybody knew about where we got it, the better. So, of course, we couldn’t tell anyone. We just did it. I figured we’d be OK; after all, Marie Clare had a hotline to God .

We drove off in an old pickup truck that had been donated to the hospital, me at the wheel. The road to the old hospital was a jungle path that was little more than a dirt track, which had deteriorated into a series of potholes because of the constant stream of heavy military traffic. Somehow I managed to get us there, but it was a hell of a drive, and scary too.

God knows how we, two young women, loaded the four enormous oxygen cylinders that we found there into the back of the truck, but we did. There was not a soul around, just jungle noises, crickets and the prr-prr sounds of hidden creatures. It was really eerie; in this hot, steamy, mysterious place, the deserted hospital felt like the medical equivalent of the Mary Celeste.

On the way back Sister Marie Clare drove. She had to be the world’s worst driver. As we clattered and banged along, I kept up a running commentary. ‘For God’s sake, be careful . this is oxygen we’re carrying . you nearly went into that pothole . watch out!’ Then the front tyre hit a rock and we bounced up, slowly, into the air, the truck seeming to leave the road in a graceful arc.

Marie Clare steered us into the bank. We rolled over – I think once, who knows – ending upside down with the cab crushed on my side. How we weren’t killed by the rolling oxygen tanks, I don’t know.

There we were, Welsh nurse and New York nun, crumpled upside down in a crushed pickup. When the wheels stopped spinning and the sputtering and banging noises quietened down, we gradually became aware of our surroundings. We were dazed but conscious, and I remember tentatively moving my arms, then my legs, which were wedged above my head.

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