After The Storm
By I.C. Finney
Doctor Thomas Newman took the patient’s wrist and felt the brittle pulse underneath the skin, tapping away.
The influenza pandemic had begun its course through the last days of the Great War and now cruel irony had snatched this poor woman’s health away like a thief and confined her to isolation in this now-empty women’s ward. Her pitiful swaddled body lay in a wire frame bed which was occasionally tended to by nurses, but there was little they could do to ease her suffering.
He looked upon her blank sleeping face that sometimes flickered with brief movements of feverish life. He felt sympathy, yes; but there was more to his pity than the simple warmth of his human heart.
This nurse had been decorated with the Royal Red Cross for outstanding bravery. The Ambulance she was travelling in had been caught in a creeping artillery barrage.
She had single-handedly pulled the injured driver and the other nurse from the wreckage and carried them to safety into a ditch, and then she had returned to the shattered remains of the ambulance in the middle of the barrage to retrieve whatever medical supplies she could find. Nurse Redfern had tended to her wounded companions for six hours until a patrol rescued the survivors.
During that time she had performed a life-saving amputation on the young nurse. The 18 year-old driver had suffered head injuries so severe that he had thought he was a five year old child. She had sung him soft lullabies, cradling the boy in her arms to reassure him until he quietly passed away during the last throes of the barrage.
Thomas studied her statuesque face which rested upon the pillow like a pale mask, her forehead blemished by beads of perspiration. Even like this, she held a kind of nobility. He had no doubt that this beauty was a reflection of her spirit.
She moaned softly and her hand moved limply upon the sheet of her bed. He reached out and held her again. She grasped his fingers but she was so weak that her touch felt like breath upon his skin.
Thomas choked back an involuntary sob. He coughed rudely to hide the sudden unwanted emotion, breaking the calm of the empty ward but he was alone with her. The patient moaned again and he saw a cold fire darken her face. Her breathing became hurried and guttural and her eyes opened and rolled wildly.
In the pit of his stomach, Thomas felt the unmistakable cold dread of something near that he recognised.
It was death.
After all her efforts as a human being, all her triumphs on the battlefields of war and life with their casualties and fallen dreams; after this, to be beaten down by a faceless invisible enemy and silenced without contest.
No.
This was not the way how noble hearts should suffer.
This was not the way how angels should fall.
Thomas placed his hand upon her forehead and imagined he could will life into her, to give her a fighting chance: to somehow transfer some of his vital essence into her. His jaws were clenched, his lips pursed tightly shut and his hand wavered but he held it to her skin with gentle strength, forming a bond with her. Maybe somehow his presence might change what seemed inevitable.
Time passed.
His fear relaxed.
Her breathing calmed a little and then her eyes gained focus on him and she blinked slowly, heavily with distant eyes. She exhaled a single word so that it floated free on her exhausted breath, a whisper.
“John?”
“No, I’m the Doctor” Thomas replied.
An expression passed across her face like a fleeting shadow, regret mixed with something darker, but then it was gone and she closed her eyes and sighed back into sleep.
Outside, as a flake of snow wafted down past the window, a tear also fell onto the white sheet of Joan Redfern’s hospital bed.
Thomas took a plain white handkerchief from his top pocket and dried his cheek.
oOo
Each night he was there, watching over her in the quiet empty ward. Only the dim echoes of footsteps along the long winding corridors outside would break the silence of his secret vigil; and each day he felt the stalking fear recede and finally fade beyond the reach of his perception.
She was safe.
oOo
On the morning she awoke, the late dawn lit the sky with gold and she looked at him for the first time with true eyes.
He held her hand once more and this time neither of them faltered in their touch.
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I wondered how a remarkable character like Joan Redfern fared after the events of Human Nature; both the Doctor and John Smith saw something wonderful within her.
In regards to Fan Fiction, I wanted to explore a subtle way of what might have occurred to her during and after the Great War without clichéd or obvious means. I felt the character and her legacy deserved more and that she should have met someone worthy of her.
Having her succumb to the lethal Spanish Flu was an interesting path, both ironic and ripe for poetry. She must have survived after all to have her grand daughter Verity write the book which we saw during The End Of Time. Perhaps she met her husband in hospital. Perhaps it was a Doctor. Who knows.
This short story is intended to be a brief Vignette. It is set during November/December 1920 when the flu pandemic had finally spent itself, hence the irony: she was one of the last to be affected.
I would have spent more time building this piece but there was only one day remaining for the deadline and I didn't start writing until early this morning.
Dedicated to my own Angel, Philippa.
Joan Redfern © Paul Cornell
Published by Paul Cornell here (Link updated 20/02/16)
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