14

Nurse Cherry swallowed hard many times that day. She forgot to eat as she went from one remaining house to another, even neglecting to get herself a cup of tea. She did her best to reset a seventy-two-year-old man’s ankle, though bone setting was never her favourite aspect of nursing. She listened as the man’s wife, Martha, talked of her six drowned hens and her root crops all washed away. Martha’s predicament was a mean one; her losses meant hungry months ahead and no apparent way around it. The boot of the Burin Peninsula wasn’t like Bolton, Nurse Cherry reflected, where you could pop down to Spencer’s green grocers on the High Street and buy a head of lettuce or a bunch of carrots.

Also on the Hillier, and less affected, side of the harbour, Nurse Cherry treated an entire family for exposure. Kenneth and Amelia Hillier barely got their four children—Lancelot, Louis, Laura, and baby Leslie—to safety as the waves rushed in. On the way out the door, Kenneth grabbed fifty dollars in cash that Amelia kept in a jar on a high shelf in the kitchen. At the time, he feared it was all the family would be left with.

Now, as Nurse Cherry examined each child in turn, Kenneth explained how, like everyone else, they lost their stage, landing slip, and wharf, as well as his dory.

“How is he going to fish?” Amelia cried out, her eyes wide. She hadn’t slept with worry since the waves had taken her husband’s boat.

The children shivered as their mother listed off the food that the tsunamistole: no less than five barrels of potatoes, three barrels of turnips, three barrels of flour, and a half barrel of salmon.

“There’s barely enough flour left in the barrel to make three loaves of bread with,” she said frantically. “I can’t feed them.” Her arms waved wildly at her children.

“And we got no coal left either,” Kenneth said. “And we’re among the lucky ones in this harbour. Our children are safe and our house is still standing.”

With the two Lamaline men standing like sentries in the Hilliers’ doorway, Nurse Cherry stood to face the couple.

“The immediate problem is that every one of you is suffering from exposure,” she said. “Now, my fear is that it could turn into something worse if you’re not careful, especially with the little ones.”

She paused while a dark silence descended in the room.

“You must keep giving the children hot tea and give baby Leslie warm water. This is very important. They’re cold to the bone and we must warm them up from the inside out. You see how drowsy Laura is? That’s not a good sign. So keep pouring hot tea into her. Don’t give any of them hot toddies or anything alcoholic, that’d be very bad for them. Cover them in blankets and heat up some bricks or large beach rocks and put them in the blankets with the children. They should warm up with a little time. I know you’re fretting about the future, but turn to the children now, and take care of their exposure.”

Amelia began gathering her little flock to her. They were dressed in their inside clothes in a frigid house, covered only by sweaters. She would take Nurse Cherry’s advice, Dorothy could see that. She needed only to be pulled out of the shock that shrouded her. The nurse moved to the stove and began boiling the kettle. She would start them off before moving on.

“Can one of you men fetch a few beach rocks that we can heat for the children?” she asked. Albert nodded and disappeared through the doorway. Nurse Cherry’s eyes scanned the house for blankets. Amelia knew what she was looking for and she ran upstairs to get them. Together, she and Nurse Cherry peeled the woollen sweaters off young Lancelot, Louis, and Laura. Nurse Cherry held baby Leslie close to her, rubbing the child’s pale skin to warm it up. Meanwhile, the kettle started to boil and Albert returned with an armload of beach rocks.

“Thank you,” the young mother said. “We’ll make sure they won’t get sick. I’ll get the hot water into them right away.”

Her husband, Kenneth, pulled a roll of bills out of his pants pocket and handed five dollars to Nurse Cherry. The nurse shook her head.

“I’ve no need of it,” she said. “Give it to one of your neighbours.” As Nurse Cherry, Albert, and Thomas walked through Taylor’s Bay, they trod over clapboard, shards of glass, scraps of felt from roofs, and torn children’s clothing. They shuddered at each new find. The head of a doll sent Thomas jumping again as the face of his own little girl appeared before him.

He gagged again when the trio entered the small home of twenty-four-year-old Hannah Bonnell, her husband, Leo, and their two little girls, Louisa and Ellen. One of the waves had dented the house, but it still stood. Now it sheltered fourteen Bonnells made homeless by the tsunami.

The unmistakable sound of a woman’s sobbing reached Nurse Cherry’s ear as Hannah Bonnell showed them into the kitchen. Elizabeth Bonnell clutched her daughter, Bessie, to her chest, so tightly that the nurse feared for the girl. Elizabeth’s cries were as primal as those of a screech owl in the middle of the night.

Her twenty-seven-year-old husband, Bertram, paced across the damp floor, his quick feet making the only other sound in the hushed room. His eyes were dark brown and wide, unblinking as he stared at a distant point. In his arms were two stiff little bodies. He held them as tightly as his wife held their daughter. But Nurse Cherry could see they were as lifeless as two birch junks. Her heart swelled for the man.

In the face of such grief, Albert and Thomas felt like intruders rather than escorts and looked at the floor. Also in the room stood Bertram’s parents, whose house had also been swept away, and their four other children. Herbert and Ellen Bonnell were here, too, with their three young children. Their one storey, two room house had been destroyed; like the other Bonnells, they had absolutely nothing left. Now there was nowhere to move in Hannah’s packed little house.

As Nurse Cherry looked at Bertram’s ceaseless pacing, trying to think what to do, Hannah said of the dead children, “Their names were John, called after his brother, and Clayton.”

At that, the boys’ mother let out another wail.

The little bodies were dressed in their winter clothes, with woolen caps on their heads and mittens covering their blue hands. The nurse wondered if they might have survived if they’d had less clothes on. She had no idea of the fate of the Hipditch children of Point au Gaul, who had drowned in their pajamas, or the Rennie children of Lord’s Cove, who died in their day wear when the first wave crashed into their home.

Dorothy Cherry spoke directly to Hannah.

“Has someone told Bertram the children are dead?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” Hannah answered quietly, releasing a sigh. “He knows they’re dead but he can’t accept it yet. We think he’ll accept it if we just give him a bit of time.”

The English nurse reflected on their wisdom. There’s nothing I can do for him, she thought. It’s his kin who will help him, not me. She remembered how one of her teachers at the Infirmary had told her that part of being a good nurse is knowing when to step back. For the first time, she realized that this wasn’t the same as helplessness.

Suddenly there was a thud. Bertram had accidentally dropped one of the stiff little bodies onto the floor. He sank to his knees and laid the other child beside his brother. Then he prostrated himself and sobbed. His brothers and sisters surrounded him, placing their hands on his shoulders, back, legs.

As Nurse Cherry moved toward the door to leave, Hannah stopped her.

“Have you got any food?” she asked quickly. “We’re famished and we’ve got nothing.”

The nurse handed her a jar of pickled cabbage, all they had left after many hours in the stricken village.