Free God Speed the Night by Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Jerome Ross Page B

independent.
    Lauzin was also the town’s only declared atheist. He made it plain to Moissac on the way that he came because a human being needed him; he was in no greater haste because she wore a veil. Moissac hunched his shoulders and concentrated on the road. He had no wish to engage in an argument his friend the monsignor had been pursuing for years to no avail whatever.
    “Eh, nothing to say in defense of your friends, Moissac?” “They are good women.” He remembered saying the very words to the Gestapo that morning.
    “Because they are chaste? Is that what makes them good?”
    Moissac knew he was being baited. “It must help,” he said.
    “Help? Mon Dieu , what does it help?” “Mon docteur , I am a policeman, not a theologian.” “A splendid distinction, Moissac, but I have never known one who did not assume the prerogatives of the other.”
    In the hospital Rachel was taken directly to the surgery. There was a moment, only a moment, in which Sister Agathe was left alone with her. She leaned close to Rachel while she untied the coif. “Sister Gabrielle?”
    Rachel opened her eyes. Agathe nodded approval. “I will answer their questions, do you understand?”
    “Yes…Sister.”
    “We shall have you back with your husband in no time,” she whispered, “but you must not betray us.”
    “I shall not betray you,” Rachel said.
    “I know that, my dear. It is only that in the fever you might say something. You must think of yourself as Sister Gabrielle, and a novice never speaks as long as there is a superior present to speak for her.”
    A consumptive-looking orderly wearing a stained white jacket that would have better become a butcher came in, clip-board in hand, and asked to have the patient’s identity card. Sister Agathe gave it to him. From it he took the statistics he needed, scarcely so much as glancing at the patient herself.
    To Agathe he said, “You are the person responsible for—” he looked at the record, “—Sister Gabrielle’s commitment to the hospital?”
    “I am the infirmarian of the Convent of Ste. Geneviève.”
    “So that the patient’s progress will be reported to you.”
    “To us, yes.”
    “And the hospital charges, Sister?”
    Sister Agathe had not had so much as a centime in her hand in twenty years. “You will discuss that with Reverend Mother, please.”
    “It should have been discussed with Reverend Mother before you came,” the man grumbled, his pen hovering over the blank place in the form.
    Agathe said, lifting her chin: “You may put down ‘pauper.’”
    At the sound of the word Rachel opened her eyes.
    “We are paupers. Poverty is one of our vows,” Agathe said firmly.
    The orderly shuffled out. Agathe drew her first easy breath in hours. She observed the room, so cheerless, the walls a bilious green, shelves stacked with aluminum and porcelain vessels. There was a rolling case of surgical instruments. The sterilizer looked like a fish aquarium. Several doctors’ gowns hung on a rack, all of them having taken on the shape of the men who had worn them. The door to the operating room was open, a dark pit with the chrome of the equipment picking up glints of light like eyes in the night. She thought of her own infirmary, spotless white. And she thought of Reverend Mother who was to be wakened when she and Sister Gabrielle returned. She should telephone, but the very thought of trying to explain was more than she felt able to cope with at the moment.
    A buxom and sullen nurse came, her eyes puffy from lack of sleep. She proceeded to prepare by turns the patient and the operating room. Agathe, despite her anxiety, was fascinated to see the equipment. After taking Rachel’s temperature, the nurse read it and handed it to Agathe. It registered almost forty degrees. She brought a hospital gown and left Agathe to undress the sick woman.
    The moment Dr. Lauzin entered the room Sister Agathe felt confident. He went to the patient even as he removed his