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I was always laughed at for becoming a nurse. ‘It’s a woman’s job’ they said, scoffing and leaving me to my studies. I never told them that the only reason I got into nursing was because it was the only way I could participate in the war, the only way I could help. Let them think what they wanted; if it helped them sleep at night, it didn’t bother me what they thought. I was happy with my job. I was very good at it.
It was the dawning of the new peace. Hitler was dead and with him millions upon millions of people. We saw it on the news every day, how more and more concentration camps were being discovered, more people freed by the Russians and reunited with their families. It was incredible, still completely unbelievable.
I had been lucky, I hadn’t seen most of the war through triage and sleepless nights. I had tried my hand at acting before I discovered nursing, but after a broken heart and a broken back, I changed my mind. The pictures weren’t for me. But acting had never really died in my heart, and the kids always gave me an opportunity to practice. California at the time had gotten soldiers in sporadically, which gave me time to work in the children’s ward on the first floor and take the night shifts like I wanted.
It was in 1946 that Alexandria arrived.
She had broken her arm falling off a ladder in the orange groves her parents were employed at, and she was the most fascinating child I had ever come across. She had cried, of course, when she was brought in. She was in a lot of pain and we were using morphine sparingly. What made her so incredible was the way she handled everything.
She kept babbling in a foreign tongue to her mother, her sister, the doctors, to me, and she never once stopped. Only after she fell asleep, her cast still drying, did her mother – through gestures and facial expressions – explain to us that she was telling a story. I had never seen a child act that way before, not one so young.
Alexandria stayed with us for two months while she healed and her family worked the orange groves while the fruit was in season. And every day she told me stories.
“I name Alexandria the Great.” She informed me on her first day. I had to smile, it was just too adorable.
“Oh yea?” I said, reclining in a wheelchair outside in the sun. It was my lunch hour and a beautiful cloudless day.
“He… when soldiers in desert, gives water.”
I raised an eyebrow in amusement.
“I thought in the stories he poured the water away,” I said, “To show the troops that they were all equal.”
“No!” Alexandria had chastised me. “That’s stupid. He give every soldier a little bit.”
I laughed again and Alexandria cocked her head at me. She had a small box held in her injured hand, her free hand slipped into the arm of a shabby little cardigan that was buttoned at the front, the loose sleeve hanging past her knees.
“Why do you sit this?” she asked, pushing the wheel of the chair with her toe. I opened my mouth to tell the truth – I’d found that kids were almost painfully perceptive, it was difficult to lie to them – but remembered how disappointed she had been waking up with a cast on her arm, unable to move it freely like she wanted to.
“I fell,” I said instead. It wasn’t an outright lie. I had taken a fall, a bad one, on a film set in a stunt gone wrong just before the war. It had been a miracle that I hadn’t ended up paralyzed. At my answer Alexandria grinned. Her two front teeth were missing.
“Me too!” she chirped, starting on another long-winded story half in English half in her own language. I listened patiently and smiled when I needed to. She seemed to get such joy out of having an audience that I couldn’t refuse her. When my lunch hour ended I nearly made to get up before remembering myself.
“I have to go.” I told her, smiling sadly.
“Tomorrow,” she informed me, “Tomorrow I tell you big story. Big story so you feel better.”
I grinned and nodded.
“I’d like that.”
Alexandria nodded happily and skipped away to the other side of the building where the ice man had brought up his cart for delivery. The kids always loved to watch him. I, on the other hand, quickly made for the nurses’ station, careful to keep out of sight of Alexandria as I reported my plan to the head nurse.
By dinner time every junior nurse and every doctor knew the plan and had discretely told the patients to play along.
The next day, I greeted Alexandria at her bed in my wheelchair, telling her it was my job to check her charts and make sure she was getting better.
-
As the weeks flowed on, I grew close to this wonderful, strong, imaginative child. Every day she acquired new words and worked out how to restructure sentences. Within three weeks, her speech was much easier to understand, and more people tuned in to her incredible, unbelievable tales.
I spent every working moment in the wheelchair, pretending I couldn’t walk so my little companion felt better about her arm and its lack of use. Day after day she wove me a tale of five friends with a great revenge against the evil Count Odious. One character, she had informed me, looked just like me: the Black Bandit.
“He’s my favourite. I like him.” she told me when I’d asked why. I must admit, it made me feel very special.
“And why is he angry at Odious?” I asked.
“Odious… bad man. He kill Black Bandit’s brother, Blue Bandit, and his friends.”
“Ah.” Well, in that case…
-
“Who was there to save them?” the old man had been listening to Alexandria’s stories for almost as long as I had been, and Alexandria had just worked her characters into an almost impossible situation: they were being held captive in the desert by Odious’ men, without shade or water, and any hope of escape.
We were all three of us outside that day, and unlike her unfortunate characters, under the shade of the expansive palm tree by the west courtyard. Alexandria had ‘borrowed’ one of the spare wheelchairs from the kids’ wing so she could keep the old man and I company in our sedentary states.
The old man had won Alexandria’s affections by playing with his teeth when she’d first met him. He, too, had a character dedicated to him in her story.
“No one.” She informed us gravely, bowing her head. There was a silence in which neither I nor the old man could think of what to say. Alexandria had never stopped telling her story, not in all the weeks I’d known her. Her imagination worked at a remarkable pace and it just seemed wrong for her to end the lives of her characters so quickly.
“But then!” and our Alexandria was back. We shared a private smile. “From in Darwin’s bag appeared a girl. Girl bandit. Black Bandit’s daughter.”
“I have a daughter?” it slipped out. I hadn’t meant to confuse reality with Alexandria’s incredibly complex world, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Yes. His daughter from previous marriage.”
The old man laughed loudly, wheezing with the effort, and I felt myself blush. Alexandria grinned at me.
“Is ok,” she told me, “He did not recognize her coz she has all her teefs.”
This time it was her that was blushing. She grinned to show me her new, tiny white teeth where, when I had first met her, only soft gums had been. I had never seen a more endearing thing in my life.
-
It was a week before Alexandria was due to be released when it happened.
I had spent the night at the infirmary, minding those who could barely move for themselves, when I heard a commotion from the east building. Curious as I was, I was unable to leave my station until I was replaced in the early morning hours by one of the young nurses, who told me what had happened.
She told me that Alexandria had fallen in the dispensary trying to reach a high shelf. She had stepped on a pestle and lost her footing, falling backwards and breaking her cast against the floor.
I wheeled myself as fast as I could – quite fast considering I’d had the practice – to triage and watched as she was processed. Her cast was removed and her entire body looked over for any signs of damage or paralysis.
She was fine.
Besides a large bruise on her head where she had fallen, and a small concussion to accompany it, she was alright. Her arm was wrapped in a soft bandage for the last week of healing and she was left to rest in one of the operating rooms. I stayed by her side until she woke up.
“I fell again.” she informed me unhappily, sniffing. We were still rationing morphine.
“I heard.” I said quietly, “Everyone’s heard. You’re famous.”
She gave me a wobbly smile before starting on a confused rant that was interrupted by sobs and sniffling. The most I could gather from the confused jumble of words was that another child had dared her to go to the dispensary, and to prove she’d been there, bring back a bottle from the very top shelf.
“What happened to the Bandit and his friends?” I asked after a while, seeking to distract her. surprisingly the question made her cry.
“They all died.” She sobbed. “I make everybody die.”
“No… why?” it was surprising how attached I had grown to the characters in the weeks Alexandria had been telling her story to me.
“They…” she didn’t finish her sentence, she just started crying. I moved my chair closer and gently stroked her face.
“I bet they died in battle,” I said quietly, “Brave and fierce and true to each other.”
Alexandria just shook her head and continued to cry. I stroked her hair gently.
“What about the Bandit’s daughter?” I asked.
“She lie. She was not his daughter. She’s nobody.”
“She’s you.” I corrected her, waiting until she blinked and looked at me. “And the Bandit loves her anyway. Even if she did lie.”
She watched me for a long time before swallowing another sob and blinking.
“I love you too, Roy.” She said.
-
The night before Alexandria left, there were sixteen people gathered around her bed to hear the end of her story.
The old man had passed away three days before, but Alexandria assured me that she would find a way to tell him the ending. I told her I had every faith that she would. Some nurses had come in for a shift just to hear her conclude her tale. The supervisors of the children’s floor had gathered too. Even the head doctor was there, listening to every word while keeping an eye on the clock just in case he missed an appointment.
When Alexandria finished, everyone cheered. She just smiled at me with all her new white teeth and bounced lightly on the bed. One of the nurses leaned over to the doctor and whispered something. He smiled and looked at me before addressing our little narrator.
“Alexandria. Roy has a surprise for you.”
She turned to me with wide, excited eyes. I had to smile. I had promised the doctor that I would tell Alexandria the truth as soon as she was free to go, and I would keep my word. I swallowed lightly and slowly stood up from the wheelchair, taking a few steps closer so I was at the end of her bed. Her eyes widened further.
“Your legs!”
“You told me your big story would make me feel better.” I reminded her, feeling my smile waver just a little. I didn’t want her to go. “And you were right.”
Alexandria watched me for a moment longer before she started to cry, crawling forward until she was hugging me around the middle, mumbling a confused jumble of English and Romanian against my nurse’s scrubs. I held her back just as tight, feeling myself cry into her hair.
-
I watched over her the last night she stayed with us, talking to her until she became too tired and fell asleep to the sound of my voice. In the morning she hugged me again, promising to come visit and tell more stories. ‘Maybe I can help other people’ she told me. I told her she was always welcome.
I never saw Alexandria again. I think her family moved away from the coast that year to a city. Working in the groves was dangerous work and not well paid. Her mother wanted the best for her children, and although I missed her more than I could say, I was happy that Alexandria was out of harm’s way.
I worked at the hospital for five more years before I left to return to college. Times had changed and more and more people were getting a higher education, using it to further themselves. My nursing work and experience helped me get into medical school and I was on my way to becoming a doctor.
I dedicated my time to the children’s ward and took to telling the kids the story that Alexandria had once told me. It became a local legend and the hospital became more popular. My career flourished and the story slowly began to grow and change. Children would add their own characters, request a different ending, draw me pictures, make up stories for the characters that didn’t get the limelight as often as the Bandit had. The story took on a life of its own and after a while, I let it go, donating it to the children who needed it.
Just like, years ago, Alexandria had gifted it to me.