Healing of Lydia Gouardo’s Relative at Lourdes

The train from Paris had rattled through the night with the smell of coal and damp wool. I sat on a wooden bench in the third-class carriage, my knees pressed against the invalid litter where Lydia Brosse lay. She weighed less than forty kilos. The left side of her skirt was pinned back so the dressings would not stick to the seat. Every time the wheels hit a joint in the rail, she drew a short breath through her teeth.

We reached Lourdes on the morning of the ninth. The air outside the station was already warm and carried the iron scent of the river. I helped lift her onto the handcart that would take her to the hospital. Her face was the color of old paper. Two fistulas in the left buttock had been draining for months. The surgeons in Saint Raphaël had cut away what they could, then packed the wounds with gauze that had to be changed twice a day. She never complained about the pain, only asked whether the train would be late.

On the tenth she was taken to the pools. The water was cold enough to make her gasp. Two attendants lowered her on the canvas sheet. She kept her eyes open and fixed on the statue above the grotto. When they lifted her out again the dressings were still stained. No change. That evening she ate a few spoonfuls of broth and asked to be taken back to the dormitory. She slept with her knees drawn up because lying flat pulled at the open tissue.

The next morning the pilgrimage director announced that the final baths would finish by noon. Lydia said she would not go. She told the sister in charge that the effort of being carried down and back again was not worth another disappointment. The sister nodded and left her in the shade of the hospital veranda. I stayed nearby, folding linen. From time to time Lydia closed her eyes and the lines at the corners of her mouth deepened.

At half past eleven a priest came through with the Blessed Sacrament. Lydia asked to be taken to the side chapel. She remained there until the bell rang for the departure of the special train. When the others began to gather their bundles she asked for her coat. She stood for the first time without help, though she steadied herself against the iron bed rail. No one remarked on it. We were all tired and the carriage was waiting.

On the return journey she sat upright on the bench instead of lying on the litter. The train passed through the tunnel at Tarbes and came out into sunlight. She asked for a cup of water and drank it without spilling. At the next station she stood and walked the length of the carriage to the lavatory. When she came back she said the pain that had been constant for three years was no longer there. She lifted the edge of her skirt and showed the skin. The openings had closed to small, dry scabs. The surrounding tissue was no longer swollen.

We reached Saint Raphaël late that night. Her doctor was summoned from his supper. He examined the site under an electric lamp and wrote in the record that the fistulas were healed and that her general condition was now thriving. He asked her to return in a week. When she did, the scabs had fallen away and the skin was smooth. Blood counts taken over the following months showed no return of the anemia that had accompanied the bone disease.

Lydia went back to Lourdes every year after that with the Rosary pilgrimage. She worked as a hospitalier, pushing the same kind of handcart that had carried her. She never spoke of the moment on the train unless someone asked directly. When they did, she said only that she had decided not to bathe and that the change had come afterward.

The medical file remained open at the Lourdes Bureau. Doctors who reviewed it noted the long history of tuberculous lesions confirmed by earlier operations and the sudden closure of the wounds without further surgical intervention. They recorded that no local treatment had been applied after the final bath attempt. The case was presented to the bishop of Coutances in 1958. Monsignor Jean Guyot signed the recognition on the fifth of August that year.