The Healing of Marie Bailly's Niece

The train jolted over a switch outside Lyons and the lamps swung. I steadied the lantern with one hand and kept the other on the edge of the berth where the girl lay. Her name was Marie Bailly. She was twenty, or near enough, and her abdomen rose under the sheet like a drum that had been beaten too long. The skin was tight and shiny. Every breath lifted it a fraction and let it fall again with a small catch.

Carrel had come aboard at the last minute, taking the place of a classmate who could not make the journey. He moved down the aisle with a black bag and a notebook already open. When he reached Marie he set the bag on the floor and lifted the sheet without asking. His fingers pressed along the hard ridges. He did not speak for a minute. Then he asked how long the swelling had been that size. The answer came from a woman two berths down: since the winter, and worse each week.

We had three other physicians on the train that day. None of them offered a different reading. Tuberculous peritonitis was what they wrote in their own notes. The word they did not write was the one everyone thought: she would not reach Lourdes alive. The motion of the cars already made her retch, though there was nothing left to bring up.

Night came on and the lamps were turned low. Marie stayed half awake, eyes open but fixed on nothing. Carrel stayed near her berth most of the hours between stations. He measured her pulse at intervals and wrote the numbers. Once he asked whether she wanted water. She shook her head. The train slowed for a signal and the couplings knocked. She winced at the sound.

At first light we reached Tarbes and changed to the branch line. The air through the open windows smelled of cut hay and coal smoke. Marie’s face had taken on the gray color that comes before the final slackening. Carrel folded his notebook shut and looked out at the passing fields. He said nothing about prayers or last rites. He only asked one of the attendants to keep the sheet from sticking to her skin.

We arrived at Lourdes in the middle of the morning. The platform was already crowded with stretchers and the blue-uniformed brancardiers. Marie was lifted onto a handcart and wheeled toward the Grotto. Carrel walked beside the cart. I followed a few steps behind with the other doctors from the train. The distance was short, but the wheels caught on every stone and Marie’s hands tightened on the sides of the cart each time.

At the Grotto they set the cart on the uneven ground in front of the rock. Someone brought three pitchers of water from the spring. The first pitcher was poured slowly across her abdomen. Marie drew a sharp breath and her back arched. The water ran off the sides of the cart and darkened the dust. Carrel stood directly behind the cart so he could see the surface of the skin. He had his notebook open again.

The second pitcher followed. The ridges under the skin seemed to soften as the water passed over them. Marie’s breathing changed. It was still shallow, but the catch had gone. The third pitcher emptied and the sheet was lifted again. The swelling had dropped. The abdomen lay flat against the spine. No fluid came from the body. Carrel wrote the time in the margin of his page.

She asked for bread. They brought a piece from one of the stalls near the Grotto. She ate it without retching. Later she sat upright on the edge of the cart and looked at the rock face as if she had not seen it before. By evening she was able to stand with help and walk a few steps to the train that would carry the pilgrims back north. The hard wooden benches did not seem to trouble her. She slept through most of the return journey.