Chapter Eleven
For two days, we cut men open, sawed bones, sewed up wounds, and ate bread, cheese, and some sort of canned meat with our bloody fingers. Sister Camilla put rubber gloves on Captain Bonaventure and set him to work flushing wounds, while his men carried out the dead and replaced them with the wounded. The less seriously injured waited in nearby cells for an open table.
We took turns catching short naps on the floor. At times, the cry of a man under the knife would wake us. We’d wolf down chunks of bread and cheese, gulp a swallow of wine, and go back to work with a knife, saw, or needle. It was all the same after a while; we ran on automatic, falling into a routine we could almost perform with our eyes closed, and sometimes I thought we did just that.
Finally, after the la
