The beauty of French nurses

I was supine on the slab and a nurse was rigging me up via wires and tubes to machines and monitors. She was an exemplary old-school nurse combining human kindness with efficient manual dexterity. Had she been vaccinated against Covid, I asked her? Oh yes, of course she had, she said. And what about you, she said. Have you had the mandatory pre-treatment Covid test? ‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I had it tomorrow.’ (My automatic confusion of the French words for yesterday and tomorrow could, I suspect, be explained in psychoanalytical terms.)

Now another, younger female nurse appeared by my side. She was lovely and reminded me of a young Fanny Ardant. Whereas the older nurse was effortlessly capable of subjectivity, objectivity, sympathy and imagination, the younger woman was limited to the first category only. She jabbered euphorically at me in colloquial French. ‘Anglais,’ said the older nurse, bobbing and weaving around my head, linking diverse parts of me to her machines. ‘You are from England? Oh, I am very happy,’ said Fanny. ‘I like to speak English. Where are you from in England?’ ‘South-west,’ I said. ‘La campagne. Les vaches. La vache folle. Have you ever visited England?’ ‘No,’ she said. ‘But I hope very much to go to England one day.’ ‘You speak very good English,’ I said. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I love to speak in English.’

The older nurse said to me privately, in French: ‘In a moment, when the doctor comes in, I want you to lie on your right side as though you are composing yourself for sleep.’ She unhooked the surgical mask from around my ears and replaced it with a clear oxygen mask and asked me to take a few deep breaths to confirm that it was working.