Marine - a friend in nature

Marine - in french, a name meaning 'from the sea'.

Last Thursday I returned from France, almost three weeks later than planned, thanks to an unscheduled sojourn (two actually) in the french health care system. I left behind one gallbladder, a string of nasty infections and an experience that was both frightening and uplifting in equal parts. While its not something I'd want to repeat, there are memories of my time there that I will carry with me - and I would not want to change...

In saying this, I don't mean the treatment, which was first class and no doubt swifter than our NHS would have provided. The efficiency of the various scans, the transfer to Lyon, the endoscopy and operation were impressive, if somewhat of a blur.  To be alone in a foreign hospital, with limited language and something clearly very wrong, requires putting your trust in others and letting them get on with the job. They were, I'm delighted to say, magnificent.

But post-op recovery requires something different. For when there is action there is concentration and focus;  unlike the long days and nights, alone in a room, where one's mind wanders and spirals, plotting a course through the mental whirlpools of Charybdis and Scylla. It's at times like like these that you need not so much a doctor, as a friend.

Which is where Marine fits into this story. 

There were many nurses in the ward, all of them kind and helpful, but she was the most jolly and the one who asked the most questions — not about my pain, but about me as a person and later about our shared passion for the outdoors. It began, in broken English, with her mention of going for a ski randonee that weekend — or ski mountaineering as I said we would call it in the UK.  She'd been brought up in Bellevaux, she said, an off the tourist track village that she was delighted I knew well, nestling as it does, under the Roc d'Enfer and Pointe de Chalune. 

And from here on, we were off...  every day thereafter, talking of the mountains and what they mean and why they're so special. I mentioned that I'd once snowshoed to the remote refuge de chavanne above her village in the winter. 'So you must know Claudius', she replied' he's a legend!'  Which indeed he is, living there alone, making copious flagons of wine and welcoming walkers and skiers all year round.  

I showed her photos of our trip and she shared more her own: a gallery of peaks and cols and cloud inversions that make this corner of the haute-savoie such a wonderful place. Later she asked about my writing and kayaking and I learned she started skiing and climbing before going to school. I could go on here, but the details don't matter, except between us in authenticating our shared passion and confirming it was something deeper than the ephemeral highs of stereotypical thrill seekers.   

Of course, I'm well aware that it's easy to romanticise a supposed friendship in times of stress. Indeed, what middle aged man would not be delighted with the attention of a young and pretty nurse?  For all I know she may have forgotten our conversations already... But truly, I don't believe that's what was going on here - and even if it were, it's not relevant to my central point .

Which is that in making a mutual connection to place and nature, she intuitively grasped that this was what I most needed to recover.  And if nothing else she understood that nursing is about more than dressings and injections. Two days before I left the ward I had a relapse in confidence and it was Marine who spotted it first — and who spoke to me thereafter that day not of the physical symptoms but of the snowfall in the hills of the Chablais, and of her friend skinning that morning up the Col de Chalune.  

Don't worry, be happy... she sang, every time she came to my room... and whatever you do, don't change Mark! You're the best and most intersting patient on my sector, she said — and true or not, it made me smile again. 

So don't you change either Marine. 

Your concern and love of nature will stay with me long after my body has healed and my time in a french hospital is but a story from the past.  This matters, and so much more than we allow ourselves to think.  

Meanwhile,  I wonder if one day we might meet again?  

If we do, I hope its on the hills, with my family beside me, so they can thank you too...  Perhaps we will cross paths on slopes, or walking on the Nifflon d'en Haut, the ridge which separates your house from mine.... or, even better, at the refuge we talked about in Ubine, that's owned by Les Amis de la Nature..  

How fitting would that be?