The French are so Cool

French politicians might have taken leave of their senses, but most of the country is not panicking

Unless it’s related to food, the French do not sweat the small stuff.

It’s a lesson I learn over and over again.

I’m sitting on a low stone wall with my friend Peta, watching a game of Pétanque. I’m drinking a glass of exceptionally cold rosé, procured from la Tour d’Oria, our local kebab place. Peta and I are pretty much the only two women we know who are not retired, vacationing, or enjoying the fruits of a trust fund or an excellent divorce settlement. We work, even in the summer, and this is our summer evening ritual – a swim, then hanging out at the boulodrome (the hilarious name for the sandy square where they play Pétanque.)

We’ve only been here a minute when Martine marches across the street, holding up her hand, a wad of paper towel pressed to the side. Martine is a traiteur, translated not as traitor, but caterer; she runs a small takeout shop specializing in local cuisine. She’s one of those tiny, fierce French women who will probably live to be 102. I’ve never seen her without her black chef’s apron or a cigarette. She’s known for her excellent paella.

Martine hands Peta a small box of butterfly strip band-aids. The doctor’s offices are all closed, she says, so she went to the pharmacy. Pharmacists in France are powerful local health advocates: they can vaccinate for a range of diseases, test for diabetes, prescribe antibiotics, identify wild mushrooms, and even pull Legos out of the nose of a toddler (boy howdy, those grandparents were so relieved.) They can treat cuts, but they’re not permitted to do sutures. Thus the little box of band-aids.

Peta asks to see the wound, and when Martine pulls away the wad of paper towel, we see her cuts are deep and thrillingly horrible, two deep crescent-shaped gashes, still bleeding.

The Man of the House is playing Pétanque, is about to take a shot, when Peta calls him over. I’m fairly certain he can sense there’s a medical emergency afoot. Rather than being annoyed at the interruption, he drops his boule in the dust and jogs over. Back in Portland, MotH worked in a hospital emergency room. He’s no stranger to putting in a stitch or two. Martine shows him her wound. He says, “oh LA,” the French equivalent of “wow” or “oh my God.”

In the States, someone would suggest fetching a car and taking Martine to a walk-in clinic, or even the ER. In France, someone might call SAMU, the French Medical Assistance Service, and a team of EMTs would arrive within minutes, at no cost. Instead, MotH hails our friend Jean-Pierre, who is also playing Pétanque. Jean-Pierre is a large animal vet. The two of them take three seconds to examine Martine’s hand, and just like that, the Pétanque game is over, and everyone troops across the street, and up the hill to our house.

MotH never travels anywhere without his First Aid kit. In the same way secretaries have been known to pilfer office supplies, when MotH worked in the ER, he helped himself to sterilized suture threads and needles, a special needle holder, surgical scissors, sterile gauze pads and antiseptic wipes. He’s been lugging this well-stocked kit around for a decade, in anticipation of just such a moment. Jean-Pierre is very impressed that MotH is equipped to perform an emergency appendectomy.        

In our garden, Jean-Pierre smooths a clean beach towel across the table. (Why is this happening outside? Because Jean-Pierre does most of his work in stables and barns?) MotH is giddy to act as scrub nurse. Martine smokes a cigarette as Jean-Pierre stitches her wounds. I still have no idea what happened to her hand, only that it happened in the kitchen. Something related to the neck of a broken wine bottle. The cause doesn’t seem to be that important. She receives ten stitches, with no anesthetic.

After Jean-Pierre is done, Martine takes a shot of whiskey. The operating theater is broken down like a movie set, and on the same table, a few minutes later, bottles of wine, bowls of nuts and olives appear. There’s no reason a little field surgery should disrupt the apéro. An American woman (okay, me) would cradle her hand, ask for Advil, revisit the whole episode, maybe enjoy being the center of the drama, would certainly ask her “doctors” about getting a tetanus shot.

Martine cannot be bothered. She’s completely over it. Just as the wine is being poured someone mentions zarzuela, a sub-species of paella. Seven fish go into the making of this Catalan fish stew and an argument erupts about which ones. (The sticking point seems to be whether or not rock fish is included.) Zarzuela is one of Martine’s specialties, so she has a lot of skin in this squabble. She leaps up from her chair. She starts hollering. She throws her hands around like an Italian. How dare anyone question her expertise!

Everyone has a phone at their elbow (face down, part of the new politesse), but no one checks it. It’s more fun, more important, to have an impassioned discussion about cuisine. I’m staring at her bandages. I’m waiting for the stitches to burst, the white gauze pad to redden with blood. But the stitches hold.