Cherishing the Captain (Men at Arms Book 2)

by Elise Marion

  And yet, having Sylvia near enough to touch—near enough for her to touch him—had made Gideon aware of how dire his future looked. The world around him had been dimmed, losing much of its joy, color, and light. Sylvia was slowly reminding him what it was like to taste the things he’d been missing—the heady rush of making love, the simple intimacy of a kiss, the comfort of letting someone get close to him. No matter how many times he told himself he must leave Sylvia again for her own good, he couldn’t stop his heart from rebelling against the notion.

  It had been easier to hold fast to his noble intentions when he didn’t have to look at her every day, when he had gone nearly two years without touching or tasting her. But now … now, everything had changed. She had seen him at his worse that night in the drawing room, was aware of just how much war had changed him. His sweet, vibrant wife wasn’t daunted by these revelations. If anything, they seemed to have made her more determined. If someone would have told Gideon that his affliction wouldn’t cause her to stop loving him—that instead, they would make her love for him truer, stronger, sweeter—he would never have believed it. Yet, she had stood in this room and begged him to try to find a way for them to be together. She’d reminded him that one night in Scotland, they had lain in bed and whispered to one another about the children they would someday have, the life they would enjoy.

  She could be with child after last night, a prospect that had gone a long way toward his decision to agree to Dr. Scudder’s methods. Despite his assertions, he could never send his wife and child away, providing for them with monthly bank drafts and distant maintenance. He’d dreamed of being a father even before meeting Sylvia, as it had always been his wish to be different than his own sire. Not that his father had been horrible to him. The man was simply cold and uncompromising, and had imposed strenuous expectations that Gideon never felt he could live up to. He’d vowed long ago to be different as a papa. He would be doting and affectionate and playful. He would give his children the room to grow and discover their own places in the world, rather than dictate to them what that should be.

  How could he do any of that if he was terrified of being a danger to them?

  So, here he was, speaking of the worst day of his life for the first time in a very long while, and trying to remain in his right mind while doing so.

  “Go on,” Dr. Scudder prodded.

  Running a hand over his jaw, Gideon slouched in his chair and continued. “It didn’t feel right from the moment I heard the command. But, what else could I do? Following orders without question had been drilled into me since before I’d even taken up my commission. My father ensured I knew what that meant from a young age. The lives of my myself and my men depended on my ability to not only accept those orders and follow them, but to lead others in my wake, to bolster them even when I felt all hope was lost. So, when the order came down, I pushed my own reservations and confusion aside, and I … I led my men down into that valley.”

  His chest rose and fell more rapidly now, his hands shaking in his lap as the world around him seemed to shrink. Darkness encroached on the edges of his vision, but he blinked and shook his head, determined not to lose himself to the crushing panic inspired by his memories. He needed to do this. Getting through the first painful step was his only choice if he wanted to make any sort of life with Sylvia.

  “It was like charging into a furnace … if that furnace were filled with gunpowder and strewn with dismembered body parts. Cannon and rifle fire came at us in waves from three sides, like a never-ending tide. I held my breath between each volley, certain the next wave would be the one to end me. I could hardly see for all the smoke covering the battlefield, all the blood splattering my face from … from the men who—”

  His throat seized up, and he found himself momentarily unable to speak. He opened and closed his mouth several times, but only a ragged wheeze emitted from his chest. Gideon’s eye watered, but he blinked back the sting of tears and did his best to compose himself.

  Dr. Scudder’s mouth went tight at the corners and his eyebrows drew sympathetically together, but he remained as silent as ever.

  Sucking in a sharp breath, Gideon forced his next words out, his fingernails digging into his thighs as he fought to remain grounded in some way.

  “Through the smoke, the only sights I could make out were carnage. Heads being blown clean off bodies that stayed in their saddles for several yards as the horses fled for their lives. Blood and gore showered me from head to toe, and I … I even glanced down to find a man’s intestines strewn over my lap. The memory often makes me feel ill, though I cannot remember being sick at the time. My senses were heightened, but the death, the blood, the carnage … I experienced it all with a sense of detachment I can make no sense of. It was as if I wasn’t present, but was merely a specter passing through the moment.”

  “That is a common phenomenon,” Dr. Scudder offered by way of reassurance. “When the body is faced with the need to either flee for its life or fight for it, there is an increased awareness of sights and smells, but a decrease in feelings such as pain or grief. Those things make themselves apparent after the fact. I’ve seen men fight battles with wounds so grievous they shouldn’t have been able to keep on their feet. But they did … until the fighting ended and they stood still long enough for their bodies to register the enormity of their wounds. Then, they would succumb.”

  Gideon nodded, realizing now that he’d witnessed the same thing. Aside from the men who fell in those first few waves were those who had somehow found the strength to fight despite missing limbs or fatal wounds. He had seen the desperation in their eyes as they had looked to him, and a bitter taste crept into his mouth at the reminder of how he had let them down. He’d failed his men as he had been failed by his superiors—those who had sent the Light Brigade into that valley without first ensuring the intelligence was accurate.

  His nails dug deeper into his thighs, and he ground his teeth, fury overwhelming him along with the heavy sense of loss.

  “The Heavy Brigade were to bring up the rear and have our backs, but … Lord Lucan, the blighter … when he saw the Light Brigade overwhelmed by the Russian forces, he pulled them back and left us to fend for ourselves. He and the other commanders … they used us for cannon fodder, abandoned us in that valley to die like animals.”

  “You did what we were all trained to do, Captain. You followed orders to the best of your ability.”

  Gideon shook his head, the motion jerky and spasmodic as he fought to keep control of his body. The fury and anguish were a volatile mixture in his gut, making him feel as if he’d be sick all over the expensive rug.

  “It was all I could do to rally the men left standing, while trying to keep my own head on my shoulders. Lieutenant Davies was at my side one moment … the next he was gone, thrown from his horse. I didn’t see him again until we found one another at Scutari Hospital.”

  “The Lieutenant’s wound was quite grievous, I’ve heard. But what of yours? How did it happen, Captain?”

  Gideon absently ran a fingertip over his right eyebrow, encountering the small, puckered scars riddling that side of his face. They’d faded over time, and most people could not see them unless they stood close—the small pockmarks sprinkled over his brow and jaw. His eye-patch obscured the worst of the wreckage.

  “It was cannister shot from one of the cannons. I cannot be certain, but it’s the only artillery I can think of that would cause a scattering of wounds like this. There are more of them along my neck, shoulder, and arm on the same side. I think … had I been any closer to the flank cannons, my head might have been blown clean off. As it was, the distance was enough to slow the trajectory by the time the fragments found me. I was thrown from my horse, and the entire world went dark. I lay on the ground, struggling to breathe, thinking I had been completely blinded. I felt no pain then, only a clawing panic in my gut that something had gone terribly wrong. I couldn’t see … not a thing, not at all.”

  He huffed
a laugh, shaking his head in disbelief as he thought back to the moment he’d thought his sight lost forever.

  “I tried to blink, and that was when I felt the pain—in my right eye only. It felt as if a shard of glass had embedded itself as deep as my brain. But then the blackness cleared on one side, and become crimson. It was blood. It had splattered me so heavily it had obscured the vision of my left eye. I used my sleeve to clear it, then … tried to touch the other eye … and nearly lost consciousness from the agony. A shard of metal … I could feel it protruding from my eye. I found several other bits of shrapnel embedded in my face. The world itself seemed to have tilted on its side. I couldn’t walk, it seemed. My feet were unsteady, as if the ground had tipped. I was dizzy, disoriented. I heard the command to retreat, for it was clear the battle had been lost. But, when I turned to flee along with the others, my legs gave out and I …”

  The cloying panic rose up in him again, and his heart began to beat so hard Gideon was surprised it didn’t leap right out of his chest. Sweat broke out along his brow. He could hardly breathe, and he couldn’t see through the thick haze of smoke suddenly clouding this vision, or the streaks of blood leaking into his good eye.

  “Captain Whitlock.”

  Dr. Scudder’s voice blasted through the chaos created by his mind like a lightning strike, reaching out to him with confidence and reassurance.

  “Are you still with me, Captain?”

  Gideon gave his head a slow shake, his throat burning with every inhalation, chest constricting as if his heart were gripped in a vise.

  “No,” he whispered, his voice low and rasping. “I’m falling, clawing at the ground … I cannot stand up.”

  “Why can’t you stand?”

  “Bodies,” he choked out as a hot tear splashed his left cheek. “One of them under me, tripped me … another falling on top of me. A hand grabbing my sleeve. Someone’s screaming … I think he wants me to help him, but I can’t. I can’t breathe, or move, or think. The cannons are blasting … the rifles … I hear the balls flying over my head. I have to run … I won’t survive if I can’t stand and run, but I can’t … I can’t … I can’t.”

  “You were crushed,” Dr. Scudder stated, his voice coming at him as if through a pane of glass. “In the retreat.”

  “I’m trying to get out, but the others are running over me, trampling me … pushing me into the dirt and the blood. The dying man is still clinging to me … he’s weeping like a baby … he doesn’t want to die. I don’t want to die either, but I can’t get out.”

  “But you did get out, Captain. You’re here with me now. It’s over … you survived.”

  Gideon heard a sound—something like the growl of a wounded animal mixed with a sob of despair. It had come from him.

  “I’m still there, Doctor. I never got out. Every time someone touches me, grabs my sleeve … when I’m in tight spaces, or when I feel trapped … I’m there all over again. I still can’t get out.”

  “Yes you can,” the doctor insisted, his voice sounding closer now. “Look at me, Captain.”

  Gideon blinked, sending another stream of tears down one side of his face. His other eye was unresponsive. Dry and blind, its grotesque deformity hidden from the world behind a patch of cloth.

  His vision was clearer now as Dr. Scudder face came into focus, sympathetic and strained. He knelt before Gideon, but kept his hands in plain sight as if to announce he had no intention of laying one on him. And thank God for that, because he didn’t know what he would do if someone touched him right now. He was too raw, the cause of his trauma too close to the surface of his skin.

  “You did get out,” the doctor said, his tone firm and resolute. “Tell me how.”

  “I … someone pulled me out. To this day I do not know who it was. He must have seen my hand clawing between the tangle of bodies. He pulled and pulled … so hard I thought he’d rip my arm off. But I wouldn’t let go of his hand. I had to get free. He yanked me loose and threw me over his shoulder, and I … the other man, the dying man … I didn’t go back for him. I let the other soldier carry me away and left that man to die.”

  “You couldn’t have saved him. You said yourself he was already dying.”

  Gideon nodded. “A rifle ball to the gut. He was bleeding out slowly. If the wound didn’t take him, the conditions at Scutari would have.”

  “It is common for officers to endure the burden of the losses of their men. You feel it was your job to save them all, as if you failed the ones who died.”

  “I failed them all, not just the ones we left behind.”

  “No. The second the order was misinterpreted, all your fates were sealed. It is difficult to let yourself believe, but it is the truth. There was nothing you could have done to control it—not the charge, the resulting attack, your injury, or the losses of your men. Not even the pile of bodies and running feet trampling you into the ground.”

  Gideon recoiled from the way those last words made him feel, and the memory of being buried alive while men lay dying around him. The helplessness of that day had followed him ever since, and he couldn’t seem to shake it off.

  Dr. Scudder stood, looking thoughtfully at Gideon as he stroked his chin. “It is clear to me that aside from suffering the guilt of having survived when so many others died, you also struggle with lack of control over your circumstances. The loss of your eye, the feeling of literally being buried alive, being unable to pull away from the dying man … all of it has altered your mind into a state of high awareness. If you are ready for attack at any time, you cannot be caught unaware. If you shun being touched, no one can make you feel helpless again. You never saw any of it coming, and I think it has generated a sort of anxiousness in you. It is responsible for your inability to sleep, your reaction to touch.”

  It made sense, though Gideon had never thought of it that way. All he knew was that he had awakened in Scutari Hospital shaking, in a cold sweat, and terrified for the nurses to touch him to even tend his wounds. The first weeks of his recovery were spent under the stupor produced by laudanum, for without the ministrations of the nurses, he might have been lost to infection.

  “Losing your sight changed everything,” Dr. Scudder continued. “The way you see, but also the way you walk, judge distance, even bend to pick things up. But you learned to control your body within its new limitations, to compensate for what you lost physically. You could not regain your lost sight, so you learned to live without it.”

  “Yes. I spent months learning how to judge the distance between my mouth and a spoon, my hand and any surface. I walked into so many doors, I thought I’d never be able to leave my home ever again.”

  “But you did leave. You learned to clear doorways, and eat without sloshing your soup. I couldn’t help but observe you at dinner the other night and was impressed by how easy you made it all look. You’ve learned to compensate well for your physical injury. Now, you will have to learn to do so for the injury done to your mind … for that is exactly what has happened here. Many of my fellow alienists have yet to let go of the old ways of thought, and see illness of the mind as a moral failing on the part of the patient. But that simply isn’t true. I’ve seen the purest of souls go mad in response to trauma, loss, and grief. These are powerful forces that alter our lives in the worst of ways. Mankind is strong, but we are not indestructible.”

  “Compensate,” Gideon echoed, swiping away the last of his tears with a sniffle. “I wouldn’t know how to begin to do that. Thus far, it has been easier to avoid touch unless I initiate it, and do my best not to let myself be caught unaware.”

  Dr. Scudder smiled for the first time, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “That is why I am here, Captain. Like your eye, this fear of touch might always be a part of you. I cannot promise to heal you of it, but I can help you learn to live with it in a way that doesn’t force you to grow old alone. Nurse Whitlock is a fine woman, and she is quite determined to have her husband back. Shall we see what we can do about gi
ving her that?”

  Gideon couldn’t help a smile of his own at the thought of Sylvia, though it was weak at best. He felt exhausted and wrung dry after baring his darkest memories and thoughts. Yet, as haggard as he felt now, there was a hint of something else beneath it all—a lightness, a freedom. There was still the fear that he was beyond repair, and that Sylvia might have gotten her hopes up for nothing. However, there was also hope. It had begun to grow, and now he couldn’t fight it off now, even if he wanted to.

  But, he didn’t want to. He needed to fight, not only for his life, but for his love. He longed for a true marriage with Sylvia, and knew he wasn’t free to have that until he did whatever he could to ensure the safety of her or any potential children.

  “Yes,” he replied. “I am ready.”

  Chapter 11

  Weeks passed with Sylvia dedicating most of her time to her patients, much to her chagrin. She would rather be with Gideon, wanting to be present for every moment of his treatment with Dr. Scudder. However, her commitment to her work could not be shunned. As well, she was still very much driven by the need to be of help to men like her husband. Even now that he was back in her life, she saw Gideon in every one of the soldiers she treated each day. Now that she’d witnessed the true extent of her husband’s trauma, she wanted to help these men more than ever.

  So, she spent her days tending their healing wounds, ensuring they ate hearty meals and that their chambers were kept clean and sterile. She read to them, talked with them, and even played card games with a few. More had begun to arrive, filling the empty rooms of the patients’ ward and creating a full day’s work for the staff. Maxwell and Josephine came nearly every day to visit patients and ensure the staff had everything they needed—though Sylvia didn’t think that would go on much longer. Josephine’s belly seemed to swell more by the day, and it wouldn’t be long before her babe was born.