by James R Benn
No, there hadn’t been a window, he was sure of it. Maybe when they’d opened the doors and slid him in…was there a window on the rear door? Maybe, a half-moon sort of thing, the glass caked over with ice. Hard to tell when your chest is sticky with your own blood and your clothes are cut and ripped half off your body, thick white compress bandages taped down tight. Wait, my arm wrapped tight against my side, more compress bandages stuffed between my arm and ribs. Am I hurt? Was there an explosion? The memory of a white-hot crack plays in his head, a vivid sensation of being lifted up and thrown by the force of a blast, floating in air, suspended in bits of snow, dirt, blood and shrapnel. Then, nothing.
He tries to calm down, but his breathing increases, rapid, shallow breaths. He can’t feel any sticky wetness on his skin. Good, he isn’t bleeding, or at least not enough to feel. The person inside the ambulance is saying something, to him or maybe to someone else. Yelling. The medic spoke softly, said take it easy buddy, you’re halfway home, hang on. Hang on.
Sulfa. The medic sprinkling sulfa on his chest, white powder that he tosses everywhere, like dusting a strawberry cake with confectioners’ sugar. He can see the scissors in the medic’s hand, shiny and bright against the brown, dirty uniform. One end of a long tattered shoelace tied around the medic’s wrist, the other around the scissors. A guy who likes his tools close at hand. He cuts and cuts, through jacket and sweater, shirts and wool underwear, snipping layers of cloth away as he searches for the boundaries of the wound. He can see the medic’s face, crystal clear, his eyes widening as he cuts loose the final section, unable to hide his astonishment that this G.I. is still alive. He sees the bags under the medic’s eyes, sad sagging pouches above sparse stubble. He’s just a kid, and he uses a lot of sulfa.
He feels cold. The damp sheet chills his skin and he wonders if the guy in the yellow raincoat has cut his clothes away. He feels around with his hands, as far as they can reach. He finds fabric and rubs it between thumb and forefinger. It feels like his pants, the trousers he put on this morning…where? Where’s his wallet? He can’t reach his rear pocket, can’t feel the pressure of the leather wallet against his hip. Bastards will probably steal it at the hospital. They steal everything. Who was that guy? Driscoll, maybe, or was it Dawson? That sergeant in the Heavy Weapons Platoon, big gambler, always the first guy to get a card game going or throw the dice. One night, outside Dinant, he won a thousand bucks at craps, biggest pot he had ever seen. He stuffs the dough in all his pockets, so he won’t lose it. Next day, a Kraut 88 hits his halftrack. Dawson…yeah that was it, we called him Daws…he’s hit bad, shrapnel everywhere, left hand gone. So Daws wakes up in an evac hospital, minus one hand and a thousand smackers. Everything gone but his dogtags. No one knows anything about a thousand bucks, must’ve gotten thrown out with the uniform when he came in. Yeah, sure.
Feeling a thump, he looks around. He’s outside now, when did that happen? He’s on a stretcher being wheeled into the hospital, the wheels clattering against concrete. Where was Daws? Last time he saw him he was in a hospital, his torso, face and one arm wrapped in thick bandages. He was yelling at an orderly, calling him a coward and a fucking thief. Seems like he cared more about losing the money than being alive after playing catch with an 88. But then again, a thousand bucks is real money, a fortune. Where is this place anyway?
The room is bright, white, and noisy. All he sees is the ceiling, white tiles with tiny holes. Someone bumps against his stretcher, mumbles an apology, and moves on. The guy in the yellow raincoat is gone, and no one is tending to him. He’s in hallway, parked up against a wall, listening to people, doctors, nurses, orderlies, all walking hurriedly by, talking, some laughing, no one paying him any mind. Why am I here, dammit? Where’s Addy, who’s looking after her? Had he forgotten all about her? Addy. Her name sounds odd in his mind as he says it, as if it carries with it some secret he isn’t meant to yet know.
Thinking about Addy, he wonders why he’s so worried. She can take care of herself, can’t she? I’m the one stuck in this hallway, tied down. Why am I tied down? Where is she? He tries to form the words, ask someone, but nothing comes out. It’s as hard to open his mouth and form words as it is to lift his arm from under the straps that hold it in place.
Am I gonna make it? He hears himself ask the question, through gritted teeth and the dull pain thumping against the morphine the medic gave him. Above him, the white ceiling tiles are dark, dingy plaster, cracked and crumbling. He’s in a hallway, the stone walls gray and the ceiling high above him, like in a church. Explosions sound outside, but far enough away that no one dives for cover. Moans drift up around him and he tries to look around, pain rocketing up through the drugs whenever he moves. A doctor, a real doctor by his insignia, not a medic, pulls his bandages away. A nurse takes him by the hand and gently pulls his arm away from his bloody side. She’s small and slight, the G.I. helmet too large on her head, tipping to one side. She wears thick gloves with the fingers cut off, working with them on. She looks tired, like the medic, bags under sad, weary eyes.
“Course you are, soldier. We’re going to take real good care of you. What’s your name?”
The doctor pulls the last of the bandages away and drops them to the floor. He peers into the wound, then runs his eyes over the rest of the litters stacked up in the hallway. Another explosion booms outside, close this time, and the doctor flinches.
“What’s your name, soldier?” the doctor asks.
“I…it’s….I” He can’t say it.
“Shock ward,” the doctor says to the nurse, after the hesitation. His voice sounds almost firm, a doctor’s certainty mixed with fear and resignation.
“Tell us your name, soldier,” the nurse says, laying her hand on the doctor’s arm without looking at him. The look in her eyes tells him this is very important, and the look in the doctor’s eyes says he doesn’t much like being held up by a nurse. He understands the shock ward can’t be a good place to be sent. “You know your own name, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am, sure I do. Am I gonna make it?”
“Tell us your goddamn name, that’s an order,” says the doctor, irritation rising in his rushed, hard tone.
“It’s Brock. Clay Brock.”
“Prep for surgery,” the doctor says, moving off to the next litter.
“You’re going to make it now, Clay Brock, don’t you worry. You did just fine,” she said with a smile that seemed aimed straight at him. She gave him a wink and turned away. Wisps of dark brown hair float out from under the helmet as her voice shifts from soft and soothing to commanding. “Orderly! Prep.”
“Mr. Brock? Can you hear me, Mr. Brock?” He looked up, half-opening his eyes against the bright lights and white walls. The nurse was dressed in green pastel scrubs, and held a clipboard in her hands.
“Are you Mr. Brock?” She said this slowly and loudly. He nodded his head, and wished he could speak, tell her how funny it was that her grandma had just asked him the same question a minute ago. She wore green too, but not this bright stuff. Dirty green, covered by a brown sweater with holes worn at the elbow. It felt impossible, and yet so real, so certain.
“Gooood,” she said as she made a note on the chart. “Can you say something for me, Mr. Brock?” She spoke in a simple, singsong voice. He wished the other nurse would come back, the one who knew how to work the doctor and who had time for a smile. She’d talked to him as if he were a real man, not a child.
“No? You can’t talk, Mr. Brock?” She tilted her head, as if cooing over a baby. Or was she watching him, cataloging his every twitch and response to her?
He fought to send the words flowing out of his mouth. They swirled around in his head. He had so much to say, the story of his life, the story that he had always struggled to keep within himself. Mother, father, war, death, wife, child, work, deception, lies, illness and shame, all these things had been tamped down, folded and refolded on themselves until they laid layered in his gut, secret stacked upon secret, l
ie upon lie. Now, now that he couldn’t speak, they clamored to get out, to unfold before this stranger, to seek the light of day. Was this silence a gift, or a joke?
Hell, why should he even bother to speak? What if he could blurt it all out, right here and right now? Tell this foolish girl the truth, tell the stories as they really happened? Maybe that other nurse could’ve taken it and stood her ground, but not Miss Sunshine here. She’d either burst into tears or give him an injection, a needle full of silence.
He knew he was getting lost in his thoughts. Something gnawed at the back of his mind, something important. Someone. A distant part of him knew something was very wrong. He had to focus, try to speak. He opened his mouth and tried to speak the name that wouldn’t quite come to him.
“Ah…ah…” The words weren’t there, not even his own wife’s sweet name. Instead, it jammed up in his throat, holding back all the other words he might have spoken in that moment. It was all too much so he wept, eyes clenched shut, leaking tears as he shook his head back and forth, the only motion left to him, the only thing he was capable of controlling in his entire life. Miss Sunshine patted his hand, and walked away.
They moved him. They prodded him, stuck him, pressing cold metal against his white, paper-thin skin. Someone moved his feet and asked him questions he couldn’t understand. Then they stuck pins in his feet and asked him more questions. It didn’t hurt much, and when he made a face at them they stopped. A woman in pink scrubs held up her finger, asking him to follow it as she moved it left and right. She told him he did fine and then wrote on her clipboard. It took a long time, longer than it should’ve taken to say he did fine. He could feel them removing his pants, underwear and socks. For a few seconds he was back with the medic, snipping and cutting away at his clothes. He worried about his wallet, then he worried about the .45 automatic he’d brought in. They were sure to steal it. Or maybe court-martial him for having an officer’s sidearm. No weapons allowed, the nurse had told him. Everything gets stored away. Good policy, he told her, I should know. But please, take this .45, hide it, I have to have it back, I have to—it belonged to—he couldn’t explain it, and finally begged, please, don’t let an officer take it or an orderly steal it, it’s a souvenir, a real important souvenir. She took it, hiding it under her coat, winking at him as she hurried away, one hand steadying the helmet on her head, the other tucked into her coat, his souvenir held against her breast.
He was being carried along on a conveyor belt, exposed more and more each step of the way, made less a man than a diagnosis, something to be processed until they ran out of tests. Then they covered him with a washed-out snippet of cloth, leaving him alone, his flaccid ass hanging out the open back.
He ended up being hoisted onto another bed. No, these weren’t beds, there’d be no sleeping here, and moved into a small room with a large glass window. Cold vinyl and thin foam pressed against his back, head and heels. He was on a narrow gurney, and Miss Sunshine was suddenly there, holding his hand. Where did she come from?
She turned to him, lowering her face so she could speak directly to him, letting him see her lips move, helping him to focus on what she was saying. “It wouldn’t be much longer. Just a few more tests.” She smiled and patted his hand.
“Ad….” The sound popped out of his mouth, surprising both of them. He tried again, but could only grunt “ah….ah”
“That’s okay, Mr. Brock, don’t try too hard. Let it happen by itself.” She gripped his hand, and he felt the strength in her soft, warm hand.
She let go and stuck her head out the door, speaking to someone on the other side of the large window. It was then he realized he wasn’t tied down anymore. He had managed half a word, and they’d untied him. Best news since when? Since what? He still couldn’t remember much about the car. Wait. Addy. Addy.
A wave of sadness crashed over him. He could feel it on his body, in it, like at the beach, standing in three feet of water and letting a big rolling wave smack you dead on. It knocked you hard, pulled your feet out from under you, and you felt it. Addy. Her stroke. He hadn’t remembered her stroke at all, hadn’t remembered she was dead.
Now the realization rushed back, and the memory of her smiling face was gone, an illusion crushed by death. She wouldn’t rush to his side. She wouldn’t even drag one leg behind her, then pull it along behind her, half a smile bright enough to light his day. It was as if it had all just happened, this realization, this memory, this central truth of his life, her illness, her death. He felt the agony she must have felt every day, every morning as she moved painfully, alone, to prepare herself, until that last morning.
He felt guilty again, as if he had been dreaming about another woman, Addy whole again, Addy alive. He grabbed the edge of the gurney and tried to push himself up. He swung one leg off, then pushed again.
He stood for a second, amazed that he was upright. Both hands were on the gurney, steadying himself. The room began to rock, and it seemed like the wall in front of him tilted up to the left. He gripped the gurney tighter but it didn’t help. He started falling, but everything was going in the wrong direction and he couldn’t tell where the floor was.
“Mr. Brock!” He felt hands under his armpits, pulling him up. He tried to steady his feet, keep them flat on the floor and balanced. Another larger and stronger set of hands joined Miss Sunshine’s and they got him back up, seated on the gurney, his skinny legs bare and dangling over the edge.
“Addy.” he managed. “She’s gone.”
Miss Sunshine nodded.
“Adelaide, is that your wife? Addy, you call her?” She watched his eyes very carefully as she asked him questions. Clay nodded as he looked at her. She had dark hair and very blue eyes that he hadn’t noticed before. He felt an odd change ripple through his body, as if a veil of thin gauze had been drawn away, and suddenly he could see and understand things more clearly.
“Yes. Addy.”
“Your voice is coming back.”
“I tried—”
“Shhh,” she said, “don’t try too much. It’ll come back naturally. I could tell you were trying hard to speak before.”
Clay noticed she was holding his hand, cupping it in both of hers. It felt nice.
“I forgot she was gone. Dead. Then it came back.”
“I’m so sorry, but it’s not unusual.” She let go of Clay’s hand and gathered up the sheet that had fallen to the floor. She arranged it around Clay’s gown, covering his legs and the rest of the skin bared by the flimsy gown.
“It’s a little chilly in here,” she said, by way of explanation. Clay liked how she covered for his embarrassment, or lack of it, actually.
“Do you remember what happened to you?”
Clay ignored her question, shook his head. How could he explain it?
“I remembered Addy, but I forgot her stroke, and thought she was still alive. It came back to me. It had gone right out of my mind.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, patting his hand.
“You said Adelaide. Did you know her?” Clay asked, tears creeping out onto his cheeks.
“Yes, I did. She was my patient.”
Curiosity crept into his mind, replacing some of the sadness, as he wondered who this young woman was. Did he know her?
“Wait,” Clay said. “If you knew Addy, why did you ask me if she was my wife? You knew that already.”
“Ah, yes, Mr. Brock,” she said. “I did know that. The trick was, did you?” She said it with a satisfied smile, patting his hand again, and Clay knew he had passed some sort of test, passed through something he couldn’t yet understand.
“I was pretty confused for a while,” Clay said. “Am I going to be okay?” The words echoed in his head, and he felt the great distance from the last time he had asked, am I gonna make it? The answer wasn’t quite as important this time as it had been the last. She picked up a chart and read through it, making a quick note, and putting it down before answering him.
“Yes, for now, you are. Y
ou’ve had a transient ischemic attack. Do you know what that is?”
“No idea. You’re not a nurse, are you?”
“No. Would you rather have a male doctor, Mr. Brock?”
“No, no. Don’t get the wrong idea. It’s just that I was thinking, or dreaming, about a nurse from a long time ago. Then I woke up, and there you were. I just assumed—”
“How long ago?”
“Another century,” Clay said, his hand moving to his wound without even thinking about it. He rubbed the scar tissue near his neck, then dropped his hand, embarrassed.
“May I?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but held down the sheet and lifted his gown to look at the scar on his right side. She moved her fingers along it, pressing it, moving out from it along his ribs. She lowered the gown.
“Not a bad job, but obviously rushed. They dealt with the essentials, but dispensed with the finishing touches. It must have been done under terrible conditions.”
“There was a long line behind me, I know that much.”
“Korea, or World War Two?”
“1945. Germany, or damn close to it. Who are you, anyway?”
“Emily Krause. I’m Addy’s geriatrician. I saw your name when you were brought in. Glad to meet you, Mr. Brock.” She stuck out her hand and Clay shook it.
Well I’ll be damned. Miss Sunshine sure did have a way about her.
“She never mentioned you.”
“I’m new on staff, they brought me a few months ago to consult with Addy’s physical therapist. I was so sorry to hear about her. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a different doctor?”
“No, you’ll do. I like a young person who knows those wars even happened.”
“It wasn’t hard in my family. My grandfather never came home from the war. He went down with a sub in the Pacific. Grandma still has his picture on the mantle, in his dress blues. I dust it off for her every time I visit.”
Clay looked at this young woman. She wasn’t quite as young as he first thought. There were a few lines around the eyes, the softness and smoothness of her twenties behind her. There was a lot he had missed, but he wasn’t thinking straight, he knew that much. He felt a sudden admiration for her, her steadfastness with her grandmother and the remembrance of her grandfather. Not the least that she voluntarily tended to the ancient and elderly.