by Terri Meeker
Sam had to face it. If there was a way to explain things to Lily, it completely eluded him.
After supper on the second day following his seizure, the whole hopeless situation was getting to him. He felt restless to the point of bursting. The damned restraints rubbed his skin raw and were a constant reminder of his new, quasi-lunatic status.
With little choice to do anything else, Sam watched as a few of the ambulatory patients paced the aisles, conversing amongst themselves. It was a nightly tradition after supper, a New Bedlam version of taking an evening stroll.
As they milled past, no one stopped to talk with him. He supposed being tied down to his bed was not terribly conducive to idle chatter.
After a time of watching the men file past his bed, he noticed one fellow in particular. He was a very tall man, early thirties, with a long handlebar mustache. Each time he limped by Sam’s bed, he would pause, ever so slightly, and turn to look at Sam. He wouldn’t speak, just look at him, then limp off to make another circuit. It was unnerving.
After his fifth loop by his bed, Sam could stand it no longer. Unable to raise his hand in greeting, he gave the man a very distinctive nod.
The fellow seemed startled at first, and it took him a moment to recover and raise his hand in reply.
“Nice night for a walk.” Sam decided to go with something as banal as possible.
“It is,” the soldier nodded.
“I must ask,” Sam said, “do I know you?”
“I’m not sure.” The man fiddled with his mustache. Rather than approach Sam’s bed, where they could have a normal conversation, he lingered in the aisle so Sam had to crane his neck about to see him.
“Perhaps we shared a trench at some point. Captain Sam Dwight, with the Thirty-second, at your service.”
“Lieutenant Colin Daly. I’m with the Fusiliers.”
“Ah, you’ve just seen a bit of action at Pozières, haven’t you?” Sam had likely taken his most recent trip to that very spot. He swallowed and forced back his excitement. He looked enough of a lunatic being chained to his bed and the last thing he could afford would be to spook the man.
Daly nodded his confirmation. “Aye, I’m with the Faughs.” He continued to watch Sam carefully, like a cat sizing up an unfamiliar dog.
Sam tried another approach. “Inky Bill has quite the reputation on the battlefield.” A man couldn’t go wrong saying something kind about a soldier’s commanding officer.
Daly laughed nervously, but gave nothing else away.
“I’ll be honest, Lieutenant Daly, I don’t recollect meeting you but you appear to know me, somehow.” When the man didn’t respond, Sam pressed on. “Do you know me? Have you seen me before?”
Daly tilted his head toward Sam as he continued to twist his mustache. “Might be that you look familiar.”
Sam waited, biting his tongue—trying not to frighten the man away.
Daly rubbed his hand across his face, then tilted his head toward Sam. “Might have been I saw you at action at Pozières, just two days back. Could that have been so?”
Since it was impossible for Sam to answer the question honestly, instead he asked one of his own. “What did you see me doing?”
The man nodded, keeping his eyes trained on Sam. “I thought I saw you with O’Reilly.”
“O’Reilly?” Sam struggled to keep his voice calm.
“My corporal. He was in a bad way and we were going to come back for him with the second wave of ambulances. I thought I saw you…might have seen you with him.”
“Is O’Reilly all right?” Sam struggled to sit up in bed. “I’d like to talk to him.”
Daly bit his bottom lip. “Don’t rightly know what happened to him. Soon as I got to the field hospital, the Jerry pillbox started firing again. I haven’t seen O’Reilly since.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sam said.
Daly tugged on his mustache. “Just before the machine guns opened up, I looked back at him and that was when it happened. Right queer it was. A fellow dressed up in hospital blues reaching out to give O’Reilly a hand up. There was a strange flash, a mortar round I suppose, and when the light got back to normal, you were gone.”
After a few moments of silence, he took a step toward Sam. “So was it you that helped O’Reilly?”
“I…I have a head injury,” Sam said. “Seizures. It’s why they’ve got me trussed up here like a Christmas goose. The details in my head are a little unclear, but I’d like to think I helped him.”
Daly nodded. He watched Sam, cautiously, for a few moments, as though weighing something in his mind. “Glad to see you’re real. We’d taken a real pounding that afternoon, but I have to tell you, I thought I was seeing things when you showed up like you did. And it wasn’t just that you were out of uniform.”
“What was it, then?”
“You seemed more ghost than man.” Daly responded. “Just had a right…peculiar air about you. And why were you wearing hospital clothes in the middle of a battle?”
“It’s…very difficult to explain,” Sam said cautiously. Daly continued to watch Sam as though he might possibly be contagious and Sam was terrified he’d frighten the man off.
Daly cleared his throat and took a step back. “Thank you, Captain. For whatever it was you did for O’Reilly. I…really should be off now.”
Daly turned and began walking away.
“Thank you,” Sam called after him. “And when you see O’Reilly, please pass on my regards. I’d very much like to speak with him, if that’s possible.”
Daly lifted a hand in acknowledgement and continued down the aisle.
Sam lay back on his bed and closed his eyes, awash in relief.
At last. At long bloody last, he finally had something that proved he wasn’t mad. Someone—Lieutenant Colin Daly, to be exact—had seen him outside the hospital. And Corporal O’Reilly for that matter. Whatever was happening was more than visions.
It was real.
Sam didn’t merely have a vague place or part of a name. He had eye witnesses. He had some confirmation. He could finally tell someone the truth about what had been going on. Most importantly, he could tell Lily.
This made all the difference in the world.
Chapter Nineteen
The local villagers had scheduled a play for New Bedlam on Friday afternoon. Luckily, the weather had cooperated and the sun shone brightly on the back garden.
Since most of the patients were well enough to attend the show, the wards were nearly empty. Matron Marshall had taken the opportunity to order the beds stripped and the floors mopped. Lily and Rose were making a bed in the officers’ ward when they were interrupted.
“Miss Curtis?” Sister Newell placed her hand on Lily’s back. “While the ward is still, you should tend to that one.” She gestured toward Sam, who had apparently been demoted from captain to that one. “He needs a shave. All the other VADs are afraid to go near him. His restraints are a bit…off-putting.” She puckered her lips in thought, squinting across the room at Sam.
Lily gave Rose an apologetic glance and set the sheet on the bed before making her way toward the back of the room to gather shaving supplies.
She shook her head. Perfect. Shaving Sam. Though she’d shaved patients since she was fifteen, the procedure always made her a little nervous. Suturing a deep wound, removing shrapnel—those were not a problem for her. They were medical procedures. Shaving, however, felt strangely intimate. And one thing she didn’t feel up to, even after three days, was any kind of intimacy with Sam.
Lily stocked her cart with shaving supplies, then prepared a dish of hot water and set it on the top shelf. After checking the razor for sharpness, she ran it down the strop a few times. Though she told herself the razor was dull, deep inside she knew she was only stalling.
She’d seen Sam throughout the last few
days—feeding him, administering medication and mostly just checking to make sure he hadn’t done anything crazy. They’d been among the most painful days in her life. She’d thought she knew him so well, yet he’d triggered a seizure knowing full well it could kill him. How could she have misjudged him so? She knew that head injury victims could be emotionally unstable, but she thought he’d long since passed that marker.
One day he was a sweet, sincere man wooing her in the garden, telling her he loved her. The next he’d suddenly transformed into this other creature that would injure himself—kill himself—for no apparent reason. She’d never been so wrong about a person and that knowledge shook her foundations.
At least Sam hadn’t made any demands. Since being placed in restraints, any time she’d fed him, he appeared contrite. He wordlessly obeyed her every command.
His meek manner only made her feel worse. She gave the razor a final swipe, then knowing she could delay no longer, pushed her cart through the kitchen door and onto the nearly empty ward.
Sam watched her approach. As she pulled her cart next to his bed, she was shocked to see that his expression was unabashedly…chipper. There was no other word for it.
His cheerfulness served as fuel for Lily’s anger. She jerked her cart to a halt, splashing a little hot water on the tiles.
“I’m here to shave you,” she said.
At her tone, his expression turned serious. He nodded and looked away.
Lily splashed a bit of warm water into the shaving mug. She began to whip the shaving brush across the disc of soap at the bottom, building up a good frothy mixture.
“If you’d tilt your head back, please,” she said.
Sam complied in silence.
She lifted the brush from the mug and spread the frothy mixture up his throat, to the base of his chin. She placed her fingers on his throat to steady him. His pulse was warm and comforting against her fingertips.
“Lily…” he began.
“It would be better if you don’t speak,” she interrupted.
“We’ve not talked for days and no one is about just now. Please, who knows when we’ll get another chance like this?”
“Well, as I’ve got a blade right next to your throat, it would be a good idea if you kept your words for the moment. When you talk, you move my target about.”
He clenched his jaw. She steadied her trembling hand, dipped the brush back into the mug, then slathered his chin with shaving cream as well. After a moment’s thought, she dipped the brush back in and covered the rest of his face, hiding his clearly aggravated jaw from sight.
She placed the blade at the base of his throat and slid it upward, just to his chin, then dipped the razor in the basin of warm water. “Look to your left.”
Sam complied.
Once she finished his throat, she began on his chin, working her way up to his cheeks. Every time she wanted him to move, she tilted his head this way or that by tugging on his chin with her fingers. And during the whole procedure, his eyes followed her every move. It was fantastically unnerving, but she couldn’t admit that to him. She willed her hands not to shake as she completed the shave as quickly as she could.
When she finished, she wiped off the excess with a towel.
“That is much appreciated,” Sam said. When she didn’t reply, he continued on. “I was beginning to feel like a bit of a vagrant. I never could grow a proper beard. Thank you, Lily.”
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“Don’t do what?” He tilted his head to the side.
Don’t look at me like that, she wanted to say. Don’t confuse me so. Don’t be so foolish as to do the things you’ve done—take such terrible risks with your health. “Don’t call me that. If the matron heard, it could get me into trouble.”
Lily placed the shaving towel on her cart and began to push it away.
“You can’t leave,” Sam protested.
Lily hesitated.
“My mail,” Sam said. “It’s been piling up for days.”
Lily glanced over at his bedside table. Four unopened letters sat on top in a tidy stack. The top one was addressed in Evie’s familiar, looping script.
Lily looked back over her shoulder to see how Rose was progressing. Miss Frederick had joined her and they were already nearly half way through the rest of the ward. She supposed she should take a few moments and read his mail to him. No sense in giving him some foolish excuse to try to read his own letters again.
She settled down in the chair beside his bed and grasped his mail basket. “You have four letters, no five. The top one is from your sister. Would you like me to read it first?”
Sam paused for a moment and something moved behind his eyes. He looked at her, as if considering something, then spoke. “I’ve changed my mind. Now that I think of it, I owe quite a few letters. Would it be all right if I wrote something instead?”
Lily shrugged and put down the basket. She pulled out the small sheaf of papers from the bottom shelf. She plucked a pen from her belt and set it down at the top of the paper, ready to write.
“How about ‘Dear Evie’,” Lily suggested.
“I’d like to leave the recipient blank for now,” he said.
“Very well.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know quite how to begin this letter,” Sam began.
Lily looked at him. “You’d like to begin with that?”
“Yes,” Sam said. “If you’d just, please, write that?”
“‘I’m afraid I don’t know quite how to begin this letter,’” she repeated. After jotting the line, she waited, pen poised.
“Are you well? Are you tired? Sad? I have no way of knowing. You’re so far away from me, even though you’re seated at my side.” Her hand froze. She forced her eyes on the page before her. If she looked up at Sam, she’d become undone.
Sam continued. “Lily, I miss you terribly.”
Tears welled in her eyes.
He couldn’t do this. She couldn’t bear it.
“I’m so sorry, darling. I can see I’m causing you pain and I hate myself for it. It seems no matter the path I take, I cause you pain, so I’ve decided to tell you the truth. I only hope you’ll give me a few moments to tell you all of it.”
He was talking far too fast for her to keep up with him now. Though she kept her eyes on the page, she wrote only random words. Sorry. Darling. Truth.
“I have a strange thing to tell you. Perhaps you’ll think me even madder than you do already. Perhaps you’ll think it’s a side-effect of the seizures. But, just perhaps, you’ll believe me. I hope you choose the last one.
“Something very peculiar has been happening whenever I undergo a seizure. I didn’t mention it at first because I thought it was only a dream or a delusion. I couldn’t tell you because I thought you’d think me mad. But it’s not a delusion and I’m not crazy. It’s real. I know that now.”
Lily gripped her pen, staring down at the sheaf of papers instead. As difficult as this was for her, it had to be harder for Sam.
“This part will sound unbelievable. I know that. But I know you, Lily. You’re not the sort of person to rush to judgment. And even though my actions have caused you pain, I think deep down, you know there’s more to it than that. You know I wouldn’t risk my life, wouldn’t risk hurting you, without a very good reason.”
A tear splashed down Lily’s cheek, landing on the mishmash of words she’d written on the paper.
“Since my very first seizure,” Sam said, “though my body remains physically in this place, there is a part of me that travels to the battlefield. I’m only there a few moments, only long enough to make a difference in one soldier’s life. I reach out. I touch them. They are healed.
“I know it’s difficult to believe and sounds a little, well, delusional. But I have proof. I’ve talked to a man who saw me during my
last episode. He’s an eye witness to the fact that I was miles away, healing a soldier named O’Reilly at the very moment I was here in New Bedlam enduring my most recent seizure.”
He paused for a long moment. She just sat there, too overwhelmed to move. Her tears were falling more freely now. She lifted her hand to wipe them away.
“I’m not mad and I’m not suicidal. I’m trying to make a real difference in this miserable war, darling. Surely, you above all people can understand the desire to make that difference, to save a life.
“Please understand. I say it again—I’d never try to hurt myself and most of all, I’d never try to hurt you. But if you’d been given a gift like this—a chance to heal those on the edge of dying, wouldn’t you use that gift?”
She couldn’t raise her eyes to look at him, too afraid that she’d fly into a thousand pieces at seeing him. She sat and stared down at the nonsensical words scribbled across the page as her tears fell down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry that I’m making you cry, that my hands are lashed to this bed and not drying your tears right now, but I—”
A door opened at the end of the ward, cutting off whatever he’d been about to say. Startled into action, Lily furtively dried her tears with the back of her hand before turning to look.
Sister Newell had entered the ward pushing a cart with sterilized linens. She cast an expectant eye toward Lily.
“I…should go.” Lily kept her eyes on her lap, blinking in a futile attempt to make herself appear clear-eyed.
“Just like that?” Sam asked. “Look at me, Lily, please. Won’t you say something?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Just tell me that you believe me.”
Lily took a few deep steadying breaths, then began to tidy the soggy papers she held in her lap. “When I say I don’t know what to say, it’s not a figure of speech, Sam. I truly don’t know what to say to you. I’m sorry.”