by Cat Winters
“But what if they don’t see the plate? What if nobody searches inside the satchel?”
“Go back down there and show them the plate yourself.”
I shrank back against the ceiling’s plaster, terrified of dropping into that damaged flesh below. Down there, my body grew grayer and colder by the minute.
“Go on,” said Stephen. “I can’t ever leave, knowing you died because of me. Push yourself back into your body. Stop the world from mucking up everything so badly.”
A gray-haired couple blew into the bedroom with rolls of white bandages tucked in the crooks of their arms. They contemplated the blood and the glass and struggled to make sense of the scene. The man knelt beside my body and searched for my pulse.
“Go back, Shell.” Stephen stroked my hair with soothing fingers. “You’ll be all right.”
“What if the world never gets any better?”
“It’ll have a far better chance if you’re in it. Go on. The only way I can rest is if you survive.”
I met his brown eyes. The same sense of urgency that had gripped us in his family’s sitting room overcame me.
“Send me off as a happy young woman,” I said.
“What?”
“I want to go off to my battles the same way you went to yours. Send me off as a happy woman.”
Gravity gave me a sharp tug that threatened to pull me away from him. We clasped hands before I could slide too far.
He leaned down and kissed me, and his touch no longer summoned images of bloodstained skies, battlefields, and murderous blackbirds. Instead of smoke and fire, his mouth tasted of the divine sweetness of icing on a cake when the sugar isn’t overdone. The taste of love before any pain gets in the way.
Our lips stayed together until gravity proved too strong.
He held tight to my hand. “Go live a full and amazing life, Shell. Come back when you’re an old woman and tell me what you did with the world.”
I nodded and clung to his fingers. “Swear to me you’ll rest.”
“I swear.”
My body down below appeared closer than before. At any second I’d plunge into an excruciating pool of ice. Our arms stretched farther apart, and our hands shook against each other. Every precious second we had spent together during our shared lives—from the day he brought his little Brownie camera to school to the morning I spied him through my goggles at the bottom of his Coronado staircase—warmed my soul and killed the darkness. I was ready.
A silent count to three.
A plea that the end wouldn’t hurt—for either of us.
I closed my eyes and let him go.
IN THE MINUTES FOLLOWING MY DROP INTO THAT frozen, leaden body, I somehow found the strength to reach inside Stephen’s satchel and hand the wooden plate holder to the Emberses’ neighbor, who was shouting to his wife that I wasn’t dead.
“Here.” I forced the smooth wood into the man’s hand. “Here’s evidence that the people you found me with are monsters.”
Before my eyelids drooped closed again, a flood of yellow warmth brightened the far corner of the ceiling—and disappeared.
MY MEMORIES OF THE MOMENTS AFTER MY BRIEF DEATH in Stephen’s bedroom were a muddled assortment. Chills that penetrated down to my bones. Pain boring into my skull. Salty broth forced between my lips. Muscle aches. Wheezing. Flooded lungs. Gasps for air. Delirium. Drowning.
Somewhere toward the end of my suffering, I dreamed about the anagram Stephen had written at the bottom of his lightning bolt photograph.
I DO LOSE INK
In the dream, the words stared at me from behind the glass of his battered and splintered picture frame that had fallen to my floor too many times. I tried with all my might to unscramble his hidden meaning, but the letters slid around in the sepia waves and repositioned themselves into dozens of nonsensical phrases.
Oiled oinks. Kid loonies. Doe oilskin. Die ski loon. Ski on oldie.
My brain hurt. I massaged my exhausted eyes and tried to make the real title come into focus.
Sink. Die. Soil. Ink. Look. Slide. Side.
Before the dream ended, I saw it, sharp and clear:
LOOK INSIDE
I AWOKE IN AN UNLIT CORNER OF THE HOSPITAL WITH sweat-soaked bandages wrapped around my head and something stringy tied to my right foot’s big toe. Perspiration drenched the hospital gown sticking to my body. My mouth tasted pickled. I strained to lift my head to get a look at the end of my cot and found a toe tag tied around my flesh, awaiting my death.
“Lord, have mercy! She’s still fighting to live.” The stocky nurse I remembered from my lightning injury waddled toward me with cobalt-blue eyes shining above her mask. “You’ve been struck down by lightning, given a concussion that knocked you dead, and spent a week getting clobbered by the flu—but here you are, blinking at me like a confused newborn. I wish all my patients possessed your mighty will to live.”
I stared at the woman with my lips hanging open. “I had the flu?”
“Yes, you most certainly did.” She set her clipboard beside me on the cot and placed her cold hand against my forehead. “Your temperature was one hundred and five degrees when they hauled you in here with that head injury, and you developed a bad case of pneumonia. Some detectives have been asking to speak with you, but I told them they’d need to find a spirit medium if they intended to chat with you anytime soon.”
I wiggled my itchy foot. “Is that a toe tag on me?”
“It is. I half wondered if tying it there would make you mad enough to prove me wrong about dying again.” She went to the foot of the bed and untied the string. “I guess it worked.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Well, it’s Sunday, November tenth …” She flipped through her clipboard. “You came in November fourth, just about a week ago. Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated the throne and escaped to Holland since then.”
“He did? Is the war over?”
“Not yet, but soon, we hope. Very soon.” She pulled a thermometer out of her white pocket and gave it a good shake.
“Did anyone bring a doctor’s bag that belonged to me?” I asked. “I left it inside a red automobile in front of a house on Coronado.”
“It’s sitting right below your cot.”
“I need to look at a photograph tucked inside.”
“I need to take your temperature first.”
“Please let me have my—”
She shoved the little glass tube inside my mouth before I could say another word. The thermometer made the insides of my cheeks itch, and I was tempted to pop it out with my tongue, but I needed her help.
She kept track of the time using a wristwatch, and after a grueling wait that seemed to ramble along for an hour, she fetched the stick from my mouth. “Ninety-eight point six.” Her eyes glistened. “Congratulations, my little fighter. You’re beating the infamous Spanish influenza.”
I tried to sit up. “May I have my bag now?”
“Lie down, lie down—you’re not completely healed yet.” She lowered me back to the cot by my shoulders. “I’ll pull out whatever it is you need, but then we need to get you resting and eating and drinking so we can send you on your way. Why do you own a doctor’s bag, anyway?”
“My mother was a doctor.”
“A lady physician for a mother?” She whistled. “No wonder you’re a bold one, missy.”
I heard her click open the black bag’s clasp beneath me, and I swallowed with anticipation.
“I see a pretty photograph of a butterfly—”
“It’s the other one. The lightning bolt.”
“Here it is.” She set Stephen’s picture on my stomach. “My, my, my. That’s a beauty. Must have been taken by quite the photographer.”
“Yes. It was.” I ran my fingers down the chipped frame to his words written at the bottom. The letters—written below an older, scratched-off title—were just as I remembered:
I DO LOSE INK
LOOK INSIDE. Not a title at all.
The nurse patted my knee. “All right. I’m going to check on some of the other patients, and then I’ll bring you clear broth and get a doctor to examine your lungs and head. Don’t go anywhere.” She chuckled and shuffled away on the soft soles of her shoes.
I pried open the frame’s back cover and saw the shine of a gold key—and a note, written on the photo’s cardboard backing in Stephen’s gorgeous handwriting.
April 29, 1918
My Dearest Mary Shelley,
My mind keeps replaying the events of yesterday and giving our time together a new ending, one that doesn’t involve Julius ruining everything for us. That morning feels like an unfinished work of art, interrupted and spoiled. If I could have had just five more minutes with you, I would have kissed you until our lips ached, and I would have told you I’ve loved you from the moment you fixed my camera on those church steps when we were little kids.
Even when the world seems like it’s spinning out of control, you’re always there for me, Shell, whether in person or through your letters. During my darkest moments, you have always reminded me that life is interesting as hell (pardon my French, but there’s no other way to put it). If nothing else, I will fight in this war to ensure people like you remain free to dream your dreams and become whatever you desire.
This photograph is for you—a small compensation for putting up with my brother’s spirit games and for sending me off to battle with a contented soul. I photographed the lightning storm from my bedroom window last winter. I’m guessing you would have loved seeing the bolts pierce the Pacific. I wish you had been here beside me.
You’ll also find a key to a safe-deposit box at the main San Diego post office (I’ve written the box number, as well as my military address, below). I don’t have time to put this parcel in the mail myself, unfortunately. The idea of giving this key to you just struck me as I was getting dressed to leave this morning. Hopefully, my mother will send it before Julius snoops and you’ll be as skilled at this anagram as you were with Mr. Muse. A regular letter would likely disappear in Julius’s hands.
Please take the contents of the box and do with them what you like. I don’t want to risk writing them into a will or leaving them in my house. Julius would get to them somehow. My mother has copies of her favorites, but the negatives are in the box. You may keep the photographs or sell them if you can. Never send any profits to my brother.
If I lose my life in France, perhaps show my work to a few people as proof that I was once in this world. It’s hard to imagine disappearing without a shred of evidence that I existed. I would be eternally grateful.
Thank you for coming back into my life before my departure to the unknown. I will never forget you, Mary Shelley Black.
Yours with all my love,
Stephen
P.S. Don’t ever worry what the boys who don’t appreciate originality think of you. They’re fools.
A DOCTOR SIGNED MY HOSPITAL RELEASE PAPERS THE same day the war ended: November 11, 1918.
Fireworks whistled and exploded somewhere out in the city, and when I flinched from the commotion, the nurses told me a German delegation had signed the armistice to end the fighting. Faraway battles would stop snatching the minds and lives of our boys and men in the dark bellies of the trenches. The carrion crows would have to fly to other hunting grounds.
During the twenty-four hours before my release, I’d been subjected to oversalted soup, cold fingers and stethoscopes prodding at my skull and chest, eye exams, mental exams, and stiff detectives in dark suits questioning me about Julius and Mr. Darning. The detectives told me Grant and Gracie were being cooperative about their knowledge of Julius’s whereabouts during the night of Stephen’s death. Yet the men warned there’d be trials and potential ugliness.
“We discovered some grisly photographs in our searches through the two men’s studios,” said the older detective with the least compassionate voice. “The road ahead may be rather upsetting for a sixteen-year-old girl. I’m afraid your delicate female eyes and ears will experience some ugliness.”
“Oh, you silly, naive men.” I shook my weary head and genuinely pitied their ignorance. “You’ve clearly never been a sixteen-year-old girl in the fall of 1918.”
WITH MY HEAD SHROUDED IN BANDAGES AND MY LEGS shaking from lack of use, I wandered with my black bag through the shivering, rasping bodies toward the hospital’s exit. The tangy sweet smell of the doctors’ celebratory champagne drifted above the fetid stench of fever surrounding me on the cots, and my heart ached to see people still suffering when one half of the nightmare was ending.
“Get better,” I told them on my way through the white corridors. “Please get better. The war is over. It’s done. Don’t miss this. Keep fighting.”
I reached the last hallway and came to a stop. I recognized the face of a patient sitting on one of the cots on the right-hand side of the corridor.
She was eating a bowl of soup, her legs nestled beneath a patched-up green blanket, and I would have missed her if she had been facing the opposite direction. Her blond hair had turned pure white.
“Aunt Eva?” I ventured closer to make sure the hazel eyes and bottle-cap lenses were truly hers. “Oh, my goodness. Aunt Eva. It is you!” I threw my arms around her bony shoulders and squeezed her as hard as I could without hurting her. “You didn’t die. Your feet weren’t black after all. I could have sworn they were black.”
“Mary Shelley …” She breathed a relieved sigh into my hair and clutched my head against hers. “They told me you were in here, fighting the flu and recovering from a concussion. I’ve been so worried about you.”
“A doctor just released me. Oh, I’m so glad you’re not dead.”
We held each other close for a good minute or more, sniffing back tears, ensuring neither of us was about to disappear.
“I buried you in onions and nearly went crazy with worry.” I dropped to my knees beside her cot. “And I was so certain it had been for nothing. Your face was brown, and some man from down the street helped me get you into an ambulance. He carried you like a hero.”
“Which man?”
“Well … he’s already married.”
“Mary Shelley!” A weak blush rose to her cheeks. “I wasn’t asking to hunt down a husband. I want to know whom to thank.”
“Oh. I’ll show you where he lives when we’re both home.” I grabbed her cold hand. “You are going to be able to come home, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” She steadied her soup on her lap. “The fever’s gone. I just need to regain some strength. I feel like a train ran me over and left me on the tracks to die.”
“I completely understand. I think I must have lost at least ten pounds. Just look at my blouse.” I tugged on the loose fabric gapping above my waistline. “I look like a scarecrow.”
“But your beautiful hair is still brown.” She ran her fingers through my mess of tangled tresses. “Mine’s white … isn’t it?”
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip. “It might be temporary. It’s a striking color, actually.”
“It might fall out, like Gracie’s. I’ve seen some clumps.”
“It might not.”
“And to think I was so worried about my chin-length hair before.” She clamped her hand over her mouth, and her shoulders shook as if she were either laughing or crying—or both.
“Shh.” I helped her stabilize her sloshing bowl. “It doesn’t matter. You’re beautiful because you’re breathing. And you’re not purple—I can’t believe you’re not purple.”
Aunt Eva wiped her eyes behind her glasses. “When I heard you had a head injury, I worried you’d gone to save your ghost. I kept dreaming about Julius shaking you in my living room.”
“I did save Stephen. And he saved me. He’s at peace now.” I swallowed. “We let each other go.”
“Oh.” She gave a small nod. “I’m glad.” She directed her eyes toward her soup with a weighty sigh. “Oh, Mary Shelley. I hope I c
an be strong enough to take care of you.”
“You will be.” I rubbed the remnants of her mighty shipyard biceps. “Soon enough you’ll be back at home, putting up with me dissecting your telephone and arguing my way through everything again. You’re stronger than you think you are, Aunt Eva. You’re my battleship-building aunt, after all.”
The corners of her mouth lifted in a smile. “Thank you.” She wiped another tear. “Despite everything, I’m glad I’ve had you by my side these past weeks. You may have driven me to the edge at times, but you excel at fighting to save the people you love.”
“So do you.”
She nearly argued that point, but she closed her mouth and seemed to accept my words.
“Keep eating and resting for now, OK?” I grabbed the handles of my black bag. “Keep getting better and stronger. I need to go fetch something at the post office, and then I’ll put my things away at home and come straight back to be with you again.”
“Don’t tire yourself out.”
“I won’t. I promise to take good care of myself.”
“Ah …” She nodded. “Now that sounds like your mother.”
“My mother took good care of herself?”
“She did. She really did.”
“Then maybe I’ll start giving that a try.” I kissed her forehead. “I love you, Aunt Eva. Thank you for living.” I squeezed her hand, scooped up my bag, and left the hospital to rejoin the world outside.
MY FINGERS SHOOK AS I SLID THE GOLD KEY INSIDE A lock on the austere brass door of Stephen’s safe-deposit box. Inside, I found a black leather case engraved with silver letters that spelled out SEE—Stephen Elias Embers’s initials. A fitting companion to LOOK INSIDE. I slid the case out of the receptacle with care, and right there on the cold post office tiles, I snapped open the latch and met Stephen’s treasures.