Chapter 3 #2
And now, giggling as we rushed past authority, I realized I was still living in someone else’s prison. Still shaped by who everyone thought I was, and who they thought I should be.
As my heartbeat settled, the hospital came into focus.
Each corridor buzzed with urgency. Footsteps echoed on tiles. Women’s voices demanded more supplies while men moaned and hollered. The force of their pain shocked my ears.
Stretchers rattled past. Nurses in white hurried past us with towels and trays piled high with bandages.
It had only been weeks since the war began, and already everything felt so different. A light above us pulsed with a steady beat as we approached.
“I …” I began but didn’t know what to say. I reached for Beatrice’s hand.
She looped her arm through mine. “I know,” she said.
There was no need to say anything more. Schools and parish halls were already being gutted and remade into wards. More were coming. All of us knew.
“I’ll never understand any of it. Killing each other. All for what?”
“Those who make the decisions aren’t the ones immediately risking their lives for it. So they don’t care. Control and power.”
A stretcher passed, pushed by two men in white. I tried not to look, but my eyes found the shape beneath the sheet. It remained still.
“Thank you for being here,” Beatrice said softly. She sighed, her gaze drifting toward a doorway where another stretcher disappeared. Another white sheet. Corners limp. “It never ends.”
“I don’t understand how you do this every day.”
“If this is too much, I’ll understand.”
“No,” I said. Otherwise, I’d be sitting at home, ruminating on all that had happened at Marigold House today.
“I’ve missed you, my darling,” she said.
“Me too.”
She paused. Turned fully toward me. Her hands settling on my shoulders. Her eyes scanning my face.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine.” I lied.
But I knew she could feel the lie in my pulse spiking and the way my fingers twitched.
We’d grown up inside the same house, breathing the same air, dreaming of skies that promised us a life we could live by our own terms. She’d seen this fear before, seen me seated at the edge of my bed at night staring at our window.
“What’s happening?” she said, blowing a strand of hair away from her face.
I wanted to tell her everything. About the feather. The voice. The way shadows seemed to breathe. But I hadn’t told her then, and I wouldn’t now.
Instead, I reached for what felt safe. “Eleanor’s offered me the flat upstairs,” I said. “Head teacher.”
Beatrice gasped. “Wendy, that’s wonderful!”
“But my house.”
Her tone shifted. “It’s old. It needs repair. Plus, Wendy, you’re there alone so much, when Eleanor and I’m sure all of the children want you there with them.”
I knew it’d be wonderful to be there. I could read to them at night before bed. I could turn the lights off and wish them goodnight, but what if something that was searching for me in turn found one of the children?
“You’re not going to take the flat, are you?”
“I’ll think about it.”
She exhaled. “Come. I’ve got someone waiting for you.”
From somewhere ahead, a low moan rose. Then the rush of hurried footsteps, and voices cutting through the corridor, calling for help. A stretcher appeared. Empty. Its wheels rattling as two nurses pushed it past us.
We rounded the corner.
Rows of beds, iron-framed, tightly ordered.
Nurses drifted between cots, their aprons stiff, the red cross on their front.
A group of soldiers sat near the far wall. Their shirts hung open, revealing bruised ribs, soft hollows of scars. A geography of wounds.
Some leaned over a crate between them, playing cards fanned out in their hands. A card struck the makeshift table with a slap. One of them barked out a laugh.
As if sensing my intrusion, one of them looked up. Dark-haired. Eyes bright. He smiled and lifted a hand in greeting. The others exchanged glances, and soon all of them were looking my way.
My breath stuttered. Heat flashed. I tore my eyes away.
Beatrice noticed at once and rolled her eyes. “Oh, love. You look like a schoolgirl gawking at a Greek statue for the first time.”
My stomach tightened. Heat rising to my cheeks.
“They won’t bite,” she said. “They can barely lift a spoon, much less anything else.”
She put an arm around me and gave a wave to the men at cards, and we continued on.
A man with half his face bandaged blinked one uncovered eye as we approached. “Pretty ribbon,” he murmured.
I touched the green bow on my hat, Lillian’s, and thanked him. His lids sank shut, surrendering to the morphine, or to the memory of what had taken him apart.
We moved on.
“They don’t all seem of age,” I whispered.
“They lied,” Beatrice breathed. “No one checked.”
I looked at the rows of young men in cots.
It seemed like what we were doing was dressing them up as soldiers, polishing their shoes, and then sending them off to die.
And for those returned, they were riddled with wounds, their faces stamped with a look I knew too well.
It was the look that stared back at me in mirrors.
At the far end of the ward, doctors in white coats stood in a huddle, heads bowed close.
I wondered what they did beyond gather and converse.
So far, I’d only seen women offering care.
It was the nurses who dressed wounds, shaved faces still shaking with fear, whispered comfort into ears that might never hear kindness again.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
I thought of Tom. The classroom. The sharp crack of erasers. I wondered what sounds these men heard in the fields at night. Cracks or booms? Maybe it was louder than thunder?
Beatrice’s pace quickened.
“I don’t know if I can get used to this,” I said.
“You will. Or you’ll leave. There’s no in-between.”
Everything I was seeing was so awful, but I wanted to help. I needed to. If I could just help someone feel not so alone in all of this then at least my time here would have mattered.
Our footsteps softened against the worn gray linoleum. A door waited ahead, its frosted glass glowing faintly.
“He’s right in here,” Beatrice said, turning the knob.
The door opened to a small room. A single bed. A lone occupant.
Beatrice leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “We usually reserve these rooms for officers, but he’s special.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“He won’t wake up,” she said.
Won’t wake up …
“We check his pulse a few times each shift.”
Unlike the others, he didn’t seem to have any marks. No cuts. No scrapes. No scars.
“Handsome, right?”
And he was. Beautiful. As if Sleeping Beauty were a man. There was color to his cheeks, his lips slightly parted, his chest rising and falling in slow rhythm. He was alive. But he was somewhere else.
“We don’t know his name. Where he came from. What unit he was with. Many of them get separated out there in the chaos of it all. He has no wound. No fever. He’s just … asleep.”
The room pressed in around me. Above the door, a clock jerked its brass hands forward. Each tick reminded me I would be alone with this stranger, and that terrible humming light, as soon as Beatrice left.
“I shaved his face this morning,” she said. “It was nice. I could just chat away, and he listened the entire time.”
I took the chair beside him. It creaked under my weight.
My fingers searched for the flap of my satchel. I looked inside, deciding which book to read. My fingers glided along the spines. I knew their stories and the challenges within.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Poor Alice, dashing after a rabbit, conversing with a Mad Hatter, all in an attempt to try to make sense of a nonsensical world.
Treasure Island. Jim trying to survive pirates and betrayal, struggling to decide who he wanted to be amid adult corruption and adventure.
The Secret Garden. Dear Mary and her journey through trauma and isolation, grief and anger. Her work reviving that hidden garden mirrored what she needed most, to heal her inner world.
Strange seeing these titles now, away from a bookshelf, out in the world. Making sense in madness. Navigating betrayal. Overcoming pain within. I could see it clearly now, how childhood could be distorted in treacherous hands.
I pushed the books aside.
That’s strange. Something was missing.
I removed each of the books from my satchel and set them on my lap, rummaging through my bag.
It’s not here.
My journal.
The air left my lungs.
Beatrice’s head tilted. “Did you forget something?”
“My journal,” I said. The room seemed to tilt. Bird skull. Feathers. Shadows. Words spoken from the journal could make all of these things manifest. It could bring him back.
Heat flashed across my cheeks. I misplaced it, that’s all. I must have left it on my desk at school.
In all of these years, not once had I lost it. Or perhaps I’d left it at home? After the hospital I’d go home, and if it wasn’t there, I’d return to Marigold House. It was somewhere. It has to be.
“I had it this morning,” I spoke quietly.
She smiled. “You and your journal, always writing and reading. Well, it’ll turn up. Things always have a way of finding you.”
I turned back to the man. His skin was pale, but his lips were red, as if he’d just spoken and his words were still hanging in the air between us.
“Yes,” I murmured. “They always do.”
That book was more than paper. It was proof. Every line a thread binding me to what was real. To what everyone told me to forget, to ignore. When no one believed me, the only things I had left were the words I’d written myself.
Without my journal, I feared my memory would fray. That I’d forget it all, the shimmering seas and pirate ships and their crews who’d cheated death again and again. They were not just fairy tales. They were real.
I reached for my pocket watch and felt its cold metal face press into my palm. A small bit of relief.
Beatrice took a few steps toward me, her hands clasped in front of her. I sensed a lecture was coming.