The New Neighbor: A Novel Page 14

  That first place, the more time passed, the harder it became to believe we ever would get patients. It rained. The latrine trench filled with water. You had to brace yourself very carefully not to slip in the mud. Ants crawled into our bedrolls. All night long we heard shelling in the distance. A whistle. A distant boom. We got up out of bed and brushed off the ants. I tried not to watch Kay for signs of her back injury, because she was alert to the slightest hint that I might be doing so. She snapped, “What?” at me more than a few times when she caught me looking at her. She always said she was fine. But then we’d be walking somewhere, and suddenly her breathing would quicken, and I’d glance over to find her staring straight ahead with a startled, almost panicked look, her mouth slack and her face pale. “I just got a little twinge, that’s all,” she’d say, when she was able to look round and smile and talk normally again. I’d promised to protect her, and I was itchy with the fear that I wouldn’t be able to, with the fear and the boredom and the anticipation.

  A few times each day I went and wandered through the tents, as if I were checking on things, though I wasn’t really. There was nothing to check on. Everything was at the ready. In the shock ward and the OR, the sawhorses were lined up just so, awaiting stretchers. Two-foot locker boxes with shelves inside held the supplies. In the empty post-op tent there was one GI blanket folded neatly at the foot of each canvas cot. I wasn’t the only one engaged in this pointless roaming. I saw the other nurses, the doctors—we nodded at each other, pretending that we had some purpose. It wasn’t that we wanted them hurt, the injured and the dying. If we’d had any say in the matter we’d have kept them whole and far from the battlefield. It was just that it was hard living like this, clenched like a fist, listening to the shelling all night long and waiting to see if it, if the war, would have anything to do with us. Already we’d learned to tell from the sound how far away the shells were hitting, how close. It is hard waiting, Jennifer, when you’re waiting for something terrible to arrive. After a while you just want it to go ahead and come.

  On the third day, they came, just as I’d begun to think they never would, that this whole thing was some strange, airless vacation on the outskirts of battle. It was lunchtime. Lunch was K rations—ham and cheese mixed up in a can, and cigarettes, of course, maybe some candy. I’d choked down about half the food and moved on to a cigarette. It was very hot. Kay and I were talking to one of the doctors, Captain Richard Steigler, a kind but excitable man. I remember him saying, “I’d just like to get a little blood on my hands,” and then laughing, and we laughed, too, though we weren’t quite sure it was funny, or even if it was a joke.

  “You could just kill somebody,” Kay said. “A murder mystery would liven things up around here.”

  “True, true,” he said. “But I—” Whatever he was going to say was lost in a sudden commotion. Wounded. We had incoming wounded. “My God,” the doctor said. He looked like somebody had slapped him, and maybe he was thinking about that blood-on-his-hands line, and whether he regretted saying it I don’t know.

  I got up to run, realized after a few steps that I still had that cigarette in my hand, and stopped to drop it and rub it out. I remember being very careful about it, making extra sure the spark was gone, because I had a vision of the whole shebang—field, tents, everything—going up in flames, all because of me. In those few seconds Kay got way ahead of me, and I ran even faster to catch up.

  It was so unreal, Jennifer. It’s hard to explain how unreal. There I was, running, and certainly that was real, the slap of my feet against ground, the sound of my own breathing in my ears. But what I was running toward, that I could no more imagine than I’d been able to when we were waiting in England, punting down the river with the tips of our fingers trailing in the cool water, watching the blur of green along the shore. I was on central supply and operating room, so I went to my station in the OR, just like I was supposed to. There was this excitement—that seems like the wrong word but I don’t know what else to call it—and we all felt it. We looked at each other and knew that we all felt it. Like we were all chanting, silently but somehow in unison: Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.

  Outside there was quite a commotion, the roar of vehicles pulling into the compound, male voices shouting, and one—I thought I heard one, at least—letting out a quickly stifled cry of pain. Well, I had to go see what was happening, and as I ran outside I realized everyone else was doing the same thing. When had we all begun to share a mind? Outside the tent I climbed up on a crate so I could see. Three jeeps. Eight or ten stretchers. And on them men—boys. The wounded. I was looking at them, watching as the corpsmen carried them into the triage area, and still I could hardly believe they existed. When would reality kick back in? I couldn’t get over the fact that just moments before I’d been smoking a cigarette, feeling disgusted by my paltry lunch, that Kay had just made a joke about murder and I’d been on the verge of a laugh. That was my life, not this.

  The CO called us all back to our positions, and we went. I assumed my place at the operating table. I switched on the light, and the brightness startled me. I stared up into the light, like I’d never seen such a thing, and then dropped my eyes and shook my head to clear my vision. Captain Steigler was at my table. He looked at me and asked if I was ready. I nodded. He nodded back. They brought the first casualty in. I still had spots in my eyes, so that when I looked at him parts of him seemed to glow, and then that was gone, and I really saw him. Really saw, for the first time, what waits on the other side of ordinary life.

  The first thing you notice is the dirt. Never in your life have you seen wounds so dirty. The mud, the grass, and the way it’s everywhere, everywhere. And the blood. The sheer volume of blood. This boy’s legs had been blown off just below the knee, tourniquets tied just above. Beneath the dirt you could see the pallor of his flesh. You could see sinew stringing down into the place where there used to be a foot, blood, tissue, little strands of muscle mixed in, a horror like you’d never seen before. You want to give in to the revulsion, Jennifer, but you can’t, and so you split in two, or maybe more pieces than that, so you can do what you have to do.

  He was awake. He was maybe eighteen. He asked Captain Steigler, “How’s my buddy? How’s my buddy?” and Steigler of course had no idea who his buddy was. There was a boy bleeding out from an abdominal wound on the table next to ours—Kay’s table. Was that his buddy? I hoped not. Steigler said, “Let me get you taken care of and then we’ll find out.”

  The boy said, “Am I going to die?” Before anybody could answer, he spotted me. He stared at me. He asked, “Are you a girl?”

  I took his hand. I said, “Yes, I am.”

  It’s such a strange thing about being female. He thought I was an angel, just because I was a girl.

  Another nurse was behind him, getting ready to administer the ether, but he kept on staring at me like I had a holy glow. Then he said, “I must be all right, then. It must be safe here, if there are women. I must not be going to die. You’re not going to let me die, are you? You’re not going to let me die.”

  And I said no, no I wasn’t, and I meant it, even if I was lying. I had to debride what was left of the legs. I poured water, I picked out dirt and fragments, while the surgeon worked above the tourniquet to see how much of the legs he could save. Bone fragments were embedded in his pelvis. We had to extract those to save the thighs. I’d never done anything like this before, and yet I did it.

  I’d been in operating rooms. I thought I had seen some things. I’d never seen anything like this. Our next patient required an amputation. The strangest part was not the cutting through but the moment when the limb actually came off. That first day I carried a whole arm away from the table. I held it by the elbow. The fingers on the hand were still flexed, as though reaching for me, saying, Hold on a minute, wait, wait. The arm was surprisingly heavy. You don’t think about what an arm weighs when it’s still a part of the body. And then when it’s off, it’s waste. It gets burned
with the rest of the waste.

  Parts of your body can come off, Jennifer. You can have a hole in your back so big a man can put his fist inside it.

  I hadn’t seen anything.

  Later I’d see all of this, do all of this, many times, without sparing a thought to the oddity of it all. This time I’d moved into the extraordinary but hadn’t yet learned how to live there. This wasn’t even a hospital as I’d ever known one, with hallways and wards and nurses in white, but a tent full of blood and guts and screaming. There should have been some other name for it, but we didn’t have one and so we applied the old one, and after a while when I thought “hospital” what I pictured was a tent or an abandoned schoolhouse, sawhorses for the stretchers, and all the patients boys.

  How could I know that soon, shockingly soon, I’d come to think of injuries like that first boy had as lesser ones? I’d say things like, “He’s only lost both legs.” Only. Because you can keep somebody with a missing limb alive longer than you can somebody with a gut wound. They bleed out slower. My boy was a low priority compared to the one on Kay’s table, the one bleeding out so fast they couldn’t save him, and he died. I don’t know if he was my patient’s buddy. I don’t remember. I can’t remember everything, you know, and what’s more I wouldn’t want to. In my opinion the human mind is a messed-up thing, the way your memory unleashes these scenes upon you, sixty-plus years after the fact, when you can’t even summon up what you had for lunch today.

  Some people cried, after. I didn’t cry, and neither did Kay. We were probably more proud of that than we should have been. I wrote to my mother, Am finally doing what I came over to do – It’s so different it’s fun.

  Topsy-turvy. But you can get used to anything.

  Day after day I soldiered through the work I had to do. I cleaned dirt from torn flesh. I picked metal from someone’s insides, where it should never, ever be. I cut a slice in burned skin so a twenty-year-old boy could breathe. I told boys on the operating table they wouldn’t die, even when I knew they would. I lied. Then I did the next thing, and the next thing, and the next, and no matter what, no matter how tired I was or how hungry or how bone-deep weary, no matter how awful the thing I had to do, I could always do it.

  I could always do it, Jennifer. No matter how awful it was.

  What about you?

  Magic

  From Margaret’s house Jennifer doesn’t go back to her own but instead drives all the way into Sewanee and parks in Megan’s drive. Once again she’s rattled by the way the interview with Margaret ended, by the fierce, unnerving expression on the old woman’s face. What about you? Why did she look so disdainful, so certain of Jennifer’s weakness? What answer is she hoping for?

  Megan opens the door, looking rumpled, a sheaf of papers in one hand. “Hi!” she says, surprised.

  “I wondered if you wanted to go for a walk,” Jennifer says.

  Megan cocks her head and raises her eyes to the ceiling, considering. “I’m supposed to be grading papers,” she says. “But you know what? Fuck that. Come on in.” She opens the door wide. “I’ll put on some shoes.”

  Jennifer steps inside.

  “I won’t be a minute,” Megan says. She jogs toward the back of her house, calling behind her, “Sit down if you like!”

  Jennifer waits in the hall, jittery. She doesn’t want to sit down. She wants to keep moving. She wants to be distracted. She wants a nice big dose of Megan’s normalcy. In answer to Margaret’s question, she said, “What do you mean?” It seemed possible that Margaret would ask, I mean, did you kill your husband? But Margaret just said she was tired and wanted to stop for the day.

  Megan reappears, already a little breathless. She’s slipped the shoes on without tying them and now she drops to the floor to finish the job. “Where do you want to go? The Cross?”

  “What’s the Cross?”

  “Oh, you’ve never been?” Megan bounces to her feet. “Well, it’s a big ol’ cross.” She grins. “It’s pretty. There’s an overlook.”

  I could always do it, Jennifer. No matter how awful it was.

  “Let’s go,” Megan says. “You’ll like it. Who doesn’t like an overlook?” She ushers Jennifer out the door.

  What about you?

  Megan claps her hands. “So glad you suggested this!”

  The road to the Cross is a hilly one, and as you traverse its ups and downs the great white cross at its end disappears and reappears, a little larger every time. Disappear, reappear. Disappear. Jennifer looks up and watches the branches jog along against the sky, a jagged elegance.

  “Something about this road makes me feel like I’m in a fantasy novel,” Megan says. “Setting off on a quest. Wearing a long braid and some kind of robe.”

  “I can see that,” Jennifer says.

  Megan laughs. “Or you think I’m nuts,” she says. She stumbles and puts her hand on Jennifer’s arm to steady herself. Smiling, she gives the arm a squeeze. “Apparently walking can be a hazardous activity.”

  “Don’t do that at the edge of the bluff.”

  “Good advice,” Megan says. “I’ll take it to heart.”

  They lapse into silence, unsure where to go after the banter. At least that’s how Jennifer feels. In their time together she’s counted on Megan to power the conversation. But Megan might grow weary of this. Already she might be thinking, Lord, will this woman never talk? But what can Jennifer talk about? She doesn’t want to reintroduce the subject of Margaret. She doesn’t want to dwell on that. That’s why she’s here, walking with Megan down this road. Do you know why I’m telling you this story? Do you know why I’m telling this story to you?

  “Milo’s been calling himself Dark Flame,” she says.

  “Oh, I like that. That’s a good one. Ben just chooses preexisting superheroes: one day he’s Spider-Man, the next he’s Batman. I’d like him to be more imaginative.”

  “Milo does that, too. Green Lantern, Iron Man, Superman.”

  “Ben hasn’t been much of a Superman fan as of yet.”

  “Yeah, that one was pretty brief.”

  “Can’t blame them, right? Boring. Insufficient angst. Milo clearly prefers a superhero with a little angst. Judging from Dark Flame anyway.”

  “Maybe he’s a villain,” Jennifer says. “Milo said he was morally ambiguous.”

  “Morally ambiguous?” Megan laughs. “Smart kid.” The Cross reappears. “There it is again,” Megan says. This hill is effortful, and they climb it in silence. The Cross disappears. “And there it goes.”

  “How much do you think kids remember?” Jennifer asks. “I mean, how far back do Ben’s memories go?”

  “I’d say not far. Sometimes I’m surprised by what he’s already forgotten.”

  “Sometimes I’m surprised by what Milo remembers.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t really want Milo to remember his dad.”

  There’s a sudden alertness to Megan. “You don’t?” she asks carefully.

  “Some memories wouldn’t be so good.” Why is Jennifer talking? Why is she saying these things? She swallows. She has a lump in her throat. “I’d rather just be able to tell him the good things, and have that be all he knows.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I guess.”

  “It is! You want him to have a happy childhood. You want to give him a good start.”

  “But I’m lying.” Jennifer risks a glance at Megan, and is almost undone by the sympathy on her face. “I’m lying to him.”

  “No, no, no, it’s not lying.” Megan frowns. “It’s like what we do when we pretend there’s a Santa. It’s preserving the magic. I don’t see anything wrong with him having good memories of his father.”

  Don’t talk, Jennifer. For God’s sake. Say thank you and shut your mouth. “Tommy wanted to be a good dad,” she says. “But . . .” She hesitates, thinking of Sebastian’s claims about Megan, and then says it anyway. “He drank too much. So you could never quite trust him.”


  Megan waits.

  “Once I woke up in the middle of the night with a bad feeling. I woke up startled—you know that feeling?”

  Megan nods, watching Jennifer with a worried frown.

  “Tommy wasn’t in bed but that was normal. He usually stayed up late, drinking. I got up and went to check on Milo—he was two and still in a crib—but he wasn’t there, so then I panicked. I searched the house, and he wasn’t anywhere. Then I realized I could hear him crying, but I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. It was like he was a ghost, like he was in the walls—” She stops with a shudder. “Anyway,” she says. “I went outside, and Tommy was on a blanket in the middle of the yard, passed out. And Milo—Milo had climbed through a broken window into Tommy’s storage shed. There was a stack of paving stones beneath the window Tommy never fixed, for the patio Tommy never built. Milo was in there in the dark, with the lawn mower and the rakes. He had little pieces of glass in his hands and feet.” Milo’s face, Milo’s desperate face. When she opened the door, he looked at her with terror. The trail of blood he’d left round the shed, the bloody fingerprints on his pajamas, his diaper soaking, his plump little feet, filthy and bare and stuck with glass. She’d let that happen to him. Because she couldn’t leave Tommy. Because of love.