Nightingale (2 page)

Of course she should remind him that he couldn't fly, and a nearly three-story plunge wouldn't release him from his wounds.

But the words lodged in her throat.

Because PFC Charlie Fadden was right. Up here on top of Roosevelt Mercy Hospital, flying seemed downright congenial.

Even triumphant.

Especially with the stars swelling against the velvet black of midnight, so resplendent that she could probably pluck one from its mount. She'd tuck a jewel in the pocket of her apron and after her shift take it home to Sadie and save it for the dark, starless nights ahead.

Yes, plucked, not caught from the sky, but a gal in her position couldn't wait for providence. She had to create her own starlight.

Perhaps Charlie wrestled his way to the roof to wrangle his own pocketful of stars. For a breath, she clung to that hope, even glancing back at Caroline for confirmation.

Caroline's nightingale cap hung askew on the back of her head, her hay-spun hair vagrant in the wind as she perched on the ladder that led to the roof access, peering out over the rim of the opening.

Esther had lost her cap the moment she climbed onto the roof. She should have thought to bring a coat, but one didn't stop to consider such items as her nurse's cape when tracking down escaping GIs.

Charlie shuffled to the very edge of the brick border, his moaning twining with the wind even as he peered out over the edge.

Please, Charlie, don't…

He dropped his crutch. Spread his arms, as if to gather the wind to his breast.

“Charlie!”

He glanced again over his shoulder, and for a staggering moment, she thought she might have dislodged the voices that deformed Charlie from a boy who'd simply survived—while his buddies perished next to him—to a twenty-one-year-old battle-fatigued veteran with a lifetime of ache in his eyes.

“No one blames you….” No, not when he'd lain helpless, his leg shattered, his body scraped raw, soggy, and half-drowned in some sandy gully hedged with barbed wire while the groans of his compatriots bled into his mind. Until, of course, after two days, they'd simply died to silence, leaving only the growl of Panzers to drill into his bones, curdle his mind.

“I'm a coward.” His voice turned to washboard, jerky and stiff against the wind, sharp-edged with the remnants of winter. He drew in a breath, turned away from her, and she lunged at the moment to inch farther across the roof, away from the chimney.

“Es—!” The wind snatched Caroline's hiss, tossing it into the night, away from Charlie's notice. Esther waved her friend away.

“Charlie, you're not a coward. You're hurt. Come back inside. This isn't the way to—”

“I don't understand why…” He turned again to her just as a spotlight from below—thank you, Chief Darren—rebuffed the darkness.

For a brutal second, Charlie stood in brilliance, the bath of light carving out his scars: the reddened gnarl of skin on his neck dragging down the left side of his face, the knotted hand, three fingers barely recognizable. And of course the stump that she'd just finished redressing,
the residual portion of his leg right above his knee, now puckered and hot with an infection.

But only his eyes frightened her. No longer wild, they'd calmed to a deadly, smoldering gray, nearly sane.

As if he'd already weighed his options.

“Charlie, please don't move.”

He narrowed his eyes. Then slowly, painfully, shook his head. “I can't live like this. I ain't got nobody. Them guys were my family.” His jaw clenched then, only the heaving of his breast evidence of his battles.

She ran her hands up her goosefleshed arms. “That's not true, Charlie. You have family here. Me, and Caroline, and the rest of the staff at Mercy—”

“You ain't my family. You
have
a family. Your husband—your daughter. You have people who love you.”

She didn't know where to start arguing. First, she hadn't actually married Linus Hahn yet, thanks to the war. And she could hardly call Linus's words a proposal. More of a decree, or an epitaph.

As for people who loved her…

“Charlie, I
am
your family—you aren't alone. And you're getting better, every day…” She dug deep and lied better than she thought she could. But then, after three years of practice, what did she expect? “You will recover—and you'll find someone—”

“I'm trapped! I'm trapped in this mangled body and there ain't no fixin' it.” He turned away, cursed at the cadre of spectators below. “There ain't no fixin' this.”

His words dug into soft flesh and caused Esther to abandon herself and simply walk out beside him. His bedridden, almost antiseptic odor poured over her, and she made the mistake of looking down, all three
stories. The spotlight blinded her, blotted out the stars, and she had to close her eyes, lest she wobble forward.

She extended her hands, wide. Imagined herself instead—

“What are you doing?” Charlie's voice turned to a wisp of horror.

She inhaled the scent of the cedar, the breeze weighty with the birth of spring, the redolence of grass needling out of the winter thatch. Yes, up here she might exhale, might even find her footing.

Or…fly.

“You're scaring me.”

She opened her eyes, smiled at him. “Then we're even, aren't we, soldier?”

He considered her a moment, a flicker of anger in his eyes. Good, a piece of sanity she could grasp. Tug, hold on to, make him again consider hope.

Although, from where she stood, with the stars winking from the sky, freedom on the wing, away from the cloistered odor of the dying, perhaps he wasn't the crazy one.

She shivered then. “There are people down there, watching. The guys from the ward are probably at the windows. You don't want them to see you jump.” But her voice sounded thin, even tinny. “And no matter how much you wish it, private, you can't fly.”

Swallowing her words, she found something honest. “Charlie, don't think for a moment that I—that those guys haven't stood on this edge and wished to fly away. To escape the moments that hold us captive, the people we see in the mirror. This war has stripped everyone down to the bone, and it's not pretty.” She reached for his damaged hand, squeezed the cold, ridged flesh.

“I don't know why you're alive and your buddies aren't. I do know that we all gotta believe that there's something bigger ahead of us. Something
better. That God isn't laughing at the way our lives turned out.” The wind chapped her wet cheeks. “Maybe He's even crying.”

Not for her, however. Never for her.

She drew in a breath. “You didn't come home in a box, Charlie, and that's not a sin.”

Charlie drew in a long breath, his knurled grip tightening. “Is it a sin to wish I had? Because it feels like it.”

Yes, it did, didn't it? The truth inside Charlie's words could tear her asunder.

The wind had fingers and tugged her hair from its netting, pushed her toward the edge. Perhaps…

No.

She had Sadie, after all.

“I hope not, Charlie. I hope God understands. But you can't find out this way. You have to believe that God spared you for a reason. Don't give up now.”

Sunday school words, but she poured them out as if she believed them. Another sin, perhaps. But she allowed herself to taste them, to swallow them down despite the bitterness, and hoped Charlie did too.

He just stood in the limelight and held her hand.

She trolled her heart for something more, some pithy, poignant wisdom. But she starved on her own feeble encouragements and had nothing left for Charlie.

They should have sent beautiful Caroline out here to stand by him on the edge, but then again, Caroline might be even more bereft of words than she.

After all, Esther had a daughter. And, as long as she returned home every day without a telegram waiting on the bureau, Linus lived.

Linus lived.

If she looked down, the distance might just knot her stomach. She shuffled back, away from the lip of the roof. “C'mon, Charlie, let's go inside. It's cold out.”

He didn't move. “I can still hear the German saws. The machine guns drill into my brain when I sleep, and the sound is shrapnel through my entire body.” His voice emerged, aged. “I try to wake up, but I can't. And then there are the meemies. They drop with a whistle, and I know they're coming, my breath stiffening inside me. Then everything erupts and turns into a thousand needles in my skin,
under
my skin, lifting it from my bones.”

He closed his eyes. “But that's nothing compared to the tanks. They rattle, the rumble chewing my insides. I want to move, but I'm paralyzed, so I hold my breath, waiting for them to mow over me. There's shouting, sometimes, but I can't open my mouth, and besides, they're too far away to hear me. So, I lie there. And it's—it's dark. Very dark. And…I lie there….”

She looked at him then through the water in her eyes and nodded.

Nodded.

She meant to convey that she understood, that she, too, relived the sounds of her own demise, although hers had been whispers, laughter, and soft, lethal words. But she could understand how you could lie paralyzed, the sound of your voice trapped in your throat. Or the feeling of something bigger than yourself mowing over you, crushing you.

But perhaps Charlie didn't read her nod that way.

It happened so fast that later she couldn't piece out the movements in her mind. She wanted to believe that he'd been leaning out too far, that maybe he lost his balance.

Wanted to believe that he didn't jump but merely toppled forward over the edge of the hospital roof.

For one terrifying, quick moment, she fell to her stomach, her hand gripped to his.

And oh, she knew it, he gripped it back. She felt his stump fingers tighten in hers, a pulse of hope, of redemption.

She knew it because when their hold broke free, it snapped, like the ice breaking beneath her feet at the edge of winter, crisp and sharp and fatal.

Not at all like flying.

Fort McCoy Army Base

Wisconsin

May 1945

To Miss Esther Lange,

I admit that I don't exactly know how to begin this letter. Perhaps with a description of myself, only that can't possibly matter in balance with the way we are meeting. I am not sure how to ease into the information of how I came upon the contents of this envelope, what details would be pertinent in this moment, or on the contrary, overwhelming. I suspect this letter is quite late, and fear it reopens wounds. For this, I apologize.

I've never been a man of eloquence, as comfortable
on the back of my uncle's Ford Ferguson, plowing up the soft, dark Iowa earth as I am trying to field dress the wounded, so I ask your forbearance as I unravel the events of our meeting.

Let me clarify, for by now, you must be thinking, get to the point! Of course. I am a medic, not a man of war, but I found myself in battle on the border of Germany, in a town called Beisdorf on the 10th of February, of this year. My task was simply to retrieve two fallen comrades pinned down for two days. I had no idea that your friend Linus would be with them.

I am sorry for your loss. I am sure he was a good man. Trusting. Honorable. I saw this in how he allowed me to tend to his wounds, and I admit they appeared significant. Without burdening you with painful images you might inaccurately conjure, let me say that he didn't suffer. He had adequate morphine on his person, and I used it for his comfort. He also offered it to the others—those I'd come to attend, and they benefited by his generosity.

We were unable to immediately evacuate our location, and thus, I spent a goodly amount of time with Linus. He talked of his family in Roosevelt, and of course mentioned you. As morning crested, I assessed his wounds further, and only then did he pass along this envelope to me. He pressed it into my hand, asking me to send it to you, fully trusting I would keep my word.

And, by God's grace, I promised I would.

Reinforcements came for him—for us—at dawn, yet
I suspect you already know his fate. Let me say that while I returned to America, I kept this letter upon my person at all times, waiting for the opportunity to send it, to do that one right thing in an age when everything else feels askew. I know, for me, the world has turned kilter for quite some time.

I again apologize for the delay in sending this. I pray the fulfillment of my promise and the contents of the letter might give you some comfort in the darkness of your hour.

Regards,

Peter Hess

Medic