ggg

Casino spent a frustrating hour trying to write the letter home to tell his folks what happened. He knew the Lieutenant sent word to them whenever he got hurt and he thought it only right that he do the same and rat the Warden out. The scattering of crumpled papers that was on the desk and littering the office floor around the trash can was a testament to how well he was doing.

A couple of things were causing his trouble. The censors for one. Any details he put down would be black-lined or cut out if the military censor thought the information could be useful to the Krauts if the mail was intercepted. His parents would get just enough of the story to make them worry and not enough to reassure them, not that he had much to tell them that was going to be reassuring... His own guilt was another factor. He was having a hard time trying to explain how the Warden had gotten hurt because he blew it. Finally he gave up, scratched a note quickly on a blank scrap of paper and headed down the hall with it. A few doors down from the Warden's office where he'd been working, or trying to, he stopped and knocked. When he heard permission called from inside he shoved the door open to find Sergeant Major Gilbert Rawlins sitting at his own desk attending to the paperwork required to keep their small base going.

Rawlins glanced up and wasn't surprised to see Casino standing there. The other three were in the city, close to the hospital where Lieutenant Garrison was being cared for, but, though he'd made one short trip in to check on him, Casino had kept close to the base since being released from the hospital after the mission claiming that he was too sick to be let in around their injured commander. He hadn't been in on the official debriefing but Gil had gotten an account of what had happened from each one of the men as they all waited in the hospital those first long hours after the group returned. He didn't think he'd gotten all the facts, but he had enough to know the team's demolitions expert was probably holding himself responsible for the CO's injury.

Rawlins didn't look up. "Yes, lad," he said as he dropped another file in the OUT basket. "What's on your mind?"

"I need to send a telegram."

The statement, Rawlins noted, was delivered with the belligerent edge of someone who expected their request to be denied. "Is that it, there?" Gil asked as he held his hand out for the paper the other man had been folding and refolding. "Come now, give it here. You know I'll need to see it."

Casino only hesitated for a moment before he pushed himself off the door frame and stalked across the room. He glanced down at the paper and read the message one more time before tossing it onto the desk for the Sergeant Major's inspection.

Gil picked up the paper, noted the address and read through the short message.

Warden got hit on a job.

Lung probably OK

Legs probably not.

The rest of us are OK.

Casino

He took a rubber stamp from his desk and affixed the mark and then initialed it before handing it back. "Here, the boys over in communications can send it out for you…. But I expect you'd rather send it when you go into the city." He didn't give the man a chance to choose, drawing another paper from his desk and quickly filling it out instead. He handed over the form releasing a jeep and giving permission for Casino to be off the grounds for twenty-four hours. "Off you go, then. Tell the Lieutenant I'll be in to check on him tomorrow morning." Lifting a stack of papers out of the IN basket Gil swiveled around in the chair to face the typewriter, cutting off the other man's chance to refuse.

Casino stood there as he dealt with the conflicting urges. He wanted to go in and see for himself how the Warden was doing. He didn't want to face Garrison after what he'd done. But he had to let his folks know what had happened. Ma would kill him if she ever found out…he amended that; when she eventually found out. Once she did, sooner or later she'd manage to wheedle all the details out of him too, and he wasn't looking forward to her finding out he'd been the one responsible for…. He folded the papers away in his pocket and gave a great sigh as he turned for the door. She'd know he'd blown it big time when they packed him up and shipped him back to the joint, might as well get it over with.

g

There was a place they usually stayed when they were allowed to go into the city. The other guys had a room there but Casino didn't figure they'd want him around so he bought a bed in a flea trap on the other side of town from the hospital. He sent the wire and went back to the room to wait. On the way back he stopped at a place Goniff had shown him to pick up a bottle. In the room he set himself up by the window, opened the bottle, poured a shot into the water-spotted glass that he found sitting on the wash basin and then just sat there and stared at it.

Three hours later he was still sitting there staring at it.

He didn't deserve a drink. He didn't deserve to get drunk and forget what he'd done. He didn't have the right to forget that if the Warden never walked again it was going to be because of him. As he continued to stare at the glass on the windowsill in front of him those thoughts that had kept him company since the shooting came back again and started swirling around and around inside his head….

A knock at the door and someone calling out 'Telegram' startled him out of his trance. He checked his watch. another two hours had gone by. Looked like his parents must have been home when that wire got there.

"Telegram!" the messenger in the hall called out a little louder.

"Yeah! Alright, alright, I'm comin' already. Keep you'r shorts on!" Casino took the two steps required to cross the small room and yanked the door open. An older man wearing thick glasses stood in the dimly lit hallway outside the door. The guy wore a cap shoved back on his head and there was a bag slung across his chest, the yellow envelope containing the wire was in his left hand. He held it out and, after it had been snatched from him, continued to stand there, his hand still hanging out there, but the hopeful look his face had originally worn had turned slightly disappointed.

Casino considered him for a moment. He didn't have much cash on him. The room was dirt cheap but he'd paid for the wire and then most of what he'd had left in his wallet had gone to the black-market for the bottle of booze that was sitting back on the window sill…. "Hang on a minute." Leaving the courier standing there staring at his back Casino walked over to the window, capped the bottle, picked up the glass and downed the shot, then returned to the door and handed the bottle over. He slammed the door on the 'thanks mate!' and went to sit on the bed. It took him a little time to work up the courage to tear open the envelope and read the telegram.

House already set up. Stop

If needed he comes here. Stop

Tell him no back talk. Stop

We love you. Stop

Ma. End

He sat there and looked at the paper for a long time. 'We love you'… Not 'we love you all'. Not 'we love you both'. 'We love you'. 'you', …. just him. Casino crumpled the paper in his hands, turned to stare out the window and wished he hadn't given that bottle away.

ggg

Casino arrived in the ward where they'd put Garrison just in time to see Actor walk out of the private room they had him in. The con man hadn't seen him, he stretched and started off away from him down the hall. If he let Actor go he wouldn't have to face him, but to find out about the Lieutenant he'd probably have to go into that room and there was a chance the Warden might be awake. Casino wasn't ready for that so he hustled himself down the hall and caught up with the big Italian just as he punched the button for the lift. Actor turned just before he laid his hand on him.

"Casino!" the taller man acknowledged his teammate. "It's late." Actor's voice was flat with fatigue. "I'd given up on ever seeing you here again."

The lift rattled to a stop and the doors opened, Actor turned, prepared to abandon his trip downstairs for a coffee but, instead of heading back down the hall for the Warden's room, Casino stepped past him and into the car. The con man's brow lifted and he considered the man a moment before he joined him. They rode down to the ground floor in silence, silence which continued as they made their way to the cafeteria. Actor bypassed the offerings in the steam trays, the food here was atrocious, and headed straight for the large urn of coffee that sat on a table in the corner. He poured a cup and handed it off to the safecracker, then poured his own. When he turned around he found Casino had already settled himself at one of the booths that lined the walls.

Casino watched their second approach the table. "How come you'r still here? Is he worse?"

"No. He's improved enough that they've taken the chest tube out." Actor took a sip of his coffee and waited for the slight surge of energy from the caffeine.

They'd stayed round the clock until the doctors told them Garrison was stable and insisted they leave to get their own rest. The three of them had continued to share watch over the Warden since they'd brought him in. Goniff and Chief had remained in the city with him, but Casino, who had avoided them on the boat trip back to England and had spent the first two days back in the hospital being treated himself, had been banned from the hospital room because of his illness and had returned to the mansion.

"Why don't you go in and see for yourself?" Actor suggested. "He's been asking for you."

Casino shook his head and manufactured a cough. "I'm stayin' outta there. Jeeze! Gettin' this crud is the last thing he needs." It was good news about the lungs. Goniff had called out to the mansion yesterday and told Rawlins that Phillips hoped they could get rid of that tube. But that wasn't the worst of it. Casino picked up the container of powdered milk and added some to his coffee even though he usually took it straight up and black. "What about his legs?"

Actor watched as Casino stirred his coffee and studiously avoided making eye contact with him. He was certain he knew what the problem was but unless he could get this extremely stubborn man to talk about it there was very little chance he could help him. "No change. His blood pressure and temperature have been stable though, the doctors are encouraged by that."

Casino just grunted. That sure would be something to write home about wouldn't it? 'Hey, the guy'll never walk again, but that's not so bad 'cause his lousy temperature's OK!….'

"He's been bothered by nightmares again."

'Who wouldn't be', the safecracker thought. 'But goin' through the rest of his life in a wheelchair isn't a nightmare for the Warden anymore, it's reality.' He didn't say that though, and he did his best to keep what he was thinking off his face. "Jeeze! Are we all dead again?" he tried to joke. He didn't manage to sell it.

"No, only you and Goniff." Actor leaned back and stretched, arching his back against the booth. "Goniff has been in to talk to him, yesterday he finally started to believe he wasn't some sort of delusion. But we can't convince him that you are all right." He reached out for the cup and took another sip of his coffee. "It seems he has convinced himself that his mistake over in France has cost you your life and that we are keeping it from him…"

"His mistake! I was the one who…" Casino stuttered to a stop when he saw the look on the con man's face.

"The one who, what, Casino?" Actor had already been through this with Goniff. In his case, the little pick pocket blamed himself for being too close,... For getting in the way and causing Garrison to fall before he could eliminate the threat the guard posed.

Casino snatched his cup off the table and took a hit, then slammed it down again, sloshing coffee out of the cup and across the surface of the table. "I should a been closer, damn it! I should a got that guy before…."

"Before you sneezed?" Actor's smile of sympathy was genuine. "Casino you had no control over that… No one does."

"But I still…."

"If the guard had turned it could have been you who was injured or killed. As it was you provided a diversion, just as you were expected to. The Warden simply wasn't in the correct position to take advantage of it and he was injured. That's all."

"But.."

"And being out of position is exactly what he's blaming himself for."

"What?" Casino frowned across the table. "Jeeze! Is he nuts!"

Actor gave in to a yawn and then smiled. "No more than you are, my friend."

"But I had a clear shot at the guy and…"

"No, you did not. Not if what you told Colonel Reynolds in the initial debriefing was the truth." Actor didn't give him any time to argue that point. "Besides, even if you had, you couldn't have taken that shot. It would have drawn a German patrol down on you."

"There wasn't a patrol out there!"

"You weren't to know that!

"But he wouldn't be…"

"Casino, enough!" Actor was tired, and it showed. Picking up his cup he finished the coffee and sat the mug aside. A memory came to him and he smiled across at the safecracker. "How did you so elegantly put it?" In a fair imitation of Casino's voice he repeated. "Hey, babe, you can only do the best you can do,… ya know?"

"Yeah, but…." and Casino stopped arguing when he realized what he'd just heard. "Hey! You remember that?" he said with a note of wonder. "You actually listen to what I say?"

"Only when you say something worthy of being listened to and retained." The elegant Italian let his shoulders droop and did nothing to stifle the yawn that overtook him. "So far it has not happened very often so it hasn't been very taxing." He pushed out of the booth and stood looking down at his teammate for a moment. "The Warden needs someone with him and I am exhausted. I am afraid it is up to you." He turned for the door but was halted by the safecracker's hand on his arm.

"But I can't go in there. My cough…"

"…was rendered harmless three days ago." The cough had started before they left France and by the time they'd reached England was deep and rumbling. The doctors prescribed pills and admitted him to the hospital to undergo a set of breathing treatments, he'd even sat in with him when he took the first one. "Go and sit with him Casino. It will do you both good."

Casino watched Actor walk across the room and disappear out the door. He looked down at the mess he'd made of the table and used a moment to wipe the spill up with a damp rag he found in the next booth over. He gathered up the cups and put them in the bin with the other dirty dishes to use up a little more time, and then turned to survey the room. It was late, there was only one other person in there, an orderly who was asleep over in the corner. He knew what Actor was doing to him... Just like he knew he'd fallen for it. The Warden shouldn't be left alone up there, especially not if he was havin' those dreams… And now he was the only one left to go up and do the job.

"Well,… Hell!" Dropping the dirty rag in the bin with the soiled dishes he stiff-armed his way through the swinging doors out into the main hall. Ignoring the convenience of the lift in favor of speed Casino headed for the stairs and took them, two-at-a time, back up to the ward.