In the Hospital

Mary opened the ward door quietly and found Archie sitting by Colin's bed. The two men were silent. Archibald stood and laid a hand on Mary's shoulder. He patted her shoulder silently and turned to leave. Seeing his dark expression, one of the nurses gave him a soft smile.

"I'll find you a cup of tea sir, you can wait outside for a while if you like." Archibald nodded politely and left.

Mary gave Colin a soothing smile and took Archibald's place beside his bed. She stroked his cheek softly, then took his hand and tried to look as cheerful as possible.

"Hello, Colin. Are you feeling a little less groggy?" Colin's chapped lips parted slightly and he nodded.

"May I have some water please?" Mary turned and poured a small glass from the jug on Colin's bedside table. She put her arm around Colin's neck, lifting him slightly so he could drink. When he was done, Colin lay still a moment, his eyes closed, his lashes making dark circles on his cheeks. At first Mary thought he had gone to sleep, but then his eyes opened, and they were clear. He reached his hand out and grasped Mary's.

"Did they tell you?"

She folded his hand in hers, "yes, they did Colin." Tears leapt to his eyes and he breathed deeply, trying to repress them.

"Oh Colin, it will all look better soon!" she wasn't sure she believed that yet, but she knew she somehow had to convince Colin that he would have a life.

"We will get you back to Misselthwaite as soon as you are well enough to travel." This only seemed to make Colin's face grow darker however.

"I don't want to be stuck in that house again for the rest of my life! I can't walk about the grounds, or drive into town, or ride about the moors. I can't work, not even in the garden. I can't even walk downstairs to the library! The simplest things! I can't even sit up on my own. I can't even..." He cut himself off sharply. Mary furrowed her eyebrows, looking at him with concern.

"You can tell me, it's better to talk than keep it all inside."

Colin's cheeks reddened slightly. "This is very difficult..."

Mary was slightly confused. "Whatever is the matter Colin? You can tell me, I promise I shan't be shocked." Colin looked away and spoke in a whisper.

"Please don't tell anyone, not even Dickon. Promise."

"I promise" Mary replied softly. Colin spoke almost inaudibly.

"I can never be a proper heir to my father." It took Mary a moment to understand, but when she did, she felt a wave of sadness wash over her, tears pricked her eyes and she wiped them away angrily.

"Oh Colin, I didn't realize, oh I should have known, it must have been obvious to anyone with a brain, but I didn't think. I'm sorry Colin." Colin turned his head away, a look of disgust on his face. Seeing his pain, Mary quickly composed herself.

"You've heard the worst of it, now leave me alone." Mary pursed her lips, sighing at the young Rajah.

"You don't honestly think you'll get rid of me that easily do you?" Colin's face remained hard and impassive, his lips were a thin line of defiant silence.

"Well if you're not going to talk, just listen. I know this all seems so very dark now. But you're home, perhaps you will never walk but at least you will have a life. So many won't. We love you, and we'll make sure you have a life, the best life you can possibly have. There is no reason you can't work, it just might look a bit different now. And as for having a son... your father will love you whether you can give him an heir or not. There is no point in dwelling upon what you might not be able to do, you must focus on what you can do. You must find the thing that only you can do."

"What can I do like this? What can I ever do?" He was angry, but so tired he couldn't continue the conversation. He turned his head away from Mary, the only real movement he could make.

"I'm tired, please go away. I want to be alone." Mary's heart hurt, he was closing himself away, and she didn't know how to bring him back. She saw the tears pricking at his eyes and felt them threatening the corners of her own. She took a deep breath to compose herself, then spoke calmly, but firmly.

"You can sleep all you like, you need your rest. But I'm not leaving, Colin, I won't leave you alone like this." Colin grunted, refusing to make eye contact with Mary.

"Do whatever you like Mary, I don't care." They sat in silence for many minutes, Mary did not force Colin to speak, but like she promised, Mary did not leave until Colin fell asleep.

Colin POV

I slept for the rest of that day, and most of the night, waking only when nurses came to turn me in bed every few hours and try and get me to eat various forms of bland food. I remained quite tired for several days, doing very little, and too tired even to engage in conversation most of the time. Only now am I beginning to have the strength to do anything but lay silently in bed. I asked Mary to bring me pen and paper, and have begun writing here of my experiences in hospital, although even the effort of writing has so far proved quite exhausting because I cannot sit up in order to hold the paper steady. But I am trying all the same as there is dreadfully little else I can do to pass the time.

I awakened early this morning, at dawn, as the night nurses were handing over to the day nurses. Mary and my father had not yet come to visit, no one in the ward was awake save myself. I finally had some time to think without prying or pitying. I lay there, watching the sunrise, seeing the light from the window across the room slowly change. I thought about how far I had come, the mad journey which led me to be stuck in this god forsaken hospital bed. I was at the front for over a month, in a field hospital with trench fever for two weeks and back at the front for just over three weeks before I was wounded. Just over two months all together. Two months in a hell of mud and blood. And now I'm back in England, as helpless as when I was ten years old. Well over a week on, and they won't even let me sit up because they're afraid it would damage my spine even more. My doctor warned me it could be months before this simple movement would be safe again. Truly, it is worse than when I was a child, I can't even turn over in bed when I like, a nurse comes to do it for me every few hours. I am in true pain all the time, not the kind of pain I had as a child from weak, unused muscles and hysteria, but the real, horrible pain of crushed bones, screaming nerves, and ruined muscles. I don't feel pain in my legs exactly, or at least not how I would expect the pain from a badly broken leg to be. It is very strange because I can feel nothing in my legs. Yet sometimes I get this strange burning, tingling sensation, or a stab of pain in my lower back, below where I can actually feel. I know it is not a sign of recovery, because when I touch where the pain is I feel nothing. Yet the strange pain persists. Dr. Hawthorne says it is a miscommunication of nerves which are no longer connected to each other. My brain is constantly trying to find my legs, and gives me pain when it cannot. Apparently, it is quite like when a limb is cut off and the person can still feel the limb long after it has been amputated. Besides this pain, above my injury my back is in excruciating pain, and my muscles are all very stiff and weak from my continuous stay in bed. They have been giving me morphine for this pain but it makes me tired and woozy, a feeling I quite despise. But now they are tapering off the morphine in order to allow me to recover some strength, and my suffering only grows as my mind becomes clearer. And they put me through such indignities! I am glad I can't feel half of it.

A woman had never once seen me undressed as a man before and now there are nurses (most barely older than I) washing me, turning me in bed every few hours, helping me in the most private ways. It's humiliating and there is nothing I can do to stop it. At night though, when the terrors take hold, I am glad for the nurses. In a haze of memory, exhaustion, and the final dregs of morphine I am transported back to the front and am tormented by such strange dreams. I replay the long hours in the shell hole with Dickon, that eternity of pain and blood. I walk past waves of dead men marching. They call to me, their faces bloody, their limbs burned and their entrails falling from their bellies. Their blackened fingers reach out and grab at me. Several times I have awoke screaming, but a kind sister is always there with a comforting hand. There are three nurses on rotation, two at a time, caring for about a dozen men, all facing similar injuries to my own. Already I can tell that most are far worse off than me, most do not waken much during the day. From what I've heard of the nurse's and doctor's conversations several of the men have kidney damage or are fighting other infections. It's easy to believe, many are too sick even to wake, and when they do wake, they do not speak much. I have spoken for short periods with the men near me, but there is little for us to speak about, and we have little energy to waste on idle chatter. The ward is quiet mostly, even I am too tired to talk much. I am the only one who has daily visitors, my father comes for several hours a day, he often reads aloud to me, as I find trying to hold a book quite tiring. Often, though, we are both fairly content to sit in silence. I can see such pain in his eyes, and I know it is a pain mirrored in my own. Mary stays nearly all day, and sometimes well into the night. She has become quite a nurse to me as of late. She doesn't seem to mind the bloody bandages or soiled bedpans, and doesn't even seem to mind having to do the simplest things for me like turning me in bed. I wish I could say I am the model patient, but sadly I can't. The pain, and the knowledge that I am now crippled often makes me angry and snappish. But Mary has never taken what Mrs. Medlock used to call my 'guff' so when I get angry at my condition she is often able to make me see sense. Half of me hated that she had to see me like this, that she had to deal with my pain, my broken body and erratic emotions, but half of me knew I would rather have Mary tend to me than anyone else. Although we are only cousins, over the years growing up together we have grown as close as siblings, I can truly say I love her as though she were my sister. She has so quickly put aside her own life to care for me, and I have complete respect for her because of it. All of these women who have put aside their own lives to work in a stuffy hospital full of injured and dying men are really the angels in white which the war office depicts. It is perhaps the only truth that office shows. Mary is coming now with clean bandages and a cup of tea made strong and milky, just how I like it. She is smiling broadly, even in this dark place. She doesn't mind moving my legs for me to change the bandages or propping me up to drink the tea. She just does it, as though it is nothing, as though it is normal. And god in heaven I love her for it.

Mary was about to turn away to dispose of the dirty bandages when I grabbed her hand to stop her.

"Mary, I haven't asked yet... I haven't been brave enough... but no one has told me anything about Dickon yet. Have you heard anything?" I turned my head towards her, already feeling the tears of desperation in the corners of my eyes. I rubbed my fingers softly, pleadingly, against Mary's palm.

"I keep trying to remember what happened, if he was alright, but I can't seem to remember. Please, if you have heard anything, just tell me. No matter what it is. I can handle it." Mary folded the towel she was holding and put down the tray of bandages before sitting on the edge of my bed. She had been changing the bandages around my legs and back and cleaning the areas where there was the most danger of bed sores. "We don't know much more than you do really, only that he was injured at the same time you were, but it sounded as though he was recovering in France. There wasn't much indication as to how bad it was but... Well anyway, we have every reason to hope." She gave a small but encouraging smile and clasped my hand. I gave her a pained smile back, knowing how difficult and painful her cheerfulness was. I had long suspected that the relationship between my cousin and my best friend was no longer completely innocent, but hearing the way Dickon had talked about Mary when we were at the front had convinced me. His eyes would brighten when we spoke of her, he would smile slightly and run his hand through his ruddy curls, looking almost sheepish. And I'm almost sure he kept her picture and one of her letters in his breast pocket, he would touch it lightly whenever we were in an especially dangerous situation as though to gain strength or luck. I never said anything to him, I can understand why they would like to keep their relationship secret, as Dickon could easily lose his position if anyone found out. It was something which simply was not done, this love between the niece of a lord and his gardener. I still had hope for them though, if anyone could break this most basic social code and succeed it was Mary. I smiled again, giving her hand a small squeeze.

"He'll come home, Mary. I'm sure he will. If I made it back without hardly knowing it, I'm sure he can make it home too. And when he does we will all be together again, just like..." I couldn't bring myself to lie and say it would be just like before the war. It wouldn't be. It couldn't be. I'm confined to bed for God knows how long, for all I know Dickon could be in no better shape than me. Mary seemed to read my thoughts. She smiled, but there was a look of fierce determination in her eyes, when she replied.

"I know it won't be like before the war, Colin. But I promise you that I will do everything in my power to make it just as good." I returned her smile, nodding slightly.

"Well I won't get in your way." I replied.

"You wouldn't dare." She said, laughing slightly and patting my shoulder.

"Let me get rid of these dirty things and then I'll sit with you awhile. Would you like me to read to you for a bit?" I nodded, settling somewhat more comfortably into my pillows. She disposed of the bandages, and brought another cup of tea for each of us, a few biscuits, and a copy of Gogol's Dead Souls. A book which was rather dark for Mary's tastes but which had been a long time favorite of mine. Mary didn't seem to mind reading from it though, and her soft voice soon lulled me into a doze despite the material. The rest of the day was the now normal blur of doctors, nurses, and blocks of time with nothing to do but sit with my own thoughts. The next morning, the telegram came.