Dr James Matthew Blythe threw his bag to one side and sat down at his desk. Sighing, he glanced at the clock - two fifteen in the morning. He had been working since dawn the previous morning. Really he should go up and let Faith know he was here but he knew she would be asleep; Faith wasn't like his mother, who often lay awake until his father was safely home. He should probably also go and eat the lunch Faith would have left out for him in the kitchen, he hadn't had a bite all day, but he wasn't hungry. Jem opened the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He poured himself a generous measure into a tumbler and knocked it back in one go, grimacing as the firey liquid burned the back of his throat. Unscrewing the top of the bottle he poured another, chucking the empty bottle in the wastepaper basket. He cradled the glass between his fingers, looking into the amber hue, wondering if he would find the answers to all his problems at the bottom of that glass.
"What's wrong?"
Jem looked up at his wife standing in the doorway, her heavily expectant figure illuminated by the moonlight. He quickly drank the remaining contents of his glass. "Bad night." he said.
"Have you been working this whole time?" Faith's voice was filled with concern.
Jem nodded as he lit a ciggarette and started searching for another bottle of whiskey.
"Don't, Jem." Faith pleaded, taking the bottle off him.
"Baby didn't live..." Jem muttered, "...then I lost the mother. Should have done more!"
"I'm sure you did everything you could." Faith tried to reassure him.
"Dad would have saved them!"
"You don't know that." Faith said quietly, hating how Jem always compared himself to his father, and to a certain extent, her to his mother. "Come to bed, you look exhausted."
Jem stood up and walked towards his wife as if heeding her request, but he simply reached out and retreived the bottle of whiskey from her. "Later." he growled and returned to his seat.
Faith shrugged. "Whatever Jem, but remember, it's not going to be just us anymore. There's another life to ruin here." She stomped off to bed, fuming, too angry to stay and cajole him. This was getting to be too regular an occurance, her left alone while he drank himself into a stupor. He hardly talked to her any more, let alone anything else - it was a wonder she had even got pregnant! The one hope she was clinging to was that the birth of his child would shock him into reverting back to the old Jem, the one she had fell in love with before that blasted war had changed him.
Gilbert stared at the telephone having just replaced the reciever. This was the last straw. For a while now he had noticed a deterioration in his son. Silly mistakes being made, late for calls, shortness in temper with patients and sometimes being downright rude. Gilbert had spent so much time recently apologising to people ringing up to complainin. Now, Mrs Billy Donaldson from the Glen had just phoned to 'inform' Gilbert that 'Dr James Blythe' had turned up intoxicated to visit her husband. This in itself was bad enough, Mrs Donaldson assured him, but the fact that her husband, Billy, had been dead for five years was too much to tolerate!
Gilbert didn't know whether to laugh or cry. If it hadn't been his son, and his practice, and totally unprofessional, he could have chuckled over it with Anne, but not this. It was up to him to find out what was wrong with Jem and try to help him before it was too late.
Jem was sat taking his tea at the kitchen table talking to his mother when Gilbert appeared.
"Hello dad." He said cheerfully. "Mum was just telling me about your planned trip to Avonlea. Di will be glad to see you both."
"Hmmm," Gilbert replied, giving Jem's shoulder a squeeze, "we might have to revise our plans a bit, but your mother and I will discuss that later." He looked at Anne and smiled, she in return gave him a puzzled glance. "Come into the office when you've finished your tea."
"I'll come now." Jem said, draining the contents of his cup and following his father.
Inside the office Gilbert sat down. "Shut the door and sit down." He motioned to the chair opposite him. "This is...this is difficult, son." Gilbert had no idea how to do this. How did you tell your child you were, essentially, suspending him from practice until he got his alcoholism under control? This was one situation Gilbert never thought he'd find himself in.
"What is it dad? Have I done something wrong?"
"Apart from going to Mrs Donaldsons drunk, you mean?"
"I wasn't drunk!" Jem said defensively.
"So you visit dead people when your sober?" Gilbert's anger was rising at Jem's denial of the problem.
"A mistake! Have you never made any? No, you're perfect!" Jem shouted.
"Far from it! But I have never let personal problems interfere with my work!" Gilbert shouted back.
"Just the other way around..."
Anne opened the door. She had heard the raised voices and had went to investigate. "What's going on?" she enquired.
"Nothing that concerns you Anne." Gilbert said sharply. "This increasing habit of yours for standing outside doors eavesdropping has to stop, otherwise you are going to hear something you wish you hadn't!" Gilbert regretted the words as soon as they'd left his mouth.
Anne stared at him open mouthed. He had never spoken to her in that tone before. With a very deliberate action she closed the door.
"That was a bit harsh dad." Jem said quietly.
Gilbert shook his head and sat down. The last thing in the world he wanted was to hurt or upset Anne, but apologies and explainations would have to wait until he sorted out this problem.
"Jem, the drinking will have to stop before it gets worse. You're a doctor, you've seen the effect alcohol can have, not only on you but your whole family as well. Faith has only a few weeks before the baby comes...she needs you to be there with her...in control."
"I - I can't stop it dad." Jem's eyes filled with tears as he looked helplessly at his father. "It blocks out the...the...memories. Every time I close my eyes I can see their faces, men writhing in pain, limbs blown off, bullets penetrating their bodies, blood gushing from their ripped and torn flesh...Walter, dad. I see Walter, screaming, bleeding, calling for help...and I'm not there to save him..." Jems words were drowned out by his increasing sobs. Gilbert stood and held his son, murmurring soothing words as Jem cried on his shoulder.
"It should have been me dad, not Walt." Jem said. "He only went because of me.."
"Walter went because he felt it was his duty," Gilbert said, his own eyes welling up at the thought of his beloved son, "not because of you or anyone else. He was a brave man, he wanted to fight for his country, protect the freedom that he believed was our right to have, keep future generations safe. He died fighting for what he believed in, and it is up to us to ensure he did not die in vain...he wouldn't want you to feel like this."
"But why Walter?"
"Why any of the sons and brother's of this empire? 'Theirs is not to reason why...'" Gilbert began quoting.
"'Theirs is but to do or die!'" Jem finished.
"Exactly." Gilbert said, hugging Jem. "Now I think a couple of months off... just until the baby's born and settled," he added at Jems protestations, "give yourself a rest, enjoy some time with Faith. We all need a break sometime. Try to lay off the drinking, eat more, sleep more...doctors orders!"
Jem laughed. "Okay dad, I'll try...and thanks."
Gilbert gave him a final pat on the back and went off to find Anne...
He found her sitting in the window seat of their bedroom.
"Anne..." he said softly.
She ignored him, not even turning to acknowledge his existance.
"Anne," he tried again, "I'm sorry."
"Sorry for what?" she snapped, "Sorry for shouting at me? Sorry for the hurtful things you said to me? Sorry for cancelling a trip I was so looking forward to, without consulting me? Or sorry for trying to keep me in the dark over problems our son is having?"
"Um...all of the above." Gilbert laughed, he couldn't help it. Anne was sat there, eyes blazing, a look on her face reminisant of the Anne Shirley of old, cracking a slate over his head; the Anne he first fell in love with. "Come on Anne-girl...forgive me?" He looked at her so pleadingly she almost relented.
"Why didn't you tell me Jem was having a hard time?"
"I hadn't realised it was so bad, but the complaints kept coming. I had to do something Anne, to make him see the consequences of his actions, so I told him to take some time off work. That's why we can't go to Avonlea just yet."
"I understand that, but what I don't understand is why you felt the need to keep it from me? Am I so very delicate that I would crumble and fall to pieces if I knew my son was...is an alcoholic?"
"You listened at the door, didn't you?" Gilbert said accusingly.
"Yes I did." Anne was defiant. "And I didn't like what I heard, but that's life. I never realised Jem blamed himself for Walter's death."
"Neither did I." Gilbertsaid sadly, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "This has been eating away at him for over two years, how did I miss it?"
"We all did, even Faith." Anne moved over to sit beside Gilbert, resting her head on his shoulder, silently forgiving him.
They said nothing for a while, just sitting and drawing comfort from each other, thinking about how much life had changed since the brutal war in Europe began six years ago.
"Do you still miss him as much Anne?" Gilbert asked eventually.
Anne carefully considered her answer. "I will miss Walter," she said slowly, "every second of every hour of every day for the rest of my life, but it doesn't hurt as much now."
Gilbert nodded. "I know what you mean. Sometimes when I think about it I'm...I'm...this might sound wrong, but I'm glad Walter died."
Anne should have been shocked, anyone else would have been to hear this.
"Sometimes so am I." she admitted. "Selfishly I want him here, but..."
"When I see the men who came back trying to deal with the aftermath, the haunting memories of the uglyness they witnessed, trying to live with physical injuries not to even mention the psycological impact...Walter couldn't have coped with that."
"No...Walter was sensitive, he wasn't like other men...I often think about it Gil, he's better off now, this world was never meant for someone like him."
Gilbert lay back on the pillows, Anne snuggled beside him. Long after she fell asleep he lay thinking about Walter...he and Anne had never really talked much about his death and how it affected them...it had been too raw. He had always known Walter was...different, Anne must have felt this too given her insightful comments earlier; it would never change how much he loved his son, but he had never been close to him - Walter had always been closer to Anne and his sisters. Gilbert doubted that anyone else suspected what he and Anne knew but could not put into words, maybe it was just an intuitive parental thing. His thoughts turned to his other sons, his son-in-laws, and all the other sons of Canada who had left for Europe brave and valliant soldiers but returned as broken, defeated men, even though they'd won the war. Maybe those who didn't return were the lucky ones...
Jem spent a harrowing few weeks battling the desire for a drink. He sweated, shook, cried and angrily lashed out at anyone who dared to speak to him. The nights were the worst - he paced the floor, unable to close his eyes for fear of dreaming. Faith stayed with him, saying nothing, just sitting. Finally in a moment of clarity he realised what he was doing to himself, to Faith, to his family. He watched his wife, heavily pregnant, struggling to keep her eyes open, stretching out to make herself more comfortable, quietly reading in the corner. A wave of love flushed over him...he would beat this addiction, for Faith, for his father, his mother, his unborn child...for Walter.