We Were Soldiers

163. If I Reached Out

To keep himself from panicking, Danny ran through everything he'd learnt in basic about emergency aid training. Then he ran through everything he'd learned whilst serving with the SSR, which was considerably more useful. It was amazing what you picked up when necessity and bullshit forced you to spend a suspiciously large amount of time in the hospital tent.

First thing was to get his pal out of danger. These alleys were not seemly places to be, and definitely not seemly places to fall ill despite the convenience of the old sewage channels. So as soon as he could, he took a route that led back to the main streets. The lamps were unlit because of blackout law, but it was still a damn sight better than wandering in the darkness and getting mugged by criminals.

Second, he needed to stop the thing from getting worse. Normally the thing was bleeding. Sometimes it was itching or unconsciousness, but whatever this was, it wasn't like anything he'd seen before. He might've thought it was some sort of shock, except that shock didn't let a guy wander half of London before setting in. No, this was something different, and he really thought a doctor was needed. But Barnes was adamant, and Danny didn't know where he could even find a doctor at this time. If he wanted to go fetch a doc it would mean leaving his friend, and right now, Barnes was in no state to be left.

Third, he needed to make the thing better. A broken limb could be splinted. A bee-sting could be treated with a salve. He didn't know how to make this better, and he suspected the only person who could give him the answers he needed was half delirious with pain.

Barnes wasn't quite a dead weight, but he was fairly close to it. His shoulder complained during the whole journey, but he ignored it. He'd needed to work it a little anyway, train his muscles to carry weight again. This was as good a way of doing that as any.

He grunted with effort as they rounded the last street corner and the Strand came into view. "Dunno if you're aware of this, pal, but I think you've put on weight. I don't remember you being this heavy the last time I had to haul you to the doctor."

And Barnes was worryingly suspicious of doctors. He hadn't wanted to see one when he'd gotten an abscess, and put it off for so long that his whole jaw became infected. He hadn't wanted to see one when he'd been poisoned by Nurse Green and gone off to search for Steve. He seemed to think he could manage everything alone, even those things that needed expert help. Idiot.

Barnes didn't respond to his poke about weight, so when they reached the steps of the Strand, he stopped for a minute and gave his friend a small shake. "We're here," he said. "What now?"

Blue-grey eyes looked up at him, gaze unfocused, and then slid past to take in the front of the hotel. "Bath," he mumbled. "Hot bath."

It was stupid. Maybe he was out of his head with pain. But he asked, "That'll fix you?"

Barnes nodded, so Danny adjusted his grip once more and performed the miraculous feat of hauling his dead-weight friend up several steps without either of them falling over and breaking their necks. The heavy door to the hotel was another challenge, and by the time they'd made it into the reception lobby, he was sweating from exertion.

The man behind the counter at first raised his eyebrows at the pair, but his surprise quickly shifted to a frown of concern. "Oh dear, what's happened to Sergeant Barnes?"

"He had a little too much to drink," Danny said.

"He's been gone for less than two hours."

"Too much to drink on an empty stomach," he elaborated. "He also mentioned something about an undercooked burger he had for lunch. He might have food poisoning."

The concierge eyed Barnes for a moment then nodded. Hopefully food poisoning looked like this. He'd never seen it before. But the man merely said, "I'll send for the doctor."

"No need," Danny said quickly. "Barnes doesn't really like doctors. He says all he needs is a hot bath to make him feel better. Right, Barnes?"

Somehow, his friend nodded and said, "Yep." Hopefully his unfocused gaze gave credence to the drunk element of the story.

With a sigh, the concierge reached beneath the counter and pulled a small set of keys from his desk drawer. "Very well. Sergeant Barnes does like his baths, I suppose. Here is the key to the linen closet where you will find fresh towels and robes. The baths are located on the lower ground floor; you may take the elevator so long as he doesn't vomit in it. Otherwise it's the stairs. Return the key to me when you're done, Sergeant..?"

"Wells," he offered. "Nice to meet you, sir. I'd shake your hand, but..?" He nodded his head at the man draped across his shoulders

"Of course. I'll slip the keys into your pocket. I wish you a speedy recovery, Sergeant Barnes. Please do let me know if you change your mind about that doctor. He's a personal friend of mine, and I can have him here within the hour if needed."

The elevator was off to one side of the lobby, and Danny kept up the mask of everything is okay until the the doors had closed behind him. Then he let the mask slip and tried to manage holding his friend upright while operating the elevator's handle. Piped music tinkled away softly in the background, making a mockery of the shit-show this evening had become. When the elevator reached the lower ground and the doors slid open, he was happy to leave the ridiculous music behind.

Despite the fact he'd never been here before, it wasn't difficult to find the shower room. A single long corridor terminated in a polished wooden door, behind which was a large communal bathing room. It wasn't quite as bad as the showers at his own hotel, though. Here the shower-heads were in self-contained tiled cubicles, and the three deep bath tubs at the far side of the room were separated by railings and curtains to allow a guy to soak in peace. It all had a very new feel about it; likely this floor had been repurposed into a bathing room for the sole intention of cleansing the many soldiers who would pass through its doors during the course of the war.

"Here we are," he said, helping Barnes over to the closest tub. Thank god the room was empty. "I'm gonna sit you on the floor for a moment while I get the water running, then go find this linen closet while you get yourself comfortable."

As slow as he could, he lowered his friend to the ground and made sure he could sit propped up against the side of the bath. The Strand had gone all-out for the baths; they were wide, deep porcelain white things that stood on cast iron legs. With the bath plug in place, he turned on the hot and cold taps and swirled his hand around in the water that collected, trying to judge a suitable temperature. When he decided it was warm enough, he returned to Barnes and gently shook his shoulder.

"Hey pal, your bath's running," he said. "Can you hear me?" He got a slight nod. "Good. Hop in, and I'll be back in a few minutes with your towels and a robe. I'm gonna close these curtains around you just in case someone else walks in."

He pulled the curtain along the railing so that it screened the bath off. One of Barnes' boots was poking out from underneath the curtain, but that didn't matter, it would hang straight as soon as he moved. Content that the bath was running nicely, he left via the door and searched along the corridor for a linen closet. There wasn't a closet in sight, so he forsook the elevator and jogged up the stairs until he reached the first floor. The man on reception raised a questioning eyebrow at him.

"Linen closet?" Danny asked.

"Second floor. Directly opposite the lift."

"Thanks."

He turned back to the stairs. Sure, they made him a little out of puff, but they were faster than the elevator, and didn't have any annoying music to put up with. The door to the linen closet was exactly where the concierge had said it would be, so Danny took out two nice big fluffy towels and a clean bath robe that looked about Barnes-sized. He locked the closet up again, ran down to the reception, dropped the key back off with the concierge, and headed back down to the lower-ground.

When he opened the door, a small cloud of steam drifted out past his head. A column of it was rising from above the curtains around the bath he'd curtained off. "Barnes, did you manage to get in there okay?" he called. "I've got your towels. They're extra fluffy."

He stopped at the curtain. The same boot was still poking out from under it. Surely he'd moved, hadn't he? Danny had brought him this far expecting his friend to do the rest. "I'm gonna open the curtain a bit," he said, loud enough to be heard over the running water. "You better be in that bath already."

But he wasn't in the bath. He hadn't even moved, except to lift his arms and wrap them around his chest as violent shivers wracked his body. Danny pinched the bridge of his nose. This wasn't good. The bath was almost half-way filled, but Barnes was in no fit state to get in it. Maybe he should just hoist him in with his clothes on. A bit of water wouldn't hurt his uniform. But then, he'd have to wear a sodden uniform all the way up to his room, and thanks to their experience on the Monty he knew exactly how easy it was to move in them when they were soaked. Besides, the concierge would likely have stern words with them if they trailed water all the way through the hotel.

He put the towel and the robe over the hanging rail on the wall, then crouched down in front of Barnes. "Hey, pal, it's me," he said, using his hand to tilt back his friend's head, trying to force him to use his eyes. "Barnes, look at me," he said. When asking politely didn't work, he gently slapped his cheeks until his eyes opened a fraction. "We are in need of an entente right now. And it is this: if you ever tell Dugan I helped you bathe, I will never speak to you again. Agreed? I'm gonna take silence as assent. Good, glad you agree. Now let's get you into this bath."

First to come off were the boots—which for some reason were knotted three times—belt and jacket, and he moved them all out of the way of any errant splashes. Too much water ruined good leather, and military jackets were a real pain to dry out. He talked as he made a start on removing his shirt, a task made harder by the fact that Barnes didn't want to remove his arms from around his chest, and the way his whole body seemed to shake just with the mere effort of being alive. "Know what this reminds me of? That time on the Monty when I dragged you along on my white rabbit hunt. Remember that?" He finally managed to get the shirt off without damaging it, and made a start on his pants. "I admit, that probably wasn't the best of ideas I've had. And after we got back inside, we were shaking so badly, just like you are now. The guys had to strip us down because we couldn't make our fingers work and our hands stop shaking." His shorts and socks were the last to go, because Danny had a real bad feeling that at any moment an entire regiment of soldiers was gonna come walking in through the door for some communal bathing fun and see the sorts of things that had given Sergeant Schuster nightmares. "You know, I think you're starting to make a habit of this. You need to watch yourself, because if you make a habit out of needing guys to undress you, you're gonna get a reputation."

Anticipating the arrival of that regiment imminently, he hauled his friend to his feet and guided him towards the rim of the bath tub. His friend's skin was like ice to the touch, as if all the warmth had been drained away. Barnes managed to lift one leg over the side of the tub, then just sort of flopped down into the water in a way that made Danny glad he'd moved the boots and jacket well out of the way. With all the grace of a dying seal, Barnes float-rolled onto his back and let the water cover him up to his chin. His eyes opened by a hair's width, and he croaked, "Hotter."

Danny dipped his hand in. "It's hot. Almost as hot as I can stand."

"Hotter."

He shook his head. His friend was gonna come out of that tub looking like a boiled lobster. But because he was a patsy, he turned off the cold tap so that only hot water continued to fill it. Then he closed the curtain fully and sank down at the top-end of the tub to monitor his friend's progress.

Skin that had been white as a sheet was slowly turning a healthier shade of pink, and when the water came so high that it threatened to run down the overflow, he turned the tap off completely. "I really think you need to see a doctor."

There was no response, but he hadn't expected one. Barnes had been hanging onto consciousness by a fingernail, and now that fingernail had slipped. His breathing slowed, and with it, the severity of the shakes. They didn't stop completely, but they did subside enough that the surface of the bath became more like a tranquil pool and less like the storm that had tossed the Monty from side to side for two days straight. Danny reached out to hold the back of his hand against Barnes' forehead. It was like touching a frozen slab of granite.

"How are you so cold?" he whispered. He dipped his hand into the water, scaldingly hot against his skin, and cupped it to bring a handful up and over the top of his friend's head, allowing it to wet his hair and trickle down his face and neck. Several times more he did that, handful by handful, until his hands could no longer take immersion in the heat. It seemed to have helped; this time, when he held the back of his hand against his friend's forehead, it wasn't quite as icy.

He sat down with a shaky breath, putting the tub against his back so he could lean his weight against it. Now that the emergency was over—or at least heading in the right direction—he could allow himself the fear that he'd denied as he followed his friend out of the Kettle and back towards the hotel. When you spent your life being shut away in the dark as punishment for crimes you didn't even know you'd committed, it kinda made everything else easier to deal with. People getting shot, people getting hurt, missions going sideways; they were easy because he could remove himself from them, and even when they were happening to him, they weren't as terrible as the closet. That was why he'd become so good at thinking of solutions on the fly. Logical detachment from fear was easy in every situation that did not involve small, dark spaces.

Now, he let the fear in. Let it make his head dizzy and his legs wobbly, and thank God he was sitting down right now, because he didn't think he could stand. For the briefest of seconds he'd entertained the thought that his friend might be dying, and now that notion was trying to batter down the walls of his mind and make him live it over and over again, that brief moment when the man who had given him so much to live and hope for, who'd shown him more kindness and caring than he'd ever been shown in his life, who'd seen who he was and not turned away, was dead. Barnes was the light that had helped guide him out of the darkness; how could he go on if he lost all the light in the world?

Get a grip, he told himself. He's not dead. He's just sick. Barnes knew what he needed, and the man on the desk said Barnes liked baths, which means this has happened before. Maybe it happens a lot. Whatever it is, he's getting warm, so it's working. And you still have work to do.

His eyes had moistened slightly because of all the excess steam in the room, so he ran his sleeve across to dry them and then turned back around to check on his friend. Still floating, and looking more pink than white now. Maybe he was conscious, or aware on some level of where he was, because every time he exhaled and his head came close to dipping under the water, he raised it a little so that he didn't inhale liquid. It was probably safe to leave him for a short time.

"Barnes," he said. When there was no response, he reached out to give his shoulder a little shake. "Barnes, where's your room key?" Still no reply. So Danny got up and rifled through the pockets of his pants, and then the pockets of his jacket, until he found a key nestled inside. The tag on it said 3-13. "I'm gonna go get your room ready for you," he said, collecting all of his friend's clothes to take with him. "If you drown while I'm gone, I'm gonna get Dugan to come and give you mouth-to-mouth."

This time he opted for the elevator. There was no need to hurry now that the urgency was passed, and by using the elevator he could skip the floors he didn't need and avoid talking to the concierge. Hopefully skip meeting anybody at all, because he had no explanation for why he was stood in an elevator holding all of Barnes' clothes in his arms.

On the third floor he hopped out and wandered along the corridor until he found room thirteen. The key slid into the lock, and he closed the door behind him as silently as possible. Barnes' room was nice, but he'd taken a real Sergeant Schuster approach to decorating the space. No personal pictures graced the walls, and there were only two books on the bedside table. One was a bible and probably belonged to the room. The other was a much-weathered ASE copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. A smile tugged at his lips when he spotted it there.

But he hadn't come to be nosy. The window was open because it had been a warm and stuffy day, so he pulled it closed and then drew the curtains across it. That done, he knelt at the tiny fireplace and built up a nice stack of coal, then used the lighter he always kept in his pocket for emergencies to set the kindling ablaze. Within moment the flames were growing, so he closed the doors of the grille that kept the hot cinders from falling out. In the closet he found three itchy woolen blankets, but it was a well known fact that a blanket's capacity for heat insulation was directly proportional to its itchiness, which meant these were very warm blankets indeed. He layered them on top of the bed and then folded them back along with the duvet. Another door to the side of the room turned out to be a tiny shower and toilet—the lucky bastard had his own shower!—and he used the small hand sink to fill a glass with cold water which he placed beside the books on the night stand.

He surveyed his handiwork and nodded to himself. Not even Audrey could've done better, and she was a master at making poorly people feel comfortable. A shame nursing wasn't a man's profession, because he suspected he'd be very good at it. He was very empathetic to the people who mattered to him.

The elevator took him back down to the lower-ground floor, where he found Barnes still floating safely. Miraculously, the room was still devoid of other people, but perhaps it was simply that most guys preferred to spend their time drinking, and not bathing, during the evenings.

This time when he crouched beside the bath and placed the back of his hand against Barnes' forehead, he was treated to a flickering of tired blue-grey eyes. "You awake now?" he asked, and got a tiny nod in return.

"Cold," Barnes said, barely more than a whisper. So Danny dipped his hand into the tub again and discovered the water had gone down to a moderate hot from the scalding it had been.

"Yeah, it's not as hot as it was. But I've got your room heating up nicely for you, and extra blankets for the bed. So if you're ready to get out, we can get you up in front of the fire. Besides, look at how wrinkly your fingers are getting. You're gonna come out looking like a shrivelled prune if you stay in there much longer."

He received another tiny nod, so he grabbed one of the towels from the wall hooks and draped it over his arm to give him use of both hands. Now the tricky part. Getting into the bath involved a relatively easy watery landing. If Barnes couldn't handle getting out, it was a cold hard floor that awaited him, and possibly a concussion to go with it. Some coordination might be required.

"Here's what we're gonna do," he said. "I'm gonna pull the plug. After a minute, when some of the water has gone, we're gonna stand you up. I'm gonna wrap one towel around you, so that you're not tracking quite as much water everywhere. Then I'm gonna help you step out of the bath. After that you can sit on the edge of it while I grab your second towel, but I need you to be able to stand for at least ten seconds without support. Can you do that?"

A head-shake. Danny sighed.

"Okay, let me rephrase that. You can do that and you will do that because I'm making it an order. I know you're tired. I know you're hurting. But you gotta meet me half way here. I can't keep running your bath hot every time it cools down; we need to get you into your bed." He reached down to grab the plug's chain and gave it a quick yank. The water level immediately began to lower. "I'm gonna count backwards from five. Give you time to prepare for standing. You know what Dugan will call you if he hears you can't stand on your own, right? It's not gonna be princess names, it's gonna be Bambi. So let's not let that happen, huh?"

He watched the water swirl down the drain until the tub was half empty. Then he said, "Five… four… three… two… one… stand." Either the hot water had done him good, or Barnes had one last reservoir of strength left, because with some minor assistance from Danny, he was able to stand and sway unsteadily on his feet. With no time to lose, Danny quickly wrapped the towel round his waist and then took hold of one arm to help support his weight as he climbed over the side. Mission successful. A few seconds later, Barnes was perched on the edge of the bath looking just as pathetic as that time they'd gotten near-drowned on the Monty.

"Well done, pal. Take a break for a minute." He grabbed the second towel and ran it over his friend's hair, taking most of the moisture off, then draped it around his shoulders. The bath robe followed, another fluffy thing that smelled like it had come fresh from the laundry room. The Strand was definitely a cushier affair than the Parkgate. After he'd tied the robe off, he shifted his grip to Barnes' shoulders again. "C'mon, while you can still be marginally upright, let's get you into that elevator."

In hindsight, maybe he should've left the guy's socks down here, because the corridor was probably chilly on bare feet. Still, it had a runner carpet, which was better than nothing. And it wasn't like they'd be standing around in there for hours. They just needed to get down it as quickly as possible… which was not as quick as Danny would've liked. Barnes could only manage a slow shuffle, but on the bright side, he wasn't shaking anymore.

In the elevator, he propped his friend up against the wall again, refusing to let him sag down. If Barnes hit the floor, he knew that it would be hard to get him up again, just like a horse that got a dose of colic. He had to stay on his feet. The gunshot wound Danny had taken to his shoulder had been taxed severely tonight, and very likely his arm would be aching for days after this. Still, it was a small price to pay, and a pain he would gladly suffer a thousand times over to help his friend.

They arrived at the third floor and resumed the slow shuffle down the corridor. At room 13, Danny inserted they key and tried to ignore the blast of hot air as he helped his friend shuffle towards his own bed. The rest was easy. Gravity didn't matter when you had a comfy mattress to catch you, so Barnes merely sank down into its softness and wrapped his arm around himself. Danny shut and latched the door behind him, then started covering Barnes before he could start shivering again, first with the duvet, then the three blankets. That done he stoked the fire to give the coals a little more air, then pulled the chair at the tiny writing desk over to the side of the bed and let it take his weight.

Barnes finally seemed to be asleep. He eyes were closed and the muscles of his face slack. There was no frown of pain and no sign of shivering. Danny checked the guy's temperature with the back of his hand again, and found it almost warm enough to pass for human. Hopefully the heat from the bath and the heat from the fire would give him a good chance of warming up completely, so that he could get some answers about what the hell had just happened.

To keep the heat up, he added a couple more coals to the fire from the bucket beside the fireplace, used the iron poker to stoke the flames, then closed the grill again. Barnes' hair was drying all skewed, so he raked his fingers through it a few times and tried to make it lie a little flatter and straighter. Didn't work, but it didn't matter. There was nobody in here to see him looking unkempt. Nobody who mattered, anyway. Danny didn't matter; not really. He wasn't on the team. He didn't go on missions anymore. He wasn't technically needed; anyone with a few brains could do his job. He was just the guy who waited behind and tried to pretend that he didn't worry at all, because if Barnes knew that he actually did worry, then his stupid logic would probably make him pull away.

"Sometimes I hate the way you make me feel," he said quietly to his sleeping friend. "I'm not strong. I know that. I've always been weak, on the inside. But now I'm weak in a different way. Weak like… I dunno. Before, I was afraid of what might happen to me. Now, I'm afraid of what might happen to you. Knowing you has changed me, and that change terrifies me. If life is like a river, then the day I met you my river got pushed completely and utterly off course. I don't think it's even a river anymore; I think it's a flood-plain."

He leant forward to rest his arms on the edge of the bed and his chin on his arms. He would stay awake all night. Make sure the fire didn't go out. Make sure Barnes kept breathing. "I wish I could save you the way you saved me… but I don't think I can. I don't think you would want me to. And maybe that's the question I'm too weak to ask. If you were drowning, and I reached out to you… would you reach back?" He sighed. "I hate the way you make me feel sometimes."