I felt a meager ray of sun on my face but kept my eyes shut just one more moment; one more moment to extend my dream where I was lying in my comfortable bed in my comfortable house with my mother and father in the room next to mine, my dog, Sassy, sleeping at my feet. There was no war, and no shell-shocked soldiers with missing limbs stumbling through the city, no blackout windows shutting out the light. It was a memory of when I was a girl, a memory of before, and my exhaustion of the last week was making me far too susceptible to having hopeless dreams.
A scratching sound made its way through my dream state, and briefly I thought it was Sassy’s nails on the wood floor of my old bedroom, trying to dig her way to China. It was a habit Sassy had had since she’d been a puppy, and one my mother would scold her for, usually followed by a threat that she would put Sassy out on the street. But we both knew that Sassy was beloved by both of us, and spoiled rotten to boot, and the worst that would happen would be Sassy getting another soup bone to gnaw on in the kitchen.
But Sassy was long gone, a victim of a mule pulling a milk wagon that had been spooked by the honking of a car horn. I opened my eyes, staring at the faded chintz of the chaise longue that had been my bed for the last four nights, sure now that the scratching wasn’t in my head but most likely in the walls. Rats!
I catapulted out of the chaise, catching the hem of my lab coat on the unruly spring, and miraculously landed on the floor with both feet. With one giant leap, I reached behind my desk for the cast-iron skillet that I’d found in the corner of the attic room. Because of its heft and telltale dings on the back of it, I assumed it had probably been used as an effective weapon against all intruders, not just the furry four-legged variety.
I paused, listening for the scratching again, trying to find which wall it was coming from and hoping the rat wasn’t too big. Not that I was afraid of something like a rat, just that the large ones made such a mess and took time to clean up.
Slowly, I turned toward the sound and found Captain Ravenel in bed sitting up against plumped pillows, an empty breakfast tray on the table next to him. He was holding his chart, the attached pen poised above it.
“I hope you have more modern medicine than that to knock me out with,” he said with a soft drawl.
“I heard scratching . . .” I stopped, suddenly realizing that he wasn’t delirious with fever, and was sitting up in bed and speaking. “How . . . ?”
“Nurse Hathaway came in about an hour ago, and pronounced my fever broken. I was also starving so she brought me breakfast. No grits, but I managed to eat it all anyway. I’m weak as a foal and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t shoot straight to save my life, but I’m feeling much better.”
I took a step toward him, too shocked to speak. The night before he’d been clammy with sweat and I’d begun to finally admit to myself that Dr. Greeley might have been right all along.
“But . . . ,” I finally managed to say.
He looked at the skillet. “You can put that away. I promise you that I’m stronger, but most definitely not strong enough to ravish you. Just strong enough to doodle a little bit with pen and paper while you slept. Nurse Hathaway and I both agreed that we should let you sleep. She said you’ve been taking care of me without a proper rest.” He tilted his head. “Although I must say that your rumpled appearance and sleepy eyes are very alluring. I’m almost tempted to start all over.”
“Oh,” I said, the skillet sliding to the floor with a thud as my hands reached for my hair. My comb had been dislodged while I’d slept and I was almost grateful for the lack of a mirror in my attic room.
My gaze moved to his chart and the pen in his hand and I suddenly remembered who I was and who he was. Trying to muster as much authority as I could with my hair half-hanging down my back and my eyes still puffy with sleep, I approached the bed. “Excuse me, Captain. But what are you doing? No one is supposed to mark on your chart except for medical personnel . . .”
I stopped as I reached his side, realizing the source of the scratching noise. The page had been flipped over to the blank side, but instead of an empty sheet of paper, elegant strokes of a pen like the gossamer threads of a web now filled the middle of it. Leaning closer, I recognized a remarkable likeness of my own face.
“You’re very good,” I said, my admiration superseding my need to reassert myself as a medical professional.
His hand began to tremble, the exertion of sitting up and sketching too much for his weakened body. I took the chart from him and settled him back against his pillow, already knowing that I would meticulously copy everything onto a clean chart so I could keep the sketch. I told myself it was so Dr. Greeley wouldn’t see it and make conjectures where none should be, but there was something intimate and familiar about the way Captain Ravenel had drawn my face, something raw. And I remembered again the first time he’d looked at me, and how it seemed as if he knew me.