A doubtful look came over her. “I did not. I thought he looked so much recovered that I should save it…for fear he might have a relapse and need it more then.” She raised her eyes to Michael. “It was very hard to procure.”
“It still is,” Michael said. “That’s one thing that hasn’t changed. But obviously he recovered,” Michael said. “You must have been very glad of that…and proud, too.”
“Proud?” Proud of what? Eleanor would never have used that word. Once she knew his dreadful needs—and once she had actually helped him to satisfy them—she had never in her life felt pride again.
And after she had come to share those needs, she had felt nothing but an all-abiding disgrace.
“What did you do once he was well, and the war was over? Did you both return to England?”
“No,” she said, her thoughts drifting away for a few moments. “We did not go home, ever again.”
“Why was that?”
How could they, given who—and what—they had become? For as Sinclair had recovered, she had declined. The fever ward had done its work, and by the next morning Eleanor had felt the initial symptoms. A slight dizziness, a sticky warmth to her skin. She did her best to dissemble, because she knew that once she was relieved of her duties, she would not be able to see Sinclair, but when she went to his side, carrying a bowl of barley soup, she had tripped over her own feet, spilling the soup and nearly collapsing on top of him. Sinclair had clutched her in his arms and called for help.
A kerchiefed orderly had eventually shambled over, the stub of a cigar wedged behind one ear, but when he saw that it was Eleanor, and not just another dying soldier, who needed help, he’d picked up his pace.
Sinclair had looked stricken, and she had tried, even in her own extremis, to assure him that she would be all right. She was escorted back to the nurses’ quarters in the tower, and Moira had immediately pressed a glass of port to her lips—where she was always able to find such things remained a mystery—and put her to bed. Over the next week, Eleanor would remember little of what transpired…apart from Moira’s worried face, hovering over her…and, on one unforgettable night, Sinclair’s.
There was a low hissing sound from the machine that she only became aware of when she stopped talking. She had almost been unaware that she was talking.
“Why,” Michael asked again, “did you never go back to England?”
“We would not have been welcome there,” she finally said, leaning back on her hands. “Not then…not as we were. We became…what do you call them?” She was starting to feel hazy, confused; whatever substance the doctor had given her was clearly having its intended purpose. “People who have been banished from their own country?”
“Exiles?”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I believe that’s the word. Exiles.”
She heard a little click, and looked down to see the red light stop flashing on Michael’s hissing little box. “Ah. Your beacon has gone out.”
“We’ll put it back on another time,” Michael said, gently lifting her feet off the floor and resting her legs on the bed. “Right now, I think you should just sleep for a while.”
“But I have rounds to make…” she said, even as she struggled, unsuccessfully, to keep her head from falling back onto the pillow. She felt an increasing sense of urgency. Why was she lying down when she should be visiting the wards? Why was she babbling on when soldiers were dying?
She felt the slippers being taken off her feet.
“And I am so far behind in my duties…”
Once her eyes had closed, Michael threw a blanket over her. She was fast asleep again. He put his tape recorder and notepad away, then pulled down the blackout shade and turned off the light.
Then he simply stood there, like a sentinel, watching over her in what little light still penetrated the room. He had been on vigils like this before, he reflected. The blanket barely moved as she breathed, and her head lay turned on the pillow. Where was she now? And what strange concatenation of events had led to her terrible demise? To being wrapped in a chain and consigned to the sea? That was a question he would never know how, or when, to ask. But time, he knew, was already running short; his NSF pass had less than two weeks left to run. Still, who knew what reaction she might have to reliving such a trauma? The silken strands of her hair lay across one cheek, and though he had a momentary impulse to brush them away, he knew better than to touch her. She was somewhere far away…an exile, in a place and time that no longer even existed.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
December 19, 2:30 p.m.