And I wasn’t. I wasn’t really a nurse, and I wasn’t doing my job. Martha was supporting her family back in Glenley Crewe; Nina was earning money for her wedding and marriage. What would happen if either of them had started talking about ghosts, the way Martha had talked about the orderlies being afraid of the basement? Any nurse, any orderly who hadn’t left already was in desperate need of the work. And the consequences of seeing ghosts were as dire for them as they were for the patients.
“What about the woman?” I said. “Have you ever seen her?” When I’d told him the story, I’d described the woman I’d seen.
“No,” said Jack.
“I don’t know what she was,” I said. “I didn’t get the same feeling from her that I did from—from the others. But I never got very close.” My mind was turning it over. I couldn’t stop it. It was better than cowering in fear. “If she wasn’t one of the Gersbachs, who was she?”
He watched my face for a moment. “You’re not going to solve this, Kitty. You can’t.”
“You’re right.” My neck hurt, but I straightened in my chair. “But there’s one thing different now.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re talking to me. You and I are talking about ghosts for the first time. Right now.”
He opened his mouth, closed it again. “You’re the one asking questions.”
“And you’re answering them. I want to know, Jack.” As I spoke the words, I felt how true they were. “I want to know who they were. What they want.” I felt light-headed, as if I could float to the ceiling, and the sensation, surprisingly, was not unpleasant. “I’m going to find out.”
“Kitty, think,” he said. “You just said you could lose your job just for being in this room. Think about what you’re saying.”
“If they died here,” I said, “if there was a sickness, or something—where are they buried? When were the funerals? Where are the graves? Who sold this place to Mr. Deighton, the house and all the land? Four people are gone, Jack. Gone. How did that happen?”
“Kitty. You can lose everything. Why do you want to do this?”
In that moment, he looked weary. He wouldn’t help me; I could see that. He couldn’t. And I thought briefly, dispassionately about my mother. I wondered where she was, whether she ever thought of us. I wondered whether it mattered to her that Syd was dead, that I’d been left to fend for myself alone. I hated her with a hatred that was casual and often forgotten, but I also understood her. She’d known, just as I had, that it was life or death to leave. And when you run, you must not look back, must not check over your shoulder, must not think too much, must not wonder. For I would only drag her down and drown her.
Sometimes putting yourself first was the only thing you could do.
But it would have been nice to have someone to rely on, just once in my life. It would have hurt a little less.
“It’s wrong,” I said. “Captain Mabry should see his children. Archie shouldn’t spend his nights screaming like that. And I’m not supposed to fix it—I’m not supposed to see the patients as my friends, as anything but a job. That’s fine. But I’m about to get sacked, and I need a weapon.”
“What do you mean?”
I laughed, an ugly rasp from my throat. “Jack, I’m not even a nurse. There’s already been at least one incident report, and there are going to be more after tonight. I have three weeks, if Matron doesn’t dismiss me herself when she hears I’ve been in your room again. I need something to fight back with. There’s a secret here that someone’s keeping; I can smell it. And if I can find it, I can use it.”
“You’re talking blackmail,” he said softly.
“No. I’ve never blackmailed anyone in my life, and I don’t intend to start. I’m talking about knowledge, Jack. In order to win, you just have to know more than your opponent does. I’ve told enough lies to know. I’ve been at a disadvantage since the day I came here. I need to get ahead. Digging up secrets may not be the means for my leaving. It may be the key for me to stay.”
There was a silence between us. I couldn’t read Jack’s face in the gloom, but he looked at me for a long moment, and when he spoke, his tone was almost admiring. “I can’t tell if that’s brave,” he said, “or just coldhearted.”
It stung, but I put on my best bravado. “Coldhearted or dead, Jack,” I said. “Everyone has to choose sometime.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Even among the mad, life at Portis House had a routine. Meals were served at exact times; morning awakening and evening curfew were strictly observed. The time between was a simple rhythm of rest, exercise, walks in the garden, reading, napping, or just staring out the window. Many of the men seemed barely to notice one another. Very few appeared to be friends. Perhaps that was strange, but I understood it, as did the other nurses. A man fighting for his sanity had the energy only for the simple tasks of his daily life. Friendship was a luxury.
I had thought the routines pointless at first, but it didn’t take me long to see they were not only valuable; they were very nearly the stuff of life. That a man’s soup was ten minutes late could upset him; that it rained during the time of his usual walk could send him into a black despondence. As the patients traveled through their weary, sometimes painful days, we nurses and orderlies worked day and night in the background, our own routines never stopping. One man couldn’t abide a single hair in his basin; another pulled his blankets to the floor every night and slept in the corner as if he were still in a trench, leaving us with bundled linens soaked in sweat.
Florence Nightingale had dealt with fevers, poultices, broken limbs, festering wounds. I wondered what she would have thought of the nurses on her ward tending to a man whose only illness was that he’d completely forgotten he’d been in a war at all.
I rotated back onto the day shift. There were no more nightmares on my watch; I counted linens. Jack Yates stayed in his room and I stayed out of it. I wrote a terse account of the assault by Archie and submitted it in my nightly report to Matron. I heard nothing about it, nor about discipline for breaking the rules about fraternizing with patients yet again.
After that first night, Archie was not in his room. When I was back on the day shift, Boney told me he was in the infirmary again.
“You may as well take his supper to him,” she said, handing me a tray and staring at the bruises on my neck in a way I’m sure she thought was discreet. “You’ll have to see him sometime.”
“Is he in there because of me?”
She shrugged. “Matron’s order. It’s either that or the isolation room. He’s been quiet, so he’s in the infirmary.”
“Fine,” I said, and took the tray down the corridor toward the stairs. I didn’t want her looking at my neck anymore.
Archie was curled on his side in bed, his thin body barely making an impression under the covers. His eyes were closed, though I knew he wasn’t asleep; they stayed closed as I brought in the tray and set it on the bedside table.
“They’ve put your soup in a bowl again,” I said. “I’ve told them to put it in a mug, but they don’t listen.”
There was a sound from the bed, and I turned to find him looking at me.
“Expected someone else, did you?” I said.
He stared at the marks on my neck, his expression one of stark horror. “Kit-Kitty—”
“Don’t,” I said. I dumped his tea into the sink, rinsed the cup, and began to carefully transfer the soup. “Don’t say it. Don’t apologize. There’s nothing to apologize for.”
I kept my eyes on the soup. I couldn’t look at him. I could hear his breathing, heavy and harsh.
“I’m s-s—,” he tried.
I gritted my teeth, focused on not spilling the soup. “Archie, stop.”
“I’m so s-s—”
I turned my back and took the empty soup bowl to the sink. I would rinse it before I took it back to the kitchen. I may as well.
“Kitty,” he said again behind me. My vision blurred. I put the soup bowl down and put a hand to my mouth. I stood there for a long time, struggling to take one breath, and another. I recalled it again, the needle I’d jabbed into his arm, the scream he’d made.
It had happened to Maisey Ravell, too, and she’d run from him before he could say he was sorry. As if he were a dangerous monster. And, to all appearances, he was. Or he was just a man who had been through hell and was still there, a man who had spent weeks digging the rotting bodies of his comrades from the mud and still saw visions of it daily.
“Kitty. Pl-please—”
I turned around. His cheeks were wet, though he did not sob. I took a deep breath, took in a gulp of air that smelled of ammonia, musty old sweat, and the faint tang of vomit, the air that was the smell of this place. And then, the tray of supper forgotten, I walked over to the bed and got on it next to him, sitting up with my back against the brass bedstead. He rolled over and put one arm around my hips, his head in my lap. His shaking hand trembled in the folds of my apron.
“It wasn’t you,” I said to him.
He said nothing.
“I know it wasn’t,” I went on. “I knew it at the time, even as it was happening. It was never you. And still I gave you that needle.”
The arm on my hips hugged me a little tighter.
“Who is he?” I ventured. “Do you know?”
He flinched in my lap. I heard him take a breath, but he didn’t answer for a long moment. When he did, his voice was almost a whisper, but his stutter was gone.
“He comes in my dreams,” Archie said. “He tells me I’d be better off dead.”