Bonds of Earth (25 page)

“Why did you leave us?” the man rasps, and his voice is Seward’s. Michael cannot breathe. He stumbles and whirls around, trying to escape, but the floor has changed to thick, cold mud, sucking at his shoes, holding him fast. It closes around his ankles, his knees, his waist; he tries to fight it but finds his body refuses to obey him. As it rises past his chin, he cries out for help, but it is too late, too late—

Michael woke sweating and shivering. He wiped at his eyes to clear his vision, and his fingers came away damp with tears. Sitting up, he swung his legs over the bed, his bare feet hitting the chilled wooden floor of his room. Like an old man, he shuffled to the window and peered out into the night. Huge, fat snowflakes were falling, whipped up by an early winter storm that blanketed the city in white, temporarily obliterating the ever-present layer of filth and making everything new.

He was not aware of how long he stood at the window watching the snow fall over the nearly deserted street, but his back protested when he finally straightened. About to turn away and make a futile attempt to get some more sleep, he paused when he saw a milk wagon approach and pull up outside his building, its lone quarter horse plodding through the drifts that had begun to form.

And then from around the corner came a skidding, careening motorcar, the driver obviously either drunk or stupid. Taking the turn too quickly, it spun out of control and slammed into both horse and wagon. Michael could hear the dull thud of the collision and the scream of the animal as the wagon teetered and fell onto its side, toppling the injured horse as well.

Without thinking, Michael snatched up his trousers and his coat, stumbled into them quickly, shoved his stockingless feet into his boots, then tore a blanket from the bed as he ran out the door. He practically flew down the three flights to the ground and waded through the snow and over to the wagon. The horse was still screaming, and he tried to block out the all-too-familiar sound as he clambered over the wagon searching for the milkman.

“Jesus Chris’!” The voice did not come from inside the wagon but from behind him, and the slur told him all he needed to know. “I didn’t see’m, I swear—”

Michael pointed behind him without looking at the man. “Go to the police box on the corner and call for help, if you’re able.” The unearthly glow of the streetlamps in the storm made it easy to see the milkman. Unfortunately, he’d had a large crate of milk beside him, and it had fallen onto him as the wagon toppled. Gingerly, Michael lowered himself into the cab and crouched down, feeling for a pulse. He found it after a moment, faint and fast but definitely there.

The milkman groaned and stirred weakly. “Don’t move,” Michael ordered. “I have to get this crate off you.” Bracing himself on either side of the man’s body, he lifted the heavy crate off and away, then hefted it into the back of the wagon. He then crouched down again and reached up under the man’s trouser leg to pinch the skin. “Can you feel that?”

“Touching—my leg,” the milkman gasped, and Michael felt his heart leap in triumph. Likely it wasn’t a back injury, then, but moving him without assistance was impossible, since it would require hoisting him up through the side of the cabin, now the top of a five-foot pit, or through the back, which was presently littered with smashed crates and milk bottles. Standing up, Michael grabbed the blanket he’d left outside, then shook it out and draped it over the man. “Help will soon be here,” he said softly, smoothing back the man’s hair. “We’ll get you to a hospital.”

“Horse,” the milkman said weakly, trying to move. Michael stilled him with a firm hand on his shoulder. The animal’s cries had died down, but he was fairly sure it had broken at least one leg in the fall, if the injuries it sustained from the crash weren’t fatal.

“We’ll do what we can,” he said reassuringly. “For now, try to rest.”

When Michael lifted himself out of the cabin again, he saw the driver stumbling toward him. “I called the p’lice!” he bellowed proudly, as though he’d just discovered the cure for polio. “They’re comin’.”

“Good. Now shut the hell up before I give in to my desire to put a fist through your face,” Michael snarled. The man’s wide-open mouth clapped shut with an audible noise, and he backed away until he tripped and fell on his arse in the middle of the street. Michael suppressed a wish that he be run over.

Within ten minutes a pair of police cars arrived, and with the assistance of one of the younger men, Michael lifted the injured man out of the cart. He was thankful the milkman was unconscious by then, because that way he didn’t see the sorry state of his horse, which indeed had severely broken its right hind leg.

“His pulse is faint and slightly arrhythmic, and there are possible internal injuries,” he instructed the young man. “Make sure you tell the doctors that when you get to the hospital.”

One of the older officers eyed him. “You a doctor?”

“No,” Michael answered.

“Maybe you better come with us just the same,” he said. “I don’t know nothin’ about that stuff, and neither does Ted.”

“Hey, Sarge, what about the horse?” one of the other cops asked.

The older man shook his head. “Put it out of its misery.” The other cop drew his gun almost eagerly, and Michael felt his stomach churn.

“For God’s sake, wait until we’re out of the area,” Michael spat, and around him the policemen froze. “I didn’t tell him about the horse.”

The sergeant nodded at the other officer, who holstered his weapon, then motioned Michael toward the car. “You sure you’re not a doctor?” he asked conversationally. “Because you’re bossy enough to be one.”

The ride to the hospital felt like another dream. Michael sat in the cavernous backseat of the police sedan, the milkman’s head cradled in his lap. When they arrived, he gave his report to the duty doctor, who looked at him oddly but listened nonetheless. After the milkman had been wheeled into an examining room, the sergeant walked up to him and patted him on the shoulder.

“Thanks, bud. C’mon, we’ll drive you home.”

Michael did not answer at first, busy taking in the scene around him as he took a few moments to calm down from the events of the night. The reception area here bore more of a resemblance to that of one of the base hospitals in France than to the one in sleepy Hudson. Here there was movement and urgency and purpose. It was clear that the milkman’s was not the only accident of the night, and the nurses were bustling back and forth, the heels of their shoes tapping out a fast-paced tempo on the polished floor. As Michael watched, one of them knelt down before a small child sniffling in her mother’s arms, touching her hair briefly before escorting mother and child to another examining room.

“Hey, you okay?”

Michael shook himself from his stupor. “I’m fine. And thank you, but I don’t believe I’ll be needing a drive home.” Walking away from the bewildered cop, Michael started down a hall. The increased activity in the reception area meant that no one had the time or the inclination to stop him. He wandered for some time, up stairs and down corridors, forcing himself to look into wards and to listen to the nighttime sounds of loneliness and distress. There were considerably fewer cries than there had been in the hospitals he’d known, but even the softest moan was enough to set his teeth on edge. By the time ten minutes had passed, he was shaking and nauseous, but still he pressed on.

He would have known the amputee ward without the sign; it was isolated from the rest of the wards, as though there were a need to protect the other patients from the most obvious evidence of war’s horror. As he stood in the doorway, gazing out over the neat rows of beds faintly lit by dimmed Mazda lamps, he saw one man stir in his sleep, obviously caught in the throes of a nightmare. Every fiber of his being screamed at him to turn, to run; instead, he forced his feet to move, forced himself to pull up a chair and sit beside him. When Michael brushed the back of the man’s hand with his fingers, he started awake with a sharp gasp.

“It’s over,” Michael reassured him. “You’re safe.”

The man stared at him uncomprehendingly for a moment—God, he was young, so young—then slowly shook his head. “It’ll never be over.”

“You’re right,” Michael agreed. “But it is for tonight. And perhaps that’s all we can hope for.” He gripped the young man’s hand in his, squeezing it briefly before letting go.

“No.” The young man’s voice halted Michael’s attempt to rise. “Could you—” He looked about him and licked his lips before continuing. “—could you stay until I fall asleep?”

“I’d be happy to stay,” Michael said, taking the young man’s hand in his once more and sitting with him for long minutes. When his breathing evened out and his grip relaxed, Michael watched over him for a while longer, guarding him against the return of the nightmares.

He rose to his feet on legs turned to water and turned toward the door, only to see a woman’s figure silhouetted in the doorway. With a sigh, he trudged toward her, anticipating the stern lecture that would follow.

The first words out of her mouth were not the ones he’d been expecting, nor was the vaguely familiar voice. “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” she said, her accent crisply English, and Michael, who had never believed Fate was anything but a malicious bitch, began to wonder if she could also be blessed with a kinder, more compassionate side.

“Elizabeth,” he breathed, leaning against the door frame, suddenly feeling weaker than a baby as the fact of what he’d just done caught up with him. “It’s good to see you.”

“I saw you wander past my station like a man in a trance and followed you,” she said, reaching out to grip his arm as though she feared he would collapse at any moment. “What the devil are you doing here?”

“I, ah,” Michael said, and this time he ignored the tears as they began to trickle slowly down his cheeks, “I believe I’m looking for a job.”

M
RS
. D
INARDO
shook her head. “No, she no here. She move last month.”

Michael glared at her over the stack of Christmas presents he’d brought for Edith and Donald. “Then where did she go?”

The plump woman shrugged casually, then betrayed herself with a sidelong glance up the tenement stairway. “She no tell me. Please, you go now, hah?”

Michael closed his eyes briefly. “I know my sister hasn’t moved, Mrs. Dinardo. I watched her walk into this building yesterday afternoon.” He had wanted to see her, wanted to know how she was getting along. She had been returning from the market, a paper bag clutched in one arm, the baby in the other. Edith marched proudly along ahead of them, hugging a smaller bag.

She’s growing up,
Michael had thought, a lump forming in his throat.

Mrs. Dinardo slumped visibly when confronted by her own deception. She shook her head again, but sadly this time. “She tell me to lie to you,” she said heavily. “This I do, many times; many woman hide from a man. But you no look so terrible.”

Michael sighed. “Thank you for that. I won’t cause you trouble. I only want to give her these. Will you give them to her for me?”

“I no think she take them.”

Michael transferred them into her waiting arms. “Then give them to your own children, or someone else’s. It doesn’t matter to me.” He reached into his vest pocket and passed her the envelope he’d filled at the bank. God only knew if she’d refused the money he’d sent her last month. “This, too.”

“I am sorry.” Michael turned back to look at her. “I tell her nothing is more important than
la famiglia
, but….”

Michael forced a small smile. “Thank you for that, too. Merry Christmas, ma’am.”

“
Buono natale
,” she answered softly.

Michael let himself out. The snow of last month was long gone, but the chill in the air had persisted, and Michael hitched his coat collar up around his neck as he descended the steps. When he crossed the street, he turned and looked up at the tenement, gaze scanning the windows on the top floor. He caught the movement, the brief flash of a face, then a pale hand as it drew the faded curtain closed.

I’m not giving you up. I’ll never give you up,
Michael thought fiercely, his fists clenching.
You’re worth more than all the gold in the world.

A
WEEK
before Christmas, Michael was making his last rounds of the ward when Elizabeth informed him he had a visitor. He followed her to the gymnasium, only to find one of the last people he’d expected to see.

“Doctor Parrish,” Michael said, stepping forward with his hand extended.

The little man met him halfway, a wide smile on his face. “It’s good to see you, my boy,” he said warmly. “The compliments of the season to you.”

“You too, sir.” Michael tried not to let the tension show in his face, but Parrish obviously sensed his mood, for he held up a hand.

“While I’m sure you know I’m pleased to see you back working in medicine, I’m not here to press you. I know you’ll come to me when you’re ready to take the next step.”

Michael felt himself relax. “I appreciate that.” The fact that Michael felt no urge to amend Parrish’s “when” to “if” showed how far he had come in the past month.

Parrish smiled again and patted Michael’s arm. “I can’t stay long. I’m here to fulfill a promise I made.” With that, he reached into his coat and drew out an envelope, which he held out to Michael.

Michael stared at it. The envelope bore his name, written in strong black capitals with a grease pencil.

Parrish’s voice was kind. “Go on and take it; it won’t bite you.” Michael obeyed, trying to ignore the way his fingers suddenly itched.

“Who gave this to you?” he asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.

“Open it and find out.”

Bracing himself, Michael tore open the envelope and extracted the note, written in the same decisive hand. Even though he fancied himself half-prepared for whatever was inside, the words still struck him like a roundhouse punch to the gut.

Sarah has been asking after you for months. She now insists that seeing you again is the only Christmas present she wishes to receive this year. She and I will be in town this Thursday the 21st after eight at the address below. I would like to be able to keep my word.