Downtime (39 page)

“Ez?” Talk about strained. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Ezra, it’s me. And Derry,” I said as Derry dropped heavily to his knees and set a hand on the back of Ezra’s neck. We prompted not the flicker of an eyelash or the softest exhalation. It seeped into my own tired brain that this sleep wasn’t one born of exhaustion. Cupping his face in my hands, I tilted his head back and gave his cheek a light pat. “Ezra?” He was out cold. I swallowed hard and reminded myself that blowing up was only going to get me a forced escort to the road. “What did you give him?”

Mrs. Lougheed frowned. “There’s no need to take that tone, sir. If the gentleman could not be induced to rest, the last doctor on shift likely gave him morphia to prevent him from working himself into a state of collapse….”

She continued on with the explanation, but I had heard all I needed to hear. Morphine. And I’d thought the knot in my gut couldn’t get any tighter. “Bring that lantern over here.”

Samuel leaned over us with the light and I checked Ezra for signs of overdose. Apart from the drowsiness, his pulse was strong, his breathing good. Still it made me sick to think they’d pumped him full of drugs without a second thought. If it had taken us any longer to get him out, he’d have ended up addicted to the stuff.

“He’s all right?” Derry whispered, watching me worriedly.

“I think so.” It was the best assessment I could make in this dark little cage in this goddamned backward century. One thing I knew for certain. He wasn’t staying here a minute longer than it took me to get him dressed and out the door. “Where are his clothes?”

Mrs. Lougheed’s lips formed a resolute line. “I did explain to you, sir. You will have to wait for the doctor.”

I was on my feet and staring her down, my last vestige of good manners gone. “Where the hell are his clothes?”

“Morgan,” Derry cut in with dismay, but I couldn’t stay quiet.

“What the hell kind of care is this? You lock him up on the word of two doctors who never even examined him and then, without talking to him, label him violent and delusional and stick him in a dark closet to fend for himself all night.” I looked at Derry. “This is the best? Really? Jesus Christ. Just because they haven’t chained him to a wall doesn’t mean what they’re doing to him now is all that much better.”

Derry groaned, bowing his head over Ezra’s. Though it was directed at me, I wasn’t about to apologize for losing my cool. Mrs. Lougheed stared at me, stony-faced, just a glint of uneasiness far back in her eyes. The attendants were ready to intervene if I lashed out at her again. But I had no intention of dropping the matter.

“Bring me his clothes. We’re getting him dressed and out of here, doctor or no. If you won’t give me his clothes, I’ll take him out of here in that goddamned burlap bag you’ve got him dressed in and I’ll carry him back to London if I have to. And then I’ll go to every newspaper in the country and let them know exactly how St. Andrews cares for its patients. It’s all up to you, Mrs. Lougheed.”

“Now look here,” Samuel began indignantly, but Mrs. Lougheed raised her hand and he fell silent. She waved the other two attendants out and, taking charge of the lantern, instructed Samuel to bring Ezra’s clothes. When he was gone, she looked at me for a long moment, much in the same way, I suspected, she assessed her more volatile patients. When she spoke, it was with her usual measured calm.

“I assure you, sir, that if the doctor on shift felt Mr. Glacenbie would be best served by being shut in seclusion, then I for one have no cause to question that decision. No harm has been done in his spending some time alone.”

“He’s never alone.” I brushed a hand over my face and exhaled, wondering if collapsing in tears would have Mrs. Lougheed locking me in another room. Derry’s hand, strong and warm, squeezed mine. It had been one hell of a long night, but Ezra was still with us and we were taking him home.

I made another attempt to rouse him; maybe not enough to walk out on his own, but to at least let him know the cavalry had arrived. “Come on, Ez. No time for napping. Let’s see those baby blues.”

His mouth turned down in annoyance and my heart leapt. He was in there, trying to respond past the haze of medication, even if it was just to tell me to leave him the hell alone. “Ezra, if you don’t wake up, Derry and I are going to have to dress you. You don’t want to go out in public like that, do you?”

Derry gave a watery snort and hugged Ezra to his chest. “Poor love. And we’ve got to get you aboard the train, no less.”

Ezra opened his eyes, giving me a fleeting glimpse of confusion before he shut them again. Then he muttered my name, flooding me with a relief all out of proportion to his response. I doubted we’d get him walking, but he would at least leave this place with some dignity, wearing his own clothes.

The process of getting him dressed roused him to semi-wakefulness. While I held him so Derry could drag his coatsleeves over his arms, he squinted at me, then repeated my name as if it were a lifeline keeping him conscious. He touched my cheek, fingers trailing along my jaw. “You’re real.”

Putting his watch in my pocket for safekeeping, I buttoned the top button of his coat. “Yeah, I’m real. Here to get you. I’m sorry it took us so damned long.”

He didn’t seem to hear. His gaze shifted suddenly past me, and even more abruptly his arms surged over my shoulders to pull me against his chest with surprising strength. “Leave him alone!” His voice was weak, hoarse from the hours he’d spent calling for help, but his shielding grip was like iron. I don’t know what made me look over my shoulder, half-expecting to see some slavering monster ready to take a bite out of me. There was of course only what Ezra could see, which didn’t help matters as far as convincing Mrs. Lougheed and her staff that he was ready to go home.

“He ain’t right,” Samuel said in a low voice.

“No,” the matron said. “Samuel, please find a doctor, if you can. I am not at all easy about discharging him.”

I extricated myself gently from Ezra’s hold and looked into his frightened face. “Ez, listen. Whoever it is, they’re not going to hurt me. I’m fine.” Tired, anxious blue eyes darted around with such raw fear, I shivered. What the hell was he seeing? There was no way I could ask him. No way I could put him through that right now. “Ezra, look at me. Think you can walk? We’ll do most of the work. You just move your legs back and forth.”

He swallowed, catching his breath, and his head drooped forward in the semblance of a nod. Good enough. We got his arms over our shoulders, and stood for a minute to let him adjust. But at the first step forward, his legs buckled. He groaned, sagging against me, and I rested my head against his. “Still with us?”

Every word took effort. “I don’t feel well.”

The morphine. “If you’re going to barf, warn me,” I whispered. Maybe he’d hit Attila the Matron, who stood blocking the door. “Mrs. Lougheed, I’m really not interested in getting into a long explanation, but the fact of the matter is, Ezra’s in direct communication with the spirit world and your damned asylum’s full of trapped ghosts who probably aren’t much saner than the day they died. That’s the reason he didn’t sleep until you injected him full of morphine and that’s the reason he’s shaking like a goddamned leaf right now. So unless you want to be vomited on in the next couple of seconds, I suggest you get the hell out of our way and let us take him home.”

“Home,” Ezra muttered, lifting his head. He frowned at Mrs. Lougheed. “Alexander wants a game.”

Derry shot me a bemused look and I shook my head. Then I realized Mrs. Lougheed looked a little spooked. “You know what he’s talking about?”

Ezra muttered something about backgammon and Mrs. Lougheed abandoned her post altogether, lantern rattling at her side as she hurried from the room. She’d left us in near darkness, but Derry’s eyes shone bright as stars as he grinned at me and clapped Ezra on the back. “Bravo, Ezra. It’s still a fair run to the porch and they’ll have the steward after us, but we’ve a fighting chance now.”

“We’d better move it.” I had no idea if there were wheelchairs around. I wasn’t sure if they even existed. “Ez, you’re doing fine. Stay on your feet and we’ll get you out.”

“And a blessing on you, Alexander,” Derry called as we hauled ass out of the room. The maze of gloomy corridors might work in our favor, I thought, as we backtracked to the stairs. Unfortunately, Ezra didn’t make it far before his legs gave out again. Derry took most of his weight with the apparent expectation that I would try to rouse him back to wakefulness. But it was just slowing us down and it was too hard on Ezra.

“It’s no good. He can’t walk out of here.”

Ezra clutched at my coat and held on, fighting for all he was worth to appear awake and alert, though he could barely stand. “Don’t leave me. I can walk.”

The desperation in his voice cut me with a cleaner stroke than the Ripper could have managed on his best day. “Ezra, we’re not leaving you. We came here expressly to get you out of this place and that’s what we’re doing, even if I have to carry you.” And it looked like I’d have to. Bending, I wrapped an arm around Ezra’s legs and as he settled unresisting over my shoulder, I sucked in a breath and straightened up. He wasn’t any heavier than I expected, but I was so damned achy and tired, I didn’t know how I would get him all the way down to the cab.

Humor warred with sympathy in Derry’s gaze. “Can you manage it?” he asked, clearly willing to do the carrying if I couldn’t.

“I’ve got him. Let’s go.”

I must not have looked too good myself, because Derry hovered close as he hurried along beside us. When voices somewhere ahead made themselves heard, we froze, until a herd of attendants led by one very pissed-off guy in a suit, tie, and white coat stormed in our direction.

“Bloody hell,” Derry wheezed, and pushed me through the first unlocked door he could find. We waited until all was quiet again before making another run for the front. Or more like an awkward lope in my case. My headache had reasserted itself and I was starting to feel Ezra’s weight. Just ahead, I saw the light pouring out from the open door of the front office, and I rejoiced that we were almost home free.

Then my gaze swept ahead to the entranceway, and Mrs. Lougheed waiting at the door.

Mrs. Lougheed
considered us with a reproachful gravity as she fingered a shiny silver whistle. The last thing I wanted to do was threaten the woman with my gun, but I wasn’t leaving Ezra. Then it dawned that the matron hadn’t blown her whistle and apparently did not intend to. She went into the office, returning with a wicker wheelchair.

“You cannot carry him back to town,” she said calmly. “Take this.”

“Truly?” Derry Neilan, suspicious of another soul—now that was unnatural.

Me, on the other hand…. “You’re just going to let us walk out of here?”

Mrs. Lougheed’s grim mouth turned up ever so slightly, but pure sorrow shone in her eyes. “Alexander was one of the first patients under my care. No friends nor family. No one to take him.” Her gaze went distant. “Those were the days we still took in paupers. Alexander was brilliant, a mathematician, but he hadn’t a penny to his name. He loved games and I played backgammon with him because I’d never learnt chess. He was always a gentleman.”

She pressed fingertips to her mouth until she had regained firm control over her emotions. “He was a gentleman, but he flew into ravings like nothing I had seen before. Haunted, he was.” Her gaze strayed to Ezra, propped between us, nearly asleep but mumbling to himself. “He took his own life. Before you were even born. You could not have known it. Could not have guessed it.” Mrs. Lougheed had made her decision, on our side this time. “Go on, take him out. If you’re quick, you’ll catch the six-fifteen back to London.”

We didn’t need more encouragement. We got Ezra into the chair and as Derry opened the door, I wheeled through it. Mrs. Lougheed stood in the doorway and when I turned to thank her, she waved impatiently. “Go on. And keep him out of trouble, so they will never find cause to bring him back.”

She closed the door, but her shadow remained in the glass. Derry noticed it too. “She’ll distract them.”

“Think so?” I tilted the wheelchair to get Ezra down the steps. We reached the lawn and took off, the wheels running slick on the damp ground. Afraid the cab hadn’t waited so long for us, I nearly gasped aloud at the sight of it looming in the lingering mist. The eastern sky glowed with the first touches of sunrise. I looked back to see no one following. Mrs. Lougheed had done right by us, with a little nudging from Alexander.

We made the station with minutes to spare. A stumbling Ezra propped between us, we hurried down the platform—Derry’s eye out for our compartment, mine for any sign of trouble. The stares we got from the few people waiting on the early train were either disapproving or amused. No one stopped or questioned us. But I couldn’t relax until the train had pulled out of Northampton. As picturesque in the morning light as I’d imagined, I watched without regret as it receded into the distance, gold-tinged fields taking its place.

We were hardly thirty minutes out of town when Derry drifted into a well-deserved snooze. I let him sleep, and Ezra as well, thinking maybe it would help him distance himself from the nightmare he’d been through. As I had on the first night we’d bunked together, I got him into a comfortable position, curled up on his side, head pillowed on my lap. It was the best we could do on the train, but he wasn’t complaining and neither was I.

A little more than an hour and a half later, I woke, disoriented to find the train was slowing along the platform of a much more crowded station. I woke Derry and together we roused Ezra. He couldn’t manage much more than a dazed awareness of his surroundings, but he trustingly followed my instruction to walk beside me, holding on to my arm as he needed. We flagged down a cab and in seconds he was asleep again.

Not sure anyone would be up to greet us, I was pleased as hell to see the anxious faces crowding for a peek through the parted curtains as the cab rolled to the curb. Everyone in the house poured onto the steps and, as Derry and I maneuvered a drowsy Ezra to the sidewalk, ran down to help us bring him inside. A flurry of questions went along with the help, and I let Derry tackle most of them, my sights set on getting Ezra into bed before he collapsed. Dr. Gilbride’s cursory examination confirmed what I already knew, that Ezra needed to sleep off the morphine and he would be all right, at least physically. The rest I would worry about when he was awake enough for conversation.

After a tiring trek upstairs, Derry and I sank onto Ezra’s bed with a near simultaneous gasp of profound relief. We’d done it. Sure, it had taken threats, blackmail, long miserable waits, and the occasional flight in panic, but we were finally home.

Between us, Ezra slumped, awake but none too focused. Derry looked at him fondly. “The poor lad could sleep on a two-penny rope. We’d best get him out of his clothes and into bed.”

“I hate to complain, Derry, but your century sucks.”

Discerning from my tone what he might not from the words, he smiled sorrowfully. “Is life so much easier in yours?”

I had to admit it wasn’t. Institutional life might be less of a horror, but generally speaking, there was as much to bitch about in my own time, if not more.

Derry helped me get Ezra undressed and into a nightshirt, before leaving him in my care. As I buried him in blankets, he opened his eyes. Blue gleaming like a starry twilight drank me in for the longest minute. “You’re here.”

“Right here. Try to sleep.” I drew the curtains tight, plunging the room into a peaceful gloom, and crawled into bed. All but asleep, he turned over and plastered every warm inch of himself against me. If he needed something to hold on to, something solid after all those ghosts, it was okay with me. Nuzzling disheveled hair, I kissed his forehead and whispered a good night.

But that was not to be. He slept peacefully for a while, then the nightmares kicked in and he was tossing and turning. I held him and talked to him, so tired I hardly knew what I was saying. He went back to sleep for a few hours, until the nightmares resumed.

Waking at three in the afternoon, I got up and dressed. I settled in a chair with a book, but kept one eye on Ezra, until the smells rising from cooking going on downstairs started to make me squirm and, to my relief, woke him too.

I could tell as he sat up that, despite the nightmares, he had no idea why he was in bed at such a weird hour. He glanced toward the window and the afternoon light streaming in, then at me in blank confusion. “Morgan?”

He wasn’t as hoarse as before, but the rough edge surprised him. I moved to his side, an explanation on my lips, but suddenly the confusion cleared away, disquiet taking its place. He looked at me and I nodded. “If there’s anything you don’t remember, I’ll fill you in, if you want. Talking about it is probably a good idea,” I added as the disquiet only seemed to deepen.

“Perhaps a little later.”

“Want to go down for some supper?”

“I’m not particularly hungry.”

I might have attributed that to the morphine, but I knew there was more going on. He wasn’t ready to face everyone yet, whether it was their sympathy he dreaded or their doubt that he was sane after they’d seen him dragged off by the asylum goons. I didn’t want to push him, though I knew everyone had to be anxious to know how he was doing. “The drug may have killed your appetite, but you should eat a little something. I’ll bring you tea and cookies,” I said, keeping it light and cheerful. “And you’d better eat it or Kathleen will be up to feed you herself.”

Satisfied with the flash of wry amusement that got me, I went to find dinner spread out in the dining room and nearly everyone in the house just sitting down to it. At my appearance, they perked up and I stopped the forthcoming questions with a shake of my head. “He’s not ready to come downstairs. The morphine’s worn off, I think, but he’s tired and not in a frame of mind to talk about what he went through.”

“Then I shall bring his supper up,” Kathleen said, starting to rise.

“No, let me do it,” I said, waving her back to her chair. “He’s not really up for visitors yet, either.”

“You may take it up—and something for yourself, as you’ll want to stay with him, I suppose.” She bustled around to overload two plates with food. “I meant to tell you, I’ve aired Mr. Cotton’s room, so you may move upstairs when you like. I do understand you may not be much longer with us, but I will have you comfortable while you’re here.”

Henry bowed down further over his soup to hide whatever expression was in danger of getting us all into trouble. But Derry couldn’t hide his commiseration. He shook his head with an unspoken promise to help me deal with Kathleen later on. I let the matter drop. Ezra might not be ready for a flood of visitors, but neither was he ready to face the night alone.

Near staggering under the weight of the tray Kathleen put in my care, I hiked back upstairs and peered past the door I had left ajar, to see Ezra where I’d left him. His thoughts had wandered to some place not so nice, judging by the pensive turn of his mouth. Uneasy, I went inside and deposited the tray on the window seat. I dropped there, myself, energetically enough to rattle the cups and wake Ezra from his reverie. “Chow time. Shall I pour?”

A pale imitation of his exasperated smile touched his lips. “If there is anything left in the teapot, you may.”

I dared to hope he was coming back out of himself, ready to face the world and all the dead and living in it. I couldn’t talk him into eating any more than tea and biscuits with his favorite strawberry jam, but he chatted as if all were right with the world. I was getting my butt kicked in a game of chess when Derry came up to see how we fared. Ezra got up to greet him with a hesitancy I’d never seen him show around Derry. Even Derry looked taken aback.

“I’m flesh and blood,” he teased, with an affectionate muss of Ezra’s hair. “No proof you need of that, eh?”

“If I require it, I’ll borrow a hatpin from Kathleen,” Ezra said, warming to Derry’s good cheer.

“Aye,” Derry said ruefully. “She wreaks swifter vengeance than the Lord Himself, for the sin of napping through Mass.” He looked Ezra up and down, his expressive face twisted in an outpouring of sympathy. “It’s good to have you home where you belong.”

Ezra’s smile was still hesitant. “I’ve caused you and Kathleen some embarrassment. I know you are too kindhearted to ask me to leave, but I also know that boarding houses live and die by reputation—”

“Are you saying you’re nothing more than a boarder here? That you don’t know you’re as dear to us as any kin? Don’t say as much to Kathleen. You’ll break her heart.”

Ezra looked stricken. “I do not mean to break yours.”

“Well, then, say you’re staying.” Derry blinked against the moist gleam in his eyes. “Did I not just say it’s where you belong, you great damn fool—” He choked off the sentence as he smothered Ez in a fierce hug and kissed his cheek. Ezra hugged him back and wheezed out an agreement to stay put. I couldn’t help marveling at the sight; it was something rare in my own time, fearless physical affection between guys. In trying to label each other and the whole world, we’d lost something precious.