The Foreshadowing (9 page)

“I’m not afraid,” I said. That seems a stupid thing to say, but it was all I could manage.

“Who are you?” I said. “I’m not afraid.”

“I am,” said the man. “I am.”

76

Unwittingly, I had said perhaps the one thing that got him to talk.

“What are you afraid of?” I asked.

“Everything,” he said, and there was such feeling behind that single word it made me shiver.

I wondered what I should do. I felt like running out of the room, but I had always wanted to be a nurse, and if I ran from this chance to help someone, I would have failed.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like the light on?” I asked.

“No!” he said. “It hurts my eyes. It’s better in the dark.”

It was obvious he was a patient.

“Why does it hurt your eyes?” I asked.

No response. I thought about what to say. There was something obvious, at least.

“What’s your name?”

He answered so quietly I couldn’t hear what he said.

“Sorry?”

“Evans,” he said. He paused. “David Evans.”

I knew he was a soldier then, from the way he gave his surname first. The name was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“What are you doing in here, David?”

“I come here,” he said. “Get away from the light, the people. That man.”

Now I recognized his Welsh accent.

“No one knows,” he continued. “Too busy to care, even if they notice. As long as I’m back before bedtime.”

“Why don’t you like the light?” I asked again. I was going round in circles, but I couldn’t think what else to say.

“It hurts. My eyes hurt. Flashes in the dark, all the time. It hurt my eyes. And now I’m here, and they still want to shine lights into my eyes, see? It hurts, so I come here.”

“Who shines lights into your eyes?” I asked.

“That man,” he said. “That doctor. Says he wants to look into my eyes, but it hurts, it hurts.”

With a lurching feeling I realized he might be talking about Father. Then I knew why his name was familiar.

Evans. He was the shell-shocked patient I’d seen on that very first day with Sister Cave. He was one of the soldiers my father had been doing his tests on.

“They shine it in my eyes,” he said. “And they stick things to my head.”

“What things?”

“Wires,” he said, in a small voice. “They stick wires to my head and put electrics through it.”

That was what he said. Electrics.

“Why?” I said, though I knew I was asking the wrong person.

“To make me better, they say, but it hurts, and everything goes weird.”

“Weird? What do you mean?”

I heard noises in the corridor outside. Voices calling, and footsteps. Running footsteps. But they went past the door to the linen room.

“What do you mean?” I asked again.

There was silence for a while. I decided to move closer to Evans, even though I couldn’t see him. My legs were starting to cramp, anyway. I stretched, and eased my way round the side of the stacks of blankets.

“What are you doing?” came Evans’ voice.

“Just coming closer,” I said. “I can’t hear you properly. Tell me about what happens. When they put the wires on your head.”

“It hurts,” he said, “and it makes something strange happen. I feel like it’s all happened before.”

“What? What’s happened before?”

“Everything. The room, them, the wires, the pain. Like I’m going through it all over again. Living it again. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yes,” I said, “I think I do.”

There was more commotion outside, coming from the ward.

I felt torn, but I was supposed to be on duty. I had to see what was going on.

“Stay here, David. Don’t go anywhere.”

I opened the door and edged out. A couple of young doctors rushed past me into the ward and ran to one of the beds.

With a shock I realized that it was the bed of the man with the shrapnel wounds.

Of course it was him. I was disgusted with myself for even wondering who might be in trouble. I ought to have known better than to doubt myself. He said he’d be dead by the morning.

Nurses crowded round, but as the doctors pushed through, I saw that there was a pool of blood collecting on the floor, dripping from the bed.

He was already gone.

“There you are!” said a voice.

I spun round, but the voice was not directed at me.

Evans stood in the open doorway of the linen room. An orderly had spotted him.

“Come on, then,” he said, leading Evans away. I could see now that he was a tall, strong young man, at least in body. He looked back at me imploringly, as if I were to blame for his capture.

“Complete case, that one,” said a nurse next to me. “Shell-shock. Hasn’t spoken a word of sensible English since he got here.”

I must have looked puzzled.

“Honestly,” she said. “Only talks in gibberish. Not a word anyone can understand.”

But that can’t be right. Evans was a frightened, hurt and timid man, yet I had understood every word he said.

75

In the confusion, no one spotted that I wasn’t on the ward when I should have been. I couldn’t have done anything to help. Just because I knew it was going to happen doesn’t mean I could have stopped it.

I didn’t know when he would die, or how.

I feel betrayed now, betrayed by my own emotions.

There’s a word for what I have been feeling.

Premonitions. Each one has been more clear, more categorical than the last, and they refuse to be ignored.

Although I hadn’t foreseen anyone’s death for a long time, there had been no deaths on the ward since I joined. Until yesterday.

It’s not that surprising.

Most men leave the hospital alive, but that’s not always much to do with us. Of course, it’s a good hospital, and we do our best to see the patients get the help they need, but that’s not what I mean. A doctor told me that if a soldier gets hurt at the front, and if he manages to survive being pulled off the battlefield, and the journey back to the base hospital, and the ship home, then he’s probably going to survive anyway. If he’s badly hurt, he’ll be dead before he gets six miles from the front.

So we don’t actually see many deaths, and I am glad of that. But it allows you to think that maybe things aren’t as bad as they must really be.

Then yesterday came my clearest premonition. I heard a man tell me he was going to die, and minutes later, he was dead.

Were it not for the fact that it is happening to me, I would not believe it. Why do I only see deaths, and not good things? Why do I not see everyone’s deaths? As I walk past people in the street, why am I not witnessing all their endings?

A thought strikes me. What if I see something about someone I love, someone in my family? What if I see something about myself?

And if I really can see the future, then what does it mean? Is there any sense in our lives if everything is already out there, just waiting to happen?

For if that were so, then life would be a horrible monster indeed, with no chance of escape from fate, from destiny.

It would be like reading a book you know very well, but reading it backward, from the final chapter down to chapter one, so that the end is already known to you.

74

Tom’s letter.

I forgot all about it till last night as I sat in bed thinking about everything that had happened. I had been late getting home, and Mother fussed over me.

“How are you getting on?” she asked. “At the hospital?”

I forced a smile.

“Fine.”

Father wasn’t home yet, so she can’t have known what had happened on the ward. But he wouldn’t mention it anyway. Why should he mention a patient’s dying? It was only to me that it had a terrible significance.

“Just fine?” she said. “Sasha?”

I wanted to shout at her, shake her with words if not with force, and tell her she had to
believe
what was happening to me. It would be the only way she could help me. I stared into the fire, struggling to think what was best to say. But I knew.

“Yes, Mother,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

I even smiled as I left the room to go up to bed, and she smiled back.

“All right, dear. Sleep well.”

She knows things aren’t right with me, but I won’t talk to her about it again. She didn’t believe me when I tried to before. When did she lose the desire to have a life? I know she cares. I know she loves me. But not enough to cross Father. Not enough to be on my side when it really matters.

I will never let myself become like that, let my spirit be crushed as I see has happened to her.

And yet I long for her to make everything all right again, as if I am still her little girl. I long to be a child again, and not to know the things I do.

Then I saw Tom’s letter poking out of the pocket of my dress.

It’s a long letter, about life as a medical student. He says the feeling that we are at war is no different in Manchester, people there are just the same. He stays in a lot, in his digs, when he isn’t studying, because he’s got into too many arguments about not going to fight.

He thinks the chances of completing his training are small, and says that everyone around the college thinks conscription is on its way. He’s already had to comply with compulsory registration.

Now there’s this new scheme going on. Have you read about
it? They’re trying to get all men to say they’ll fight if called
upon, but they’ve said they won’t ask a married man to fight
until the supply of single ones has run out. So there’s plenty
of married men signing up, looking as though they’re doing
their bit, but thinking they won’t ever have to. And then, of
course, when they are needed, they’ll get no support from the
friends and family of the poor single men who are already
dying in France. It’s a clever ruse by the government, but
quite dishonest.

Tom sounds very political, and I don’t understand it all. If Father saw what he’d written, I don’t think he’d ever let him back in the house.