“Well, I’m Kate and I’m going to hang out with you today on that airplane over there.” I pointed. “Do you think that would be okay?”
He was silent, his big dark eyes looking through me.
I wondered where his people were. If he had a mom and dad still. Siblings who would rally around him when he got home, a place he may or may not recognize, a place he may never see should he be deemed too dangerous, whether to others or just to himself, to be anywhere but a hospital for the rest of his life.
I squeezed his hand and stood, and then moved on to the next patient, my heart heavy but my smile light as I went from injured to injured.
We didn’t land back at base until the sun had gone down, having to take a load of wounded to a base in Scotland first before flying back to England.
“Hello there,” William said, when I wandered wearily into the mess hall after looking for him in his bed. “I came over figuring you’d be hungry when you got in and head here first.”
“You’re sweet,” I said, kissing him and waving off the whistles from the soldiers nearby. “But I always go to the hospital to see you first.”
“Well then, you’re the one who’s sweet,” he said, leaning forward to kiss me again. There was another round of whistles and we laughed as he pulled away and pushed his tray toward me. “Also, I knew these animals would eat all the good stuff if I didn’t save you some. I’ve been here for nearly two hours.”
“William!” I said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“If I had to, it wouldn’t be as much fun. Now, eat up.”
The food was still warm, thanks to him asking one of the cooks to set a plate off to the side under one of the warmers for me and keeping guard over it until ten minutes before I arrived when the kitchen was shutting down.
I tried not to wolf it down, but I was starving, having not had time to stop for lunch or even a snack due to the hectic schedule.
“How did it go?” William asked.
I shrugged. Most days I didn’t mind talking about it, but sometimes I had a hard time finding the words, the images of the men etching themselves into my mind and heart. My interactions with the young soldier named Joel had sat heavy with me for the remainder of my missions. He was so young. Too young to have had to experience what he had. I thought of all the others. The hundreds I’d heard about being marched from their homes, down the streets they’d known all their lives, and loaded onto trucks and trains, only to be taken far away, put to work, and never seen or heard from again.
An image of my childhood friend Ruthie rose in my mind and I sucked in a breath. It was indescribable still, the feelings of guilt I had surrounding her. Regardless of the fact that I’d been too young to do anything to help. When her father was arrested on suspicious charges the year before I’d left home, I knew that somehow my own father had had something to do with it. My mother had always relished telling her friends that he knew everyone and there wasn’t anything that happened in our city that he didn’t know about.
“He knows everyone, that man,” she’d say with the grin that always caused a chill to run up my spine. “And has his finger in every pot.”
Two weeks after Ruthie’s father was imprisoned, he was moved to another facility farther away. Then another. Then came the day Ruthie hadn’t shown up for school, when I’d run the many blocks to my friend’s house to find her and her mother packing.
“Where are you going?” I’d asked, looking around desperately, wanting to tell them to stop, tears hovering on my lower lids.
Ruthie had looked at her mother who hesitated before nodding.
“My aunt’s,” she said. “We’ve told everyone we’re just going for the weekend but...” Her big brown eyes had said it all and the tears that had hovered now streamed down my face as I nodded and stumbled to her, wrapping my arms around her.
“Can we write?” I’d asked when we’d parted, looking to her mother.
“Not at first,” she’d said. “To be on the safe side. For all of us.”
I’d nodded, understanding the things she didn’t say. They didn’t want to be found. And I could get in trouble for keeping their secret.
“I will write though,” Ruthie had said.
“Under a different name,” her mother had said.
I never knew if a letter came. I left home having never heard a thing, without knowing what had become of my friend, and wondering for all the years after if they’d escaped.
William squeezed my hand and I leaned into him, reveling in the warmth of his body against mine.
“Where’d you go?” he asked.
I stared into his eyes and then leaned my head on his shoulder. I never answered. He didn’t push. It was one of my favorite things about him. His silent acceptance of my sometime need to quietly wade through whatever feelings I was having until I was ready to talk about them.
Or not.
