“I love you,” I say, smiling at his curious eyes.
He doesn’t recognize me, or at least it doesn’t feel like he does. The way he looks at me sometimes, I feel like nothing more than a stranger.
“Hi,” he utters breathlessly.
“Hi,” I reply. He seems proud of himself for carrying on this minor victory of a conversation. I’m proud of him too.
“How are you feeling?”
His eyes blink in a slow succession before closing. He takes several long naps a day—a stupor we can’t seem to keep him from falling in and out of. Despite the progress, his diagnosis seems to change a bit each day. However, some days are worse than others, but the days that are better fill me with hope—hope that I need to hang on to.
* * *
The medics moved Everett into my tent; the shock unit where others like him are lying weak and unmoving in their cots. I spend my entire day under this canvas tarp, resisting sleep until my eyes lose the battle and close.
It’s been a comfort being able to monitor him all day rather than just the hours I’m not working. However, seeing his stationary state for hours on end highlights a truth I’m still not willing to accept. He’s shown improvement, despite how slowly it’s happening. I have faith one of these days he will sit up on his own and ask me for a hot dog or a grinder. I wish and imagine it happening like I once dreamed of a day at the beach. It’s all I want—the part of him that made him who he was to return.
“Doll-face,” he calls out, his voice hoarse like always. “A cigarette.”
I giggle at his statement. “What are you talking about, silly? You said smoking would cause you wrinkles at an early age. Do you remember that? You told me what it had done to your father.”
“I don’t have a father,” he says.
“It was my mother.” I’m not about to remind him that his mother is dead if it’s slipped his mind, but he’s confused about what he’s saying.
“How about some water?”
“That’s n—not nice,” he says with a slight stutter.
“Nurses can’t always be nice, especially when the patient is a little stubborn sometimes.”
“I’m not stubborn. I’m famous.”
That you are, Everett. I’m just not sure he recalls the timeline of when this was true.
“And charming,” I whisper, pinching his chin.
“I love you. Marry me, doll.”
I try to smile and convince myself he knows who I am, and that he knows he was in love with me before he became a prisoner. All I want to do is believe he knows what a marriage means and the meaning of having a life with someone, but I can’t convince myself of this after everything we’ve been through. I don’t know what part of his mind is intact and what part is not, but I pray he knows the person I am, the person I’ve been—the people we were together and the reason he’s spouting off crazy words while lying in a cot under a medical tent.
46
November 1944
I’m goingto try and spend more time in my cot for the sake of catching up on lost sleep. I won’t be any good to Everett if I get sick, so a few hours of deep sleep, rather than quick naps in a chair by his bedside, are necessary. The fatigue has been affecting my ability to think on my toes and it’s not fair to endanger any of my other patients either. As if there are bells ringing throughout the tent, I sit up straight like a jackknife at twenty minutes before zero five hundred hours, ready to take on my shift.
“I’m glad you slept in your bed last night,” Isabel says, stretching her arms over her head. “You needed the rest. It’s been almost six weeks of twenty-four-hour care for Everett. You’re going to fall ill if you don’t take better care of yourself.”
“I did sleep well last night. I suppose it was a much-needed break after sleeping on those hard chairs in the shock unit. But comfort shouldn’t matter when it comes to caring for the man I love, right?”
“He’s doing better, Lizzie,” Maggie speaks up.
“He is,” I agree. “I’m just worried about the day he stops improving.”
“You can’t think like that,” Isabel follows.
“Say, did you girls hear part of our unit is getting split up sometime this week?” Beverly grumbles with her mouth pressed into the side of her pillow.
