“What happened, Claire?”
His voice, as quiet as the water, as persistent, as careful. Warm enough to wrap yourself in, if you didn’t know better.
If you didn’t know what he didn’t.
So she turned on him and she told him. “What happened was I quit,” she told him. “Quit fighting, quit asking, quit giving a damn. I went over because I could make adifference, but I was wrong. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t takeevery one of those boys looking to me to save them, to hold them, to be their mothers and sisters and lovers. I couldn’tlet them die without trying and I couldn’t tell them it wasgoing to be all right when I was sending them home with only one limb. So I quit.”
Her heart was pounding; her chest ached with shame. Shecouldn’t face him anymore, because he loved her. Because she loved him and she couldn’t live with that anymore.
“Did you stop doing your job?”
“It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t what they needed. Icouldn’t... I couldn’t...”
So many things, so many memories spilling free. So manysins to be confessed, and she couldn’t confess them. Shecouldn’t bear them anymore, either.
“You couldn’t what, Claire?”
So gentle, so understanding. Claire squeezed her eyesshut, and still the tears came. Still the remorse and futilityswelled in her like a terrible cancer.
“I just...couldn’t.”
“Why?” he asked. “What was his name?”
“Jimmy,” she answered before she even thought of it·“His name was Jimmy.”
“Tell me about him, Claire. Tell me how he hurt you.”
“How he hurt me?” She turned on him, faced downthose sweet eyes with the truth. “Jimmy didn’t hurt me.Jimmy didn’t hurt anybody. He was a fenuge. Three weeksoff the plane and so uncoordinated his friends named himInspector Clouseau. Three weeks off the plane and hestepped on a bouncing betty and lost his legs. Lost most everything below his waist He was so afraid... he grabbedmy hand and begged me not to leave him. Not to let him die,because it was his birthday and he couldn’t do that to hismother. He couldn’t…”
Sea gulls spun like figure skaters over their heads. Abreeze ruffled the trees, and a sandpiper skittered across thesand. So peaceful. So quiet.
Claire pulled in a breath that hurt like a mortal woundand forced herself on, forced Tony to understand what he’dbeen asking for.
“Well, I wasn’t going to let him die. I made him repeat itto me. I made everybody listen. They listened until we wereattacked. Everybody else was getting the patients under cover. I was pouring blood into Jimmy and trying to keepthe rest from pouring out. One of the corpsmen, Hamelburg, kept yelling at me to take cover. Hamelburg was... hewas the best. We called him Humbug because he was so tough. Taught me how to function in the middle of disaster. I was six months out of training when I walked into thattriage area, and Humbug held my hand until I got it right.”
Tears again. Useless, choking tears that filled her throat and her chest and her lungs. That tore away her sanity likesharp nails. Tears that couldn’t seem to stop. Tony stoodclose to her and they still wouldn’t stop. They wouldn’t stopbecause she knew better.
“A rocket hit our ward,” she said, her face lifted so shecould watch the birds. “Humbug threw himself on me toprotect me. He was killed. I held him in my arms, but he wasalready dead.”
“What about Jimmy?”
She shrugged. “He died, too. He was going to die anyway. I should have known better, just like everybody said.”
Tony wrapped his arms around her so she didn’t have tofeel the wind, so the gulls didn’t sound so lost. She still wept.“Just like Humbug said.”
“How old was Jimmy, Claire?”
“Eighteen. Jimmy was eighteen. He died on his birthday.”
