Bonds of Earth (10 page)

Parrish laughed. “Well, shall we start?” he said, clapping his hands as though the matter had been settled to everyone’s satisfaction. “I’m sure this young man will be happier to see the end of me sooner rather than later.”

Michael rose and stepped back as Parrish stepped forward. “Now,” the doctor said bracingly, “let’s start with something simple. I’d like you to stand for me, please. Use whatever supports you would normally use, and try to keep your motions as natural as possible.”

Seward’s gaze shifted back and forth between Michael and Parrish as though he were searching for some way to regain control of the situation. Apparently finding none, he set his jaw and reached for his cane.

“There’s a good fellow,” Parrish said kindly. Michael bit his tongue to keep from smiling. Then he looked up and saw Seward struggle to his feet, swaying a little as he reestablished his balance, his brow furrowed in concentration, his hand white-knuckled on the cane, and all traces of humor left him. Folding his arms, Michael leaned back against the wall and tried to focus on the task ahead.

B
Y
THE
time Doctor Parrish had completed his examination, all three of them were exhausted, but Michael could tell the results were significant. Few had been able to resist Parrish’s gentle yet firm cajoling, and Seward was no exception. He’d put genuine effort into the tests, attempting everything Parrish had asked of him, even if it had caused him pain.

For there was no doubt now that Seward was in a great deal of pain—more than Michael would have guessed. The retraining of his muscles would be a slow and difficult affair because of it, for like other severely injured men, Seward had developed many largely involuntary reactions to minimize that pain. He favored some muscles over others and in so doing had hastened the atrophy of the disused muscles and tendons, particularly on his more devastated right side. Rehabilitation would not be a short or easy process for any of them.

“If he can commit to his recovery, anything is possible,” Parrish said cheerfully as Michael walked him back to his car. “I have to attend a conference Monday, but I should be able to get a plan to you by the middle of next week. In the meantime, you know what to do.”

Michael nodded. Massage was the initial key to improving circulation, especially in a patient so weak.

“Just a basic one today, but give him a full treatment tomorrow, and every day thereafter.” He cast one more glance around the grounds. “How I wish there were a pool. And you say you can’t persuade him to go to the hospital?”

“No,” Michael said. “I wouldn’t even get him over the threshold.”

“That’s too bad. They have a fairly decent exercise room in Hudson. Well, I’ll make my appeal to his aunt and see what that gets us.” At Michael’s raised eyebrow, he said, “Daniels owes me a favor. I’ll have him introduce me to her as a specialist he’s consulting on the case. Perhaps I can convince her to provide you with some equipment. As for you… if you can wire me the bare bones of your curriculum vitae, I’ll have my secretary type it and make it presentable.”

Michael shook his head. “You’re much too conniving to gain admittance to heaven, I think.” He handed the doctor’s bag to his driver, who stood waiting.

Parrish laughed and patted his arm. “All in a good cause, my boy.” Pausing, he added, more earnestly, “You had such a marvelous way with the men. They all missed you terribly when you left, you know.” As Michael stood reeling from this, Parrish shook his head. “I am a doddering old fool. Of course you didn’t know that.” He sighed. “Michael, I hope—well, you know what my hopes are regarding you.” He smiled up at Michael with a fondness that brought an unexpected lump to Michael’s throat. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am to be working with you again.”

“I—” Michael began, faltering as the doubts he’d been holding back unexpectedly flooded through him, joined by memories he’d done his damnedest to bury beneath months of selfishness and mindless pleasure.

The breaking point comes without warning.

At the front, it is a gradual thing, a slow realization that a month, two months more of the constant shelling, the cries of the men, the stench of death will send him down the path that so many others have already taken. He is not stupid. He can feel the madness building in him and takes steps to escape as quickly as possible. Surely, he reasons, a change was as good as a rest.

He soon finds out he could not have been more wrong, for at least at the front he can distance himself from each individual man, let his focus blur until they are simply a murky sea of indistinct faces and bodies. Here each man has a name, a story, though not every one has a face. Half of David’s was blown off somewhere in Belgium; they are trying to grow him a new one using an experimental treatment that has more in common with the realm of nightmares than medicine. There is a long column of flesh, blood, and skin leading from his shoulder to his rebuilt jaw, a bridge between the living and the dead.

Although he has perhaps the least reason to be so, David is easily the most cheerful of the men under Michael’s care, constantly joking and jollying along the others, some of whom have much less cause to be dispirited.

“I think I’m going to be even more handsome than ever,” David tells him one day, turning this way and that in front of the hand mirror Michael holds for him, preening like a debutante before her coming-out party. “What do you think?”

And suddenly Michael’s chest constricts, stopping his breath, and he knows he cannot force another lie from his throat. He has told so many damned lies over the last year that he is drowning in them, and in the end they have done no good. Either the men survive on their own, or they succumb to despair. He cannot change them, change this, change himself. He rises on trembling legs and staggers away, pursued by David’s concerned questions.

Parrish finds him a little while later in the staff lounge, deserted this time of night, where he has curled into a ball on the chesterfield like one of the patients from the mental ward two floors down.

Perhaps he will end up there. It would be fitting, he thinks.

A comforting hand rests on his back and begins a gentle circling motion. It only makes him sob harder. “I’m sorry, my boy,” Parrish murmurs. “I should have seen the signs that all was not well with you. Forgive me.”

Michael shakes his head but can make no more answer than that. Within two weeks he is bound for New York, his failure a second skin that insulates him from the cold North Atlantic winds.

Michael blinked rapidly and took a deep breath. “Yes,” he managed, voice ragged. “Good to be working with you, too, sir.”

With a final smile and a paternal squeeze of Michael’s arm that his own father had never bestowed on him, Doctor Parrish stepped into his large black sedan and drove away.

M
ICHAEL
trudged back up the stairs, intending to ask Seward when he wanted his supper, only to find the man fast asleep. He lay on top of the quilt, curled on his left side, his dark hair askew and falling over one eye like a mischievous boy’s.

Jaw clenched, Michael walked next door and began pouring a hot bath. He searched the linen closets for mineral salts; finding none, he made a mental note to seek some out on the next trip into town. When the tub was filled, he returned to Seward’s room and shook him gently.

“Nnnnpphh,” Seward said.

“Same to you,” Michael replied, shaking him again. “Get up, please.”

Seward tried to move an arm and immediately winced. “Leave me to expire in peace.”

Michael sighed. “Believe me, I wish I could.”

With slow, deliberate care, Seward pushed himself to a sitting position as Michael helped him. “Neither of you really knows anything about medicine, do you? That was just one of your gardening friends helping you play a prank.”

Taking hold of Seward’s legs, Michael swung him around slowly so that his feet were dangling off the edge. With great care, he slipped an arm around Seward’s back and supported him as he stood.

“Where are we going?” Seward demanded as Michael guided him out of the room.

“You’re getting a hot bath and a massage.” Seward stiffened against him. “You need both, or you’ll be in even worse pain tomorrow.”

When they reached the bath, Michael propped Seward carefully against the edge of the tub, then reached for the fastening of his robe. Seward shoved his hand away.

“I can do it,” he gritted.

Michael nodded, stepping back cautiously, yet still ready to spring forward if Seward lost his balance. Seward loosened the belt, then hesitated. “Are you going to stand there and stare at me the entire time?”

Michael sighed. “You’ve just exercised more than you have in months. I’m only here to ensure you don’t fall and crack your skull.”

Seward remained still. “I don’t—” he began, then shook his head, gaze shadowed.

“I can guarantee you I’ve seen worse,” Michael said, with a gentleness he thought he’d forgotten. He’d been present for Parrish’s examination, but the doctor hadn’t required Seward remove his undershirt or shorts for the tests, and Michael knew from the reports that the worst of the scarring would be over his torso, front and back.

Seward snorted. “Is that supposed to reassure me?” he sniped.

Michael shook his head. “No,” he said simply.

Seward held his gaze for another moment, then turned slowly and shrugged out of the robe. When he tried to remove the undershirt, however, he hissed in pain as he tried to raise his arms past his shoulders.

“Here,” Michael said when the second attempt ended unsuccessfully. “Bend over while you rest your hands on the edge of the tub. Like this.” He stood beside Seward and demonstrated.

Seward opened his mouth as though he were about to protest, then closed it and obeyed. “Slowly,” Michael instructed. He could tell the motion was still painful, but at least Seward’s arms were no longer fighting gravity. As soon as he was in the position, Michael efficiently pulled the shirt up and over his head and arms, then helped him up.

Michael tried not to let his gaze wander, but as Seward straightened, he couldn’t help but see the angry, puckered scars that adorned his chest and belly. The largest one was the surgical scar from his rib operation, but there were others, at least a dozen, probably the calling cards of a shrapnel bomb.

Yes, he’d seen worse; that certainly was no lie. But the implication that he would be indifferent to the evidence of Seward’s suffering had been completely false, and Michael had known it from the start. As much as he’d tried to harden himself against Seward, he had never been able to look at a broken body and see only a body, to remain impartial or unaffected. In that respect, he was no more help to Seward than a little chit fresh out of nursing school whose only ambition was to cuddle babies.

Returning to himself after God knew how long, Michael realized that Seward was staring at a place off Michael’s left shoulder, his cheeks pink with exertion and embarrassment. Feeling ill at his own unprofessional behavior but trying mightily to keep the reaction from showing on his face lest it be misinterpreted, Michael hastily stepped back, dropping the shirt over the back of a chair. “I’ll let you take care of the rest,” he murmured.

“Thank you,” Seward bit out, sarcasm dripping from his voice. Michael kept his gaze focused on the other man’s back as he unbuttoned his shorts and let them drop to the floor, then sat on the edge of the tub and gradually swung his legs over it. The tub itself was one of the more rectangular, modern types with a low, wide rim. Seward had probably had the original model replaced so that he could be more self-sufficient.

Promising to return in half an hour, Michael left the room as quickly as possible, cursing himself soundly as he went. He spent the time pruning the apple tree behind the house while Sarah lopped the heads off the dying day lilies, watching him out of the corner of her eye. It occurred to him that they were both a little too ruthless in their tasks, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

“Did he tell you to go away?” Sarah asked him as she brushed the dirt from her skirts.

Michael smiled. “More or less,” he said.

“You’re not going to listen to him, are you?”

“No,” Michael answered.

Sarah looked at him through her lashes and smiled tentatively, and the fragile hope in it was nearly his undoing. “Well,” he said gruffly, squeezing her small shoulder as they walked toward the house together, “don’t worry about it, m’dear. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

When Michael returned to the house, Seward was back in bed, the quilt pulled up over his body this time, revealing only his head, neck, and the curve of one bare shoulder as he slept. Sighing, Michael decided to retire from the field for the day, giving them both precious time to regroup. Tomorrow would be soon enough for the next battle.

7

I
N
THE
morning when Michael went outside to start the car, he found Sarah already busy weeding the vegetable garden.