Klayne gave her an anxious look. “No. Delaney doesn’t need to know. I don’t want her to see me like this.”
“Delaney? Is that your wife’s name?” Billie asked, wondering why men were so stupid. If her husband had been as gravely injured as this man, she’d want to know where he was, how he was doing. She’d want to be right by his side. Billie couldn’t imagine Klayne’s wife would be any different.
“Delaney is her name. I call her Laney, but her friends call her Dee.” Klayne glanced down at the handkerchief then held it to his nose and took a whiff before stuffing it inside the pocket of his robe.
He gave her a sheepish look. “The scent of her wore off months ago, but I can imagine it’s still there. I hope you don’t think I’m completely loony.”
Billie sat beside him and placed her hand on his back, like she would if she offered comfort to a small, frightened child. “Not at all, Klayne. I think it’s sweet you keep that close to you. It’s obviously been with you through your trials and tribulations.”
Another nod.
“When did you marry Delaney? Have you known her a long time?”
“No. We met at a New Year’s Eve party and I married her the next month, just before I shipped out to begin training for the raid.”
Billie knew the raid meant the Doolittle Raid when a group of brave men dropped bombs over Tokyo and a few other Japanese cities. In spite of the odds that they wouldn’t survive, the men had gone anyway. Fortunately, most of them had made it through the experience, although several bore life-altering injuries.
“She must be so proud of you. Of what you did.”
Klayne gave her a wary look then glanced across the courtyard. “I’m not sure she knows. I haven’t been in touch with her since I left. I did write her a note in April and arranged for her to receive a gift for her birthday last month. Before I shipped out, I sent it to her friend to give her in case I didn’t make it back.”
Billie stiffened beside him. “Let me get this straight? You met a girl and married her a month later, then left for a dangerous mission she has no idea you went on, and you’ve not reached out to her since? Is that about right?”
“Yep.” Klayne continued staring into the distance.
“What is wrong with you, Klayne Campbell? That poor woman is probably beside herself with worry and fear, desperately praying you’ll come home. You have to write to her. If you want, I’ll even help you place a long distance telephone call.”
“No.” Klayne’s voice held a hard edge. One she’d not heard before. “I don’t want Delaney to see me or hear from me until I can walk up to her. I’ll be there soon. Doc said he figures he’ll release me next week.”
“You’ve made remarkable progress, Klayne. We’re all so impressed with how far you’ve come since you’ve been here.” Billie studied his profile since he refused to look at her as they talked. He’d allowed his hair to grow, both on his head and his face. A beard covered the scars on his face while his overgrown hair hid the scar on his forehead.
She stood, moving in front of him.
He tipped his head back and looked at her.
Her hands fisted on her hips and she glowered at him. “You absolutely must get a haircut and shave off that mess before you go home to her. No wife deserves that.” She waved a hand toward his unkempt hair.
Klayne offered her one of his rare smiles. “Yes, ma’am.”
Billie reached out and clasped his good arm in her hand. “Come on. If you want to get home to Delaney, we’ve got work to do. I want you to take four more laps around the courtyard then walk to the cafeteria and tell them I said to give you a big glass of tomato juice.” She laughed when he wrinkled his nose. “Don’t you turn up your nose at me, young man! It’s good for you.”
The soldier was a few years her senior, but she had no problem taking him to task. “Once you drink that juice, and I mean every last drop of it, you work on the strengthening exercises we’ve been doing.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He offered her a snappy salute then started walking with his cane along the courtyard path.
Billie watched him take a few steps then made her way inside the hospital. She’d miss Klayne when he left. His gentle presence had assisted in keeping a balance in room seven. Although she’d never heard exactly what he’d said to George Haney the day he’d thrown the tray and hit Dorothy in the head, Jimmy had told her that Klayne had given the man an earful along with an ultimatum that had straightened the man right up.
Although he was an unassuming, quiet man, a few words from him could settle an argument or diffuse a potentially heated situation.
She hoped, for his sake and his wife’s, he would soon be on his way home. How his wife must have suffered his absence, his silence. Billie hoped Delaney would be accepting of Klayne and welcome him back into her life, because he was clearly besotted with the woman.
Billie grinned as she thought of another besotted patient. Jimmy was so head-over-heels for Dorothy, it was almost funny to watch him when the girl worked as a volunteer. And Billie greatly admired Dorothy for seeing past Jimmy’s lack of legs to the sweet, wonderful boy that he was.
Two of the twelve patients in room seven had been discharged just that morning, leaving empty beds that would no doubt soon be filled. The hospital was already treating more patients than they could adequately care for. Beds were crammed into rooms until it made privacy impossible. Even the private rooms previously used for high-ranking officers now had two to four beds in them.
“Billie, can you give me a hand?” Peggy called as she stepped into the hallway on their floor.
“Coming.”
The morning passed in a hectic blur of activity. Billie took only long enough to gobble a sandwich and drink a glass of milk before she returned to work for the afternoon.
When an orderly approached and handed her a stack of files, she tamped down a frustrated sigh. “More new patients.”
“Where do you want them?” he asked. Billie and Peggy hastily worked to find beds for the ten new men, two of them landing in room seven.
Billie hadn’t even taken time to read the files or learn their names. There would be time enough for that when they were all settled.
One soldier in particular drew her gaze and stirred her compassion. White gauze encircled his head, wrapped over his eyes and looped beneath his chin. He had burn marks and stitches covering his torso, where he’d been hit with shrapnel. The skin around a bandage on his side felt hot, and she made note to check it as quickly as possible.
“You’re safe now,” she said, bending down and whispering close to the man’s head.
He turned his face toward her, but remained silent. Something about him seemed familiar but she had no time to dwell on it. Not when her patients needed her.
An hour later, Billie returned to the soldier’s beside with Doctor Ridley.
“Afternoon, soldier. I’m Doctor Ridley and I’m going to have a look at your side.”
The soldier remained silent and unmoving. Billie would have thought he was sleeping, but he finally moved slightly, so his wounded side was more exposed, giving the doctor better access to it.
The doctor removed the bandage and handed it to Billie. She was grateful it was dry, a good sign the wound wasn’t infected. With skilled hands, Doctor Ridley examined the stitches on the wound, felt around it, drawing a grunt from the soldier, before he glanced at Billie.
“The nurse is going to put a fresh bandage on you, but the wound is healing.” The doctor moved back and jotted notes on a chart, leaving it with Billie. “Later, we’ll do a full examination and take a look at those eyes, Private Timmons.”
“I’ve got a bandage right here, Private. I’ll just…”
“Billie!” one of the nurses scurried into the room, a stack of files in her hand. “That dimwitted orderly scrambled all the files. I think these belong to the men in here.” She handed Billie two files, then picked up the one the doctor had just written in. “Private Timmons has
his arm in a cast and his right foot is broken. I think he’s in room three.”
“Well, who’s this soldier?” Billie asked, opening the file. Her knees buckled as she read the name written in the file. Captain Zane West.
Zane? Her Zane?
Was he the blind soldier on the bed in front of her?
She scanned the file. Plane crash. Explosion. Shrapnel wounds and burns. Loss of crew member. Concerns over patient’s mental state as well as physical health.
For the first time in her life, Billie thought she might faint. Her throat felt thick, her ears rang, and her eyes swam.
“Nurse Billie?” Jimmy asked in a voice that sounded far away.
Unable to remain upright, she tilted toward the floor.
“Someone catch her!” Jimmy yelled.
Billie felt hands guide her to the bed behind her, the one Klayne normally occupied.
“Put your head down and take a deep breath,” Doctor Ridley ordered, pushing on the back of her neck until her head was between her knees. She sucked in a gulp of air, then another.
The doctor picked up the files that had fallen from her hands.
“Oh, I see,” he said, aware of Billie’s friendship with Zane. “We should move him to one of the officer’s rooms.”
“No.” The wounded soldier said, speaking for the first time since his arrival. “No. I’ll stay here.”
Billie drew in another lungful of air then slid off the bed on wobbly legs. She moved to the side of the man she’d spent the last several months worrying about, wondering about, while praying for his safety.
“Zane? Oh, my poor Zane.” Gently she took his hand between both of hers and pressed a kiss to the back of it.
“Billie?” he asked, turning his head slightly, as though he thought he was dreaming. “Beautiful Billie Brighton? Is it really you?”
“It’s me, ol’ lonesome cowboy.” She pressed another kiss to his hand. “Fancy meeting you here.”
The hand she didn’t hold lifted and touched their joined hands then tentatively searched for her face. The rough calluses on his palm scratched across her cheek while his thumb wiped at the tears she didn’t even realize streamed from her eyes.
“Billie,” Zane whispered, as though he couldn’t force any other words from his throat.
She had no idea how long they remained there, so close, but miles and months apart.
A hand on her shoulder finally drew her back to the present. To the other men who needed her assistance. She glanced at Doctor Ridley.
“Let him rest, Nurse Brighton. Let him rest for now.”
She nodded and released his hand, tenderly setting it on the covers of the bed near his side. Her fingers brushed through the hair not bound down by his bandage. “I’ll be back, Zane. I promise.”
He nodded once, then released what sounded like a pleased sigh. Tension he’d held coiled in his shoulders melted away and he appeared to relax as he settled back against the pillows.
Billie didn’t want to leave his side, not even for a single minute. But she had other patients depending on her, patients who needed her. She gave Zane one more look, relieved he was alive, but her heart aching over his wounds. Of more concern to her were the wounds she couldn’t see, those that picked at his mind and ravaged his soul.
Unsure and disconcerted, she buried her thoughts and trepidation in her work.
The important thing was Zane had returned and if she had anything to say about it, he’d once again be whole and well.
Chapter Fourteen
“What do you think, Doc?” Zane asked as Doctor Ridley shined a light in his eyes. Zane could sense the light. In fact, it made him want to flinch at the pain it caused, but he still couldn’t see.
“Tell me what you remember from the plane crash,” the doctor said, removing the light.
Zane could hear him doing something, but he had no idea what. “We’d flown a night mission. Some Zeros caught up to us on the way back to the base and shot at us, hit the plane worse than we realized. We were almost to the airfield, but the rain had doused the landing lights and it was thick darkness all around us. The engines failed and we fell out of the sky. I tried to make a landing, but we crashed.”
“Lie back,” the doctor said, pushing against his shoulder until Zane rested on his back on the examination table. “I’m going to rinse your eyes. It shouldn’t hurt, but it will feel cool and may be uncomfortable.”
Zane nodded. To distract himself from the procedure, he kept talking. “I banked too far from the landing strip. There was a ball of flames, an explosion, and screeching metal.” And the pain-wrenched screams of his men. Men who’d entrusted him to get them safely back to the base. “I woke up in a plane being transported to Hawaii, unable to see.”
“They obviously stitched you up there. Did they treat your eyes at all?” the doctor asked as he trickled liquid over Zane’s eyes.
“No. The doctor took a look at them and said either the explosion or the fire must have blinded me. He did say I didn’t get any shrapnel in them, but that I wouldn’t see again.”
“Hmm,” the doctor said. “And how did you end up here at the hospital?”
“After I found out Rock’s whereabouts, I changed my home address from Texas to his. I put in a request if anything happened to me, I be sent to Oregon so I’d be close to Rock. I guess that includes when I’m unfit to serve and have to recuperate at a veteran’s hospital.” Zane had been so out of things, sedated with drugs for the consistent, horrid pain in his head he’d suffered from since the crash, he hadn’t realized they’d brought him to the hospital in Portland until he heard Billie’s name.
He thought he recognized her voice and scent when she first stepped near his bed, but he figured he was hallucinating. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d imagined her presence, or his mind had conjured her fragrance.
Then he’d heard someone say her name. From the scrambling and shouting, he assumed she must have figured out who he was, too, and nearly fainted. Then she’d taken his hand in hers and kissed it and nothing else mattered at that moment. He’d felt her tears, heard the shaky fear mingling with relief in her voice when she spoke.
Zane knew in that moment his love for her was far greater than he’d allowed himself to believe, but he couldn’t and wouldn’t pursue it. Billie deserved far, far better than to be saddled with a helpless blind man.
He wouldn’t burden her with his disability, but he knew someone who would gladly welcome him into his home.
“Do you think you could let Rock know I’m here?” Zane asked the doctor.
“Of course. I’ll telephone him myself if Nurse Brighton hasn’t already done so,” the doctor said. The man dabbed at the liquid that ran down the sides of Zane’s face and pooled beneath his head. “Go ahead and sit up.”
Zane sat and forced himself to stillness when the doctor held the light to his eyes again.
“It’s too soon to tell, but I’m not convinced you’ll be permanently blind. I’ve seen a few cases like this in my lifetime. It might just be a flash burn.” The doctor turned off the light and stepped back.
“Flash burn?” Zane asked.
“Have you ever stared at the sun then been unable to see for a second or two when you looked away?”
“Sure. What ornery little boy hasn’t done that, even when his ma is hollering at him not to do it?”
The doctor chuckled. “Indeed. Well, it’s sort of that same principal. I believe the explosion, or perhaps the ball of flames, might have created a temporary burn on your corneas. Given enough time and healing, you might be able to see again. I can’t make any promises, but we’ll do our best for you, Captain West. And if I remember correctly, congratulations are in order. Weren’t you a lieutenant when you were here back in the spring?”
“I was, sir, and thank you.”
The doctor patted his shoulder. “Just relax, Zane. Give your body the time it needs to heal. Now, I’ll go find a nurse to take you back to your room.”
Zane half hoped it would be Billie, but at the same time dreaded it. He didn’t want her to see him like this. Injured and weak, and unable to even feed himself because he couldn’t see a blooming, blasted thing.
“Let’s get you back to your bed, Zane,” Billie said in cheerful tone as she entered the room.
An orderly had brought him to the examination room in a wheelchair, but Billie placed one hand around his back, her other on his arm, and led him from the room.
“We’re going down the hallway,” she said, as he slid his feet along the floor in a pair of slippers. “The floor is tile, there are no bumps, ridges or steps, and miraculously, no one left anything sitting out in the way today.”
Zane might have smiled if he hadn’t been listening so intently to her voice. The smooth cadence of it struck something deep inside him. He wanted to keep her talking, hold her close, never let her go in spite of his intentions to push her away.
“I promise I won’t let you fall,” she said when he continued taking small, shuffling steps. She stopped and he could picture her sizing him up. “Zane West, I know for a fact you can walk like you aren’t an ancient old woman. Now lift those feet and walk like a man.”
Annoyed by her command, he forced himself to forget he was blind and walk as he had before the crash. Before his career ended. Before he’d killed his friends.
The weight of his guilt and burdens caused his feet to stumble. He tripped, but Billie somehow kept him upright.
“It’s all right, Zane. You’re doing fine,” she said, pressing a hand against his chest as they stood in the hallway. The heat of embarrassment burned up his neck. Frustrated and flustered, he wanted to hit something, to kick something, to run until his lungs burned, deprived of air.
Instead, he kept his chin lifted, back straight, and ignored what the touch of Billie’s small hand did to him. Nerves jangled, it felt like her warm palm might sear right through his skin. He refused to wear a pajama shirt or a robe because the fabric rubbed on his wounds. The shrapnel he’d taken in his side had cut him up like a frying chicken. The worse wound, the one on his side, felt hot and hurt deep inside. Even a sheet brushing over it left him unable to rest comfortably.
Dream of Her Heart Page 14
