Downtime

by Tamara Allen

  “He ain’t right,” Samuel said in a low voice.

  “No,” the matron said. “Samuel, please find a doctor, if you can. I am not at all easy about discharging him.”

  I extricated myself gently from Ezra’s hold and looked into his frightened face. “Ez, listen. Whoever it is, they’re not going to hurt me. I’m fine.” Tired, anxious blue eyes darted around with such raw fear, I shivered. What the hell was he seeing? There was no way I could ask him. No way I could put him through that right now. “Ezra, look at me. Think you can walk? We’ll do most of the work. You just move your legs back and forth.”

  He swallowed, catching his breath, and his head drooped forward in the semblance of a nod. Good enough. We got his arms over our shoulders, and stood for a minute to let him adjust. But at the first step forward, his legs buckled. He groaned, sagging against me, and I rested my head against his. “Still with us?”

  Every word took effort. “I don’t feel well.”

  The morphine. “If you’re going to barf, warn me,” I whispered. Maybe he’d hit Attila the Matron, who stood blocking the door. “Mrs. Lougheed, I’m really not interested in getting into a long explanation, but the fact of the matter is, Ezra’s in direct communication with the spirit world and your damned asylum’s full of trapped ghosts who probably aren’t much saner than the day they died. That’s the reason he didn’t sleep until you injected him full of morphine and that’s the reason he’s shaking like a goddamned leaf right now. So unless you want to be vomited on in the next couple of seconds, I suggest you get the hell out of our way and let us take him home.”

  “Home,” Ezra muttered, lifting his head. He frowned at Mrs. Lougheed. “Alexander wants a game.”

  Derry shot me a bemused look and I shook my head. Then I realized Mrs. Lougheed looked a little spooked. “You know what he’s talking about?”

  Ezra muttered something about backgammon and Mrs. Lougheed abandoned her post altogether, lantern rattling at her side as she hurried from the room. She’d left us in near darkness, but Derry’s eyes shone bright as stars as he grinned at me and clapped Ezra on the back. “Bravo, Ezra. It’s still a fair run to the porch and they’ll have the steward after us, but we’ve a fighting chance now.”

  “We’d better move it.” I had no idea if there were wheelchairs around. I wasn’t sure if they even existed. “Ez, you’re doing fine. Stay on your feet and we’ll get you out.”

  “And a blessing on you, Alexander,” Derry called as we hauled ass out of the room. The maze of gloomy corridors might work in our favor, I thought, as we backtracked to the stairs. Unfortunately, Ezra didn’t make it far before his legs gave out again. Derry took most of his weight with the apparent expectation that I would try to rouse him back to wakefulness. But it was just slowing us down and it was too hard on Ezra.

  “It’s no good. He can’t walk out of here.”

  Ezra clutched at my coat and held on, fighting for all he was worth to appear awake and alert, though he could barely stand. “Don’t leave me. I can walk.”

  The desperation in his voice cut me with a cleaner stroke than the Ripper could have managed on his best day. “Ezra, we’re not leaving you. We came here expressly to get you out of this place and that’s what we’re doing, even if I have to carry you.” And it looked like I’d have to. Bending, I wrapped an arm around Ezra’s legs and as he settled unresisting over my shoulder, I sucked in a breath and straightened up. He wasn’t any heavier than I expected, but I was so damned achy and tired, I didn’t know how I would get him all the way down to the cab.

  Humor warred with sympathy in Derry’s gaze. “Can you manage it?” he asked, clearly willing to do the carrying if I couldn’t.

  “I’ve got him. Let’s go.”

  I must not have looked too good myself, because Derry hovered close as he hurried along beside us. When voices somewhere ahead made themselves heard, we froze, until a herd of attendants led by one very pissed-off guy in a suit, tie, and white coat stormed in our direction.

  “Bloody hell,” Derry wheezed, and pushed me through the first unlocked door he could find. We waited until all was quiet again before making another run for the front. Or more like an awkward lope in my case. My headache had reasserted itself and I was starting to feel Ezra’s weight. Just ahead, I saw the light pouring out from the open door of the front office, and I rejoiced that we were almost home free.

  Then my gaze swept ahead to the entranceway, and Mrs. Lougheed waiting at the door.

  Chapter 21

  Mrs. Lougheed considered us with a reproachful gravity as she fingered a shiny silver whistle. The last thing I wanted to do was threaten the woman with my gun, but I wasn’t leaving Ezra. Then it dawned that the matron hadn’t blown her whistle and apparently did not intend to. She went into the office, returning with a wicker wheelchair.

  “You cannot carry him back to town,” she said calmly. “Take this.”

  “Truly?” Derry Neilan, suspicious of another soul—now that was unnatural.

  Me, on the other hand…. “You’re just going to let us walk out of here?”

  Mrs. Lougheed’s grim mouth turned up ever so slightly, but pure sorrow shone in her eyes. “Alexander was one of the first patients under my care. No friends nor family. No one to take him.” Her gaze went distant. “Those were the days we still took in paupers. Alexander was brilliant, a mathematician, but he hadn’t a penny to his name. He loved games and I played backgammon with him because I’d never learnt chess. He was always a gentleman.”

  She pressed fingertips to her mouth until she had regained firm control over her emotions. “He was a gentleman, but he flew into ravings like nothing I had seen before. Haunted, he was.” Her gaze strayed to Ezra, propped between us, nearly asleep but mumbling to himself. “He took his own life. Before you were even born. You could not have known it. Could not have guessed it.” Mrs. Lougheed had made her decision, on our side this time. “Go on, take him out. If you’re quick, you’ll catch the six-fifteen back to London.”

  We didn’t need more encouragement. We got Ezra into the chair and as Derry opened the door, I wheeled through it. Mrs. Lougheed stood in the doorway and when I turned to thank her, she waved impatiently. “Go on. And keep him out of trouble, so they will never find cause to bring him back.”

  She closed the door, but her shadow remained in the glass. Derry noticed it too. “She’ll distract them.”

  “Think so?” I tilted the wheelchair to get Ezra down the steps. We reached the lawn and took off, the wheels running slick on the damp ground. Afraid the cab hadn’t waited so long for us, I nearly gasped aloud at the sight of it looming in the lingering mist. The eastern sky glowed with the first touches of sunrise. I looked back to see no one following. Mrs. Lougheed had done right by us, with a little nudging from Alexander.

  We made the station with minutes to spare. A stumbling Ezra propped between us, we hurried down the platform—Derry’s eye out for our compartment, mine for any sign of trouble. The stares we got from the few people waiting on the early train were either disapproving or amused. No one stopped or questioned us. But I couldn’t relax until the train had pulled out of Northampton. As picturesque in the morning light as I’d imagined, I watched without regret as it receded into the distance, gold-tinged fields taking its place.

  We were hardly thirty minutes out of town when Derry drifted into a well-deserved snooze. I let him sleep, and Ezra as well, thinking maybe it would help him distance himself from the nightmare he’d been through. As I had on the first night we’d bunked together, I got him into a comfortable position, curled up on his side, head pillowed on my lap. It was the best we could do on the train, but he wasn’t complaining and neither was I.

  A little more than an hour and a half later, I woke, disoriented to find the train was slowing along the platform of a much more crowded station. I woke Derry and together we roused Ezra. He couldn’t manage much more than a dazed awareness of his surroundings, but he trustingly fol
lowed my instruction to walk beside me, holding on to my arm as he needed. We flagged down a cab and in seconds he was asleep again.

  Not sure anyone would be up to greet us, I was pleased as hell to see the anxious faces crowding for a peek through the parted curtains as the cab rolled to the curb. Everyone in the house poured onto the steps and, as Derry and I maneuvered a drowsy Ezra to the sidewalk, ran down to help us bring him inside. A flurry of questions went along with the help, and I let Derry tackle most of them, my sights set on getting Ezra into bed before he collapsed. Dr. Gilbride’s cursory examination confirmed what I already knew, that Ezra needed to sleep off the morphine and he would be all right, at least physically. The rest I would worry about when he was awake enough for conversation.

  After a tiring trek upstairs, Derry and I sank onto Ezra’s bed with a near simultaneous gasp of profound relief. We’d done it. Sure, it had taken threats, blackmail, long miserable waits, and the occasional flight in panic, but we were finally home.

  Between us, Ezra slumped, awake but none too focused. Derry looked at him fondly. “The poor lad could sleep on a two-penny rope. We’d best get him out of his clothes and into bed.”

  “I hate to complain, Derry, but your century sucks.”

  Discerning from my tone what he might not from the words, he smiled sorrowfully. “Is life so much easier in yours?”

  I had to admit it wasn’t. Institutional life might be less of a horror, but generally speaking, there was as much to bitch about in my own time, if not more.

  Derry helped me get Ezra undressed and into a nightshirt, before leaving him in my care. As I buried him in blankets, he opened his eyes. Blue gleaming like a starry twilight drank me in for the longest minute. “You’re here.”

  “Right here. Try to sleep.” I drew the curtains tight, plunging the room into a peaceful gloom, and crawled into bed. All but asleep, he turned over and plastered every warm inch of himself against me. If he needed something to hold on to, something solid after all those ghosts, it was okay with me. Nuzzling disheveled hair, I kissed his forehead and whispered a good night.

  But that was not to be. He slept peacefully for a while, then the nightmares kicked in and he was tossing and turning. I held him and talked to him, so tired I hardly knew what I was saying. He went back to sleep for a few hours, until the nightmares resumed.

  Waking at three in the afternoon, I got up and dressed. I settled in a chair with a book, but kept one eye on Ezra, until the smells rising from cooking going on downstairs started to make me squirm and, to my relief, woke him too.

  I could tell as he sat up that, despite the nightmares, he had no idea why he was in bed at such a weird hour. He glanced toward the window and the afternoon light streaming in, then at me in blank confusion. “Morgan?”

  He wasn’t as hoarse as before, but the rough edge surprised him. I moved to his side, an explanation on my lips, but suddenly the confusion cleared away, disquiet taking its place. He looked at me and I nodded. “If there’s anything you don’t remember, I’ll fill you in, if you want. Talking about it is probably a good idea,” I added as the disquiet only seemed to deepen.

  “Perhaps a little later.”

  “Want to go down for some supper?”

  “I’m not particularly hungry.”

  I might have attributed that to the morphine, but I knew there was more going on. He wasn’t ready to face everyone yet, whether it was their sympathy he dreaded or their doubt that he was sane after they’d seen him dragged off by the asylum goons. I didn’t want to push him, though I knew everyone had to be anxious to know how he was doing. “The drug may have killed your appetite, but you should eat a little something. I’ll bring you tea and cookies,” I said, keeping it light and cheerful. “And you’d better eat it or Kathleen will be up to feed you herself.”

  Satisfied with the flash of wry amusement that got me, I went to find dinner spread out in the dining room and nearly everyone in the house just sitting down to it. At my appearance, they perked up and I stopped the forthcoming questions with a shake of my head. “He’s not ready to come downstairs. The morphine’s worn off, I think, but he’s tired and not in a frame of mind to talk about what he went through.”

  “Then I shall bring his supper up,” Kathleen said, starting to rise.

  “No, let me do it,” I said, waving her back to her chair. “He’s not really up for visitors yet, either.”

  “You may take it up—and something for yourself, as you’ll want to stay with him, I suppose.” She bustled around to overload two plates with food. “I meant to tell you, I’ve aired Mr. Cotton’s room, so you may move upstairs when you like. I do understand you may not be much longer with us, but I will have you comfortable while you’re here.”

  Henry bowed down further over his soup to hide whatever expression was in danger of getting us all into trouble. But Derry couldn’t hide his commiseration. He shook his head with an unspoken promise to help me deal with Kathleen later on. I let the matter drop. Ezra might not be ready for a flood of visitors, but neither was he ready to face the night alone.

  Near staggering under the weight of the tray Kathleen put in my care, I hiked back upstairs and peered past the door I had left ajar, to see Ezra where I’d left him. His thoughts had wandered to some place not so nice, judging by the pensive turn of his mouth. Uneasy, I went inside and deposited the tray on the window seat. I dropped there, myself, energetically enough to rattle the cups and wake Ezra from his reverie. “Chow time. Shall I pour?”

  A pale imitation of his exasperated smile touched his lips. “If there is anything left in the teapot, you may.”

  I dared to hope he was coming back out of himself, ready to face the world and all the dead and living in it. I couldn’t talk him into eating any more than tea and biscuits with his favorite strawberry jam, but he chatted as if all were right with the world. I was getting my butt kicked in a game of chess when Derry came up to see how we fared. Ezra got up to greet him with a hesitancy I’d never seen him show around Derry. Even Derry looked taken aback.

  “I’m flesh and blood,” he teased, with an affectionate muss of Ezra’s hair. “No proof you need of that, eh?”

  “If I require it, I’ll borrow a hatpin from Kathleen,” Ezra said, warming to Derry’s good cheer.

  “Aye,” Derry said ruefully. “She wreaks swifter vengeance than the Lord Himself, for the sin of napping through Mass.” He looked Ezra up and down, his expressive face twisted in an outpouring of sympathy. “It’s good to have you home where you belong.”

  Ezra’s smile was still hesitant. “I’ve caused you and Kathleen some embarrassment. I know you are too kindhearted to ask me to leave, but I also know that boarding houses live and die by reputation—”

  “Are you saying you’re nothing more than a boarder here? That you don’t know you’re as dear to us as any kin? Don’t say as much to Kathleen. You’ll break her heart.”

  Ezra looked stricken. “I do not mean to break yours.”

  “Well, then, say you’re staying.” Derry blinked against the moist gleam in his eyes. “Did I not just say it’s where you belong, you great damn fool—” He choked off the sentence as he smothered Ez in a fierce hug and kissed his cheek. Ezra hugged him back and wheezed out an agreement to stay put. I couldn’t help marveling at the sight; it was something rare in my own time, fearless physical affection between guys. In trying to label each other and the whole world, we’d lost something precious.

  “Are we finished with the chess for today?”

  I flashed a hopeful grin as the two of them looked around at me. Derry, with a quick brush of a sleeve across his face, studied the board. “You’re teaching Morgan to play?”

  Ezra cleared his throat, and I noticed he was fighting down a smile. “No, apparently he already knows.”

  “Ah,” Derry said, taking my seat as Ezra mercifully eliminated the evidence of my defeat. I watched the two of them at it a while. By the second game, Ezra was nearly asleep
in his chair, and I decided to nix my plans to attend the Stride funeral or do any investigation at all. Ezra needed a distraction, a healthy one. I talked it over with Derry, who came up with half a dozen suggestions that no doubt sounded like fun to him, even if they didn’t sound that way to me.

  What the hell, maybe an afternoon in the park would be good for me. More importantly, it would be good for Ezra. I virtually sleepwalked him from chair to bed and asked Sully to keep any wayward spirits from disturbing his sleep. But it wasn’t long before Ezra started tossing and turning. I hung on to him through the rough spots and soothed him back to sleep when he woke. By three in the morning, an afternoon in the park was looking better and better. We’d both be too tired to do anything but lie in the grass and soak up the sun.

  “And there’d better be some goddamned sun,” I muttered, giving Ezra a little squeeze as he relaxed against me. I wished I could get in his head and chase away whatever or whomever haunted him. I had leaned on him more than I’d realized and now, when I couldn’t, I felt the loss. Worse, I couldn’t provide the same comfort he had provided me. I couldn’t make him stop doubting his own sanity, nor help him escape the visions that caused him to doubt it in the first place. All I could do was hold him, which seemed inadequate when he was caught between this world and the next and moaning fearfully in his sleep.