“Sir, I need you to lay back,” a nurse told him as she grabbed his other shoulder, shoving him down onto his back. He screamed once more, kicking his legs in the air. “Sir, please stop fighting me. I need to see to your wounds.” As she continued to struggle, he kicked his legs harder. I lunged for them both, wrapping my arms around his ankles. I clamped down on them, pinning him between my chest and the bed. He howled, and while it wasn’t exactly the distraction the nurse expected—or at least that was her expression—she used it to plunge a needle into his arm, pushing the drugs into his bloodstream. His cries softened into whispers and his body relaxed. A few tears streamed down his unburned cheek.
“Thank you,” the nurse whispered to me.
More and more men and women rushed through the doors of the hospital, calling out for help, for the nurses and for the doctors. Dirt stained their faces and their clothes, and a few were even covered with thick layers of soot, as though they had been playing in a fireplace. Their faces obscured under the dust. Everyone around me looked the same.
A woman coughed in her hand as she passed me, and without thinking I grabbed her shoulders, turning her toward me. “Mum?” I asked.
She shook her head, blinking as she continued coughing.
“Mum?” I called out, not caring about the attention I was drawing. “Mum? Dad?” I weaved through the mass of people, checking each person either lying on a bed, leaned up against the wall, or even laying on the floor. My parents were among none of them. Hundreds of townspeople had been down at the lorries that morning, buying tomatoes and enjoying their summer afternoon. “Mum! Dad!”
With my heart still pounding, I ran back outside. Buildings down along the pier smoldered, billowing smoke up into the air. It choked my lungs, causing me to cough as I weaved through men working to find anyone trapped under debris, or help anyone in need.
“Mum! Dad!” No matter how many times I called for them, they didn’t answer.
Perhaps they went to Henry’s store, looking for me? The thoughts of their safety consumed me as I ran back to the grocery store, finding it still standing, but empty. The only damage to the place was a few busted windows, as though the noise of the bombs hitting the small town had blown them out.
I dashed back down to the hospital. More and more bodies lay along the streets outside the building, with nurses bent over them. They checked for pulses, shaking their heads to one another before covering the faces of the deceased with sheets.
I stood watching them.
I didn’t want to think that underneath one of those white cloths lay two people I knew. Didn’t want to think I could lift them up and find the faces I had been desperately searching for. How many times had I looked upon them, not thinking it would be the last time? How many times had I taken seeing them for granted, not fully appreciating the time I could spend with them? Days and nights, enjoying meals with them, having conversations about nothing important at all, or just sitting around the fire at night while Mum rocked in her chair knitting and dad sat on the couch reading.
“May I help you?” One nurse asked me.
“I’m . . . I’m looking for my parents.”
She dropped her gaze for a moment then met my eyes once more, reaching out to clutch my shoulder as if she knew the weight sitting upon me. “Well, let me help you, then. To check for them,” she said.
She led me over to the first body, hesitating for a moment before she bent down. Her fingers trembled as she clutched the sheet and drew it from the person’s face. Eyes stared up at the sky, his skin so pale the sight of what used to be a living, breathing man, twisted in my stomach. My mouth watered. I spun away, closing my eyes.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
The nurse grabbed my shoulders. “What about the shoes?”
“What do you mean?”
“Would you know your parents’ shoes?”
I spun back around, facing her as she pointed toward the bodies once more. This time her fingers motioned toward their feet.
“Um. I . . . I think so.”
I scanned each of them as I walked up and down the side of the hospital, not knowing if I would recognize my father’s shoes. Perhaps I would my mum’s, but my father’s proved a whole other notion. My head pounded, and the more I searched, the more panic bubbled in my chest.
I wanted to find them, and yet, I didn’t. At least not here. Not like this.
I rounded the building and leaned against the brick, pressing my forehead into the hard stone as I exhaled several breaths and closed my eyes. Memories swam inside my mind. The way my mum smiled and the way my dad’s eyes closed when he laughed. Years of growing up ran like a movie. Christmas holidays, birthdays, even just a simple dinner at home on a quiet evening with the four of us chatting about nothing of importance.
I thought of Amelia, wishing she was here right now, but thankful she wasn’t.
“We have two more. We found them together under some rubble.”
My breath shortened as I heard the voice from around the corner. With as much effort as I could muster, I pushed off the wall and made my way back around to the front of the hospital. There, my mum’s body lay in a man’s arms as he carried her while my dad lay on a makeshift gurney carried by two other men. Their skin was pale and covered with a thick layer of dust that also stuck to every fiber of their clothes and every strand of their hair.
The nurse glanced at me and, not knowing what else to do, I nodded. She rushed toward them, checking both of them for a pulse before facing me once more and shaking her head. Her shoulders hunched over.
The men laid my parents down on the ground, and I knelt beside them.
No one prepares you for the loss of a parent. The two people who have always been there in your life are suddenly gone and no matter how hard you try to breathe or keep yourself from collapsing to the ground, you can’t. Your mind goes numb to any thoughts other than the ones that have you standing and screaming at the top of your lungs before you fall prey to the utter madness haunting you. Of course, you can’t actually stand or scream. You can’t even move because aside from your mind, your body goes numb. Weakness spreads throughout your limbs, leaving you desiring nothing but the floor to lie on, or even better, to swallow you whole so you may not have to feel the sorrow and pain anymore.
That’s what I wanted—for the earth to swallow me whole and bury me deep underground where I could whither away and perish into a world where I didn’t have to live without them.
SIX
Henry - June 1940
My eyes fluttered open as the sun shone through the hospital window. The rays cast light upon the walls and ceiling, illuminating the room in a soft glow.
Most of the surrounding patients continued to sleep; their soft snores were like an orchestra of instruments playing their music at random paces that never seemed in tune with one another. Only a few were awake, like me, and they just lay on their beds, staring with far off looks in their eyes. I knew those looks. Knew how their minds were, like mine, wandering through the memories of what happened. The bombs. The explosions. The fires.
The pain.
Germans hadn’t just invaded Guernsey with their tanks rolling down our streets or the soldiers marching with their jackboots as they passed through town.
They bombed us.
They flew over our town, dropping bombs on us like we were nothing but ants on the ground.
I shifted my weight, and the bed creaked as my arm hit something next to me. I rolled slightly, catching sight of a cascade of chocolate curls lying on the blankets next to my hand.
Evelyn.
Fast asleep, with her head lying on the side of the bed, her breaths were deep and heavy.
Vague memories of her helping me popped in my mind. I remembered the first few bombs dropping, even remembered bracing the two of us against the side of the grocery store, but the rest was nothing more than fuzzy thoughts. The more I tried to think about them, the harder my head pounded. The dull ache
worsened, and I closed my eyes.
“She hasn’t left your side,” a woman’s voice whispered.
As I opened my eyes, a nurse approached my bed.
“You are one lucky man to have a girlfriend who loves you so much.”
“She’s . . . she’s not my girlfriend.” My voice was deep and strained, and although I hadn’t meant it, it growled and rumbled against my chest. I cleared my throat. “But she is a friend.”
“A friend that saved your life.” The nurse leaned down, feeling my forehead. Her hand was icy. “If she hadn’t helped you to the hospital, you would have died.”
“What happened to me?”
“You took a bullet to the leg.”
I glanced down toward my blanket covered feet. “Well, that, I remember. I just don’t remember anything else.”
The nurse set her clipboard down on top of a rolling cart. “Those are questions for your friend. All I know is she brought you in here. You were in and out, unconscious for most of the time.” The nurse held up a thermometer. “Open and leave this under your tongue. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
The cold instrument sat in my mouth as I watched her move onto the patient in the bed beside mine. A young woman who looked asleep, or at least held still as though she was. With her face bandaged, covering her eyes, I didn’t know if she was awake or not, and she didn’t move as the nurse touched her arm, pressing her fingers into her wrist to check for a pulse.
I glanced around at all the other beds surrounding me, and the men and women who lied in them. Each one bandaged for fresh injuries—arms, legs, even heads. Other nurses tended to them, and even a few doctors roamed throughout the room. A grim mood seemed to plague them all.
Although, I suppose it would. To think otherwise would be foolish.
“Let’s see what your temperature is,” the nurse said, returning to my bedside. She plucked the instrument from my lips, turning it over as she held it up in the air. “Slightly high at one hundred degrees, but not anything to worry about.”
I adjusted my weight again, stretching my legs and feet. Pain shot up my calf. I sucked in a breath.
“Do you need another shot of morphine?” she asked.
“No, I think . . . I think I’ll be fine.” I paused for a moment, letting out a breath as I tried to relax my body. I didn’t want anything else. Didn’t like how it made me feel—sick to my stomach and wanting to crawl out of my own skin. “Can you fetch the doctor for me, though? I would like to know what happened.”
“Of course. They are making their rounds, but I can get him now, if that’s what you like.”
Before I could utter another word, she marched off. Her heels clicked against the floor.
Evelyn stirred beside me, and a soft moan whispered from her lips. One of her curls fell down over her eyes, sticking to her eyelashes. I hadn’t realized how long they were or how they naturally curled, and they reminded me of feathers.
“Evelyn,” I whispered. “Evelyn, wake up.”
She moved a tiny bit more, stretching out her arm. Her face scrunched as though in pain, and her eyes opened. She sat up, jerking away from the bed. She blinked.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning.” She winced again, rubbing the back of her neck with her hand. “I knew I shouldn’t fall asleep in such a way. I’m going to be sore for days.”
“I appreciate it just the same. The company, I mean.” I snorted a slight laugh. “Did you find your parents? Are they all right?”
Her face scrunched again, although not in pain, but of an utter sorrow I’d never seen on a person. She slapped her hand over her mouth and began sobbing.
I sat up, ignoring my leg, and grabbed her shoulder. “Don’t cry. What’s wrong?”
She shook her head. “It’s . . .it’s just my parents . . . they died.”
Her words hit my chest as though they were a pile of bricks toppling down upon me. The weight sucked the air from my lungs and gutted me all at the same time.
“Evelyn, I’m . . . I’m so sorry.” With my hand still on her shoulder, I gripped her tighter and drew her into me, wrapping my arms around her however I could. She sobbed, and her body trembled against mine. “I know it’s probably hard to understand, but it’s going to be all right.” As soon as I uttered the words, I bit my tongue, regretting them.
“I don’t see how,” she said, her voice muffled by my shirt.
“I know you don’t, and that was probably not the right thing for me to even say to you. Damn it. I’m sorry.”
She sniffed and moved away from me, sitting back up as she wiped her eyes. Red and puffy, they were both swollen, and the green hue of her irises lightened against the paleness of her face. If she hadn’t been asleep when I found her, I wouldn’t have thought she had slept at all.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she whispered.
“Perhaps you should go to London. Find Amelia and stay with her.”
She shook her head. “There are no boats leaving Guernsey, and there are no boats coming for us. I’ve heard the talk around here. They say the Germans are coming. No one knows when, but they are coming.” She dropped her gaze down to the blankets and wrapped her arms around herself, rubbing the sides of them. “Henry, I don’t know what will become of all of us. I’m scared.”
“Don’t think about it.” I raised my hand as she opened her mouth to argue. “I know you think it will be hard not to. But just don’t. We will be all right. Everything will be all right.”
“But I don’t have anyone here. I’m alone.”
“You have me. You are not alone.”
Her face scrunched again, and she covered it with her hands, sobbing once more. Never once in my life had I ever felt helpless. In this moment, however, I did. And it was a feeling I didn’t like.
She wiped her face, sniffing as she calmed herself with deep breaths. “I know what you’re trying to do, Henry. You’re trying to make me feel better. Perhaps it should, perhaps I should listen to you and take comfort in the fact they will not have to face the Germans. But I can’t. Having friends is not like having a family. I couldn’t even go home last night because . . . because I would have been alone for the first time.”
She paused for a moment, staring at me as though she wondered if I was going to say anything. While I wanted to utter words of encouragement or at least some brilliant advice for her, I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to even say.
“Never in my life have I been alone in the house,” she continued. “While Mum or Dad would take day trips or weekends away to London from time to time, they would always leave a neighbor with Amelia and me. Or as I got older, I would take care of us both.”
She paused again, snorting a laugh as her eyes focused on the blanket with a far-off look in them. “The first few times they left us to ourselves had been both exciting and scary. Of course, we had done what all children suddenly living in a house without rules would do.”
“And what was that?”
“We ate dessert before dinner—sometimes eating so much we had little room for vegetables or anything healthy. We stayed up well past our bedtime, dancing to the radio or sneaking some of Mum’s books full of stories of women and men enjoying the company of one another in ways that made two little girls giggle until all hours of the night. But staying in the house last night would not have been like any of those other times. I would have been alone, and I didn’t want to be alone.”
“It’s all right that you didn’t, Evelyn. No one is saying you should have.”
“I know. I . . . I just don’t know what to do.”
“You will figure it out, and I will help anyway I can.”
For the first time since she had awoken, she looked me in the eyes. A desperate plea of something normal flooded her face. It overwhelmed my instincts, and I reached out, drawing her into my arms one more time. She exhaled a deep breath, melting into my chest as we both laid there in silence.
“And how are we f
eeling today, Mr. Barrow?” The doctor said as he approached. Evelyn sat up and he glanced at her then me before returning his gaze toward the papers on the clipboard in his hand. He flipped through them.
“All right, I suppose. Considering.”
“You didn’t want any more morphine?”
“Nah, not right now.”
“Well, we were able to get the bullet out of your leg. However, there was some damage we couldn’t repair.”
“What kind of damage?” Evelyn asked, wiping the last of the tears from her cheeks.
The doctor looked at her without moving his head. His eyes peered over his glasses, which had slipped down his nose. “I’m afraid Mr. Barrow won’t walk without the assistance of a cane from now on.”
“A cane?” My voice bellowed over the silence of the room. Nurses, and even several of the patients who had one by one woken with the commotion of their treatment, turned their heads toward us, gawking.
“What happened?” I asked.
“There was significant damage to the muscles and tendons that I couldn’t repair. Unfortunately, trying to locate and dig out the bullet further damaged what was left. We did everything we could.” The doctor let the papers flap back down upon one another and looked up at me, resting the clipboard against his waist. It dug into his coat. “It could have been worse, Mr. Barrow. A lot worse.”
“A lot worse as in how?” I didn’t know if I really meant the bitterness in my tone. A part of me did, however, a part of me felt a bit of guilt, too. He had only tried to help me. All of them had. It wasn’t their fault, this outcome I hadn’t seen coming.
Yours: An Emotional and Gripping WWII Family Saga (The Promises Between Us Trilogy Book 1) Page 6
