“To save them from what I wonder?” the second simply replied.
The men that watched the world turned their dark eyes away from the window and to the room they stood in, their eyes hungrily taking in the cold soulless machines that filled the room, the light glinting off glass, steel and the hard metal surfaces. This was just one of many buildings quietly purchased all over the world
They took this all in and smiled.
***
Bleeding Heart
Nat Wassell
“…Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven.”
Thirty-seven new patients. Twenty-five more than they had the space for. Jimmy Beaton sighed and rubbed his temples. What exactly was the point of filling in the paperwork and jumping through the hoops if the army was going to completely ignore them and send as many as they wanted anyway? Beside him, Sister Maggie Martin was surveying the influx and her small sigh told him that she was thinking exactly the same thing as he was.
“Come, Doctor,” she said eventually, her soft Canadian accent somewhat stronger than usual in this stressful circumstance, “They are here now and we must find the space.”
It was a long, hard afternoon and Beaton still was not entirely happy when they were finished. As it was, his feelings did not come into the equation and, after a brief dinner, he began his second shift of the day, short staffed as the hospital was. He did his rounds, coming last to the room that they had been forced to adapt quickly into an extra ward for twelve of the new men. This room was quieter than any of the others; six of the twelve were in comas, three of the others suffering from blindness, two from deafness and the last from blindness and deafness. In this room, in this deathly quiet, Beaton believed he could see the true cost of the war, even in comparison to the raving and screaming and sobbing that were common among the men in the other wards, the men who had lost limbs and suffered brain damage and relived the waking nightmares of watching their friends die.
Here, in this silence, men were lost.
A single nurse flitted around the room, offering comfort where she could, and Beaton decided to take his time here and bugger the protocols. He talked to the three blind soldiers, who had been grouped together at one end of the room so they could converse between themselves. One of them, a captain, seemed to have adopted the younger two when he was with them in the French hospital and had refused to be placed in the separate officer’s ward away from them. He was a decent enough chap though and the other two, no older than boys really, worshipped him. After a while Beaton moved on to the deaf pair, with whom he was able to speak easily enough through brief notes scribbled on the backs of their paperwork. The nurse was sat with the wretched deaf and blind man, holding his hand and murmuring assurances he couldn’t hear, so Beaton went to the coma patients. Only one of them had come in unidentified and he found himself drawn to this poor nameless man.
The soldier wasn’t remarkably young, not one of those tragic cases that left the nurses sobbing over a young life wasted. Beaton estimated his age to be somewhere in his mid-thirties, maybe closer to forty, although the short brown beard he sported could have been making him look older than he was. The notes he had come with, written hastily in some shaking hand in France, had said they believed him to be a sergeant, but even this they did not know for sure. Whatever rank he was, he’d clearly had a terrible time of it. He had fading red skin around his eyes, a product of a mustard gas attack only just healing, and when Beaton lifted his eyelid he saw the soldier’s eyes were a soft brown colour. There were similar burns on his hands and arms, perhaps even angrier than those on his face. They would scar but were nothing compared to the head wound which was clearly the main cause of his present condition. It looked as though they had pulled a dinner plate out of his skull and stitched him up rather messily afterwards. Beaton knew he would need to get to know the injury well, watching it keenly for the onset of some infection that would surely be the death sentence of the poor bugger. So far he was holding strong and Beaton was pleased. There was an honesty about the soldier’s face that seemed reassuring, as though he were a good enough sort that one could read it on him. He had the body of a miner, lean and fit, but with the distinctive rounded shoulders of one who had spent much of his life underground. Perhaps he was Welsh, from some tiny village in the valleys that was suddenly without most of its menfolk in this time of war.
Beaton decided privately to call him David, after Wales’ patron saint. He had a feeling he was right about the Welsh connection.
* * * *
It took him four days to think of it. Four days. Beaton couldn’t believe it had taken him so long. Then again, it didn’t really surprise him. He had spent the last three years of his life perpetually exhausted, being one of the few doctors left in the hospital that didn’t have grey hair and thirty years on all their patients. He’d been horrified when the army turned him down, the very idea that he was too old to go out to France a ridiculous one to say the least. Men he knew from university and medical school, only a few years younger than him, were being called up and drafted all of the time. They were being killed all of the time now, and he could hardly remember why he had ever envied those poor bastards. He was so tired. He was so tired he could hardly think any more and when the idea, a way to help David, came to him he wasn’t so sure that The Institute hadn’t once been part of a dream. It certainly felt like that.
It had happened in London, at least to start off with. He’d been at a dinner party thrown by an old friend, a deadly dull affair save for the stranger there, a man he did not know or even recognise. They had drunk too much wine with dinner, too much whiskey afterwards and the man had told him of a project he was part of. The Institute. It sounded like science fiction, like something H G Wells would have written on one of his more off-kilter days, and Beaton had laughed at him. It was only when he was sober and on a train to Scotland two days later with his new friend that he began to think he had perhaps been mistaken.
It was rumoured to have been mothballed almost as soon as it had started, with the beginning of the war, and so it was hard to find any evidence that it even still existed. Beaton had forgotten all about it, but now he might have a use for the Damnable place.
* * * *
Lewis Tennant, they called the man who kept the desk at this branch of The Institute, and a nastier piece of work Beaton had never had the misfortune to be acquainted with. Tennant had been a doctor himself once but had been forcibly removed from the hospital in which he worked, for reasons that nobody was ever quite sure of. The rumours though – the rumours were disgusting. Beaton pulled himself up to his full height as he approached the desk, all six feet and two inches of it. Since he had grown, suddenly and sharply at the age of fifteen, few people had ever dared to argue with him and he hoped that it would be enough now to get him what he wanted. Tennant, his face deliberately impassive, stared at him as he planted himself in front of the desk.
“Well, James Beaton,” Tennant said, “Wasn’t expecting to make your acquaintance again quite so soon.”
“Lewis,” Beaton said tersely, “If we must be on first name terms then please call me Jimmy. Only my mother calls me James.”
“Surely not,” Tennant grinned nastily, “A posh boy like you with a name like a gutter rat? Where did you pick that up?”
“That’s none of your business, Lewis,” Beaton said firmly but a red flush was creeping up his neck and onto his cheeks even as he tried to stare the older man down, “I need to get to some papers, things that Doctor Connors wanted me to read. I have some time and I thought I would prepare myself for when things are back on track.”
“Why, you got some inside scoop that the bloody war is going to end any time soon?”
Tennant was a foul man, one who, it seemed, had somehow forgotten how to look after himself once his time as a medical man was up. His hands were perpetually filthy, his hair greasy with oil and his teeth getting browner every time Beaton came across him. He was not, however, stu
pid, and he narrowed his eyes as he considered the request carefully.
“And why would I just let you in here? I haven’t heard from Connors in a year and a half, or the rest of them. Even the big men down in London only check in every month or so and then you come here like you have every right to start making demands of me. This facility is locked until I hear otherwise.”
Beaton closed his eyes and breathed carefully through his nose. He knew he needed to be most careful but it was time to try a little recklessness.
“All I want is some papers, Lewis. You can come with me to get them if you do not believe me and if you do not let me in to fetch them then the people in London will hear about it and I am not convinced they will appreciate the fact that a desk man got in the way of the next progressive step of this initiative.”
It worked, thank goodness. Lewis Tennant was idle and if there was one thing that he disliked more than helping another living person, it was helping them in any way that involved him doing something physical. He growled under his breath and tossed his set of keys at Beaton, turning back to his crossword puzzle.
“Ten minutes.”
He had not been to the facility very often, dead as it was, and Beaton felt the same cold dread now that he had felt that first time walking down the empty corridor. Something about empty hospitals got to him every time, almost as though he was being shown a future where he had failed at his life’s work and been unable to save a single soul God had handed to him. It was probably quite a common fear amongst doctors or, at least, doctors who actually cared about their jobs. And Beaton did care – the sheer fact he had lied his way into this place and was about to do what he had planned was testament enough to that. His colleagues had always said that he cared too much. Perhaps he did, but here and now he had a chance of helping someone in desperate need. Somewhere out there, David’s family were waiting for him. Beaton could find them and at least give them peace of mind in knowing where David was, even if he never regained consciousness. The world was in a sad state of affairs, he thought, when a body was the best that people could hope for.
He found his way to the treatment storage easily enough and put several doses of the stuff and the small canister with the masks in the large satchel that he had slung over his shoulder. There were already some files in there, just dull administration papers from the hospital, that he could show to Lewis if the man was to ask. He didn’t inquire though, just growled dismissively and waved Beaton away as he tried to thank him for his time.
Riding high on the success of his operation, Beaton decided he would try David out on the treatment that very night. He waited for the skeleton night shift to have done the midnight rounds and then announced he was going to spend the night with the coma patients, observing them for a paper he was thinking of writing, and that he would deal with any problems that came up in that ward. Sister Martin gazed at him for a moment, her quick mind perhaps sensing something strange and unusually abrupt in his manner, but she was understaffed and it would be foolish to turn down such an offer. Beaton bade her goodnight and shut himself in the ward, grateful that it was the furthest away from the nurses’ station.
He’d brought a small dose of the treatment from its hiding place in the storage room, just enough to make an initial tentative exploration and see how perceptible David was. Beaton had never actually done the operation by himself but he’d watched enough times and was fairly confident as he bustled around checking he had everything he needed. As he moved, he began to talk quietly.
“We’ll soon find out who you belong to,” he said under his breath, addressing the man on the bed, “And you would have been part of something very important too. More important than the bloody war, anyway.”
He fitted the clumsy mask gently over David’s face, brushing his slightly too long hair out of his closed eyes, “Remind me to ask one of the nurses to trim your hair for you. It’s getting long. Your beard too, if you like.”
He had to stop talking then, in order to fit his own mask over his face. The tubing connecting the two masks had a valve in the middle that he pushed into the small gas canister containing the treatment. Taking a seat close to the bed, he pushed the release button on the canister and took three deep breaths, as he had been taught. The last thing he saw before he slipped under was David’s hand twitch.
It was dark when he opened his eyes and for a moment his heart dropped; perhaps this was all David would be able to give him in his state of unconsciousness. Slowly a small flame flickered in the corner of his eye and then, more quickly, there was a tunnel and two men stood beside him, stripped to the waist. One of them was David, perhaps a few years younger. The other had flaming red hair and an open, honest face.
“That’s enough, Rhys-lad,” the stranger said, patting David on the shoulder, “You get home now. I’ll wait with the poor bugger.”
Rhys.
Rhys didn’t answer, kneeling down and staring at something Beaton had not realised was there. It was a pit pony, lying on its side, still attached to the overturned cart it was pulling. Rhys reached out and stroked the pony’s nose gently. It took one last laboured, rattling breath and then was still. Rhys turned to glance at his companion, a look of sorrow on his face.
“I told you he was being worked too hard,” he said, voice thick with the Welsh accent Beaton had been expecting, “I told you he’d had enough. You can’t work an old animal to death, Sammy, it isn’t right.”
“I know, lad,” the man said, “And I told ‘em what you said. Maybe now that bloody idiot will have to listen. He shouldn’t be allowed to work with the ponies.”
“Aye,” Rhys said, eventually turning away from the pitiful animal, “Aye. Poor thing. If I ever get my hands on-”
He was interrupted by a low rumble that seemed to rush up the tunnel to his left, and both he and Beaton turned to peer into the darkness. The pony, his cart and the red headed fellow were gone and Rhys was holding a gun, a pack slung over his back. The rumble got louder and louder and then there was fire and Rhys shouted and –
Beaton fell back into himself, heart pounding with terror – Rhys’s terror – and he glanced at his patient to see that the only change about the man was a curl of his fingers. That was something that the nurses had noted he often did, and it seemed to Beaton now that it would be connected to what he had seen. Quickly, he pulled his stethoscope up to his ears and pressed it to Rhys’ chest. Sure enough, his heart was pounding a rhythm that Beaton could feel matched his own. Before he even realised what he was doing, he had removed his mask and begun to speak.
“It’s alright, Rhys,” he murmured, keenly aware of the other men sleeping so close by, “You’re not there any more. You’re safe, old man.”
He kept up his mantra, unsure if he was assuring himself or the other man, but Rhys’ heartbeat slowed reassuringly quickly. Perhaps he could hear what was happening around him after all.
It looked good though. It looked very good. There had been no resistance, no struggle to keep the connection. Beaton had only come back to himself because the test dosage was so small. And he’d been right about where Rhys was from, at least. He felt a rush of affection and patted his patient’s arm.
“I’ll find them for you, old man. I’ll take you home.”
* * * *
The next day, Beaton decided to try again. He had meant to wait, to give Rhys a chance to recover from the first test, but the results were so promising that he did not think it would take much more to find what he was looking for. In the afternoon, the mobile patients were taken outside for an hour in the sunshine, and Beaton settled himself down next to Rhys’ bed. It was too risky to try the treatment during the day, but he was drawn to the man and he couldn’t help himself. Rhys’ hands curled into tell-tale fists several times and Beaton talked, because it seemed to soothe him, then he just carried on, because it soothed him too. He told Rhys all about his life, dull as it was. He told him about the rowing at school, about how they had wanted him to play rugby
but he just couldn’t bring himself to take part in the needlessly violent game. He told him about his family, about his sister and her sons. He told him about Danny and Matthew, the nephews fighting out in France, and about Jack, the third nephew who had been missing for a year.
“He’s only a youngster, you know,” he said wistfully, “Twenty last May. Perhaps someone is looking after him like I’m looking after you. Maybe he’ll come back to us at the end of all this.”
The words sounded hollow, as hollow as they had sounded when he was saying them to his sister back at home, but he said them anyway, because what else was there to say? He knew then why he was so intent on getting Rhys home – it wasn’t this godforsaken experiment, not entirely anyway. It was partly about fairness, about bringing peace of mind to a family in grief, and it was about hope, about wishing that someone somewhere had Jack in their care too. That’s what it was about.
And so, that night, he tried the treatment again.
It was bright this time, and so real that Beaton felt he could taste the air. Rhys was in the garden of a small terraced cottage, dressed in a loose shirt and old patched trousers. He looked even younger than he had before, perhaps in his mid-twenties, and he was digging at a vegetable patch. There was that same low rumble in the background, so quiet Beaton was straining to hear it, but Rhys didn’t seem to mind it. There was a rustle in one of the bushes and Rhys smiled, evidently pretending to ignore it. The bush rustled again and said, “Da? Do you really not know where I am?”
“I looked everywhere I thought,” Rhys said, “And I did not know bushes could talk.”
A small giggle and a small boy emerged at the same time and tapped Rhys on the back.
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