Come Back To Us - 16. Chapter 16

Another day that was just the same as the others. The hospital was animated with the usual hustle and bustle. It just seemed to get more and more crowded as the days passed.

When he thought he could get some sleep last night he only happened to have a weird dream. But strangely he could remember it quite well, even though it made no sense to him.

He was in a desert, a desert that seemed to be endless, but he wasn’t alone, and neither was he lost. Karl was with him, and Paul was there too. All he could understand was that they were trying to be as discreet as possible with the intention to fight some enemy. Enemies like the Nazis he guessed. Yeah, with that dream he had got the feeling that they were at war, even though there had been no words exchanged. They had got weapons with them.

He must just have been listening to the radio too much. He kept walking in the long halls as he shook his head.

So…with whom would he start today?

He got into one of the big rooms where all the beds were lined up next to each other. It was definitely not the best place to get some privacy…

His eye was caught by a little girl who looked too innocent and too small to be there. As he approached her, he noticed that she seemed to be alone.

She was looking so sad that it broke his heart, well, what was left of it at least.

“Hello, you.”

He tried his best to sound cheerful and to smile, but seeing her so sad was making it so hard.

The little girl hardly looked up to make eye contact with him. Well…it seems it won’t be a piece of cake to make her smile…

“May I,” he pointed at her to make sure he wouldn’t scare her away if he tried to touch her.

She looked at him for a bit longer this time, but she had no reaction of any kind. From what he could observe, she didn’t seem to have been a victim of the bombings.

“I just want to see why you’re here. I won’t hurt you, okay?”

He tried to be careful with his words. Every detail mattered. He just couldn’t act coldly and be aggressive, he was the one to take care of now, not the one who needed to be taken care of.

“It hurts,” she ended up saying after a long moment of silence, and he could hear the slight whining in her voice.

“Where is it hurting?”

He could only try to guess what caused her suffering.

“My leg. I can’t walk anymore.”

“Is that so? May I?” He pointed at her legs this time.”

They exchanged another look. Her eyes were as blue as his. She nodded slowly.

“Which leg is it?”

“The left one.”

He approached his hand slowly and touched her leg with the utterest delicacy as if it were some precious good.

“Even when you’re not walking, it hurts, right?”

“Yeah…”

He examined her leg thoroughly, glancing at her every now and then to make sure he wouldn’t make it hurt more.

It could only be a broken leg. Or a sprain. The bone wasn’t sticking out, so if the leg was really broken, he would need a more thorough examination.

“What happened to you?”

“I fell while I was running.”

Probably running while the bloody Huns were bombing the city…

“What’s your name?”

“Rosemary.”

Rosemary… His mind clicked instantly.

She was…she was the little girl whom Karl had wanted to know if she was alright. He had finally found her when he expected it the least.

“You were with Carl when the first bombing happened, weren’t you?”

She was so small that she may have not even remembered him…It had happened quite a while earlier…

“Where is he? Is he alright?”

He had his mouth wide open, and his eyes must have been just as wide.

“You… remember him?”

“I’ve never stopped thinking about him. He saved my life that day.”

She didn’t sound like a child at all. There was so much maturity in her voice that he couldn’t speak any longer.

“Do you know him?” She asked him with that same sharp wisdom as if just thinking about him was making the pain seem insignificant to her.

But he still couldn’t utter a single word. But the little girl was patient. Why was she reminding him so much of him?

“Has something happened to him?”

She sounded worried all of a sudden? There was this part of him that refused to talk about him, but that other part that didn’t want her to be sad.

“I don’t know.” He sounded almost desperate as he spoke, his voice low and devoid of any emotion. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”

The little girl didn’t seem to mind the lingering eye contact anymore, but he did.

“Why?”

The question was plain, too plain for his ears. Too naive and too much to take.

His grandmother had once told him children were the mirror of truth. They couldn’t lie because they were too innocent to know what conceit was. They had nothing to hide unlike grown-ups.

“Why?”

He didn’t know whether she had just repeated the question or if the question was just replaying in his mind, just to make him understand he shouldn’t ignore it.

He pondered over that simple word for quite a while. Why had they stopped seeing each other?

He knew the answer, of course, but it was too hard to face.

“Because we will never be able to be mere friends.”

His words were followed by a long moment of silence, that endless silence that had been hurting him more than any kind of word.

“Did you argue with each other?”

“I guess you can say that.”

There was another moment of silence.

“I’d like to see him again.”

Their eyes met again. She couldn’t ask him that. He wasn’t the right person to ask for it.

“I don’t think I can take you where he is.”

Rosemary looked disappointed, even though her face was grave.

He let out a short sigh.

“I’m sorry…”

He realised he couldn’t deny that truth any longer.

“It’s my fault if he left.”

But then this meant…no! He couldn’t love him. But if he didn’t care….No…the real logical explanation was…

He was finally free to leave after having to take care of a failure and liability for so long, to make sure he wouldn’t try to kill himself again, because if he had succeeded in doing so, he probably couldn’t have stood the weight of guiltiness for letting it happen, for his own conscience. That was all. There was no other explanation.

“You don’t need to be sorry. His absence is enough to make you feel bad.”

He stared at her with wide eyes and parted lips.

What…what had she just said? The words couldn’t quite get to his brain at first. His jaw clenched after a while. Who was that girl exactly? She must have been hardly five and she was acting as if she was a grandma who had seen too many things in her life to acquire the wisdom and maturity she had got.

Well, she had been seeing things that a child should never see…that no one should ever see.

“Would you like me to find your parents?”

She stared at him with an emotionless expression that made him shiver.

“Both my Daddy and Mummy are dead.”

Bloody hell. He should have shut up.

How could he have been so naive…? He should have known.

War makes no survivors. It only leaves ghosts who are too messed up to be among the living anymore but not damaged enough to be dead, his uncle once told him.

He was too embarrassed to know what to do anymore… How could he possibly try to make up for his foolishness?

As he had the intention to speak again, the little girl was faster tan him.

“I don’t want to go back to the orphanage.”

Her voice was low and sad, with a hint of despair in it.

His stomach was hurting. He was speechless.

“Please…” she begged.

It was even worse now. He licked his lips as he looked away from her. And he thought. It all made sense to him now.

“That’s why you fell while running. You were running away from the orphanage, weren’t you?”

He took her silence as confirmation of his statement.

“They must be looking for me.”

She said that as if she were talking about the Nazis. But the caretakers of that orphanage couldn’t be monsters. They wouldn’t dare…they couldn’t mistreat her, could they? Well, he knew for a fact that most people were not good.

“Please,” she begged again. She looked as though she was about to cry.

But he couldn’t help her… He couldn’t look at her any longer.

She reminded him of Nathan. He had never forgotten him even with Karl, but it was different. He…he had never felt what he had felt for the Dane… But Nathan would still be a part of him, because he had come into his life and played such an important role in it. And now that he was thinking of him, Nathan would have never refused to help her.

“Did you tell anyone your name here?”

She shook her head.

“You’re the first person I chose to tell.”

Her words left him speechless. He couldn’t help wondering why now.

“Why?”

“Because you were the first one who cared first before looking for knowing my name at all costs. Just like him.”

There was a weird feeling upsetting his stomach. One he had rarely felt, if ever.

People were supposed to care first, but maybe they just didn’t know how to do it right. You had to adapt depending on who you had in front of you.

He leant forward and grabbed her shoulders gently.

“Well, don’t tell anyone. You won’t be able to leave the hospital immediately anyway.”

He glanced sideways as he started thinking about a possible plan.

“If someone tries to take you away from here without my consent, just shout, okay? I’ll be here day and night.”

She nodded as she gave him a tiny smile. He returned it, despite being as tiny as hers, it was better than no smiling at all.

“I’m going to take you to another room for further examination, alright?”

She nodded again and he lifted her up, but he didn’t think a little girl would be so heavy. Don’t get him wrong, he wasn’t saying she was fat, because she wasn’t, it’s just that he had never carried a child before, so he couldn’t know. He wouldn’t let go of her anyway. She wrapped her arms around his neck and looked like she wasn’t ready to let go either.

“Thank you,” she whispered in his ear.

He smiled to himself and walked away with her. The way wasn’t that long.

“I need her to have an x-ray for her left leg. I suspect it’s broken,” he told one of the women who were there.

He put Rosemary down on the examination table and remained close to her.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be alright. I’ll come back as soon as you are finished with the examination, okay?”

She nodded again.

“I know you must help other people. So go ahead. I know I’m not the only one suffering.”

His skin tingled slightly. That maturity and wisdom in a child, he wasn’t afraid of it anymore. He just loved it.

“See you.”

“See you.”

As he walked away, he looked back only to see her smiling at him. His mouth fell open.

He hadn’t felt that way in a while. It was good to care for someone who didn’t mean to harm you in any way.

 

***

He went to the graveyard to pay his respects to Doctor Spencer if he was not to leave the hospital for a while.

As he was standing before his grave, he was trying his best to hold back his tears. If he was this moved, he didn’t dare imagine what a mess he would be if it was a member of his family…

“Doctor, there was that little girl today….She looked so sad and so desperate, yet so mature and so wise…She broke her leg and doesn’t want to go back to the orphanage, so I think I’m going to take her with me, at least temporarily. Maybe I can find a loving family for her… I know I shouldn’t do that, but had you seen her, I’m certain you would’ve done the same thing.”

His eyes were focused on the gray stone, and suddenly a detail caught his attention.

Beloved husband and father.

His eyes widened and his mouth fell open, and his nails dug into the skin of his hand. He looked away and when he looked back at the gravestone he noticed something else. He had never paid attention to what was written above.

 

Here lies Betty Spencer,

Beloved wife and mother,

1904 - 1940

 

He froze as a sudden realisation hit him.

What if…what if….

What if Rosemary was actually their daughter…?

That thought was haunting him. No…it couldn’t be…he was probably wrong. She was definitely not the only child to have lost her parents during the bombings. She had blue eyes like Doctor Spencer, but she didn’t look like him. Well, she could have taken after her mother, but he could never sure since he had never seen Mrs. Spencer. No, he was only assuming one thing he had no proof about because of the current circumstances.

The simplest way would be to ask her her last name, a thing he hadn’t thought about because it was unnecessary to him. Or he could choose to shrug it off because it didn’t matter. Whether or not she was their daughter, it wouldn’t change a thing. He would help her anyway.

After staying there for a long while in silence, he walked away, but as dis, he thought about his own father… This wasn’t the right time to have this kind of thought.

He hadn’t lost him like Rosemary had lost hers since he had never known him. His pace slowed down as he remembered what he had told Karl once.

I know most kids who are like me would give anything to have a father, even if they aren’t related by blood. But not me. I realised I was just fine growing up without a Dad. I can’t miss or crave what I’ve never known.

When they had been on that farm in Essex. He could never forget his own words, but neither could he forget his absence.

His uncle had never taken him to see him to the graveyard. Only his mother had. But she never cried whenever she had, so he wondered how she could be so grave without ever shedding a single tear. He had never felt any particular emotion since he had never known him, but coming so often to the graveyard in his childhood didn’t leave him unaffected. It was all his mother’s fault, wanting him to mourn and try to get to know someone he could have a strong bon with.

Out of nostalgia for the past and habit or maybe because he was too messed up to know what he was doing anymore, he made his way to where the man was buried.

He was buried in the Hopkins family vault. Many dead had already been buried there before him. His great-great-grandfather, his great-great-grandmother, his great-grandfather, his great-grandmother, his great-grandaunt, his great-grandaunt’s daughter, his grandfather and grandmother, his aunt.

It frightened him to think that one day it would be his turn. It frightened him to be still alive to be conscious that one day everything would be over without having asked for anything, just like when he was born…not to know when it would happen. It could be tomorrow or in fifty years, if the world weren’t totally destroyed by then.

Praying for the dead was vain, talking to them was even dumber. It’s not as if they could reply in any way. But then why was he feeling this sudden urge to talk to someone he had never known?

His hands were shaking as he licked his lips. He was feeling sweaty.

“I’ve never talked to you. You don’t know me and neither do I know you. Yet…I feel like you’re the only one I can talk to freely since you can neither hear or see me. Where should I start? Well, I’m not normal. I love males and that’s wrong. I don’t why but I do, and I can’t do anything about it. I’ve tried so hard to change. I don’t want a wife and children. I’m not like you or Uncle Robb or most people. And I’m sure you couldn’t understand.” He licked his lips again as he paused and glanced away from the stone. “I don’t know if you would have approved of Mum finding another man and having a life of her own without you. I was just fine living with her, but then she ruined everything. I used to like a boy that once saved my life, he was my closest friend and could understand me better than anyone else. But he left me. He left me alone in that unfriendly and mad and rigid world. He died because of that bloody war. There was that Doctor I liked too, but not in a wrong way, but he died too.” He paused again, his breath shaky and uneven. “There’s another boy I have feelings for, but he doesn’t know. And I’ll never tell him. But he’s gone to war too.” He started shivering as he licked his lips another time. “And I’m afraid he’ll die too.”

He could feel his eyes prickling.

“Bloody tears…”

It was stupid to feel that way for a boy he hadn’t even known for a year…

“I shouldn’t have come here…”

He looked at the huge stone one last time before he ran away. He had to go back to the hospital now. He didn’t run to go there. He just had the impression to walk aimlessly (again), feeling that burning sensation that a part of him was missing. No, he shouldn’t be thinking like that. He had a purpose now, and he should stick to it and only think about it. Talking to the dead wouldn’t help him with that. And thinking about what he had let go wouldn’t either.

As he was worming his way into one of the examination rooms, he came across a trolley covered by a long white sheet.

What is it doing in the middle of the way?

Out of curiosity, he lifted the sheet and his body twitched at what he saw. After taking a deep breath, he lifted it entirely. It was a human body, no doubt about it. But it was greatly damaged… It was swollen with numerous marks on it. He couldn’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman… But he could at least tell for sure that the person hadn’t died due to the bombings.

“Poor woman, such a great talent wasted for the horrors of the war…”

He jumped slightly as he heard the familiar male voice. It was the white-haired doctor.

“What happened to her?” He asked as he turned to him.

“She drowned into a river. But she didn’t drown accidentally, it was intentional. She left a suicide note which was found by her husband.”

George froze. He couldn’t speak anymore. His whole body shivered. His blood ran cold. He could only stare at the lifeless body.

It had him think about that time when he had cut his veins open in the bathtub. He could have died too, but Karl had been there to save him just in time. Unlike her husband. He wasn’t going to blame the man though.

“May she rest in peace at least.”

The doctor patted his shoulder lightly, which made him jump.

“Don’t stay here for too long. The living need you much more than she does.”

He only nodded slightly, and then heard him walk away. His catatonic state lasted for a few minutes. He couldn’t find the strength in him any longer to let go of his dark thoughts.

“She had always been depressive, but her creativity and genius were finer than any other I knew. She survived the Great War, but when one goes through the same thing twice, it becomes too much for a person who is already so psychologically damaged.”

His heart skipped a beat. He thought about his uncle. No…he would never do such a thing. His uncle wasn’t weak. No matter how damaged the previous war left him, he wasn’t like him. He knew he had a family who was counting on him.

“We never know what we have until we lose it. We are all prisoners of our own demons and fears. One needs a tough heart and an even tougher determination to live with their depression until the heavens decide to call them back among the dead.”

Was the man really talking to him? Or was he only speaking because he was the only person there to listen so he wouldn’t look like a madman?

“Are you working here?”

He heard his question but was slow in replying.

“Yeah.”

“He glanced at the man who was examining him thoroughly.”

“You seem quite young to be a doctor.”

He looked at him and saw he was rather old, not as old as the white-haired doctor, but he looked older than his uncle and aunt.

“I’m not a doctor. I’m just still a student.”

His voice was low and monotone as he spoke those words, sounded almost sad.

“Well, May God keep you safe and sound.”

He put one hand on his shoulder which he quickly removed.

Then the long white veil hid the body from sight.

“Goodbye, my Love.”

Time passed, he didn’t know how long. Perhaps just minutes. The trolley and the man vanished. The noise around him had faded away. He could only hear that small voice in his head saying: You don’t know what’s wise, you’re only a fool.

He was a fool, he knew it. What if he really ended up like her at some point in his life? He would leave nothing behind.

It was strange to have that feeling that he wasn’t the only one having dark thought that were so consuming that they pushed him to kill himself.

It’s such a terrifying prospect to think that there are people like you in this world.

Mad and desperate.

He had a sudden revelation.

Geniuses are the one who suffer the most because they care too much to be blind like the happy fools.

 

*

Oh, lost innocence! Oh I wish I could find my way back to you.

There is too much suffering in my life and too many tears in my eyes.

I can’t find the light anymore…. I just want to be happy

Is it too much to ask for?

I’ve been looking for someone who can save me from my demons,

But I just end up being alone to face them

My mind is worse than the bloodiest battlefield, my heart darker than the night,

I’m not sure of who I really am… I just keep thinking…I don’t want to be anyone.

I’m sick and tired of society and its stupid rules

People are nothing but fools

They only see in others what they want to see.

Oh dear Innocence, they are the ones who brought you to your demise.

They are only good to despise.

I can only wish for their downfall for they will never change.

I refuse to believe in fate,

But there sitting at my chair, that tragic truth I must face

We’re nothing more than pawns on a chessboard.

Nothing can be done about it I guess.

And that’s sad

I guess that’s why I get so mad

I need to write down all my pain before it consumes me, like a wild fire that can’t be extinct.

There’s that boy who’s been plaguing my thoughts.

Love is a sweet poison.

You’re not aware of it when it gets into you, and when you realise it’s inside you, it’s already too late.

Your fate has been sealed.

Your end has come.