She stood by her mailbox, leaning against the post for support, flipping through the scant assortment of bills, junk mail, and advertisements. The usual, she thought. But at the bottom of the small pile, she noticed an envelope, a short rectangle printed on heavy off-white paper.

Gloria pulled it free and turned it over in her hands. In neat, thin letters, someone had written her name and address in dark green ink:

Mrs. Gloria Duffin

244 Seahawk Blvd

Harbor Bluffs, FL 33770

The return address was almost impossible to read. Gloria squinted through her bifocals at the tiny and cramped letters: Monahan, Texas.

Her daughters, then, could be ruled out. Not that they’d be the sort to send her a letter out of the blue anyway, she thought. Catherine and Dawn were busy, grown, leading fully lives. She received the dutiful birthday and holiday calls, and was tolerated when she checked in with the girls once a month.

The letter, she decided, was a treat, the sort of mystery a woman her age could enjoy without too much trouble. She thought about tearing it open right there at the mailbox, but then hesitated. Something like this should be enjoyed with leisure.

Tucking the mail under her arm, she stepped gingerly over the curb and made her way slowly up the driveway toward the squat, white, one story house, a traditional Florida style that Gloria had always found charmingly hideous. When she and Marvin had bought the house fifteen years ago, downsizing from their three bedroom home in Tampa, the neighborhood was small, comprised of similar homes built in the 60’s, all facing the waterway. Now, the old homes were dwarfed by soaring pink brick mansions. The subdivision of Harbor Bluffs had become cramped.

A strong breeze, fresh off the waterway, tugged at Gloria’s hair and tickled the thick palms in her front yard, fluttering the drooping pansies in their pots. She gripped her precious parcel closer to her faux cashmere sweater and ducked into the garage.

It was cool inside, and smelled of the open bags of potting soil and the bitter reek of fertilizer. Along the walls, metal shelves were lined with boxes, tools, fishing poles, an ancient bike, an antique drill press. Marvin’s projects. She felt a burst of exasperated fondness. He had spoken of a yard sale for years, of wanting to ‘declutter’ their lives. It hadn’t happened when he was alive, and she was almost certain it wouldn’t happen now—just like him, to leave her with this sort of task.

Gloria closed the garage door and walked through the living room into the kitchen. It was simple, with the same sort of Florida retiree décor that could be found in any number of similar houses along Seahawk Boulevard. Mismatched overstuffed couch, a handmade crocheted throw, an ancient T.V. set that should have been replaced ten years ago. And, of course, family pictures—beginning in black and white, and moving up the spectrum in color and saturation as the years progressed. But the cycle of adding fresh, youthful faces had stopped, as Gloria had no grandchildren.

She supposed that Catherine was what people on T.V. called “a high-powered businesswoman.” She had always been driven like no other child Gloria had ever seen. Catherine had taken ballet, gymnastics, debate team, church choir, along with a host of other hobbies. She was so involved that Gloria decided quit her position as a secretary (an unnecessary job, Marvin had reminded her several times—they were well off enough on his salary) in order to chauffer Catherine around. In college, Catherine had been president of her sorority, and graduated magna cum laude, with many job offers from business agencies.

Gloria was of her eldest child, but she knew she could make no claim to her success. The girl had always been distant. Polite, well-mannered, but distant, even from toddlerhood, in a way that only Marvin could reach. Catherine had been a daddy’s girl from the moment she was born. She even looked like him: brown eyes, dimples, and his fine, thin, dark brown hair.

It was when God sent them a second child, six years after Catherine, that Gloria had worked diligently for her baby’s love. How gentle Dawn was! From the moment Gloria had seen her inexplicable red curls and round happy face, Gloria had a favorite child (though she would have died a thousand deaths before mentioning it). Dawn hadn’t felt the call of ambition as her older sister had. She preferred to meander out in the woods behind their Tennessee home, to sit on the roof late at night and sketch willowy figures dancing in under the streetlamps.

Gloria passed a sepia photo of Dawn at age three at the beach, a bemused expression on her face as her father pressed a large seashell to her ear.

Marvin had been worried about Dawn, but Gloria knew that while she would never be the driven intellectual her father desired, she would always be an innocent.

Yet it had been a shock a shock when, at age eighteen, three days before heading off to the University of Southern California, Dawn had sat them down at the dinner table and told them that she was in love with a woman. That she had felt this way since she was a little girl, that she hoped they would understand.

Marvin had thrown his plate at her and told her she was allowed back home when she got rid of her “urges.” Gloria had sat helplessly, fingers in her lap, and wondered if this was God’s vengeance—if this was how He intended to punish her for her youth—that terrible kiss with Jinny Dupree on the balcony of Colonel Dupree’s mansion the night of the 18th Annual Chatanooga Cotton Ball —so many years before.

Jinny, a full two years ahead of Gloria and already out as deb, had taken Gloria’s face in her one of her daintily gloved hands. Her sandy blonde hair had been tucked in gentle waves behind her ear. The pink pearls on her neck clicked together as she leaned over. I missed you when I was off at Townsend, she had whispered into the quiet night air. The kiss had been gentle, as pure as the Baby’s Breath bouquets that were scattered on the deserted tables across the balcony. A simple press of lips to lips.

Gloria had felt her mother’s presence behind them before Jinny had. And yet, she hadn’t pulled away until she felt her mother’s hand on her shoulder, squeezing painfully, yanking her away. The older woman had stared Jinny down.

“If I ever see you with my daughter…if I see you ever acting in the filthy way you did just now…” her mother’s voice had trailed off, hissing a threat into Jinny’s pale neck that Gloria either hadn’t heard or didn’t remember.

Her mother had remained silent through the car ride home. She had let Gloria change out of her white debutante dress before calling her downstairs.

“I’m sor—“ was all Gloria managed before the blow from her mother’s palm cut her off, the three karat diamond in her ring drawing a gash through Gloria’s bottom lip.

It was the first and last time her mother hit her.

Not that she blamed her mother, of course. At the time, it had been the right thing to do. Girls just weren’t…like that in those days. The path her mother had placed her on after that night had been so much easier than the one she might have chosen.

Despite Marvin’s rage at their daughter’s sexuality, Gloria could not muster the energy to disown her beloved Dawn. They had communicated frequently while she was away at college, undetected by Marvin, who held his ground.

Dawn had held her ground, too. She had never returned to the comfortable, two-story house in Tennessee. Now, she worked as an entertainment organizer on the Norwegian Cruise Line, while her partner Arewa, a six foot tall Nigerian former pole vaulter, worked as a sous chef in one of the restaurants on board.

Several years ago, Gloria had resigned herself to the fact that she would never have grandchildren. She knew that Catherine would never think of children, that she had never wanted them. But she had held out some hope that Dawn and Arewa would adopt. When she questioned Dawn it, her daughter had let her down gently.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” she said, not without a twinge of wistfulness, Gloria thought. “But we’re at sea most so much, and we just don’t have the time. It would be very unfair to a child.”

Gloria couldn’t fault her logic. And she knew Dawn was right. But a part of her hoped that a grandchild might bring about reconciliation between Marvin and his daughter—the man had wanted a grandchild so badly. He would have been a wonderful grandfather, no matter what he felt about Dawn. He was just that sort of man, a man who loved children, who would offer to help a neighbor set up a new sprinkler system or repair the swinging rope bridge at the local children’s park. She thought of all his unfinished projects in the garage, things he had promised to clean up. Just like him, then, to leave her with the task of cleaning it all up. But as generous as he was, he was also impulsive, occasionally frivolous, up and off to each new business opportunity without hesitation, leaving her behind.

It hurt, sometimes, at her weekly bridge gathering, when the other ladies would pull out wallet photos of chubby toddlers in footed pajamas, or show off their latest baby quilt or crocheted booties for the newest addition to the family. Last month, Janice had proudly brought in her youngest grandchild’s graduation certificate from kindergarten. Gloria had made the appropriate noises, and then had to excuse herself to blow her nose in the bathroom.

In the kitchen, she sat her pile of mail on the rickety wooden dinner table and searched for the teakettle. Tea was just the thing for a day like today, she thought. She would take it out onto the back porch to enjoy the sunshine and the sparkling grey waters.

It was a good plan. If only she could find the teakettle. Where had she put it? Gloria checked in the drawer beneath the stove (its usual repository), in the cupboards above the microwave, behind the oversized white ceramic pitcher. She checked twice. What had she done with it? Eventually, she discovered it on the top shelf of the pantry. She didn’t remember putting it there. Brushing aside a niggle of worry, Gloria filled it up with water and placed it on the stove.

It was a small thing, she told herself. She was probably tired the last time she had made tea, and had put the kettle back in the pantry without thinking. Also, she lacked mental stimulation, she knew—since the bridge club meeting a month ago, the group hadn’t had their weekly get-together. Angie—at the positively youthful cusp of fifty, the youngest of their group— underwent a breast lift and then left for a cruise with her husband to celebrate the results. Angie was the host of their group and had been since Margaret, the former organizer had been taken quietly to a nursing home over in Tampa, after she drove her Cadillac to the store and couldn’t remember her way home.

There was no reason the other seven women couldn’t have met, except for the fact that Caroline had broken her hip two weeks ago and was still in the hospital, and Martha was undergoing chemo (again) for ovarian cancer. Brenda was taking care of her sister’s funeral plans; Ruth, Bonnie and Frances had agreed that perhaps it was best to take a few weeks off until the group could get back together. After all, Ruth was taking care of her husband Rich, who was slowly dying of pancreatic cancer in their downstairs bedroom, and Bonnie and Frances were too confused to play the game without a great deal of support and assistance.

Gloria had been disappointed to get the call from Ruth about the temporary suspension of the bridge club, but she understood, especially with Ruth’s case. Marvin had had cancer…lung cancer, although it was the pneumonia resulting from his emphysema which had done him in.

When they first started hearing about cigarettes and lung cancer in the 60’s, Gloria had begged Marvin to stop. But he was a traveling businessman, always on the road or in the air, and she couldn’t keep an eye on him all the time. He continued to smoke after he retired, before eventually quitting in 1995: his fortieth anniversary gift to her.

But the damage had been done. For the three years before his death, Gloria listened to her husband struggle for breath, drowning in his own fluids. Marvin had made it to their fifty-second anniversary, dying two days after the nurses smuggled in a bottle of champagne for a quiet toast in the intensive care unit. The two had said their silent goodbyes then, as she brought the paper cup to his lips.

Gloria sighed, tapping the kitchen counter with a withered finger, waiting for her water to heat up. A watched pot never boils, she thought. An old adage, but Gloria could hear it only in her mother’s voice. It had been her mother who had introduced her to Marvin in her senior year of high school. She had been painfully shy, but her mother had practically forced the pair together.

Not that she blamed her mother, of course. It had worked out for the best.

Goodness, had it always taken so long to make tea?

The envelope on top of her pile of mail called to her. She turned back at the stove and the stubborn kettle.

Then she noticed that she’d turned on the wrong burner. She shook her head at her own foolishness. She moved the kettle to the correct burner.

I could pop out on the porch for a minute while the water heats, she thought. She picked up the letter, leaving the other superfluous notices on the table. She opened the screen door and moved went out to the concrete porch. Two pots of red geraniums swung gently in the breeze between the square columns of the deck. A thin patch of green lawn, no more than thirty feet wide, separated her from the waterway. Her neighbors’ backyards were empty, and she was glad for the privacy. They had built their homes after Marvin and Gloria had moved in.

A young man in a speedboat whizzed by. She raised her hand in greeting, but he had already passed her by the time her hand was in the air. She sat in a white plastic patio chair at the edge of the railing. Gloria examined the letter again. Monahan, Texas. She was fairly sure she didn’t know anyone in Monahan. She wracked her brain. Perhaps an old school friend had found her address on one of those computer-internet places and was trying to look her up. Hadn’t Julia, one of the secretaries she worked with, moved out west after she retired? Maybe the letter was from her. Or possibly, this was somewhere that Marvin had traveled—perhaps someone was trying to reconnect with him.

Her hands trembled. Excitement, or…she didn’t know. Because of her devotion to Marvin’s comfort, she had neglected her own health, avoiding the doctor, ignoring notices for yearly mammograms and heart health reminders. Three months after Marvin’s death, she had noticed a lump in her left breast while taking a shower. It had taken her another month to make the appointment to see the doctor. The lump was examined and found to be benign; it was easily removed a few weeks later. But the doctor was not worried about the lump. Gently, he mentioned the fact that she was repeating herself. That she was wearing mismatched socks.

“These things happen with aging. It’s very common.” The handsome doctor had smiled. “But we should probably refer you to a specialist for a cognitive examination. As a precaution, you understand. Are your children available to take you your next appointment?”

She had whispered a barely audible ‘No.’ The number of the office the doctor had told her to call sat in the kitchen junk drawer. She had never called.

Gloria patted her short white hair in distress. She suddenly wanted to push these ugly thoughts away. She looked down at the letter in her hands.

Monahan, Texas. No, she was quite sure she didn’t know anyone in Monahan. So many folks used computers nowadays, but she thought that electronic mail seemed awfully impersonal. She studied the handwriting on the envelope. Probably a woman’s. A young woman, or someone her own age? Gloria couldn’t be sure.

Carefully, Gloria slid a nail beneath the flap of the envelope. It gave without much reluctance.

She heard a shrill whistle from inside the house. The teakettle, of course. Gloria turned back to the door, letter loosely gripped between her fingers.

The breeze was sudden, unexpected. It sent the hanging flowers knocking against each other. It tore the letter out of her fingers, sent it flying over the lawn. She made a frantic grab for the note—just beyond her grasp—and her calf muscle gave way. She tumbled down the first stairs, landing squarely on her knees, her face an inch from the bottom stair, hands splayed desperately to break her fall.

The envelope tumbled across the grass. Another gust tumbled it into the waterway.

For a second or two, the envelope floated on the water, before its own weight pushed it beneath the surface, into the grey-black depths.

Trembling, Gloria pushed herself upright and rolled up her khakis, examining her skinned knees. Blood bubbled to the surface in tiny pinpricks. Inside, she could hear the teakettle on the stove boiling over.

She stood on the porch for a moment, pressing down the stinging in her palms, her knees, her eyes. Then she turned and slowly limped back into the house.

The Empire State Building was falling. Dan and I, wrapped in an ancient stained afghan, watched the blast from the comfort of our sofa; a series of eight beautifully choreographed explosions, each detonating thousands of tons of nitroglycerin which set the walls caving, crumbling as millions of pounds of concrete and steel were forced in on themselves. The explosion itself seemed strangely soft, almost gentle on the television screen—perhaps it was because the news stations replayed it in slow motion, continuously, from every angle possible.

Dan tickled the bottom of my feet underneath the afghan as the President made his speech, standing in front of the now smoldering rubble. His eyes were wide and shining. “It is time to undo what we have done!” he declared, raising his hands. “My fellow Americans, the demolition of this great landmark is only the beginning. It is time for us to remove the years of human impact on our earth, for the sake of the future. For a new hope. A hope that extends beyond mankind’s existence.”

The news cameras panned to a crowd, some waving flags and signs, some cheering, others standing silently with faces drawn. Some were crying silently.

I turned away from the screen, feeling repulsed at the sight of tears. Useless.

“What?” Dan asked, noting my expression. I just sighed and tugged my feet away from him.

“I just don’t think an explosion was the best way to go about preserving the Earth,” I told him, wrinkling my nose at the T.V.

He shrugged. “It’s more impressive than leaving it to rot away over the next millennia,” he told me, hunting for the remote between the cushions. I made a face at him, blowing a raspberry as I scooted away while he slid his cracked, scaly hands into the crevices of the black, faux-leather couch. As he lifted the cushions off, he casually tossed one at me, missing and hitting the wall. It bounced off harmlessly.

I threw the afghan over his head and held it over him, giggling as he play-fought to extricate himself. Dan pulled me onto the floor and we entwined on the carpet as his hands slid up the back of my shirt, trying to undo my bra, his eyes still covered by his thick woven blindfold. I laughed helplessly, squirming in his arms. Above us, the television on the wall blared statistics and science to us, its uninterested audience.

His hands were still attempting their complex task. I rolled off him before his blind groping became successful, and he yanked off the blanket. His hair was full of static charge and his face was flushed and as I sat up crosslegged he placed his head in my lap and looked up at me like an inquisitive child. I caressed his hair in silence for a few moments.

A blonde woman on the news was now talking about economics, and the inevitable fall of the economy. I wanted to get up and turn it off, but Dan’s head was resting on my ankles. As I watched the current of information flow by on the screen, I could feel Dan worrying the frayed edges of my jeans with his callused fingers.

“You wanna say something?” I asked idly, fingers twirling the soft short pieces of hair at the nape of his neck. Dan had such soft hair. Baby-fine. He took my hand.

“Let’s go somewhere,” he said. He was wearing his serious face. I pushed his head back down between my knees, where he began to trace the length of my calf.

“Sure. Let’s go out to dinner tonight.”

“No. I mean, really go somewhere. To Puerto Rico or the Bahamas or Thailand or something.”

I was still staring at the blonde newscaster. “What would we do in Thailand?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Bungee jump. Go to clubs. Eat weird food.”

“We can do that here,” I pointed out. He sat up now, taking my hands in his own, coarse and rough as a pumice stone. The cracks were getting worse; whenever he washed his hands too much, something that happened frequently with his job as a nurse, his skin would start to split and bleed. He worked in a geriatric ward now, and he never talked about his work. As he gripped my fingers, tiny red lines appeared on his knuckles.

“That’s not the point. I’m saying we should get out and do things while we still can.” He pointed at the television. “They’re saying there won’t be any more commercial air flights in another six years. There won’t be enough manpower to run oil rigs, and they’re going to start consolidating any fuel for usage by…the Remainders.”

I didn’t say anything, but I thought there was a chance it could happen even sooner than that. Suicide rates were skyrocketing, especially among the 30-45 age category—one of the many statistics the television had been spitting at us. Groups were committing mass suicide, even in public places. Putting bullets in their heads or drinking Kool-aid with others in internet suicide pacts. Take away a person’s ability to procreate, and I guess you take away some people’s will to live.

“People are talking about moving the entire nation’s population to the Southern states, assigning everyone in nonessential occupations to new offices,” he insisted. “I mean, I don’t know if it will actually happen, but we only have so much time left. For things to still be normal.”

Dan was wrong, of course. Things had stopped matching whatever the notion of normal was a while ago. Four years, actually, when an international panel of OB/GYN specialists met to discuss rising fertility problems around the world and discovered that nobody was getting pregnant anywhere. And suddenly, there were no more babies.

Across the planet, governments poured billions into research, into a cure. Nobody knew what was wrong, though there were theories. Some scientists believed that we had overdosed ourselves with hormone injected food, stunting our own reproductive hormones. Others believed in a virus, a manmade toxin designed by eco-terrorists to sterilize humanity for the good of the planet. It came from space, they claimed. It came from China, it came from the very earth itself. And still others insisted that we were being punished by an angry God; this was a new flood, a cleansing of the world, and He would start anew with the creation of a new race after humanity was erased.

They still don’t know. Most have stopped trying. In some ways, it’s sad how easily we gave up—how Science looked into the face of a challenge and simply hung its head.

And then came the Earth Rejuvenation Movement.

“Hey,” Dan said. “Hey, look at me.” His tone was strange, somewhat sad. Unusual for him.

I met his eyes. Brown and soft. Dan had such kind eyes. I knew he would have made a wonderful neonatal nurse. Not that he had that option anymore, but I couldn’t help but feel warm, thinking of all those tiny figures, looking up him, their eyes smiling at him.

When Dan and I first began dating, meeting through his job as a nurse and mine as a transcriptionist, I never wondered what our child would look like. I was young. I wasn’t even sure I wanted children, or if Dan was the man to have them with. After all, there were years ahead to plan, to make those important decisions.

Now, I wondered about its nose, its hair. Mine or his? Would it be a fat, happy thing, or perhaps grumpy, crying all night? Each morning, I deleted our internet history so Dan wouldn’t know what terrible places I had been while I was supposed to be transcribing medical charts. How much money I’d spent in online auctions buying past issues of Baby Magazine and Toddler. I flipped through them with the desperation of a teenage boy with a new pinup magazine, wearing through pages in a matter of weeks.

Dan waved his hand in front of my eyes. “Hello?”

Annoyed, I batted the offending limb aside.

“Yes, I’m looking at you,” I said, perhaps a bit brusquely.

He stood up, and the tiny lines around his eyes creased more deeply. “Let’s go on a cruise,” he said suddenly. “We’ll see the whole world in one go. Before everything gets torn apart and crushed up and blasted away.”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” I said, rising as well. “Let’s plan a trip later.”

“Later has nothing. Anything we want, we have to take it now.” He grabbed my arm and I struggled for a moment, wrenching away. “Let go,” I snapped.

He stopped holding me, and I watched as everything slid on his face. He sat down on the sofa. I continued to stand. I went to the window, unable to bear staring at the figures any longer. Outside, the globed streetlights were pale and fading after three cloudy days and no solar power to feed from. In the grey dark, the shadow of a small dog trotted between trash cans and cars. As it wandered by, I could see it was wearing a tiny hooded sweatshirt—so, one of Mrs. Fritt’s, then.

In the wake of the news four years ago, the level of pet ownership had skyrocketed. Little furry child substitutes peered from every window of every house and apartment on the street. Of course, people were warned not to breed animals—experts predict a surge of fifty million stray dogs and cats roaming the United States by the time the Remainders are in their prime—but still they were bought and sold and pampered and bred just the same.

As if it mattered. It was almost funny—I doubt anyone ever expected “The meek shall inherit the earth” to refer to their Miniature Schnauzer.  I stifled a brittle, delirious laugh.

Outside, the dog wound its way between a few ancient green trash bins and disappeared into the bushes. Off to start creating his own little dynasty, no doubt.

Dan stared up at me, hesitant. I ran my tongue across my parched lips. Instead of meeting his glance, I turned to the television again.

An Asian woman was on the news now, discussing potential plans for future planetary rejuvenation projects. She and a thin, pale man were discussing the disposal of toxic waste, nuclear warheads, plastic wrap. They were arguing.

“This is our final chance. Do you want mankind to leave the earth the garbage heap it is now? Is that what you want mankind’s legacy to be?” she demanded angrily.

The man scowled and slapped his hands on the table. “There is no legacy. You can only have a legacy if somebody is around to remember what you’ve done. I don’t understand why we are wasting resources on tearing down landmarks when we could be planning for the good of the Remainders. The President has been brainwashed-”

“That’s a loaded term, Mr. Whitman-“

“He’s been brainwashed into thinking we should save the planet. We don’t need to save the planet. It has the next hundred million years to fix the damage we’ve done. What we need to be doing is ensuring that our final generation has enough resources to be comfortable until humanity finally dies out.”

The Last Generation. The Remainders. I suppose that made Dan and I the second-to-last generation. In some ways, it felt good not to be a part of the end of mankind. Nobody likes to be the last one out of the bar at two o’ clock in the morning. Why should this be any different?

I spied the remote under the dark wooden coffee table. So that’s where it had been. I scooped it up and offered it gently to Dan.

“Present for you,” I told him softly. He turned to look at me.

I won’t say sorry, I thought. He knew I didn’t like to talk about the future. The argument was really his fault anyway, and he should be aware of that fact. But I could at least make a peace offering.

He accepted it with equal solemnity, muting the television. The two figures on the screen were thrown into silence. They had begun to wave their arms and gesticulate, mouths wide and gaping with increasing outrage, two absurd mimes performing a parody of anger.

I sat down next to Dan.

“Why are we bothering?” I asked him. “Why are we trying to save anything anymore? There will be nobody left to appreciate it.” He paused, and put his arm around me. I allowed him, though I thought for a moment of shrugging it off. I was still feeling surly. Not that I had any right to be angry with him. Not that I had a right to act like I was the only one suffering.

“I guess it’s a need to feel like we’ve done something worthy. Like we’re preserving something forever…maybe like a monument to us. Well, I guess we could actually look at the earth like one big baby,” he joked. “Now that we can’t have real ones, we’re using earth as a stand-in. All those nurturing feelings have to go somewhere.”

That sounded wrong to me. I certainly didn’t feel very motherly to a fucking planet. An ugly, ruined planet. What a terrible replacement for a baby. I could have argued with him, but I decided against it. Instead, I pulled the afghan over us both.

The two people were gone from the television. The news had switched back to replaying the slow-motion footage of the now ruined Empire State Building. We watched as the skyscraper fell silently, collapsing inside itself over and over and over again.

What Pritchard gives us insight to is the figure we all know in some capacity in our own lives—the aloof, knowledgeable leader that we assume is either ‘cold’ or ‘unreachable’ because of his or her distance, as a result of their attitudes or positions.  Towards the beginning of this story, I did assume coldness on the part of Captain Brown, and frustration at his seeming incapacity to do anything but wander about the hospital and mope.  However, I was eventually charmed by his constant self-doubt, second-guessing, and frequent departures into nature for solace and solitude.  What is courage? He ponders—and upon self-examination, fears that it is a trait he lacks, especially in comparison to the young soldiers dying on the battlefield as well as the French Resistance fighter Marie-Helen.  Therefore, by the end of the piece, his suffering at the news of Marie-Helen’s murder (which he could have theoretically prevented) is all the more devastating to the reader.  I found myself desperate to assuage his guilt.  “He couldn’t have known,” I told myself—and then I realized that this desperation on my part to absolve the Captain of his sins illustrates just what an effective, moving character he is.

I was also moved by the relationship between the Captain and the unknown figure in the window.  Upon first introduction to the figure, I was worried the piece would devolve into some sort of ghost story.  In some ways, it did—but not in the manner I expected.  Instead of  a floating figure rattling chains and moaning in the corridors, we have the insomniac Captain pacing the gargantuan building at all hours of the night, counting the windows and wards with obsessive fervor, “like an abbess counting her rosary beads.”  He is haunted by his own worries of ineffectuality and cowardice, and in turn he haunts the halls, tormented by his psyche. I am reminded of “The Canterville Ghost” by Oscar Wilde, where the ghost of Sir Simon, and his deep guilt over the death of his wife forcing him to remain imprisoned in his castle, mirrors Captain Brown’s pain even after he leaves the hospital and he learns the fate of Marie-Helen.  I just wish that Pritchard hadn’t told us, flat out, that the mysterious figure in the window was potentially a reflection of Captain Brown’s own tormented psyche.  As a reader, one of the pleasures of stories is figuring out the subtleties within the text.  Pritchard gave us plenty of hints to figure this out for ourselves, but in stating it plainly, we lose some of the magic and delight of our own discovery.

The final paragraph leaves us with Captain Brown, albeit post-mortem, many years after his time at the Victoria Royal Military Hospital has passed.  He bicycles happily beside an unnamed woman (perhaps his wife, or Marie-Helen), riding off into “idle green days, into the old stories and legends of foreign lands, warrior heroes, and faithful lovers…where, half-hidden in the marble-arched doorways, the mothers of the newly dead waited, wishing their children home from the pain and pride of long adventure.”  Some might say that this ‘happy’ ending is a cop-out…but once again, I am reminded of “The Canterville Ghost” where Sir Simon is finally released from his centuries of torment by a young girl who helps him come to terms with his actions.  Captain Brown has suffered long enough, and Pritchard was wise to free both him—and the reader—from the gloomy, agonized recesses of his own mind.

Melissa Pritchard is the author of four short story collections, the latest of which is entitled The Odditorium.  She has received numerous awards for her work, including the prestigious Flannery O’Connor and Carl Sandburg Awards among others.  She currently teaches at Arizona State University, and her foundation of The Ashroton Goodman Grant works closely with the The Afghan Women’s Writing Project to fund women’s literacy and writing workshops in Afghanistan.

While perusing “A Stubborn Desire,” I couldn’t help but to feel, at some points, as if I were reading fiction.  Casey’s portrayal of Albert Dadas’ wanderings—and her subsequent exploration into the meaning and search for wonder—seemed almost fantastical in its description, and beautiful in ways that I did not expect from an essay.  Lines such as, “Dadas was undone and undone and undone again” and “It is an echo in the chamber of feeling in which the poignancy of the foolhardy bravery required…resounds” seem to belong more in the realm of the story, not the essay.  Casey utilizes lyricism and repetition to lure us into a state of mind that I believe is key in works of magical realism and the fantastic—a state of mind that is prepared and ready to accept wonder.

In some ways, I struggle to write about the meaning here, because the questions Casey leaves us with are unanswerable: What is wonder?  And how can we achieve it?  Like the documentary director Herzog, we rely on our innocence (whether it be forced or real), sacrificing our natural skepticism for the ability to be amazed.  We must sacrifice outside, expert opinion, and perhaps even our very sanity (as in the case of Dadas) in order to obtain that sense of awe.

In the end, we are left with a vague sense of despair.  The last historical reference that Casey cites is that of Dadas’ daughter, who mysteriously vanished without a trace.  This loss reflects the loss we feel as we come to the end of the essay, in which we feel we have just missed something special.  Like Casey struggling to define her brief moment of…what?…in the church, readers are also left unable to quite articulate or completely comprehend the fleeting sensation of awe, leaving us “jonesing for the next hit of wonder, willing to do anything to get it.”

(As a final note, I did some research and found an audio excerpt from The Drum Literary Magazine in which Casey reads from her “upcoming novel” Fugueur.  However, this was published in 2010, and Casey’s biography provides no information as the future of this work, leaving me to wonder if this essay was perhaps born out of the framework and research for the intended novel).

Maud Casey is a professor of creative writing at the University of Maryland, and has written two novels along with a collection of short stories.  She received a New York Times Notable Book of the Year award for her work The Shape of Things to Come.  She wears appropriately stylish glasses and looks especially sharp in black and white photos.

Image Credit: User CleverLoginName via Deviantart

It progresses naturally, up until the fifth stanza, in which Mann directs readers to replace certain words in previous lines with new ones.  I was struck by the sudden, completely unexpected turn the poem takes at this point.  Such changes — “For six read seventeen/for microwave read purse” – drastically alter the meaning of the lines, forcing readers to rethink and re-imagine what they had previously pictured.  As I read it the first time, I was shocked to find I felt betrayed on a personal level, as though Mann had looked me in the eye and told me a lie.  How could…how can he do this? I spluttered silently in the library, angrily clicking my pen.  I’ve already made connections!  I’ve already found meaning!  You can’t just change ‘womb’ to ‘horse’ midway through a poem!  But I obeyed direction.

Despite the instructions, however, I could not completely separate my original concepts of the altered lines from my new perception.  I picture a boy at age six and at age seventeen in the backyard, a man stealing a hearse and a horse.  This double imagery creates an extra, perhaps even third layer to the poem — what is the surface? What is real? — and the combined perceptions of both.  Some of the replacements, however, brought up disturbing images.  I wasn’t sure what to make of a line changed from  “Bloody, slick, and fierce/I slid out of the womb” to “Bloody, slick, and fierce/I slid out of the horse.”

In some ways, I feel the tactic used here reflects the overall theme of the poem.  The meaning of the poem is hidden beneath a layer of safe words, just as a young man struggling with his homosexuality might cover up his emotions and desires.  Upon his ‘bachelorhood confirmed,’ however, the narrator is free finally to reveal to the reader the actual content—in a way, the poem ‘comes out.’  We discover that the narrator was not six years old and playing in the backyard wearing superhero tights, but was instead seventeen and using voguing (a modern form of dance popular in the LGBT community) to express his sexuality.  He does not buy a microwave to warm his ultra-masculine TV dinner—he purchases a purse and has sex with another man.  The lines “My underpants were used: he liked that they were small” begins to make sense, in that the speaker is in some sort of erotic relationship with another man.

The poem concludes with two stanzas in which the speaker creates an extended metaphor comparing himself to a horse, speaking to the reader.  He seeks attention, “dying to be groomed,” and yet wants the reader (or whoever he is addressing) to promise to refrain from kissing him.  There is something deeply lonely about this—it conjures a man who has the desire to be loved, yet cannot accept a truly loving relationship.

The only quibble I have with the poem is that I wish Mann had not provided a substitute word ‘alone’ for ‘Hungry’.  I like the idea of “Hungry Man” representing both the hyper-masculine TV dinner and a sexual partner-the idea of hunger being tied in with both food and sex. However, this is based solely on personal preference and a love of punning.

Randall Mann is a self-proclaimed “Writer. Editor. Queer” and fan of our very own John Casteen.

There were two types of patients, I discovered: those who were injured, and those who were ruined.  The man in the hospital bed fell into the latter category.  He lay listless, with what remained of his face turned away from us, apparently oblivious to the whitewashed concrete wall and the needle in his vein.

“Had his jaw blown clean off fighting the Japs.  They tried to put him back together over there, but there wasn’t much left to put back, if you catch my meaning,” Dr. Perlman murmured.  His explanation was unnecessary, as I had already read the patient’s chart, but I remained silent.

“At least they managed to keep the poor bastard’s tongue in his head.  He started to heal up, but on the boat ride over, the wound got infected.  Manson General claims they treated him with penicillin but to no effect.”  Dr. Perlman’s tangled hedges of eyebrows drew together and he frowned slightly.  This man put the same faith in penicillin that my mother did in Chanel No. 5, and I could tell he was disturbed by its impotence in this case.   “Of course, no cosmetic work can be done until the rest is cleared up.  He’s no handsome bull, but I thought you could handle that.”

“Absolutely,” I smiled at him.  Saint Mary’s was not a veteran’s hospital, but, there had been considerable spill over in the last few months as the hastily constructed wards for soldiers began to close as the war ended.  Patients were dumped off at other facilities like unwanted kittens in a box with a hastily scrawled note, “free to a good home.”  Combined with the veterans who were returning from hospitals in England and France, we were getting a considerable influx.

“We’re going to increase the antibiotic dosage, and he’s on morphine.  He won’t be in much shape to communicate.  Give me an update will you doll?  I’ll leave you to it, then,” the doctor lifted his hand in farewell.  Off to flirt with Helen in the cafeteria, I supposed.  I was glad for his absence as I turned back to the man in the bed.

This was what you worked for, I told myself.  Whatever he looks like, you went into nursing for him.  For all the boys who left this country.

I was like any number of bright eyed girls who attended nursing school for a chance to sew any Johnny who had gotten his gun back together again.  “The greatest healing gift a G.I. can receive is the attentive face of an all-American nurse,” claimed Eliza Monahan, head nurse and instructor at Cunningham Hospital Nursing School.  But Japan had surrendered only a month after I graduated, and I never saw anywhere beyond the borders United States.  In the past weeks since the end of the Great War, a few tattered soldiers had drifted through, needing a bullet removed here or a bandage change there.  Today’s offerings from Manson General, however, were something new.

I stepped into the room quietly.  The two small windows  on the far wall scattered pale light across the yellowed linoleum floor, but failed to reach the white bars of the hospital bed.  “Mr. Thompson, I’m Nell Bridges.  I’ll be your nurse for the day shift.  Are you feeling well enough to sit up so I can examine you?”  I was ashamed momentarily of the eagerness I felt.  Could this man hear it in my voice?

He complied slowly.  I could see his spine undulate beneath his blue gown, could count thoracic to cervical vertebrae, before he finally adjusted his posture and turned his head towards me.  Everything below his ears was swathed in stained bandages, but his eyes were perfect and unmarred, the pupils bright and focused.  I bent over the bed and reached for his arm.  “I’m taking your pulse,” I informed him, sliding the cuff from my pocket and wrapping it around his bicep.  For a split second, I thought of the less defined arm of Howard, my steady.  He would be at the office now, meeting with clients.  Did he wonder about my job?

The man’s pulse was high.  I made a note on the chart.  “I’m going to take off your bandages now, so I can replace them,” I said, taking gauze and saline down from the cupboard next to the bed. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me, and he hadn’t blinked.  What had the girls at Manson thought of this one?

I unwound the gauze from behind his ears, gently, like a thoughtful child opening a fragile and highly anticipated gift.  The stains, which had shown through the bandages as a greenish yellow, deepened to amber, then rust.  I could smell the congealing blood—

and something else.  Something like rotting peaches.  Whatever is under there, I told myself, I could handle.  I’ve cleaned open fractures on screaming children.  I’ve bathed stroke victims.  Nell Bridges wouldn’t be shaken so easily.

I pulled away the final strips, dropping them in the trashcan.  A cavernous hole, a wreckage of a face was revealed.  The lower jaw, of course, was gone.  The surgeons must have sewed a flap of skin of in place of the bone, but the stitches were jagged and ill formed, beginning to split and reopen.  Was this done on the battlefield?  Whose hands had fumbled with this flesh, attempting to sculpt a façade from ruin?  The cavern reached back into where his molars should have been.  The edges of the wound were still ragged and inflamed, darkening with necrosis, and formed a half circle that mocked a semblance of lips.  It appeared that the original blast had also broken his upper jaw, which was angled peculiarly.

The man—Arnold Thompson—inhaled.  The cavity widened, shrank.  I could see the back of his throat and tonsils move.  His red wet tongue glistened and lolled to one side.  I could smell decay in the tissue.  In school, they had taught us to breathe through our mouths when faced with a particularly awful odor; this was, I found out, terrible advice.  Now the stench invaded my mouth and taste buds, and I snapped my lips closed and breathed shallowly, desperately through my nose.

I felt my stomach roil.  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of nurses saw this and worse when treating our men around the globe.  I would not vomit.  I would not.  I wiped my clammy face with my white sleeve.

Delicately, I squirted the saline solution around the raw edges of the wound.  Darkened skin peeled away.  The solution dribbled down the remains of his upper lip and into the hole.  The fat red tongue slid towards the droplets.

Steady girl, steady, I thought.

“It’s saline.  It won’t hurt you to ingest it.” There it was, cool as a cucumber.  Nellie Bridges, unflappable as Rosie the Riveter, Clara Barton to the brave boys at home.

It had been several weeks since the war ended.  How long had this been left to fester?  With gloved fingers, I smeared antibacterial ointment onto the flaps of skin.  They felt meaty and sanguine, and my stomach gave another heave.

Suddenly, his nostrils flared.  I jerked my hand away.  For a shameful moment, I feared thought the cavern would move and swallow my fingers.  The lines around his eyes creased more deeply.  This man was probably barely older than I.  I realized I had been thinking of him as a vessel for this wound, not a human being.  He had become the ruined face.

“Arnold, I’m going to rewrap the wound.”  There.  I had separated the man from his appearance.  As I replaced the gauze, I wondered if he had been a handsome man.  I regretted not thinking about this earlier; I could not picture him whole now that I’d seen what was missing.  I could not compare him to my Howard.

“Are you comfortable?”

He made no sign.  “Would writing help you communicate better?” I asked, desperate to assuage some vital need as penance how I had wronged him with my thoughts.  The barest nod.  I stood up straight, overcome with fatigue.  “I’ll bring you paper then,” I offered, and fled.

I lounged outside the cafeteria with a Julep dangling from my fingers.  It was my lunch break, but I needed a smoke more than a meal.  I toyed with the silver lighter in my pocket; it had been a gift from Howard, and was engraved with our initials.  “A practical gift for my practical gal, Nell,” he had laughed.

Rose, a pretty, flighty girl joined me.  “Have you seen the boys on the fifth floor?  I’ve gotten two assigned to me…one’s an amputee, the other’s still got shards of metal in his lungs!”  She leaned forward conspiratorially.  “I admit, I was gammin’ for them a bit, just for fun.  I don’t need to flirt with these half-dead fellows though, when there’s plenty of whole vets out there, now that the boys have come home.”

She too lifted a cigarette.  I noticed her hem was a few inches short of regulation; she must have fixed it herself.  I held out my lighter for her.  I should, I thought, be more like Rose.  Perpetually unchanged by the horrors she encountered, she sauntered through life attracting men like flies to milk.  The only thing she saw when she looked at a broken man was the passing fancy that he would make a poor husband.

“You have a date with that dandy of yours tonight?” she inquired innocently, leaning towards the flame from my lighter.

“Oh, Howard will be picking me up.  We’re supposed to go out.”  I held a man’s face together today.  Tonight I would be dancing.

Rose pouted.  “Oh, you lucky thing!  He’s taking over his father’s practice, right?  Rich and handsome.  Pity about the leg, though.”

Howard told me that a badly healed fracture as a child left him with one leg an inch shorter than the other, though I didn’t notice it when he walked.  This small defect shut him out of the army for good.

“You’ll be leaving,” she wailed, her white cap falling comically to the side of her head, “You’ll leave me here a spinster after you get married.  I’ll be like poor old Gertie, no man in my life.  I’ll have to work here forever!”

I paused.  “I don’t know if we are getting married, and even if we do, I don’t necessarily mean to stop working as a nurse.”

“Oh, don’t be silly.” She dropped the lighter back into my hands.  “Of course you’ll leave.  It’s what every woman does.”

We were interrupted by a symphony of ungreased wheels on tile flooring.

“Nell!  Nell!”  Gertrude huffed towards me, red frizzled hair flying, the metal cart she was pushing chirping at every rotation.  “Your mother’s on the phone.  Could you please tell her to stop using the nursing station’s number for personal use?”  The word about Gertie today was that she was in a bit of a snit since we were dealing with the arrival of more vet patients.

“I’m sorry, Gertrude,” I said.  “I’ve talked to her and there’s just nothing I can do.  She’s very domineering.”

“Well for heaven’s sake, try harder.  This is a new era, you know, we’re supposed to be liberated,” she sniffed.  “Also, you have a run in your tights.  Fix that.” She turned on her flat white heels and marched off, pushing the squeaky cart with as much dignity as she could muster.

Rose began to giggle as the other woman disappeared around a corner.  “Liberated?  I guess she doesn’t realize the war is over.  We don’t need pep talk like that now that the men are back.”

I stubbed out my cigarette.  “I have to go, Rose.  See you.”  She waved.

Gertrude was right about the run, although it was so small nobody would have noticed.  A quick look revealed the hall was empty; unceremoniously, I hiked up my stockings so my white hem covered the tear.

The nurses’ station was a floor down, so I was forced to trek down a flight of stairs.  My mother was an impatient woman, and I hoped that the delay would have cause d her to hang up.  I picked up the phone where it lay on the desk.

“Darling, is that you?”  My mother didn’t wait for an answer.  “I just wanted you to know we’ve organized a quaint little get-together tomorrow, so please, make an attempt to show your face.”

“Mother, Howard and I have plans to-“

“I’ve invited Howard, don’t worry.  But please, Nellie, take a shower at your place and not at St. Mary’s.  You’ll bring that awful hospital smell with you otherwise.  Oh, and wear makeup, because Howard will be there.  Did I already say that?  Goodness!”

“Mother, you know you can’t-“

“Just wanted to give you an update, dear.  We’ll talk tonight.  I’m sure you’re a busy girl now, so go back to doing your job.”

My mother never had the need to wait for men or money, and her philosophy on these subjects applied to me as well.  She sounded rushed;  likely she was running late for her weekly salon appointment.  At least she could comprehend I was busy, doing something important.

I paused, hands caught in my curls as I wrapped my fingers through my hair..  Did Howard think I smelled?

Rose pestered me the following day.  “Why hasn’t he proposed?” She trailed after me as I rode the elevator up to floor five.  A pulsing ache was beginning in my temples.  I ignored her and fixed my cap in the reflection of the tall mirrors inside the lift.

“It’s unnatural,” she prodded.  “You’ve been seeing him for a year?”

“He’s busy,” I retorted sourly. “And so am I.  And he knows that.”

Last night, he had idled his new jet Plymouth in the ambulance parking, waiting for me.

“There’s my Nell!  Pretty as a pinup!” He had embraced me.

“Howie, I didn’t know you looked at those,” I had replied, attempting to be coy.  He’d pulled away sharply and coughed, fingers clenching my shoulders.  “I don’t, Nell.  Don’t accuse me of something like that.”

“I’m sorry,” I’d said, running my fingers across his jacket.  I was trying not to flush.  How had I already manage to botch this evening?

Now the blush from last night crept into my face.  Rose followed me out of the elevator.  “You have the boy with half of a face, Nell?  Lord, I’m glad it was you and not me.  I would have fainted on the spot!” She pushed a cart loaded with replacement bandages and IV fluids.  She hurried to close the gap between us the gap between us.  I walked faster. “Are you wrapping him up again today?  Can I see?”

“I thought you said you would faint,” I pointed out.

“If I didn’t have to look too closely, I wouldn’t,” she replied.

I sighed.  “Maybe later,” I said.

She frowned at me and trotted off, flattened heels snapping on the tile.  I didn’t care that she was annoyed.  If she wanted to be entertained, she could head to the carnival.  Arnold was a patient, not a performer.

Dr. Perlman met me at Arnold Thompson’s room. His usual jovial attitude of was noticeably amiss.

“We did an x-ray,” he said by way of greeting.  He held up the black filter and pointed at the white blotches with a pen.  “I figured he was bad off from the external exam, but it looks like the infection has made its way up his nasal cavity…see here?”  He tapped the pen.  I could see where darkness crept into the bone, like a trickle of petrol on pavement.

“We could surgically debride, of course, but there’s no guarantee it would stop the infection.”

Sharp debridement was complicated with facial tissue, I knew; it bled badly, and simply carving out the necrotic tissue didn’t mean that the infection wasn’t still hiding elsewhere, ready to manifest itself again.  Dr. Perlamn sighed shuffled the film back into a manila folder.  “Could you inform him of his options, please?”

When we informed patients of their ‘options,’ it meant that they had very few to choose from.

I hesitated.  “Have we contacted his family?”

“He won’t give us any information.  You see that sometimes, with the boys who come back with mutilations.  They don’t want their fiancés, their parents, their friends to see them torn apart.”  Dr. Perlman’s voice was soft now.  “Why don’t you try and see if you can get some names out of him.” He left to finish his rounds, closing the door with a soft click.

Arnold Thompson’s room had been washed with bleach since I’d last been in it, but the smell of decay overpowered the sharp sting of the cleaner.

“This is Nell, from yesterday,” I said to the figure swathed in sheets and gauze.

Somebody had placed a wooden chair beside his bed, though I wondered why.  He would have no visitors if he hadn’t yet given out family information.

“We were wondering who to contact,” I said, “if you have any names of relatives we could look up.”

His eyes opened, still brilliant and aware.  His hand reached out, feeling across the pale blue sheets, finding the sunny legal pad the other nurse had left.  I passed him a pen from my pocket.  Steadily, he wrote for a moment, then flipped over the pad so I could read it.

No point.  I don’t want to bring anybody here.  The letters were spiky and thin, barbed wire that divided the page.

Suddenly, Arnold had a voice, a personality beyond the hole in his skull.  I was encouraged.

“Are you sure?”  He made no motion to write again.

I prodded further.  “Nobody?  I’m sure somebody out there wants to know you’ve come home.”

Still no movement.  His eyes were no longer watching me.

“Not your parents?  Not your friends?  Do you have a girl?” I pressed.  “I see you there, with those baby blues, don’t tell me there isn’t a damsel somewhere.”  I feigned a cheery wink.  I wasn’t flattering him; although I still could not picture this fellow as a whole piece.   I did not know whether he was attractive, but his eyes alone would have enticed any woman.

There was a slow flicker of his fingers.  He began to scrawl again.  A name appeared: Ava Brown.  Grimesland, NC.  Gently, he tore off the sheet and handed it to me.

“There we are.”  I smiled at him, but then stopped, feeling as though perhaps I had been patronizing.  “Before I go find Ava, I’ll give you another wrap up.”  There was no apprehension this time when I peeled away the gauze.  The stench was still strong, though, and I worked on breathing shallowly as I dropped the darkened, smelly wrapping in the bin.

The black edges of the raw wound had increased in size.  The tissue was still red and inflamed, especially around the sewn on flap of skin.  If antibiotics weren’t working, debridement would be the only choice.

Carefully, I redressed the wound.  It was odd how the gaping hole demanded  my attention when uncovered, and yet when bandaged I could almost pretend that it wasn’t there, that there was something else beneath the gauze other than a ruin of a jaw and lips and teeth.  “We’ll be dressing this frequently to keep the infection from spreading.  Dr. Perlman may need to do surgical debridement on the wound, depending on your progress over the next few days.”  I found myself focusing on the rest of his face now; the slightly oversized ears emphasized by the hair just beginning to creep back from an army razor.  The bridge of his nose was straight but had enough width to connote masculinity.  I was suddenly very glad this man was willing to give me the name of somebody important.

“Let me see if I can contact Ava for you.   I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I headed towards the closest nurses station to make the call.

When I reached the phone, it was heavy and warm in my hand; somebody had used it moments before.  I dialed the operator.

“Hello?  I need the number for Ava Brown in Grimesland, North Carolina.”

“One moment, please,” the operator said smoothly, and the line was suddenly full of empty air.  I ran my fingers along the counter and looked at the massive weekly schedule posted on the wall.  I had to attend to several more patients in the orthopedics wing, but my shift was over at four p.m.  Enough time to shower and re-do my hair before I caught a cab to the party.  Howard had told me last night when he’d dropped me off that he might be a few minutes late, because his firm would be entertaining the mayor and city council at the Blue Ridge Country Club.

The phone crackled.  “I’m sorry, your call could not be connected,” the operator told me.

“Could you try again?” I asked anxiously.

“Miss, the number for Ava Brown in Grimesland has been disconnected,”   the operator said.  “Would you like to try another number?”

“No, thank you.” I hung up the phone.

I  dragged my feet coming up the stairs.  I had already seen a dozen patients in my short time at St. Mary’s who had no family by their beds, no wives or children or parents to comfort them.  This man was in the military, I told myself.  He was strong, he could make it without somebody to hold his hand.

I was startled, realizing I had already reached his door.  When had the distance grown so short?

I stepped inside.  The light had changed in the minutes I had left—now the room was bathed in afternoon sun.  Arnold’s face was turned away from the bright light, and I could see him squint behind the bandage.  I wove between the bed and the IV drip to the windows and closed the ugly, stained blinds.

“Arnold.”  He turned towards me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said earnestly, “But the number for Ava was no longer working.  We could try another number if you want.”  I leaned my arm against the rail of the bed and bent over him slightly.   The metal was hot against my clammy skin.

He had been sitting up in bed, propped up on his pillow, and now he sank slightly into it.  He shook his head gingerly.  He lifted his face slightly, and I watched as a tragic tumble of hope slipped back into passive awareness.

“We can try again later.” Suddenly, I was desperate to appease him.  “Don’t worry about it now,” I said, walking to the doorway.

Rose’s blonde hair was vanishing around a corner when I stuck my head out of the entrance and called to her.

“Rose!  Rose!  Could you find Dr. Perlman and bring him to this room, please?”

“You do it,” she retorted.  “You didn’t break your legs since I last saw you, did you?”

“I don’t want to leave the patient right now.”

She put her hand to her mouth, and her eyes widened.  Silently, she circled her lips and then pointed to the door, her eyes questioning.

“Yes, yes,” I said, impatient.

She smiled.  “He isn’t dying yet, right?  I’m busy right now.   Find the doc yourself.”

She was right, of course.  But I felt like I would lose something important if I left the room behind now.  “Please?”

Rose raised her eyebrows.  “Fine,” she murmured, and disappeared down the hall.

I turned back to my patient.  Arnold had rolled over on his side.  “I’m calling Dr. Perlman so we can talk about how to treat your injury.”

He didn’t stir.  “Dr. Perlman is very good at excising bad tissue,” I explained, “But we have to make sure you’re strong enough to handle the blood loss and anesthesia.  He will assess you when he gets here.”  I didn’t tell Arnold yet about the x-ray.  If the infection had spread to the nasal cavity, more of that face would be stripped away.  This wasn’t news he needed now.

“Arnold.  Arnold, look at me.”  I sat beside the bed and took his hand, which was oddly chilled.  He didn’t return the grip.  It was good he wasn’t febrile.  I pushed away the odd, intimate urge to lace my fingers with his.  He had stopped connecting with me, and I didn’t want to lose him to the inside of his own head.

“Arnold, Dr. Perlman is excellent.  Once the infection is gone, there are things we can do…things a good surgeon can do.  There are plates that can make new bones, you know.  Lots of veterans are having it done.”  This last part was a falsehood; unless he could find a sympathetic cosmetic surgeon, the cost would be exorbitant.

His free hand moved, clenching the pen in a fist.  Don’t lie.  Nobody can heal this.  The words were even smaller than before, and cramped tightly together.  The visible flesh on his face had sunk into a hardened mask—drying clay in a kiln.

“I’m not lying,” I said more urgently.

I heard a snap, and a shard of plastic shot past my face.  Arnold’s shaking fist held the remains of my pen.  Black ink leaked over his trembling fingers and I gently tried to pry the pieces of plastic from his grip.

As I removed the pen, and mopped up the ink with a kerchief, a voice itched at my brain.  This man is gone.  He wants to be gone.  Why was I so desperate to save a cadaver with no face?

“It’s bad now, Arnold, I know.  I know it hurts, and it looks really awful.”  My throat was sticky from lack of moisture.  I saw his fist clench.  “But you’re a soldier.  You can overcome this.  This,” I gestured to the concrete walls, “this isn’t your future.  There is so much more, so much more for you.  If you can get through this, you can get through anything.”  I waited, catching my breath, before I continued, almost maniacally.

“You can’t give up in here, Arnold.  I won’t let you.”

The blow came at me as sharp and fast as an arrow, and I felt as his half formed fist connected with my cheek.  The force knocked me out of the wooden chair.  My eyes teared.  My face felt scalded and numb at once.  “Arnold,” I gasped.

He was standing, and I realized that I had never seen his legs.  Like the cavern in his face, I couldn’t imagine him connected to these appendages.  Both hands gripped my shoulders, and as he lifted me, I couldn’t help but think that he must not be receiving that much morphine after all if he could be so active.  I felt very little pain; only a dull sensation of pressure, as if I were being crushed by a boulder.

With one hand, he gripped my throat and with the other he ripped the bandages off his face.  The tattered skin around the wound fluttered; he exhaled a foul air.

I could not look at the corrupted flesh, even though he pressed the wound almost to my skin.  I could only stare into the glacial rage in his eyes.  He hated me, he hated me and my promises.  I felt ashamed and weak for trying to tell this broken being that he could and would survive.   I could cry, but I knew that my tears would not alleviate the agony that exuded from every pore.

His eyes were going fuzzy now, and so was everything else I could see, but I thought I saw tears run down his nose and merge into the raw, red chasm.  Then, a voice.  I thought perhaps it was his, but that was absurd, because he had no mouth.  Then another voice arrived, and they were both loud, and then I fell into a soft whiteness.

“And then the man attacked her!  Thank goodness the doctor arrived when he did.  They pulled him off of her like a beast!  A beast!”

I wanted to tell my mother that she was describing it all wrong, but I had learned early in life not to correct her in front of company.  I was showered, coiffed, and powdered, but the bruises on my neck and the welt on my face was still visible.  My mother had tried to convince me to wear her mink to wrap around my neck and cover the marks, but I had refused.

“They should have shot him, vet or no!  He’s back in the civilized world, and he needs to act like it!” exclaimed a portly man with glasses and freshly shined shoes.  The dining room echoed with similar sentiments.

The party had begun fifteen minutes ago, and for the moment I was the center of attention, seated on the velvet ottoman like a jewel on a pillow for presentation.

“He was sedated,” I whispered huskily, throat raw.

Mrs. Gladson, a widow from down the street, shook her head.  “They don’t come back the same,” she said.  “The war drives some of them out of their heads.”

“Nell, honey.” My mother crouched next to me so that I could meet her eyes.  I was touched by this, because my mother made it a point never to bend if she could help it.  “Nell, you won’t go back to that place, will you?  It’s so dangerous.  Nobody would blame you.”  Her face bunched with fine wrinkles, I wanted to ask her to hug me but I didn’t.  She was wearing her brightest red lipstick, a slashed across her pale face.  I had to turn away because suddenly I felt queasy.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled.  I pointed to my throat, excusing me from further discussion.  The conversation was already drifting away from me, I could tell, and soon we would all be talking about the war and the economy and how pleasant it was not to have to deal with sugar rationing anymore.

The doorbell rang.  My mother rushed to get it. “Howard!” I heard her call from the parlor.  “Howard, oh Howard, you must have heard…no?”  I couldn’t catch what came next.

A few moments passed before Howard entered.  He wasn’t a man of large proportions, but from where I sat on the low ottoman he looked very tall, like some great statue.  He bent down to hold me.  I embraced him back.  His collar was fragrant with an exotic floral note and a red stain.  My breath caught as brushed away the mark, chest tightening.

“Your mother told me about the incident.  No, Baby, don’t say anything, I know you’re in pain.”  His fingers lightly slid across my collarbone and up my neck.  His hand circled the red print Arnold had left on me.  “I’ll find that bastard and kill him myself,” he said, rising.  I grabbed his sleeve, trying to plead with him using just my eyes.  “No,” I rasped.  “It was an accident.”

“You’re the sweetest, babe,” he said and pecked my forehead.  Some of my mother’s friends came forward to greet him.  “I’ll be right back,” he said, kissing me on my swollen cheek.  His lips burned, burned so hot they felt like plunging my stinging flesh into an ice bath.  Like blue eyes branding me with shame.

As he turned away, Mrs. Gladson approached me.  “I brought you some tea with honey from the kitchen.  It should help,” she offered sympathetically.

I nodded, grateful.  The bodies moved around me.  I let waves of normalcy wash over me, as I floated adrift on my little ottoman.  These were the people who had not tried to save the world and despite that, they were successful in life.  They looked happy.  Around the room, glasses clinked and soft chuckles wafted up to the ceiling.  Wretchedly, I sipped my tea.  It burned too, but not unpleasantly, and the honey coated the rawness in my throat.

Howard made a path through these waves.  He knelt beside me again and took my hand with one of his own.  His hands were pale and the hair was so light on his skin you couldn’t even tell that it was there.  It was soft and warm and uncalloused.

“Nell,” he murmured. “I’ve thought a lot about this.  And I wanted to do this tonight, and I thought about waiting, after I heard about what happened, but now I think this is the right time after all.”  I saw his eyes dart towards my mother, who smiled.  He focused on me once more.  “And so,” he said, voice strengthening, “Nell Bridges, would you make me the proudest man on earth and marry me?”

The entire room was silent as he withdrew a black box from his pocket, and produced a ring from inside.

I stared.  It did not matter if it was gold or silver or brass: for a moment, I was sure that if I stuck my finger through the ring, the digit would not appear on the other side.  I forced the absurd notion back.

“Yes.”  Howard kissed me.  He pulled on my left hand and slid the circle over my nail, forcing it past my knuckle to its proper resting place.  It was too small, but we would have it altered later.  I entwined my fingers with his, then looked at the man who was willing to offer me everything.  He smiled and his teeth were perfect, perfect, and there were no holes in anything at all.

Image Credit:http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc617/m1/1/med_res/

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