“Not much to see today,” Michael said.
“He's out there.”
Michael did not have to ask whom she was talking about.
“He's out there, and he's all alone.”
A largely untouched meal sat on a tray on the bedside table.
“And he doesn't even know that I left him unwillingly.” Eleanor paced back and forth in a pair of white slippers, her tearful eyes still riveted on the window. The transformation was strange; when Michael had first seen her, in the ice and later on in the church, she had looked so alien, so out of time and so out of place. It was never in doubt that he was talking to someone from whom he was unquestionably separated by an immeasurable gap of time and experience.
But now, with the collar of the white robe gathered up about her face, her freshly washed hair hanging down, and the slip-ons scuffing along the linoleum floor, she looked like any other beautiful young woman newly emerged from the treatment room at a posh spa.
“He's survived so much,” Michael said, choosing his words carefully. “I'm sure he can survive this storm, too.”
“That was before.”
“Before what?”
“Before I abandoned him.” She had a clump of tissues wadded in her hand, and she used them to dry her tears.
“You had no choice,” Michael said. “How long could you have gone on like that? Eating dog food and burning prayer books to keep warm?”
Had he spoken too precipitously? He was trying to comfort her, but her green eyes flashed in warning.
“We have been through worse than that together. Worse things than you could ever know. Worse than you could ever imagine.” She turned away, her frail shoulders heaving beneath the terry-cloth robe.
Michael put his backpack on the floor and sat down on the plastic chair in the corner. Part of him said that the sensible thing was simply to leave and come back later when she was calmer, but something else-was it wishful thinking? — told him that, despite her grief and confusion, she did not really want him to go… that she could still derive some solace from his being there. In the artificial environment in which she had been placed, he might actually provide a note of familiarity.
“The doctor tells me I'm not to leave here,” Eleanor said, in a more tranquil tone.
“Certainly not to go out into that storm,” Michael joshed.
“This room.”
Michael knew that that was what she'd meant. “Only for the time being,” he assured her. “We don't want to expose you to anything-germs, bacteria-that you might not have any natural defenses against.”
Eleanor gave a bitter laugh. “I have nursed soldiers through malaria, dysentery, cholera, and the Crimean fever, which I myself contracted.” She breathed deeply. “As you can see, I have survived them all.” Then she turned toward him, and said, more brightly, “But Miss Nightingale, of course, has been making great strides in that realm. We have begun to air the hospital wards, even at night, in order to dissipate the miasma that forms. With improvements in hygiene and nutrition, I believe that countless lives can be saved. It is just a matter of persuading the proper authorities.”
It was the longest speech he had ever heard her make, and she must have been surprised at her own volubility, too, because she suddenly stopped herself, and a faint flush came into her cheek. It was clear to Michael, though he would have guessed as much, that she had taken her duties as a nurse quite seriously.
“What am I saying?” she mumbled. “Miss Nightingale is long dead. And everything I have just said has no doubt sounded foolish. The world has gone on, and here I am telling you things that you must know have been proven right, or utterly wrong, years ago. I'm sorry-I forget myself.”
“Florence Nightingale was right,” Michael said, “and so are you.” He paused. “And you will not be confined to these quarters for long. I'll see what we can do.”
She'd already been exposed to him, and whatever germs he might carry, so what harm, Michael figured, could further contact cause? And as for her being encountered by others on the base- grunts and beakers alike-well, there were probably plenty of ways to get around without too much interaction. Point Adelie was not exactly Grand Central Station.
Eleanor sat down on the edge of the bed, facing Michael. The sedative must have started working, for she had stopped crying and was no longer wringing her hands. “It was after the battle,” she said. “That was when I caught the fever.”
Michael ached to take out his tape recorder, but he didn't want to do anything that might puzzle her or disturb the fragile mood.
“Sinclair-Lieutenant Sinclair Copley, of the Seventeenth Lancers-was wounded in a cavalry charge. It was while nursing him that I succumbed myself.”
There was a kind of faraway look in her eye, and Michael realized that even the mildest tranquilizer might have an inordinate effect on someone who had never had one before.
“But he was fortunate, really. Nearly all his fellows, including his dear friend Captain Rutherford, were killed.” She sighed, her eyes dropping. “From what I was told, the Light Brigade was utterly destroyed.”
Michael nearly fell out of his chair. The Light Brigade? Was she talking about the famous Charge of the Light Brigade, the one immortalized in the poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson? And was she talking about it from firsthand experience, yet?
Was she suggesting that her frozen companion-this Lieutenant Copley-was a survivor of that charge? Whatever all this was-a sustained fantasy, or an historical account of unimaginable, firsthand authenticity-he had to get it down.
Slipping a hand into his backpack, he deftly removed his small tape recorder. “If you don't mind,” he said, “I'm going to use this device to keep a record of our conversation.” He pressed the ON button.
She looked at it pensively, the little red light glowing to indicate that it was running, but she seemed otherwise unconcerned. He wasn't sure she'd grasped what he'd said, or what the machine actually did. He had the sense that so much was new to her-from black, female doctors to electric lights-that she chose only certain things, one at a time, to process and engage.
“They were told to attack the Russian guns,” she said, “and they were annihilated. There were artillery pieces on the hills, on every side of the valley. The casualties were overwhelming. I was working night and day-so was my friend Moira, and all the other nurses-but we could not keep up. There were too many battles, and too many wounded and dying men. We could not do enough.”
She was back there now, reliving it; he could see it in her eyes.
“I'm sure you did everything in your power to help.”
A rueful cast came over her face. “I did things that were beyond my power,” she said, bluntly. Her eyes clouded over at the recollections of events that manifestly haunted her still. “We were forced, all of us, to do things we could never have prepared for.”
And then Michael could see she was swept away on that tide of memory.
It was the night after she had found Sinclair-she remembered it well-and she had secretly appropriated several items, including a vial of morphine. The latter was more valuable than gold, and Miss Nightingale accordingly kept a sharp eye on the supply. It was after her rounds, when Eleanor was supposed to be in the nurses’ quarters, fast asleep, but instead she crept down the winding stairs with a Turkish lamp in her hand, and made her way back to the fever wards. Several soldiers, mistaking her for Miss Nightingale herself, whispered blessings in her wake.
“This was after what battle?” Michael gently prompted her, his voice startling her from her reverie.
“Balaclava.”
“What year was that?”
“Eighteen fifty-four. It was late October. And the Barrack Hospital was so crowded, the men were lying on straw, shoulder to shoulder.”
The Highlander, she recalled-the one who had warned her, in his delirium, that Sinclair was a bad one-had been stowed close beside him. If he, too, was suffering too much, she had resolved to share out the contents of the vial between the two of them. But when she got to the ward, it was clearly unnecessary. Two orderlies with
