In the Shadow of Blackbirds(57)

I found him in the same chair as the day before—a mangled young man who could have been Stephen’s age. His head seemed to have caved in on one side and now hid beneath all those crisscrossing bandages, including his left eye, which may or may not have still resided in its socket. The left sleeve of his button-down shirt lay empty and deflated, as did the left leg of his tan trousers. All I could see of his actual body was a hand, a pale eyebrow, and an open right eye the color of green tea.

He drew in his breath beneath his flu mask. “Oh, sweet Jesus.” He sounded like he could only talk out of the right side of his mouth; each s that he spoke whistled through his teeth. “I thought I was a goner.”

“I’m sorry I scared you.”

“You looked like an angel.” He took a few shallow breaths. “I don’t mean that in a flirtatious way. You honestly looked like a golden beam of light. I thought you were going to take me away.”

I shook my head. “No, I’m just a person.” The chair where the man with the eye patch had been the day before was empty, so I pulled it closer to the boy and lowered myself into its cushion with a squeak of leather. “Are you in much pain?”

“They keep me on morphine. I’m too far gone to care about the pain when I’m doped up like this.” He chuckled a little. “It’s nighttime that’s the worst. That’s when everything aches and the nightmares come breathing down my neck.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. I’ve heard the others talk about the nightmares, too. I’m sure it’s not easy.” I found my hands shaking. “Umm … look … someone told me you were from Coronado.”

“Yes.” He pushed himself up a little straighter. “That’s where I’ve lived all my life. Except for my time in the army, of course.”

“Did you go to the high school there?”

“Yes. Good old Coronado High.”

“Did you know Stephen Embers?”

“Stephen?” He nodded. “Yes, definitely. We’ve been friends since he first moved to the island.”

My heart beat faster. “D-d-did you see him in France?”

“Yeah, a group of us from school joined up at the same time.” He cocked his head at me and raised his visible eyebrow, as if he suddenly recognized me, even with my mask covering most of my face. “Say … what’s your name?”

My entire name counted too much to hide any part of it. “Mary Shelley Black.”

“Ohhh …” The soldier’s eye brightened. “No wonder you look so familiar. Stephen pulled out that photograph of you all the time.”

“He did?”

“I was there when he first got it in the mail, and boy, you would have thought you had sent him a pile of gold from the way he reacted.” He held his chest and took a longer break to catch up with his breathing.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Sorry. It’s sometimes hard … to get the words out.” His labored speech sounded like it was tiring him, and every s whistled worse than before, but he kept going. “I was just going to add that Stephen wedged your photo inside his helmet when we were down in the trenches. He mooned over it—when he was feeling well. He told the rest of us boys you were the prettiest and smartest girl in the world.”

“He said that?”

“I was even”—the exposed section of the boy’s forehead turned pink—“a little jealous of him.”

I blushed as well, and smiled so much the strings of my mask tautened enough to hurt. My eyes smarted with tears, but I sniffed and held myself together for the sake of Stephen’s friend.

“How’s he doing?” asked the boy.

My blood drained to my toes. “What do you mean?”

“Have you seen him yet? Or did they put him in a hospital on the East Coast first? They said that might happen.”

My eyes narrowed in confusion. “Weren’t you there when it happened? Stephen died in battle in the beginning of October.”

“October?” He shook his head. “No, that’s not possible. He wasn’t even overseas in October.”

I clutched the armrest. “Pardon?”

“They had to send him home.”

“Alive?”

“Yes.”

“When? Why?”

He answered in a tone so hushed I had to balance myself on the last two inches of the chair to understand him. “It was pretty bad. I hate to be the one to tell you.”

“Please, just tell me.”

The boy swallowed. “Stephen sort of … well … he lost his mind over there in the trenches. Got to the point where he couldn’t even move anymore. He’d just huddle in the mud, shaking. They tried to help him in one of the field hospitals once—examined him to see if he was faking. But then they sent him straight back into battle … and he got worse than ever.”

I folded my hands to conceal how much they jittered. “What did they do to him then?”

“They discharged him and shipped him home. He wasn’t the only one like that. Hell—excuse my language—but hell, most of us went a little off our rockers over there. You couldn’t help it. Some of the fellows’ bodies and brains just stopped working right. Scary as heck.” The soldier rubbed the right side of his bandaged forehead and wheezed a little. “Stephen was so bad off I didn’t think anything could fix him. It was like something inside him broke.” He turned his eye back to me and looked like a lost pup. “You don’t know where they took him once he got back to the States, then?”