I Fell in Love with Hope(80)

“Well,” Sam scratched the back of his neck, exhaling in part relief, part amusement. “We can’t have that.”

“We cannot!” Henry tapped his crutch’s end on the ground. He removed a pile of coins from his pocket. “Do you like cards, boy?”

“Sure, sir.”

“Excellent!” Not bothering to count the change, he dropped the money in Sam’s open palm. “Go buy us some, that witch of a nurse took my last deck. Buy yourself some sweets while you’re at it.”

Sam was never one to deny running an errand. He didn’t ask Nurse Ella. He simply hauled me along, feasting on any excuse to feel the wind on his face and run a race down the street. We came back with a fresh deck of cards from the corner store. When Sam tried to give Henry the change, he waved him off, said Sam ought to use it for something useful, like gambling.

Although Henry, like Sam, never really left the hospital.

Bodies strengthen with age, then, they wither, return to their state of weakness when they were little as butter sticks. Henry disagrees with this view of existence. He is all mind and all memory. Beneath the pipe and the gray, he’s as young as they come, a boy still in his prime ready to dance, party, and gamble with the best of them.

“Sweet child,” he says, waving me over. “Come shuffle for us, my arthritis is acting up.”

“No, no, don’t come over here,” Sam says. “I don’t want you to see me getting humiliated.”

But I do anyway. Sam eyes me over his mask as I shuffle the cards. Yellow shines in the flares like amber. The only language that light knows is mischief. He winks at me, sliding a hand beneath the table and running it up and down the back of my thigh.

“I’ve barely put a dent in you, boy,” Henry says. “You should’ve seen me during the war. We played blackjack for whiskey flasks. Even my sergeant couldn’t beat the likes of me.”

“Yeah?” Sam teases. “How’d a great player like you end up in a place like this?”

“Oh, time is a rotten old friend and crafty card player. Only gambler that could ever best me, that one.”

I give Henry back the cards. A few spill through my fingers.

“Hah, a clumsy dealer. Thank you, dear.” Henry’s constant laughter falters for a moment. He thins his eyes, tilting my chin gently to get a better look at my face.

“Have we met before?” he asks, searching.

I smile at him as I did at my butter baby, shaking my head. “I don’t think so, sir.”

“Ah, that’s too bad.” Henry pats my cheek. “Such a pretty face.”

Henry’s said that to me before. He’s asked me that question before too. Because in a sense, he and I have met, a long time ago.

Henry is dear to me. His stories of army days and the war are echoes of memories we share. After all, Henry didn’t buy that pipe, he stole it from a friend. A friend he lost on a bloody day, along with all the flesh and bone under his right knee.

“Another game!” Henry orders, pushing his chair in, tapping his one leg.

“Alright,” Sam sighs. “But only one.”

“What are ya?” Henry teases, tossing him a hand. “Scared?”

“Scared of losing all my change.”

Sam and Henry play another game. All the while, Henry hums old songs, smoking, talking to himself. At times, I’ll catch him having entire muttered conversations with the air. I wonder if that is a habit one develops living alone. I wonder if he’s talking to someone in particular, a ghost with which he shares that pipe.

“Hah!” he cheers, throwing his arms over his head as high as they’ll go. “I’ve still got it.”

“He’s cheating,” Sam says, throwing himself back in his chair. “Isn’t he? He’s got to be cheating.”

“I think you’re just a lousy card player,” I tease.

Sam reaches under the table and pinches the back of my knee. I flinch, smacking him away. He licks his canine, running a hand through his hair, the locks unruly, sprawling over his forehead.

Sam’s gained a boyish confidence. He still acts the kid, only now with strut in his step. His doctors and nurses call him handsome, a soon-to-be heartbreaker. He’s become confident from the praise and the deviousness of his childhood has turned fatal.

“Hooligan!” Of course, Nurse Ella doesn’t take days off. She marches into the room, fists at her sides, steps quick and tempered. “Did I not tell you to leave him alone?”

“Sorry, Nurse Ella,” Sam says. “We’ll go soon.”

“She was talking to me,” Henry beams.

“Shut up, you old pest. You have to wear a mask around him, you hear me? Put that wretched thing out.” Nurse Ella flips a needle out from her apron, flicking it with her middle finger. “Take your medicine.” She sterilizes a spot on his arm, finding a vein with machine-like efficiency.

“Such a demanding woman,” Henry says, not so much as wincing from the injection. He cranes his head back, taking in Ella’s stony features. “I should marry you.”

Ella’s displeased grunt sounds. “As if I’d ever marry a gambler.”

“Everything in life is a gamble, my dear, even love itself.” Henry sighs. He reaches for something on his other side. His crutches lean against the chair’s back. His pipe is in his mouth. He reaches for the air, muttering to his ghost, something sadder taken to him.