Ivan Press

Parker

They are near the edge of winter, and it seems there is always ash, and dust, and blood. Sometimes there are worse things than blood. A girl slipped in it just two days ago, got a mighty bruise on her thigh, but Matron was annoyed that it hadn't been mopped. She wants the girls to remember this is a hospital. She refuses to buckle. She refuses to behave as though things are in any way out of the norm. There is no crying on duty. There is precious little crying in the dormitory, either.

They've sent many of the children away. It leaves pockets of odd and unnatural quiet here and there in London. Somehow the quiet feels as strange and frighting as the nightmarish barrage of bombs that now come nightly.

This corner of the ward is quiet, at least for now. Most of the men on the beds are sleeping, sedated or simply exhausted. Sheets separate people here and there, when need be. Beside one such narrow bed, barely illuminated by a small lantern on the nightstand, sits a dark-haired nurse with thin wrists, sharp features, and a back as straight as an iron rod.

One of her hands is on the patient's wrist, fingertips to pulse. Her other hand is turned, inner wrist towards her, so she can watch the second hand of her watch. There is a clipboard on her lap and no expression on her face.

The patient is unpopular.

Not because he is uncharming, or abusive, or crazed, as altogether too many of the patients -- those that have the strength for it -- can sometimes be. In fact, he cannot have been judged by his personality or his actions. He has not opened his eyes once since he arrived here. No, he is unpopular because of the circumstances of his arrival. He not dug from the rubble of a bombed-out building, nor evacuated here from that hellish continental front. He was dragged from the smoking wreckage of a Luftwaffe bomber shot by down the British defense, still marginally conscious then, reaching for his sidearm before someone smashed a rifle-butt into his temple and put an end to that.

Since then he has been unconscious. He was grievously wounded when he arrived. There was some amazement that he was alive after plummeting from the sky in flames; very few others have ever survived a crash like that, and none long enough to be questioned. So he is, in a sense, precious, and he has been treated as such: his numerous wounds cleaned and bandaged, his shattered leg reset to the best of the surgeon's ability, any simmering infection kept at bay with vial after vial of that rare, expensive miracle of a drug, penicillin.

There has been resentment in the ward. Patients and staff alike have eyed him askance, this interloper, this enemy in their midst, leeching off their scarce resources when days ago he was dropping bombs from the air. One night they caught one of the other patients, a soldier evacuated from Dunkirk, advancing on his bed with a pillow. So now he sleeps in the corner cot, screened off by sheets, pale beneath his bandages and his burns, handcuffed to the bedrails, guarded constantly by an orderly -- both for the safety of the others and for his own.

It has been two weeks. His medical condition has improved. The mangled leg has not turned gangrenous, which in and of itself is a miracle. His wounds are healing and his burns are nearly healed, and his pulse is steady and strong.

He has not woken once in two weeks, but now, as the nurse checks vitals and makes notes,

his eyes are open. He watches her.

The patient is precious, and also dangerous, and also despised. So he is in a corner, and his bed is curtained off, and an actual doctor has seen him repeatedly. And he is chained. And just outside the curtain, there is a yawning orderly.

But inside the curtain, sitting on a wooden stool and staring at her watch, is the nurse. She's not as young as some of the others, who in a better world would be in school, or starting their own families. She's halfway to her thirties, but looks neither old nor young. She has a certain regal bearing, a coolness about her that he can observe for some time while she finishes taking his pulse.

Then her fingertips leave his wrist. She takes the pencil attached to the clipboard and he can hear it scratching softly on the paper as she makes notes.

She glances at him, and pauses. Sees that his eyes are open. She narrows her eyes for a moment, then looks at her watch again, and then --

-- makes another note on her clipboard.

His consciousness is a feeble thing, barely there. His stare is flat, fixed, dull. He blinks slowly. One could imagine the gears of his mind moving: he thinks slowly, too. He does not have the strength to be insulted that his return to the world of the waking is greeted so coldly.

After some time, though, he summons the energy to say something. It is a hoarse whisper. It is not English.

Nor German.

His stare is flat, but his eyes are a bright color despite how clouded they are. They are the opposite of hers: pitch black, even moreso in the dim light. It's like looking at black pearls, or caviar, or the soil of a graveyard.

Or garden. It could be a garden. But perhaps a cold one, just after the thaw, wet and dark and not yet filled with the new shoots of true spring.

She looks up from her note-taking as he speaks. She is impassive. She does not understand him. But she addresses him: "You are in London, Mister Kazakov." Then, perhaps appallingly or unsurprisingly, depending on the British nurses you've encountered, she reaches out with her pencil-holding hand and uses said pencil to tap three sharp times on the side of the handcuff that is attached to the bed.

No words are needed for that one. He is an enemy combatant in the very city he was tasked with destroying, and they have him chained to a bed,

and his nurse doesn't care if he isn't speaking German. It isn't English, either, now is it?

It is impossible to tell if he understands the words. Even his name is quite different with a British clip; perhaps he doesn't even recognize it. He does understand the tap of her pencil, though. He does understand, when his eyes drift slowly to it, the cuff on his wrist.

He emits a small huff. Perhaps it's meant to be a laugh. His eyes come back to hers. He has green eyes, flecked in gold. He has blond hair, though somewhat tawnier than the Nazis would prefer. Like everyone touched by this damned war, he's a little too thin, more bone than muscle.

Another word or two. Now, perversely, it's in German. Perhaps she ignores him again, or simply does not understand. The detente lasts for twenty seconds, thirty.

A third try, and this time, a heavily accented English: "Water."

Doesn't ignore him. Stares at him, though, in icy silence. She has a cruel sort of patience, as though she is willing to let him starve or squirm until he finds his manners.

Speaking of which: he says 'water'. She says, with a raise of her brows:

"Let us try that again, Mr. Kazakov. 'May I have some water, please, Nurse Parker?'"

His eyebrows furrow. Her English is more rapid than he can follow. He closes his eyes.

And reopens them:

"Water. Please."

She stares at him another moment. A long, dead moment, where perhaps it seems she is going to hold out for all proper politeness. But she doesn't. She sighs, sets her pencil down, then rises. She puts her clipboard on the nightstand and lifts a pitcher that stands here, pouring some water into a glass.

When she turns to him with the glass, though, she actually puts her hand under the pillow beneath his head, carefully and rather slowly lifting him up somewhat even as she brings the glass to his lips with her other hand. It's entirely possible that he's capable of both these things on his own, but she performs this strange act of compassion with the same briskness as she demanded his request water in English, with a 'please'.

"Slowly, then," she says, more softly, like a reminder that's half for her own benefit.

Regardless: she helps him drink, and if he tries to do it himself she snips at him: "I won't have you pushing yourself when you've just woken, Mister Kasakov. Please let me do my duty."

But he is given water. Cool, but more or less room temperature. Until he indicates that it's enough. Then she lets him down again, and sets the glass on the nightstand, but does not sit again. Stands beside his bed, hands folded in front of her. She's in the same uniform as the other girls: a slightly frilled white cap, a blue dress, white apron and sleeves. No bloodstains that he can see. Everything starched to perfection.

There is pride in him. It was there in that momentary linguistic rebellion; it was there in the please. It's there when she starts to slide her hand beneath his pillow, too: he turns his head away, too weak to do much else.

For his trouble, he earns another string of rapid English. This time he does catch his name in there. Also, a please.

He sets his head back where it was, sighing. And she lifts him. And she holds water to his parched lips. And he drinks, staring her in the eye, as though the only remedy for bruised pride is to confront it as directly as possible.

It is not long before he lifts his chin. Barely a few sips. It's more for comfort than necessity: he's had an IV running for two weeks. Saline, and nutrition, and several times a day, penicillin. Which is too precious to squander on even the wounded soldiers shipped back from the front, so many of which have died in the two weeks this bomb-dropping bastard has lain here. She deserves credit: she neither drowns him nor drops him back on the narrow bed.

When he's resettled, she remains standing. And he looks at her, clearly exhausted by even the minor task of drinking. His eyes wander: he notes the iconic little cap and apron; the dress.

"Ya by predpochel vas," he says. "Ty kholodneye vody." He offers her a small smile, crooked. "No krasivaya..."

His eyes close. Unconscious again.