Silence for the Dead(21)

“Tell me.”

She didn’t take much convincing. “I overheard Boney say once—I didn’t mean to hear it, really I didn’t—that he came here after he tried suicide.”

That made me stop. I straightened and stared at her. The room seemed to actually tilt for a long moment. “What did you say?”

“It might not be true,” Martha insisted. “I don’t know, not really. I don’t even know how he—well, how he tried it. But he’s labeled as a suicide risk, Kitty. Even more so than the others. We have to search his room regularly, those of us with clearance. Matron is very fussy about how he’s treated. I think she worries about him. We’ve never yet had a successful suicide here.”

She caught my gaze for a long moment, then looked away. So there had been unsuccessful suicides, then. I didn’t ask. I couldn’t. “But Matron doesn’t make him leave his room,” I said, “and follow the rules like the others.”

Martha shook her head, biting her lip again.

“Why not?”

“Kitty, he’s Jack Yates! You’re more worldly than me, I suppose, but even I saw the newsreels.”

“That’s no reason.” I undid my skirt and let it fall to the floor, then started on my underskirt. Jack Yates, trying to kill himself. That man who’d stood before me in his room, so vital and alive. My fingers were numb on the buttons and loops at my waist. “So no one knows who Patient Sixteen is? Not even the other patients?”

“Oh, no. He doesn’t talk to the other patients. We aren’t allowed to mention him by name. I don’t think any of the patients know.”

He uses that lav, I thought. Even Jack Yates has to use the lav at some point. But I’d get nowhere pushing the issue. I had finished undressing, and wore only my underwear and stockings. I pulled another uniform from the wardrobe where the spares were kept and dropped it on my bed next to the dirty one. Then I put my back to Martha and sat on the edge of the bed.

“He was on some kind of drug,” I said. “I could tell by his pupils, and his speech was slurred.”

“Kitty, you have so many questions! He can’t have been.” I could hear Martha’s apron slide over her sleeves. “I told you, we search his room. Twice a week at least.”

I stared down at my knees for a moment. “Martha.”

“Yes?”

“Do you think he’s weak?”

“Mr. Yates?” Her voice was surprised. “Whyever? Because he tried to kill himself?”

I leaned down a little, slid my hand under the mattress. My fingers slid along the slats of the bed, seeking that one thing I’d hidden. “Everyone knows that men who try to kill themselves are weak. Aren’t they?”

“Oh, no,” she replied in earnest. “Certainly not. He’s just had a terrible time like the rest of them, that’s all. The war made some of the men sick. The unlucky ones. It isn’t their fault. They got sick, that’s all. And so we nurse them.”

Under the mattress, my fingers found the handle of the knife I’d swiped from the kitchen my first night here. It was long and its blade had gleamed silver in the lamplight of that first night as I’d tilted it to and fro. I’d looked at it closely, making sure I saw every detail. Looking at it had made it more real, so that when I hid it under the mattress within easy reach, I could still see it before my eyes as I lay down every night.

I’d taken it because I’d been afraid, because I wanted to be armed. It was that raw, exposed feeling again, as overwhelming as a drug. I couldn’t get the sensation of Creeton’s hand off my skin, the way he’d looked at me, and I’d known I’d never sleep unless I had some way to protect myself.

From my patients.

I’d nearly screamed at Jack Yates. I’d nearly struck him. I’d come within inches.

He’s had a terrible time.

It isn’t their fault.

I rubbed my hands across my eyes. Well, Martha was a better person than I was; most people were. Most people were kinder, more trusting, more forgiving than I.

I had my reasons.

I let go of the knife, but my eye caught on something square and dusty pushed up against the wall below the headboard. The corner of it was in plain view. I slid off the bed to my knees and reached for it.

Something metal tinkled, a smaller item tucked between the object and the wall. I pulled it out and looked at both things. One was a book: Practical Nursing: An Everyday Textbook for Nurses. The other was a circular locket on a thin chain. I popped it open and saw a photograph of a pretty blond girl, perhaps fifteen, looking soulfully at the camera from under a halo of hair. I latched it shut again. It must have been left here by the last nurse. Perhaps Nurse Ravell with the freckles. Maybe she’d dropped the locket and the book and never thought to look under the bed before she quit.

I had just opened the book and touched the edges of the pages when Nina came into the room behind me. “Kitty, Boney is asking for you. She says you’re taking too long up here. Oh—hullo, Martha. Up already?”

“Oh, God,” I said. “What does she want me to do now?”

“The common room. There’s no one to supervise.”

I dropped the book and the locket and kicked them back under the bed, taking up my uniform and putting it on as fast as I could. When I looked up I found Nina looking at me, uncertainty washing the usual sullen expression from her face. “What is it?” I asked.