Silence for the Dead(76)

“It isn’t—” I blinked, hard. “Syd—you were there. He hit you, too. I saw him.”

“That was years ago.” He pushed back his chair and stood. “You don’t understand. He is a changed man, Kitty. He admits he’s done wrong in the past, and he regrets it. You can’t know how bitterly.”

“Now who’s a liar?” I said. “He punched me in the stomach and called me a whore, Syd. And that was on a good night.”

“You’re foulmouthed, too.” The corner of his mouth twisted down. “Father wants to make amends. He wants you to come back so it can all be straightened out. He’s dying, and I’m his son, and for God’s sake I’m bringing you back.”

I looked in his eyes, and that was the rub of it: He believed it. He believed every word he said, with passionate devotion. My father probably was dying; that likely wasn’t a lie. But my father had convinced Syd of the rest of it, as if he’d found a religion. Syd wanted to believe, and he’d convinced himself I’d made everything up. God knew why—but he did. I felt the hope that had begun to bloom in my chest die sharply, with a quick pain. And then everything I’d taught myself in the past four years came back to me in a rush.

Don’t look back, don’t look down.

This is how I am going to die.

“Leave,” I told him. “Get out. Now.”

The corner of his mouth turned down again. “That’s not polite, not when we’ve just found each other again.”

“I’m not going back, Syd.”

“This is ridiculous. I thought—”

“You thought I’d cringe. He thought I’d cringe. You were both wrong.” My voice was shaking, but I ignored it. “Now, leave.”

He made no move, so I turned and left the room, taking my unsteady steps into the main hall. The circulation in my arms and legs had been cut off but for a painful pinpricking along the backs of my forearms. My knees had been replaced with half-frozen jelly. I hoped I’d get my body parts back when I watched Syd drive away.

If I found my brother and I lost him again, was it better or worse than never finding him at all?

“What is this?” Syd followed me into the hall. “I don’t believe it. You’d rather be in this place—a madhouse—than home, where you belong?”

“Kitty?” It was Martha, approaching tentatively from the corridor. “Is everything all right?” Nina, who had come off night shift that morning, was with her.

I opened my mouth, but Syd said, “Everything is quite all right, sister.”

“She’s not a sister,” I said.

“What is the matter with you? I’ve come to take you away from here. Father said you’d be difficult.”

“Did he?” I said. Martha was looking uncertainly between us, and I hoped to God an orderly would come. “What else did he tell you, Syd? That we’d be reunited as a happy family? That I’d weep at his bedside like a girl in a melodrama? And you believed it?”

“He said . . .” Syd took a breath. “He said he worried about you, that last year after I was gone. He said you might be . . . delusional.”

The unfairness of it hit me so hard I could barely speak. “Just get out,” I managed. “Just leave.”

“I’m not going. For God’s sake, Kitty, you’re ill. You don’t even know what’s real anymore. You’re as mad as the rest of them.”

“I take exception to that,” someone said.

I turned. Coming down the corridor behind Martha and Nina were patients, come to see the commotion—West in his wheelchair, and MacInnes, and Mabry. Others trickled in one by one behind them, crowding to see. And Jack, pushing his way forward through them. It was to be an utterly public humiliation, then. My chest burned, and I turned back to Syd.

He’d gone pale, looking at the men. “Are you quite finished?” I said to him now.

“Stay back,” he said to the men.

Captain Mabry looked at him coolly. “I believe Nurse Weekes would like you to leave, old chap.”

“I agree,” said West. His arms flexed massively as he grasped the wheels of his chair.

“Stay back!” said Syd again. He gazed at the stumps of West’s legs sticking out from the seat of his chair in their pinned hospital trousers, and he looked almost sick. He’d fought in the war, and I realized he must have been seeing something in his mind I couldn’t see. “Don’t come any closer.”

I had to defuse the situation somehow. “Syd—”

“What is the meaning of this?”

Matron came stomping down the main staircase, in the middle of all of us, her glasses bouncing on the chain on her chest and her face red with fury. Boney followed behind her, hurrying to keep up. Matron stopped five risers up and leaned over the banister, the better to loom over everyone.

“Nurse Beachcombe,” she barked. “Nurse Shouldice. Why are these men not at morning exercise?”

“Matron—”

“Nurse Weekes, what are you doing? This is not part of the schedule. Who are you, sir? Where are the orderlies?” As she spoke the last sentence, Boney turned and fled, presumably in search of help.

“Are you in charge here?” said Syd. “Thank God. My name is Sydney Weekes, and this is my sister. Our father is on his deathbed and I’ve come to take her home.”