“You might want to put a damper on that,” Alex said discreetly, particularly if Ed heard about it.
“He wrote to me a few times, and I sent him cheery little notes,” Lizzie said, thinking about it. “He actually did ask me to marry him when he was here last time, and of course I said no.” Lizzie looked mildly embarrassed by his claims. “How is he?”
Alex looked serious when she answered. “To be honest, Lizzie, he’s in terrible shape. He was on Omaha Beach. I think his mind is gone. Something snapped. I suspect the army knows it too. He has delusions in the daytime, like being engaged to you, and nightmares all night. He claims he was shot in the foot by a German soldier, but his commanding officer believes he shot himself. You’ve never heard anyone scream the way he does at night. They’re putting him on the next hospital ship home, and until then, we’re babysitting him here in the psych ward until one shows up. I think something in him is irreparably broken.” They had both seen others like him, and it was always sad. “I don’t know how they’re going to put boys like him back together when they get back to the States. The war has been hard on everyone, and we’ll all have nightmares about things we’ll never forget. But I think some of the men will never recover from them. The trauma they went through was just too great for their minds. I think Alfred is one of those. He’s just a kid, but his mind is shot. He says he met Hitler in Berlin.”
“Oh God. Maybe I’ll go see him,” Lizzie said, thinking about it, and sorry for him again.
“Be careful what you say. He’s delusional.”
“I’d like him to stop saying we’re engaged,” Lizzie said quietly.
“No one is taking it seriously,” Alex assured her, “any more than they are about his meeting Hitler.”
“The poor kid. He was a sweet boy. He wasn’t right in his head the last time I saw him either. He was desperate for me to agree to getting engaged. Ed and I aren’t even engaged and I’m in love with him.” They both laughed at that.
“Do you think that’ll happen?” Alex asked her, and Lizzie shrugged in answer and looked vague.
“After what happened to Pru and Audrey, you can’t count on anything until the war is over. We’re not making any plans. We both want to go to medical school after the war and become doctors, but he lives in Dublin, I live in Boston.”
“Stranger things have happened,” Alex encouraged her. She was thinking that about her own life too, and Dan. Meeting him had been unexpected, but it had seemed so right, and still did, no matter how different their backgrounds were.
“Everything in wartime is strange,” Lizzie said, “and maybe afterwards too, good and bad. The only thing I do know is that you can’t count on anything while we’re here and the war is still on.” They both knew it was true. Alex nodded and left the room after delivering the message about Alfred.
Lizzie went to see him the next day and found him much more delusional than he’d been before. She had no experience with psychiatric nursing, nor training for it, unlike Alex, but his mind was all over the place. He recognized Lizzie immediately, but then he wandered off into dark corners of his mind. He told her in detail about his meeting with Hitler, and that a German officer had shot him in the foot. She saw the notes in his chart about the nightmares he had every night. He had to be sedated and restrained when he had them. When she mentioned that he would be going home soon, he said that no, he was being sent for duty in North Africa as an aide to General de Gaulle. He didn’t mention being engaged to her, although the head nurse on the psych ward said he spoke of it all the time, and that he was fixated on it. They were recommending electric shock treatment for him when he got back to the States. The military wasn’t going to release him until some semblance of sanity had returned. Lizzie wondered if it ever would or if his mind was blown forever by the rigors of war.
She went to see him another time, and he thought she was his mother, and then he said he was Jesus and she was the Virgin Mary. She wished him a good trip home when she left the ward and didn’t go back to see him again. There was no point. He didn’t recognize her some of the time, and he came in and out of lucidity. It tore at her heart to see it. The war had destroyed so many minds and bodies and lives. She hoped they could put him back together, but it didn’t seem likely. Nothing was sure anymore. They had all been through too much. And boys like Alfred couldn’t find their way back from the terrible things they’d seen and done in the war.