Finally, with this, he obeyed.
She stood stiffly on the porch, and when things settled, her eyes landed on Ridley, left in their wake without even a mention. The donkey was so bonded with her husband that her chest seized at the sight of the creature. She walked to greet him, grabbed him by the reins, and guided him to his stable.
“We’ll go get him once I’m dressed,” she said. “No need to worry. You just eat a bit.”
She put a hand on his flank, and there in the privacy of the stable, in the confidence of only the donkey, she collapsed under the weight of her relief, which mingled with her sorrow to wreck her completely, until she sat in the hay with her head against her knees, soaking her dress with her tears. The donkey seemed not to notice and there was a comfort in his indifference, the way he carried on eating as though the world had not changed on them forever. She would get it out now. All of it. And then she would retrieve her husband.
*
The leg was already gone when she arrived. He lay asleep before her, shapeless under the bedsheets. She sat beside him and took his hand and turned to ask Doctor Dover when George would wake.
“I’d give it an hour,” the doctor said. He informed her that he’d finished up the amputation that morning. The leg had gotten infected in the woods, he told her. It could’ve killed him. Still might.
In sleep George’s face lost its hardness and grew round, almost cherubic, and it seemed wrong somehow for this unguarded innocence to be on display in front of a doctor neither of them knew beyond his name.
“He fought with me,” Dover said. “Said he’d rather die than lose it. Nothing I haven’t heard from the soldiers, though, bless their hearts.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That life carries on.” The doctor was young, slim, his sleeves rolled to the elbow. “We’ll have him on crutches shortly. We can get him fitted for a prosthetic. They send pamphlets all the time. Good models.”
George was in private quarters now. At first he’d been placed in the general infirmary among the other sick, and Isabelle had decided to pay for this room. The privilege afforded them some peace and quiet, but only marginally. Even the hallways were full of bodies, those who’d been burnt the day before slumped against the walls and still awaiting treatment, pleading for the attention of harried nurses. Hearing their moans, Isabelle hoped it wasn’t the money she’d paid that allowed the doctor to focus on George first, but she put the concern out of mind in the belief that the others would be attended to in due time.
“Well, I’ll leave you two,” the doctor said. “It’s been a busy day. Call on me if he wakes.”
She ran her hand through George’s hair, watched his stomach rise as he breathed in and listened to him exhale, no differently from when he slept at home. Given all that had happened, that bit—that familiarity—troubled her as much as it soothed her. “We’ll be fine,” she said. “I’ll let you know if anything changes.”
*
He came to in fits. It took two days in all. He was not himself and lashed out at the strangeness of the hospital, at the foreign bed, the foreign doctor, the nurse who dared to see him unclothed as she changed his bandages.
When he was at last truly lucid, Isabelle sat up in her chair, impassioned by his waking, and looked upon him ardently. Yet there was only fear in his eyes, which searched the room for something unseen.
“Take me home,” he said. “Please.”
But the doctor was still concerned about the infection and wouldn’t hear of it. So George stayed through the night, with Isabelle at his bedside, lending an ear to his moans of agony, though she could aid him with nothing more than words of comfort. At some late hour, when even the noisiest patients were asleep, she woke to the sound of his crying, and held his hand with such intensity that the firmness seemed to provide him the courage to quiet down.
A faucet, rusted crimson, was perched above them, extending down from the ceiling, dripping in rhythm with the passing seconds. The whitewashed walls carried a tint of yellow, which led Isabelle to believe that something noxious pervaded the building and took residence around them. Although the night had been difficult, she felt like it had forged her place as George’s ward, his protector. Yet he wailed and beat the bed like a child when they wished to bathe him, demanding that Isabelle leave the room.
“George, how many times have I seen you bathe?”
“Get her out!” he commanded the attendant. “She won’t see me like this!”