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.
“The trouble with Matron. Is it very bad?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “She said there will be an incident report.”
“That’s bad. I’m sorry. She asked. I can’t lie to her. I need this job.”
By lying my way into Jack Yates’s room, I could have gotten her sacked. The thought bothered me, something I was far from used to. “It’s my fault.”
“What got into you? For God’s sake, just follow the rules or we’ll all be out the door. Though that bathroom was a nasty one—I’ll give you that. I’ve never seen Matron make a girl do that before. When I started, she had me rake leaves out of the back garden. I thought it horrible at the time.”
“I suppose I should be honored.”
“No. You cleaned it, though, right enough; I checked. What’s Matron got in for you?”
“I don’t know,” I lied.
Martha chimed in, “I don’t think Matron does it on purpose.”
“No.” Nina sighed. “Of course you don’t. Get your cap on, Kitty, and let’s go.”
? ? ?
The men took daily exercise after breakfast, as long as the weather was fine. As the next day was a textbook example of June in all its beauty, a painting of sunny skies and soft breezes, the men were duly shuffled out behind the house to the grounds. I was sent with them to supervise, in the company of Paulus and one other orderly.
I was starting to understand the intricacies of the staffing at Portis House. Matron hadn’t exactly been truthful with me; in fact, she had outright lied. Even with only nineteen patients, Portis House was grievously understaffed. Everyone—nurses and orderlies alike—was stretched to the breaking point. One week per month on night shift, Matron had told me, but that would require four nurses on rotation; we had only three. Boney was permanently assigned to “special duties” and never had to work nights, part of the reason Nina despised her.
My inexperience meant I hadn’t noticed as quickly as I might have, but I was starting to see. When the last nurse had quit, days had gone by with no nurse on night shift at all. There were only six orderlies, including Paulus, covering twenty-four-hour duty; they did all the heavy work and one of them always had to be on call in case a patient became unruly. They walked around as gray faced as we did. If Matron told me now, as she’d said that first day, that I’d get “two hours of leisure time in the early afternoon,” I would probably laugh in her face, for the idea was as likely as taking a trip to Monte Carlo.
And so now there were three of us—and I a woman—supervising eighteen grown madmen on the open, sun-drenched lawns of Portis House. There was no fence or wall around the grounds; only the manicured garden near the house was circled with a low garden wall and a waist-high gate that opened out to the grasses and hills beyond. Even a child could have unlatched this gate, or climbed over it, and so the men were essentially given free rein.