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.”
Matron didn’t even pause. “That is well, sir, but I have not given permission for Nurse Weekes to take leave.”
If Matron had held out her hand like the Pope, I would have knelt and kissed it, religion be damned.
“That is completely unreasonable,” Syd protested. “This is a family matter.”
“And this is a medical facility,” said Matron, “with professional staff. Applications for leave are taken through the proper channels.”
“Matron,” shouted one of the men from the corridor. “She don’t want to go!”
Syd turned to the room at large. “This girl is delusional!” he proclaimed. “She is a liar. She’s not even a nurse!”
“She is too a nurse!” Martha’s cheeks were bright red with outrage. “You just leave her alone!”
“Syd, for God’s sake!” I said.
“Look what you’ve done, Kitty,” he said to me. “You’ve caused a scene. Enough of this foolishness. You’re just like Mother, aren’t you? Father said so. It’s time to leave.”
I stepped closer to him, looked him in the eye. “I said I’m not leaving.”
It was quick—the space of a second, and yet in my eye it was slow, so slow. It had started minutes before, really, and my mind, which knew the timing so well, had half expected it. And it wasn’t much of a hit, not really, just a little slap with the flat of his hand, stinging and very loud. My head rocked back and I took a step, and for a second my ears rang and I didn’t see everything that went on behind me. But I heard shouts and voices. And then someone yelled, “Go get him, Jack!” and Jack Yates vaulted out of the corridor and straight at my brother.
He didn’t even look angry, just determined, like an athlete doing a sprint. But Paulus Vries had arrived, he had longer legs, and he was surprisingly fast for such a big man. He caught Jack just as he reached Syd, who fell back toward the door.
Paulus grabbed Jack’s upper arms from behind, a hard grip that stopped Jack in his tracks. Syd’s face was blanched with shock, but he looked past the terrifying madman’s uniform at Jack’s face, and recognition trickled through. “You’re Jack Yates,” he said.
Jack didn’t struggle against Paulus; he only leaned forward a little, as Paulus’s huge hands held him back, and spoke in a calm, taunting voice that barely contained the anger underneath. “How are you feeling, Weekes?” he said. “A little peaked since you got back? You seem prone to violence to me.” He watched my brother’s expression fall. “It happened to a lot of us. We have a room for patients like you, if you’d like. It’s locked. And very, very dark.”
“I’m not like you lot,” Syd said. “I’m not.”
Only someone watching Jack’s face as closely as I was would have seen the flinch. It was gone in a second. “Stay a while and find out,” he said.
Syd gripped the handle of the door, as if by reflex. His knuckles were white. He looked at Jack and swallowed. Then he looked at me, one last time, and his gaze turned hard. He pushed the door open and left without another word.
Paulus sighed, his hands still on Jack’s arms, though I could see his grip had relaxed. “You didn’t have to scare him, Yates.”
“No,” Jack agreed. “I didn’t. But it was fun.”
“That’s enough, everyone,” Matron shouted from her place on the stairs. “I want every patient in his room immediately. Morning exercise is canceled.”
Jack looked at me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said softly.
“Are you certain?” said Paulus. He’d let Jack go. Their scuffle may have been partly serious, but it had been a little fiction, really, between the two of them, to scare off my brother. I nodded, unable to trust my voice.
“Move it, Yates,” Paulus said mildly. He turned back to me. “If you need ice, get it now. I have a feeling Matron is about to call a meeting.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“That,” said Boney, “was unacceptable. Unacceptable.”
“It isn’t Kitty’s fault,” Martha protested. “She didn’t invite him.”
We were sitting around the small table in the kitchen, all of the nurses. Matron had called us here, just as Paulus had predicted, but so far she had said almost nothing.