Between the Crosses, Row on Row

Toronto, Ontario

It snowed all around the psychiatric ward. A cloud of cold mist hung over the town. A few city folk walked down the lanes, although most stayed in their homes due to the Spanish Flu. It had been a year since the Armistice, the end of the Great War. The soldiers had come back home to an emotional hodgepodge of celebration, relief, anguish and sorrow. The bars were full with cheerful and boisterous men who returned from their journey. Many, however, laid in hospitals, sick with flu.

But the common people on the streets cheered for the survivors. The non casualties. The righteous shining knights of empire and freedom. The Hun killers.

They cheered for those who had come back unscathed.

Not the sickened. Nor the tarnished. Nor the scarred.

George Grant was sitting with Dr. Kyle in his office. Cigarette soot smeared the ash pot on the desk, with fumes surging towards the ceiling fan blades. George sat glum, fiddling with a pencil in anxious boredom. He fixed his gaze right at the brass nameplate on Dr Kyle's desk, with unblinking eyes.

"Dr. Gerard D. Kyle, Professor of Psychology, M.U"

He tried hard to resist the impulse to fidget erratically, but it only made the urge worse.

Across the desk from him, sat a grey old man, with big, round glasses. He had a calm, serious face, wizened by years of experience.

"Mr. Grant, your reintegration into civilian life has so far been quite successful. Only a few more things to work on, and you will be a fully functioning member of society. Now, can you smile for me?" he said with a cigarette butt in hand.

George lifted his head.

He attempted a half-hearted smile in response.

"Perfect." the doctor replied.

Putting down the roll, he scrolled through a few documents, bringing up George's profile. A typewritten page, documenting all his wartime events.

"Now, I'd like to know a few more things about what we have been discussing earlier. Your experiences in the war." George looked in anguish as the doctor produced a pen from the desk drawer.

"Tell me what you remember of Amiens. Describe to me the day of the battle in clear detail."

George hated these sessions. He detested how society as a whole didn't give a damn about whatever he had been through, as if it was a little beachside stroll. Among all his experiences, he never hoped to conjure back memories of that day. He'd seen things there, in France and Flanders, worse than what he thought were the deepest pits of hell.

"Why do you want to know? Why is that important?" replied George monotonically.

"Now come on George, it is for your own good. Tell me, so you can leave your past behind you faster."

George sighed. He nodded his head reluctantly, shifting his eyes onto the wood grain of the desk. Why must he recite such calamity?

"If you really must know..."