An Expectation

8

Marion felt a strange stirring in her heart. A quickening. 

"When?" was all she could manage to say.

"We just got the telegram. He'll be here in maybe a week." A grin appeared on Martha-Grace's freckled face. "Excited?"

"No more than when we usually get a telegram about a new patient." Marion struggled to keep her face straight. "I'm glad he won't be in our wing. Illness is under Nurses Colton and Bellamy, remember?"

Martha-Grace looked pensively at Marion with a funny smile. "I know that. What are you telling me for?"

"Oh." Marion looked down at the letter she'd been writing. "I didn't mean to say it aloud. Just mumbling."

Martha-Grace nodded slowly and turned towards the door. "I'll let you process this on your own."

Marion stared at her letter and re-read it.

Slowly, she picked up a corner of the paper and held it over the candle until the flame licked the words into dust.

She would talk to James in person.

*****

Lewis sat alone in his room, staring out the window at the road below. He knew there was someone coming today, but who he didn't know.

He hoped for a roommate. At night there was nobody there to ring the bell if he needed it, sent into such violent dreams that he couldn't ring for a nurse himself. Not to mention that the silence gave him too much time to think. To remember.

The car pulled into view, crunching the gravel in front of the manor with its weather-beaten tires. The back door opened slowly- a hunched shell of a man stepped out- and Lewis grinned. Here was James! He'd lost some weight in the past months since they'd seen each other, but he was still tall, and blond, and carried a sense of dignity about him. 

Lewis grabbed his walking stick and hobbled to the door. He didn't really need the stick, but he knew Marion would have a fit if he went anywhere without it. Technically, he wasn't supposed to leave the room without letting a nurse know, but... there were no nurses around, and it was his old friend, home at last. He stepped out into the corridor. Surely an exception could be made?

"Where do you think you're going?" came a teasing voice. Marion stood just down the hall, a smile on her narrow face and arms crossed playfully across her chest. 

Lewis grinned and went towards the lift. "Private Abbot is here!"

Marion went white. "We only received notice yesterday..."

Lewis stopped. "Is something wrong?"

She quickly shook her head. "No. Go right back up to your room, hear? I'll see if he'll see you once he's settled in." False sternness laced her voice. 

Lewis walked back into his room.

He was out of sight and Marion rushed to look out the window. Sure enough, there was James Abbot, climbing the stairs to the front door with a cane in his hand and a nurse supporting him.

A pang of jealousy ran hot through her veins. The nurse was only doing her job, true, but Marion longed to run to James and tease him like old times, like nothing had changed, and maybe see if she really loved him or if she just missed him.

She couldn't help herself. She practically flew down the stairs just as the front door opened and James walked in. He saw her.

The world stopped for a half second. 

Marion smiled at him and he gave a smile that lifted the right side of his mouth a little bit higher than the left, but Marion liked his crooked face and how he never smiled with his teeth. He was different than other men she'd known, who flashed their teeth and smiled so broadly she'd wonder if it was a smile or a scream. James made her feel safe.

"Here, I'll take him to his room," she said to the nurse. "You help with his bag."

The petite nurse gratefully untangled herself from tall James. "Room two of the illness wing."

Marion nodded acknowledgement with a smile and put James' arm around her shoulders. "How well do you walk, soldier?" she asked playfully and began to walk slowly.

"I can hardly move," he replied with an obvious rasp in his joking voice, walking easily alongside her. "Ah, Nurse O'Leary, I'm absolutely certain I will never walk normally again."

They turned a corner into the illness wing. James switched into his normal voice. "How on Earth is this house divided? I swear illness was upstairs when I left."

She pushed open a door. "It was, but we decided to move the blind upstairs for some reason. Now the west upper wing is blind and upper limb loss, lower west is lameness, lower east is illness, and upper east is shrapnel." Lifting his arm from her shoulders, Marion pointed to the lone bed in the tiny room. "Here you are, soldier. Prime window spot."

James moved to sit on the cot. "Strange to be home and not really be in my own bed."

"Your old room is currently inhabited by the blind and armless."

Silence. Her smile began to ache. 

Neither wanted to say anything and it grew awkward.

"Marion, I want to ask-"

"Are you feeling up to meeting with someone? Lewis Miller wants very much to catch up," she interrupted, fearing what his question may have been.

"Yes, of course," replied a baffled James. "But Marion, I wanted to talk about-"

"Excellent!" She jumped up towards the door. "I'll fetch him. Then you lads can walk out wherever you please together."

She left before anything more could be said. The space between them had been to far and too close for her to bear, thick with anticipation and the dread of something more. 

*****

"Who's still left?" asked Lewis, sitting in the breezy garden.

James, wrapped in a quilt, shook his head. "I don't really know. This is the first time I've left the hospital tents since February. A lot can happen in four months."

"I heard you've been writing stories," Lewis said, trying to get some sort of conversation started. 

James blushed. "How did you know about that? I didn't write them to anyone but my friend here in England."

"Nurse O'Leary read one to me." A boyish smile appeared on Lewis's face and he playfully used his remaining arm to nudge his friend, who laughed. "Congratulations on her, mate."

James looked down, smiling shyly. "Congratulations for what? We just wrote each other."

"Of course." Lewis nodded sarcastically, but his heart leapt a little inside him. "I'm sure that's all that was going on."

"It was!" protested James, with a crooked little smile, but neither man was sure.