"Awakening"

Chapter 1 from the forthcoming Ad Astra

Hesitant, reluctant, slowly fading, black nonexistence sluggishly gave way to vague awareness. Faint music, reminiscent of hymns sung long ago, floated in the blackness like singing heard from an open window of a distant church on a summer’s night. A light began to form, growing, brightening, like a door being opened to a brightly lighted room. Silhouetted within the light was a figure, blurred and indistinct, robed in dazzling white. Red-tinged light radiated from around its head, or what appeared as a head, like a halo. Within the halo was a featureless mask, shadowed by the glow of the surrounding light.

What’s happening? Am I dead? Is this an angel?

His mind was a vaporous mist, evaporating, condensing, struggling to form some reality he could grasp, something he could hold on to. But the image he saw standing in the light held no meaning for him.

He felt chilled, detached, troubled by this figure in the light that now seemed to be extending a hand to him. A cooling sensation passed over him. He struggled to open his eyes. The hand reached out from the figure, and again passed the damp washcloth over his face, gently wiping his matted eyes.

“Hi, Yank,” the apparition said, with a soft, quiet voice filled with concern. “You ready to join the land of the living again? You’ve been out for quite a spell, now.”

At the sound of her voice, he forced his eyes farther apart, blinking to clear the blurred image. Standing at his side, cooling his face with a damp cloth, was the prettiest angel God could have sent to escort home a fallen pilot. Sunlight from the window behind her silhouetted her slender figure, brightening the white of her nurse’s uniform and highlighting the red tint in the auburn hair framing her face. Large dark eyes smiled at him from her finely shaped face. There were hints of Ireland in her eyes and mouth. She tilted her head and arched her eyebrows. The corners of her mouth turned upward in a quizzical, irresistible smile, awaiting his response. He could only stare as he tried to force his mind to assume its former role in his life again and assimilate where he was and why he was here—and why this beautiful girl was standing next to him.

“What’s the matter, Yank? Cat got your tongue?"

She spoke with an unmistakable Australian accent, sounding as though she were teasing him back to consciousness, and yet concerned about him. She continued smiling, and again wiped his face. He attempted to pull himself upright on the bed, but could not. He felt paralyzed, unable to persuade his body to respond. She placed her hand on his shoulder, restraining him. He tried to speak, but his mouth was a desert wasteland.

“Water,” he rasped.

“In a moment,” she replied, “as soon as you’re a little more awake. We wouldn’t want you to choke on it.”

She placed her hand under his neck, lifting his head, and moistened his parched lips with the damp cloth. The delicate touch of her hand made his neck tingle. He looked at her dark Irish eyes, smiling back at him. His mind seemed mired, bogged down, unable to move. Nothing made any sense.

“Where am I? What happened?”

He struggled to form the words, his voice cracking and hoarse, then asked again for water. She held his head and helped him use a straw to draw a small trickle of water from a glass. He swished it around his mouth, struggling to swallow. She watched, making sure that he could, before she answered.

“You’re in the hospital in Sydney. You’ve been in surgery for several hours. I’m Mattie. I’m here to watch over you while you recover from the anesthesia.”

“Hospital?”

He looked around the room. A window behind her looked out on what appeared to be a large park, with the distant waters of Sydney Harbor sparkling in the sunlight. The room was painted bright white and cluttered with various kinds of hospital carts and equipment placed willy-nilly around his bed. A metal rack, that looked like a chrome hat rack with bottles of fluid hanging upside down from its hooks, stood near his head. That the clear tubes dangling from the bottles were attached to him didn’t register.

He looked at the two legs at the end of his bed as though they belonged to somebody else. The right one was entombed in bulky bandages from just below his knee, the left encased in a large white plaster cast from mid-thigh to his foot, and elevated at an awkward angle by pulleys and cables dangling from the ceiling. His left arm was in a cast of lesser enormity, but folded across his chest, giving him the appearance of posing for a Napoleon portrait. His right arm was not in a cast, but swathed in bandages from below his shoulder to over his wrist. It all reminded him of a car-wreck scene from an Abbott and Costello comedy.

He looked up at her.

“What happened to me? How bad is it?” His eyes searched hers for the telltale signs of kindness masquerading as truth.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “but they don’t tell me much. I’m just a volunteer nurses-aide here at the hospital. All I know is what the nurses tell me, or what I overhear the doctors telling them. They said you were wounded on a mission somewhere over the Pacific. Don’t you remember it? And don’t worry, there’s nothing missing. You were hit in both arms and legs. Your left leg was injured the worst, but they were able to save it. The corpsmen at the field where you landed up in New Guinea got you patched up enough that they were able to fly you down here. You’ll probably be here quite awhile for recovery and therapy. Is there anything I can get you?”

She leaned over him to straighten the sheets and to fluff his pillow, her hair lightly brushing his face. Her perfume made him catch his breath. It was the first breath of femininity he had inhaled since—when? He couldn’t remember the last time he had even seen a female.

The shock of the operation and lingering anesthesia, her perfume, the feel of her hair brushing his face, the touch of her hand, her very presence were all too much, and he felt himself floating, spinning back into the void. He closed his eyes, slumping back into his pillow. She brushed his hair back off his forehead. Her hand was cool, and soothing. He felt himself drifting farther away.

“I’m fading,” he told her, his voice not much above a whisper. It sounded hollow, distant, to him, as though coming from someone down a long hallway.

“Looks like you need some shuteye, Yankee boy,” she agreed, patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll pull the blinds and let you sleep awhile. I was listening to some church music while I was waiting for you to come back to us. Do you want me to turn it off?”

“No, I like it. Be seeing you,” he replied, his voice trailing off.

She nodded, and smiled at him, but he was gone. She pulled the covers back over him, straightened them, and stood looking at him for a moment. He looked so young—no more than twenty-one, she imagined, if that—and yet, so old. His face was gaunt and haggard, with three days growth of stubble aging him. He had not yet been cleaned after being wounded, and from the surgery. She ran her fingers over his face, touched his eyes. Dark splotches of blood smeared across his face, caked and dried in his whiskers, made chills run down her as she tried to avoid imagining what those eyes had seen.

She realized there was something in his face that drew her to him. Most of the wounded she helped care for in her role as nurses-aide seemed so immature. Although he appeared to be as young as the others, he seemed to have a seriousness, a maturity, in his face that she did not sense in most of them. As she looked at him she began to be aware of feelings stirring within her that were new to her nineteen years. She started to leave, then turned, looked at him another moment.

“I’ll think you’ll be seeing me quite often, Yank,” she said quietly, and left the room.

§

It was night when Captain Gene Stoddard, United States Army Air Force, again became aware of being alive. He forced his eyes open, blinking to clear them, and looked around the room. It was a different room than before. The lights were out, but the door was ajar. Dim light from the hallway was just sufficient that he could see that he was alone in the small room—there were no other beds. His left leg was still held elevated with the cables and pulleys. The shades of the window beside his bed were drawn. He wondered why, but then remembered that it was wartime and a blackout would be in effect.

After months of growing accustomed to nights filled with the raucous noises of the jungle that surrounded his airbase, the quiet of the hospital night was unnerving. He heard hard-heeled shoes clunking along the hallway, and the sounds of the wheels of a cart rattling along on stone-hard floors. Then it was quiet again, with only occasional faint voices coming from down the hallway.

He stared into the dimness of the room, but she wasn’t there. She was probably just a dream, he thought. A strange sense of disappointment, depression even, settled over him. She said I was wounded on a mission over the Pacific…seems like I should be able to remember that. He closed his eyes, and vague images of enemy fighters flashing by, of guns blazing, of explosions and fire and chaos in the cockpit teased at the edges of his consciousness, but nothing felt real about them. Maybe they were dreams—or maybe not. His mind still felt dull, leaden. It was hard making sense of what had happened to him. He wondered if it might all be a dream and he would wake up soon, on his cot at the airbase up in New Guinea—which also didn’t seem real.

As uncounted minutes crept by, and his senses gained a degree of alertness, he began to be aware of pain developing in his arms and legs, like the first flashes of lightning from a distant thunderstorm. And like the approaching storm, the pain grew more intense, the lightning flashes more frequent and severe, forcing the pain to the front of his mind, excluding all else. Flames began to shoot throughout his body. He cried out, even as he struggled to stifle it. Straining against restraints he hadn’t known were strapping him to his bed, twisting, sweat breaking out on his face, he was vaguely aware of people rushing into the room, of a needle being jammed into his thigh. Then the blackness came again.