Chapter 53

“Nick, Nick, can you hear us?”

“Who’s Nick?” he moaned. “My name is Jean Claude.”

“You collapsed on the football field,” a random voice spoke. “Can you tell us what happened?”

“I’ve been shot.” He tried opening his eyes, but the blinding whiteness made him close them again.

“Shot?”

“Oui, shot.”

He felt a prick in his arm.

Although his eyes were glued shut, he heard another faraway voice.

“Nick? It’s your mother.” A female voice shouted at him. “Your father’s following in the car. We’re on our way to the hospital.”

He tried opening his mouth to speak, but his throat was blocked. Water. He wanted water. He moved his hand. Did it actually move?

“Hold on. We’re almost there!” Desperation laced this woman’s voice.

Oui, his maman was with him. Chaton too?

“How are you feeling, honey?”

His maman was talking in a foreign language. The voice wasn’t his maman. His maman spoke in softly slurred French and this woman in English, the vowels jarring. Something covered his mouth and nose. He couldn’t speak. The words—English and French—tangled around each other.

Someone fingered his hand, and he tried to squeeze back, but whatever was sitting on his chest made it difficult to move.

“Can you take my hand?”

He tried, but nothing. He struggled to open his eyes, but they remained glued shut.

His eyes were closed, but he could see everything in a blurry haze. Two women were with him. Both were dark-haired and beckoned him. He searched for their names. One called him Nick and the other, Jean Claude. They stayed with him, fighting for his attention.

He was a disjointed figure swathed and protected in a hospital bed. He came slowly to himself, the feeling of walking through an endless forest, always searching for a way out.

“Nick.” A woman pushed back the curtains surrounding his bed and took his hand. “You had us so worried, honey.” She squeezed his fingers in a familiar way.

Who was Nick? He knew the name, but not the person. Was she talking to him? She was touching his hand. Yes, she had addressed him as Nick.

“Where…where am I?”

“Spectrum Hospital. You’ve had emergency surgery.”

His eyes flew open.

Jean Claude’s chest was covered in bandages, and the radiating heat was tender and intense.

“Was I shot?”

“No, of course not.”

“Did we win?”

“Win?”

“Did we win the war?”

“What war?”

She frowned at him. They both stayed silent.

“Why am I here?” he finally demanded.

“A birth defect,” the woman said, although he thought she was his mother, only she didn’t resemble his mother in the least. His mother covered her hair with a scarf. This woman’s head was unadorned.

“A hole in your heart,” said the man who came to stand by the woman. His father? The man was his father. Had he come home from the war to be with him?

“You collapsed at the game,” his mother prompted.

“Game?” Surely the conflict with the Germans wasn’t a game. “We are at war; it is no game!”

His mother frowned briefly before responding, “You need your rest.”

His parents left, and when he awoke again, Chaton was beside him. “Mon amour.” My love.

“Qui, je suis venu.” Yes, I have come.

“Pourquoi suis-je ici?” Why am I here? “Ma poitrine est en feu.” My chest is on fire. “Suis-je mourir?” Am I to die?

“Non.” No.

When Jean Claude awoke later in the day, the window showed afternoon light. His parents and another man were there, looking down on him.

“How are you feeling, Nick?”

“Pardon?”

“Nick?”

“I am Jean Claude.”

He heard his mother inhale sharply, and his father’s cheeks sagged.

“Why do you think you are Jean Claude?” the doctor asked.

“What nonsense! Because I am! I was shot!”

“Who shot you?” the doctor asked.

“My lieutenant!” Such idiotic questions. Surely the man knew that.

“I see.” The doctor turned to his parents, ignoring him again. “He may just have a form of anesthetic confusion. It is quite common in some patients.”

“Did you get the bullet out of my chest?” Jean Claude demanded.

The man ignored his comment and replied, “You should be fine to go home.” Home to his narrow cot at the cavalry school or his bed in Montreuil-Bellay? A look passed between his parents and the doctor.

“Will I fight?”

“No, you must rest.”

“My maman has left town,” Jean Claude said.

“I see,” the doctor said, but he didn’t. Jean Claude could tell he was saying whatever platitudes were necessary to keep him calm.

“And my fellow cadets?”

The man frowned but said, “I’m not sure about them.”

“We were overrun by the Germans; surely more are here.”

“Perhaps.” The doctor pressed a button by Jean Claude’s bed, and soon a man in blue scrubs gave him two pills.

“You need your rest.”

The voices in his head were tiny, and it was hard to make out all the words. They were speaking about someone named Nick. The ribbons of words flowed around and under each other in an exotic confusing dance, just out of his reach.

“A form of schizophrenia…”

“Treatment?”

“Drugs and therapy.”

“What kind of medicine?” asked the woman who was pretending to be his maman.

“To keep him from hallucinating.”

“I don’t think he’s hallucinating.” His father.

“Has he done this before?”

“When he was a small boy.”

“Mental illness can be triggered by a catastrophic event such as surgery.”

“It may be a concussion.”