Page 1 of Hearts Held
Chapter 1: Brielle
Wildflowers and Wild Horses, Lainey Wilson
It’s a brisk spring day in London, England. The year is 1926, and everyone is still trying to get used to their new lives after the end of The Great War in 1918.
I welcome hospital work, especially compared to the blood and turmoil I saw on Flanders Field. Belgium would always haunt my dreams. The wails of men, the putrid smell of rotting flesh and metallic melancholy. As time went on, they kept sending us closer and closer to the front lines, and the war became a raging storm engulfing everything in its path. Trying to hold young men as they bled to death, begging me for salvation. Land mines would fray the strong, limber legs of young men, leaving their muscles coarse and vessels gushingfrom the explosive material. We tried our best to save as many men as we could, but in the end, we were failures, for the amount of men we did save did not add up to the amount of men we lost. I hated lying to them, giving them false hope that things would “be okay” or they would “pull through,” just to ease them into the afterlife with a calming lie instead of a deathly truth. I joined the nursing corps because of my twin brother, Marcus. When he left for the fight, my heart broke in two, for we kept hearing about our neighbors’ sons dying from battle.
My family don’t know when my brother died; they only received the awaiting sergeant at their door, holding the gruesome letter notifying them of his death. But I do—I know when he died.
I couldfeelit.
The pang in my chest on May 25, 1916, at the severing of our twin bond.
When we were younger, I could feel whenever he got hurt, whenever he struggled emotionally, and then when he died it felt like a piece of my own heart stopped beating. A pain coursed through my body. After that happened, I distanced myself from everything and justfocused on being a nurse. Along the way I got married. My husband was great in the beginning, the romance and the courting. He even wrote my mother sweet letters confessing his love for me. I never knew what love was, so I thought this was how it was supposed to be, but his true colors showed after the nuptials. Our first night as husband and wife, he was so pissed he let his guard down and his demons finally came out toplay. Since that night I’ve hated him; we have only been married for nine months, but I have the built-up resentment of a marriage that is twenty years old. Every time the resentment bubbles over against him, the burned scars on my body cause me to wince in pain at the memory of their placement.
One evening, in one of his drunken stupors, he bragged about avoiding the draft by running away to a neutral country, after joking about how I was his broodmare and branding me with anHon my back with the fire iron. It made me enraged, to think my brother was three years younger than this idiot and still had more courage to fight for what was right. It made me sick that my husband relished the fact that every time I gazed upon my scars, I had to think of him and his knife or fireiron. He would taunt that the scars would go with me to the grave, and thus a part of him would always be with me. I tried telling my mother about his actions, but she favored him, and regardless he ended up finding my letters to Father and destroying every last bit of them. He also threw a fit and destroyed other writing apparatuses, paper, journals, anything else in the way of his tantrum. He cut me off from my family after that. My brother would have killed him. He moved us to a new house, smaller, because he was wasting our finances away. He’s pub buddies with all the bobbies in town, and he does a marvelous job of making me think he’s always watching me. He works in the booking department for the police. He isn’t a bobby but he loves to state he works for them. It gives him a false sense of power. I found out he had been cheating on me with one of my colleagues. When I caught them, he had no remorse, and I had no feeling.
I find every excuse to try to work extra shifts to save up enough money to devise a plan of freedom. Though who am I kidding? Freedom for a woman in the 1920s would only be possible trough death. Though the waris over, everyone still carries a part of it with them and struggles to win the battle within.
I scold my mind for wandering into a dark moment and continue my work, finishing off the medication pass and beginning my assessment rounds, when a clashing sound catches my attention from the far hallway. I gather my long white skirt within my hands and pad down the hall to the noise. I can feel my white nursing cap bobbing on top of my head, barely holding on with its partnered hairpins. To my surprise, I find a man hunched over in a three-piece tweed suit. He’s clutching his waist, trying to hold pressure there with his scally cap, raggedly breathing. Sweat beads down his brow as he winces in pain. If he doesn’t get attention soon, he may go septic, judging by the way his skin’s pallor is kissed with a hint of a gray hue. His eyes rise to mine as I state, “Let’s get you out of here, hon, this isn’t a good spot for you.”
He chuckles. He actually chuckles, though he’s bleeding all over himself. Then the twentysomething-year-old man-boy winks at me with his bright blue eyes and says, “Yeah, I kind of put myself in a bad spot to begin with, gorgeous.”
I cock my head to the side, curiously assessing his accent. He’s not from London; his accent is too rough,too deep. Before I can decipher his accent, I mutter, “Well, it isn’t my concern how you got into the situation or why, but it is my concern to stop your bleeding.”
I shudder as a hand carefully touches my back, and I have to keep my composure as to not haul my fist at them in defense. Another young man-boy appears at my side in a tan tweed suit, a matching scally cap adorning his head, with worrisome brown eyes and a furrowed brow. “Bobby, they be coming here soon, we needa get ya out of here. They’re gonna fuckin’ kill us.” Just as he speaks, shouting comes from the end of the hallway accompanied by marching feet. Their eyes grow wide with fear. With quick thinking, I motion him to Bobby’s side and we haul him up. “Follow me, hon.” We swiftly move through the corridor and enter the supply room. It’s a vast room, encased by four white walls, several shelves stocked with various medical supplies, gauze and instruments, along with an adjoining door to the morgue. At least there are supplies.
Bobby lets out a gasp of pain as we help seat him on the floor. “Hold pressure, hon, I’m going as quick as I can. We can’t let you get septic.”
Each word he gasps between painful breaths: “You’re not gonna ask what we did? What if we’re the bad guys, love?”
I shrug my shoulders with no hint of concern as I find a suture kit, antiseptic and abdominal packing in the stacked shelves. As I kneel down to assess the damage, I reassure the man-boy Bobby. “I think you wouldn’t have winked at me if you were so bad.” Bobby begins wincing as I administer the antiseptic. He appears to have been stabbed five times in the abdomen. Luckily, it does not appear to have been a long blade, more a decent-sized pocketknife. No main vessels have been broken, but I’d be concerned if it nicked something deeper within him, like his intestine or something worse. As I clean the wound, I realize his blood has slightly trailed into the supply room. We’ll need to work swiftly in case their attackers come looking this way.
His friend pipes up: “What about the big bad wolf, darling?”
I smile, realizing he hasn’t used the correct reference. “Do you mean a wolf in sheep’s clothing?”
He gawks, realizing he’s made a fool of himself—then clasps his hand over his brown eyes. “Eh, shite, I wasalways horrible with that stuff.” Then he shakes his head at his own disappointment.
“That’s why you don’t have agirland we only have you run the books, Marcus.” My hands stop moving as my heart ceases a beat. Hearing the name Marcus leave his lips gives my soul a shudder. The boy looks nothing like my brother, but thenamehaunts me. Anytime I hear it, a part of my soul wails on the inside, longing for a brother I’ll never see again. I blink rapidly, trying to reinsert myself back into the scenario in front of my hands.
“You all right, miss?” Bobby asks me, more concern written over his face. I clear my throat and continue working, suturing the tissue together as Bobby tries biting his bottom lip, suppressing the agony that wants to seep from his mouth.
Working as precisely and swiftly as I can, I stitch up the lacerations. “I’m sorry, hon, I’m sorry I don’t have anything to calm the pain, but we need to patch you up. To distract you I’ll tell you, my brother’s name was Marcus. He was an amazing man. My twin. He always stood up for me and taught me how to swim and ride a cycle, to be courageous, to love life. Well, the way hetaught me how to swim was by pushing me into the bloody pool, but he was right there, always reassuring, always a safety blanket.”
Bobby starts to pant. The sweat is dripping down his brow, sliding from his cheek and landing atop the collar of his shirt. “Was he… Was he in the war? Did he die in the war?” He’s barely able to ask the question.
“Yes,” I reply simply with a hard swallow as I begin to finish up the last stitch. “Now you gonna tell me who is after you?” I reach for the gauze packet next to me, but I cease when the sound of pounding footsteps and unfamiliar voices resounds from the hallway. Some of the individuals have thick Italian accents, which mix with the sound of a couple of my colleagues’ voices.
“Fuck, they’re gonna find us,” Marcus hastily whispers. He begins to frantically look around the storage room for somewhere to hide.
“No, no, they’re not. Here, place this on your wound, keep pressure. I need to put you in that room. I’m sorry, but it is the morgue. It is the only way to hide you.” I help Bobby to his feet as he sucks in a harsh breath of air, wincing fromthe pain.
“Do what you got to do, doll. I’ll happily lie with the dead rather than become one of them.” Marcus grabs under Bobby’s other side as we hurry through the morgue doors.
“Stay in here. Don’t make a sound. I have a plan.” Glancing around the room, a gruesome idea comes to mind. The culprits are bound to see the smeared bloodstains leading toward the supply closet, and I need to devise a cover. My white nursing smock is covered in blood, so I decide to reach for one of the fresh, dead carcasses in the fridge and push it through to the supply closet. Hopefully this strange idea will work, but at this point anything will be a trial and a potential failure. The man-boys stare wide-eyed at me as I push the trolly carrying the dead man. “Just trust me,” I whisper, and Bobby and Marcus simultaneously nod their heads. Stopping the cart next to one supply shelf, my hand reaches for the drenched gauze pads that aided Bobby. I open up the body bag and whisper a small “Forgive me” to the deceased man I’m now going to use in an attempt to save two other men’s lives. I’m going to hell anyway. I set the scene up to appear as if the carcass continues to bleed post-mortem. Hopefully it will work.
I brace in anticipation as the supply room lock clicks. My nursing supervisor’s voice can be heard on the other side of the door, irritated by the Italian men questioning her and pressing her to hurry up.
