For a moment I thought I saw a flash of recognition in his eyes, but then it was gone and he crawled away from me again. I muttered under my breath. How could the man be so stubborn? I strode back toward the fire. He was still alert, as if not aware of who or where he was. Perhaps he would follow me if I didn’t try so hard to force him. If nothing else, perhaps the glow of the fire would beckon him.
Only a few steps after I turned from him, I heard a gasp. I spun around. His eyes were wide but his face a mask of despair. “Don’t leave me.” His voice cracked and the glazed look returned to his eyes.
“I’m not leaving you. Come to the fire.”
He didn’t move.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Come to the fire, now,” I ordered.
His shoulders drooped and he started to crawl toward me. I stood stock-still, wishing I could go to him and help him stand, but if I did, he would most likely run from me again.
When he was close enough I could have thrown my dressing gown over him, I knelt and looked him in the eye. “You need to wear this. It is too cold. You are too cold.”
He raised himself to a kneeling position, lifted a hand to my cheek and squinted his eyes as if he were trying to place me. “May?” he asked with an almost reverent hush.
His words had been so irregular and mumbled that one word shouldn’t have meant anything. But I knew immediately he was not asking permission to do something—he was speaking a woman’s name. His wife’s name.
“No,” I said softly. “I’m not your May.”
I ever so slowly inched the green velvet over his shoulders. He stiffened in shock at the touch of my fingers upon his skin but then tucked himself into it and sank down to the ground.
I sighed. Finally, perhaps he would settle again.
But the dressing gown was thrown off only a few moments later.
He shouted orders, pleaded for life, and murmured over and over about not leaving anyone behind. He was, as I’d guessed earlier, a soldier returning home after Napoleon's defeat.
Tears pricked my eyes. How often had Mama and I prayed for Papa’s safe return? More times than I could count. No happiness could compare to the moments we saw his horse galloping up to our front door. Somewhere along this road a woman was waiting at a window for this man. He had to make it back to her.
I resorted to begging and pleading and eventually settled into commanding him to put the dressing gown back on. He did,but once again, only for several minutes, and then he began to thrash and move about the room again.
Time passed slowly, and with each bout of delirium he weakened. I didn’t know how much longer either of us could keep up with this strange dance.
The seventh or eighth time he kicked my gown away, I approached him carefully, waiting for him to scramble away again, but this time he didn’t. He dropped down to the floor a good five feet from the fire and stilled.
His breathing stopped. I’d never stopped watching his chest whenever he was still, and it simply stopped.
I dashed over to him and put a hand to his cheek. It was hot again—hot enough to make me hiss. My touch must have jolted him for he took two gasping breaths and then stopped breathing again.
I shook him. Two more gasping breaths.
He turned to me. “I’m sorry ... ” he choked out. His hand lifted only an inch or two off the ground, as if he wanted to touch my cheek again but he was too weak. “I miss you.”
Tears crept into my eyes. Papa had thought me as strong as any of his men, but I wasn’t. I couldn’t simply sit here and watch this man die alone and in despair.
I reached for his hand and the moment I wrapped mine in his, his breathing stopped again. “I’m here,” I said softly. “You made it.”
Those haunted eyes of his caught mine just as he sucked in two rasping breaths again. Those were not the breaths of a man who was going to make it through the night. His eyebrows furrowed. “You came back?”
I pulled my lips into my mouth to stop a jerking sob. “Yes,” I murmured in assent.
His frantic searching stopped and even though his breathing didn’t improve at least he seemed to settle. “I don’t want to be alone.”
I shifted closer and pulled his head off of the cold ground and rested it on my right leg. His long limbs stretched out to my side. When I was sick, Mama would hold my head in her lap and stroke my hair. There was no better comfort in my childhood than that. His breath caught and released and then stopped again just as it had so many other times. I pushed the hair back from his head. “You are going to be alright,” I lied, running my hands through the tangles. I hummed a low lullaby, the one Mama used to hum to me. His eyes followed me in confusion as if he were trying to place exactly where I’d come from. They weren’t clear, though. He was still in another world I couldn’t quite see. “You made it home. Now rest. Rest so you can get better.”
His eyes fluttered closed and he stilled. I stilled with him, my fingers anchored at the nape of his neck. This time, something deep inside me whispered that his chest wouldn’t move again. He was too cold, his face too motionless. I counted the seconds and there were too many of them. I stopped breathing, waiting silently for any sign of movement. Fifteen, sixteen ...
Twenty counts in, he gasped for air.
