Edwin forgot to answer for a second while he stared. When Maxwell cocked his brow at him, he remembered himself. “I want to listen,” he finally said. “To help you, but also because I want to know.”
Maxwell sighed. “Okay. First though—” He reached into his pocket and produced a simple, silver lighter and a cigarette holder. Calming his trembling hands, Maxwell pulled one out and rested it between his lips.
With a flick of his thumb, a small flame came to life, and he cupped his hand around it while he lit his cigarette. The embers crackled in the dark and Maxwell tilted his head back as he took a long drag. Light spilled over his neck. Edwin longed to drag his fingers over the bump on his throat and tracing the curves of his jaw. Maxwell parted his lips and released a slow trickle of smoke. What Edwin would give to be that cigarette between his lips.
Maxwell noticed him staring. “You want one?” he asked, already offering the open cigarette holder.
“Um.” Edwin hesitated. He didn’t smoke often—the doctor in him suspected it must damage the lungs, but every other part of him craved something to take the edge off. There’s a reason cigarettes were part of the rations they received.
“Sure,” he found himself saying. Edwin pulled out a cigarette from the metal case and held out his hand for the lighter, but Maxwell was already pressing his thumb down on the spark wheel. The flame ignited and he brought it closer to Edwin’s face.
Holding his nerve, Edwin leaned in. He steadied the cigarette in his mouth with two fingers and hovered the butt in the flame. He glanced up at Maxwell and saw he was already watching him, his brown eyes deeper than the sea. Edwin held his gaze while he pulled back and inhaled, his body relaxing at the warm rush.
Maxwell leaned against Edwin, shoulder to shoulder. “It was when I got shelled,” he started. “I went over the top and nearly crossed to the enemy trenches but before I knew what was happening, I was on my back. Everything was blurry and I couldn’t hear, and I felt this searing pain—” He brought his hand up to his bandaged shoulder.
“I found a hole to hide out in and—” He swallowed thickly and shuddered. “There were other men in there—deadones. They were strangers, but in my dream, they had the faces of people I knew. Friends, brothers…lovers.”
Maxwell glanced at Edwin, but he only nodded for him to continue. He did not let his face betray himself.
“They kept begging me to save them, and I couldn’t do anything. I just sat there, bleeding out.” He paused and brought his cigarette to his mouth again, smoke blowing away from them in the summer night breeze.
“It tookhours. The fighting kept going on around me: men dying and shells exploding. Every time one went off, I held my breath, surely it would hit me and that would be it. Eventually it ended and everything went quiet, like the whole world had died. I was so sure I would die too, I kept passing out. I made my peace—or at least as close as I could to—in that hole, but then I heard people searching for survivors and I called out. A stretcher-bearer found me and carried me out. The trip out was so painful, all that jostling…” He winced at the memory.
“And then the next thing I remember is seeing your face.” He looked up at Edwin and smiled faintly. “Not a bad thing to come back from the dead to.”
Edwin hoped his pink cheeks weren’t obvious in the dim light. It hardly seemed appropriate. “That sounds truly harrowing. I am sorry you went through that, and must relive it now.”
Maxwell shrugged. “In war we all have harrowing moments. I’m sure you do too.”
The pause suggested an opportunity for Edwin to offer something up, and he felt it was only fair. He nodded. “All the lives I failed to save. All the needless suffering.”
“But you saved me, and so many others.”
Edwin smiled at him. “That is true, and I am glad for them.” The addition ofand for youhung unspoken in the airbetween them, a space that continued to shrink.
Maxwell held his gaze with an intensity behind his half-lidded eyes. “You know, I really wanted to die in that hole. I thought going on would be too painful. But I am so glad I didn’t get what I wanted.”
Edwin wasn’t sure who moved first. For all he knew they both took the leap of faith at the same time.
What he did know is that their lips met in a tender kiss that tasted of smoke, full of wanting and pain. They stayed frozen for a moment, not wanting to break the spell, before Maxwell deepened the kiss, pulling a barely audible sound from Edwin’s throat.
Maxwell cradled his thin neck, pulling their chests flush together, and Edwin twisted his body to hold Maxwell’s waist. It took everything in him not to let his hands wander. He wanted to commit every dip and line of Maxwell’s body to memory, but for now he cherished the warmth of his skin under his shirt. They parted their lips and swallowed each other’s breath. Their half-spent cigarettes lay forgotten on the ground, embers still burning…
Even as I write this well after midday during a rare moment of calm, I am still thinking of his soft lips. It is taking everything in me to act as if nothing has changed. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore his knowing, borderline smug, looks. What a mess I have made.
* * * *
11 August 1918
I have done something which I am sure isn’t entirely ethical, however I can’t bring myself to care. I have seen too much violence and suffering to worry about a passionate moment between two men, even if one is a patient and the othertheir doctor. It was in no way planned but we took advantage of the storm last night. With the power out, there is only so much candles can do to illuminate a whole hospital.
I was finishing up with a patient. He was half-asleep while I was redressing his arm and I left him to get a few hours of sleep myself. But then Maxwell caught my eye, as he often does. He was still awake and I approached his bedside…
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” Edwin asked him as he took a seat on the edge of the bed. There was nothing unusual about the gesture of casual familiarity.
“I could ask you the same thing, Dr. Keller,” Maxwell gaze flicked over him, sizing him up. “I’ve been watching you jump from patient to patient since dawn.”
“Edwin,” he corrected him.
