Silence for the Dead by Simone St. James Read Free Book Online

today, so I spoke to one of the orderlies about it. He said there’s water leaking somewhere in the cellar, and none of them want to go down there to the scuttle, and they’re having to draw straws.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, they don’t want to go down there?”
    â€œWell.” Martha’s eyes went even wider in her heart-shaped face. “They say the water leaks constantly, they can’t make it stop, and the scuttle is placed far in the back. You have to cross the cellar to get to it. And sometimes, at the back, they hear sounds in the water behind them closer to the stairs, like—like splashing footsteps. And so they won’t go down.”
    We all fell silent. Finally Matron spoke. “Are you telling me,” she said, her mannish voice slow with disbelief, “that the orderlies—grown
men
—are afraid of a few mice in the cellar?”
    â€œUnacceptable,” said Boney.
    Martha bit her lip. “But they say it’s true.”
    â€œIt sounds like poppycock to me,” said Nina, as she shoveled in another mouthful of stew. “Send me down there. I’ll go.”
    â€œThere will be no need, Nurse Shouldice,” said Matron. “I will speak to Paulus myself.”
    Paulus, I gathered, was the huge orderly, the man with the South African accent. Nina shrugged. Martha worried her lip, her supper forgotten.
    Matron turned to me. “And you, Nurse Weekes? What nonsense have you brought me? Or are you a girl with even a minimum of intelligence?”
    There was a glint in her eye; she was waiting for something from me, something she expected. I lifted my chin. “What happened in the dining room today,” I said. “The nosebleed. I’d like an explanation.”
    â€œWould you?” said Matron.
    â€œFrom the way you spoke to him, there’s obviously a history. If I’m to care for him, I’d like to know what it is I’m to expect.”
    She frowned. If there’d been a test, I wondered whether I had passed it. “Mr. Mabry has a particular psychoneurosis,” she said. “He often seems calm, but he is prone to fits. They can be violent, so you must take care if you’re in his presence when he’s struck with one. He has broken several items during his time at Portis House.”
    I digested that. “And the nosebleed?”
    â€œIs one of his recurring fits. The doctors believe it is of particular concern. They have been focusing their treatment on it, and before today he hadn’t had one in nearly three weeks.”
    â€œTreatment?” I looked around the table. “Do you mean he somehow
makes
himself have nosebleeds?”
    â€œYou saw it yourself,” said Boney. “How else did he get it?”
    I decided not to mention that I hadn’t been in the dining room at the time. “It’s just—I didn’t know a nosebleed could be caused by force of will.”
    â€œHe doesn’t will ’em,” said Martha. “He gets afraid. He thinks he sees something.”
    â€œThat’s bunk and you know it.” Boney turned on her, her lips tight, spots of red high on her cheeks. “He does no such thing!”
    â€œNurse Fellows is correct,” Matron broke in. “Mr. Mabry suffers from delusions, as do many of the men here. Mind over matter, Nurse Weekes. Mind over matter. It is what many of the men here still have to learn.” She pushed back her chair and stood. “And now, I expect you all to return to your posts for the evening. We have work to do.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    â€œ I t was a test, wasn’t it?” I said much later in the nurses’ quarters as I sat on my narrow bed and pulled off my shoes. “Supper, I mean. Putting me in there alone.”
    Martha, standing before the washbasin and pouring water over her hand from the pitcher, glanced sympathetically at me. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Boney does it to