They Call Me Patrice

Helen saw her nervously steal a look at herself in the mirror.

“You’ll be all right, Patrice. They’ll like you.”

“Hugh says they’re very wealthy,” Patrice remarked. “My father and mother weren’t. When they died I had just enough to stake me until I got the job with UNNRA that took me to Europe in the first place. I know Hugh’s father had to send us the money for the trip home. We were always on a shoestring over there. We had an awful lot of fun, though. But I didn’t want to have the baby over there, and Hugh didn’t want me to either.”

Suddenly she reverted to their mutual topic of interest again.

“Are you frightened? About it, you know?”

Helen made the admission with her eyes.

“I am too. I think everyone is, a little, don’t you? Men don’t think we are. All I have to do is look at Hugh—” She grinned companion-ably. “I can see he’s frightened enough for the two of us, so then I don’t let on that I’m frightened too. And it reassures him.”

Helen wondered what it would be like to be so treasured.

“Do they know about it?” she asked.

“Oh sure. Hugh wrote them. They’re tickled silly. First grandchild, you know. They didn’t even ask us if we wanted to come back. ‘You’re coming back,’ and that was that. Heady? Shall we go back to our seats now?”

Helen’s hand was on the door handle, tussling with the little hand-latch which was hard to turn with the train’s movement throwing her off balance. Patrice was somewhere behind her, replacing something in the open dressing-kit. She could see her vaguely in the chromium sheeting of the door in front of her. Little things. Little things that life is made up of. Little things that stop—

Her senses played a trick on her. She had a fleeting impression, at first, of having done something wrong to the door, dislodged it in its entirety. The floor shifted to become the wall upright before her. The door was hopelessly out of reach, a sealed trap overhead, impossible to attain.

The lights went. All light was gone, and yet so vividly explosive were the sensory images whirling through her mind, that it took her a comparatively long time to realize she was in pitch-blackness, could no longer see physically. Only in afterglow of imaginative terror. The car seemed to go up and down like a scenic railway. A distant rending noise ground nearer, swelling in volume. It reminded her of a coffee-mill at home, when she was a little girl. But that one didn’t draw you into its maw, crunching everything in sight, as this one was doing.

“Hugh!” The single word from somewhere below her. And then silence.

Chapter Two

Whatever this moment was, it held pain in it; it was all pain, only pain. Her hand, moving at random beside her, found something light and soft, drew it toward her. A scarf-like thing, a handkerchief. It was knotted, and the knot was kept from slipping by a little metal circlet, by a ring it had been drawn through. She put the little bulge of the knot between her teeth and bit on it. That helped, the pain eased a little. The more the pain grew, the harder she bit.

She only wanted to sleep, to sleep some more. And they were making so much noise they wouldn’t let her. Clanging, and pounding on sheets of loose tin, and prying things away.

She cried softly in protest — no, it wasn’t her own voice, she knew now. She knew. And there was a sudden frightened flurry of activity, the pounding became faster, the prying became more hectic.

Then all at once a man’s voice sounded directly over her, strangely hollow and blurred.

“Steady. We’re coming to you. Just a minute longer. Can you hold out? Are you hurt? Are you alone down there?”

“No,” she said feebly. “I’ve...  I’ve just had a baby down here... ”

First she was dimly aware only of the small sphere immediately around her: the pillows behind her head, the bed covers under her chin, a dim face bending close. She was aware of a small form that was alive and warm and hers. She came more alive at those moments when she felt it nestled in her arms. It was her lifeline back to life. The rest remained unfocussed, lost in misty gray distances. Then visibility spread to the whole room around her. Then she noticed flowers in the room. There was fruit too, in a basket over by the window, with a big-eared satin bow standing up straight above its handle.

And the last phase of recovery was sitting up. She saw her own hands one day. And on the left hand something twinkled and caught her eye. She was suddenly looking at a slender circlet set with diamonds, a sapphire at each end. A wedding-band. Strange and yet she remembered it. Or did she?

The nurse came in and saw her looking at it. She called the doctor, who gave her something to drink.

It tasted salty and sent her to sleep.

She wanted one of the flowers. A small one, arching over in her direction, invited her. Her hand closed on its stalk. She started to draw it toward her, and that carried her hand high up over her head.

Something jangled and fell beside her, from the bed-frame. It was a chart.