into his mood with a kind of inverted pleasure. ‘My incompetence was directly responsible for the deaths of over twenty of my men, Sister Langtry! There’s nothing phantom about their widows and orphans, I assure you,’ he said stiffly.
It was many weeks since she had seen him so passionately down; Michael’s advent, probably. She knew better than to interpret his behavior tonight as entirely related to herself; the arrival of a new man always upset the old hands. And Michael was a special case—he wasn’t leadable, wasn’t the sort who would knuckle under to Neil’s brand of domination. For Neil did tend to dominate the ward, to dictate its patient policy.
‘You have to lose this, Neil,’ she said curtly. ‘You’re a fine, good man, and you were a fine, good officer. For five years no officer did a better job. Now listen to me! It isn’t even established that your mistake was what actually caused the loss of life. You’re a soldier, you know how complicated any action is. And it’s done ! Your men are dead. Surely the least you owe them is to live with all your heart. What good are you doing those widows and orphans, sitting here in my office stewing, pitying not them but yourself? There’s no written guarantee that life is always going to go the way we want it to. We just have to deal with it, bad as well as good. You know that! Enough’s enough.’
Mood visibly soaring, he grinned, reached out to take her hand, and leaned his cheek upon it. ‘All right, Sis, message received. I’ll try to be a better boy. I don’t know how you manage to do it, but I think it’s more your face than what you say. You always manage to take away the pain. And if you only knew how much difference you’ve made to my sojourn in X. Without you—’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, I can’t imagine what X might have been like.’
He said she always managed to take away the pain. But how, why? It wasn’t enough to do good; her intelligence needed to know what the magic formula was, and it always eluded her.
Frowning, she sat staring across the little desk at his face, wondering whether it was prudent of her to give him the few small encouragements she had. Oh, to be able to divorce personal feelings entirely from duty! Was she in fact doing Neil more harm than good by becoming involved with him? For instance, how much of this performance had been a ploy to gain her attention? Feeling more for the man than for the patient destroyed true perspective; she would find herself running along lines of thought having more to do with the future than the present situation, when the present situation should have had her whole energy bent upon it. Admittedly there were delicious possibilities in a peacetime relationship with Neil, from experiencing his first kiss to making up her mind whether she would actually marry him, but it was wrong to dwell on that now, here. Wrong, wrong!
As a man she found him attractive, exciting, interesting. His world was much like her world, which had made their friendship logical. She liked the way he looked, his manners, his education, his family background. And she more than liked the kind of man he was—except for this perpetual, unfortunate obsession of his. When he persisted in hearkening back to that day of slaughter as if it would permanently color the rest of his life to mourning, she doubted the viability of a peacetime relationship very much. For she didn’t want to spend her own emotional coin on an emotional cripple, no matter how understandable that crippling was. She wanted, needed , someone able to meet her as an equal, not someone who leaned on her while simultaneously he worshipped her as a goddess.
‘That’s what I’m here for, to take away the pain,’ she said lightly, and removed her hand in a way which could not hurt his feelings. Michael’s papers still lay under her other hand; she picked them up. ‘Sorry to have to cut it short, Neil, but I do have work to do.’
He got to his
It was many weeks since she had seen him so passionately down; Michael’s advent, probably. She knew better than to interpret his behavior tonight as entirely related to herself; the arrival of a new man always upset the old hands. And Michael was a special case—he wasn’t leadable, wasn’t the sort who would knuckle under to Neil’s brand of domination. For Neil did tend to dominate the ward, to dictate its patient policy.
‘You have to lose this, Neil,’ she said curtly. ‘You’re a fine, good man, and you were a fine, good officer. For five years no officer did a better job. Now listen to me! It isn’t even established that your mistake was what actually caused the loss of life. You’re a soldier, you know how complicated any action is. And it’s done ! Your men are dead. Surely the least you owe them is to live with all your heart. What good are you doing those widows and orphans, sitting here in my office stewing, pitying not them but yourself? There’s no written guarantee that life is always going to go the way we want it to. We just have to deal with it, bad as well as good. You know that! Enough’s enough.’
Mood visibly soaring, he grinned, reached out to take her hand, and leaned his cheek upon it. ‘All right, Sis, message received. I’ll try to be a better boy. I don’t know how you manage to do it, but I think it’s more your face than what you say. You always manage to take away the pain. And if you only knew how much difference you’ve made to my sojourn in X. Without you—’ He shrugged. ‘Oh, I can’t imagine what X might have been like.’
He said she always managed to take away the pain. But how, why? It wasn’t enough to do good; her intelligence needed to know what the magic formula was, and it always eluded her.
Frowning, she sat staring across the little desk at his face, wondering whether it was prudent of her to give him the few small encouragements she had. Oh, to be able to divorce personal feelings entirely from duty! Was she in fact doing Neil more harm than good by becoming involved with him? For instance, how much of this performance had been a ploy to gain her attention? Feeling more for the man than for the patient destroyed true perspective; she would find herself running along lines of thought having more to do with the future than the present situation, when the present situation should have had her whole energy bent upon it. Admittedly there were delicious possibilities in a peacetime relationship with Neil, from experiencing his first kiss to making up her mind whether she would actually marry him, but it was wrong to dwell on that now, here. Wrong, wrong!
As a man she found him attractive, exciting, interesting. His world was much like her world, which had made their friendship logical. She liked the way he looked, his manners, his education, his family background. And she more than liked the kind of man he was—except for this perpetual, unfortunate obsession of his. When he persisted in hearkening back to that day of slaughter as if it would permanently color the rest of his life to mourning, she doubted the viability of a peacetime relationship very much. For she didn’t want to spend her own emotional coin on an emotional cripple, no matter how understandable that crippling was. She wanted, needed , someone able to meet her as an equal, not someone who leaned on her while simultaneously he worshipped her as a goddess.
‘That’s what I’m here for, to take away the pain,’ she said lightly, and removed her hand in a way which could not hurt his feelings. Michael’s papers still lay under her other hand; she picked them up. ‘Sorry to have to cut it short, Neil, but I do have work to do.’
He got to his
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