Past Loves Ch. 11: Bobby and Hettie

- - -

Bobby awoke the next morning when the door to her small hospital room was opened and a bright shaft of sunlight burst through, illuminating the small space that she shared with five other patients of the Hospital. Into the room walked a tired looking doctor followed by an elderly nurse who was writing hurriedly on a clipboard as he went from patient to patient examining the medical notes attached to each patient's bed. Bobby still couldn't hear a thing, not even the dull ringing she got when she'd had blocked ears in the past. The whole world was completely silent, as if she was watching a film without the musical accompaniment or the subtitles.

The harassed looking doctor came to her bed last, quickly examined her clipboard and looked up at her. Bobby saw his lips moving and guessed that he was asking her a question. For a moment she sat stunned, unsure of what to do, before remembering and fumbling for the notepad that Nurse Chambers, Hettie, had left for her. The doctor held up his hand reassuringly, said a couple more words to the nurse at his side and walked off hurriedly, leaving the nurse behind to take more notes.

Around her Bobby could see her fellow bunkmates beginning to move and sit up. Some had bandages wrapped around their legs or arms, some had whole reams of them around their head, and one poor fellow's entire face had been enshrouded with white bandages and plaster. Bobby saw him struggling to take a sip from a cut at his side through a paper straw and counted herself lucky that, for now, she'd only lost her hearing.

The nurse waved to get Bobby's attention and pointed to the notebook in her hand, asking to borrow. Bobby attempted to sit up to hand it over, but as she did so, a wave of nausea and dizziness overtook her and she collapsed back onto the bed for fear that she might be sick. The nurse saw this and pushed her back down gently by the shoulder, before scribbling a short note in her book.

'Head wound, don't move. Breakfast soon.'

Bobby nodded obediently, but before the nurse walked off she asked drowsily,

'Where's Hettie, I mean... Nurse Chambers...?'

The Nurse smiled to herself as if in a secret joke before patting Bobby gently on the knee and miming a sleeping action. Bobby was confused as to whether this meant that Nurse Chambers was sleeping, or that she herself should get some sleep. After her dizzy fit, she certainly didn't feel like going anywhere soon, and so lay back on her small pillow and stared at the ceiling.

After a moment, she was hit in the face by a pillow as one of the other soldiers in the room tossed it at her. She looked over and saw the man with the bandaged arm mouth something at her with a frown, as if he thought that she'd been ignoring him.

'What?! I can't bloody hear you, idiot!' she called out in his direction, it was strange that she could feel the vibrations her voice made inside her own head, but couldn't hear the words as they were formed. It was a disorienting and slightly dizzying experience, and Bobby felt herself begin to feel sick again. She closed her eyes and tried to lay still, but not before tossing the pillow back where it had come from.

After a moment she felt a gentler prod at her shoulder and she opened her eyes to see the soldier who had thrown the pillow pointing at her notebook. She handed it over begrudgingly. He wrote quickly, 'Stevens', and pointed at himself, 'Bobby', Bobby replied. Stevens held out his hand, the one that wasn't bandaged up, and Bobby shook it cordially, trying not to move her head too much.

'Who's Nurse Chambers?' Stevens wrote next with his eyebrow cocked in a decisively salubrious manner. Bobby had gotten used to this sort of talk whilst enrolled with the army. It seemed that there was nothing young men liked to do more, when around other young men, than about girls. The language they used was often filled with multiple layers of double-entendres and words that Bobby wasn't fluent in, but she knew enough to at least play long in the background.

'A Nurse, she checked in on us late last night, you were all asleep.' She replied in her best approximation of a polite young boy who was unfamiliar with girls.

Stevens smiled and looked around at the other men, and even though she couldn't hear the pleased chuckles, she could feel them, this was going to be a pain.

'Nice Chassis?' was the next question in the notebook. Bobby knew this one, Stevens was asking if Nurse Chambers had a nice body. In response she just held up her hand and waggled it in the air a little as if to say 'so-so.'

'Dilly Dame?' was the next question, followed quickly by 'Parson's Daughter?'

Bobby knew exactly what these both meant and decided that she didn't want to answer them. But she had to keep up the laddish charade, and so just shrugged noncommittally and said back in as manly a voice as she could muster,

'She's a bit of alright lads, I'll say no more.' She topped it off with a wink before holding out her hand for her notebook back.

Stevens and his new pals seemed to accept this as ample ammunition to begin speculating on... something obscene she was sure, and he handed her the notebook back.

As Bobby lay there in a new silent little world and stared up at the ceiling again, she felt her mind wandering back to the strange night time encounter with Hettie. Although the expression was crude, she meant what she had said. Nurse Chambers had been quite a beautiful woman. Bobby found her memory drifting back to the way that the Hettie's orange candlelight had delicately highlighted the loose wayward stands of her auburn hair, like drifting cobwebs in a golden summer glow. Or the full, tender soft redness of her lips as they smiled down comfortingly at her, with those deep brown lustrous eyes filled with care. Her skin had been so soft and warm as she had held Bobby's hand in hers, and Bobby felt a small tingle in her skin as she remembered the soft touch of those delicate fingers.

Nurse Chambers couldn't have been much older than she herself was, maybe mid to late twenties? The meagre light from the candle had not been much to go by, but somehow the image of Hettie's pale angelic face illuminated in it's flickering light had lodged itself inside Bobby's mind and she found herself drifting back off into daydreams of those eyes, those lips and how it would feel to run her fingers through that long straight hair of hers.

Bobby was snapped back out of her daydreams when the door to the room opened again and another older nurse bustled in with toast and jam for the men. Bobby may have been down once sense but the smell of the browned bread and sugary preserve was enough to make her stomach gurgle. She devoured the two slices she was given ravenously and was just licking the last of the sweet jam off her fingers when Nurse Chambers came back into the room.

Her heart quickened as she saw the woman who had appeared to her, as if in a dream, this time in the light of day. She thought that she was even more beautiful than she remembered. Nurse Chambers was about the same height as her and she walked into the room with such supreme feminine confidence that Bobby could have only ever dreamed of emulating. Despite the other soldier's boisterous gossiping, they were quickly put to silence like schoolboys by Hettie's snapping fingers. Bobby couldn't hear what was being said, but one by one, each of the men nodded respectfully and walked out of the door. The last one to go was Stevens, who gave Bobby a lude leer and an eyebrow wiggle in the direction of the nurse, before walking out.

Hettie next walked over Bobby's bed. Bobby made to get up, as she assumed that, like the rest of the soldiers, orders had been given for them all to be relocated. But another wave of nausea passed over her as she made to rise and she collapsed back onto the thin pillow beneath her. Next she felt Hettie's comforting hand on her shoulder, followed by the light pressure of her notebook being retrieved. After a few moments she was able to open her eyes and read what Hettie had written.

'No. You stay. Head wound. Eardrums. Need time to heal. Don't worry. I'll take care of you.'

Bobby blushed as she read the last part and looked up at where Hettie sat on the side of her bed, her face still filled with compassionate care and worry. She wanted to sit up and talk to her, to tell her that she thought she was beautiful, that if it meant getting nearly blown up again then she'd do it a thousand times over just to see her again. But instead she merely lay there and smiled awkwardly and nodded her head.

'Thank you miss.' She managed to whisper, nervously. 'Will I see you again soon?'

This second question escaped her mouth before she could stop it and she blushed again at how awkward and needy it made her sound. She closed her eyes again and hoped that Hettie would think that she had gone back to sleep. But the next thing she felt was the soft, tender feeling of Hettie's hand lightly cupping her cheek and then the equally soft and tender feeling of her placing a soft kiss on her forehead. She opened her eyes and found that she was looking up into the deep green-brown depths of Hettie's own eyes as she looked down on her. The soft yellow light of the morning sun through the window framed her face so that once more she looked like a celestial being descending on Bobby from above to bring her to salvation.

For a second or two, the two women sayed put, perfectly still in a strange moment of tender intimacy. Bobby's lips parted as she felt an unusual feeling of butterflies begin to fill her chest, that had nothing to do with her injuries. Hettie seemed equally lost in the moment, her eyes fixed perfectly on staring into Bobby's own blue ones, unable to tear away. Miniscule movements of both women inclined their heads closer together, leaning in to kiss, mouth to mouth. But just as they were mere inches apart, something shattered the yellow-orange glow of loving tenderness around the moment and Hettie blinked and seemed to snap back into her senses.

She quickly withdrew, sitting up and blushing furiously as if unsure of what had just happened or why she had done that. Bobby too was equally confused, she had wanted it to happen, to feel Hettie's lips on hers, and now that the moment was gone. The butterflies left a hollow emptiness in her chest. She was about to reach out and try to take Hettie's hand in hers, to try and preserve the moment that seemed to have popped like a soap bubble. But Nurse Chambers quickly stood up from the bed, still blushing and unable to look Bobby in the eye.

She quickly walked to the end of the bed and pointed at Bobby as if to say 'stay' before she bustled out of the room. A moment later she was back to place the notepad and pencil she had accidentally walked off with back on Bobby's bed, now if possible blushing even harder. Bobby waved briefly with a small hand motion as Nurse Chambers tucked her loose hairs back behind her ears before shooting one last sweet, but awkward smile at Bobby and walking out again.

Bobby was left in the empty room with nothing but her thoughts for company. She was dizzy and tired and very, very confused. What had just happened? Whatever it was, she hoped that it would happen again soon.

- - -

Hettie turned the corner along the corridor along from the long-term treatment room and leant up against the wall in order to collect herself. She could feel that she was very flushed and her heart was beating faster with a strange mix of excitement and embarrassment. Why had she leant in and kissed young Private Partridge on the forehead like that?! What had that moment been? Why had she wanted to kiss him so badly? She'd never done such a thing before in all her career of caring for wounded soldiers. She'd never felt this way about a young man in her care before, but something about Bobby enticed her and mystified her. She wanted to sit by his bedside all day and night and talk to him, even in the unusual written way that they had to at the moment.

The young boy was just so... pretty and innocent and pure in a world filled with ugly depraved injustices. She wanted to protect and cherish him, to hold him in her arms and tell him everything was going to be alright. Why this young man, of all the young men who had passed before her? There had been many who were handsome or dashing or heroic, all the things that women like her were supposed to find attractive in men. But Bobby, there was something so infuriatingly comforting and familiar about the young man, something she couldn't put her finger on. It was maddening.

But she couldn't allow herself to become distracted. She had a job to do and by God she was good at it. Private Partridge would have to wait.

For all the rest of the day, Nurse Chambers busied herself with her duties. But every now and then she would find her mind drifting back to the beautiful shy blue eyes of that young man, with his heavy dark lashes and full lips. She would think of how un-naturally and wonderfully soft and smooth his skin had been beneath her palm when she had cradled his face in her hand. She would try and get back to see him tonight, even just to talk. He needed her, just as much as she needed to see him. Tonight when everyone else was asleep. She only hoped that there wasn't another 'Big Push' to flood their beds with more wounded and broken men.

- - -

Bobby spent most of the day wrestling with her inner thoughts. Her mind kept drifting back to Nurse Chambers and the intimate moment they had shared that morning. If there was ever a person who genuinely cared and seemed free of judgement, it was Hettie. Bobby's conscience burned inside her to think that she was misleading the sweet caring woman. She wasn't sure what the moment this morning had meant, but she did feel that there was something intimate, developing between her and Hettie. If the nurse found out that she was actually a woman, would this change things? How could it not? Would she help her or expose her?

Until now, her persona of a young, naive boy had held up fine. But now that she was here in Hospital, surely they would discover her true nature sooner or later. Thankfully the bathrooms had closed stalls so she had not found a problem there, and when she had been given a simple patched set of hospital pyjamas to wear, she had been allowed privacy to change. So far luck was with her, but how long would it last, especially now that she also seemed to be deaf into the bargain.

At least the dizziness seemed to be waning, she could now sit up and stand without falling back down, but walking still took some effort. Some doctors and other nurses came and went throughout the day and Bobby kept her head down, either pretending to sleep, or interacting minimally to try and maintain her cover. Nobody seemed to notice.

And still the thoughts and arguments went round and round in her head, like a carousel. One moment she would resolve herself that she would tell Hettie the truth, that she would understand and not immediately report her or worse, reject and rebuke her for misleading her into caring about her. The next moment Bobby resolved that she couldn't possibly stand the look on Hettie's face when she found out the truth. She would surely report her and have her sent back to England in shame for betrayal of her trust.

Night had long since fallen when flashes of light outside the window announced the resumption of distant artillery. The lights, far away though they were, still slightly terrified Bobby, as if each shell that was fired was bound to come crashing through the high window of her room and finish her off for good. She lay there in the dark trying to keep the memory of the shell that had cost her her hearing from overwhelming her.

She was lying still with her eyes tightly closed, trying not to dream when an orange light glowed through her closed eyelids. Opening her eyes, Bobby was greeted once again to the angelic form of Nurse Chambers standing beside her bed. She was holding her candle-lit lantern in her hand and looking down at her with a look of compassionate attention on her face. Hettie set the lantern down on the bedside table and reached for the notebook still lying there. Slowly and carefully she wrote in her neat, delicate handwriting,

'How are you feeling? Can you hear me?'

Bobby shook her head, no matter how much she wanted to hear this woman speak and hear her comforting words, her ears remained completely deaf. Hettie pulled a face and looked down at Bobby's chart again, before writing another note and then reaching out to take Bobby's hand in hers once more. It's soft warmth gave Bobby's mind something to focus on as she read the words on the page.

'I'm sorry Bobby. If your hearing hasn't come back, even a little bit, by now. It's unlikely to ever come back.'

Bobby took the message in with shocked realisation. Never again would she hear the sound of the wind, or birds, or the voice of her mother. She would never know what Nurse Chambers' voice sounded like, or hear her laugh, or sing. She looked up into Hettie's eyes as her own began to fill with tears at what she had lost. Her own guilt of her deception began to overwhelm her at the same time. This woman had been so kind and caring to her, she held her hand tightly and smiled sweetly even as the tears ran down Bobby's cheeks.

I... I have to tell you something...' She said out loud, unable to hear her own words, and hoping that her mouth was still able to make the correct sounds.

Hettie cocked her head to one side, clearly listening.

'I'm not really, that is... My name isn't really... I'm...'

Her words failed her and she lowered her head and several heavy sobs wracked her body. As she looked down her eyes alighted on the golden locket that held a picture of her true self inside, and she knew what she had to do. As she sniffled back a couple more shaky sobs, she opened the locket up and showed the picture inside to Hettie, who looked at it and for a moment of sadness and disappointment passed over her face. She wrote in the notebook, 'Who?'

Bobby took a big breath to calm herself, the grief within her swiftly being replaced by grim resolve and a little excitement at revealing the truth. She pointed at the picture and then pointed to herself.

'That's me. This is who I really am. Roberta Clara Partridge. I'm sorry...'

For several achingly long moments the two of them sat and stared at each other in complete stillness and silence. Bobby's mind had gone as silent as her ears and she sat in dumb-foundead anticipation of Hettie's reaction. Many different expressions and emotions seemed to pass over Hettie's face in quick succession. Puzzlement, realisation, more puzzlement, confusion, relief, fear and then tender-hearted happiness.

She scribbled something quickly in the notebook before shifting a few inches closer to Bobby along the edge of the bed.

'I knew there was something different about you Bobby.'

Hettie's hand released its hold on Bobby's and softly travelled up her arm until she was gently cupping Bobby's cheek once more in her palm. Bobby felt the tension and fear of rejection and of being reported fade away as she looked into the caring gaze of Hettie's green-brown eyes, illuminated beautifully in the pale glow of her candle. Just like it had that morning, time seemed to slow and the world around them faded away until it was just the two of them illuimated in a yellow-gold light amidst the darkness.

Gingerly Bobby reached out with her hand and tucked one of the loose strands of Hettie's auburn hair back behind her ear and rested it also on her soft feminine cheek. Slowly, like two glaciers colliding, the two women leaned in towards each other, their lips softly parted until they were nearly nose to nose.

'I... I don't...' Bobby murmured softly, unsure of what was happening, but knowing only that her mind and body wanted it so badly.