A Fire Sparkling by MacLean Julianne

Author:MacLean, Julianne
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781542092807
Published: 2019-07-31T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE:

APRIL

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

September 1940

I woke in the hospital the morning after the bombing, overcome with despair because my twin sister was dead. There was a cavernous hole in my heart, a void in the world, and I felt guilty for being alive when she wasn’t. I wanted to die too.

Numb with disbelief and depression, I could do nothing but lie in a motionless heap, staring at the wall. I was in shock. The depth of my grief was incomprehensible.

The room was bright. Too bright. Sunshine beamed in through the windows, and I was forced to squint. I’d never felt more alone in my life, but I wasn’t alone. I was in a large, open ward with at least twenty beds, all filled with other patients groaning and complaining.

Vivian . . .

Her pained whimpers in her final moments assailed me, and I couldn’t escape them. I couldn’t stop reliving the explosion and my desperate, unsuccessful attempts to rescue her from the rubble.

A young nurse hurried past the foot of my bed, like a ghost on feet made of vapor. She carried two bedpans, and I caught a whiff of something foul. Nausea hit me hard, and I knew I was going to be sick. Rising up on my elbows, I winced at a sudden stabbing pain in my rib cage and shoulder. There was a sick bowl next to my bed, so I grabbed hold of it and expelled the contents of my stomach, which wasn’t much, but the dry heaves were violent, and the retching was excruciating.

“Are you all right?” another nurse asked, appearing like an angel of mercy and reaching to take the bowl from my trembling hands. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. She set the bowl aside and picked up a cup of water. “Take a drink of this.”

I managed a small sip. Then memories flooded back to me—the air raid siren and the bomb whistling as it fell from the sky, just over the rooftop of the house.

I heard the windows shatter. Then I was falling . . . piles of bricks were beneath me, on top of me. Dust filled my lungs and choked my throat.

Vivian, where are you?

Rolling away from the young nurse, I buried my face in the pillow to smother a sob. “Please . . . I just want to be alone.”

The nurse set the cup on the side table. “Yes, Mrs. Gibbons.”

My eyes flew open at the sound of my sister’s name on her lips.

As soon as she was gone, I pulled my hand from beneath the covers and examined the gold wedding band on my finger. It fit perfectly, but the sight of it caused a deep, heavy ache in my soul, because it reminded me that Vivian was truly gone, and I was still here, without her. But I could never take her place. How could I, when I felt like only half a person?

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