While My Heart Beats by Erin McKenzie

Author:Erin McKenzie [McKenzie, Erin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781635555905
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2020-03-25T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

There were too many. He stood in the road and called to her, and she fought to get to him, tripping over bodies and slipping in the blood-soaked mud. “Duncan! Duncan, wait…I’m coming!” He was yelling something, but she couldn’t hear as shells whistled overhead and exploded all around her. She ducked, and when she looked again, he was gone. She ran to where he’d been standing, but all she found was a dead boy with no face. And she screamed.

The familiar pain crushed Johanna’s chest as she bolted upright, bathed in sweat. She looked wildly around in the darkness, yelling out when a hand touched her shoulder.

“Johanna?”

The darkness was suddenly pierced with light, and Johanna found herself in an unfamiliar room. She couldn’t stop trembling.

“Johanna, darling, I’m here.”

The voice came again, calming her. Warm, gentle hands rubbed her back and smoothed her hair, and she realized where she was. Ellie sat beside her, her face awash with concern.

“Are you all right? You had a bad dream.”

Johanna took several deep breaths until she could speak without her voice shaking. “It’s always the same.” She shuddered.

“Can you talk about it?” Ellie asked.

Johanna scrubbed her hands across her face and sighed. Maybe it was time to face it, this nightmare that had stolen her peace. “There was a boy at the CCS. He came in with several wounded from the Royal Scots—a bullet had grazed his arm. I remembered him especially because he looked very like my brother. He was a friendly lad, and we spoke of home as I tended his arm. He wore a braided leather band around his wrist, a memento from his sweetheart, he said.” Johanna wiped her eyes as tears began to fall. “Two weeks later, a wounded soldier grabbed my skirt as I walked by his stretcher. He couldn’t speak—his whole jaw was blown away. He had tears in his eyes, and I held his hand as he died. Only then did I notice the leather band on his wrist.”

Johanna’s tears fell freely now, and Ellie pulled her close, pressing a kiss to her bare shoulder. “I had to cut off his red identification tag for the clerk—it’s crazy, but his surname was Duncan.” Her voice cracked. “In my dream, the faceless dead boy is my brother. I feel like he is reaching out to me somehow, because I wasn’t with him when he died.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Ellie said. She gathered Johanna into her arms and held her as she sobbed, purging some of the horrors she had held inside for so long. After a while, her tears stopped, replaced by a desperate need.

“There was so much death in that place, I sometimes felt numb and lifeless myself. And my family, they’re all dead, too.” She took Ellie’s face in her hands and kissed her with urgency. “Touch me, Ellie—I need to feel alive.”

Ellie made love to her with all the tenderness and passion she could give, and when the morning came, Johanna knew a part of her had begun to heal.

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